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"You think?"
"We had fun. That's the way she wanted it. That's why she made the effort. That's why she asked to go to Polidor. It wasn't like she ate anything. "
He just shrugged. We drank our coffee in silence. I tried a croissant. It was OK, but I had no appetite. I put it back in the basket.
"Life," Joe said. "What a completely weird thing it is. A person lives sixty years, does all kinds of things, knows all kinds of things, feels all kinds of things, and then it's over. Like it never happened at all. "
"We'll always remember her. "
"No, we'll remember parts of her. The parts she chose to share. The tip of the iceberg. The rest, only she knew about. Therefore the rest already doesn't exist. As of now. "
We smoked another cigarette each and sat quiet. Then we walked back, slowly, side by side, a little burned out, at some kind of peace.
The coffin was in the corbillard when we got back to her building. They must have stood it upright in the elevator. The concierge was out on the sidewalk, standing next to the old man with the medal ribbon. He was leaning on his walking sticks. The nurse was there too, standing on her own. The pallbearers had their hands clasped in front of them. They were looking down at the ground.
"They're taking her to the depôt mortuaire," the nurse said.
The funeral parlor.
"OK," Joe said.
I didn't stay. I said good-bye to the nurse and the concierge and shook hands with the old guy. Then I nodded to Joe and set off walking up the avenue. I didn't look back. I crossed the Seine at the Pont de l'Alma and walked up the Avenue George V to the hotel. I went up in the elevator and back to my room. I still had the old guy's box under my arm. I dropped it on the bed and stood still, completely unsure about what to do next.
I was still standing there twenty minutes later when the phone rang. It was Calvin Franz, calling from Fort Irwin in California. He had to say his name twice. The first time, I couldn't recall who he was.
"I spoke to Marshall," he said.
"Who?"
"Your XII Corps guy. "
I said nothing.
"You OK?"
"Sorry," I said. "I'm fine. You spoke to Marshall. "
"He went to Kramer's funeral. He drove Vassell and Coomer there and back. Then he claims he didn't drive them the rest of the day because he had important Pentagon meetings all afternoon. "
"But?"
"I didn't believe him. He's a gofer. If Vassell and Coomer had wanted him to drive, he'd have been driving, meetings or no meetings. "
"And?"
"And knowing what kind of a hard time you would give me if I didn't check, I checked. "
"And?"
"Those meetings must have been with himself in the toilet stall, because nobody else saw him around. "
"So what was he doing instead?"
"No idea. But he was doing something, that's for sure. The way he answered me was just way too smooth. I mean, this all was six days ago. Who the hell remembers what meetings they had six days ago? But this guy claims to. "
"You tell him I was in Germany?"
"He seemed to know already. "
"You tell him I was staying there?"
"He seemed to take it for granted you weren't heading for California anytime soon. "
"These guys are old buddies with Willard," I said. "He's promised them he'll keep me away from them. He's running the 110th like it's Armored's private army. "
"I checked those histories myself, by the way. For Vassell and Coomer, because you got me curious. There's nothing there to suggest either one of them ever heard of any place called Sperryville, Virginia. "
"Are you sure?"
"Completely. Vassell is from Mississippi and Coomer is from Illinois. Neither of them has ever lived or served anywhere near Sperryville. "
I was quiet for a second.
"Are they married?" I said.
"Married?" Franz said. "Yes, there were wives and kids in there. But they were local girls. No in-laws in Sperryville. "
"OK," I said.
"So what are you going to do?"
"I'm coming to California. "
I put the phone down and walked along the corridor to Summer's door. I knocked and waited. She opened up. She was back from sightseeing.
"She died last night," I said.
"I know," Summer said. "Your brother just called me from the apartment. He wanted me to make sure you were OK. "
"I'm OK," I said.
"I'm very sorry. "
I shrugged. "Conceptually these things don't come as a surprise. "
"When was it?"
"Midnight. She just gave up. "
"I feel bad. You should have gone to see her yesterday. You shouldn't have spent the day with me. We shouldn't have done all that ridiculous shopping. "
"I saw her last week. We had fun. Better that last week was the last time. "
"I would have wanted whatever extra time I could have gotten. "
"It was always going to be an arbitrary date," I said. "I could have gone yesterday, in the afternoon, maybe. Now I'd be wishing I had stayed for the evening. If I had stayed for the evening, I'd be wishing I had stayed until midnight. "
"You were in here with me at midnight. I feel bad about that too. "
"Don't," I said. "I don't feel bad about it. My mother wouldn't either. She was French, after all. If she'd known those were my options, she'd have insisted. "
"You're just saying that. "
"Well, I guess she wasn't very broad-minded. But she always wanted whatever made us happy. "
"Did she give up because she was left alone?"
I shook my head. "She wanted to be left alone so she could give up. "
Summer said nothing.
"We're leaving," I said. "We'll get a night flight back. "
"California?"
"East Coast first," I said. "There are things I need to check. "
"What things?" she said.
I didn't tell her. She would have laughed, and right then I couldn't have handled laughter.
Summer packed her bag and came back to my room with me. I sat on the bed and played with the string on Monsieur Lamonnier's box.
"What's that?" she said.
"Something some old guy brought around. He said it's something that should be found with my mother's stuff. "
"What's in it?"
"I don't know. "
"So open it. "
I shoved it across the counterpane. "You open it. "
I watched her small neat fingers work on the tight old knot. Her clear nail polish flashed in the light. She got the string off and lifted the lid. It was a shallow box made out of the kind of thick sturdy cardboard you don't see much anymore. Inside were three things. There was a smaller box, like a jewel case. It was made of cardboard faced with dark blue watermarked paper. There was a book. And there was a cheese cutter. It was a simple length of wire with a handle on each end. The handles were turned from dark old wood. You could see a similar thing in any epicerie in France. Except this one had been restrung. The wire was too thick for cheese. It looked like piano wire. It was curled and corroded, like it had been stored for a very long time.
"What is it?" Summer said.
"Looks like a garrote," I said.
"The book is in French," she said. "I can't read it. "
She passed it to me. It was a printed book with a thin paper dust jacket. Not a novel. Some kind of a nonfiction memoir. The corners of the pages were foxed and stained with age. The whole thing smelled musty. The title was something to do with railroads. I opened it up and took a look. After the title page was a map of the French railroad system in the 1930s. The opening chapter seemed to be about how all the lines in the north squeezed down through Paris and then fanned out again to points south. You couldn't travel anywhere without transiting the capital. It made sense to me. France was a relatively small country with a very big city in it. Most nations d
id it the same way. The capital city was always the center of the spiderweb.
I flipped to the end of the book. There was a photograph of the author on the back flap of the dust jacket. The photograph was of a forty-years-younger Monsieur Lamonnier. I recognized him with no difficulty. The blurb underneath the picture said he had lost both legs in the battles of May 1940. I recalled the stiff way he had sat on my mother's sofa. And his walking sticks. He must have been using prosthetics. Wooden legs. What I had assumed were bony knees must have been complicated mechanical joints. The blurb went on to say he had built Le Chemin de Fer Humain. The Human Railroad. He had been awarded the Resistance Medal by President Charles de Gaulle, and the George Cross by the British, and the Distinguished Service Medal by the Americans.
"What is it?" Summer said.
"Seems like I just met an old Resistance hero," I said.
"What's it got to do with your mom?"
"Maybe she and this Lamonnier guy were sweethearts way back. "
"And he wants to tell you and Joe about it? About what a great guy he was? At a time like this? That's a little self-centered, isn't it?"
I read on a little more. Like most French books it used a weird construction called the past historic tense, which was reserved for written stuff only. It made it hard for a nonnative to read. And the first part of the story was not very gripping. It made the point very laboriously that trains incoming from the north disgorged their passengers at the Gare du Nord terminal, and if those passengers wanted to carry on south they had to cross Paris on foot or by car or subway or taxi to another terminal like the Gare d'Austerlitz or the Gare du Lyon before joining a southbound train.
"It's about something called the Human Railroad," I said. "Except there aren't many humans in it so far. "
I passed the book to Summer and she flipped through it again.
"It's signed," she said.
She showed me the first blank page. There was an old faded inscription on it. Blue ink, neat penmanship. Someone had written: A Beatrice de Pierre. To Beatrice from Pierre.
"Was your mother called Beatrice?" Summer asked.
"No," I said. "Her name was Josephine. Josephine Moutier, and then Josephine Reacher. "
She passed the book back to me.
"I think I've heard of the Human Railroad," she said. "It was a World War Two thing. It was about rescuing bomber crews that were shot down over Belgium and Holland. Local Resistance cells scooped them up and passed them along a chain all the way down to the Spanish border. Then they could get back home and get back in action. It was important because trained crews were valuable. Plus it saved people from years in a POW camp. "
"That would explain Lamonnier's medals," I said. "One from each Allied government. "
I put the book down on the bed and thought about packing. I figured I would throw the Samaritaine jeans and sweatshirt and jacket away. I didn't need them. Didn't want them. Then I looked at the book again and saw that some of the pages had different edges than some of the others. I picked it up and opened it and found some halftone photographs. Most of them were posed studio portraits, reproduced head-and-shoulders six to a page. The others were clandestine action shots. They showed Allied airmen hiding in cellars lit by candles placed on barrels, and small groups of furtive men dressed in borrowed peasant clothing on country tracks, and Pyrenean guides amid snowy mountainous terrain. One of the action shots showed two men with a young girl between them. The girl was not much more than a child. She was holding both men's hands, smiling gaily, leading them down a street in a city. Paris, almost certainly. The caption underneath the picture said: Beatrice de service a ses travaux. Beatrice on duty, doing her work. Beatrice looked to be about thirteen years old.
I was pretty sure Beatrice was my mother.
I flipped back to the pages of studio portraits and found her. It was some kind of a school photograph. She looked to be about sixteen in it. The caption was Beatrice en 1947. Beatrice in 1947. I flipped back and forth through the text and pieced together Lamonnier's narrative thesis. There were two main tactical problems with the Human Railroad. Finding the downed airmen was not one of them. They fell out of the sky, literally, all over the Low Countries, dozens of them every moonless night. If the Resistance got to them first, they stood a chance. If the Wehrmacht got to them first, they didn't. It was a matter of pure luck. If they got lucky and the Resistance got to them ahead of the Germans, they would be hidden, their uniforms would be exchanged for some kind of plausible disguises, forged papers would be issued, rail tickets would be bought, a courier would escort them on a train to Paris, and they would be on their way home.
Maybe.
The first tactical problem was the possibility of a spot check on the train itself, sometime during the initial journey. These were blond corn-fed farm boys from America, or redheaded British boys from Scotland, or anything else that didn't look dark and pinched and wartime French. They stood out. They didn't speak the language. Lots of subterfuges were developed. They would pretend to be asleep, or sick, or mute, or deaf. The couriers would do all the talking.
The second tactical problem was transiting Paris itself. Paris was crawling with Germans. There were random checkpoints everywhere. Clumsy lost foreigners stuck out like sore thumbs. Private automobiles had disappeared completely. Taxis were hard to find. There was no gasoline. Men walking in the company of other men became targets. So women were used as couriers. And then one of the dodges Lamonnier dreamed up was to use a kid he knew. She would meet airmen at the Gare du Nord and lead them through the streets to the Gare du Lyon. She would laugh and skip and hold their hands and pass them off as older brothers or visiting uncles. Her manner was unexpected and disarming. She got people through checkpoints like ghosts. She was thirteen years old.
Everyone in the chain had code names. Hers was Beatrice. Lamonnier's was Pierre.
I took the blue cardboard jewel case out of the box. Opened it up. Inside was a medal. It was La Medaille de la Resistance. The Resistance Medal. It had a fancy red, white, and blue ribbon and the medal itself was gold. I turned it over. On the back it was neatly engraved: Josephine Moutier. My mother.
"She never told you?" Summer said.
I shook my head. "Not a word. Not one, ever. "
Then I looked back in the box. What the hell was the garrote about?
"Call Joe," I said. "Tell him we're coming over. Tell him to get Lamonnier back there. "
We were at the apartment fifteen minutes later. Lamonnier was already there. Maybe he had never left. I gave the box to Joe and told him to check it out. He was faster than I had been, because he started with the medal. The name on the back gave him a clue. He glanced through the book and looked up at Lamonnier when he recognized him in the author photograph. Then he scanned through the text. Looked at the pictures. Looked at me.
"She ever mention any of this to you?" he said.
"Never. You?"
"Never," he said.
I looked at Lamonnier. "What was the garrote for?"
Lamonnier said nothing.
"Tell us," I said.
"She was found out," he said. "By a boy at her school. A boy of her own age. An unpleasant boy, the son of collaborators. He teased and tormented her about what he was going to do. "
"What did he do?"
"At first, nothing. That was extremely unsettling for your mother. Then he demanded certain indignities as the price of his continued silence. Naturally, your mother refused. He told her he would inform on her. So she pretended to relent. She arranged to meet him under the Pont des Invalides late one night. She had to slip out of her house. But first she took her mother's cheese cutter from the kitchen. She replaced the wire with a string from her father's piano. It was the G below middle C, I think. It was still missing, years later. She met the boy and she strangled him. "
"She what?" Joe said.
"She strangled him. "
"She w
as thirteen years old. "
Lamonnier nodded. "At that age the physical differences between girls and boys are not a significant handicap. "
"She was thirteen years old and she killed a guy?"
"They were desperate times. "
"What exactly happened?" I said.
"She used the garrote. As she had planned. It's not a difficult instrument to use. Nerve and determination were all she needed. Then she used the original cheese wire to attach a weight to his belt. She slipped him into the Seine. He was gone and she was safe. The Human Railroad was safe. "
Joe stared at him. "You let her do that?"
Lamonnier shrugged. An expressive, Gallic shrug, just like my mother's.
"I didn't know about it," he said. "She didn't tell me until afterward. I suppose at first my instinct would have been to forbid it. But I couldn't have taken care of it myself. I had no legs. I couldn't have climbed down under the bridge and I wouldn't have been steady enough for fighting. I had a man loosely employed as an assassin, but he was busy elsewhere. In Belgium, I think. I couldn't have afforded the risk of waiting for him to get back. So on balance I think I would have told her to go ahead. They were desperate times, and we were doing vital work. "
"Did this really happen?" Joe said.
"I know it did," Lamonnier said. "Fish ate through the boy's belt. He floated up some days later, a short distance downstream. We passed a nervous week. But nothing came of it. "
"How long did she work for you?" I asked.
"All through 1943," he said. "She was extremely good. But her face became well known. At first her face was her guardian. It was so young and so innocent. How could anyone suspect a face like that? Then it became a liability. She became familiar to les boches. And how many brothers and cousins and uncles could one girl have? So I had to stand her down. "
"Did you recruit her?"
"She volunteered. She pestered me until I let her help. "
"How many people did she save?"
"Eighty men," Lamonnier said. "She was my best Paris courier. She was a phenomenon. The consequences of discovery didn't bear thinking about. She lived with the worst kind of fear in her gut for a whole year, but never once did she let me down. "
We all sat quiet.
"How did you start?" I asked.
"I was a war cripple," he said. "One of many. We were too medically burdensome for them to want us as hostage prisoners. We were useless as forced laborers. So they left us in Paris. But I wanted to do something. I wasn't physically capable of fighting. But I could organize. Those are not physical skills. I knew that trained bomber crews were worth their weight in gold. So I decided to get them home. "
"Why would my mother go her whole life without mentioning this stuff?"
Lamonnier shrugged again. Weary, unsure, still mystified all those years later.
"Many reasons, I think," he said. "France was a conflicted country in 1945. Many had resisted, many had collaborated, many had done neither. Most preferred a clean slate. And she was ashamed of killing the boy, I think. It weighed on her conscience. I told her it hadn't been a choice. It wasn't a voluntary action. I told her it had been the right thing to do. But she preferred to forget the whole thing. I had to beg her to accept her medal. "
Joe and I and Summer said nothing. We all sat quiet.
"I wanted her sons to know," Lamonnier said.
Summer and I walked back to the hotel. We didn't talk. I felt like a guy who suddenly finds out he was adopted. You're not the man I thought you were. All my life I had assumed I was what I was because of my father, the career Marine. Now I felt different genes stirring. My father hadn't killed the enemy at the age of thirteen. But my mother had. She had lived through desperate times and she had stepped up and done what was necessary. At that moment I started to miss her more than I would have thought possible. At that moment I knew I would miss her forever. I felt empty. I had lost something I never knew I had.
We carried our bags down to the lobby and checked out at the desk. We gave back our keys and the multilingual girl prepared a long and detailed account. I had to countersign it. I knew I was in trouble as soon as I saw it. It was outrageously expensive. I had figured the army might overlook the forged vouchers in exchange for a result. But now I wasn't so sure. I figured the George V tariff might change their view. It was like adding insult to injury. We had been there one night, but we were being charged for two because we were late checking out. My room service coffee cost as much as a meal in a bistro. My phone call to Rock Creek cost as much as a three-course lunch at the best restaurant in town. My phone call to Franz in California cost as much as a five-course dinner. Summer's call to Joe less than a mile away in my mother's apartment asking him to get hold of Lamonnier was billed at less than two minutes and cost as much as the room service coffee. And we had been charged fees for taking incoming calls. One was from Franz to me and the other was from Joe to Summer, when he asked her to check if I was OK. That little piece of sibling consideration was going to cost the government five bucks. Altogether it was the worst hotel bill I had ever seen.
The multilingual girl printed two copies. I signed one for her and she folded the other into an embossed George V envelope and gave it to me. For my records, she said. For my court-martial, I thought. I put it in my inside jacket pocket. Took it out again about six hours later, when I finally realized who had done what, and to who, and why, and how.
