Blood Oath Part 2

"As I grew up. When I began to ask her why I didn't have a father."

"You're relying on your childhood memory?" The superintendent's face contorted in bewilderment.

"She told me often. See, by then she'd regretted what she'd done. She wished she had his pictures and his letters. He became a kind of legend for us. She repeated tales about him, word for word. She made me promise to remember all the details. 'Peter,' I can still recall her saying. 'Peter, though your father's dead, he still exists as long as we remember him.' "

Andrews tapped a pencil on the desk.

Chapter 3.

"He thinks I'm crazy!" Houston said.

He stood with Janice near the Citroen. The wind had died. The clouds had disappeared. The sun glared.

"No, he doesn't," Janice told him, staring at him, troubled. "But in his place what would you do? Did the military screw things up, or did you simply misremember?"

"Hey, I told you "

"I believe you. You don't need to prove to me how well you can remember things. I've seen the way you don't need lecture notes in cla.s.s. I don't need convincing. But the superintendent does. To him, a fact isn't a fact unless it's written down and double-checked. As far as he's concerned, he did the best he could for you, considering the nature of your evidence."

"Which means he thinks I'm crazy."

"No. Mistaken."

Houston pushed his fingers through his hair. He faced the oppressive white building in confusion. "Fine, I'll grant him that much. Possibly I'm wrong." He turned abruptly toward her. "Not because I misremember. But my mother could have misremem-bered."

"We can't ask her."

"Is that it then?" Houston asked, in pain, reluctant, unaccept-ing. "We simply leave it like this?"

"We can write the War Department when we're home."

"We're here, though. Within walking distance, somewhere close, my father's buried."

"If you find some evidence, Andrews can at least locate the grave in case we come back. And anyway, you said it earlier: What difference does it make?" She blinked, as if she suddenly considered what her words meant. "Forget that last part."

Houston stared at her. "To me, a man in middle age, I guess it doesn't make a bit of difference. h.e.l.l, my life won't change because I stand before his grave.

But to that boy who grew up haunted by the father . . . Dammit, what's the matter with me?"

"Nothing. You're sentimental. It's attractive."

Houston smiled at her. "You do know what to say."

"I ought to. We've been married long enough."

He kissed her.

Glancing once more toward the building, he saw someone watching far back from a window.

"It's not me who's wrong," he told the distant shadow.

"What?"

"I just . . . This d.a.m.n headache. Why don't you drive?"

Houston climbed inside the Citroen. They'd left the windows closed. The seat was hot, air stale and cloying. As he rolled the window down, he felt a thought uncurl.

Jan drove through the iron gate. She angled up the curving blacktop toward the summit.

Though he sensed the graves behind him, Houston didn't turn to look. He had this other thing to occupy him, this persistent nagging thought that there was something he had not remembered.

"There was a Frenchman," he said.

"Where? I didn't see him. You don't mean I almost hit him."

"No. Not here. There was a Frenchman. I remember now."

"Remember what?"

"A Frenchman. Then. In nineteen forty-four. My mother said she got some letters from him."

Now his mind was clear. The deep black corner of his recollection was illuminated. Houston's stomach burned excitedly.

"Do the letters still exist?" Jan said.

"I doubt it. If she burned the other things, she would have burned those letters too. It doesn't matter. I remember what she said about them." His exhilaration rose. "The Frenchman said his people felt obliged to all those soldiers who had died to liberate this country. Every member of his village had selected a different grave. They vowed to tend the graves, to see there were flowers planted. Each fallen soldier seemed a brother or a son to them."

Jan frowned. She reached the top and concentrated on the road.

"This Frenchman chose my father's grave."

"I don't see how that helps us."

"He'd remember. We can ask him where the grave is."

"If he's still alive, and if There isn't any sense to this. We don't know who he is."

"I do know who he is."

"You can't expect me to believe "

"Pierre. That was his first name. That's why I remember it. Pierre de St.

Laurent."

"The village where we're staying. St. Laurent. But why would you remember that his first name " She stared at him.

"Of course. My mother said to me, 'And Peter, if it's any consolation, just remember that the man in France who tends your father's grave is Peter. Just like you. Pierre.' "

Chapter 4.

The village stretched on both sides of a languid river. In the middle of the afternoon, the sleepy sunshine settled on the shops and houses, making Houston feel he'd returned to normalcy. He smiled at flower sellers, fruit vendors, old men smoking pipes in cottage doorways. If it hadn't been for traffic, phone poles, and electric cables, he'd have been convinced that he was in the seventeenth century.

Jan drove across an old stone bridge. Beneath it, two boats drifted lazily. In one, a man and boy were fishing. Straight ahead he saw the village square, where tall expansive trees contrasted with a slender rigid obelisk the monument for World War Two. He brooded past a group of children toward the bleak plaque on the obelisk the roster of the village war dead.

"Aren't you getting out?" Jan asked him.

Houston roused himself. She'd stopped beside their hotel, which faced toward the park and then the river.

"I can read a menu over here," he said. "And I can find the men's room. But I don't think I can trust myself to ask the proper questions, let alone translate the answers."

They walked toward the entrance to the hotel. Years before, the place had been a manor. Now the tourists ate and slept where n.o.bles once had ruled the land.

"Europe puts things in perspective," Janice had remarked when they arrived.

"This place was built before America was founded."

In the high-beamed lobby, they approached the counter. Houston used his halting French to ask the manager if an interpreter could be employed.

The man responded slowly that monsieur should take advantage of this visit to perfect his knowledge of the language. An interpreter would make him lazy.

Pardon the impertinence. The manager continued smiling.

Houston laughed. The manager relaxed.

"D'accord. Je sais. Mais nous..." Houston faltered. "We have business to conduct. I need to understand precisely. Precis.e.m.e.nt."

That was a different matter altogether. If monsieur would kindly wait . . .

"I'm starving," Janice said.

Pete told the manager where they'd be waiting.

In the dining room, they sat beside a window that looked toward the huge trees in the park. They ordered dry white wine, cold chicken, a salad.

Pete felt a shadow. Glancing up, he saw a woman standing by him at the table.

"Mr. Houston?"

She was thirty, maybe less but certainly no more. A tall, thin, dark- and long-haired woman with attractive eyes; a full curved mouth, a smooth deep voice.

"My father is the manager. He says you need someone to interpret."

Her arrival was so unexpected that for several moments Houston failed to realize she spoke English without any trace of foreign accent.

"Yes, that's right."

"If I can be of help to you."

"Sit down please. Would you like some wine?"

"No, thank you." When she sat, she tucked her skirt beneath her. She wore sandals and a yellow sweater with the sleeves pulled up. She crossed her hands on her lap and waited.

"This is Janice," Houston said. "My name is Peter." They shook hands.

"Simone," she said.

"Your English is remarkable."

"I studied hotel management at Berkeley. In the sixties. When the campus riots started, I came back to France."

So I was wrong, he thought. She isn't thirty. More like thirty-five. You'd never know it. He explained what he wanted, though he avoided mentioning what had happened at the cemetery.

"So you want to thank this man," Simone rephrased. "For tending to your father's grave."

"We're in the neighborhood. I figure it's the least I can do."

Simone frowned. "Thirty-seven years."

"I know. He must be dead."

"It's not just that. If he's alive, he might be hard to locate. Many people in this village come from families so old that their last name is St. Laurent.

Descendants of the St. Laurents who settled here. You might as well be looking for a certain Smith or Jones back in America."

"But Pierre de St. Laurent. That helps to narrow things."

She thought about it. "Please wait here a moment." She stood smoothly, with aristocratic poise, and left the room.

"Attractive," Janice said.

"Oh, really? I didn't notice."

"Fool, you'd better eat your lunch before you get yourself in trouble."

He grinned. They finished drinking coffee by the time Simone came back.