inflamed, and his head pulsed as if he were suffering a hangover, although he had had nothing to drink.
Laurel was already up and dressed; she was wearing khaki trousers and a softly pleated pale blue shirt. He looked at the bedside clock, reassuring himself that he remained on schedule.
"You've got plenty of time-we won't miss our flight," she said when he finally staggered to the bathroom.
"Our flight?"
"I'm going with you."
"I can't let you," he said. "I don't know what the dangers are, and I can't expose you to-"
"I accept that there are dangers," Laurel interjected. "That's why I need you. That's why you need me. I can help. I can watch your back. Be an extra pair of eyes."
"It's out of the question, Laurel."
"I'm an amateur, I get that. But that makes me the one thing they won't be looking for. Besides, you're not frightened of them. You're frightened of yourself. And that's where maybe I can make things easier, not harder."
"How would I live with myself if anything were to happen to you over there?"
"How would you feel if something were to happen to me here and you weren't around?"
He gave her a sharp look. "I did this to you," Ambler said once more, with muted horror. He did not voice the silently insistent question within him:
When will it stop?
Laurel spoke quietly but with steel. "Don't leave me, OK?"
Ambler cupped her face with his hands. It was madness, what she was proposing. But it might well save him from another form of madness. And what she said was true: on another continent, he would not be able to protect her from those who threatened her on this one.
"If anything should happen to you ..." he began. It wasn't a sentence he had to finish.
Her gaze was steady and unafraid. "I'll pick up another toothbrush at the airport," she said.
Chapter Fifteen
Paris
As the train pulled into the Gare du Nord, Ambler felt both a pulsing current of anxious vigilance and a wave of nostalgia. The smell of the place-he remembered every city by its distinctive odors-brought him back with full force to the nine months he had spent there as a youth, nine months in which he had matured faster, so it seemed, than in the preceding five years. He deposited his suitcase at the left-luggage office and entered the City of Light through the grand portals of the railroad station.
As a safety precaution, they had traveled separately. He had flown to Brussels, using identity papers Fenton provided in the name of one "Robert Mulvaney," and arrived here via the hourly Thalys train. She was using a passport he had altered from one he'd hurriedly purchased on Tremont Avenue in the Bronx: the name, Lourdes Esquivel, wasn't the perfect match for the amber-eyed American, but he knew it would pass muster in a busy airport. Now he glanced at his watch and walked through the crowd at the station. Laurel was seated in a waiting area, just as they had arranged, and her eyes lit up when she saw him.
His heart swelled. She was obviously tired from the trip and yet as beautiful as he had ever seen her.
As they walked together out into the Place Napoleon III, he watched as Laurel stared in wonder at the magnificent facade with its Corinthian columns.
"Those nine statues represent the major cities of northern France," Ambler said in his best tourist-guide mode. "This station was built to be the gateway to the North: northern France, Belgium, Holland, even Scandinavia."
"It's amazing," Laurel breathed. Such words were often spoken. Yet in her mouth they were not formulaic or perfunctory; they expressed her heart. As he saw the familiar sights through her own fresh eyes, they became new again.
The symbolic gateways before him-they were the perfect distillation of human history. There were always those who sought to open the gates; there were always those who sought to shut them tight. Ambler, in his day, had done both.
An hour later, he left Laurel at his favorite cafe, the Deux Magots, with a large cappuccino, a Blue Guide, and a view, as he told her, of the oldest church in Paris. He explained that he had some business to do and would return before long.
Ambler walked west at a steady pace into the Seventh Arrondissement. He made a few detours, checking in windows to see if he could identify anyone following him, scanned the faces he encountered. There was no sign of surveillance. Until he made his contact with