“Right, look for feathers,” Nate said. “Seriously, this Blackbird could be dangerous. Here’s what I’m going to do. See that last pillar thing on the end? I’ll hide there and keep my eye on you. And on everyone else wandering around. Sound good?”
Nate and I were certainly not pulling off high-level surveillance techniques, but it sounded as good as anything else I could come up with. “Okay. Now that I’m here, I’m glad you’re here, too. Take this so you look like a tourist.” I handed Nate my Blue Guide.
“Like a tourist from 1985,” Nate said, assuming his post behind the pillar and opening the book to the handy paper-clipped section on the Panthéon. I stood in plain view in front of the wall hoping to attract someone’s attention.
The lights flickered in the building, two big dips that left us in temporary darkness. I heard the guards in the building announce in French, “Quinze minutes jusqu’à la fermeture.” Fifteen minutes to close. Floor traffic picked up as visitors headed toward the doors. It seemed like bodies were coming out of the woodwork to leave. Not exactly a stampede, but a rush. My eyes were trying to take in the scene. Then there was a tug on my arm from behind. I whipped around.
A young male security guard in a sharp blue uniform was holding a large envelope in his hand. “Excusez-moi. Avez-vous déposez ce?”
The envelope read “JBB,” my initials only. I looked around to see who might have given him the envelope. Nate was at my side in a second. He spoke sharply to the guard. “Who gave you this?”
I translated as best I could. “Cette enveloppe, qui vous l’a donné?”
The guard pointed toward the exit, where dozens of people were headed out the grand doors and out onto the streets. “Un homme.”
Nate could barely stand there. “Oh, a man. That’s helpful.”
I said quickly, “Une description de cet homme?”
The guard did a tiny head shake and answered in half English. “Tall. Pale. Veste noire.” Tall, pale, and in a black jacket like half the men in Paris after a long winter. I turned to see Nate headed through the crowd in an attempt to spot the right tall, pale guy in a black jacket.
I slipped the envelope into my backpack, then started toward the exit to follow Nate. Remembering my manners, I turned to the guard. “Merci. Merci bien.”
The lights flickered again as I made my way across the transept and out onto the steps in front of the Panthéon. Where was Nate?
The drizzle had stopped, and the late-April night sky was streaked with the last bit of sunlight cutting through the clouds. I stopped on the top of the Panthéon steps and searched for Nate but got caught up in the view. The Panthéon’s setting on the top of a hill provides a startling vantage point across the neighborhoods of the Left Bank all the way to the Eiffel Tower. I wasn’t prepared for the sight of the lights of the city stretched out toward the iconic structure, and for a moment, I forgot my mission. I must have stood at this spot more as a student. I thought of my father, too, making the city his canvas. How had that all slipped away?
“Joan!”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Nate at a street corner, waving his hand to grab my attention. He was alone, no Blackbird in sight. But a half dozen heads turned to stare me down as I waved back, as if we violated some code of Continental cool. I didn’t care. I wanted to get across the street to him as quickly as I could and rip open the envelope.
Nate turned and, still clutching my guidebook, threw his hands up, clearly unsuccessful in his attempt to spot Blackbird. As a consolation, I held up the large envelope in my hands.
“Wait. Don’t open it here. Too many people. We should regroup. Plus, I’m starving,” Nate said, gently taking my elbow and guiding me away from the street corner with purpose. The traffic, of both people and cars, was heavy, and I didn’t want anything to happen to the envelope. Neither did Nate.
“Me too.” We ducked into a doorway, and I slipped the envelope in my bag. “Let’s find a café, order some drinks and food, then open the envelope. Sound good?”
It was logistics first and then we’d discuss what had just happened. Nate was on his phone, searching for cafés in the 5th arrondissement, the labyrinthine neighborhood surrounding the Panthéon. With the Sorbonne and other universities nearby, the area was loaded with cheap ethnic restaurants and signs for souvlaki hiding some architectural gems from the fifteenth century. While my main concern was opening the envelope and scrutinizing its contents, I wasn’t too keen on eating cheap student food, either. I wanted to sit, order a glass of wine, and take my time with the contents of the envelope. Nate was beginning to work his way through the Yelp reviews when abruptly he stuck his phone in his pocket. “Let’s just walk that way. I’m sure we’ll find some place.” Serendipity over crowdsourcing.
I couldn’t wait until we sat down, even though the streets were crowded, and the traffic was noisy. “Did you see him?”
“I don’t think so. I saw a tall pale guy in black leather jacket walking down the steps and crossing the street, so I followed him, but he met a woman on the other side of the street. Clearly, it was a date or something, because they looked very happy to see each other. I don’t think he had even been in the building, now that I think of it. Probably just using the steps as a lookout spot.” We crossed the street indiscriminately. Nate seemed to be in a hurry to somewhere.
“Well, at least we know Blackbird is a man,” I said, dodging a large group of American students. Nate made another quick turn off boulevard Saint-Germain and onto a tiny side street. It was nearly impossible to talk and keep up with Nate’s blistering pace. Parisians walk quickly and with purpose, but Nate was in a league of his own.
“Likely, yes. But the tall pale guy in the black leather jacket could have been a go-between to a go-between. We don’t know for sure it was Blackbird that handed the envelope directly to the security guard.”
I chuckled.
“What’s so funny?”
“I’ve never used a code name in a conversation before. Have you?” Nor had I ever gotten my heart rate up to the red zone looking for a place to eat, but I tried to breathe deeply and keep up.
“Yes, I have, but usually for projects that involve highly valuable intellectual property, not guys in black leather jackets.” Nate stopped in front of a wine bar named Le Porte Pot. “This looks fine,” he declared. By then, I would have agreed to McDonald’s. I needed to sit down and catch my breath. We pushed through the front door together.
Nate ordered a beer even though it was a wine bar, and I chose a Sancerre, plus a bottle of sparkling water and a couple of dishes to share, ordering as quickly as we could. The restaurant was warm and inviting, with beamed ceilings, giant maps of wine-producing regions on the wall, and simple wooden tables and chairs. If Nate and I had simply been tourists taking in a few sites, it would have been the perfect post-Panthéon spot for happy hour. Instead, Nate’s eyes darted around the place like he was checking for the nearest exit, and I felt like a covert operative who’d just failed a meet. How did we get here? Once the drinks arrived, I felt settled enough to open the envelope.
“Wait,” Nate said.
“Did you want to sprint somewhere else first?” I said, alluding to his distance-runner pace setting.
“No, but let’s try something. Why don’t you tell me what you think is in the envelope? What might be the next page from the notebooks? The next location to meet up, if there is one?”
“Is this some bogus exercise you do at Green Town Industries?”
Nate didn’t appreciate my skepticism. “My sister leads the brainstorming sessions. She went to business school, so there’s a method to her madness. It works. It gets your brain pumping before you have to zero in on the question at hand. When we’re trying to anticipate what might go wrong or right with a project, it opens us up to other avenues of inquiry when we think about all possible scenarios.”