As cold as it was, the Place St.-Michel was still jammed with bodies, a Latin Quarter mixture of Parisian students meeting friends and earnest tourists looking to soak up the fifth arrondissement’s exiled-artist mystique.
“This way,” Brian said, pulling me after him as he started down the narrow rue de la Huchette.
We’d be early. A good thing, Brian had said. Time to get the lay of the land. We’d been over our plan a dozen times at the hotel, but as we neared the rue St.-Jacques, Brian put his hand on my arm and pulled me to the side of the street.
“One last time,” he said.
“We split up here,” I told him. “I cross the Petit Pont, then come back through Notre Dame. Before I go into the tearoom, I stop at St.-Julien-le-Pauvre and say a quick prayer, left side of the aisle, second row back.”
“And after?”
“You’ll be watching from the church. When I leave the tearoom, I walk straight back to the St.-Michel metro stop. You’ll meet me on the platform.”
“Good. And if anything goes wrong?”
“We meet back at the hotel. If one of us isn’t there by seven, the other one goes.”
Brian nodded. “Don’t wait for me,” he said. “I won’t wait for you.”
He put his hand on my back, touching the butt of my Beretta through the canvas jacket. “You’re okay,” he said, as if reassuring himself of this fact.
“I’ll see you at the church,” I told him, my eyes steady on his, my hand on the pen drive in my pocket. Then I turned away and started down the rue St.-Jacques toward the Ile de la Cité and Notre Dame.
City of Tourists. That’s what Sister Theresa called Paris, her distaste for the crassness of the visitors apparent. She’d grown up rich here, a daughter of privilege, Heloise had told me one night over a mound of brioche dough, obviously not meaning to flatter. I’d been taken aback by the revelation, surprised by the deep-rooted sense of class in a place I’d naively assumed to be above such distinctions.
Theresa had been the last of the sisters to warm to me. Even after I’d gained her trust, she’d had a particular way of correcting me, of pointing out the flaws in my French, the imperfections in my cooking. You see, she’d say, biting into one of Heloise’s éclairs, this is the real pâte à choux. As if the fate of the republic rested on my inability to make the perfect pastry.
As I made my way toward the imposing spires of Notre Dame, I was reminded of Theresa’s prejudice. The island was clogged with sightseers, many of them obvious Americans, harried families running from one great European monument to another, guidebooks and digital cameras in hand. I could understand the nun’s snobbery. Yes, there was a coarseness to these people, an arrogance borne of unchallenged comfort. What I still couldn’t see was my place among them.
And yet, Theresa had seen it. So had Mohammed, my little friend from the train tracks. American, he’d insisted, when I’d tried to say otherwise. And so I was, though surely in no way these compatriots on the Ile de la Cité would recognize. There was something besides the clothes, the T-shirts and athletic shoes, besides the blank and bewildered faces staring up toward Notre Dame’s exquisite facade. There was something other than loyalty even. The real pâte à choux, I heard Theresa say, her tongue clicking accusatorily. Later, after everyone had gone to bed, I’d sneak down into the kitchen and taste mine against Heloise’s, trying in vain to tell the difference.
I made the loop Brian and I had discussed so many times, crossing the Pont au Double, then walking west along the river before heading down the rue Viviani toward St.-Julien-le-Pauvre. I got my first glimpse of the tearoom, a tiny establishment tucked into the first floor of a medieval town house, before turning through the iron gate into St.-Julien’s churchyard.
The church’s door was closed, but it swung open easily, ancient hinges groaning in protest. I stepped inside and stood for a moment in the warm foyer, letting my eyes adjust to the absence of sunlight, taking in the little stone chapel. Not Catholic, I thought, noticing the ornate icons on the altar. No, whatever its origins, St.-Julien-le-Pauvre now belonged to the Greek Orthodox order.
Unlike its flashy cousin across the river, the unassuming St.-Julien drew few visitors. There were just a handful of us today, a young Italian couple studiously surveying the twelfth-century architecture, a stooped old woman in widow’s black saying her rosary. And in the second row back, on the left side of the aisle, a solitary man with his head bowed in prayer. Brian.
I checked my watch, making sure we were on schedule, then slid into the row in front of him. He leaned forward onto his kneeler and put his hands on the back of my pew.
“It’s hard to tell,” he said, “but I don’t think there’s anyone else waiting for your meeting. It should just be you and your mystery date.”
I looked up at the lurid crucifix, the gilt images of the saints.
“There’s a back way out, but it’s a tight alley, with just one exit. I wouldn’t use it unless I had to.”
Nodding almost imperceptibly, I leaned forward and crossed myself once, fingers moving from head to gut to shoulders as they’d done so many times at the abbey. Then I slipped from the pew and started for the back of the church.
There was something unnervingly quaint about the little low-ceilinged tearoom, something ominous about the white-aproned serving girls, the tiny sandwiches, and the thick slices of gingerbread with delicate dollops of cream. Close as we were to Notre Dame, I’d expected a mob of tourists and the bad food that inevitably accompanied them, but it was obvious at first glance that the establishment catered to locals.
Most of the customers were old Parisian ladies, archaic creatures in hats and smart wool suits, but there were three male patrons as well. The first, a grandfatherly type with salt-and-pepper hair and a neat mustache, sat alone near the back of the room, deeply engrossed in a copy of Le Figaro and a slice of fruit tart. The second, a rumpled bureaucrat in his late fifties, sat closer to the door, an untidily folded copy of Le Monde on the table in front of him, his brown wool overcoat occupying the opposite seat. The third man was even younger, a university student, I figured, sharing a weekly tea with his grandmother. Either that or he was a gigolo, catering to the over-eighty set.
None of the three seemed a likely match for my enigmatic contact. Certainly not one of them had taken even the slightest note of my arrival. I scanned the room one last time, searching for something I might have missed, then took the last free table. It was exactly four o’clock by my watch. One of the waitresses came over, and I ordered a pot of Darjeeling, just as Helen had told me to do.
The tea came, hot and smoky, and I poured myself a cup, dousing it liberally with cream, checking my watch again. It was a quarter after now, and still no sign of whoever it was I was supposed to meet. Of course the message had gone up late, I told myself. I could always try again tomorrow.
Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw the Le Monde reader get up from his chair and shrug into his coat. Reaching into his pocket, he fished out a euro note and some change and laid the money on the table. He was just a few feet from me, and when he moved I thought at first that he was heading for the door, but he stepped toward me instead, his heavy coat brushing clumsily against the narrowly spaced tables.
“Katy?” he asked, stopping just in front of me.
I set my tea down and looked up into his face. “Uncle Bill. You got my message.”
He nodded, his eyes nervously taking me in, his hands gripping the old newspaper.