He stared at her when she glanced at him, but did not speak.
The plane broke free of the clouds only in time to begin a long descent to Brussels. The North Sea, always gray and angry, chopped in vicious waves below the wings.
She thought of going home alone to the place where she lived near the park. The apartment was small and precise. Her father, who was still alive, had visited her there once and exclaimed that whole families in Lithuania did not have so much room to live in. She knew his stories were true. She once had gone to Lithuania to find the broken thread of family memories. She had searched for names her father gave her. She found some, and was sorry she had gone back to that place her parents fled. The conditions in Vilnius had made her angry, and she had not expected anger.
The jet bumped again through the lower elevations of clouds. The attendants had picked up the empty miniature bottles and plastic glasses and paper cups and plates and were bracing themselves at the front of the plane. The No Smoking light was on.
Rena glanced again at the pale man.
In such moments of rough landings, everyone on a plane deals with fear of death. Rena believed this, but she had long since resolved that particular fear. This is what she told herself. The plane shuddered at some invisible restraint. Landing gear whirred down and locked with loud bumps. The plane tipped, rolled to the right. The farmlands of Belgium were divided below, and there were streams of traffic on the roads.
The man across the aisle only stared at her.
She thought she would take a warm shower when she was safe at home on the rue du Lavois, on the hill above the center of the town. After the shower, she might drink some of the Stolichnaya vodka she kept in her refrigerator, in the freezer section. Bread and Brie and an evening to listen to music, perhaps Grieg in honor of the week she had spent in Scandinavia. She smiled at that, a dazzling smile and very out of place on a plane careening down through the clouds with one hundred twenty-one passengers strapped to fragile plastic chairs. But Rena was in her cocoon again: She would fall asleep and dream of Michael or the tape, and not think of Vilnius or anger or the wolf in winter. She would dream only of her pleasure.
The tires bumped and the brakes shuddered. Flaps went up, biting at the wind to slow the hurtling steel. The air slammed against the wings, and the engines whined in their familiar complaining voices. In that violent moment, they were down. Relief shrugged out of the crowd on the plane. Even as it taxied to the terminal, the plane was filled with sounds of voices again, the clicking off of seat belts, the slam of overhead baggage doors. Everything routine; piece of cake; we weren’t really afraid.
The gray man did not move.
The aisles clogged before the plane made contact with the terminal. The jetway snaked out from the terminal and clamped to the bulkhead.
People pushed against each other in the narrow aisle to be first out of the plane. Rena thought it was like the ungentle queues in the fruit markets or in lines at the cinemas. She had spent four years in England once, where people waited in patient lines. She could never again become used to the aggressiveness in lines on the Continent.
Rena waited, and so did the man across the aisle.
The plane was nearly empty when she got up. She stretched and took down her weekend bag from the overhead compartment. Was he watching her? Of course, he had waited to watch her stretch and take down this bag. She was totally honest about her appearance and the effect it created. She made her way up the aisle. Near the front of the plane, she turned back.
The man across the aisle was still in his seat. He was still watching. His look was curious, even familiar. How could he presume that intimacy? But it wasn’t that, Rena saw. It was a familiar look but a sad one as well, as though he was staring at a sick child or a grieving mother. And there was something else in him. Yes, she thought, exactly like the wolf. But where had she ever seen a wolf in winter? In that moment, she felt the satin stirrings inside her belly, felt a warmth that was not intended. She pouted at him in that moment, and her wet lips opened, and she looked tentative and uncertain and confused. And then she looked away.
“Sorry for the delay. Fly Sabena next time,” the attendant was saying. Rena turned, nodded, stepped onto the jetway and followed the windowless corridor to the terminal. Was it raining in Brussels? She would have to get a taxi all the way to her apartment below the Palace of Justice. Brussels would be full of Saturday-night revelers.
It never occurred to her the man was following her.
She climbed the carpeted stairs to her apartment on the third floor. The stairs were narrow and the banister was elegant, sculpted in the French style of the last century. She had tall French doors for windows in her flat, and there was a small gas fireplace in the main room which bore a ridiculously ornate marble mantel. She stepped into her rooms and turned on the light in the small kitchen. The telephone was on the kitchen counter as well as the recording machine. No one had called her in a week away. It disappointed her for a moment; maybe the tape machine was broken. She would have to ask M. Claude on the fifth floor, who was a genius at that sort of thing.
A moment after she closed the door of her apartment, the doorbell rang.
She had just taken off her coat and hung it in the armoire in her bedroom. She made a face. The doorbell rang again. Claude on the fifth floor probably had seen her come in and he wanted to… well, he wanted to see if she needed anything. Claude was sweet, a gentle, divorced man who was a bureaucrat in EC in charge of counting such things as wheat crops in France and pea crops in Britain — but she really wasn’t ready to go to bed with him.
She opened the door to the hall, and he pushed her inside. Her breath caught. It was him, the man on the plane. The wolf was very near, there was blood on his teeth.
“Qui êtes-vous?” she demanded.
“Sit down,” he said. His voice was low and flat but without any softness. No blood, but the savage feeling was in the room now. Whatever was her in the room was beaten back to shadows in that moment. “I want to see if you took something by mistake.”
“Who are you?”
He stared at her a moment. “Don’t be afraid.” He tried to make the words gentle, and they sounded grotesque. “There’s been a problem, in Malmö. From the conference. Something is missing and it’s a mistake, but we still need to have it back. I’m from the conference, and it’s a little matter of security. I want to see if you have it.”
“How did you follow me?”
“That was difficult, even with a police driver. Brussels taxi drivers have their own rules.” Devereaux smiled again, but it did not assure her. It is one thing to have a man stare at you, to admire you, even to follow you for a while down a sidewalk because you are what you are. It is another thing for a man to be on this side of the door.…
“I want to see identification—”
He showed her a card. It might be identification. She would remember the U.S. Great Seal on the plastic card. He seemed slow and intent on not threatening her. She was not assured. She thought of Michael suddenly and the sixth tape.
Her bags were in the middle of the living room. He picked up the weekend case and opened it.
“This is monstrous, I’ll call the police—”
He glanced at her then. The glance was almost an afterthought, as though he had decided something she would not understand.
He took out her blouses and put them gently on the couch. He took her nightgown and put it on the blouses. She had worn the nightgown when she slept with Michael in the big room at the Savoy. Her perfume was on the gown. He really was looking for something, she thought. He moved his fingers like chess pieces. They probed her case and clothing. Whatever it was, it was small, the thing he was looking for.