Final justice - W.E.B. Griffin [225]
They unpacked their luggage and then walked over to the Champs Elysees, took a quick look at the Arc de Triomphe at the other end, and went in search of breakfast.
Then they went to the U.S. Embassy at the foot of the hill, where--after Mickey threatened him with calling Pennsylvania's junior senator right then and on his worldwide telephone--the press officer somewhat reluctantly promised to be prepared to give him the latest developments vis-a-vis the extradition of Isaac Festung once a day when Mickey called.
As they left the embassy, Matt said they were within walking distance of two famous Paris landmarks, the Louvre Museum and Harry's New York Bar.
"Let's take a quick look at the museum," Mickey said. "Just so we can say we saw it. And then we'll go to the bar and hoist a few."
They went into the museum a few minutes before eleven and left a few minutes more than eight hours later, when at closing time three museum guards--immune to Mickey's argument that he was the press, for Christ's sake, and entitled to a little consideration--escorted them out.
He immediately announced to Matt that they were going to have to come back tomorrow.
"I could spend all goddamn day in there just looking at Venus de Milo," Mickey said.
They called their respective maternal parents while sitting at the bar in Harry's. When Matt told his mother they had spent most of the day in the Louvre, and had only minutes before arrived at Harry's Bar, she chuckled knowingly.
"Have a good time, sweetheart," she said. "But get some rest."
When they left Harry's four beers and an hour later, and were walking toward the Opera, where Matt remembered a restaurant his father particularly liked, Mickey offered a philosophical/historical/literary observation:
"Did you know that's the joint where Hemingway used to hang out?" he asked.
"I heard."
"Did you know that before he became a writer, he was a newspaperman?"
"I heard that too."
"I don't mean some schmuck on a small-town rag, he worked for the Herald-Tribune, here," Mickey said. "He gave a speech one time where he said he thought working on a newspaper was the best training he ever had to become a writer."
"I didn't know that, but I'm sure he was right," Matt said.
"Yeah," Mickey said, thoughtfully. "He probably was."
Am I in the company of the next Tom Clancy? The next Whatshisname, the guy who made millions writing about dinosaurs?
"When do you want to go to Cognac-Boeuf, Mick?"
"What's that?"
"That's where Festung is."
"Soon, but not right away. I told you, I want to go back to the Louvre. You can't see half what they have in that place in one day, for Christ's sake."
Over the next five days, they developed a routine. On waking, while Matt ordered their room-service breakfast, and while waiting for it to be delivered, Mickey first got on the phone to the embassy's press officer, then would get on the Internet with Matt's laptop, go to the Bulletin's Web site, and catch up on what was happening in Philadelphia.
After breakfast, they took a cab to the Louvre. Matt thus got to see more of the museum than he'd seen in his previous-- more than a dozen--visits to the City of Lights. Once they went out of the museum to lunch, but that took too much time for Mickey, so the other days they had eaten lunch standing up at a museum concession.
He did manage to get Mickey briefly to the top of the Eiffel Tower--to which Mickey's reaction was "What's the big deal?" and "Are you sure it's safe? It's rusty all over"-- and to Napoleon's Tomb, but that was about all.
They called their respective maternal parents daily, usually from Harry's New York Bar after the Louvre closed. And then they went to dinner, and after that, twice, to jazz places on the East Bank.
Matt realized that he was having a good time, largely because Mickey was what his father described as "a good traveling companion."
On the morning of the sixth day, Mickey called, "Hey,