Page 36 of A Mother’s Love
Five minutes later, as they reached the bridge to the Left Bank, after driving between walls of riot police, Bart’s cell phone rang. He hoped it was his FBI friend, but it was Major Leopold.
“I have located Madame ’Olbrook, and vouched for her,” he said calmly.
“I am very sorry. Paris is in an uproar, with a manhunt for the men who tried to kill the president. And she had no physical papers. I need to give her a temporary identity paper. I should have thought of it,” he said, feeling sorry for her.
“Thank you very much, Major. Where is she?”
“At a police station, being held until someone picks her up. I can assure you, she is well. I told them that she is a very important American. They took her out of the cell, and put her in an office at the police station. Can you pick her up? Or I can send an officer from our detail,” he explained.
“Tell me where it is, and I’ll go straight there.” She was at a station near the City Hall, the H?tel de Ville.
“I’m very sorry. This is an unusual circumstance,” the major explained.
“She is a foreigner with no identity she could prove, and they had to follow regulations in a state of emergency, particularly an attempt on the president’s life.
This is very serious. They are mobilizing all our forces.
” Bart had never seen so many police in his life, in all manner of uniforms, although mostly the heavy-duty CRS riot police.
“I understand,” Bart said. “The poor thing has had a rough time between the theft of her bag, the thief’s threats and stalking her, and now being taken into custody.”
“Please extend my profound apologies to Madame. It was a formality,” Leopold said regretfully, and Bart told his driver to go as fast as he could to the address the major had given him. Bart was eager to get there and rescue her from the traumatic end to their evening.
He expected to find her in a state of hysterics, or fury, when he got there, but neither was the case.
Bart gave his passport to the officer at the desk of the police station at City Hall.
The officer in charge had already been notified that an American VIP had been rounded up at the Faubourg, and she had been cleared by a senior officer of the S?reté Territoriale. Someone would be arriving to get her.
They had Bart wait while a female officer went to retrieve Halley from the office, and handed her her cell phone as they walked her back to where Bart was waiting.
Halley thanked the officer politely with a small smile.
It had been quite an evening. The officer was surprised that Halley wasn’t complaining or hysterical, and was calm and polite.
She told a colleague that a Frenchwoman would have been raising hell, but the American was astonishingly gracious and well mannered.
They walked her back to where Bart was waiting and tears filled her eyes the minute she saw him.
She tried to look composed but it had been upsetting and frightening for a few minutes.
They had refused to tell her what was happening, until they came to inform her that Major Leopold had cleared her, and she would be free to go when someone came to get her.
And without her phone, she couldn’t call Bart.
She walked straight up to Bart and he put his arms around her and held her tight.
He could feel her shaking even with her coat on.
“It’s all right, Halley,” he said softly, smoothing a hand over her hair, and then holding her tight again to calm her.
She had been very brave until then. “Let’s go home now,” he said gently, and she nodded and regained her composure as they left the station. She looked dignified when they left.
She took a deep breath of the night air when they left the building with all its shouts and ominous noises and uniformed officers running everywhere. Bart looked her over carefully. There was no visible damage and she still looked impeccable.
“Are you okay?” She nodded with a cautious smile.
“Yes,” she said as she exhaled. “It was pretty scary for a minute. I didn’t know what they would do to me, or where they would take me. I’m sorry to have caused you all this trouble, Bart. I didn’t even think of needing ID papers.”
“You couldn’t know, and even if you did know why it was happening, you couldn’t have stopped the police without the proper ID. Just put it behind you. I’m sorry it happened at all, to spoil our evening,” he said sympathetically.
“I had a wonderful time at dinner.” She smiled at him, and was relieved when they got back to her house. She wanted to take a shower and get rid of all the dust and grime and terror of the police station.
Bart walked her into the house and was sad to see how exhausted she looked. It had been an upsetting experience. She’d had too many lately and they had taken a toll. There were shadows under her eyes.
“I thought they were going to keep me there, or arrest me for not having ID.”
“Thank God you had given me the major’s number.
He called me back very fast and got right on it.
” She nodded, almost too tired to speak, and he kissed her and left a minute later.
She walked upstairs, took her phone out of her pocket, and glanced at it as she dropped her coat on the bed.
She saw that she had four messages that had come in while the police had her phone.
Two from her daughters, who must have wondered where she was.
And two from a blocked number, and tears filled her eyes when she saw them.
She knew they had to be from the stalker, and she suddenly had the same feeling she used to have as a child with her mother, that no matter what she did, or where she hid, she could not escape the beating that was coming.
It had taken her years of therapy to get over that feeling of dread and a punishment she could not avoid, no matter how fast she ran, or where she hid, or how good she was.
She crawled into the bed then without getting undressed, and curled into a ball, as the tears rolled down her face.
Like her mother, Tomás Maduro, the bag thief who was stalking her, was an evil she couldn’t flee, and no one could save her.
She was powerless and alone again. It was déjà vu, and a feeling that brought the past rushing back to her with a vengeance, and in her heart, she became a helpless child again, no matter how old or big or successful she was now.
There was no escape, and she thought he would find her and kill her in the end.