The Obedient Assassin: A Novel by John P. Davidson Page B

sausage, which he ate sitting in the Citroën, studying a road map. Lyon was a bit out of the way, too far east. But he could drop down to Aix then head back along the Riviera to Perpignan and eventually Cerbère. He asked a man to point him toward the road to Aix then started south. The traffic was light but slow, mostly trucks trundling along at fifty kilometers an hour. He passed through Valence, stopping on the outskirts of Aix near a gas station where he slept in the backseat of the car. When he woke, listening to the insistent drone of cicadas in the trees, he felt as if he were once more a boy in Toulouse.
    He got the car gassed up, found coffee and bread, then started east through Languedoc-Roussillon, the landscape becoming increasingly wild and rugged, the road winding and turning. The sun was strong, the air hot, dense with the smell of motor oil and melting tar, the scent of juniper, rosemary, and pine. At intervals, small, carefully cultivated valleys came into view with vineyards, olive groves, and lavender fields, followed by wild and rugged terrain, craggy boulders and ridges, stony hilltop villages. He saw gulls and sensed the air changing, then, coming over a ridge, in the distance he glimpsed the white, snowcapped peak of Canigou floating spectral in a misty band of blue haze that lay between land and sky. His breath caught at the sight of the mountain; the road dropped down from the ridge, the Mediterranean came into view, reflecting the curve of the earth, the swells rising and falling, marking the passage of time. He was close to home, Barcelona, just hours away.
    The train station at Cerbère felt oddly quiet at two o’clock in the afternoon. “Barcelona?” the man in the ticket window repeated. “No, there’s nothing for Barcelona.”
    â€œNothing?”
    â€œThe border is closed.”
    â€œAnd for cars?”
    â€œAs well. There’s a war, you know.”
    Outside, on the street he saw a Gypsy leading a dancing bear on a chain. The man, dressed in flashy black pants and shirt with a rakish black hat, looked weathered and weary. The bear, a metal collar around its neck, was filthy, its heavy coat matted and dusty. Ramón lit a cigarette, offering the pack to the Gypsy, who took two, saying one was for a friend.
    â€œWhere do you cross the border?” Ramón asked in Catalan.
    The Gypsy lifted his chin and pointed inland toward the foothills with his pursed lips.
    â€œIn a car?”
    â€œWalking or on horseback. There are paths.”
    â€œDo you mean the crossing at Puigcerdà south of Toulouse?”
    â€œNo, much closer. There’s a dirt road that goes through the forest. When it starts up into the hills, you see an opening for a trail into Catalonia.”
    Ramón got back in the car, starting north on the blacktop until he saw a well-used dirt road that ran inland toward the hills. When he found the trail, he drove back to the train station in Cerbère, parked the Citroën, and flagged a taxi, calculating that the chance of the car being stolen or vandalized would be greater on a dirt road so close to the border.
    He paid the taxi driver, then started down the rocky trail. He needed a bath and a shave, but he looked relatively respectable in a white shirt and pair of gray slacks. He was in Catalonia once more, three hours from Barcelona by car or train. He stayed on the trail till it came to a dirt road, where he turned back toward the coast. When he saw a woman in a battered straw hat hoeing in a garden next to a farmhouse, he stopped to ask for water. Wiping her brow, a smudge of dirt on her cheek, she brought him a tin cup from the well. She was in her forties, her face lined and faded, her lips chapped. Despite her age and a certain heaviness that emanated from her body, he could see her prettiness.
    â€œWater tastes better on this side,” he said in Catalan, wiping his lips.
    â€œYou came from France?”
    â€œYes,