Order of the Air Omnibus: Books 1-3 (37 page)

“This is not the war, Robin. They arrest you for things like this.”

Beriault shrugged one shoulder. “If they find out.”

“We need to be able to travel,” Jerry said. “To Italy. Alma speaks Italian, but no French. And you know me. Can you do anything for us?”

Beriault cocked his head to one side. “Yes. Yes, I can make up some identity cards — no, passports — that will work, I think. You’ll have to be British, though. That’s what I have.”

“You promised you weren’t doing that anymore,” Vallerand said.

“I’m not.” Beriault’s face softened. “I swear, Paul. These are just the leftovers. Otherwise I’d have a lot more options.”

Vallerand paused for a moment, then shook his head. “Ok. This once. But, Jerry, if you’re caught —”

“We didn’t get the papers here,” Jerry said. “That’s understood.”

“Ok.” Vallerand took a deep breath. “Ok, then. What have you got for Auntie?”

Jerry reached into his pocket, pulled out the bundle of watches and jewelry. Vallerand spread it out on the worktable and extracted Alma’s chain. “I can’t take that,” he said. “Men can’t pledge ladies’ jewels. You know that.”

“I didn’t. It never came up,” Jerry said, but he handed the chain back to Alma.

“Right,” Vallerand said. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. And in the meantime, Robin can do your passports.”

“Thank you,” Jerry said, and clasped Vallerand’s hand.

“Thank me when you see what I can get you,” the artist answered. “Auntie’s not been as generous as she used to be.”

Beriault was already rummaging in a pile of boxes stacked between the long windows. “Ah, here we are,” he said, and pulled out what looked like a handful of passport folders. “It’ll take me a bit to fill them out and do the stamps. Make yourselves comfortable — have a smoke, have a drink. We’re out of coffee, but there’s wine on the shelf. And you can pour me a glass while you’re at it.”

Jerry did as he was told, poured glasses for each of them, and he and Alma returned to their chairs. He stretched his leg, the stump aching, lifted his glass to Alma. “Salut.”

“To you, too,” she said. “You know some interesting people, Jerry.”

“I knew Paul when I was in school,” Jerry said. “He and Robin had a studio together then. Except Robin was the one with the money, because he was really good at drawing his own.”

“I never did,” Beriault said, without looking up. “Straight forgery only.”

He’d spoken in French, and Jerry translated for Alma’s benefit. “If you say so, Robin. But, anyway, I hoped they’d be able to help us.”

Alma nodded. “I still say you know some interesting types.” She paused. “Why did Mr. Vallerand keep talking about his aunt? I mean, even I know that much French, the plume de ma tante, and all that.”

“Auntie is the Crédit Municipal,” Jerry said. “The city pawnshop. It’s a government monopoly here, Al, and if you want to borrow more than a few francs, you have to show your identity card and proof of residence. Which I don’t have. So Paul will do it for me.”

“Only in France,” Alma said, and took another swallow of her wine. “Is that a Baedeker?”

Beriault waved a hand, and she collected the guidebook, buried herself in the timetables.

The passports were ready and drying in the sun by the time Vallerand returned. He handed over the money — Jerry whistled appreciatively at the amount — and with it a bag with bread and sausage and a bottle of wine. “For the train,” he said, and Alma took a deep breath.

“Thank you,” she said. “You’ve been — you’re being so kind.”

“A pleasure, Madame.” Vallerand flourished a bow. “And one more thing.” He disappeared behind a second, larger screen that hid his bed, returned with a pair of cheap cardboard suitcases. “Props,” he said. “Take them. And perhaps Madame could wear this?”

He held up a plain gray frock, respectable and Parisian, and Alma took it gratefully.

“I could just kiss you, Monsieur.”

Vallerand cocked his head, and Jerry translated. Vallerand laughed. “Please do!”

That didn’t need translation. Alma grinned, and gave him a hug, then vanished behind the screen to change. Vallerand found her pumps as well, and a pair of cotton stockings for later; there was a second-hand store in the next block, a little out of their way, perhaps, but anything else they needed they could probably purchase there.

“Thank you,” Jerry said, and embraced both men.

“Be careful,” Vallerand said. “And tell me the story when it’s over!”

“I’ll do that,” Jerry said, and let them out into the hall. It was awkward, trying to carry a suitcase and maneuver himself down the stairs, and Alma rolled her eyes and took it from him. He started to protest, and made himself stop. He couldn’t afford for his pride to delay them.

The second-hand store was where Vallerand had said, and they bought spare shirts and underwear, then made their way back to the cafe. Lewis and Mitch were still there, the table covered now with the remains of a second meal, and Lewis was glowering at the waiter. Mitch gave them a look of relief, and pulled back his chair.

“Are we ready? These guys were getting a little antsy.”

“We’re ready,” Alma said. “We’ve got a train to catch.”

T
he train left Gare de Lyon at 6:40, winding its way slowly through suburbs, over iron trestle bridges and brick right of ways, until factories and apartment buildings gave way to trees and houses, branches hanging thick over the track in a canopy of spring leaves. The west slanting sun made a hypnotic play of light across them, flashing over the windows. Lewis put his head against the glass and slept.

He woke to darkness, his mouth feeling as if it had been stuffed with cotton. If he had dreamed he remembered nothing.

“Good morning, sleepy head,” Mitch said. He was sitting on the seat across, only the small side light illuminating the newspaper he was reading. “Or should I say good night? Jerry and Alma wanted to talk without waking you up, so they’re in the other compartment. Or were hours ago. It’s coming up on midnight.”

“Oh,” Lewis said, still trying to get his bearings.

“We could fold the bunks out if you’d like to lie down and get comfortable,” Mitch said.

“Ok.” Lewis got up stiffly and moved things around. The two seats folded into one lower bed while a top bunk pulled down from the wall, also exposing a second window high up.

Mitch moved like an old man, Lewis thought. “If you don’t mind taking the upper…” he said.

“No, that’s fine.” Lewis’ eye fell on the front page of the folded paper. He didn’t read French, but the picture said it all. “Is that….”

“Deadly Airship Crash Kills Fourteen?” Mitch nodded. “That’s Independence. On the front page of the late edition.”

It certainly looked impressive in the picture, the broken body of the airship across the beach, tail section in the water, while French Marines scrambled over it.

“The Independence, a new American airship en route from New York to Paris, crashed early this morning at Le Havre,” Mitch read aloud, translating as he went. “Fourteen people are confirmed dead, including both of the pilots and three of the engineers. Miraculously, only two of the passengers were killed, Mr. Palmer of Los Angeles, and Mrs. Grogan of New York, who was struck on the head. The other dead include numerous crew members. Four passengers remain missing. ‘It is a miracle,’ said M. Jourdain, President of the Air Safety Commission of France. ‘Given the nature of the catastrophic failure, it is little short of a miracle that all aboard were not killed.’ While initial search and rescue operations were conducted by the Marines of the Cruiser of War Marengo, currently berthed at Le Havre, responsibility has now been taken over by Sûreté.”

Lewis blinked. “Isn’t that police?”

“The equivalent of the Bureau of Investigation,” Mitch said. “Which means they found a bunch of bodies with bullet holes and have a lot of questions about them. Notice they mention Palmer but don’t mention he was shot.”

Lewis nodded slowly.

“Mr. Henry Kershaw, the owner of the airship, remains in critical condition in a Le Havre hospital. Inspector Victor Colbert of Sûreté said, ‘We hope that Mr. Kershaw will soon be able to talk with us and illuminate the circumstances of the accident.’ ”

“Oh boy,” Lewis said.

“I have no idea what he’ll say,” Mitch said. “Except that he won’t say ‘I was possessed by a demon and crashed my own airship.’ ”

“Um, no,” Lewis said. “I take it we’re the four passengers who’re missing?”

“I expect so,” Mitch said, sitting down on the lower berth. “For now they probably assume we were killed and that our bodies are somewhere in the wreckage, or maybe pulled out to sea.”

“For now,” Lewis said. “And then what?”

“I don’t know,” Mitch said. “Show up at the American Embassy in Rome and profess utter amazement that anyone is looking for us? A lot depends on Henry.”

“He could blame the whole thing on us,” Lewis said. “It would get him off the hook.”

“I’d like to think he wouldn’t do that,” Mitch said, the lines at the corners of his mouth tightening. “But it may not matter. Henry may die.” He stretched out looking toward the window, his back to Lewis.

“Oh.” Lewis remembered belatedly that they had been friends, back in the original lodge. He felt like he was going slow tonight.

He lay down on the upper bunk. After a moment Mitch turned the light out. Outside the window ghostly shapes of trees slid past under the moon. It was rising toward the full, gibbous and golden when the train flashed out of forests. Fields lay quiet. In the distance he could see the lights of a town. Trees again, a little river, the sounds of the wheels changing as they passed over the trestle. It was soothing. He should have fallen right to sleep, but he didn’t.

Next door Alma was sharing the other compartment with Jerry. There wasn’t anything in it. He believed her. Alma wouldn’t lie to him about something like that, and if she did she wouldn’t make up a story like this, like Jerry and Gil. She’d make up something more plausible, something less weird.

Mitch must have known, Lewis thought. Mitch had lived with them for years, close as the apartment over the garage. Surely he hadn’t missed it if…if all this stuff was going on. And Mitch was a straight shooter.

“Did you know about Jerry?”

There was a sound below and a sigh, as though Mitch were turning over. “Alma told you, did she?”

“Yeah. And about Jerry and Gil.” Lewis waited. He could feel his pulse pounding, the shadows of trees slicing through the compartment under the moon. He hesitated, looking for words. “Did it…bother you?”

“To each their own,” Mitch said. His accent seemed more pronounced in the dark. “I don’t reckon I get to go around telling other people how to live their lives. And Jerry’s a good friend.”

That last was a warning, Lewis thought. Jerry was his friend, and Mitch would tolerate questions but not insults. For a moment he wondered if Mitch…. But no. He’d seen the way Mitch looked at the pretty girl at the airfield in Los Angeles, like she was a forbidden treat. He always looked at women that way, at desk clerks and secretaries, even at the occasional pretty woman passenger, who he helped aboard with a special smile and a double dose of Southern courtliness.

“Was Alma happy?” Lewis blurted.

Mitch paused as though genuinely considering the question. “I think so. Leastways I never saw anything that made me think she was unhappy. She and Jerry have been like this, like brother and sister, or like two wives of the same man, just like Rachel and Leah. Or maybe it was more like Michal, David and Jonathan,” Mitch added contemplatively. “I always wondered how she felt about that surpassing the love of women bit.”

Lewis blinked. He hadn’t thought of it quite that way before, like Michal and her brother Jonathan shared a husband, just like Leah and Rachel. Of course a lot of people did things in the Old Testament that you could pretty much count on a priest not approving of. All that begetting sons on handmaids, for one thing. That was definitely not ok. “You don’t think it’s wrong?”

Another sigh, as though Mitch wanted nothing more than to go to sleep, but he answered anyway, his voice quiet against the sound of the rails. “I’m Moravian,” he said. “God is love. So how can love be evil? That would be like saying God is evil.”

Lewis stared out the window. The train came out of a culvert, dashing suddenly across a railroad bridge over a river, the moon making a path of light across the water. He hadn’t more than the vaguest idea what Moravians were, though he’d thought they were people from somewhere in Austria-Hungary, not a religion, but the stolen memory came back to him, if that’s what it was. The little church with its plain glass windows, beeswax candles wrapped in red paper ribbon, the scent of spiced buns on the altar, and the clear, high song of the old harpsichord. That was Mitch’s memory. He was sure of it. Christmas Eve and family and peace, a child’s sense of wonder that he could be loved by God.

“Way back long ago we were Hussites,” Mitch said. “We lived in Moravia. But when the Church called a crusade against us, we had to go into hiding. The Moravian Brethren didn’t give up, though. The Church never stamped us out. We kept on having our love feasts and our lay ministers just the same. And in the middle of the eighteenth century a bunch of us came to America. My mother’s people are from Salem. We’re Moravian. So I’m used to seeing the world a good deal different.”

“You think it was love?”

A long pause, as though Mitch was assembling his thoughts. “Gil and Jerry were both wounded in October of ’18, both of them in Vittorio Veneto. Jerry got a piece of shrapnel in his foot. They didn’t take it right off. It got worse later, but right then he was ambulatory. Gil…Gil got gassed. He was real bad. Nobody thought he was going to make it. So there they both were in the hospital in Venice, and Alma half off her head with worry.” A long quiet. The train plunged into darkness again, deep woodland. “Jerry was down there by Gil’s bedside every day, not that Gil knew him or knew anything going on around him. Until they decided that Jerry had earned his ticket home. He was safe to move, you see, so they could ship him back to the states, back to a hospital there and his discharge. And Gil, they weren’t moving him. I guess they figured they weren’t taking him anywhere except in a coffin.” He paused again. “I was there when Jerry said goodbye, not thinking he’d ever see Gil again. It was love.”