“How long?”
The connection went dead. Gabriel reached up and tore loose the key. Then he pressed the trunk release and the rain fell benevolently upon his face.
27
GRAND-FORT-PHILIPPE, FRANCE
When Gabriel entered his room at the Hotel de la Mer, he found Keller propped up in bed, a cigarette burning between his fingers, his eyes fixed on the television. It was a replay of an English Premier League match, Fulham versus Arsenal. The sound was muted.
“Comfortable?” asked Gabriel.
“I saw you drive up.” Keller aimed the remote at the screen and fired. “Well?”
“She’s alive.”
“How bad?”
“Bad.”
“What do we do now?”
“We wait for the phone to ring.”
Keller switched on the television and lit a fresh cigarette.
This time Gabriel’s natural forbearance abandoned him. He tried to distract himself with the football match, but the sight of grown men in shorts chasing a ball around a pitch seemed offensive to him. Finally, he brewed another evil cup of the double-strength Nescafé and drank it at his outpost in the window. The current of the tidal creek had changed directions; it was flowing in instead of out. He looked at his wristwatch. The time had not changed since he had checked it last: 3:22 a.m. It was a provable fact, he told himself, that nothing good ever happened at 3:22 in the morning.
“They’re not going to call,” he said, more to himself than to Keller.
“Of course they’re going to call.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because they’ve come too far. And keep one other thing in mind,” he added. “At this point, they want to get rid of Madeline as badly as you want her back.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
Keller looked at him seriously. “When’s the last time you slept?”
“September.”
“Any chance you’d allow me to deliver the money?”
“None whatsoever.”
“I had to ask.”
“I appreciate the gesture.”
Keller frowned at the television. Evidently, someone had scored a goal because the men in shorts were jumping up and down like children on a playground. But not Gabriel; he was staring at the waters of the tidal creek and thinking about Madeline clawing the skin from the back of her hand. Consequently, when the phone finally rang at 3:48 a.m., it startled him like the scream of a terrified woman. The voice spoke to him, thin, lifeless, and stressing all the wrong words. After a few seconds he looked at Keller and nodded once.
It was time.
The night clerk was nowhere to be found. Gabriel placed both room keys in the pigeonhole behind the desk and wheeled the two suitcases into the wet street. The engine block of the Passat was still ticking from the last journey. He loaded the suitcases into the trunk and climbed behind the wheel. The phone started ringing as he was closing the door. He immediately switched the device to SPEAKER mode, just as he had been instructed.
“Go to the A16 and head toward Calais,” said the voice. “And whatever you do, don’t hang up. If the connection dies, the girl dies.”
“What if I lose cell service?”
“Don’t,” said the voice.
It was a four-lane motorway with light towers down the center median and tabletop-flat farmland on either side. Gabriel kept to the posted speed limit of ninety kilometers per hour, despite the fact the road was nearly empty of any other traffic. He drove with one hand and held the phone with the other, watching the signal strength meter carefully. For the most part it remained at five bars, but for a few anxious seconds it fell to only three.
“Where are you?” the voice asked finally.
“Approaching the exit for the D219.”
“Keep going.”
He did. It was more of the same: farmland and lights, a bit of traffic, a power transmission line that stepped on the cell service. The next time the voice spoke, it was through a hailstorm of static.
“Where are you?”
“Coming up on the D940.”
“Keep going.”
The transmission lines fell away, the signal cleared.
“Where are you?”
“Approaching the A216 interchange.”
“Keep going.”
When the lights of Calais appeared, Gabriel stopped waiting for questions. Instead, he offered a running commentary of his whereabouts, if only to break the monotony of the call-and-response rhythm of the instructions. There was silence at the other end until Gabriel announced he was nearing the turnoff for the D243.
“Take it,” said the voice, though it sounded more like a question than an order.
“Which direction?”
The answer came a few seconds later. They wanted him to head north, toward the sea.