Second Fiddle (23 page)

About an hour later our parents came back in, with the French police chief right behind them.

“Good news,” Mrs. Armstrong called out.

The police chief strode up to the table. “Sergeant Kross has been recovered, hungry but alive,” he said.

I let out a huge breath I didn’t even realize I’d been holding.

“And our friends in the KGB,” the police chief went on, “are now following the wrong man on a chase that will be as difficult and costly as we can possibly make it.”

General Johnson nodded in admiration. “Those boys are in for a cold day in Moscow if they ever make it home.”

“They’ll see a cold day before the Palace of Justice if they break even one law on French soil,” the police chief said, with no trace of his usual charm.

“Where is Arvo now?” I said.

“On a helicopter to the hospital at Ramstein Air Base,” General Johnson said. “He’ll need X-rays and a cast, and also a quiet and safe place to work with the brigade intelligence officer and others sorting out what he knows about weapons transport.”

“However,” the police chief said, “he insisted you have this immediately.” He handed us a large envelope with a flourish. I opened it, and out slid a stack of cash, three passports, and a set of second-class train tickets.

“He was very concerned about these girls,” the police chief said to our parents. “He didn’t want the Soviet agent to see all of them together and bring them to harm. He thought if he took their passports and money, they’d go to the embassy for help immediately.”

The police chief turned to the three of us with a stern look. “He was right, mesdemoiselles. They would have helped you at the embassy. Any gendarme on the street, probably any citizen of Paris, would have helped you, if only you had
asked.” He paused while the weight of that sank in. It was true. Everyone we’d met had been kind.

“Next time you visit my city, you will not be so shy—or perhaps not so spirited. Do you promise?”

“Yes, sir,” we each said in turn.

“So all is mended then?” the British agent said. “Well done!” He stood up, and the American agent with him. “We have reports to file. You will remember what I said, Miss Field?”

I nodded and waved as the two left the room. The police chief followed them out, and then it was just us and our parents alone in the conference room.

For a moment no one said anything. Dad peered into his empty coffee cup. Vivi’s mom put her feet up on a chair. General Johnson actually took off the tie on his Class A uniform. They all looked exactly like people who hadn’t slept in two days.

“Dad, I’m sorry—” I began.

He shook his head. “Do you have any idea how worried people have been about you? The number of people? The hours?”

“We were just trying to help,” I said. “Arvo was in trouble. We couldn’t figure out any other way to do it.” I looked from my dad to General Johnson. “We couldn’t just leave him there—hurt and in danger. You would never abandon an injured soldier.”

“It’s what you always talk about,” Giselle said. “Do the
right thing. Support the mission. We were keeping him safe. We were helping him be free. Did you think I wasn’t listening to you all this time?”

“You ran away to Paris without telling anyone,” General Johnson said. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?”

“Dad!” Giselle straightened up. “It’s not the DMZ. This is Paris. People like us here.”

“We didn’t run away!” I said.

“It’s true,” Vivian added. “There was very little running. Mostly we walked.” She gave the parents a little smile and got nothing back.

“Daddy,” Giselle said, “he was all alone, and he needed us. He wanted all the things we want: freedom, self-determination, justice. It’s what you talk about at home. It’s what we sing about at church. You can’t just teach me all that stuff and then expect me not to care.”

Dad turned away from the table and looked me in the eye. “Do you know how hard your mother works to make music happen in your life? She’s the one who thought you were ready for this trip. ‘Give that girl some room to grow,’ she said to me. ‘Trust her,’ she said.”

I knew how Mom got when she was worried. Whenever we were in a crowded place in Berlin, she was terrified about the boys getting lost or stolen; she always made me hold their hands. She could work an emergency room full of gunshot wounds and even help with an amputation and totally
keep her focus, but the thought of losing her own boys in a foreign country made her panic.

“I never meant to make her worry,” I said. “We did all that work to come home so you wouldn’t have to worry.”

“You lied. You lied to both of us.”

“I lied to save a man’s life,” I said, trying to hold my voice steady.

“You just wanted to play in that contest with your friends.”

“These are the best friends I’ll ever have,” I said, determined not to cry. “And I’m never going to see them again.”

I thought he was going to yell. Every muscle in my body was ready for it, like you get ready for a wave at the beach.

“If you had told me about Sergeant Kross five days ago, I’d have gotten him out of East Germany, no problem. If you’d told us someone stole your money, we’d have come to get you.” He shook his head, looking at the ground, and I could feel the weight of his disappointment. “Are we really so hard to talk to?”

“It’s not you, Dad. It’s not Mom, either. I wanted to save Arvo by myself. I wanted to find my own way home.”

“Jody,” he said, and looked up. “I was a year younger than you when my dad died.… I’ve found my own way ever since. Everything I’ve gained in my life has been my own accomplishment.” He shrugged the way he does. “And I’d give it all up to have my dad back. Please. I’m right here. Talk to me.”

I should have hugged him. I wanted to, but all that disappointment stood between us.

“When we get to Texas,” I began, “I’ll try to be … less independent.”

Dad sighed, took off his glasses, and rubbed his eyes. “Independence isn’t a crime, you know. But we could start with something less extravagant than international espionage.”

“Right!” I nodded earnestly. “I’ll never help a Soviet spy escape ever again. I swear.”

Dad folded his arms and looked down at me. “Exactly. I think we’ll start with something much more local. How about a morning paper route?”

I was not a morning person.

“I have some serious paying back to do, don’t I?”

“Oh yes.”

“So I guess we better move to a town that has a newspaper then, even if it doesn’t have an orchestra.”

“I think I can promise that.”

“Okay.”

I walked over to where Vivi and her mom were talking with Giselle.

“Well, girls,” Vivian’s mom said briskly as the dads meandered over. “I spoke with our ambassador this afternoon. Apologies were in order for all the disruption you’ve caused, and he was good enough to remind me that in addition to this outrageous escapade, which has caused us considerable grief, not to mention expense …”

General Johnson nodded grimly, and my dad was right there with him.

“… you have also managed,” Vivian’s mom went on, “to save the life of an important intelligence contact. Something that will benefit not just our own country but the stability of the region.”

Dad opened his mouth to say something, but Mrs. Armstrong held up her hand and went on. “Needless to say, medals will not be awarded. Nonetheless, the ambassador would like to express his thanks by offering us the use of a vehicle for the remainder of the afternoon.”

I looked from Vivian to Giselle, hardly daring to believe it.

“This is very generous,” General Johnson said. “While I am deeply disappointed by many”—he looked sternly at Giselle—“of your decisions of the last five days, your rescue and resuscitation of our Soviet contact was perfectly executed. Your subsequent actions, though ill-advised, were surprisingly effective … a soldier twice your age might not have done as well.”

Giselle studied the ground in front of her feet, but I could see her beaming.

“So, girls,” Vivi’s mom said, “did you see everything you’d hoped to in Paris? We have a few hours before our flight home.”

“Let’s go to the Eiffel Tower,” Giselle said.

“Yeah,” Vivian said. “I think I want a picture of us at the top of the Eiffel Tower after all.”

“Seriously?”

“Honestly, Jody,” Vivian said, “we never would have come at all if you hadn’t saved Arvo’s life.”

“You’re the girl with the plan, honey,” Giselle said. “We would have been lost without you.”

“Eiffel Tower, it is,” Mrs. Armstrong said. “I’m sure our driver can arrange a quick visit.”

Apparently this is true. If you have the right kind of car, you can park anywhere and also go to the front of the elevator line. After we’d posed for serious and silly pictures at the top of the Eiffel Tower, I went a few steps away from the others and leaned on the rail looking down at the cream-colored buildings, plain and fancy, and the green fluff of treetops in the park just across the river. It was a much tidier-looking city from up there, and I wondered what would become of Arvo, and if his country would ever be free. Dad came and leaned on the rail next to me, and I thought he was going to say something, but for a long time he didn’t.

“About your music,” he said. “You were disqualified from the competition. Contestants have to play a published piece. I know that competition was important to you and you worked hard for months. I’m sorry it didn’t turn out better.”

“Oh.” I looked down at the Seine and the slow, flat boats pushing people and cargo. “I guess I forgot about that. I was trying so hard to get home.”

“However, you succeeded in impressing a very
distinguished panel of judges. I hear that was quite a piece of music you wrote.”

“Really?”

“Really. The French judge even invited you to attend his school.” Dad reached into his kit bag and pulled out my music notebook.

“You got my notebook back!” I snatched it out of his hand. It was a little bit more tattered and bent than before. I flipped it open to “Canon for Three Friends.” It was still there, every page.

“Thanks.” I hugged the notebook to my heart. “I need this, Dad. I can manage the new house and the new school, all of it, if I have this.”

He put a hand on my shoulder. “I know,” he said quietly. “I do know that about my Jo.”

I rested my head on his sleeve for a second, and then we went back to leaning on the railing.

“Did you know, I had to give up my piano lessons when my dad passed,” he said. “I never really missed them until now, when I see you loving music every bit as much as I did back then.” He shrugged and looked out at the city of Paris. “I wish I knew how to read your composition, Jody. That’d be a thing to know. I wish I could still play.”

I took that in as we stood side by side watching the river.

“Time to go, girls!” Mrs. Armstrong called from the far side of the platform.

“Aww, Mom, one last look?” Vivi came and tugged me
over to where she and Giselle were looking east toward the Latin Quarter.

“See?” Giselle said. “That dome over there is the Sorbonne, and the two square towers are Saint Sulpice, where we first played on the street.”

“Hey, your notebook!” Vivi pulled it out from under my arm and flipped it open. “Can I have my part to our canon? I only got to play it once.” She looked through the pages until she came to my now very wrinkled and coffee-stained song. “Can I have this? Please?” She looked at me over the tops of her glasses. “Nobody ever wrote a song just for me.”

“Not this copy,” I said, taking back my notebook and closing it carefully so none of the loose pages got blown away. “I’ll write out your part for you,” I said. “All the parts—on good paper. And I’ll send it to both of you, okay?”

“So we’re writing each other, then,” Giselle said.

“Yeah!” Vivian said. “Of course we’re writing.”

“Good,” Giselle went on. “None of this wimpy I-miss-you stuff and then dropping the letters when you get other friends because it’s embarrassing to say I have other friends now.” She gave us both the look, and I totally got what she was talking about. That had happened to me twice already.

“Of course we’re going to have other friends,” Giselle went on. “Good friends, I hope. But I’m never going to find girls like you. I can tell.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll write.”

“And one other thing,” Vivian said. She and Giselle both turned away from the city sights and faced me.

“Close your eyes and hold out your hand,” Giselle commanded.

She set a square package of paper in my hand. It was warm, as if it had been carried about in a pocket all day.

“What’s this?”

“Open it!”

It was the song I’d written at Shakespeare and Company. The wind rattled the pages, but I held them tight.

“I promised Mr. Whitman …” I looked from Vivi to Giselle, amazed. “I left it for him in the children’s room. I was going to give it to him, but it’s not finished and—”

“We talked to Mr. Whitman while you were off finding the money in that book,” Vivian said. “And he said we could keep your song. He doesn’t even play music. Can you believe it? He was pretending.”

“He said”—Giselle slumped her shoulders the way Mr. Whitman stands and tried to imitate his voice—“ ‘When you have a friend as tenderhearted as that one, you should remember that she will do for her friends what she is not brave enough to do for herself.’ ”

“So we’ve been thinking,” Vivi said. “And we decided you can have your song if you promise to finish it.”

“There is no cello part,” Giselle said. “What’s up with that? Finish the song and then send it to me.”

“Yeah,” Vivi chimed in. “Because honestly, Jody, you’re the one with all the talent. You’re the one who’s going to be famous someday.”

“I heard what Mrs. Jorgenson said about your song,” Giselle said. “She’s going to give you a full-ride scholarship, I know it. And then it’s straight to Juilliard for you!”

“You’ll have your own symphony in no time,” Vivi added.

I just laughed. “Oh no, I totally have other plans.” I pulled out the British agent’s card and showed it to them. “I’m going to be a spymaster. Look! We’re practically partners already!”