The Day After Tomorrow_ A Novel - Allan Folsom [180]
Letting his mind drift, Osborn turned his gaze back to the passing countryside, a rolling, gently forested, pastoral land, forever dotted with lakes. Abruptly, and for the briefest moment, his. view was blurred by a large stand of conifers. As quickly they vanished and in the distance he saw sunlight touch the highest spires of a fifteenth-century cathedral. And the perception came that he was right, that they were all here—McVey, Noble, Remmer and himself—because of some greater design, that they were part of a destiny beyond their knowing.
Nancy, France.
THE MORNING sun peeked up over the hills, lighting the brown-and-white farmhouse like a Van Gogh.
Outside, Secret Service agents Alain Cotrell and Jean Claude Dumas relaxed on the front porch, with Dumas Cradling a mug of coffee in one hand and a nine-millimeter carbine in the other. A quarter mile down the long driveway, at the halfway point between the highway and the farmhouse, agent Jacques Montant, a French Famas assault rifle slung over his shoulder, leaned against a tree, watching a parade of ants march in and out of a hole at its base.
Inside, Vera sat at an antique vanity near the front bed-, room window, five handwritten pages of a long love letter to Paul Osborn already done. In them, she was trying to make some sense of all that was happening and had happened since they’d met, and at the same time using them as a diversion against the abrupt ending to his phone call the night before.
At first she’d thought it had been a problem with the telephone system and that he would call back. But he hadn’t, and as the hours stretched on she knew something had happened. What that might be, she refused to consider. Stoically, she’d spent the rest of the evening and most of the night reading over two medical journals she’d brought with her almost as an afterthought when she’d so hurriedly left Paris. Anxiety and fear were impossible companions, and this, she’d been afraid, might be a journey filled with them.
By daybreak, when she’d still had no word, she’d decided to talk to Paul. To say things on paper, she would say if he were there with her and they had time alone. As if; none of this had happened and they were everyday people, finding each other under everyday circumstances. It was all, of course, to keep from being overwhelmed by her own imagination.
Laying down her pen, she stopped to read what she’d written and suddenly burst out laughing. What was intended to have come from the heart was, instead, a rambling, long-winded, pseudo-intellectual treatise on the meaning of life. She’d meant to write a love letter, but what she’d put down was more like a writing sample for a position as an English teacher at a private girls’ school. Still smiling, she tore the pages in quarters and threw them in the wastebasket. It was then she saw the car turn off the highway and start up the long drive toward the house.
As it approached, she could see it was a black Peugeot with blue emergency lights mounted on the roof. As it reached the halfway point, she saw agent Montand step into the roadway with his hands raised, motioning the car to stop. When it did, Montand walked to the driver’s window. A moment later he spoke into his radio, waited for a reply, then nodded and the car proceeded on.
As it neared the house, Alain Cotrell walked out to meet it, and like Montand, motioned the driver to stop. Jean Claude Dumas came up behind him, sliding the carbine from his shoulder.
“Oui, madame,” Alain said, as the driver’s window rolled down and a very attractive woman with dark hair looked out.
“My name is Avril Rocard,” she said in French, flashing a picture I.D., “from the First Prefecture