The Sixth Station(101)
Instead of sneaking back around the backside of the mountain, Pantera tightened his hand around mine in that death grip and, almost at a run, began dragging me toward them in the valley.
Like the Cathars walking into the flames!
“We’re heading right back to the—” I tried saying, but he wasn’t listening. I attempted to break free of his grasp, but it was useless. At a run now, dragging me with him, he began waving to the cops. In less than ten seconds I’d be in their hands—the hands of the authorities I’d been ducking for days, who were out for blood.
“You lying traitor,” I screeched, as he rushed us into the fray, still holding my hand.
32
“Ta gueule! Seriously. Trust me.” He actually said this as he was dragging me against my will into the hands of the authorities.
Trust no one.
He loosened his grip on my hand and then squeezed it—as opposed to crushing it—and put his other arm around my shoulder, draping it like a boyfriend would, as he forcibly “strolled” me quickly to the first cop we came up to.
Like a big buffoon, he said way too loud in the cop’s face—or this is what I thought he said, but my French is worse than, well, anything:
“Qu’est qui se passe? Pouvez-vous nous prendre en photo moi et ma femme? C’est comme dans un film!”
The cop was having none of whatever it was, and threatened (or it sounded like a threat anyway): “Mais c’est ridicule! Reculez! N’approchez pas. C’est une scène de crime, vous devez quitter immédiatement les lieux sinon nous allons ce faire arreter.”
“Juste une photo, s’il vous plait. Nous avons traversé tout le village dès que nous avons entendu les sirènes.”
“Sortez ces civils d’ici immédiatement.”
At that, two cops came over and forcibly escorted us out of the Valley of the Burned and then out of the area entirely.
If you ever trust anyone, maybe this should be the guy.
As we headed back down the paved part of the mountain road to the bottom, I turned to him.
“Damn! You are good.”
“You have no idea.”
“No, seriously. Really good.”
“And seriously, I know that. Let’s move,” he urged, pushing me beyond my physical capacities right then. Or so I thought. I didn’t realize I hadn’t even been tested yet.
We hurried back to the boarding house at a jogging pace. I packed up my nearly nonexistent belongings, changed into my only other pair of jeans, and met him back downstairs.
“We’ll take two cars. I don’t want you to follow me, but I highlighted the route for you in yellow. We’re going to Carcassonne. It’s a fairly straight route, so don’t get lost. We can’t communicate by cell. Strictly off the grid, old-school.
“When you get to the city, there is parking at the foot of the village outside the walls.”
“Walls?”
“It’s a walled city. But tell them you are staying at Hôtel de la Cité, and you will be directed to a private area immediately outside the wall and they’ll send a car or van to get you. I’ll meet you there.”
“What name should I use to check in, and should I use Sadowski’s ATM card?”
“It’s all taken care of. Just tell them you are Madame Roussel and that you would like your room key.”
With that he got in his red Citroën and slowly pulled out of sight. I assumed by now everyone in the village of roughly one hundred citizens knew everything we’d done, hadn’t done, and were about to do. Or maybe the French weren’t like small-town folk everywhere else on the planet.
There wasn’t a soul in sight, and I assumed that whoever was there had by now gone up to the mountain to see what all the excitement was about.
At the end of the village there was, as I should have expected, a police- manned roadblock. I showed my false passport, and they checked the car thoroughly. I told them in English, and then tried in Italian, that I had come to see the mountain, and then I made a big deal about trying to find out why all those cop cars and ambulances were there. Maybe it was the old-lady rocker hair that did it, but they just got annoyed and let me pass.
If there ever was anyone who didn’t look like a threat to anyone but herself, it’s you right now!
It is about fifty-seven kilometers (just over thirty-five miles) between the towns of Montségur and Carcassonne, but they may as well be on different planets. One is the kind of ancient rural village you can only find in France, and the other is the kind of ancient walled city you can only find in France. One has no commerce, while inside the other behind those ancient walls are high-end designer boutiques, hotels, and Michelin-starred restaurants doing business in stone buildings that were built in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in a city that was founded by the Romans in the first century.