Sentimental Journey (4 page)

The truck tailgate opened with a junky rattle.

She opened her eyes. The sun was so bright there was no shadow, no silhouette, nothing before her eyes. Breathing was impossible. She bent down and placed her hands on her knees, disoriented still, trying to catch a breath that was out of reach.

Men jumped down out of the truck. She smelled male sweat, desert dust, and something else—the slightly burnt odor of starched and ironed twill. The smell of uniforms. The men wearing them surrounded her; their shadows blocked out the hot sun.

She felt an incredible sense of relief. The
Vichy
could protect her from the man who chased her. She took one more shallow breath.
“Aide. S’il vous plait. Un homme me chasse.”

They said nothing. The
Vichy
had never given her any trouble other than the political quagmire that made her and others like her have to wait for exit papers. But that was all over now. She was going home.

She straightened.
“Pouvez-vous m’aider?
Will you help me?”

The only answer she got was the click of a rifle. Then another, and another, all around her,
click . . . click . . . click . . .
like doors of escape locking closed.

“Quest ce que vous-voulez?”
she said more forcefully.

A man grabbed her shoulder. His hand was hot and sweaty. He was panting. It was her pursuer.

Couscous. An inane thought. He had eaten couscous? What did that matter? She could feel the edges of hysteria: a laugh that was rising from her gut.

He jerked the scarf from her head.

Her laugh came out as a cry, small and final; the same pitiful noise the rabbits made when market butchers chopped their back feet off so they couldn’t run away.

For just a moment she thought she might faint. She wobbled slightly, head down. Her loose hair fell into her face; it was damp and stringy and smelled of the Breck shampoo she’d used that morning.

He grabbed her hair in a tight fist, then twisted it hard and jerked her head up and around so she faced him. The bright sun behind him made everything look white.

She smelled that same frighteningly distinctive odor she’d first encountered years ago when she was just a kid, standing in front of a cage full of leopards at the zoo; it was the metallic, bloody smell of a predator, the kind of smell you never forgot. Now it was all around her, emanating from this man who was a good foot taller than she was.

He twisted her hair again even harder.

It hurt so badly she cried out.

He laughed.

She kicked him.

He spun her by her hair so her back was against his chest, his other arm clamped hard across her ribs.

“Someone help me!” she shouted. “Oh, God . . . Please! Help me!” she screamed it in English, in French, then in Italian.

He let her go, then kicked her feet out from under her.

She fell to her knees. Small, sharp pieces of gravel cut through her stockings. He stepped behind her and twisted her head back until her neck was exposed.

Oh, God . . .

He was going to slit her throat.

She screamed as loud as she could.

He laughed. The sound was cruel. He thought her fear was funny.

She reached up and dug her nails into the bastard’s wrists.

He released her. “Bitch!”

She stood up quickly, but she couldn’t run because the men surrounded her; their guns poked into her back and her ribs.

She faced him, then, defiant. If she was going to die, she wouldn’t do it begging for her life.

She took a deep breath and stood there, ready to kick or claw again in an instant.

Two men grabbed her arms. She fought them. She punched and kicked, screaming and trying to make a scene that she hoped someone would remember for the right price.

She tried to pull her arms back and away. She kicked.

They pinned her between the two of them, their hands clamped hard around her upper arms. These men smelled like the dust from the desert, like leather and sweat, except one of them had drunk a beer. Uniform buttons pressed into her forearms, then pistol holsters ground into her sides, and the rifle butts hit her back.

She fought, but the soldiers only tightened their grips on her arms and dragged her away kicking and screaming. She twisted hard and grabbed one man’s rifle butt . . . jerked it downward as hard as she could. The thick leather shoulder strap held, but she could feel it dig into his shoulder.

He cursed violently.

The words she heard made her freeze for just one instant, and in that single moment, the men lifted her up and shoved her inside the back of the truck.

She fell hard against the riveted metal of the truck bed; it was covered with some old, vile-smelling straw. She lay there stunned.

She pushed up onto her elbows and turned toward the outside light, toward the warmth of sunlight that was coming into the back of the truck.

The light disappeared as the canvas flapped closed.

Panicked, she scrambled toward it, pushed at the canvas flap, but the men had already securely tied it down to the tailgate. She hit it with her fists, her shoulders and head, grunting she hit it so hard. She felt like a trapped bird, butting against the cage again and again.

She sobbed, cried for help, her hands still beating on the canvas, because even though it was useless she couldn’t just give up.

She began to scream. Again and again. If she made enough noise. If someone were to ask after her. Her father. Her brothers. Surely some man in this souk, unlike the women, would gladly speak about the foolish American for the right amount of francs.

She gripped the tailgate. No matter how hard she pushed, it wouldn’t budge. She kicked at it, sat back and hammered it with her feet. It was locked in place.

Finally she fell backward, exhausted, panting, her throat raw.

The air in the truck had the musty scent of sun-baked canvas, stale hay, and the sweet flavor of the Evening in
Paris
perfume she had dabbed at her pulse points that morning, as if she were home and it was just another warm, sunny day in
California
.

The door to the truck cab opened, then slammed shut. It rattled the whole vehicle.

A man settled inside.

There was a long moment of silence.

“We have her,” he said. His words were in German.

PART THREE

NARRAGANSETT BAY
,
 
RHODE
 
ISLAND

“BOOGIE WOOGIE BUGLE
BOY
”

A sleek and low, boat-tailed
Auburn
used its eight supercharged cylinders to speed right past a road sign that said:

This is God’s country,

So don’t drive through it like hell!

The car was a bright electric blue. So was the summer sky overhead. And when that blue convertible flew past a dusty old Model-T truck full of chicken feed, farmer Melvin Johnson actually thought the sky was falling.

But the sky didn’t fall around J.R. Cassidy; women fell. Hard. James Raleigh Cassidy
III
was to women what a Betty Grable pinup was to enlisted men—sweet, dreamy candy for the eyes.

It was a curse, or perhaps a blessing, to those Cassidy men, men whose blond good looks could make you believe they were created on God’s best day. J.R. looked so much like his father and his grandfather that the women of the family just shrugged. If they gave birth to a boy, they knew never to look for a nose, a chin, eyes, or even a dim feature that bore any resemblance to their own ancestors. All that would be staring back at them was a face that was pure Cassidy.

J.R. was six foot two, with thick, wavy dark-blond hair that shone gold with a dab of Brylcreem and would streak almost platinum after two days of sailing his racing sloop in Rhode Island Sound. His smile was quick and white. He had the kind of smile that could melt a mother’s heart . . . and usually did.

His eyebrows were dark, a sharp contrast to his blond hair and something that drew attention to him, as if God and the genetics that created man were showing off. He had green eyes the exact color of the two imported olives that Jonesy the bartender at the Officer’s Club speared with a wooden toothpick and dipped into J.R.’s usual—a double shot of smooth, hundred-proof imported vodka . . . on the rocks.

There were creases in the corners of J.R.’s eyes from a life spent outdoors and from a hint of wry humor, one that said he could and did laugh at himself. When he shaved with a new Gillette blade, a
five-o’clock
shadow still smudged his jaw, which was square and hard and reflected the stubbornness of the Cassidy men.

His grandfather had been a mercenary soldier, one who fought in
Angola
, fought again in the
Philippines
prior to the Spanish-American War, during which he finally joined the U.S. Army in an official capacity and used his reputation and skill for a cause more patriotic than mercenary avarice.

Of course by the time that first Jim Cassidy had joined
Roosevelt
’s Rough Riders, he had earned enough money for himself, for his son, and even for his future grandchildren to live out their lifetimes like Rockefellers.

Jim Sr. had been known as
the Scavenger,
a man who by hook, by crook, or by steel balls could do the impossible. When Colonel Teddy Roosevelt had his favorite mount shot out from under him the day before his heroic charge up
San Juan Hill
, Jim Sr. had crept behind Spanish lines and stolen General De Vega’s horse, a prime Arab that the very next day carried
Roosevelt
into the history books.

As the story went, while Jim Sr. was filching that horse, he also stole half the Spanish Army’s Mauser ammunition.

His years in the regular Army had earned Jim much more than mercenary gold and a reputation for skilled thievery; he earned a Medal of Honor and a general’s silver stars.

His son, Jim Jr., carried on in his father’s wily footsteps when he stole a German biplane—a contraption he swore to this day was made of little more than rags and wood. Still, he flew himself and a buddy out of captivity in
France
during the First World War.

Now Jim Sr.’s grandson, U.S. Army Captain J.R. Cassidy, was earning the same reputation, not as
the Scavenger,
but as
the Scrounger.