Echo of War by Grant Blackwood Page B

ambiance that was at once medieval and modem. One minute you can be wandering the dim back alleys of the Marais—literally, the Swamp Quarter—the next emerging into clamorous, bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Rue de Turenne. Turn another corner and you’re eating a lunch of pastrami and borscht at a Jewish-Algerian cafe overlooking the Place des Vosges, a park that centuries ago served as a jousting ground for knights of rival houses.
    Somewhere down there, amid the labyrinth of alleys, the glass and chrome skyscrapers, and the thousand-year-old boulevards, Susanna Vetsch was lost. She’d turned herself into a chameleon, slipped into the underworld of Paris, and disappeared.
    Once on the ground, they went through customs, picked up their bags, and found a taxi at the curb. “Bonjour, ” the driver said. “Où ?”
    Tanner said to Cahil, “You have a preference?”
    Bear looked up from his phrase book. “Huh?”
    â€œNever mind. Hotel Les Ste. Beuve, s’il vous pla î t, ” Tanner told the driver. “Rue Ste. Beuve.”
    â€œTrois cent. ”
    â€œNon, ” Tanner said, wagging a finger at him. “Deux. ”
    â€œOh, monsieur, je proteste ! Un surcharge sp é ciale —”
    â€œNon, ” Tanner repeated. “Deux !” From hard-won experience Tanner knew Parisians loved to barter and argue, and considered it all nothing more than good-natured sport. Quoting an inflated fare had simply been the driver’s way of engaging them. If he’d gotten the price, all the better; on the other hand, had Tanner pushed the matter—and done so with admirable flare—he might have even finagled a discount. As he’d read in a travelogue once, “There’s no better compliment than to be singled out for an argument by a Parisian.”
    The driver gave a Gallic shrug and smiled. “D’accord. ”
    As they pulled into traffic, Cahil was riffling through his Berlitz phrase book. “What was that, I didn’t catch that.” Of Bear’s many skills, a long-term memory for languages was not one. He picked up phrases well enough to travel discreetly, but he promptly forgot them once back home.
    Tanner owed his ear for languages to his parents, Henry and Irene. From the age of seven until he entered high school in Maine, Briggs lived in a dozen different countries and saw a dozen more as his father, a teacher with a cross-cultural outreach program, led them around the globe. Employing some maternal magic Tanner had never quite understood, his mother had always managed to make their house, flat, bungalow, or tent into a home. By the time Tanner became a teenager, he was well rounded, tenaciously curious, and self-assured, having seen and experienced things his peers had only read about in books.
    â€œWhat was he saying?” Cahil asked.
    â€œHe was trying to pad the fare. Have you learned anything useful with that?”
    â€œIt’s a fount of knowledge. Here try this: Pouvez-vous traiter mon animal contre les tiques et les vers ? There, what do you think of that?”
    Before Tanner could answer, the driver barked over his shoulder, “Aucuns animaux ont permis !” No pets allowed!
    â€œWhat did you say to him?” Tanner asked.
    Bear consulted his dictionary and recited, “Can you treat my pet for ticks and worms?”
    â€œVery handy.”
    â€œYou never know.”
    Tanner had been in Paris in half a dozen times before, but never for more than three days at a time, so his memories of the city were disjointed, bits of recollections and remembered landmarks which he used to reorient himself whenever he returned. He navigated the city like a coastal sailor, taking his bearings from nearby landmarks and adjusting his course accordingly. Once down to the level of alleys and side streets, it became a matter of trusting that his mental compass would return him to the familiar. Each time