The Enemy

“You tell him I was in Germany?”

“He seemed to know already.”

“You tell him I was staying there?”

“He seemed to take it for granted you weren’t heading for California anytime soon.”

“These guys are old buddies with Willard,” I said. “He’s promised them he’ll keep me away from them. He’s running the 110th like it’s Armored’s private army.”

“I checked those histories myself, by the way. For Vassell and Coomer, because you got me curious. There’s nothing there to suggest either one of them ever heard of any place called Sperryville, Virginia.”

“Are you sure?”

“Completely. Vassell is from Mississippi and Coomer is from Illinois. Neither of them has ever lived or served anywhere near Sperryville.”

I was quiet for a second.

“Are they married?” I said.

“Married?” Franz said. “Yes, there were wives and kids in there. But they were local girls. No in-laws in Sperryville.”

“OK,” I said.

“So what are you going to do?”

“I’m coming to California.”

I put the phone down and walked along the corridor to Summer’s door. I knocked and waited. She opened up. She was back from sightseeing.

“She died last night,” I said.

“I know,” Summer said. “Your brother just called me from the apartment. He wanted me to make sure you were OK.”

“I’m OK,” I said.

“I’m very sorry.”

I shrugged. “Conceptually these things don’t come as a surprise.”

“When was it?”

“Midnight. She just gave up.”

“I feel bad. You should have gone to see her yesterday. You shouldn’t have spent the day with me. We shouldn’t have done all that ridiculous shopping.”

“I saw her last week. We had fun. Better that last week was the last time.”

“I would have wanted whatever extra time I could have gotten.”

“It was always going to be an arbitrary date,” I said. “I could have gone yesterday, in the afternoon, maybe. Now I’d be wishing I had stayed for the evening. If I had stayed for the evening, I’d be wishing I had stayed until midnight.”

“You were in here with me at midnight. I feel bad about that too.”

“Don’t,” I said. “I don’t feel bad about it. My mother wouldn’t either. She was French, after all. If she’d known those were my options, she’d have insisted.”

“You’re just saying that.”

“Well, I guess she wasn’t very broad-minded. But she always wanted whatever made us happy.”

“Did she give up because she was left alone?”

I shook my head. “She wanted to be left alone so she could give up.”

Summer said nothing.

“We’re leaving,” I said. “We’ll get a night flight back.”

“California?”

“East Coast first,” I said. “There are things I need to check.”

“What things?” she said.

I didn’t tell her. She would have laughed, and right then I couldn’t have handled laughter.

Summer packed her bag and came back to my room with me. I sat on the bed and played with the string on Monsieur Lamonnier’s box.

“What’s that?” she said.

“Something some old guy brought around. He said it’s something that should be found with my mother’s stuff.”

“What’s in it?”

“I don’t know.”

“So open it.”

I shoved it across the counterpane. “You open it.”

I watched her small neat fingers work on the tight old knot. Her clear nail polish flashed in the light. She got the string off and lifted the lid. It was a shallow box made out of the kind of thick sturdy cardboard you don’t see much anymore. Inside were three things. There was a smaller box, like a jewel case. It was made of cardboard faced with dark blue watermarked paper. There was a book. And there was a cheese cutter. It was a simple length of wire with a handle on each end. The handles were turned from dark old wood. You could see a similar thing in any épicerie in France. Except this one had been restrung. The wire was too thick for cheese. It looked like piano wire. It was curled and corroded, like it had been stored for a very long time.

“What is it?” Summer said.

“Looks like a garrote,” I said.

“The book is in French,” she said. “I can’t read it.”

She passed it to me. It was a printed book with a thin paper dust jacket. Not a novel. Some kind of a nonfiction memoir. The corners of the pages were foxed and stained with age. The whole thing smelled musty. The title was something to do with railroads. I opened it up and took a look. After the title page was a map of the French railroad system in the 1930s. The opening chapter seemed to be about how all the lines in the north squeezed down through Paris and then fanned out again to points south. You couldn’t travel anywhere without transiting the capital. It made sense to me. France was a relatively small country with a very big city in it. Most nations did it the same way. The capital city was always the center of the spiderweb.