And then, just as he was sure he was about to lose the Maserati altogether, it suddenly, and without warning, cut across the traffic lanes, causing one truck to swerve wildly and another to hit its brakes, before shooting toward the exit ramp for a couple of towns called Biencie/Cinq Tours. It was standard procedure for losing a tail, and Escher wondered if he had actually been spotted, or if the driver was just doing what came naturally.
But with only seconds to react, Escher simultaneously flipped on his flashers and his turn signals, and navigated as fast as he could toward the right side of the road. Other cars blasted their horns and one driver flew by giving him the finger. But he was too far along to make it down the ramp, and it was all he could do to stop the Peugeot on an overpass a hundred yards ahead and jump out of the car.
With the roar and the wind of the traffic rushing by, he ran to the guardrail. Below him he saw empty fields, a white farmhouse, and a two-lane blacktop going north and south. The Maserati was sitting at the crossroads, plainly waiting to see if any other car came down the exit behind it. Escher instinctively ducked lower, and watched as the car sat there for a full minute before turning to the right, where a blue arrow pointed toward the town called Cinq Tours.
Chapter 36
The moment Ascanio swept the car across the traffic lanes, and gunned it down the exit ramp, Olivia had let out an involuntary scream and David clutched the walnut trim on the dashboard so hard his knuckles turned white.
“Are you crazy?” Olivia cried.
But Ascanio was looking in the rearview mirror as the car descended the ramp, and at the bottom he stopped abruptly, letting the car idle there. It was a lonely spot, with brown farmland and a white farmhouse off in the distance, and it took David a few seconds just to release his grip on the dashboard.
“I had to be sure we had no company,” Ascanio said.
“Well, I think we’ve settled that question,” Olivia said. “But next time, could you at least give us some warning?” She muttered an oath in Italian, and Ascanio smiled.
Then, he turned the wheel to the right, toward the town called Cinq Tours. The road there, part of the Route Nationale system, was older and narrower, and it meandered through scenic but now-barren fields and forests. In a grove of old oaks, David saw a pack of wild boars, pawing and snuffling at the hard ground.
“A local specialty,” Ascanio observed with a tilt of his chin. “In his day, the marquis was a very good hunter.”
“But not so much anymore, I’d guess.” David had been wondering how to ask the indelicate question, but this was as good, or bad, a time as any. “How were his legs injured? In an accident?”
Ascanio waited for a tractor to lumber over an old stone bridge, then maneuvered around it. “An accident of history,” he replied. “It happened during the war.”
The war. David almost laughed at the absurdity of it. Which one? It could be almost any war at all, from the Napoleonic campaigns to the Second World War. The marquis might have been a field marshal at Waterloo, and Ascanio his aide-de-camp. It was an alternate reality that David was working in, but since that was also the only reality in which some hope for his sister survived, he was not about to challenge it.
A few kilometers on, they came to a cobblestoned town square, with a white stone cross in its center, a few shops, and an inn—L’Auberge Sur le Carré—bearing the green and white Logis de France imprimatur. Ascanio parked the car right outside, close to a lone gas pump.
“We can get something to eat here,” he said. “They do a good rabbit-and-mushroom stew.”
But David didn’t want to wait, much less for rabbit stew. “Why don’t we just keep going?” he said. “It can’t be much farther to the chateau.” He still had every intention of getting on a plane to the States that same night.
Ascanio opened his door and got out. Poking his head back in, he said, “We have to wait till it gets dark, anyway. And I like stew.”
Slamming the door shut and heading into the inn, he left them, still in their seat belts, in the car. David turned around and Olivia, un-snapping her belt, said, “He’s right. We have to eat. Come on.”
They found Ascanio in a wooden booth in back. Only one other table was occupied, by a couple of farmers in overalls. The owner, a cheerful, chubby woman wearing a soup-stained apron, brought them a bottle of the local wine and took their orders—three rabbit stews.
By the time she returned with the food, Ascanio had already taken out some papers, a map among them, and was explaining the rest of the plan first laid out by the marquis. Glancing down as she made room for the plates, the woman said, “Do you need directions?” But Ascanio, laying his hand across a rough diagram, said, “Non, merci. We have a GPS in the car.”