The van lurched as the driver doubled back toward Avignon. “You think Junior will fall for it?”
“Let’s hope so.” He waved a finger at my clothes. “He saw you get into the car dressed like this, and he’ll see your double get out of the car dressed like this. So unless something makes him suspicious, he’ll assume it’s you.”
His “unless” dug into me, the way a splinter on a rough wooden railing can snag a passing finger. “What might make him suspicious?”
He shrugged. “If they had someone watching at the other end of the tunnel, maybe they noticed the extra twenty seconds it took for the car to go through. The police, we might notice that kind of thing. Your FBI might notice. But these guys aren’t that good. They’re fanatics, not cops or spies.”
“Fanatics brought down the World Trade towers,” I pointed out. “Never underestimate the power of fanatics.”
“I don’t underestimate their power,” he said. “Just their capabilities. As far as we can tell, only the preacher and the big guy came to France for the bones of Jesus.”
“The bones of not-Jesus,” I corrected.
“True,” he conceded, “but we can’t tell that to them. If they learn the truth, they have no reason to keep mademoiselle alive. We must pray that they continue to have faith in our lies.”
I wasn’t much of a praying man, but there in the back of a lurching van bumping its way back to my hotel, I sent out a request to God, or to the universe: Whatever it takes, truth or lies, help me get Miranda back safely. I thought of Meister Eckhart’s criticism of the hypocrisy of praying Thy will be done but then complaining about the outcome. But I wasn’t praying Thy will be done; I wasn’t that virtuous or pious. I only wanted Miranda back, safe and sound.
The van turned again, entering the old city, and hugged the wall until it reached the tower that faced Lumani. The driver pulled onto the narrow sidewalk and stopped with the van’s side door directly aligned with Lumani’s wooden gate. “Stay here,” Descartes reminded me, “until the decoy gets back from Geneva.”
“Do I have to? This feels like house arrest, and it’s gonna drive me crazy. I’d really rather help you look for the bones.”
“It’s too risky,” he said. “If the preacher sees you, he knows you’re not in that car. Then he kills mademoiselle. Non, you must stay out of sight. We will keep looking for the bones. Now go.” He tapped the van’s driver on the shoulder. The driver got out; luckily, he was skinny as a rail, or he’d never have managed to squeeze through the narrow gap between his door and the wall of the house. Stepping into the street, he checked carefully in both directions, then gave a quick, low whistle. Descartes slid open the van’s side door, and without even having to lean out the opening, I put my key in the lock and opened the wooden gate. Then, in one step, I was inside the sheltering wall, latching the gate behind me. This maneuver took even less than the twenty-three seconds in the tunnel. Très bien fait, I thought. And Please, bring her back.
CHAPTER 40
In a three-mile stretch of tunnel carved through the mountains on the route from Geneva, Switzerland, back to Lyon, France, a black BMW whips to the left and surges forward, rapidly overtaking the old Peugeot that’s chugging up the gradual grade. The German car rockets past the French one as swiftly as Hitler’s tanks darted around France’s Maginot Line back in 1940; it cuts in front and then brakes hard. The hulking bald driver, Junior — a name he hates, even though he, too, uses it for himself — checks his mirror, expecting to see the Peugeot’s hood dip sharply, expecting to hear tires screeching in a panicky, reflexive stop — after all, the gray-haired guy in the piece-of-crap Peugeot is some kind of egghead professor, right? — but instead, the Peugeot darts to the right, wedging itself between the decelerating BMW and the wall of the tunnel.
Metal rasps and shrieks as the Peugeot rakes the entire passenger side of the BMW, clipping the outside mirror at the same moment it rips a warning sign off the right wall of the tunnel. The Peugeot driver’s window is down and suddenly Junior sees what appears to be a pistol in the professor’s hand: a pistol pointed out the open window; a pistol pointed — shit! — at him. Next thing Junior knows, the Beemer’s passenger window is shattering and he’s ducking for his life, and the Beemer is veering wildly to the left, where it slams into a concrete abutment, pushing the radiator back into the engine block and knocking the left front wheel off the frame. The steering-column airbag explodes, punching Junior in the face, breaking his nose, adding injury to insult. He’s not sure which hurts worse, the broken nose or the knowledge that he’s been outmaneuvered and outsmarted by an aging egghead in a piece-of-crap car.
CHAPTER 41
Eight endless, nail-chewing, garden-pacing hours after I’d climbed out of the van — as the afternoon sun was casting long shadows across Lumani’s courtyard — my phone rang. “The preacher’s muscleman just tried to ambush our decoy,” said Descartes. I felt a jolt of fear, and sweat began beading on my forehead and trickling from my armpits. “Shit. What happened? Is our guy okay?”
“It’s okay,” he hurried on. “You got away. The muscleman’s car is wrecked, so that’s good; maybe he’s hurt, maybe not. Our guy didn’t stop — without backup, he couldn’t take the risk, and besides, we didn’t want to blow his cover. But you need to call the preacher right away, so he still thinks it’s you on the highway.”
I forced myself to breathe slowly — once, twice, three times — and then said, “Okay, tell me what happened. And tell me what I need to say.”
“It was in the Chamois Tunnel, about fifty kilometers west of Geneva. An hour after you left the bank. The muscleman passed you in the tunnel and tried to force you to stop. You made a shot—”
“Good God, I shot someone?” I was shocked by the idea that I — even a counterfeit I — might shoot someone.
“We don’t know if you hit him. All we know is that the muscleman’s car ran into the wall in the tunnel. He’s not following you anymore. You should call the preacher now, before he hears from his guy.”
“This is Brockton,” I said when he answered. “That was really stupid, Reverend.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve got a good mind to turn this car around and go dump the bones in Lake Geneva. A spot so deep you’ll never find them, no matter how long you look or how hard you pray.”
“I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about, Brockton.” His words said that, but his panicked undertone told me otherwise.
“You’re lying, Reverend. Either that, or your goon’s spinning out of control as badly as his car did just now.”
There was a long pause on the other end of the line. “What car?”
“Don’t insult my intelligence. The black BMW your bald-headed ape was driving. The one that just crashed into the wall in the Chamois Tunnel.”
Another pause. “There was a wreck in a tunnel? Was anyone hurt? Are you okay?”
“Gee, thanks for your Christian concern, Reverend. I’m just fine, but I don’t know about your muscle-bound friend — call me hard-hearted, but I didn’t stop to play Good Samaritan. Maybe he’s just shaken up, maybe he’s dead — and if he is, frankly, I don’t give a damn. I’m on my way back to Avignon with the bones, and if you actually want them, don’t you dare mess with me again. God forgives, but I don’t.” I hung up the phone and, as Descartes had instructed, I switched it off so Reverend Jonah couldn’t call me back — at least not until we’d made him sweat for a while.