Why? Anything that happened here would be terrible, wouldn’t it?
A French military helicopter, an Aerospatiale SA 342 Gazelle, passed about three-quarters of a mile away. The small attack helicopter was equipped with antitank weapons, more than enough to stop a bus or truck loaded with explosives. A second helicopter hovered in the distance. Local air traffic had been brought to a virtual halt for the U.S. President’s visit; even outgoing flights at de Gaulle had been canceled for a while.
Karr continued around the plaza, heading back for the steps. He was probably the most suspicious-looking person here.
The second level was another 359 steps away. The girders got thinner and the space between them seemed more open; Karr had more of a sense that he was climbing well above the city.
As he neared the second étage, the Deep Black op noticed a figure dressed in coveralls dangling over the side. For a second he thought the man was going to jump; then Karr realized he was a painter. It wasn’t until he was nearly level with the man that he saw the figure wasn’t real at all but a mannequin, part of a display about how important it was to paint the tower. According to the sign, the process continued every year. The job was done by hand, with old-fashioned paintbrushes rather than spray cans or fancier devices. A picture showed some of the men testing safety ropes.
Sure enough, there were several men nearby dressed in coveralls climbing upward in the grid work toward the third level, using one of the utility ladders to ascend into the web-like structure that held up the third level and its antenna mast.
So where were their paint cans and safety ropes?
78
“What do you mean, you lost him?”
“We’re not omniscient, Charlie,” sputtered Telach.
“How could you lose him?” Dean was standing in the far waiting room at the Gare du Nord Eurostar station, usually reserved for passengers in the forward cars. The train was boarding and the place was empty.
“The cameras don’t catch most of the waiting areas. Look in the men’s room. That’s the only place he could have gone.” Telach’s voice, normally understated, seemed strained and high-pitched.
“I just looked,” said Dean, but he went in again. He glanced at the sinks and then opened each of the stalls. All were empty. He looked up at the ceiling. The vents were too small for anyone to get through.
The loudspeaker announced that the train to London was now in its final boarding. Dean hurried out, kicking one of the boxes placed on the floor for trash — security protocol here did not allow containers where a bomb might, be hidden.
“Where?” he asked Telach.
“We’re looking.”
He turned right, heading toward the exit down to the tracks. There were refreshment counters, small stores like those found in American shopping malls, on either side of the short hallway.
“Did you see a tall man?” he asked one of the women at the register on the right. “He had a gray windbreaker. He might have gone in the back.”
The woman answered in indecipherable French. Dean didn’t wait to hear the translation from the Art Room — he leaned over the side, getting a good view of the back. There were no back entrances; even supplies came through the small opening at the side.
The snack counter on the other side was even smaller, with no place for anyone to hide.
Dean continued to the boarding entrance. There were two officials there, just closing the door.
“Wait,” he said. “S’il vous plait.”
“Charlie, where are you going?” asked Rockman. “Lia will take the train. You stay in the station.”
Dean walked through the door and across to what looked like an escalator down to the train. It turned out to be a moving ramp and it took a moment for him to get his bearings.
“Mr. Dean, where are you going?” said Telach.
“I’m not letting Lia go alone. He’s not here.”
“She’ll be all right.”
That’s what you said about Korea, he thought, but he said nothing, continuing toward the train.
* * *
Lia sat in car eleven, a first-class car near the middle of the eighteen-coach train. The Eurostar seemed less than half-full, if that. There were only three other passengers in the car — an elderly woman two seats away and a pair of twenty-something lovers who’d been whispering in German when Lia came in.
She hadn’t seen anyone with a gray jacket on the platform, and she’d made sure she was one of the first passengers down and one of the last in. Probably he’d taken off his coat; the Art Room had downloaded a blurry picture of the suspect that she could use to check out the passengers more thoroughly once the train started. She would also put the camera attachment on the satellite phone to beam images back to the Art Room, so the computers could go over the faces as well.
They had two tentative names — Patrick McCormack and Horace Clark. The name was bound to be an alias, assuming the Art Room had matched it to the right passenger. But they were checking the names against various watch lists anyway.
The doors closed; the train began to lurch forward — and Dean appeared around the corner of the car.
“This isn’t your car,” Lia said as he sat down across from her. The first-class seats faced each other across a table, two spots on the right side of the coach and singles on the other.
“Why? Somebody sitting here?” Dean pushed back in the seat, spreading his arms across the back and taking it over. He had that sort of air about him, as if he owned everything he touched.
“Telach wanted you to stay in the station,” Lia told him.
“That would have been dumb. If he got out, they would have seen him. He must have put on a disguise somewhere. Besides, I couldn’t have gotten out of the waiting area without blowing my cover. Which I’m not supposed to do. Right?”
“Maybe there’s an exit from the waiting area the Art Room doesn’t know about,” said Lia. “Rockman thinks every schematic he looks at is accurate just because he got it off a computer. I can’t tell you how many doors I’ve gone through that the Art Room said didn’t exist.”
“If our John Doe got out, then he’s long gone,” said Dean.
A pair of French border policemen walked through the car toward the back.
“Do they always put policemen on the train?” Dean asked.
“Are you talking to me or the Art Room?”
“You. Marie said they’re busy back there.”
“They’re always busy,” Lia said. “Especially when you need them.”
Lia realized how bitter her words sounded — and that the Art Room would inevitably have heard them, since her communications system was on. But the words were out and she couldn’t take them back.
She had every right to be bitter — they’d let her down when she needed them the most.
No, they hadn’t let her down. They hadn’t been able to help, not immediately. They hadn’t abandoned her — they’d sent the Russians, made phone calls, got Fashona in place. Rubens would have sent the Marines if he needed to.
It wasn’t the Art Room’s fault or Rubens’, or hers or anyone’s. It was the nature of the job. All this high-tech garbage didn’t save you from being alone, truly alone, when the volcano erupted.
You were always alone. Always.
Dean reached his hand across the small table toward hers. Lia pulled back.
“You going to be angry for the rest of your life?” asked Dean.
How do I answer that? she wondered. Be sarcastic? “If I’m lucky.” Be poignant? “Maybe.” Be truthful? “I have no idea.”
She pulled out the phone and put the camera attachment on it. “I’m going to take a walk. Rockman, stand by to download live video of our companions on the train.”
79
Rubens found it more difficult than normal to wait patiently for Johnny Bib to get to the point. He knew from experience that it would do absolutely no good to tell Johnny Bib to get to the point — if anything, it might make him
take twice as long — but Rubens needed to get back to Hadash and the President as soon as possible.
“Six units of thirty-two-point-seventy-three pounds apiece,” Johnny was saying on the phone line. “Of course the original formulas were configured in kilograms and I’ve converted.”
Telach, standing over Rockman at the computer console a few feet away, waved at him.
“Johnny, what exactly are the units?” said Rubens, holding up his finger to tell Telach to wait.
Johnny was several stories above the bunkered Art Room, but Rubens could almost see him standing back from his desk in surprise at the question. He found it baffling that anyone couldn’t follow his convoluted logic through its myriad twists and turns.
“Explosive value similar to the yield of the original equation,” said the team leader. “But in small bits — in the formula they look like variables, but I asked myself, Why would the variables be just of certain sizes? And of course, if they were packages or packets that you had to carry a certain way, say if you sewed up vests full of explosive, OK? Vests a man could wear, then remove and set at the proper position. That’s the way this formula is constructed, to figure out how many packets you need and where to put it. Now, if we substitute—”
“Johnny, tell me clearly: Are you saying that this formula is related to another attack on the Eiffel Tower or not?”
“The formula includes calculations for the tensile value of steel similar to the characteristics of the girder structure between the second and third étage of the Eiffel Tower,” said Johnny Bib. “Étage means ‘floor’ in French.”
“I remember my French, thank you very much,” said Rubens, snapping his underling on hold. He pressed the button on the communications selector on his belt, connecting himself with Hadash in Air Force One. “George, there’s a new development.”
80
The stairwell that extended upward from the second floor of the Eiffel Tower was far more exposed than the ones below, and Karr could feel the wind whipping at him as he trotted up the steps. There were five or six men above him, across the opposite pier. A pair of elevator shafts ran through the center of the structure to the top, but only one was being operated. Its car rose slowly past the cluster of painters.
Or supposed painters. Karr still hadn’t seen any paint cans or brushes or other equipment. Just coveralls that could hide quite a bit.
“Stand by for Mr. Rubens,” said Rockman.
“You sound out of breath,” Karr told him as he climbed. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d think you were the one climbing the stairs.”
“Tommy, I’m on the line with the national security adviser.”
“Hello,” said Karr. He quickened his pace as he turned the corner, trying to keep the painters in sight. There were roughly a thousand steps to the top; Karr had gone up about a third of them. The men were two-thirds of the way to the third étage.
It looked to him as if one was taking off his coverall.
“What’s going on?” asked Hadash.
“We’ve just found a formula to damage the top part of the Eiffel Tower using six bombs placed together on one of the main girders,” said Rubens. “We’re going to alert the French authorities. I’d like you to—”
Karr cut him off. “You’d better do it quick,” he said, running up the stairway. “They’re wearing explosive vests under their coveralls. That’s how they got the explosives in.”
81
Mussa checked his watch as the train passed Charles de Gaulle Airport and began to pick up speed. It took roughly an hour to reach the Chunnel from Paris; they had a little over forty-five minutes to go.
Forty-five minutes to be caught.
The brothers would be at the Eiffel Tower by now. Those two were maniacs — imbeciles, to put it more accurately. They would have others just like them to help.
Forty-four minutes to go. Forty-four chances to be caught.
Was he losing his resolve? Had he suddenly become a coward?
Hardly.
“The dragon lady is in a terrible mood,” said Ahmed, coming back from the other car. “She thinks there was some foul-up with the ticket system and she will somehow be held accountable. The train was supposed to be sold out.”
Mussa suppressed a laugh. To expedite the plan, they had filed a large number of phony reservations, aiming to keep the train nearly empty. Even the second-class cars, normally overflowing, were less than half-full. He had planned the attack for this run because there were few “walk-ups,” or last-minute ticket buyers. Fewer passengers meant less chance at interference.
“You have to bring one of the carts forward with the drinks,” said Ahmed. “It has to go to car nine.”
Mussa selected the cart and backed it out of the holding area. It bumped sharply on the metal furring between the rug and aluminum flooring. The jerk shocked him, and for a millisecond he thought that he had taken the wrong cart and had somehow set off the explosives. This was impossible, yet for the tiny space of time he thought, he felt, he knew it had happened. Even when the shock of the moment passed, he found it difficult to breathe properly.
I am not a coward. I am a believer, and a great man. My father was a great man, and I am his son.
God is great.
Mussa pushed the cart into the passenger area of the train car. The clear plastic of the overhead rack caught his face in its reflections: a deep, worried frown. He forced himself to smile, or at least try to smile, and pushed forward, wheeling the cart to the end of the car. There were five people: an old woman, two young people in their twenties, a woman, and an older man in his fifties. The older man’s stare swept into Mussa’s face. Mussa felt himself wincing, as if the glance were a physical thing.
I can do this easily. I have built an empire and braved much greater dangers. I am a soldier of God, the one, true God.
He made his way between the cars, pushing the cart forward. The other steward, an Englishwoman, met him in car twelve and went with him to car nine. She had him help her set the trays in the vestibule at the end of the car. As he helped, someone came to use the nearby restroom.
Mussa glanced up as the man came through the door. As the man turned to go into the restroom, Mussa swore it was Donohue, the Irish assassin.
Impossible! He’s in Paris, killing Ponclare.
Mussa stared after him for a moment, then realized that the man had a mustache. His hair had also begun to gray. And now that he thought of it, wasn’t he a little taller than the former IRA man and thinner?
I cannot let my imagination run away with me, Mussa told himself, turning to help the other attendant.
82
Karr was about twenty feet below the nearest man when one of the others pulled an MP-5 submachine gun from beneath his coverall. Tommy started to duck down but lost his balance and slid down the stairway.
Bullets ripped against the metal. Slugs ricocheted everywhere.
Karr’s chin slapped against one of the treads so hard he thought he’d been nailed by a bullet. He was surprised to find his face intact when he finally stopped sliding.
He jumped up, then ducked away as another burst bounced through the iron rafters.
“Get the French here, now!” he shouted. “And get the people down off the tower.”
* * *
Piped over the Art Room’s loudspeakers, the bullets sounded like a drummer’s rim shots off the side of a snare. Rubens gritted his teeth and turned to Telach.
“Why aren’t the French moving?” he asked her.
“We’re working on it.”
“Work faster, Marie.”
“We’re hearing shots at the Eiffel Tower?” asked Hadash over the line to Air Force One.
“Yes,” said Rubens.
“The French President is just coming up,” said Hadash. “I’ll leave the line open.”
“Of course,” said Rubens.
* * *
Karr, pinned down, guessed he was still two hundred feet below the third floor of t
he tower, with the terrorists twenty or so feet above him. Except for the one firing at him, they were moving upward.
From what Rubens had said, the plan would be to put all of the explosive charges together. Which meant there was a little bit of time to stop them.
Easy enough if he had a gun.
The gunfire had stopped; the man had started climbing again.
Karr jumped up and took the steps two at a time, reaching the next flight before a fresh fusillade of bullets rattled around him. As he crouched down, he saw a ladder welded against some of the supports; if he could get to it, he’d be out of the gunman’s line of sight.
After a long burst from the submachine gun, Karr pushed through the steps, jumping up and swinging across to the ladder. His hand slipped as he transferred his weight, and for a moment he hung suspended between the stairwell and the beam.
Then gravity took over, and he began to fall.
83
Donohue could not believe that Mussa was on the train with him — and in the uniform of a train porter. But surely it had been Mussa — he could see the look of recognition in his eyes.
Or was this simply more paranoia?
Donohue bent to the faucet to run some water over his face. He rubbed his eyes and cheeks but kept his fingers away from his mustache.
It had definitely been Mussa.
Was he following him?
Or making his own escape?
Whatever, someone knew where he was or at least the direction he was taking to escape. That was not good.
Dark Zone db-3 Page 27