The Enemy

Joe came out about twelfth in line. He was in the same overcoat I had seen before, but a different suit and a different tie. He looked good. He was walking fast and carrying a black leather overnight bag. He was a head taller than anyone else. He came out of the door and stopped dead and scanned around.

“He looks just like you,” Summer said.

“But I’m a nicer person,” I said.

He saw me right away, because I was also a head taller than anyone else. I pointed to a spot outside of the main traffic stream. He shuffled through the crowd and made his way toward it. We looped around and joined him there.

“Lieutenant Summer,” he said. “I’m very pleased to meet you.”

I hadn’t seen him look at the tapes on her jacket, where it said Summer, U.S. Army. Or at the lieutenant’s bars on her collar. He must have remembered her name and her rank from when we had talked before.

“You OK?” I asked him.

“I’m tired,” he said.

“Want breakfast?”

“Let’s get it in town.”

The taxi line was a mile long and moving slow. We ignored it. Headed straight for the navette again. We missed one and were first in line for the next. It came inside ten minutes. Joe spent the waiting time asking Summer about her visit to Paris. She gave him chapter and verse, but not about the events after midnight. I stood on the curb with my back to the roadway, watching the eastern sky above the terminal roof. Dawn was breaking fast. It was going to be another sunny day. It was the tenth of January, and the weather was the best I had seen in the new decade so far.

We got in the bus and sat in three seats together that faced sideways opposite the luggage rack. Summer sat in the middle seat. Joe sat forward of her and I sat to the rear. They were small, uncomfortable seats. Hard plastic. No legroom. Joe’s knees were up around his ears and his head was swaying from side to side with the motion. He looked pale. I guessed putting him on a bus was not much of a welcome, after an overnight flight across the Atlantic. I felt a little bad about it. But then, I was the same size. I had the same accommodation problem. And I hadn’t gotten a whole lot of sleep either. And I was broke. And I guessed being on the move was better for him than standing in the taxi line for an hour.

He brightened up some after we crossed the Périphérique and entered Haussmann’s urban splendor. The sun was well up by then and the city was bathed in gold and honey. The cafés were already busy and the sidewalks were already crowded with people moving at a measured pace and carrying baguettes and newspapers. Legislation limited Parisians to a thirty-five-hour workweek, and they spent a lot of the remaining hundred thirty-three taking great pleasure in not doing very much of anything. It was relaxing just to watch them.

We got out at the familiar spot in the Place de l’Opéra. Walked south the same way we had walked the week before, crossing the river at the Pont de la Concorde, turning west on the Quai d’Orsay, turning south into the Avenue Rapp. We got as far as the Rue de l’Université, where the Eiffel Tower was visible, and then Summer stopped.

“I’ll go look at the tower,” she said. “You guys go on ahead and see your mom.”

Joe looked at me. Does she know? I nodded. She knows.

“Thanks, Lieutenant,” he said. “We’ll go see how she is. If she’s up for it, maybe you could join us at lunch.”

“Call me at the hotel,” she said.

“You know where it is?” I said.

She turned and pointed north along the avenue. “Across the bridge right there and up the hill, on the left side. Straight line.”

I smiled. She had a decent sense of geography. Joe looked a little puzzled. He had seen the direction she had pointed, and he knew what was up there.

“The George V?” he said.

“Why not?” I said.

“Is that on the army’s dime?”

“More or less,” I said.

“Outstanding.”

Summer stretched up tall and kissed me on the cheek and shook Joe’s hand. We stayed there with the weak sun on our shoulders and watched her walk away toward the base of the tower. There was already a thin stream of tourists heading the same way. We could see the souvenir sellers unpacking. We stood and watched them in the distance. Watched Summer get smaller and smaller as she got farther away.

“She’s very nice,” Joe said. “Where did you find her?”

“She was at Fort Bird.”

“You figured out what’s going on there yet?”

“I’m a little closer.”

“I would hope you are. You’ve been there nearly two weeks.”

“Remember that guy I asked you about? Willard? He would have spent time with Armored, right?”

Joe nodded. “I’m sure he reported to them direct. Fed his stuff straight into their intelligence operation.”

“Do you remember any names?”

“In Armored Branch? Not really. I never paid much attention to Willard. His thing wasn’t very mainstream. It was a side issue.”

“Ever heard of a guy called Marshall?”

“Don’t remember him,” Joe said.

I said nothing. Joe turned and looked south down the avenue. Wrapped his coat tighter around him and turned his face up to the sun.