“Not far,” replied Hart. “I’ll just ride along for a few blocks, if you don’t mind.”
The woman, Parisian down to her shoes, seemed amused.
“Are you really a United States senator?” she asked quite calmly.
Hart was looking out the window, his eyes darting all around, searching for anyone that might still be trying to follow him. His heart was racing, every muscle in his body tense. The strange, the unexpected thing, was that he was enjoying it: not just the sense of danger, but his own reaction, the speed with which he had made his decision, the absence of any real panic. There was nothing like a bullet whizzing past you, nothing like the threat of violent death, to make you feel alive.
“Reagan said that,” he remarked, turning to the woman as if, instead of perfect strangers, she had been privy to his thoughts. “When he was shot,” he explained. “He said there was nothing more exhilarating. Reagan could always deliver a line, especially when it belonged to someone else. Churchill said it first, in something he wrote, about the last cavalry battle ever fought. He was in it.”
He saw the mild astonishment on the woman’s face. His eyes were full of mischief at what he had done.
“Yes, I am a member of the United States Senate; and yes, to that other question you are too polite to ask-I probably have lost my mind.”
The taxi was just passing the Eiffel Tower on its way toward a bridge that crossed the Seine. Hart had the driver pull off to the side. He started to get out, remembered he had been an uninvited guest on someone else’s ride, and paid enough to cover the fare for wherever the couple wanted to go. He watched them travel on across the bridge on their way to the Left Bank, and wondered what they would think when they learned later that the crazy American they had just ridden with was wanted for murder, and not just any murder, but the murder of the president. It might have been only vanity, or more likely self-respect, but he wanted to believe that no one who had spent time with him, even two French strangers in a Paris taxi, would believe he could have had anything to do with something as unthinkable as that. Though he did not know their names, and would never see them again, he felt almost as if they were friends. It was absurd, of course, but only, he realized, if you were not facing the prospect of your own imminent death. Then the last face you saw, the last voice you heard, the last momentary connection with another human being, had more meaning than what you had known of someone with whom you might have had a brief conversation, exchanged a few, meaningless words, every day for years. He watched the cab recede into the distance and with a wistful glance wished the two strangers well.
“Now let’s get the hell out of here,” he mumbled to himself as he started walking. “And for God’s sake-try to think!”
He had gone perhaps a quarter of a mile, collecting his thoughts, trying to make sense of things, when he remembered that he had not done the one thing he should have done as soon as he was out of the embassy and free on the streets. It was one thing to ask Austin Pearce, but this was something he had to do himself. He might be in danger, but Laura was in trouble. Even safe in Santa Barbara, reporters would be all over this, camped out in the street, badgering her with questions she could not answer about her husband’s involvement in the assassination of the president. He pulled out his cell phone and started to call, but then he remembered that it was only late morning on the East Coast and Laura was booked on a ten o’clock flight.
“If she ever got to the airport,” he said out loud. He stopped walking and looked around. He had changed directions and come back along the river until he was only a stone’s throw from the Eiffel Tower. He dialed the number, but Laura did not answer. Perhaps she had gotten away before the story broke, but that did not seem possible, if it was in all the morning papers. Maybe she saw it, the headlines in an airport newsstand, and remembered what he had told her, how important it was that he know she was safe, and had gotten on the flight instead of turning back to find out what was going on in Washington. He called Santa Barbara. At least there would be a message waiting for her when she arrived.
“I’m all right,” he told her as calmly as he could. “Stay there, wait for me. I know who is behind this, and it won’t take long to prove it.”
It was one of the few lies he had ever told her.
Turning away from the Eiffel Tower and the long lines of tourists, he walked toward a landing on the river where he bought a ticket for an open boat ride under the bridges of Paris. Just as he was about to board, he heard someone speak his name. Several women, Americans from the sound of their voices, who had already taken their seats, where pointing at him as they whispered among themselves. Pretending that he had misplaced something, Hart left his place in line and began to walk away.
“That’s him!” yelled one of the women, jumping to her feet. “That’s Bobby Hart-the one who killed the president!”
Hart kept moving, walking at the same, measured pace, trying to lose himself in the crowd. The other women started shouting as well, a strident chorus of accusation, shouting until they were red in the face, but to their astonishment, and Hart’s relief, no one seemed to pay attention, dismissing with French indifference the shouted demands of the Americans.
Even in Paris he could not pass unnoticed. Anywhere on the street he might pass an American, a tourist out for a stroll, and be recognized, and, recognized, accused. He was a fugitive who, even in a foreign capital, could not count on anonymity. There was no time to alter his appearance, no time to change the color of his hair, but he could at least change his clothes, get out of his suit and tie and dress more like a man who lived there. He found a small men’s store where he bought a pair of black pants, a short, two-button brown jacket, a pair of walking shoes, and a green shirt. The proprietor bundled up his suit and dress shoes in a brown paper package.
He felt safer now, free from his own identity and less noticeable in a crowd. It was nearly six, and with gray skies pregnant with a summer storm, almost as dark as winter. The cars on the streets had their lights on and all the shop windows were lit up, but Hart wore dark glasses and stayed off the main avenues. He was not sure what time he should go to Aaron Wolfe’s apartment. If he got there too early, before Wolfe came home, someone might notice him, someone might recognize him, someone might call the police. He decided to wait until eight. Wolfe was sure to be there by then, and if by chance he was not, it would be dark enough, whatever the weather decided to do, to stay out of sight.
He fell into a small café, took a table in the back corner, and picked at dinner. He had a glass of wine, and then had another, and he tried not to think too much about what had happened or what he was going to do. To get his mind off the immediate danger, he calculated the time difference between Paris and California, and then what time, his time, Paris time, Laura would make the long drive from the airport in Los Angeles to their home in the hills of Santa Barbara.
Even before the second glass of wine, he had begun to feel tired, very tired, as tired as he thought he had ever felt; weary with fear and frustration, fear of what he could not control and frustration over what he did not yet know: who was doing this and why they had decided that the best way to protect themselves was to make him a scapegoat, a fall guy, an assassin. His eyes felt heavy, his legs thick with fatigue. The only sleep he had gotten was the two fretful hours on the plane, a flight that now seemed like it must have happened weeks ago.