Blood Oath Part 22

He felt a drop of rain. And then another. Spots splashed darkly on the sidewalk.

He felt rain on his nose, his hand, felt it soaking through his coat. If the storm was bad, he couldn't stand out in the open waiting for Simone. But if he ran for cover, she might drive by and not see him. He searched for some shelter where he would still be in sight. A canopy. A doorway.

We shouldn't have split up, he thought. We never should have separated.

To his left he saw a dark blue van half a block away. He squinted through the gusting rain to see the driver. He saw motion in the van and ran toward it, rain soaking his newly purchased shoes and socks.

Lightning flashed. Houston reached the van. He yanked open a door and scrambled in. "You had me worried," he said.

"One place didn't have a van for rent. Another place was closed." Simone wiped raindrops from his forehead.

"But you used your driver's license from America? You used your married name to rent the van?"

She nodded. "The police don't know about that name. They'll never trace this van to us."

He glanced behind her toward the rear compartment. "You've got the sleeping bags? The food?"

She nodded. "We're all set." She started the winds.h.i.+eld wipers. Houston watched the cars ahead of them inch forward.

"Where, though?" she asked. "All we know is that they're in the Alps, a country home belonging to LeBlanc. We'll never find it."

Houston pulled a brochure from his pocket. "No. While you were at the rental agent, I was with a broker. I pretended I planned to buy some stock. Verlaine.

The salesman gave me this." The brochure was an advertis.e.m.e.nt for Verlaine.

"Since LeBlanc claims he's in the Alps on business, I decided his country home is probably a Verlaine a.s.set, not in his own name. That way he writes it off on taxes." He shrugged. "So I called Verlaine. LeBlanc was gone, of course. His secretary said he was in the Alps on business. Naturally I didn't leave my name.

But she was more specific than the servant at his home. He's at Verlaine's executive retreat."

"That doesn't help us."

"Yes, it does." He handed her the brochure. "Here." From a verdant valley, looking upward past thick stands of fir trees, they could see the turrets, parapets, and towers of a castle, ancient, gray against the snow on the mountains beyond it. Underneath the picture was a caption: Verlaine's training center, its executive retreat.

He told her, "There. That's where we'll find your father. And my own. And all our answers. In that castle in the Alps."

Simone steered toward a wider street, which led them out of Paris. Houston sensed her excitement.

"That's not all," he said. "Another coincidence. The broker said Verlaine began in nineteen fifty. That's the year the courthouse in your town was burned. The records were destroyed."

"You think it was arson?"

"To burn the death certificates. You said yourself, those soldiers must have taken new ident.i.ties. They used the names of children who had died at St.

Laurent. Your father found the names no doubt from families who died in World War Two. That way no parents could object, 'You're not our sons. Our sons are dead.' Because those parents too were dead. Your father must have handled all the paperwork. He got the pa.s.sports and the birth certificates, and then he burned the courthouse so no one could discover that those names belonged to children who were dead."

"G.o.d knows what else my father did for them."

"The main thing is that now we know why those men have French names."

"No. We know how," she said. "Not why. We still don't know what made them do it."

"Soon," he said. Grimly, he watched the storm.

Chapter 39.

"Ah, oui. Je le connais," the young man at the gas pump said, pleased that he could be of help. He wore mechanic's coveralls. The soft gray cloth showed evidence of recent cleaning, but the chest, the knees, and arms were stiff from oil and grit.

A service station near Gren.o.ble. They had traveled through the night, exchanging places at the wheel from time to time, one napping while the other drove. Their only stops had been for fuel, take-out food, and a bathroom. They pursued a southeast line from Paris to Lyons and after that a road directly eastward toward the mountains. When the sun had risen, glinting far ahead of them, they'd guessed at first that they were seeing fleecy clouds along the skyline. Then they'd realized with shock that what they squinted at was bright snow on the mountaintops, a wondrous, soul-disturbing grandeur.

Throughout the morning they had stopped in fifteen different towns to ask about the photograph, but no one seemed to recognize the castle. As the mountains loomed closer, Houston weary, cramped, and hungry had at last become discouraged. He'd been certain that the castle was a landmark, well known to the people who lived near it. Now he doubted. "h.e.l.l, it's hopeless. I was wrong.

We'll never find the place."

The young attendant's recognition of the photograph was like electric current.

"What?" he asked Simone. "He knows where to find it?"

The attendant's eyes were bright, delighted that he hadn't disappointed Houston.

He grinned, gesturing beyond the chateaux of Gren.o.ble toward a faint dot in the tree line at the bottom of a far-off peak.

So near, so distant. Houston's mind began to trick him. His imagination magnified the dot. The tree line seemed to rush at him. To destroy the sickening illusion, he swung to face Simone. Her cheek was close beside him, thick hair hanging past her shoulders. Houston touched her, drawing fingers through her hair. "Just making sure you're beside me," Houston told her when she glanced at him, surprised. "For a second, I was doubtful. About everything."

"He's gone to get a road map. He can show us how to find the place."

"How far? It must be twenty-five kilometers."

"Or more. These mountains can fool you. They make the distance seem much shorter."

"That's exactly what I mean. If we can see the castle all the way from here, then how d.a.m.ned big is it? Up close, it must be huge."

They soon found out. The young man gave them directions and a map, and they drove eastward from Gren.o.ble, higher into the mountains. Houston stared ahead.

Determined, he was nonetheless intimidated by the hulking pressure of the mountains, crowding closely around him. As the van whined in low gear, they navigated switchback roads that angled up and down forbidding granite pa.s.ses, fir trees thinning upward toward the gray rocks and the snow.

The air got colder. They drove past cascading streams and swooping cliffs. They stared down toward the valley forests and what seemed a small-scale model of Gren.o.ble in the distance. One wrong turn discouraged them, but they soon discovered their mistake, and finally they saw the castle they'd been searching for.

It lay above them, wedged between two mountains, black against a ma.s.sive cliff, its spires rising high above the fir trees, its turrets and walkways clearly visible from this perspective.

The place was overwhelming, more impressive as they neared it. Houston studied the photograph, raising it so it blocked his vision through the winds.h.i.+eld. On the page, the building seemed a childhood fantasy, a storybook depiction of an enchanted castle. He set the page down and saw the castle from the same perspective the photograph had shown, stunned by how much difference three dimensions made. The sheer expanse of what he stared at sent a s.h.i.+ver through him.

"It's like several buildings stacked on top of one another," he said. "It must have fifty rooms."

The road veered, skirting the estate. A private lane led toward a barred metal gate between high concrete walls.

"It's a fortress," Houston said.

Up close, the walls obscured his vision of the castle. Through the bars of the gate, he saw no guards beyond, no watch dogs, no activity at all, just wooded parkland and a gravel lane that curved until it disappeared. The grounds seemed rustic, innocent.

But among the sunbeams that filtered through the pastel forest, Houston knew there would be guards all right, security precautions, carefully prepared defenses.

As the van pa.s.sed the ma.s.sive gate, Houston had the strong sensation he was being studied from somewhere. Fighting to control the flutter in his stomach, he didn't turn to watch the gate recede behind him. Though he wanted to, he didn't scan the walls or try to locate what unnerved him. He peered forward, watching where the road climbed higher through the fir trees. He hoped that Simone and he seemed nothing more than unalarming tourists.

There had been a car ahead of them. He checked the sideview mirror on his door and saw another car approaching from behind. Granted, traffic wasn't frequent.

All the same, there was enough that Houston didn't think this van would seem conspicuous. The wall came to a corner, merging with another wall that swept back from the road to reach a mountain. Houston turned to face Si-mone.

"As soon as we get up a little higher, find a place where we can stop."

She found a "scenic site" with a guardrail and a gravel parking surface off the road. There were picnic tables, benches, and a row of pay telescopes.

"Aim the back end of the van so it's pointed toward the castle," he told her, squinting toward the dizzy view of the majestic valley spread below them. "I'm sure they watch the traffic on this road," he went on. "They'll get suspicious if we stay too long. And while we're here, we have to seem like tourists. Get out, and go over to those telescopes. But keep your back turned to the castle.

Act as if your single interest is the view toward the valley."

"Aren't you coming?"

"Not just yet."

"But if they watch the traffic on the road, they'll know there are two of us inside the van. They'll be suspicious if we don't both step out."

"I need five minutes."

Frowning, she opened her door and crossed the gravel toward the guardrail and the telescopes. The car that had been following them pulled up behind her.

Houston tensed. But then he saw a man, a woman, and three children tumble out.

Excitedly they scrambled near Simone, delighted by the vista. Good, he thought.

They give her cover. With that car behind her, someone watching from the castle doesn't have an un.o.bstructed view.

He crawled back to the rear compartment of the van and grabbed the binoculars he'd bought in Gren.o.ble. Their eight-power lenses were the largest he could use without a tripod to control the tremors of his hands. He stayed back from the window to hide himself and, peering through the lenses, concentrated on the castle, which he judged to be a thousand meters away.

He scanned the edifice, a few small buildings near it, then the parkland and the wall enclosing the estate. At times, the image was so clear he felt he could almost touch the stone blocks of the castle or the smooth blue glinting surface of a Porsche that was parked beside a small peaked building a carriage house or servants' quarters. Or a guardhouse.

Houston grabbed the picnic basket, pulled open the side door of the van, and got out, hidden by the van from anyone who would be watching from the castle. He walked into view, showing his back and in particular the picnic basket that he held.

"Simone."

She stepped back from the telescope, as if reluctant to be leaving the perspective of the valley, and turned sideways toward a table. As she sat, the van was once again a barrier between the castle and themselves.

"It worked?" she said.

"I found out what we need to know."

Their breakfast had been hot croissants and coffee. They'd skipped lunch. His hunger was insistent as he reached inside the basket. Sausage, cheese, a strong red wine. He chewed and swallowed, mouth hot from the sausage.

"Guards with rifles," he said.

She stiffened.

"Five of them. Two German shepherds roaming freely. I a.s.sume there are more. The towers are equipped with searchlights." Houston heard the strangled noise in her throat. "The walls enclosing the estate hold television cameras. Even if we figured how to climb the walls and not be seen, we'd never get beyond the barbed wire at the top. Oh, we could cut the wire, but I'm guessing it's electrified, and once the current's interrupted, I'm a.s.suming that alarms are triggered in the castle."

"Then it really is a fortress. There's no way to get inside."

He wiped his mouth, reluctant to suggest what he was thinking. "Maybe."

"Maybe nothing. It's impossible."

"No. Only difficult." He put the food and wine back in the basket.

"How?" she said.

He heard a door close, turned, and saw the man, woman, and their children get into their car. The engine started.

"We've stayed here long enough," he said. "When they pull out, we ought to go too. The view is great but not enough to make us hang around all day." He stood.

"I asked you how."

"We go in from behind the castle. From above it. No, don't turn around to look."

She stopped herself. "The back's a cliff! No, never mind a cliff! The sheer wall of a mountain!"

"So they won't expect visitors from there. They'll figure it's too dangerous."

"They'd be right! If you expect me to "

"Just think about it. In the meantime, we've got errands."

She eyed him suspiciously.

"Equipment. From Gren.o.ble."

Chapter 40.

"But I'm afraid of heights!" Simone said.