"What?"

  He took her by the elbow and led her to the door. "Get in the car and go back to Paris."

  "And leave you here like this? You can't be serious!"

  "But I am, Camille. I'm deadly serious."

  She made to break away from him, but he held her all the tighter. She struggled for only a moment, then she was still. They stared at each other in an odd contest of wills that mimicked the impassioned struggle between a headstrong teenager and his mother.

  "This is no game, Camille. These people are out for blood-"

  "What people? Do you know who is behind this? Bravo, you're frightening me."

  "Then I've succeeded. Camille, I've put you in enough danger as it is. I'd never forgive myself if something happened to you."

  "And what about your friend, Jenny Logan? You would risk losing her?"

  At that moment, a sound came to them, like the soft mewl of a cat that hadn't been fed. They both turned, and Bravo let Camille go as he rushed to the bed. Jenny's eyes were open; they were looking blankly around the room.

  "Bravo?"

  "I'm here." He took her hand as he sat beside her. "And so is Camille."

  As Camille came into her line of sight, Jenny said in a cracked voice, "Where am I?"

  "In a hotel," Camille said with a smile. "You're perfectly safe here."

  Jenny's eyes settled on Bravo. "The Mercedes?"

  "Destroyed, utterly," he said. "It hit a gas pump and went up in flames."

  "God…" Her head turned to one side and a single tear rolled down onto the bedspread.

  "Thank you for saving my life," Camille said, kneeling beside her. "Your courage is extraordinary."

  Jenny looked at her but said nothing.

  Camille leaned against the night table. "You must rest and regain your strength. We have brought you to Mont St. Michel. It is a sacred place, Jenny. A place for healing both the body and the spirit. It has been so ever since the first abbey was built in the eleventh century. But the very site itself is holy. The monastery was founded in 708 by St. Aubert, the Bishop of Avranches, who was visited in dreams by the Archangel Michel himself. Ever since then Mont St. Michel has been a magnet for people in need from all over the known world. Be at peace now, you need time to recover. Call me if there is anything you want and I shall bring it."

  She rose and, smiling, told Bravo that she was going to lie down for a while.

  Bravo waited until she closed the door behind her, then said, "How are you feeling?"

  "Like I was run over by a freight train."

  "You very nearly were," Bravo said, "or something very much like it." He took a breath. "Jenny, did you see who was inside the Mercedes?"

  "I had only the briefest glimpse and that was… I keep getting flickers of images. There were two figures."

  "Male or female?"

  "The one with the gun-he was a man, I'm sure of that. He had a long, narrow face, dark hair and eyes, mid-thirties or so." She closed her eyes for a moment. "Everything's spinning around."

  "Here," Bravo said, "see if you can sit up."

  He helped her put her back against two pillows. Then he gave her some water. Jenny stared down into the bottom of the glass as if it were a sorcerer's bowl in which the images of her encounter with the Mercedes could be conjured up.

  "The driver was a man, as well."

  Standing in her room, smoking a cigarette, Camille had to admire the ingenuity of the microcircuits on the listening device she'd planted on the underside of the night table as she knelt down. Her conversation with Jenny had been a diversion while she pressed the tiny device into the unpainted plywood.

  "Yes, he was," Bravo said. "I saw him slumped over the wheel after you shot him dead. I think we can reasonably assume that your recollection of the other man is accurate." A small noise interrupted the flow, then Bravo's voice returned. "The Mercedes had German plates. Camille thinks that Jordan might be right about the Wassersturms being after me."

  "Surely you don't think that."

  "I don't," Bravo said, "but I suppose it would be best to be certain."

  "The Wassersturms are a blind alley, and a potentially dangerous one," Jenny said in a voice audibly more firm. "We can't allow anything to interfere with finding the cache of secrets."

  "Dear God, no, we can't have that," Camille said into the ensuing silence. When she was certain that the conversation was at an end, she took out her cell phone and tapped in a number.

  "Bravo doesn't know where the cache is," she said when her son picked up the phone. "On the other hand, he isn't going to tell me a thing about the devilish labyrinth Dexter has set up."

  "Did you actually expect him to?"

  "There was always the chance."

  Jordan laughed, a piercing, thoroughly nasty sound. "How disappointed you would've been if he'd proved himself such a fool!"

  "He's his father's son, after all, isn't he?"

  There was a small silence.

  "He won't go for the Wassersturm story, and neither will Jenny. I told you," she said, abruptly changing the subject. "That was Osman Spagna's idea, wasn't it?"

  "What if it was?" Jordan said somewhat defensively.

  "I don't like that man, Jordan. I've told you before. Get rid of him."

  "I didn't think Bravo would go for the Wassersturm story, either, but that wasn't the purpose," he said, avoiding an answer he did not want to give. "We needed to build your credibility with them."

  "Yes, it's an old confidence trick. The girl didn't like me from the outset, now there's a bond of trust between us." She paused a moment. "About the Mercedes, there were no survivors."

  "Survival of the fittest," Jordan said. "If they were good enough Jenny wouldn't have been able to kill them."

  "How did you know Jenny did it?"

  Jordan laughed again. "I have to have some secrets, Mother, even from you, otherwise I'm just too good a boy."

  "Make sure there aren't any more," Camille said sternly as she broke the connection.

  Silence.

  Jenny, her eyes half-closed, whispered, "Why are you looking at me that way?"

  Without answering, Bravo disappeared into the bathroom. A moment later, she could hear the water running. The sound soothed her and her gaze drifted to the picture window, beyond which only the largest form-that of Mont St. Michel itself-could be seen, though indistinctly, no more than a shadow towering from the salt beds of the unseen tidewater. The long afternoon had progressed, but within the white void of the fog there was no sound, no movement, not even a hint that the sun continued to cross the sky. It was as if time itself stood still.

  Settling herself, Jenny felt small sticking pains as if beetles roamed over her body, biting her with their pincers. She made incoherent sounds deep in her throat, as people often will when their dreams get the better of them.

  After an indeterminate time, she opened her eyes to see Bravo standing over her. The water sounded like a cataract, burbling and rushing as if anxious to get from one place to the next. She had the strange impression that the tide had risen high enough to seep through the foundation, swirling upward to wash into the room and now lapping at her thighs. Her fingers worked the bedspread, searching for evidence that she had floated free of terra firma.

  Without a word, Bravo scooped her off the bed and carried her into the bathroom. Once inside, he did not stop but stepped over the lip of the tub. Steam was rising, and it was wonderfully warm. He laid her in the water and, taking up the handheld faucet, ran the hot water over her. Then he began to untangle her clothes. At first, she felt as if the beetles had returned, and she resumed her sounds of distress, but when she was more herself, she understood that her own blood, drying, had made her clothes stick to her and it was this that caused the pain when she'd moved in bed.

  Slowly, layer by layer, he unpeeled her. Her blood was dissolving, and it was not an unpleasant sensation. She thought of an orange, whose bitter rind must be stripped away to reveal the sweet fruit beneath. She gazed up into Bravo's face and saw herself reflected in his eyes. She was half naked, and somehow she was neither angry nor embarrassed.

  On the other hand, she felt compelled to say, "Why are you doing this?"

  As his hands continued with their work, he looked at her for what seemed a long time. "Because," he said at last, "I almost lost you." His fingers, nearly finished, stroked her bare flesh. "Because you mean something to me."

  "What?" The hot water cascaded over her, over both of them as he knelt facing her. "What do I mean to you?"

  She saw what he wanted to say in his eyes, felt it in the way he cradled her, in the heat rising between them. Her arms came around him and because she couldn't help herself she pulled him toward her. She felt him against her and she was lifted up, not only her body but her spirit. She recalled what Camille said about the healing power of Mont St. Michel.

  She felt the steady, strong beating of his heart. A wildness had taken hold of her that was strangely familiar, the deep, soul-shattering yearning that had gripped her before her mother had sent her away to school.

  The floodgates, so long held in check, opened. Her head moved forward, her lips opened, and she surrendered herself to everything she wanted, everything that was coming.

  When they emerged from the bath, the fog had lifted entirely. It was that time of day, beautiful, mysterious, when the sky is infinite and full of light from an unseen source, when far below, the darkness of evening has already begun to gather, spreading its midnight-blue shadows across roads and cobbles, low walls and foundations, weighing them down, fastening them to the black earth.

  They sat side by side, gazing out the window at the Marvel with its two-level walled village curled like the defeated dragon around its feet. The enormous monastery, which was constructed entirely of granite, had foundations that were laid 160 feet above sea level.

  "As you probably know, the abbey is Benedictine," Bravo said, "but in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries it was fortified in the manner of a military installation. In fact, Mont St. Michel's position in the channel made it an important outpost when France went to war with England. Immediately, it became both strategic and impregnable. Its defenses have never been breached."

  On the wall just above the window were sculpted a cockleshell, a horn and a staff.

  Jenny ran her fingertips over the bas-relief. "Do these symbols have a meaning?"

  "They're the insignia of Mont St. Michel," Bravo said, "known to every pilgrim who made his way to the islet from the thirteenth century on. This was before the causeway was built, you understand, when the high tide completely cut off the islet from the mainland. Many people drowned in the uncertain tides. It's difficult to know which was more treacherous, the tides or the sea floor. The staff was used to probe for quicksand on the journey out to the abbey, the horn would be used to sound the alarm if the pilgrim was lost in lowering fog or rising water, and the cockleshell was stuck in the pilgrim's hat when he left Mont St. Michel, a symbol that proclaimed his safe and successful journey."

  "I wish I had a cockleshell." Jenny put her head back against the sofa.

  "Do you want to sleep?" Bravo asked her.

  "No," she said, a small smile on her lips. "I'm hungry."

  "What should I bring you?"

  But her eyes were already closed. In a very short while her breathing became even, and Bravo, rising, brought the blanket over, covering her from feet to neck.

  Chapter 12

  St. Malo occupied the westernmost part of a small cape that jutted out into the English Channel. The cape was more or less in the shape of a dog's head, St. Malo being the muzzle. They arrived just after 12:30 in the afternoon. The inner core of the city was ancient and beautiful, fortified by a thick stone wall. Around this had been thrown up concentric circles of twentieth-century housing, cheap and ugly, where many of the residents lived and worked. The tour buses, however, drew up in the vast cobbled car park outside the gates to the Old City, where they disgorged their contents of excited, video camera-toting tourists, wanting to tape the highlights, eat crepes and continue to the next stop on their whirlwind tour. There were Germans and Swiss and Austrians, Spaniards, Italians, Britons and, of course, Japanese. As hostile as warring parties, they clannishly' formed into tight knots as if afraid to come into contact with each other. They moved in swarms, under military banners resentfully brandished by their guides.

  Camille pulled up adjacent to several of the buses. She looked at Bravo sternly and said, "Are you certain this is what you want to do?"

  He nodded. "Absolutely."

  "Bon."

  "You'll do as I asked and return to Paris," Bravo said a little anxiously.

  "I told you at breakfast I would." She kissed Bravo and Jenny both on either cheek and advised them to enter the city amid the forming crush of tour groups.

  This they did. As they passed through the ancient gates to the Old City, Bravo glanced over his shoulder, but the Citroe"n was nowhere to be seen.

  Amid all the video equipment and digital cameras, the GPS Bravo had taken from Kavanaugh's car was inconspicuous. He punched in the coordinates his father had provided.

  They stayed within the knot of the tour group for five or six minutes, but when it began to move out to its first destination, he went to their left. "This way," he said, heading through the narrow shop-lined streets. He led them through the maze of the Old City, heading generally northwest toward the seawall.

  St. Malo, more or less midway along the Cote d'Emeraude, the Emerald Coast, was built on the rocky and often wild coast of Brittany, France's north shore. In the old days, it had harbored both merchant sailors and marauding corsairs. At that time, many of the European countries were at war, and the high seas was open territory. The kings of France, Spain, Holland and England did what they could to encourage private owners to arm their ships to attack enemy vessels. The French privateers were known as corsairs after the king's permit, a lettre de course, a formal authorization to carry out their business under strict regulations. Their booty was divided into equal shares split between the king, the ship owner and the crew.

  The city was founded by Father MacLaw, a Welsh bishop who fled Wales to Brittany in 538, Malo being the French pronunciation of his name. Despite its advantageous location, the city did not attain real prominence until it was adopted by corsairs, who, growing rich and powerful, fortified it against their enemies both on the sea and on land. By 1590, the St. Malo corsairs had become so influential that they dared to declare the city a republic independent of both the federal and the municipal Breton governments.

  Throughout the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, St. Malo acquired considerable wealth, not only from its maritime trade between the Americas and Europe but from its so-called Newfoundlanders, whose fleets fished for cod in the chill waters off the east coast of Canada. However successful these intrepid fishermen were, the bulk of the city's riches and fame was the result of the constant raids of its feared corsairs.

  If one knew what to look for, St. Malo's rich and storied history was visible all around in the stone houses, the fortified walls, the brightly colored corsair pennants. Striding along cobbled streets, Jenny and Bravo reached the formidable seawall and now mounted the stone stairs set into its inside face. Gaining the top, they looked out onto the Gulf of St. Malo, beyond which were the gray-blue backs of Jersey and the Channel Islands, rising from the channel like breaching whales. The day was fair and what little breeze came to them was as soft and downy as a feather pillow. The summer sun blazed down from a clear sky. Because of yesterday's rain the normal heat haze had not yet reasserted itself. Every object stood out, sharp as a knife blade, and the vista seemed endless, the thick swath of sun-dazzle as solid-seeming as a pale stone road through a cobalt wood.

  "There," Bravo said, pointing. "That's the spot!"

  "But for miles and miles there's only water here," Jenny said. "Could your father have etched the wrong coordinates?"

  Bravo shook his head. "He knew just what he was doing."

  "Then how do you explain this?" Her arms swept out to encompass the infinite waterscape. "And what about the last four numbers-one, five, three, zero-what do they signify?"

  Bravo glanced at his watch. "I don't know about you, but I'm hungry. Let's go down and have lunch at that pretty little cafe we passed."

  Jenny looked at him sharply. "You know what the last number sequence means, don't you?" She shaded her eyes from the sun with the flat of her hand. The color had returned to her face, the spray of freckles across her nose clearly visible again. "Tell me."

  "I don't want to spoil the surprise," he said with a laugh.

  They sat in the tiny stone courtyard of the cafe, beneath a gaily striped umbrella, not three yards from the seawall. They could smell the tang of the brine and the sharp mineral scent of the ancient stone blocks. Jenny ate with little appetite. She drank no wine but insisted on iced coffee.

  She wanted to talk about Camille Muhlmann but said nothing, afraid of Bravo's reaction. Fear of another sort, terribly familiar, was slithering through her belly like a serpent. Their sublime moment of intimacy should have changed everything, but when she had awoken this morning, her self-made wall had reasserted itself. Worse, she didn't trust her own feelings. After all, she admonished herself, she'd been no more than half conscious-perhaps the whole thing had been nothing more than a fever dream.

  Seeing her shiver, Bravo said at once, "Are you all right?"

  "I'm fine." There was a patch of sunlight on his face, making the electric-blue color of his eyes even more extravagant. "You don't have to keep asking me. Really."

  "But you looked-"

  Her face flushed with sudden anger and she shot him a poisoned look. "For God's sake, don't scrutinize me! Paolo Zorzi trained me-and trained me well-for this life. Do we have that straight?"

  The remainder of the meal was passed without either of them uttering another word. The happy burble of voices, sudden bursts of laughter, clink of wine-filled glasses, amorous glances passed between couples at neighboring tables all served to depress her so thoroughly that before dessert and a refill of her iced coffee she was forced to closet herself in one of the two minuscule stalls in the cafe's bathroom so that she could burst into tears undetected. Dexter Shaw had charged her with protecting his son. Bad enough that Bravo had already seen her in a weakened state, she was certain he would lose all respect for her if he knew that she'd sunk so low.

 

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