Afternoons in Paris

by Janice Law

  “I don’t know where she is hiding, and I couldn’t have told anyway because they drugged me. I don’t tolerate drugs well.”

  Pavel considered this.

  “Could I have a drink of water?”

  His eyes flickered uncertainly as if it was in his mind to cut my throat instead, but he turned and went out. I made a lunge for the doorknob; there was an answering rattle on the other side. The little bastard didn’t have a key, but he was quick with some sort of lock pick. I sat down on the floor, my throat like sandpaper. I’d imagined a frightened, abused child. This was such a child grown strong.

  A few moments later, the lock rattled again. The flashlight beam washed around the room, again momentarily blinding me, before Pavel dropped the beam. He handed me a glass of water that tasted better than the finest champagne, and, when I’d emptied it, a chunk of bread.

  “Now prove my sister is alive.”

  I told him about the play, about Jules and his machines, about the way Alexi haunted the alley in a taxi every night afterward.

  “That is Alexi,” he said and nodded. I noticed that he still had the knife and I wondered that he was allowed a weapon.

  “Inessa has been looking for you without Alexi’s knowledge.” I explained about hiring the detective and about his sudden and violent death. “That attracted some British embassy officials. That’s why I am here. I was just taking a message when I was caught.”

  “You are English,” he said, his face grim. I could see him waffling between hope of his sister’s survival and the satisfactions of hatred.

  “I was born in Ireland.”

  “Is that a difference?”

  “A vast difference.”

  He moved his shoulders, then took out a handkerchief, wrapped up the knife, and slid it into his boot. “I came to kill one of the Englishmen,” he said. “I thought it was my chance, now that the operation is finished.”

  “Finished?”

  “Alexi and Anoshkin have their men.” He held his hands up before his face as if pointing a camera. “They will blackmail them for their secrets. I hope they all hang.”

  “And you? What happens to you now?”

  “Everything’s to be wrapped up. They will kill me, probably as soon as Alexi returns. But I will take one of them with me.” He gave me another feral glance. “Maybe you, too.”

  “Please remember that I’m only here because I was helping search for you. And that I can connect you to people who know where Inessa is. Forget about revenge, and let’s get out of here.”

  He thought this over, fatalism fighting with what I had to admit was a slim hope. “The gate is guarded, and the wall is unclimbable. I know. I’ve tried.” He raised his pant leg and showed me a nasty scar on his left shin. “They thought for a while I’d be no more use. But I healed up.”

  “And now you are running around armed in the middle of the night.” I couldn’t help sounding skeptical.

  His smile was too sad and cynical for someone so young. “The guards can be bribed for anything short of escape,” he said. “Not Alexi or Anoshkin, but the others. I amuse them and they close their eyes. But if they let us out the gate, Alexi would kill them on the spot.”

  “In the middle of Paris? In a house that can be connected to him?”

  “He’d hide them.” Pavel went to the window and gestured for me to follow him. “See that?”

  In the grayish city light I saw a stone cylinder. “An old well?”

  “He’d put them down there. That’s where I’m to go, but Alexi will get a surprise.” He patted the knife in his boot.

  “Bodies in a well would stink to high heaven. How long before the neighbors would complain?”

  He shrugged. “I just know what Alexi says when he is drunk.”

  I wondered if poor Monsieur Chaput’s information could possibly be correct after all. “If this is the house Anoshkin rented—”

  “Who else?”

  “There is supposed to be a tunnel from the house right under the Seine. No one has ever found it, probably because the well must have had water in it. Is it dry now?”

  Pavel nodded.

  “Worth a look?” I asked.

  He hesitated. “Is my sister really alive?”

  “Yes. She looks like you, very beautiful, and she dances well and when she acts Human Hope in the play, the audience throws flowers to her.”

  He smiled for the first time. “You could not have made that up.” He opened the door, and I limped out. He took a piece of metal from his pocket and fiddled with the lock until it clicked. “We will need some tools,” he said and led me down the hall to a narrow back stair. At one point, he switched off the flashlight and motioned for me to be quiet. We crept past a room where someone was snoring gently. Pavel felt his way along the dark corridor to a closet near the kitchen.

  He eased open the door and switched on the flashlight again. Cleaning supplies and tools. Wrenches, hammers, screwdrivers. He looked at me. I pointed to a stout steel pry bar and a large screwdriver. Pavel took the bar and handed me the screwdriver. He added a length of rope before closing the door softly. He lifted the latch on the kitchen door, and we climbed a short flight of stone steps to the garden.

  The well was toward the back of a graveled courtyard, and our feet crunched on the stones. I froze, but Pavel took my arm. “They are all drunk except the two on the gate. And they will be half drunk.”

  Just the same, we tiptoed to the well, larger and more substantial than I had expected and closed off with a lattice of iron bars. Pavel shone the light between them. The bottom looked to be no more than six feet below, but no matter how he angled the light, we could not see if there was anything more to the hole.

  “We must not waste the battery,” he said, switching off the light.

  We waited until our eyes adjusted to the dark before attacking the iron strips. The screwdriver broke on one that was secured by a bolt rather than a modern screw. “We need a wrench,” I said, but neither of us cared to reenter the house.

  Pavel put the pry bar under one strip and leaned his weight on it. Nothing. I added a hand. Still nothing.

  I moved around the well, touching the metal strips until I found one that was dry and flaky with rust. I beckoned Pavel, who slid the pry bar underneath the iron. We put all our weight and strength behind it, producing a screech that made us both start. Pavel froze and so did I, anticipating the guards’ footsteps, their shouts and lights. When the silence continued, I felt under the bar. The fastener was loose and with a little effort, we pulled it out.

  “We need two more,” Pavel whispered.

  Another search, another assault on the grill, another screech, more painful suspense. “They must think it’s an owl,” said Pavel. “I have heard them calling.”

  I wiggled the bar free, and we used it to lever one of the crosspieces. There was another frightful scraping and screeching but with that loose, the well cavity was open enough. We looked at each other. He was slimmer and would have fit easily, but I could see he did not trust me.

  “I’ll give it a try,” I said.

  Pavel helped me up onto the rim of the well, an operation that set all my bruises complaining. Grasping two of the remaining bars, I let myself down into the darkness. He switched on the flashlight so that I could see the sand and bricks below. I dropped farther than I’d expected and landed with a thud. “Let me have the light,” I said, and he handed it down. Stone walls, some with moss, a strong smell of mildew, dust, and cobwebs. Debris underfoot. Some old boards leaned against one side. Leaves and twigs and small animal bones littered the floor. I ran the flashlight around the wall that seemed solid everywhere, and I was about to say I’d been wrong when I hear the toot of a horn, a shout at the gate, the sound of a car crunching over gravel.

  “Alexi’s back,” Pavel hissed. He dropped the pry bar to me, scram
bled onto the rim of the well, swung his legs over the opening, and jumped down beside me. “He will search the house first.” He held his hand out for the flashlight. “Now, where is this passage?” His tone was threatening.

  I shook my head, but the sounds of voices moving toward the house lent urgency. I began pulling away the boards and patting the stones beneath, though I had a sick feeling that the idea had been ridiculous from start to finish.

  “They will see that the grate has been opened. They will shoot us like rats.” He took out the knife, and I thought, Good-bye, Nan. I was wondering if Uncle Lastings would find out what had happened and let her know, when Pavel turned and stuck the blade between two stones. Then between another and another. “Give me a hand. This stone is loose.”

  I found the pry bar amid the leaves and mess on the floor of the well and inserted it behind the stone. A jerk, another, and the stone, which proved to be no thicker than a brick fell out and bounced off my foot. At that moment lights went on overhead, illuminating what looked to be a rotting wooden door behind the stonework.

  “Quick, quick! They’ve found we’re gone,” Pavel said in a tight, frightened voice. “They can light the whole garden.”

  I put the pry bar to the next stone and the next, and Pavel grabbed the loosened stones and pulled them away, revealing a small door, cracked and splintered and rotted at the bottom but locked.

  “Hold the flashlight.” Pavel fished the pick from his pocket. He started on the lock, but the old mechanism was so unfamiliar there was not even a rattle.

  “It’s rusted out,” I said.

  I put down the flashlight, lifted the pry bar, and inserted in near the lock. As the ancient iron nails groaned in the wood, footsteps crunched on the gravel faster and faster. In desperation, Pavel grabbed the loosened board and threw himself backward. The wood, rotten for most of its length, came away. We thrust our weight against the rest of the door, and it collapsed, tumbling us into a low, dank opening. Pavel grabbed the flashlight and switched it off just as someone reached the well above.

  “Pavel?”

  He shrank back against me.

  “Pavel?” Whoever it was touched the loosened bars of the grate. Without understanding a word of Russian, I knew from the man’s wheedling tone that he’d guessed where Pavel was and was persuading him to come out. Down below, we hardly dared to breathe.

  Whoever it was now rattled at the grate—he must have been too big or too heavy to squeeze through the opening—and his voice, formerly cajoling, turned harsh and violent. Threats come through remarkably well without translation. A hoarse shout of, “Pavel!” Once, twice, before his voice dropped to a whisper, an appeal. I sensed a complicated relationship before we heard his footsteps retreating. Pavel said nothing, and I didn’t ask. He turned on the flashlight, revealing that we were at the mouth of a tunnel no more than four feet high. The footing was damp, the walls dubious, the floor sloping down into a murky claustrophobic darkness.

  I looked at Pavel, and I think neither of us would have chanced it if we hadn’t heard footsteps again. Multiple footsteps.

  “Pavel?” someone said, before something bounced off the grate and into the well, followed by a thunderous blast that sent us both tumbling and somersaulting and slithering down the tunnel.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Darkness and dust. I sat up coughing and choking, only to knock my head against a piece of wood. Everything was silent. This was it: I was dead and buried. Then I moved one arm and understood I was alive. But my legs were immobilized, so, though I was not dead, I was nonetheless buried. Buried in such utter, paralyzing darkness that for a moment I was consumed by panic and started wheezing and gasping. I was well on my way to disaster when I saw a faint round light just a few feet away.

  I thrashed my legs and wriggled out of the dirt to make a lunge for the light. I touched a flashlight, solidly metallic and real. I wasn’t in a grave after all. I was in the tunnel. The tunnel from the well. With Pavel.

  “Pavel? Pavel, are you there?” Just the silence, a peculiar ringing silence. Yes, there had been a blast, an explosion, and Pavel and I had been blown into the tunnel. “Pavel!”

  I got up on my hands and knees, knocked my head again, and fell over something both firm and soft. “Pavel!” He gave a groan, and I shined the light on him. His face was spattered with earth and his eyes were dazed, but I saw no blood. No bones at odd angles, either. His lips moved without producing a sound. Or, rather, whatever sounds he made, I could not hear. And it appeared, he could not hear me, either, for he touched my arm and then his ear.

  The blast, of course. I got to my knees and swung the light around. Ahead was the black mouth of the tunnel sloping down who knew where; behind, a heap of earth and stones where the walls of the well had collapsed. I clawed my way up as far as I could and began pulling away the debris, but I couldn’t get any purchase on the earth, and I couldn’t begin to make way through the stones now jumbled in an unstable pile.

  I slid back down and sat, turning off the flashlight to save power. I don’t know how much time passed before I heard Pavel say, “Which way?” and realized that I could hear, if faintly and through a peculiar ringing in my ears.

  “I couldn’t move any of the debris,” I said.

  Pavel had a go just the same, scrambling and digging like a terrier after a rat. Finally, he backed down the pile. “What time do you think it is?”

  “No idea.”

  “They will think we’re dead. They’ll have gone,” he said.

  That was certainly possible, and buoyed by the idea, we began working together to shift the pile. But the combination of heavy clay soil, old wood, and massive stone blocks soon discouraged us, especially since we had difficulty telling which way we should be digging. The old dust and mold got my asthma going, and Pavel alone was not strong enough to move the larger stones. We were worried, too, about the flashlight batteries giving out, and at last we decided to chance the tunnel.

  We had to proceed bent nearly double. If some randy king had made the trip regularly, he must have been a midget. We took turns leading the way, feeling along the dank and chilly walls, our flashlight sending a hopeful round circle ahead of us. Down, the tunnel led down, and soon it was wet underfoot. At first just dampness, then mud that sucked at our shoes and pulled at our legs. Once we startled a rat. Pavel jumped and started swearing in Russian, but I was relieved. Unless the rodent had been trapped with us by the blast, the tunnel must come out somewhere.

  I walked in front after that, splashing through puddles below, sprinkled by chilly drips from above, and trying to forget that the Seine might actually be running overhead. Pavel began to hum in a high, frightened voice. “Miners do this all the time,” I said, but I’d never fancied being a miner, and I don’t think Pavel had either. Soon my back was aching as if cracked in a dozen places, and my legs were cramping up from the strain. We heard a nasty splashing sound and before we knew it, we were over our knees in water.

  Pavel stopped. “We’re going to drown,” he said.

  I raised the flashlight. We were approaching a flat black puddle of unknown depth, but beyond—“Look,” I said. “It rises. The tunnel starts to rise.”

  Pavel agreed it did, but he refused to budge until I said I would go first and left him with the flashlight. “Keep it on the water,” I said and he nodded.

  I waded into the puddle, mucky and slimy on the bottom. Ankle deep, knee deep, thigh deep. I slipped once and had to thrust a hand to the dubious bottom to keep my face out of the foul water. I floundered forward, fell onto my knees twice, but then, yes, a surface and not dirt, stone. And not just stone but stones sloping up, almost a ramp.

  “Come on! There’s a stone floor here. Throw me the flashlight when you get in too deep.”

  He hesitated only a moment before wading in cautiously. Halfway through, he started to slip and slide, our only light swinging up and down and side to side, but he refused to
let it go until the water reached his waist. Then, instead of throwing the flashlight to me, he stuck it in his teeth and slogged across like a pirate. Drenched and muddy, we rested for a moment before starting up the stone-lined passage. Wet as we were, we slipped and fell on the rounded stones, especially after our flashlight began to waver and fade, and we had to feel our way along the walls.

  But the air was better, the ceiling higher. And the floor was dry, so that I was sure we had dry land above us. But where? The passage narrowed and then, to our shock, ended abruptly. We were in a stone cul-de-sac, no, not entirely stone, brick. The passage had been bricked up. I could feel my chest tightening, but Pavel took out the knife that had survived our trip safe in his boot and began testing the mortar.

  “It is crumbling,” he said, and after a moment, he’d knocked one brick free. Immediately there was a draft, the damp and moldy air of the tunnel refreshed. Though we cut our fingers and scraped our knuckles, it was not long before we had removed half a dozen bricks. I gave Pavel a boost, and he wriggled through the opening.

  I passed the flashlight through the hole and he said, “A cellar. We’re in some big cellar.”

  He found a stout piece of wood and told me to stand back. A dull thud, another, and an irregular lump of bricks detached and fell at my feet. I scrambled through the opening and stood up on a stone floor. Pavel turned the light so that I could see the outline of what appeared to be the base of a huge tower. Built of large, well-cut stone blocks, it reached the ceiling, and was so impressive that Monsieur Chaput’s story might be true after all: We could be in one of the lower levels of the Louvre.

  “There must be a staircase,” I said. “We need to get to a floor with windows before our flashlight gives out.”

  We followed the curve of the stonework, picking our way among building debris and mysterious holes, piles of earth, rock outcrops, and ancient pillars. Our dying light cast immense shadows, accompaniment to the hollow sounds of our feet on the flagstones. We walked on and on without finding any stairs or any door until suddenly we were in pitch darkness.