4. Jocul cu bâtă
Jocul cu bat?
Louna followed the guard down the hallway, gripping the handle of her briefcase tightly as she walked.
The arched ceilings and stone walls gave the building a forlorn, ancient feeling, despite its modern renovations.
Really, the atmosphere within the lobby had been almost cheerful—the corridors were clean, the prison staff had been friendly and helpful, and there had even been music playing over a radio behind the front desk.
Louna had asked the secretary about it as she waited for her escort.
“It’s called ‘Jocul cu bat?’,” the woman had said. “Stick dance. It is a traditional Transylvanian melody. A dance of freedom.”
And worse, that he would do it without her.
The guard stopped outside a metal door and unlocked it, gesturing for her to enter first. “You can have a seat at the table,” he said. “I’ll bring the soldiers from their cells.”
“You’ll have to wait in the hallway,” Louna said. “I must protect the confidentiality of my clients.”
The guard looked doubtful, but Louna pressed her hand to his arm and tipped back her head to smile at him. “I’m sure they won’t try anything when they see who is guarding me. I promise to call if I need help.”
A rush of color spread over the guard’s face, and his chest puffed as he gestured for her to enter the room.
It was as empty and cold as she expected it to be: stone walls, no windows, a single table with three chairs set in the center of the floor. Louna went to the chair facing the door and sat, setting her briefcase on the table.
“I’m starting the interview,” she said quietly.
“We have their statements,” Philippe reminded her. “If you need to check anything, I’ll pull it up.”
A few moments later, the door opened again, and the guard ushered two men into the room.
They were handcuffed and dressed in chalk gray, but they walked with straight spines and raised chins.
The taller one had brown hair and eyes, and a solemn expression that seemed more habitual than situational.
The other was blond, bulky, and looked like he was trying not to scowl.
They sat in the chairs across from her and waited in silence while the guard shut the door behind them.
“Hello,” Louna began, pulling a small notebook from her bag. “My name is Leah Wilson, and I’m with the State Department. I’m here to follow up on your well-fare check. Will you please state your names?”
“Corporal Jonathan Mitchell, ma’am,” said the taller man.
The other fixed his eyes on the wall behind her. “Corporal Javier Alvarez.”
“Thank you.” Louna withdrew a file and shuffled some papers, then looked back up at the men. “The Judge Advocate General’s office is sending over a lawyer to handle your case, but we need some more information before she arrives.”
“We already gave our statements,” Alvarez said.
Louna smiled. “This isn’t about your statements. I need to know a few other things about the party.”
They waited, expressions wary, and a wave of pity swept over her. “I know this has been difficult,” she said. “And I’ll make this as quick as possible. Did you see anybody before or during the party who stuck out to you?”
“Stuck out how?” Alvarez asked.
Louna shrugged. “Any way. Someone who was overly quiet, or who called attention to themselves, or who moved or dressed in a way you didn’t expect.”
Alvarez shook his head, but Mitchell looked thoughtful. When Louna tilted her head at him, he exhaled. “Maybe. I’m not sure it’s worth mentioning.”
“It may not be,” Louna admitted. “But we can’t know unless you tell me.”
Mitchell straightened his shoulders. “There was a man on the street, outside the embassy building. He didn’t come on the grounds, but Gunnery Sergeant Fox asked me to keep an eye on him.”
“Did you notice anything?” Louna pressed.
“No,” Mitchell said. “Alvarez and I were outside, so I tried to watch for the man, but he left. I was patrolling near the front gate a little while before the attack, and I thought I saw him crossing the street toward the embassy again, so I went forward to check. Then Gunny found the body and called out, and Alvarez and I responded.”
“Do you think the man you saw may have been involved?” Louna asked.
“I didn’t see him,” Alvarez said, glancing at Mitchell. “But Gunny wouldn’t have told us to look out for nothing.”
Louna scribbled in her file, giving the boys in her ear time to process the information. “There’s nothing about a man in Lindsey’s report,” Philippe said after a moment. “Or Mitchell’s or Alvarez’s.”
“A man walking on the street doesn’t mean he was involved,” Jean-Claude put in.
“Can you describe this man?” Louna asked.
Mitchell rested his cuffed hands on the table. “A little over six feet tall, with a big dark coat. He wore a hat—knit—and kept his head down. But it was windy.”
“Not much to go on,” Jean-Claude said. “Tenny? Does it ring any bells?”
“Could’ve been Hartmann,” Tennyson said. “Or a dozen other people who might be working for Harlow. We need more.”
Louna wrote a few pretend notes, then looked up at Mitchell. “Gheorghe Razvan’s body was discovered off of the embassy’s grounds.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Mitchell answered. “Gunnery Sergeant Fox saw that the ambassador looked hurt, and went to help. Alvarez and I followed.”
“If you had stayed on embassy grounds,” Louna said gently, “you would have been protected. They would not have been able to arrest you.”
“A man was hurt,” Alvarez said, his voice firm. “Dead. Gunny would never leave someone like that.”
“And you followed,” Louna said.
“We were assigned to the same sector,” Mitchell put in, as if that erased any question about the matter.
She needed to talk to Lindsey. It was Lindsey who had noticed the man in the first place, and there had to be something that made her mention it. “Thank you, gentlemen,” Louna said, sweeping her papers back into her file. “My office will be in touch soon.”
She waved the guard in through the window in the door, and Alvarez and Mitchell stood to follow him out. At the door, Alvarez paused and turned back to her. “Did you need to see our cells?”
Louna paused her shuffling. “I’m sorry?”
“At the first well-fare check,” Alvarez continued. “The officer checked our cells.”
Louna looked at the guard, who nodded confirmation of Alvarez’s claim. “Yes,” she said. “Of course. Yes, I will need to see your cells.”
“Why did they look at the cells?” Jean-Claude asked.
“Access to that part of the building?” Philippe guessed. “To plant a bug?”
“Lindsey would have noticed a bug,” Tennyson said.
But she may not have been able to do anything about it.
Louna slipped her papers into her bag and followed the guard from the cell, casting careful looks down the hall.
There were no pictures on the walls, no lamps or vases—none of the more conventional locations for hiding a bug.
The guard prodded Mitchell and Alvarez ahead of him so he could walk between them and Louna, and she followed with whirring thoughts unaided by the torrent of voices in her ear.
“We have a bug scanner,” Jean-Claude was saying. “We should have sent it with you. Is there time to bring it?”
“I’m reading through the reports again,” Philippe added. “There’s no mention that the previous officer checked on the cells.”
“Could it be another fake?” Jean-Claude asked.
“Someone Harlow sent in?” Philippe said.
Tennyson hadn’t spoken, and Louna was glad—it would have only added to the chaos.
When they reached Mitchell’s cell, Louna gave the pretense of an inspection while searching for a bug, then repeated her actions in Alvarez’s cell.
She found nothing. The guard locked each door behind her and led her down the hall, through another doorway.
“Gunnery Sergeant Fox is the one suspected of the murder,” he said, casting a look over his shoulder at Louna, “and is being held separately from the others.”
Louna nodded, making quick studies of the prisoners they passed until the guard stopped outside a cell.
Louna peered around him as he unlocked the door.
This was it. Finally, she would see the woman who held Tennyson’s heart.
It didn’t matter how beautiful Lindsey was—and Louna had imagined every version of beauty that might capture the attention of a man like Tennyson—and it didn’t matter how competent she was.
There would be time to steal back Tennyson’s heart, once this was all over.
For now, she needed Louna’s help, and Louna would help her for Tennyson’s sake.
The lock clicked open, and the guard pushed the door and stood back to let Louna enter. She gestured for him to wait in the hall, and he held back obediently as she stepped into the concrete-blocked room.
A muscular, red-haired man sat opposite the door, dressed in the same prison clothes. He looked up when she came in, and she stumbled to a stop mid-step. “I’m sorry,” she said, blinking. “There’s been a mistake.”
The man tilted his head, shooting a curious look into the hall, then back up to her face.
“What mistake?” Jean-Claude demanded, at the same time as his brother’s, “What happened?”
“Can I help you?” the man asked.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated. “I was looking for someone else.”
The man leaned back, and his movement shifted the loose shirt across his broad chest, exposing the chains of two necklaces under his collar. One looked like a military identification tag, but the other made an impression of a circle under the fabric, about the size of a coin.
The size of a 10 franc coin, exactly like the one Tennyson wore around his neck.
“Tennyson,” Louna muttered, taking another step back.
The man straightened. “What did you say?”
“Is Lindsey there?” Tennyson asked, worry coating his words. She made a noise of assent, and the man surged to his feet.
“Tennyson Stone?” he said. “Do you know Tennyson Stone?”
“Louna,” Tennyson demanded.
“Yes,” Louna said. “I know him. And you... you are...?”
She trailed off, unable to form the rest of the question, and the man finished her thought with a nod.
“Gunnery Sergeant Fox,” he said, his voice slightly guarded. “You can call me Lindsey.”