If Tanner was correct — if he wasn’t groping for something that wasn’t there — the twelve digits on Susanna’s cupboard — translated as 330299554783. Following his hunch, Tanner regrouped them: 33 0 2 99 55 47 83—the twelve-digit arrangement of a French phone number.
Once back at the St. Beuve, Tanner called Oaken and brought him up to speed. “Was Slavin any help?” Oaken asked.
“As little as possible.”
“I was afraid of that. He’s coming up on retirement. The last thing he’s going to do is put himself out on a limb. Sorry, Briggs.”
“Don’t worry about it. We paid a visit to her apartment. We might have something.” Tanner recited the decyphered number and explained his theory. In addition to the code, they’d also gotten a lead from Trixie’s questioning of Rene the Gatekeeper, who’d also seen Susanna’s mysterious German. Rene was certain the man’s name was Stephan. It wasn’t much, Tanner realized, but perhaps enough to shake the tree.
“I’ll see if I can get Susanna’s cell-phone LUDs,” Oaken said, then hung up. He called back twenty minutes later. “You might be on to something. That phone number belongs to a tavern in St. Malo called the Sanglier Noir.”
“The Black Boar?” Tanner translated.
“Downright medieval, isn’t it? Susanna’s cell-phone dump shows five calls there in the last month. I’ve got an address.”
Tanner copied it down, then said, “One more question: Could you tell whether there’d been any other requests for her cell-phone dump?”
“I thought of that. There weren’t, not in the last six months, anyway. You’d think that’d be one of the first things the DEA would have checked — if they were trying to find her, that is.”
Oaken’s information told Tanner something. Whether Slavin knew it or not, the DEA was in fact not looking for Susanna, a fact which probably had little to do with apathy, and everything to do with hope. In the shadowy world of special operations, undercover work is the grayest; there are few rules and fewer still were unbreakable. Susanna’s controllers were probably hoping her disappearance was simply her way of burrowing deeper into France’s drug culture and that she’d soon resurface and make contact
Maybe yes, maybe no, Tanner thought. Either way, it was no way to run an operation. He’d worked both as an undercover operative and as a controller. Of the two, the controller is in a better position to play devil’s advocate, to recognize pitfalls to which the operative may be blind. Chances were, Susanna’s disappearance had been foreshadowed by her own behavior: vague reports, missed check-ins, impulsive behavior. Seeing the signs, her controller should have either pulled her in, or put a tighter leash on her.
“I’m hoping they haven’t written her off,” Oaken said.
“Me, too,” Briggs replied. He thanked Oaken, hung up, and turned to Cahil. “St. Malo.”
Bear checked his watch. “It’s after ten; let’s hope we can find an all-night Avis,” he said and reached for the phone book.
As it happened, they found no rental agencies open, but a better arrangement presented itself with the train a grande vitesse, or TGV, France’s high-speed train. They checked out of the St. Beuve, boarded the 11:10 train at the Montparnasse station, changed trains at Rennes, then continued north to St. Malo, arriving two hours and ten minutes after leaving Paris.
From habit, Tanner had kept peripheral tabs on their fellow passengers. Of those that boarded at Montparnasse, nine changed trains with them at Rennes for the final leg to St. Malo. Of these, two boarded their car: a blond-haired man in his middle thirties and a teenage girl with magenta hair, a black leather jacket, and square-tipped biker boots. Twenty minutes into the ride, the girl ambled over to the blond-haired man, exchanged a few words, then accepted a franc note from him and walked down to them. “Aide une fille hors?” she said. Help a girl out?
Tanner handed her a few notes. She flashed a dingy smile, then returned to her seat.
As they disembarked at St. Malo, the teenager started walking in the opposite direction, and the man hailed a taxi that took him around the corner to Quai Des Corsaires. Tanner and Cahil rented a locker, stuffed their duffel bags inside, then started walking.
The Black Boar was inside the walled city on Place Vauban, so they walked across Avenue Louis Martin, which spanned the three-hundred-meter canal separating the intra- and extra-muros. Across the canal they could see the lighted ramparts and watchtowers perched atop the ancient wall, which was lit from below by amber spotlights, lending the battlements a Disneyland-like appearance. Tanner suspected the lighting had been installed in anticipation of the upcoming tourist season. By this time next week, St. Malo’s population would swell to five times its normal size as visitors from Great Britain and urban France descended on the “City of the Corsairs.”
As they reached Grande Porte, the city’s main gate, Tanner caught a glimpse of a taxi pulling away from Porte St. Louise down the quai. A lone figure disappeared through the gate.
“Blondie from the train?” Cahil asked.
“Couldn’t tell.”
It was nearly one-thirty, but Tanner was hoping the Black Boar would still be open. The deserted cobblestone streets glistened under the glow of gaslights long ago converted to electricity. It took little for Tanner to imagine them hissing and sputtering with the flow of natural gas. Houses crowded the street, dormer windows looming over them. Hanging from every dark balcony were flower boxes and hanging pots, tiny blooms of color in the darkness.
“Talk about lost in time,” Cahil murmured. “I feel like we’re heading to a meeting of the resistance, listening for jackboots on the cobblestones.”
Tanner nodded. “It’s eerie.” Of course, it was precisely this atmosphere that drew hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. On its face, St Malo was frozen in the 1930s.
They followed the winding streets for another twenty minutes until they reached a cul-de-sac at the end of Place Vauban. There, tucked between a pair of alleys, was the Black Boar. Hanging from a rusty chain above the oaken door was a neon sign: “Sanglier Noir.” Light flickered through the tarnished windows. Tanner could hear raucous laughter coming from inside.
“Something tells me we’re not going to be able to slip in unnoticed,” Cahil said.
“Maybe that’s good.”
“Gonna shake the tree?”
“I was thinking about it It’s hard to tell what kind of reaction we’ll get though.”
“One way to find out”
Tanner grabbed the door latch and pushed. In keeping with its appearance, the door let out a rusty shriek. They stepped through and were hit by a wave a cigarette smoke. The tavern’s interior went quiet. Two dozen faces turned to them and stared.
“Thank god there wasn’t a piano to stop playing,” Bear murmured.
“Amen.” Tanner nodded at the patrons and raised a hand. “Bonjour.”
No one replied. After a few seconds’ silence the patrons returned to their drinks and conversations. The Black Boar’s furnishings were nearly as medieval as its name, with trestle tables, long benches, and a horseshoe bar whose front had seen more than its fair share of kicks and gouges — as had most of the patrons, all of whom Tanner assumed were locals, an assortment of sun- and wind-burned fisherman and oyster bed workers. There were no women to be seen.
Incongruously, the bartender was dressed smartly, in a royal blue, tab-collar shirt with a red tie.
“Bonjour,” Tanner repeated.