I ducked out and started walking swiftly up the hill. Swiftly, that is, but casually, like someone with nothing to hide.
The car was actually a large truck. A man stood next to it. Not Bruno. My age. Dressed in the utilitarian clothes of a state worker. This must have been the son.
A feeling of nervous excitement overtook me.
I tamped it as I conjured an explanation. He’d expect to know why I was on his father’s property. I said I was looking for the place I was meant to stay. I’d realized, when I took a look around, that this was not my vacation rental.
“Who are you renting from?” he asked.
I said I could not remember their name, but that it was near the Château de Gaume.
“If you turn back to the D79 and continue north you will pass the road to that place. This is the property of Madame Quercy.”
Quercy? Perhaps it was the ex-wife’s name. It could have been why I never found a property record for Bruno. But why would his son call it that?
“There’s an outage here,” he said, “because of the winds.” He opened a panel on the side of his truck, and I saw that it was a Telecom truck.
I SPENT THE AFTERNOON at the Dubois place, packing up equipment and planning for my next job, an assignment on the island of Malta.
I sorted my clothes and put them in my suitcase, the clothes of Sadie Smith, simple outfits, jeans and T-shirts and sweaters that I was sick of. I could dump this stuff before I returned the car and got on a plane.
In the evening, there were new Google Alerts. The news about the document dump and “Amy” had spread like lice looking for a host. Some of the articles speculated on who this federal agent was. Had she infiltrated other movements and scenes? Is this what the FBI was spending tax revenue on? “Amy” had been paid sixty-five thousand dollars for entrapping these people, one article claimed. (Actually, it was more.)
“Amy” was an example of the illegal and immoral and wrongheaded surveillance of leftist activists in the United States. Nancy was the self-appointed expert and martyr on this topic, even as the boy had served more time than she had. There was a video of them being interviewed. She did all the talking. As he looked at her and nodded with his serious beard, I was reminded of how he had looked at me, and I felt a twinge of nostalgia.
In the video, she says they are pursuing a civil case against me, now that they know my true identity.
My true identity?
I took a Xanax to calm my nerves. I washed it down with red, which I’d been forced to drink because I didn’t have any white and I had run out of beer.
I reminded myself that right now, today, this moment, my “true identity” was Sadie Smith, and as her, I had a job to do.
I loaded the gun I planned to give to Burdmoore tomorrow, so he could sacrifice himself. I put it on the side table next to the bed.
I held off on a second Xanax. It was important that I sleep defensively, which is similar to driving defensively, a modality of heightened anticipation, ready to waken at the slightest disturbance.
But I needed sleep, and it wasn’t coming. I felt like all the lights had been turned on inside me, bright as a twenty-four-hour office building.
I gave in and took the second Xanax and also an Ambien and set my alarm.
OR I THOUGHT I SET MY ALARM.
I woke with a start, but by no external stimulus.
It was eleven a.m.
My heart pounded from disorientation and drugged sleep. The Lucien phone, which I would soon scrub, scrub and return to factory settings, was stacked with messages.
Vito, texting.
—I have news.
—Lucien is with someone.
—It’s not a fling it’s a relationship.
—I was wrong about the cabal. It was two not three.
—It’s Amélie.
—(In case you didn’t already guess.)
I was behind schedule. I gave myself twelve minutes to make coffee and pack up the Škoda and get going. I was putting on my clothes when Vito started texting again.
—Sadie?
—Do you not care??
This guy had no sense of what my concerns were at the moment.
—Sadie?
I powered off that phone.
NO, VITO, I DO NOT CARE.
I TORE OUT. Left that house open like an old, unlaced shoe.
