The Girl in the Blue Beret - Bobbie Ann Mason [49]
“Disgusting,” said Iphigénie. “Disrespectful.”
“I’m with you there,” Marshall said. The waiter refilled his wineglass.
Jim went on. “Iffy wears those heels that make her ankles so slim and sexy, you know what I mean. I’ve known her for five years and she always surprises me.”
All the while Jim was speaking, he was looking at Iphigénie, teasing her, judging her reactions (she was pretending not to hear him), congratulating himself for his taste in women and, Marshall thought, insulting Iphigénie in an underhanded way. He tried to remember if he had treated Loretta this way. He thought about Annette and her mother, and after a lull in the conversation he began telling Jim and Iphigénie about hiding in the Vallons’ apartment.
“I keep thinking how brave they were,” he said. “I really didn’t give them credit for the risks they took. It’s only becoming real to me now. Strange, isn’t it?” He swallowed some wine. “I’d love to find them again.”
“They may want to forget the war,” Iphigénie said, her eyes down. “But they were very kind to you.”
“Retirement takes you full circle,” Jim said. “A lot of people want to go back to their young days. Maybe that’s true with the people you’re looking for.”
“Who knows what might have happened to them?” Marshall said. “They could be in Timbuktu. That goes for all of the people who helped me escape. I’d like to find them, to thank them. But I don’t know. Maybe it’s not a good idea.”
“You were fortunate to find the persons in Chauny,” said Iphigénie, touching a napkin gracefully to her lips. “And fortunate they were happy to welcome you again. As for the others …” She waved her hand ambiguously.
Later, as they parted on the street, Jim said, “We’ll be back in a couple of weeks, but here’s where you can reach us if you need to.” He wrote the number on a bit of paper. It was Iphigénie’s parents’ home near Brantôme.
“Au revoir, Marshall,” Iphigénie said, pecking his cheeks lightly.
Marshall tucked the paper into his trousers pocket and walked to the Métro, wondering whatever could possess him to call Jim Donegan in the Dordogne.
MARSHALL FOUND HIMSELF circling Napoléon’s Tomb. The thing was like a sleigh, or a giant baby’s crib with a lid on it. It was highly polished stone, the color of roasted chestnuts. Freestanding in a circle under the Dôme des Invalides, it was downright weird. Inside—a man once, now disintegrated. And he was packed into a set of coffins nesting one inside the other like Russian dolls.
A vague memory had drawn him here. Napoléon’s Tomb was a safe house, he recalled someone saying. He didn’t know what that meant. Did Nappy have room inside his cave to hide a scared airman with his dog tags in his boot? Marshall wondered why so many people got the idea that they were Napoléon in a past life. Reincarnation—what crap, Marshall thought. But Napoléon was always good for a laugh.
He had come here once with someone. With Robert on his bicycle?
NICOLAS WAS ON THE TELEPHONE with news. Marshall had just returned to the hotel from apartment hunting. It was too expensive to remain in the hotel. He was still breathing hard from his walk up five flights of stairs. The elevator was small and busy, and he had grown impatient with the wait.
“I’ve learned a few things,” Nicolas said. “But I don’t yet know what to do with this information. As you know, the people who helped you before you got to Chauny would be very difficult to locate, but we can start with the family you knew in Paris. My father told me something about the network in Paris that picked up the flyers from this region. It was one of several escape lines. It was called the Bourgogne.”
“I don’t remember anyone ever mentioning that name.”
“You recall my father spoke of going to Paris