Karen opened the window. The alarm was still blaring, but she could also hear the conversation of the hotel guests.
“There was an explosion in one of the rooms on the first floor.”
“Yeah, I think it was room thirty-eight, right off the stairway.”
“Was there anyone in the room?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. The concierge was very concerned. He said a female was in there.”
Karen’s eyes narrowed and she whispered, “Again, someone has tried to kill me.” That was explosives I smelled. Maybe this room isn’t safe either.
She strapped on her Glock G33, slipped on her skirt, donned her top, stepped into her shoes, quickly repacked her suitcase, and darted down the back stairs to the rear of the hotel. On her way, she called French Intelligence and told them she wanted to be picked up on Rue Saint-Benoît, the street behind Hotel d’Angleterre.
She hid in an alleyway until she saw a black car slowly rolling down the street. It passed by, stopped and began backing back up the rue. On its way, Karen stepped onto the sidewalk and held up her hand.
“We weren’t sure we had the correct information. You are okay, Ms. Krystal?”
“I’m fine; I need to get to your headquarters, quickly.”
The driver set Karen’s suitcase in the trunk. She got into the car and the driver slipped back behind the wheel and sped away, heading to the seventeenth arrondissement to the General Directorate of Homeland Security, DGSI (Direction Générale de la Sécurité Intérieure) eight miles beyond Levallois-Perret, France. It took the driver less than a half an hour to drive to the underground parking lot.
“What would you have me do with your suitcase?” the driver asked.
“I’ll take it with me,” Karen said.
The driver lifted it out of the trunk and extended the handle. Karen grasped it and headed for the elevator. After passing through several security checkpoints including the x-raying of her suitcase, and a full body scan that showed her weapon strapped to her leg, and after producing identification and verification from French Intelligence that she was who she said she was, she was escorted, bag and all to Paul Durran’s office.
The aid opened the door and Karen stepped through.
Durran looked up from his desk and said, “I’m told there was an explosion at your hotel.”
“The explosion happened in my room.”
Durran looked up and down at Karen, his eyes wide. “You seem to be okay. It was a small explosion?”
“It destroyed the room.”
“You weren’t in it obviously.”
“When I checked in, I rented two rooms. The one on the ground floor was the one destroyed. Someone wanted me dead. Someone knew it was my room,” she said narrowing her gaze. “But they didn’t know I had rented a separate room under a pseudonym.”
Durran picked up on her suspicion and said, “I know you gave the information to Natalie. She’s been with me for years and I trust her implicitly. And Lamboise—”
“Someone knows my travels. I was kidnapped before I even set foot in Paris, and now a bomb was planted in my room.”
“Are you insinuating that someone in French Intelligence is trying to eliminate you?” Durran straightened his back and stiffened his neck. His brow furled.
“I’m not accusing anyone. I’m just saying that someone knows my whereabouts. And someone wants me dead. The terrorists for sure, but I don’t know why. And I don’t know how they know where I am or what I’m investigating. But they seem to know.”
“You’re going to stay here. After you and Lamboise investigate the Metro line, you can return here. We’ll have a room for you.”
“What about the terrorist plans to set off the bombs?”
“We’re working on that. We’ll know more what to do after you and Lamboise check out the M7 line and see where the wires lead.”
“How much time do we have before the bombs are detonated?”
“They said that we had to pay them by twenty-three hundred or at midnight they would destroy the Louvre.”
“How much are they asking?”
“Eight million Euros.”
Karen’s eyebrows rose. “They’ll destroy it at midnight whether you pay them or not.”
“We know. That’s why I’ve moved up the time for you and Lamboise to get to the M7 line.”
“Is there somewhere I can change my clothes?”
“There’s an apartment we use for special guests. I’ll have one of my assistants take you there.”
CHAPTER 34
Karen stepped into the apartment on the fourth floor of the French Intelligence building, closed the door behind her, and stopped. She smelled the bleach from the bathroom, the clean linen on the bed, the lemon-scented dust cleaner, and a strange metallic odor. She listened. She could hear a faint buzz coming from the unlit lamp in the sitting area.
She walked over. The sound grew louder, and so did the smell.
Must be bugs.
Karen wondered if there were also cameras in the room, inset into the ceilings or walls.
She wanted to shower. She opened her suitcase.
“Damn Sharon,” she said.
She rummaged through Sharon’s clothes and chose an outfit. She picked up a bra and eyed it, groaning audibly because of how skimpy it was.
“This’ll barely cover me.”
She then took out a pair of panties. She had purchased some thong underwear before, but after trying them, she decided they weren’t for her. Now, thanks to her sister, she’d have to wear them exclusively.
“This must be the tiniest pair she owns. There’s hardly a front, and no back.”
She took a quick shower, got dressed in slacks and a top, and it was time for her to hook up again with Lamboise. She fastened her holster and slid in her Glock 17 against her outer thigh, leaving her G33 in her suitcase. She went to exit the room, but stopped.
I wonder if my cellphone’s being tracked.
She left it in the room and waited for Lamboise outside Durran’s office.
Durran’s office door opened and he invited Karen in. “Have a seat. Lamboise is in the building. He’ll be right here.”
Another operative knocked on the door and entered. “We found an abandoned truck on Rue Leneveux. Inside, there was a gray powder: iron filings,” he said, holding up a plastic bag with slivers and powder inside.
“We took a Geiger counter to it and found it was radioactive. There were a couple of heavy-duty plastic bags with protective wear in them, also contaminated. And we found this,” the agent said, handing Durran a folded piece of paper and showing him another plastic bag containing a chewed, half-smoked cigar.
Durran unfolded the paper. He said, “Well, this confirms what we’re dealing with.” He handed it to Karen.
Before Karen took it she asked,” What about fingerprints?”
Durran said, “Anything we receive, we check for prints. It’s been done.”
Karen took the paper, scanned the words on the page and said, “This is in English.”
“Right, the specs for creating a dirty bomb.”
Durran said to the agent, “I assume you’re running a DNA check on the cigar. Send the powder sample in your bag to the U.S. Y-12 National Security Complex satellite labs for analysis.”
The aide affirmed the information and left.
Karen asked, “I’ve heard of that complex before, but do you think they can help?”
“Each batch of nuclear material from a particular facility has its own signature.”
“What will they tell us?”
“We’ve been informed of the theft at the Sehali uranium enrichment plant in Pakistan. If it’s from there, we know the terrorists don’t have another source.”
“A consolation.”
“Small, I admit.”
Lamboise entered the office.
“Durran said, “They found the truck that transported the dirty bombs over on Rue Leneveux.”
“Interesting,
” Lamboise said.
“Why interesting?” Durran asked.
“Well, they probably figured that you’d close down the city and they’d need a place to hide.”
“What are you suggesting?”
“Not far from there, down an alleyway, is a hole in a wall that drops down into an upper tunnel of the underground mines and the carrières de Paris.”
“You think they’re beneath Paris?”
“I just find it interesting that the abandoned truck is only a short walk to that entrance.”
“Finding them in that maze could take years. I’ll dispatch a few contingents and see if we can locate them quickly. You two get going over to the Palais Royal Metro station. I’ll stop M7 in about fifteen minutes. I can only stop it for an hour. So, you’ve got to work fast.”
***
Lamboise drove them to the Palais Royal metro station and parked in front. He placed his authorization sticker in the windshield and they descended to the station terminal. People were complaining angrily that the M7 line was disabled with no explanation. Karen and Lamboise walked against the crowd, trying to relocate to the M1 line so that they could detour to their chosen destination.
They descended the platform and began walking on the tracks back toward Rue de Rivoli.
“I hope Durran gives us enough time to do this,” Lamboise said.
Karen looked at the walls beyond the tracks and said, “If we run out of time and a train comes barreling through, there isn’t anyplace for us to get out of the way.”
The tunnel was dimly lit. They needed to use their flashlights to prevent from slipping beneath the rails and trapping their feet. They moved slowly, first shining the lights on the floor and then the south ceiling of the shaft.
About ten minutes into their walk, Karen shone her light on an opening just above the right-hand wall and said, “There. There’s the wire. Big and red.”
Lamboise shone his light and agreed. They followed it, and it led back toward the Palais Royal Metro station.
Lamboise said, “We probably should have looked for the wire before we walked all the way down here.”
“There are a couple of red wires. How would we have known which one is ours?”
They arrived back at the station and kept following the thick, red wire. It stayed on the ceiling and joined along with a number of other wires, another set of which was red.
“How are we going to make sure?” Lamboise asked, stopping and shining his light on the ceiling.
They were standing alongside the delayed train and Karen said, “Help me get up on the roof.”
“What for?”
“Just help me.”
Karen reached the roof and walked along the top until she came to where the wires were within reach. She gently pulled them down and felt them. She then smelled them. She pointed to the wire that veered off to the right of the ceiling and said, “That’s the one.”
“How do you know?”
“Help me down.”
Karen jumped to the dock and said, “The one set of wires that continues on through the tunnel, attached to the top right, is the newer wire.”
“How do you know?”
“I can smell the plastic.”
Lamboise looked up at both pair. “Aren’t they both covered with plastic?”
“Yes, but the other one has been down here for quite a while, and the plastic smell is gone, replaced by the smell of oil and copper.”
“You can smell that?”
“Yes.”
They followed the new, red wire all the way through the Pyramides Metro station to just past the Opéra Metro stop when Karen said, “Look, the wires disappear through the wall on the left. What’s over there?”
“We’re in the ninth arrondissement of Paris.”
“That doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“Do you like opera?”
“Opera? Why would you ask that?” Karen said, tilting her head to the side.
“We have to go to the old Opera House.”
“Why there?”
Lamboise patted the wall and said, “That’s what’s on the other side of this tunnel.”
They walked back to the Opéra Metro station and exited toward the Opéra Garnier, the old Opera House. Within minutes they were inside and Lamboise was showing the manager his ID.
“What is it you wish?” the manager asked.
“We need to go below.”
“Below?”
“The basement.”
“There’s nothing much exciting down there.”
Lamboise said, “Still, we need to go.”
The manager escorted them to the lower level of the Opera House. They walked by all the mechanical and electronic equipment that caused the illusions of rain, ocean movement, thunderstorms, and myriad other special effects needed to accommodate performances in the theater.
Lamboise took out his phone and tapped a symbol on the screen. Pointing, he said, “Over there’s southeast.”
Karen nodded agreement.
They walked to the wall and searched for the heavy red wire, but they couldn’t find it.
“We need to go below,” Lamboise said.
“Below?” the manager asked.
Lamboise said, “I know there’s another level.”
“There’s one more floor,” the manager said.
Karen and Lamboise searched the southeast area of the second basement but once again found nothing.
“It must be beneath the foundation,” Lamboise said.
“Beneath the foundation is the lake,” the manager said.
“We need to see it,” Karen said.
The manager said, “There’s an old access stairwell that has been boarded up and padlocked. The only entrance from here is through the forbidden door.”
“Let’s see it,” Karen said.
“I’ll unlock the door, but I can’t go down. It’s forbidden.”
The manager led them to the far corner of the room to a wooden door that was attached with rusty hinges and a combination lock. The manager spun the tumbler and entered the combination: right, left, right.
Karen asked, “You know the combination by heart? I thought you were not supposed to go down there.”
The manager held the door open and said, “Firefighters practice underwater rescues down there. I have to let them in.”
“How did a lake come about beneath the Opera House? And how big is it?” Karen asked.
The manager said, “In the 1860s, the engineers had a difficult time draining the water. They decided the best way to prevent water from entering the Opera House was to fill a pit so that the water would stop flowing. The lake’s twelve feet deep, a hundred-eighty feet long and forty-five feet wide.”
“Interesting,” Karen said, and she and Lamboise moved through the “forbidden” door and carefully descended the metal ladder that led to the shore of the underground lake.
Lamboise reached the ground first and waited as Karen eased herself down to the dirt floor.
“Do you see any wires?” Karen asked upon stepping toward the rocky shore.
“Only the power lines to light the lake.”
Karen directed her flashlight around the ceiling. “Is there a switch to turn them on?”
“I don’t see—”
There was a splash.
“What was that?” Karen asked, turned toward the water and drew her weapon.
“You can put your gun away. It’s only an oversized whitefish that’s lived down here for years. The Opera House employees sneak down here and feed it frozen clams. No one knows how old it is.”
Karen shone her flashlight, illuminating a silver-scaled, multi-finned modern-day Coelacanth moving slowly just below the surface. “Is that it? It’s huge!”
“It has no natural enemies down here, and it just keeps growing. The firemen leave it alone.”
Karen took a final look at the large fish, flashed her light across the lake to an old wooden boat, its oars resti
ng in the water, slipped her Glock 17 into her outside-thigh holster, and then turned her light again to the ceiling to search for the wire. “There’s nothing here,” she said.
“I see a switch behind the ladder,” Lamboise said. He walked over and flipped it up.
A series of bare bulbs lit the near side of the lake. Separate cubbyholes and entrances to various tunnels and caves could be seen the length of the stone façade.
“We need to find that wire. We’re running out of time,” Karen said.
They began a systematic search along the bank of the lake. After fifteen minutes, Karen called to Lamboise.
He joined her, and she shone her flashlight. He pointed his.
There, alongside the back wall inside a small cave was a massive control panel complete with switches, red and green lights, and power-monitoring needles. Karen moved her beam all over the equipment and settled on three bundles of dynamite sticks with wires that were attached.
Karen stopped and said, “I smell a metallic and a sulfuric smell. Like automobile batteries that are either bad or have been overcharged.”
“If that’s true, they could explode at any time, filling the air with acid,” Lamboise said.
“That could be what they rigged just in case the power is cut. The batteries could supply power to the detonators and explode the bombs. They must be tied into the main power along with the control panel. And they’re continually charging. Now, overcharging.”
Without the advantage of an alternator, it was a somewhat crude backup system that could misfire prior to the designated detonation time. The whole system could prematurely activate.
They walked the perimeter of the room, tracing all the wires until they discovered their origins and where they entered the cave.
The smell of rotten eggs became stronger. Karen tracked the smell to a large wooden box. She gingerly lifted the lid and said, “Twelve, twelve-volt automobile batteries.”
Lamboise walked over, looked in, and said, “Looks like they’re all tied together in parallel.”
“There’s another box,” Karen said, pointing and walking over. “It smells like almonds.”
Krystal Scent (Krystal Vibration Series Book 2) Page 25