At that, Lefty gave me a doggy smile that was so filled with love, it too transcended species. That was the look. Peace, love, and, yes, an acknowledgment that I was the only one who could save him.
Even if you are innocent, I can’t save you, mister. I am too busy trying to save my own sorry ass.
With that thought in mind, I drifted off to sleep (probably the Jack), and the next thing I knew the copilot was shaking me gently awake. “Miss Roussel … we’re preparing for landing. Miss Roussel, wake up.”
I checked the time—four hours had passed—as we landed at a private airfield adjacent to the huge Barcelona Airport.
Now comes the hard part. Renting another car.
But that was actually the easy part. I rented a Smart car in no time using my bogus passport, license, and credit card.
The car was parked across the road in the huge—and very hot—rental car lot. It must have been eighty-five degrees, even though it was now nearing midnight.
If you’ve ever tried getting out of Barcelona Airport and onto a highway, you know that the whole roadway system there is designed to keep you from ever getting anywhere but back where you started.
After two solid hours of going around and around, I decided to call it a night and checked into one of those motel/hotel places near (I think!) the airport. I prepaid with cash.
I awoke at dawn, went down to the free continental breakfast, complete with horrible fatty ham hock that’s as common a sight at every breakfast place in Europe as the Danish-in-a-bag is at our cheap brown motels.
Skipping the ham hock and going straight for the carbs and coffee, I studied a map that I’d gotten from Europacar. I was not comfortable using the GPS (“It’s imperative that you keep deep undercover”), so I kept it off.
It seemed like it would be a fairly easy ride into France through a highway cut into the Midi-Pyrénées—approximately three and a half hours. Three hours until I’d hopefully be on my way to Mr. Pantera.
Well, if the “Y, Pan, Y” in Sadowski’s contact had really meant “Yusef Pantera,” that is. And if “Y, Pan, Y” was the right guy and he was alive, that is. And of course, and worse, if “Y, Pan, Y” was alive, it also meant that he had to be at least as good an operative as Maureen Wright-Lewis, which meant I’d never find him—unless he wanted to be found.
I deliberately decided not to attempt to call that number beforehand—thinking somehow that I’d take him by surprise by showing up in the same village. I mean, it can’t be that easy to run out of a walled city without being seen, right?
The “easy” three-and-a-half-hour ride somehow turned into over six. The map took me on every back road and through every idyllic (translation: speed limit zero) little Spanish town in the entire country.
After five hours on small (half dirt, half paved) roads and perilous one-lane, guardrail-free, endlessly curving slivers of road that hung on the edges of mountains shrouded in cloud, I slid down a mountain—clutching and downshifting the whole way—and finally hit flat land, and yet another unpaved street that looked like it was carved out of somebody’s back forty. And then there it was—a hand-painted wooden sign nailed to a tree. It simply read: FRANCA.
The border crossing between France and Spain looks like a driveway? What? This can’t be right!
But it was right. I’m sure I’m the only person who’s ever gone that crazy, circuitous route, so I figured at least I wasn’t being followed. I knew I’d entered France because the first little town I came to had signs only in French.
I’ll be damned!
I stopped for lunch at a small inn, mostly because it had a parking lot.
The inside was typical of the region—beamed ceiling, plaster walls, and big comfy fireplace—and I ordered a steaming plate of duck stew with black currants, which, if I was home, would have taken a thousand hours on the elliptical machine to undo.
It was, however, worth it, because it was maybe the best thing I’ve ever tasted. Not that I had much choice. By the look of the menu, ducks in this part of the world had about a one-in-a-thousand chance of surviving past duck puberty.
I ordered a bottle of Perrier, deciding to be very un-French and forgo the wine. I still had a long drive ahead of me and didn’t want to drive over the edge of one of these insane mountain roads.
As I was musing my lunch away, Sadowski’s phone jangled me out of my respite. The other customers at two other tables glared at me, stage-whispering something like, “Doit être un Américain à utiliser leurs téléphones pendant le déjeuner!”
You only needed to be fluent in human to know that cell phones at a meal here were strictly for the uncivilized—or American—which to Europeans tend to be one and the same.