I couldn’t believe it. I froze where I stood. We had been just about to check in. We were so close. I wanted to run.
“That’s strange,” said Dad.
“I wonder what they could want with you?” added Mom.
“Adam?” said Dad. “You look awfully white. Do you want to sit down?”
“I’ll speak to the security people,” said Mom. “This must be some sort of mistake.”
“NO!” I cried out.
“Adam? Why are you shouting? You don’t look right. I insist that you sit down,” said Mom. “Why are you so pale? I’ll do this for you.”
“No, you won’t,” I said, staring right into her eyes. I had to face this. I couldn’t involve my parents in my situation unless it reached the point where I absolutely had to. I was going to go over there and see if I could get out of this. The authorities had no proof. Not now. But then I remembered something. I glanced down at my bag. The coveralls were in there, and the Chauvet shoes, and Mermoz’s hair. I couldn’t dump them now. Security would be watching me. My heart sank.
But I walked over to the counter on my own, rolling my suitcase, my parents watching from a distance. Dad was getting on his cell, likely calling some of his connections at American Airlines.
“I am Adam Murphy,” I said to the uniformed woman at the counter, who looked tough and mean. Her face was broad like a man’s, her chin wide with a dimple cleft into it, a noticeable fuzz of dark hair on her cheeks.
She looked at me sternly, her mouth a straight line. “Une minute,” she said and got up from her stool behind the counter. Then she looked back. “Stay there,” she said in a low voice. Then she turned, took a few steps and opened a door behind her. She began whispering to someone, looking back at me. Then she returned to the counter.
“Wait here,” she said.
I could hardly stand. I began to rehearse what I would say. I’d say I was simply staying in a hotel with my parents in Marseille and didn’t know anything about Vallon-Pont-d’Arc or the Chauvet Cave, and only admit to even being in Arles if they knew about my hotel there. I was trying to convince myself that they had no way of tracing me to the Ardèche region. Then I started thinking about all the people who had seen me there—the tourist kiosk woman, the guys who gave me rides, the patisserie owner, the two Canadians and, of course, Mermoz himself. His word was likely bond in France, likely beyond bond. Then, of course, there was the evidence in my suitcase, held in my very hand at this very moment. I started thinking that my best bet was to run. Maybe I could make it into the departure—
The door behind the counter opened and a man stepped out. He was huge. He had to turn his shoulders to get through the door. He, too, was dressed in a uniform, but he also had a helmet on, as if he had been outside doing something. It looked similar to what the Nazis wore. He seemed a little out of breath. He had probably just arrived, perhaps from the Ardèche. He had something under his arm, a package. What had I left behind? What evidence did he have? It looked awfully small. He stared at me.
“Are you Adam Murphy?” he asked without expression.
“Yes,” I said. It was barely audible.
The woman leaned toward the man and whispered in his ear. She seemed to be saying something about identification, that I must be thoroughly identified.
Now seemed like a good time to run.
Then the man smiled. “No need for identification,” he said in English. “There is a note with this package, saying what you look like, sir. I had to go outside to search for this in another building. It has been here a long time. We were instructed to give it to you when your name appeared on a flight manifest. Here you go. Just sign on the line.”
I signed the paper he gave me, barely able to hold the pen, scrawling my name so badly that it was almost illegible.
“But…what is this?” I managed to ask. “Who is it from?”
“What it is, I do not know, but it comes from a man named David McLean. He said in his letter that you would know him.”
“Grandpa?” I said out loud and nearly fainted.
I took the package with me, unopened, through the checkout and security. Mom and Dad smiled at Grandpa’s cleverness, how he set this up so that I would receive something from him almost from beyond the grave.
But what was inside the package? What was this final message?