Season of Ashes Ch. 03-05

❦

"Le vert?" The man's voice maintained a motorised undertone grained by years of indifference to the notion that smoking kills. A toothpick twitched from his lips as he spoke, highlighting the vehemence of his speech. One of his hands was suspended in the air, thumb and fingers in a loop, giving him the appearance of an impious saint in some modern reconstruction of Christian iconography. The hand moved, gesturing blindly to another row of colourful packages shining from the glass-covered cabinet behind him. "Ou le bleu?"

Milicent pursed her lips in concentration, eyes sweeping from one set of cigarettes to another. Four-leaf clovers were green, weren't they?

"Le vert," she decided.

The man grunted in acknowledgement, then slowly rotated with all the pomp of a planet to retrieve a packet. Milicent was patient; she coughed into her fist -- it was so dusty in the shop -- and simultaneously brushed her other hand along the merchandise perched in front of the register. The man reversed his cycle and placed a small green box on the counter.

"Dix euros."

"Euhhh..." Milicent's fingers roamed the interior of the tiny front pocket of her shorts. "Pardon, j'ai oubliée ma--" --she bit her lip in frustration, looked at the green packet on the counter, then stared outside at the adjacent street-- "--Une seconde!"

She dashed out of the small shop with resolute purpose, passing beneath the red diamond emblazoned with the word TABAC, and slipped into a narrow side street. Her fingers remained inside her pocket, where the faint outline of a rigid rectangle was apparent. A smile curled on her lips. She adjusted the set of her headscarf and crossed to a wider boulevard, making her way toward the nearby métro station.

❦

Milicent was pleased to discover that the antiquated process of using the rare Parisian payphone had not, in the years since her previous attempt, improved. She slipped her stolen télécarte into the slot, dialed the appropriate number, and found herself ping-ponging through a series of conversational greetings and ringing tones from the French Directory Assistance to the lobby of the Hôtel Beaufort to the empty Istanbul Suite back to the lobby of the Hôtel Beaufort and thence, after a few charming entreaties, to the office phone of a Beaufort, Ltd executive secretary, and finally onward to the private portable of Mme. Isabelle Moreau.

Milicent waited a lengthy interval, her eyes nervously inspecting the ticking plummet of her minutes on the display. She scrunched her lips to the side and pondered her options. Perhaps the secretary would know of a different number--

--"Allô?" A throaty, indolent tone full of vocal fry.

"Isabelle? Tu m'entends?"

"Ouais." The speaker coughed. A dull, ceaseless beat throbbed in the background. "Qui est à l'appareil?"

"Charlotte. Do you remember from--"

"Charlotte!" The voice rose an octave. "Magnificent! I have been waiting hours for you to call me, dear." Milicent's heart dropped to her stomach. Could Isabelle know--?

--The rush of panic subsided almost as quickly as it materialised. Milicent remembered: this was Isabelle's modus operandi. She was something of a social wiseacre, forever feigning an omniscience at utter odds with her actual possession of the facts. Upon hearing an ecclesiastical joke for the first time, Isabelle would say, "How charming! But when I first heard it, it had been a monk, not a priest." And when hearing the latest news about a medical innovation, she would say, "Oh, that? I thought we were speaking of something recent."

"Sorry I'm late," Milicent said, playing along. It was best to indulge Isabelle when broaching the subject of a favour.

"Nonsense, Charlotte. But you must drop everything at once. Come to Paris, dear. We are having an endless fête--"

"--I'm here--"

"--So you are! It is destiny. Come at once. I will--"

"--Isabelle, I'm sorry to interrupt. The truth is...I'm in a bit of trouble. It's urgent. I could use your help, if it's not too much to ask."

There was a pause. Milicent wondered if Isabelle had stopped paying attention.

"It would be the honor of a lifetime, Charlotte. You are my dearest friend, my most precious confidante--" --the clarity of her voice dropped, as though her mouth had moved away from the microphone-- "--Mais t'es où?"

"The Latin Quarter, near--"

"Ah bon? One second, Charlotte. I will give you directions -- and then you will come to me, okay?"

"Okay."

Milicent stared at the row of turnstiles in the distance, calculating their distance from the uniformed officials wandering around the station, and listened to her friend's instructions.

❦

Milicent was not ashamed to admit that she had expected something more...fashionable. Armoured car service, a chic address, attendants desperate to please her with tea and mineral water. These were the amenities which, in her mind, a friendship with Isabelle Moreau guaranteed.

Instead, Milicent found herself trudging all by her lonesome along the dilapidated path of the Petite Ceinture.

It was a strange feeling -- knowing that she was within the bounds of the city, but somehow removed from the bustle of the urban environs. She wandered through a winding, bosky wonderland where overgrown greenery had long since engulfed the embanking, graffitied walls; wriggling vines now crept through the unused train tracks that pierced the damp paths. The silver blanket of clouds that plastered the firmament above seemed to lend a more vivid hue to the verdure that surrounded her, as if the plants had changed into their most dazzling clothes to beseech the skies for more rain. Beyond the walls, she heard the growl of cars and the chatter of pedestrians, but the sounds were hauntingly distant -- separated from her by an otherworldly barrier.

She muttered the directions Isabelle had given her, her lips moving in silent prayer as she looped through the path, walking parallel to the tracks. A winding turn soon brought her within sight of an overhanging tunnel, its dark archway festooned with ivy. She exhaled, recognizing the description, and proceeded onward, letting the shadows embrace her as she stepped beyond the threshold.

The darkness in the tunnel was all-encompassing in a way that interfered with the logic of time. Night was eternal here; even the slow advance of minutes did little to accustom her vision to the gloom. Milicent placed her palm against the wall, stifling her disgust as she traced her way forward, her heels unsteady on the porous soil beneath her tread. After a minute, she swore she could hear the dull vibrations of uninterrupted noise behind the wall. She continued forward, leaving behind the halo of light that marked the entrance to the tunnel behind her, until her palm brushed against something metallic, causing a ding to echo in the dark.

Finally.

She grasped the metal object and slammed it against the wall, again and again and again. A rectangular burst of light assaulted her vision: someone had opened the door viewer right in front of her. Two black eyes stared at her; one of them widened as its corresponding brow arched quizzically.

"Isabelle Moreau?" asked Milicent.

The eyes blinked. Clattering sounds echoed from behind the wall, and within seconds, the door -- for it was a door that Milicent had been standing in front of -- creaked open, washing the tunnel with the soft haze of yellow illumination. The indistinct din she had heard on the other side coalesced into clear sound: music.

Milicent squinted past the threshold, barely discerning the hulking form of a swarthy bouncer. He pointed toward the end of the hallway behind him, where glittering flashes of multicoloured light flickered in and out of existence. "Là-bas," he said, closing the door shut behind her once she stepped in.

Milicent had been filled with trepidation from the moment Isabelle had blathered on about the esoteric directions it would be necessary to take to find her. But this? This was something entirely unanticipated, an altogether alien landscape. The small hallway deposited her into a large cavern; a domed ceiling vaulted dozens of feet above her head, sheltering the mass of bodies that wormed across the chamber, their silhouettes blurred by the stupefacient haze that hung in the air like a thick mist. The music was omnipresent; Milicent could feel it vibrating in her chest, but there was no higher structure to it, no melodic law apart from an apparent arrhythmia. It was noise for the sake of noise. Perhaps this was too high a price to pay for the possibility of--

--"Charlotte!" Something large and fleshy collided with Milicent. She jumped, but the thick throng of bodies prevented her from making an escape. Instead, she succumbed to a powerful embrace. Twisting around, she discerned the familiar scent and the unmistakable visage of her friend.

"Isabelle!" It was too loud. Milicent couldn't even tell if she was forming the right syllables. She felt Isabelle's fingers threading through hers, and her body was soon being dragged across the wasteland of dancing figures. Within a few seconds, Milicent was sitting on a plush banquette hidden in a large alcove along the wall. The table in front of her was filled with ashtrays, crumpled papers, glow sticks, and half-finished drinks.

"My darling, I have been waiting for hours!" Isabelle sat next to her. The dark-haired beauty was as voluptuous as ever, even with her curves diminished by the flattering sheen of her black, velvety dress. One hand fidgeted with her silver locket, drawing attention -- by design or by accident -- to the embonpoint of her ample chest.

"We spoke not an hour ago," countered Milicent.

"Did we? Strange." Isabelle's sculpted brows and dark pout exaggerated her reaction like the makeup mask of a mime. "No matter. At last! Welcome to the underworld, my dear." She swept her other hand out in the grand manner of a circus ringmaster, ushering Milicent's gaze toward the neon-speckled wasteland of the dance floor. "Très hédoniste, no?"

"I wasn't expecting it."

"Of course not, you poor thing, how could you have done? But it was a surprise to me, too." Isabelle produced a cigarette, swept her hand across it, and conjured fire in an act of prestidigitation. "Orhan has been such a bore recently. Or do I mean boor? Whichever. Both." She took a drag from the cigarette, thick lashes fluttering. "One must find sanctuary wherever one can." Smoke puffed from her painted lips.

"Speaking of sanctuary--"

"--Oh yes! Forgive me, Charlotte. How could I have forgotten?" Isabelle perched her chin on her free hand, casting her glance at Milicent. "Tell me everything."

"It's a bit complicated. The long and short of it is that I need to leave the city. Preferably without anyone noticing. I wasn't sure if you still had pull with the Lemniscate..."

Despite her whimsical affectations, Isabelle possessed a startling lucidity when it came to important matters. Her expression smoothed into an inanimate void.

"Easily done. Will it be you alone?"

"There may be another."

"Ah." Isabelle smiled, recovering a hint of her playfulness. Milicent mirrored the smile; in the absence of unambiguous details, it was better to have Isabelle consider her friend's plight to be the natural result of an affaire du cœur -- something with which Isabelle herself was intimately familiar. "Then it is urgent indeed. Handsome, I hope?"

"A knockout."

Isabelle looked at Milicent's clasped fingers on the table. Milicent stifled a groan. She had forgotten something.

"Very well. The Lemniscate will arrive in Paris this afternoon, take off in the evening, and arrive in Venice by tomorrow night. I will have them attach my personal carriages." Isabelle leaned to her side and rummaged through a crocodile-skin purse before pulling out a small envelope; from this, she extracted two slender, glossy pieces of cardstock and slipped them across the table to Milicent. "Show those to any Beaufort agent at Gare de l'Est. You will not, of course, be dealing with any of the customs nonsense."

"You're a wonder." Milicent sidled next to Isabelle and caught her in a sudden hug.

"There, there," cooed Charlotte, evidently pleased by her own prowess in producing such an affectionate display from her hard-done-by friend.

Milicent pulled away, grabbed the boarding passes, then pulled a face.

"Charlotte? Is something wrong?"

"I lost my wallet earlier."

"And you thought to keep this from me? What a strange creature you are. You cannot hope to escape without taxi fare." Isabelle started rummaging in her purse again.

"You're too kind."

"Pah! Think nothing of it. After all you have done for me, dear..." Isabelle placed a crinkled chewing gum wrapper on Milicent's exposed palm.

"...This is trash, Isabelle."

"Oh! I have been looking for this for ages." She snatched the wrapper and tossed it unceremoniously inside her purse, then replaced it with a sheaf of banknotes. "There. Hopefully enough?"

"More than enough. Thank you, thank you, thank you." Milicent embraced Isabelle once more -- though this time with less enthusiasm; she hoped to escape this pit before falling victim to whatever contact high had addled Isabelle's senses.

"Before you leave, Charlotte..."

"Yes?"

"Take the light, darling." Isabelle handed her a bundle of inert glow sticks, then leaned back and waved at her friend through a fog of smoke. "It is so dark these days."

❦

Equipped with her party favours, Milicent raced out of the speakeasy and trailed her original route out of the Petite Ceinture. An elderly stroller, alarmed by Milicent's sudden appearance from behind a hedge, supplied her with the hour while gawking at her as though she were an elfin figment of his imagination. She grimaced at the time; this expedition had taken her much longer than she expected. She stood on the pavement, watching the cars pass by while her brain fizzed at the prospect of her contrary inclinations. It's not important, she thought, trying in vain to convince herself. And yet...

❦

The taxi chugged to a halt half a kilometre away from her destination. Milicent assured the driver she would be right back. She hurried along the pavement and maintained a studious indifference to the row of townhouses across the street. But once she was across the way from her objective, she risked a glance to the other side.

The safehouse looked perfectly ordinary, just as it had earlier that morning when she'd departed from the premises. She felt for the bulge of the key in her back pocket and took one step into the road.

She stopped. Her heart raced. There, above the ground floor, the bedroom window beckoned to her; the blinds, previously slanted to admit the sunlight, were completely shut. She blinked, wondering if it was a trick of the angle. Her eyes fell on the lockbox in front; the tiny compartment Dominik had opened the night before was ever so slightly ajar.

She turned and retreated, fighting the urge to sprint as she made her way back to the taxi.

❦

Milicent was late. Her foolhardy detour wouldn't have ruined her schedule all by itself; but the shambolic vigor of her directions to the taxi driver -- who valiantly ferried her north, then south, then north, then south of the Seine again to please her capricious tastes -- ensured her tardiness.

It was six minutes past noon when she finally climbed out of the cab, tossed a note to her bewildered driver, and made her way down the street in the direction of the appointed tearoom, hoping that no one would pay too much attention to the bouquet of unlit sticks nestled in the crook of her arm.

"Come on, come on, come on, come on. Be here." She chanted the plea under her breath. Things were getting desperate. Someone knew about the safehouse -- someone knew enough about Dominik's past, or their movements, to track them there. She could only hope that the pursuers hadn't found him yet.

Or her, for that matter. She slowed and took a look at her surroundings: none of the scant pedestrians ambling on the narrow road seemed especially interested in her. Taking a breath, she hurried onward, rounding the corner to reach the front façade of the teahouse.

Dominik

She was late. Milicent was violating an important rule of espionage; amidst the tumultuous uncertainty of their profession, punctuality was as much a certainty as there was. Tardiness was a sign that something was wrong, that a contact was lying dead in the gutter, or that a betrayal was imminent. He swallowed down the uncertainty, forcing himself to not reveal the spiking anxiety that he felt. She would be here. There was an ordinary reason for her delay, and she'd be along soon. A chill slid through his veins, and it wasn't entirely the autumn air. Still, he had no other choice. He waited, the brick rough against his back, watching pedestrians amble by.

It was easy to get absorbed in the tensions, to let anxiety drive his thoughts to uneasy ends. Fujiwara was professionally paranoid; he had to be, given how many dangers awaited him at every turn. Theirs was a treacherous profession, and the fact that someone had gone to so much effort to set them up was a testament to how far their enemies were willing to go. His gaze was dark on the pavement before him, his brow furrowed with a deep frown. Who was behind it? Someone who wanted Newland dead, and the pair of them framed for it? Or were the Newlands merely incidental?

Perhaps the binder was the source of their issues, a secret that someone wanted to keep from the wrong hands. For a new weapon that threatened to change the balance of power, there was very little that the superpowers wouldn't do. Fujiwara and Milicent could be mere pawns, easy scapegoats for any number of military powers and intelligence agencies. That much was clear: they were being used. The question was by whom and for what purpose.

He clenched a fist at his side, his fingernails digging into the heel of his palm. Too many questions, not enough answers. They needed information, but they needed so much more before they had any chance of getting that information. A way out of Paris. A safe haven to prepare and plan. They needed names, and they needed weapons. Fujiwara knew that it would take time, but that was always the most frustrating part. There was never enough of it when it was necessary, and the seconds always ticked by faster when they needed them most. Though he took pride in his patience, Dominik was not immune to the creeping anxiety of the moment.

It didn't help that he felt eyes upon him from every pedestrian walking by. Every person was a potential threat, every jacket could cloak a weapon. The next car to round the corner could be the police. There was a fine line between useful paranoia and debilitating anxiety, and Fujiwara forced himself to ignore the tickle of fear on the back of his neck.

Even so, a wave of relief flooded through him as he saw Milicent finally step around the corner. The flash of blonde hair caught his attention first, and then the elegant sway of her hips. She made even the modest clothing she'd found in their safehouse into a look, lending it far more glamour than Fujiwara did.

He felt an involuntary sigh slip between his lips at the sight of her, despite the gravity of the situation. She was safe. The expression on her face was just as harried as Fujiwara felt, but he still felt better for seeing her. He told himself it was mostly the fact that he still had his ally in the clusterfuck this whole situation was becoming.