by Cara Black
“I beg you . . .”
He kicked her. Again and again until she crumpled, moaning, on the tiny kitchen’s floor littered with children’s toys. That desperate, pathetic look in her eyes. Not enough.
“Maybe I wait until your little girl comes home,” he said.
“I do more. You like again?”
He rifled through her turquoise handbag. Found her fat ring of building keys.
“You listen to what I tell you, and the baby lives,” he said. “Maybe your daughter, too.”
Saturday, Late Afternoon
Aimée rang Gilberte back, her heart in her throat. The call went dead.
Was Mirko at that address?
A setup?
“Where to?” Poncelet had pulled over on rue Saint-Placide.
“Drive past 14 bis rue de Condé.”
She called Bellan. Needed backup. Got his voice mail and left the address. Then she rang René and explained.
“Call the cavalry, Aimée.”
“The cavalry doesn’t answer.”
“Don’t you dare, Aimée. What if it’s a setup? What if he’s waiting for you?”
“That’s what worries me,” said Aimée. Her mind raced. “But if Gilberte recognized him from the photo I showed her, saw him at the address . . .”
“Or Mirko followed you there. Coerces this Gilberte to call you . . . wait.”
Quiet except for clicking.
“René?”
“Hold on.” In the background, she heard René in conversation. A minute passed. Two.
The soles of her Louboutin sandals stuck to the taxi mat. Her neck dripped perspiration. The radio channel playing in the car stuttered with static.
“René?”
“Cavalry’s en route,” said René. “Keep out of the area. I’ve called the bomb squad, robots and sniffer dogs.”
She gulped. “That’s overkill, René. You’re overreacting.”
“Someone has to. Stay the hell away, Aimée.”
She rolled down the taxi window. Sirens wailed. A blue-and-white police car raced by the taxi. Fire engines pulled up at the other end of the block.
“Talk about quick response time!” she said.
“With le Sénat, the ministries right there?” said René. “They’re in-house, prepared for a moment’s notice. Use a burner phone from now on. The military alert means they’ll be tracking all GPS and calls via the signal towers.”
“Wait, what if Mirko slips away? Did you give a description?”
“Done.”
René hung up.
Poncelet turned in the driver’s seat, his eyes wide. “Did your friend just do what I think he did?”
“If I told you, Poncelet, I’d have to . . .”
Pause. “Kill me?”
“Not until your son brings my scooter.” She tried for a grin. “Mais non, let’s keep this quiet, eh?”
“A little hard to with those.” The sky filled with the sounds of helicopters. “My shift’s almost up. I’m an hour over our agreement.”
Translation: he wanted out. She didn’t blame him. If she were smart, she’d be out already.
Her phone rang. “Didn’t you get the message, Aimée?” Bellan’s voice, hoarse and panting, came over the line. “Back off.”
“Mirko’s been seen at fourteen bis rue de Conde,” she said, glad he couldn’t read her face and see the lie. “Check on my source, Bellan.” She gave him Gilberte’s address, phone number. “I’ve got a bad feeling.”
“You and me both. But me not the way you think.”
Aimée couldn’t call Melac and check on Chloé, not with the military monitoring all cell-phone transmissions. Not a good idea since her mother had provided the “safe house.” Aimée didn’t want to jeopardize Sydney, despite everything.
Stuck. Her fingers worried her bag strap. She wished the taxi could go faster. That they could escape the cordon the flics were erecting at street corners.
A net to catch Mirko.
Would it work?
Staff and workers, evacuated for safety from le Sénat, grouped on the hot pavement. One read a newspaper; another filed her nails.
To them, it was just another bomb threat. C’est la vie. So many these days.
Aimée scanned the faces as the taxi passed. Despite the rapid response, the combined police and military, how simple it would be for Mirko to merge into a crowd, get lost in the passersby. Or maybe the flics already had him in cuffs in back of the police van screeching away ahead of them.
Stuck in the traffic bedlam, she shouldered her bag, about to get out and walk to the safe house, when a black Peugeot with blackened windows pulled up, blocking the taxi. Her passenger door opened, and a steel grip closed around her arm.
Before she could fight back, she felt herself lifted in the air by a large cocoa-skinned man in a black suit and sunglasses. A wire trailed over his collar. He smelled military. “This way, Mademoiselle Leduc.”
“Get your hands off me—”
Too late. His companion flashed a security badge at Poncelet and tossed a wad of francs on the seat. “You’ve never seen us or your passenger. Comprenez, Monsieur?”
With an expert move, the black suit had her in the back seat of the Peugeot and buckled in all within ten seconds.
“You must practice that,” she said, fuming inside. He needed a lesson in manners.
He nodded. “Quite a bit.”
“You pinpointed my location because I used my phone?”
“Comes in handy,” he said.
The Peugeot took off and wove expertly through traffic. Trapped. Stupid. Her reaction time had been too slow.
“So what’s the occasion?” she asked.
“You’ll find out,” the black suit said.
A few blocks later, on Boulevard Saint-Michel, the car turned into the limestone-façaded entrance of l’École des Mines, the grande école of engineering and geology, founded by Louis XVI, bordering Jardin du Luxembourg. With a shudder, she remembered it as Guedilen’s office address. Men in suits and military uniformed men and women clustered in the dank, cool courtyard.
She clutched her bag as the seat belt was unbuckled and the door opened. Both men escorted her up a sweeping marble staircase, through a wide hallway, and past double doors. Another corridor, more tall double doors.
“Why am I here?” she asked.
No answer.
She was thrust in a room, the doors pulled closed behind her. Metallic clinking as they were locked.
Great. No hinges to pry off, no way to escape. No option but to wait.
She found herself in the school’s mineralogy museum, surrounded by rocks and minerals in dusty blond wood display cabinets. The whole place smelled old; musty. The herringboned floorboards creaked with her every step.
How many years had it been since she had come here with her grandfather? She remembered the dollhouse-sized theater maquette; the realistic mock-up of a coal mine, a working pulley, the coal lumps, slate and shale layers descending to the mine’s core. How her hands had come back smudged and gritty with shale. It was still there, worn by time and layered with dust.
Chloé would wonder at the amethyst crystals, purple blooms of desert rocks. Aimée would bring her here—that is, if she ever got out.
If she climbed out the window, managed to land without breaking an ankle, got through the police cordon . . . Non, she wanted answers from Guedilen, who she figured must have been the one who’d had her brought there.
A glass cabinet circa 1800 displayed maps of the old quarries and catacombs under Paris. One yellowed map showed what lay under the sixth arrondissement, riddled like Swiss cheese with traces of quarries dating back to the thirteenth century. Right below where she stood.
Her breath caught as she recognized parts of this map she�
�d seen under le Sénat buildings—those nearby tunnels below rue Bonaparte, which had once been the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés’s moat.
With her index finger, she traced the quarry map’s blue lines—at different points jagged, straight, or spidery, stone walled routes leading to vaulted caverns, staircases to the surface. A subterranean world connected by an intersecting system of tunnels and hollow pockets under the garden and buildings above. A gruyère, all right.
She was looking at a location on the map—there was an entrance to the tunnels right below the apiary. Mirko Vladić had lured Isabelle Ideler into the apiary, then disappeared—down this tunnel? The same tunnel adjoined an old German bunker under the Pharmacy School, and another offshoot led to rue Garanière by le Sénat. By Erich Kayser’s apartment. Could Mirko be using his own version of this map?
Metal scraped. The lock turned, the sound echoing in the mineralogy gallery. Two men entered, accompanied by a chorus of creaking footsteps. The younger was in his thirties, had heavy-lidded eyes and a darting gaze. He wore a blue shirt, red tie—the ministerial look under a black wool suit.
In this heat?
The other sported a full army uniform with stripes on his shoulder. He had a hawk nose, slit ice-blue eyes, and short-cropped silver hair. The kind of mec you wanted on your side and not the opposite in battle.
“Lost?” she said. “Or has the army gone into taking over museums?”
“Requisitioned, Mademoiselle Leduc,” said hawk nose.
She didn’t like him. Or the military. “The Germans requisitioned this place, too.”
“You must be thinking of the Luftwaffe at Lycée Montaigne.” The name Rondot was embroidered on his lapel.
“And who are you?” Aimée asked the man in the black wool suit.
“I’m Robert Guedilen, mademoiselle.” He flicked a switch on a walkie-talkie hooked to his belt. Gave a thin smile.
“You’re a hard man to reach,” she said.
“Excuse the secrecy,” he said. “But we feel it’s better this way.”
Secrecy.
“Abducting me from a taxi? No need to go to the trouble. Alors, I’ve been trying to reach you, as has Jean-Marie. Mirko’s alive, but you must know that by now.”
“Tell us your source, mademoiselle,” Rondot demanded.
She blinked. “What difference does that make?”
“I think the colonel means how you contacted Mirko,” said Guedilen. “Where did you obtain sensitive information?”
The military, suspicious and wrong, as usual.
“Doubting my credibility? Mirko’s prints have been identified in an investigation run by DGI. Interpol, the ICTY, and other relevant organizations have been alerted,” she said. “Why waste time?”
She looked for an answer in their faces. Expressionless.
Had she gotten it wrong?
She pulled out Mirko’s photo. “We’re talking about the same mec, non? This Serbian war criminal who was under a sealed ICTY indictment.”
“How does this case involve you?” said Rondot.
“Loïc Bellan of DGI is investigating Mirko’s connection to two murders here of people from the same ICTY unit. Jean-Marie Plove was on the same team.” She stared at Guedilen. “Your team, non? He referred to you as the military attaché, his advisor. He’s been trying to reach you, as I have.”
Guedilen shrugged.
“Don’t you understand? He’s next.”
Guedilen took the photo. He didn’t do a good job of hiding his recognition. He pulled out his high-tech walkie-talkie, the kind in René’s geek tech magazines. Barked an order.
The two men conferred in low tones.
She caught their attention and pointed to the map. “Mirko escaped down here in the tunnel after pushing Erich Kayser out the window on rue Servandoni.”
“You’re a pest,” said Guedilen. Shook his head. “A real nuisance in heels. Obstructing an investigation.”
“Shutting down le Sénat at the army’s expense,” said hawk nose. “Wasting resources like that will earn you military accommodation.”
Put her in a military prison?
He was bluffing. “Get real. I didn’t report a bomb scare. Even if I had, it’s a citizen’s duty.” She paused, frustrated. “But I get it now. The tunnels. That’s how Mirko escaped in Foča, too. He’s some kind of underground rat.”
The door opened and the two men who’d lifted her from the taxi appeared. They approached her, and each took one of her arms.
She’d read this all wrong. They had no interest in learning what she knew or had discovered. They wanted to shut her up.
Guedilen and Rondot silently watched her be escorted out of the room.
Five minutes later she’d been locked in an old classroom on the ground floor with barred windows overlooking a garden.
Frantic, she looked around. No way out.
She pulled out a burner phone from her bag, as well as the encryption card she kept in her wallet—her and René’s private code. Dialed his emergency burner phone number.
“Where the hell are you, Aimée?” he said.
She hoped René could control his emotions and do what she needed him to. “Remember our drill. Quick. Write this down.”
She gave the message in their code as quickly as she could: Call LB. M escaped. EcdeMines. C bottle.
Hoped to God he kept the code key handy.
She hung up. Under sixty seconds and the call would still be traced. René needed to act fast.
She caught sight of a figure outside the window, heard fragments of a phone conversation. “ . . . The woman? Confiscate her cell phone, d’accord.”
Merde! The signal had been detected. She stuck the thinnest burner phone and two SIM cards in her bra. Her wallet into the elastic of her lace thong, trapping it tight against the base of her spine.
A young female army officer appeared. She wore a starched uniform of a pale grey skirt and double-breasted jacket with black shoulder boards and shiny gold stripes. Her brow was creased in irritation. Just out of officer training school by the look of her.
“No calls,” the officer said. “Give me your phone.”
“I’m not under arrest, am I? I’ve got to pee.”
A sigh. “Hand over your phone. I’ll escort you.”
Aimée did.
The officer’s nose was running. She dabbed it with a clumped-up tissue.
“Allergies?” asked Aimée.
“Summer cold.” She looked miserable, red-rimmed eyes and chapped skin around her nose.
“The worst.” Commiserating might get her somewhere.
“First take off your shoes,” she said. “Leave your bag.”
No woman would escape without her bag. Or Louboutin sandals.
The officer escorted her, clutching Aimée’s elbow in a tight grip.
“Désolée, but the last thing I want is my baby getting your germs,” Aimée said.
The officer let go. Showed her into a locker room marked female only. A few uniforms hung on hangers. Sinks lined the wall. Aimée noticed the upper windows weren’t barred. There was a tang of mildew.
It gave her an idea.
“Look, I’m sweating, smell rank,” Aimée said. “Can I sponge off?”
“No time. We’re short staffed. I’m on the desk alone.”
The phone rang from the office across the hall.
Aimée sighed noisily. “Alors, I’m ripe as Saint-Nectaire . . . Can’t you just lock me in for a few minutes?”
The officer’s irritation deepened. “That’s against regulations.”
She had to soften her up. But how? “I just want to clean up before I’m questioned.”
The phone’s insistent trill echoed. The officer looked at her watch. Hesitated.
“Who’s going to know?
Please!”
The phone kept ringing.
“Make it quick,” the officer said. The key turned in the door.
Aimée turned on the faucet in the cracked porcelain sink. She stripped, pulled on the first uniform about her size, balled up her clothes, stuffed them in a bin, and grabbed a black hat with a gold insignia. Found low black heels only one size too big and stuffed the toes with tissue.
She had just finished rooting through the lockers when she heard the lock turn. She would either make it out the window or ambush the officer if she had to.
Saturday, Early Evening
The phone trilled again. Aimée heard a muttered “merde.” Receding footsteps.
She climbed onto the sink, praying it would hold her, and stood in the splashing water to pull a top window all the way open. She hoisted herself up to the ledge, which was narrow and covered in cobwebs. The window opening was just wide enough for a petite-sized woman.
Being a medium, she needed to squeeze through like a sardine. If she got stuck, the officer would laugh and leave her there.
Her elbows scraped the wood as she pulled herself through. Splinters pierced her arm. She felt her hips scraped even through the thick material of the uniform. She caught hold of a rusted pipe outside the window and tugged. Her hips squeezed through.
She tumbled out of the window sideways. Somehow she managed to keep her hold on the pipe and swung, slapping into the limestone façade. Her whole body stung. The too-big shoes slipped off.
Footsteps echoed off the tile inside. The officer had returned. Aimée had to move.
She ground her teeth and dropped, feeling the gravel cut into her bare feet on impact. She stuffed the tissue back in the shoes and took off into a vaulted arcade. Her mental compass pointed her right—east to the exit, she hoped. But the corridor ended with a locked door.
Shouts. They would find her in no time. Her getaway depended on speed. On finding the entrance to those stairs that led to the tunnels. Then she’d get away underground. Like Mirko.
The handle finally turned on the third door she tried. She burst into a back corridor. Pipes ringed the walls above cable junction boxes. She ran along the corridor, searching for a service exit. From a window, she saw a few soldiers and jeeps in the adjoining courtyard. Recognized the far wall that ran along the Jardin du Luxembourg. Beyond that a gate to the caserne, lodging for the gendarmes who policed the garden, and the gardener’s tool sheds. All parallel to the underground tunnels.