One short flight of stairs down, they found themselves in a grimy, dimly lit alcove for a service elevator. Josh hit the down button, the only one available, and waited.
"Might we just take the stairs?" Becki asked as she pointed at the emergency exit door on an adjacent wall.
"Well, we could, but . . . I'm tired," he said with a sheepish smile.
Becki was about to say something more on the subject when the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. "And we didn't have to wait long, anyway," he said.
"Don't tell me that was a Jedi thing," Becki said as they entered the lift.
"Nope," he said, pushing the button for the basement. "Luck."
"I thought there was no such thing as luck?"
Josh waved his hand dismissively. "Don't believe everything you hear in those silly movies."
Becki chuckled slightly before turning more serious. "How are we ever going to get out of this? Our pictures are going to be everywhere."
"Maybe not. The only three cops who saw us clearly - the one at Cheriss's apartment, the one on the roof, and the sniper - were all stunned."
"Yeah, but--"
"And as soon as they were out, I wiped the last few minutes from their minds. An unconscious mind is a pliant mind. They'll never know what we look like."
The doors opened again a moment later, depositing them in the hotel's basement. Before leaving the elevator, Josh hit the RC button to send the elevator to the ground floor. "What was that for?" Becki asked.
"So they'll think we ran out through the lobby."
"Oh." She looked around the grungy basement unoptimistically. "So what are we going to do down here?" she asked.
Josh pointed to a nearby door marked 'Blanchisserie.' "In here."
Moments later they stood inside a cavernous room surrounded by industrial size washers and dryers. "This is your plan?" Becki asked. "The hotel laundry?"
"No one may remember our faces," he said, "but they all saw what we were wearing." He pointed to a line of fresh dry cleaning hanging on a revolving carousel. "Find something that'll fit."
Becki looked at him in pure astonishment. "You've got to be kidding."
Josh, who was already searching through the clothing, shook his head. "Nope. If they don't know our faces and can't recognize our clothes, our chances of making it back go way up."
Ever so reluctantly, Becki began digging around on the hangers. "I just got these clothes yesterday," she protested weakly.
"We can always go buy you new ones," Josh said, favoring Becki with his most annoying smile.
"Easy for you to say," she said. "Do you know hard it is to find clothes that fit right?"
"Oh yeah? Try being six-five!" he shot back.
"So what are we looking for, exactly? Most of this stuff is awfully dressy for our line of work, Josh."
"Which is why when we're wearing it they'll never suspect we're in our line of work. . . ."
Becki held up an assortment all in greys--blouse, slacks, and sweater--as nondescript as her current tricolor ensemble was memorable. "What do you think? Inconspicuous enough?"
Josh nodded approvingly. "That'll work."
They stood staring at each other for a long moment before Becki broke the silence. "Uh, Josh?"
"Yeah?"
"Do you mind?"
"Huh? Oh! Oh yeah," he said, blushing a deep red. "Sorry. I'll go stand guard." He turned his back to her and wandered over towards the door.
A few minutes later Becki was done changing into her new clothes. She returned the favor of standing guard while Josh changed into the fashionable dress slacks and mock turtleneck outfit he'd pilfered. After a short search of the basement, they found the hotel's furnace and deposited their old clothes inside.
"What now?" Becki asked as they left the furnace room.
"Well, we need to find a way out of--"
"Wait a second," she interrupted. "Look, your cheek's bleeding again."
"Huh?" He brushed a hand against the spot where the shards of brick dislodged by the sniper's shot during their escape had struck his face; his fingers came away wet with blood, more so than he had expected.
"Gotta do something about that," Becki said, ducking back into the blanchisserie.
"No, it'll be all right, let's just go--"
"And a lot of good our nice new clothes will do if you draw attention to yourself by running around Paris with blood streaming down your face." Against one wall she found what she was looking for: stacks of white towels, neatly folded for delivery to the hotel's guests. "Here," she said, tossing one back to Josh. "At least that'll stop the bleeding a little. Maybe I can find something . . . peroxide or . . . hm. Or maybe not."
"Come on," Josh said. "We need to go."
"Josh, have you looked in a mirror? Anyone who sees us . . . That cut'll be hard to overlook." In the absence of anything that could pass for an antiseptic, she had settled for laundry detergent, immersing a hand towel in soapy water. With this she approached her grumbling comrade. "Hold still, Psych, let me clean it up."
Josh rolled his eyes impatiently but endured her ministrations. "Too bad they don't keep bacta patches in hotel laundries around here," she teased as she finished carefully washing away the excess blood. It wasn't all that bad, but it was more a matter of cuts than scrapes, several of them scattered over his face just under his right eye, and too deep to clot quickly. As soon as she stopped wiping away the blood, more welled to the surface of the larger cuts.
"Bacta patches?" Josh said thoughtfully. "Bacta patches . . . Hey--the backpack!"
"Backpack?"
"Weren't there bacta patches in there?"
"What? Were there?" Dropping the towel, she shrugged out of the backpack straps and hurried to open the pack. Inside, after a moment of sifting through data cards and cred chits and various other paraphernalia, she found what she was looking for: a handful of small sealed packages marked with the BactAid logo. "Here we go!" She tore open the first package and positioned its contents carefully over one of Josh's larger cuts. It took two more bacta patches to finish the job. The end result was encouraging: "Perfect," Becki said, "they look just like ordinary bandages, except for the weird shape. And they blend in well enough--no one will notice from a distance."
"Great," Josh said, "now, if you're all finished, let's--"
At the sudden sound of footsteps out in the hallway, both agents froze. And then scattered. When, moments later, a hotel maid entered the room with a basket full of spent towels, the only thing she noticed out of the ordinary was a pair of bloodstained towels on the floor near the entrance. On these she cast a befuddled glance, and then, with a standard Gallic shrug, she added them to her basket and went on about her business.
The maid switched off the laundry room's lights as she left, and soon, as the click-clack of her footsteps faded away again, the room fell silent save for the whirr of the washing machine into which she'd tossed the basketful of towels. Then another click broke the silence: the sound of a dryer door opening.
Back in the furthest corner of the room, Becki emerged slowly from within one of the giant dryers, glancing all around the suddenly dark blanchisserie before finally deciding it was safe to leave her hiding place. "Psych?" she called in a loud whisper.
"Here," his whisper answered her, but she didn't see him anywhere in the room.
"Where are you?"
"Right behind you--the dryer!"
She turned; the dryer directly behind her also had its door open. Josh was still inside it--and she realized now, a bit late, that it was rather a smaller dryer and he rather a taller Jedi than it had seemed when they were hiding. He was looking particularly uncomfortable at the moment. And particularly frustrated.
"Oh, don't tell me you're stuck. . . ." Becki groaned.
"Three," Josh grinned ruefully, "I'm stuck."
"I asked you not to tell me that," she grinned back. "Okay, um . . . let me . . . er, well--" Tugging on his arm didn't help much; he was wedged in there too tightly. "Can't you turn or something?" she asked. "You're at such an odd angle."
"I can't move one way or another, Becki!" he grumbled.
"Well, this isn't working. Maybe--could you get one leg out? Then you should be able to turn."
"I'll try. . . ." He wriggled as well as he could within the drum, trying to squeeze the outside foot past the dryer's door. It might have been a simple matter just to scoot the foot right out--except for a three-inch strip of metal welded in place all around the circular opening. If this was half as effective at keeping clothes from falling out of the dryer as it now proved at keeping Josh inside, the maids charged with the use of this machine must be very satisfied customers indeed.
Becki tried to help, tugging on his foot as she'd earlier tried with his arm, but to no avail. His bent knees nearly reached the opposite edge of the drum, so there wasn't much room for unbending them to lift his foot the three inches necessary to clear the barrier.
"No use," she sighed.
He rolled his eyes, squirming miserably in his confinement. "No kidding."
"How'd you ever get in there to start with?"
"It's amazing what adrenaline will do. . . ."
"Here, maybe--no, that doesn't work. It's just that any way you turn--well, you're still stuck."
"Yeah, I'd noticed. . . ."
"But maybe if I--" She tugged on his outside arm again; that didn't work, of course. So she leaned in to pull at the shoulder pressed against the rear wall of the dryer, trying to turn him enough that he would be able to move.
"Not gonna work--my knees are in the way," he said.
"Yeah, you're right. Well. . . ." Dropping the outside arm, she pulled at his knees with that hand.
"Careful!" he muttered.
"Duck your head!"
"There's barely even room for that!"
"Hey, it's working! I think you moved a little, did you feel that?"
"No, I think you just slipped--wait--there, that time my foot moved a little!"
"Yeah, now just a bit more, and then--there we go!" And then, with a thump that startled them both, his foot flew free of the dryer. And then, with Becki still pulling and the added momentum of the foot's escape, suddenly the rest of him flew free as well, so that both the agents landed, too surprised to realize for a moment what had happened, in a tangle on the floor.
By the time their wits returned to them, Becki was already breaking into a fit of giggling. "What?" Josh scowled. "It isn't funny."
"No," she laughed, "of course not, but--well--you know--" she trailed off into giggles again.
Josh sighed and stood up as Becki finally managed to stifle the laughter--just in time for footsteps in the hall to echo through the silence yet again. He whipped out his blaster; Becki picked herself up in a hurry and looked at him as if to ask what they were to do. "I don't care who it is, even if they come in here, even if they see us--I am not going back in that dryer," he whispered. She grinned and nodded, stepping back toward the deeper dark of the corner where she'd hidden before--but she didn't go back in the dryer, either. After the past few minutes, it would be too great a temptation for Fate to resist.
And so they waited. The footsteps grew louder--then faded away again as their maker passed the door of the laundry room without entering. Josh and Becki both sighed--but quietly--in relief. "What do you say we get out of here before anything else goes wrong?" Josh asked.
They climbed the stairs to the main lobby level of the hotel. A dozen or so gendarmes and Parisian police were fanned out around the opulent room, questioning people in small groups. Nobody spared the two agents a glance as they entered from the side hallway that led to the hotel's indoor pool. "So what's our exit strategy?" Becki asked.
"We're going to walk right out the front door," Josh said with what he hoped was a confident smile.
"Yes, that always works so well," muttered Becki.
They started across the large room, which began to feel larger as each step put them only fractionally closer to the revolving doors of freedom. They both wished - silently, to themselves - that there was more time to look around the lobby. It was a three story room with a grand staircase leading to the second floor dominating the center. Massive crystal chandeliers hung from the ceiling, throwing warm light against the marble floor and pillars. The room was truly spectacular. It was--
"Excusez-moi, monsieur?" a voice from behind said, stopping them in their tracks. They turned to find one of the Parisian cops had detached himself from the group of people he'd been speaking to and now stood looking at them expectantly.
"Ah, oui?" Josh said. "Uh... Ju nu parler bon Franciais," he continued, adding in as much of his native Texas accent as he could.
"English?" the police officer asked. Josh nodded. "May I see your identification please, monsieur? And you as well, mademoiselle."
"Of course," Josh said, handing his wallet to the officer. Becki had unslung the backpack and was rummaging around in it. "My name's Josh Cochran. I'm the Special Military Advisor to the Crown of Mendellia."
The officer spent a long moment staring at Josh's Mendellian government ID. Becki continued digging through the contents of the backpack, muttering, "I know it's in here somewhere," under her breath. Finally she looked back up at the officer, seeming to have found what she was looking for. "Ah yes, here it is. I'm Rebecca Bush. I'm a flutist with the Mendellian Royal Symphony."
To Josh's amazement, Becki handed over a card that identified her as exactly who she claimed to be. Unfortunately it didn't help their situation with the officer in front of them. "A military advisor and a flutist? What are you doing in Paris?"
Josh was suddenly and unusually at a loss for words, but fortunately Becki was not. She wrapped her arm around Josh's and beamed at the policeman. "We're on our honeymoon!"
If Josh had been drinking anything he would have choked on it on the spot. Luckily for both of them, he remembered their cover story from earlier quickly enough. He put his arm around Becki and smiled widely. "Day before yesterday!" he exclaimed.
The policeman looked thoroughly unimpressed. "Congratulations," he deadpanned. He fixed Josh with his most inscrutable stare. "We do not like foreign military officers coming into Paris unannounced, monsieur. We may have further questions for you. What is your room number?"
"1138."
The officer handed both their identification cards back to them. "Tres bien. We will be by later to talk to you. Have a good day."
Finally the two agents made it out through the Hotel Imperial's revolving door and into the late afternoon sunlight. Happy to be escaping the hotel at last, both tried to walk as quickly as they could without appearing to be in a hurry. Josh glanced over his shoulder, trying not to look nervous as he did. It didn't appear they were being followed.
"Where did you get that ID?" Josh asked as soon as he was sure they were clear.
Becki smiled up at him. "You, mister cool toys, have never seen one? It's an NRI gadget. You squeeze the edges and say who you want to be, and it spits out the proper ID for your cover story. It was in Cheriss's bag."
"Hmph. Why don't we have those?"
"Sci does. That's how I knew what it was."
"Damn him. . . . I want one of those!" Josh sighed. "But hey, it did its job. Got us away from that cop."
"I don't know that he believed our story, though. We really should work these things out ahead of time," Becki said.
"Doesn't matter," Josh said.
"Why not?"
"Because he doesn't remember it either," Josh said with a sly grin.
"Would you stop doing that!?"
"Why? It doesn't do them any harm. Besides, it's so much fun."
Becki sighed and let the matter drop. They continued on for several blocks, passing shops and restaurants and bakeries. The street was full of people, presumably because using the Metro had been such a hassle the whole day. As they passed a TV shop with several models displayed in the window, Josh caught a headline on a news station about a terrorist chase through the heart of the city.
Trouble loves to follow us wherever we go, he sighed to himself.
Then he realized he had no idea where they were, or where they were headed. "Hey Becki, where are we going?"
"Home, I thought," Becki replied.
"Well, I did too, but . . . are you sure this is the right way?"
"How would I know? I'm following you!"
"No you're not! I'm following you!"
"Aren't you supposed to have a great sense of direction?"
"Being chased through alleys and over roof tops sort of tends to throw it off!"
"We're lost," Becki said.
"Looks that way."
"So how are we going to get back now?" she asked.
"Well, we could stop and ask a cop for directions."
"Josh!"
"Sorry," he said. "If you walk long enough in any direction in a big city you'll eventually come to a main road, right?"
"I guess. That makes sense."
"So let's just keep going this way and see where we end up."
With that they continued in the direction they'd been going. They'd gone less than a block, though, when Becki stopped in front of one of the ubiquitous Parisian cafés.
"Josh?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm hungry."
Josh's own stomach growled as soon as he heard the word hungry, and he realized for the first time that they hadn't had a chance to eat all day. Now that he thought about it, he was almost weak with hunger himself. "Breakfast was a long time ago now," he conceded.
Becki tilted her head towards the café questioningly. "What do you think?"
Trying desperately to hide just how very much he agreed, Josh said, "I guess it wouldn't hurt."
They chose a table next to the window in the café. The first thing they noticed about the place was a lack of foreigners. Everyone in the room seemed to be genuinely French, and had the general Parisian air of superiority. Becki commented on it, and they both agreed it would be best to blend in as well as possible. When the waiter - a decidedly unfriendly young Frenchman - came, Josh dropped the sloppy Texan French he'd used with the policeman at the hotel. They both ordered in their best French, each asking for a glass of the Chateau Picard they'd seen waiters pouring at other tables.[1]
Realizing that conversing in French while calling each other Becki and Josh was sure to draw attention, they settled on using their French names from high school. Josh wondered idly if this made Becki feel as silly as it did him. He decided it probably didn't, since she'd picked a much less conspicuous French name. At least to other Americans.
"Jean-Luc, do you think we could take the Metro back once we find a station? Now that we both have ID it shouldn't be difficult to get past the gendarmes," Becki said in near-flawless French, counting on the noise of the café to cover the meaning of the conversation.
"It would be nice," Josh admitted, wincing at his inability to rid his voice completely of its native accent. "I'm getting tired of walking today. I'm afraid we would be too confined in the subway, though. We couldn't escape if we were spotted. . . ."
"True. I wonder if the others have made it back yet," Becki said as Josh took a drink from his wine glass.
He chuckled as he sat the glass back down on the table. "Mike may have some trouble getting Vickie back by himself, but I imagine Crispy already has his feet propped up on the coffee table watching TV."
"I'd like to be there, too, and I don't even watch TV very often."
"We'll get there just as soon as we can find a main road." Josh took a sip of his wine, leaving only a very small amount in the bottom of his glass. As soon as he set it back down on the table Becki picked up her glass and poured half its contents into his nearly empty glass. "Jeanne, what in the world . . . ?" he began in confusion.
"I've never had alcohol before, except in cough syrup," Becki admitted. "I don't know what that stuff would do to me!"
"So instead you want to get me drunk?"
"I'm sure you're better able to handle it. I'm sure at least that you've had more experience with it."
Josh was saved from responding by Becki's ringing comlink. She seemed startled by the sound, as if she'd even forgotten she had it with her. "Allo?"
There was a brief pause, and then, "Mike! Are you two okay? Did you get back to the apartment?" in plain English. Josh tried to get her attention to remind her of their cover, then realized the effort was useless as Mike didn't speak French in any case.
"So is Crispy there?" Becki asked into her phone. Josh tried to look casually around, and accidentally made eye contact with someone at the next table glaring at Becki. He gave them what he hoped was a friendly smile before he remembered that most Parisians had no such expression.
"Oh, well, I'm sure he'll be back any time." Continuing his casual survey of the room, Josh noticed there were no other cell phones in evidence anywhere. Was this one of those places that banned cell phones?
"Well okay then, we'll see you shortly. Oh Mike! Where are you exactly?" The pause this time was very brief before she said, "Oh, okay. Right. See you in a little while then."
"What'd he say?" Josh asked, noticing a new set of unfriendly glances in their direction as he joined Becki in speaking English.
"He said they're back."
"Oh, great, now if we could just find our way back..."
"Well I asked him where they are..."
"Where they are?" Josh asked in disbelief. "We know where they are. We need to know where we are!"
"Oh, right." Becki glanced out the window, looking slightly embarrassed. Behind them Josh could hear a murmured conversation that he was sure had involved the word 'Americains' on at least two occasions. Suddenly Becki's face brightened and she sat straight up in her chair. "Josh, I know how to get back!" she exclaimed.
"How?" he asked, her obvious excitement making him more hopeful than he'd been in a while.
"Look!" she said, pointing out the window and across the street where the top of the Eiffel Tower was just visible above the opposite buildings. "We can see la Tour from the apartment, so if we can get to the Tour we should be able to find our way back home!"
"Oh, good idea! And, uh, this might be a good time to get out of here, anyway," he said as he noticed that conversation around them had died down to almost nothing.
"We haven't even gotten our dinner yet," Becki protested.
"We'll eat when we get home. C'mon!"
"Wait! Hadn't we better pay for it anyway?" she asked. She searched around in her pockets for a moment before remembering she wasn't wearing her own clothes. "Um, do you have any money?"
"You mean like real paper money? No, I forgot to stop by the currency exchange stand in Uncle Bertie's field when we got here!" he said with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. "How did you pay for all those clothes yesterday anyway?"
"Credit card," she mumbled as she rummaged around in the backpack they'd been carrying since Cheriss's apartment. "Ah ha!" she cried, pulling several Euro notes out of the bag. "Think this'll be enough?"
Without even looking at it Josh said, "Oughtta be," and took Becki by the hand and pulled her towards the door.
Thirty minutes later they stood at the base of the Eiffel Tower, waiting in line to pay for their ticket to go up to the top. Full night had fallen now, and with it the temperatures that had risen during the day. A chill wind was blowing through the park. The few people who waited for their turn to go to the observation deck were bundled warmly. For their part, Josh and Becki both wore coats they'd bought along the way, not having thought to steal warm clothes from the hotel laundry.
"Do you know which way it is from here?" she asked. "It would be nice not to have to go to the top if we didn't need to."
Josh grimaced. "No, I don't. I've been trying to figure it out, but since I haven't been here yet and this thing's geometric, I have no idea which side is the one we see from home."
Becki handed the money for their tickets to the young woman in the booth and they turned to join the line for the elevator.
And, as had been par for the course all day, a gendarme stood before them waiting to check their IDs.
This time there was no delay. Josh reached in his pocket for his wallet. Becki pulled the card she'd used earlier out of her pocket and handed it to the gendarme. "Bonsoir, monsieur. Je m'appelle Becki, et voici mon nouveau--"
Josh's comlink began demanding attention at that moment. He glanced at the gendarme apologetically as he removed the device from his pocket. "Desolé, mais . . ."
The gendarme nodded at him and smiled sympathetically.
"Hello?" Josh said as he flipped the quasi-cell phone open. He listened for a moment before his eyes widened in surprise.
"Kristy, wait, slow down. What happened again?" Noticing the look on his face, Becki stared at him in concern.
"Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Okay. So where is he now?"
A brief pause, then, "No, Kristy, you did everything you could. We'll take care of it from here. Thanks for letting me know. Uh, can you hold on just a second?" He turned back to the gendarme and said, "Desolé, monsieur, mais nous avons une urgence dans la famille. Peut-être un autre soir, non?"
The gendarme again nodded sympathetically and bade Becki farewell as the two agents turned away from the line for the elevators.
They strode quickly away from the tower as Josh tuned his attention back to the comlink. "Hey, One? Can you tell us how to get home from here?"
Behind them, the only gendarme all day who'd seen their faces and kept his memory of them watched them leave, wondering idly what misfortune could have befallen such a lovely young couple on such a night.
[1] Yes, there really is a Chateau Picard. I'm not just ripping off another fictional universe . . . this time. J