by Tom Cain
The time had come. He took a deep breath, then let the air out slowly, dropping his shoulders, easing the muscles, twisting his neck, and rotating his head to loosen the top of his spinal cord. Then he looked back at the road.
Several hundred meters away, beyond the entrance of the underpass, he saw a black Mercedes. It was traveling fast. Way too fast.
Behind the Merc was the reason for its desperate speed. A motorcycle was chasing it, buzzing around the big black car like a wasp around a buffalo. There was a passenger riding in a pillion, carrying a camera, leaning away from his seat and firing his flashgun, apparently oblivious to his own safety. He looked for all the world like a paparazzo, risking his neck for an exclusive shot.
“Nice work,” thought Carver, watching the speed team doing their job. He started his bike and got ready to move.
For a second, he imagined the passengers in the car, urging their driver to pull away from the relentless pursuit of the bike.
Everything was going according to plan. Carver rolled downhill toward the road leading from the underpass.
As he reached the junction with the main road, a gray Citroën BX hatchback emerged from the underpass. Carver let it go, noting the two Arab men in the driver’s and passenger’s seats. Another car went by, a Ford Ka. Then Carver rode his bike out into the middle of the road.
He crossed to the far side, then turned the Honda into the flow of the oncoming traffic and dashed ahead about a hundred meters to the mouth of the underpass. There was a line of pillars down the middle of the road. They supported the tunnel roof and separated the two directions of traffic. He stopped by the last pillar and reached down to unclip his dazzler.
Something caught Carver’s eye.
At the mouth of the underpass, coming toward him, was a battered white Fiat Uno. It was doing the legal speed, fifty kilometers per hour, and therefore going less than half as fast as the car and bike racing toward its tail.
Carver’s eyes narrowed as he pulled out the laser. His mouth gave a quick twitch of silent irritation. This wasn’t part of the plan.
The Mercedes and the motorcycle were closing on the little white car at breakneck speed. There were a hundred meters between them. Fifty. Twenty.
The Merc came roaring up behind the Fiat in the right hand lane, then swung left, trying to overtake it. The bike rider had no option. He had to go around the other way, squeezing between the right-hand side of the Fiat and the tunnel wall. Somehow, he shot through without a scratch, rocketing out the far side of the Fiat.
The Merc wasn’t so lucky. The front of the car, on the passenger’s side, caught the Fiat from behind. The Merc smashed through the Fiat’s rear lights and crumpled the thin metal of the Fiat’s rear panels.
The tunnel walls echoed with the cacophony of screaming engines, smashing plastic, and tortured metal. But inside his helmet, Carver felt isolated, unaffected by the chaos that was rushing toward him. He could see the driver of the Mercedes struggling to regain control as his vehicle careered across the road. The guy was good. Somehow the car straightened out. Now it was coming straight at Carver.
Carver stood as immobile as a matador facing a charging black bull. He raised the laser, aimed at the windshield of the car, and pressed the switch.
The blast of light was instantaneous. A beam of pure energy exploded across the ever-narrowing gap between Carver and the onrushing Merc. It took only a fraction of a second, then the beam was gone.
The Mercedes lurched to the left. Somewhere, deep in the unconscious, animal part of the driver’s brain, some sort of alarm signal must have registered. He slammed his foot on the brake, desperately trying to stop the car.
He had no chance. The two-ton Mercedes smashed into one of the central pillars, instantly decelerating from crazy speed to total immobility. But there was just too much speed, too much weight, too much momentum. The shattered car bounced off the pillar and skidded across the road, spinning around as it went. It finally came to a halt in the middle of the road, facing back the way it had just come.
The front of the Merc looked like a Dinky Toy hit by a baseball bat, with a gigantic U-shaped depression where the hood and engine had been. The windshield was shattered, as was every other window. The driver’s-side front wheel had splayed out from the side. On the other side, the wheel had been jammed into the bodywork. The roof had been ripped from the passenger side, jammed down into the passenger compartment, and shifted two feet to the left. The pressure from front and top had forced all four doors open.
There was no sign of movement from the passenger compartment. Carver knew that the chances of anyone surviving that kind of an impact were minimal. In the corner of his eye, he saw a car drive past him, on the other side of the road, going into the tunnel, past the Mercedes.
Meanwhile, the Fiat was completing its journey out of the tunnel. Carver caught a glimpse of shock and terror on the driver’s face. Then he noticed something else. There was a dog in the front seat. It had its tongue out, panting happily, oblivious to the destruction disappearing behind it.
Carver strapped the laser back on the gas tank of his bike. He was tempted to go down and check the wreckage to make sure the target was dead, but there was little point. In the unlikely event that anyone had survived such a devastating impact, there was nothing Carver could do about it without leaving some sort of forensic trace. And even if Ramzi Hakim Narwaz was still alive, he wasn’t going to be plotting terrorist activities anytime soon.
It was time to go. At the far end of the tunnel, Carver could see a couple of pedestrians, standing and watching, unable to decide whether to walk any closer to the scene of the accident. In the distance he could hear the mosquito whine of motorcycle engines. People were coming. They would have cameras. They would be followed by cops, ambulances, fire engines.
Carver didn’t want to be around when they got there. He needed to get away before anyone figured out that this wasn’t just an unfortunate accident. He swung the tail of his bike around 180 degrees and headed back up the exit ramp of the Alma Tunnel.
6
The other motorcycle pulled up two hundred meters farther up the road, on the Avenue de New York, just beyond the vast neoclassical expanse of the Palais de Tokyo, home of the Paris Museum of Modern Art.
Grigori Kursk placed his feet on the ground astride his Ducati M900 Monster, sat upright, and raised his visor. His eyes burned with the rapacious hunger of a man for whom killing was not just a job but a compulsion—one that he would gratify whether he was paid to do so or not.
He turned to look at his passenger, who was just stowing the camera in a basket on the side of the bike.
“Did you see that?” he crowed, speaking in Russian. “Did you see the look on that driver’s face? The poor bastard didn’t know what to do. Well, he’s just French pâté now!” He paused for a second, then continued more calmly, getting back to business: “Okay, that was just as easy as I promised. Now, let’s pick up the other half of the money.”
“Just pick it up fast, I’m in agony back here,” his passenger replied. “My knees are up around my ears.”
Kursk laughed. “Ha! I thought you liked it like that!”
He drove on another few meters till he found a gap in the parked cars just big enough for the bike. He positioned himself facing out from the curve, giving himself just enough clearance to see the exit of the tunnel. He then took a night-scope from the chest pocket of his biker jacket and held it up to his right eye, through the gap in his helmet. He was looking for the man who’d been on the bike at the far end of the tunnel.
Kursk knew two things about this man. He was ex-British special forces. And he was the next target.
7
Carver’s route out of town was simple. He planned to follow the river till he reached the périphérique, the freeway that ringed Paris, then to circle the city counterclockwise before hitting the A5 expressway away from the city to the southeast. He’d be over the Swiss border before dawn.
He was just
about to open the throttle when a flash of light caught his eye, no more than a hundred meters ahead, a reflection off a glass lens. It was only there for a fraction of a second, but that was long enough to draw Carver’s attention and alert him to the curve of a motorcycle tire protruding from behind a parked car.
Someone was watching him. And he was riding straight toward them.
Carver needed to get off the road. He looked to his right. There was a turning. No good—a dead end. There was only one option now. He swung the Honda onto the broad expanse of pavement and raced past a line of trees and a low, black-painted iron railing that provided some sort of barrier between himself and whoever was waiting for him.
To his right loomed the gray white bulk of the Palais de Tokyo. Its wings wrapped around a vast expanse of open plaza that rose uphill on four levels, separated by flights of shallow steps that stretched the full width of the building. At the very back ran two rows of tall classical columns, raised on a high pediment between the two wings. Behind them was the Avenue du President Wilson, which would give him another route out of town.
Carver swerved toward the giant building, aiming the bike at the pediment. He hugged the curved wings of the plaza, racing past a knot of skateboarders huddled around a glowing joint, who looked at him in stoned bafflement. As he hit the first line of five steps, he rose in his saddle, letting his legs and arms act as shock absorbers as the Honda juddered up and over the obstruction.
With his helmet on and the engine screaming, Carver didn’t hear the gunfire. He just saw a spark of light to his left, followed instantaneously by the impact of bullets smashing into the back of the bike, punching holes in the rear mud flap, and blasting through the exhaust pipe.
Behind him, the skateboarders were woken from their trance. A couple threw themselves to the ground. The rest just ran, screaming in panic across the expanse of open stone.
Carver crouched over the handlebars, pressing his head down as low as possible as the wall next to him erupted in a spattering of miniature explosions, little puffs of stone fragments and dust. He had nowhere to go but straight ahead. Jinking his bike from side to side, he raced across the pavement, then hit the next set of steps.
He was in a heavy sweat now, almost pulling the machine beneath him over the steps by sheer physical effort and bloody-minded determination. But as his body rocked back and forth in the saddle, his mind was working on another problem. Who was shooting at him? The obvious answer was someone working with or for Ramzi Narwaz. But if he had protection, why hadn’t they defended his car? It had to be someone else. And unless the assassination party had an uninvited guest, that only left one alternative.
“Shit!”
Kursk shook his head in disgust and shoved his Mini Uzi submachine gun back in his jacket. He had been forced to shoot twisted around in the saddle of his bike, which was pointing in the wrong direction, away from the plaza where the Englishman was making his escape. There were trees in the way and he was aiming at a moving target. He was just wasting ammunition.
Then he looked again. The Englishman seemed to be riding into a dead end, trapping himself at the far end of the inverted U-shaped plaza, beneath a wall at least four meters high. Kursk saw that there were more steps rising, much more steeply this time, diagonally up the side of the wall. Mother of God, was the man planning to ride up those as well?
If he did, Kursk would not be able to follow. His bike wasn’t built for that kind of stunt. Not with a passenger onboard. Of course, he’d have time to get off the bike, set the gun to fire single-shot, and aim at leisure as his target struggled upward. But the range would be well over a hundred meters. At that distance his gun, designed for close-range work, had greatly reduced stopping power.
There was another issue. Suppose he put enough shots into the Englishman to kill him. Kursk would still be left with a body on the steps of a public building, with witnesses to the shooting, less than four hundred meters from the initial crash. Even for the guys who’d hired him, that would be hard to cover up.
He swore under his breath. Things were getting out of hand. Kursk had to get one move ahead of his opponent.
“Hang on,” he said to his passenger, and punched the Ducati back to life. He drove another few meters down the Avenue de New York, then made a right onto a side street and roared uphill, beside the Palais de Tokyo. Now he was running parallel to Carver, separated by the bulk of the building, heading away from the river. But he’d be closing in on his quarry soon enough.
At the far side of the plaza, Carver had reached the foot of the pediment steps. He revved the bike, prayed that its low-gear grunt was as good as advertised, then hurled himself at the steps, heaving the handlebars and pushing with his thighs, as if forcing an exhausted horse over a series of fences. The engine screamed in complaint as it rose to the demand. But it kept going up.
Finally, with one last howl of protest, the bike made it to the top, spun its rear wheel for a second on the slick marble surface, then raced forward, between the columns, out onto the tiny semicircle of the Place de Tokyo, which led directly to the Avenue du President Wilson and—
“Damn!”
Carver needed to turn left, across the oncoming traffic, into the far right-hand lane of the road. That was the way to the périphérique. But there were two solid lines of parked cars, backed by trees, running down the middle of the road, blocking his way.
Then, emerging from a side street about fifty meters to his left, he saw the same bike that had been chasing the Mercedes. It was a big, powerful machine but it looked like a scooter beneath the massive bulk of its rider, who dwarfed the passenger riding pillion. Their two heads scanned from side to side, then the smaller man tapped the rider on the shoulder and nodded down the road in Carver’s direction. The rider responded immediately, turning right and gunning it downhill.
By then Carver was already blazing down the road. He’d answered his own question. Max had set his people after him. But why would he want him dead? Carver ran through the alternatives in his mind as he sent the Honda’s engine back into the red zone, ignoring traffic lights, swerving in and out of traffic coming out of the cross streets.
Was it the money? Three million bucks was a lot to splash out on one job. If Max got him out of the way, he could keep the unpaid half of the cash for himself.
Parisian drivers don’t give a damn. They’re famous for it. But even they hit their brakes at the sight of a motorcycle racing across their front fenders. Carver weaved between cars as they skidded to a halt, rear-ending one another in a cacophony of shrieking brakes, squealing tires, and furious French insults. That suited him fine. Every stopped car was just one more obstruction slowing down the men on his tail.
Had Carver outlived his usefulness? It had been pretty clear from their conversation that this was the last job he’d be doing for a while. Max might want to tie up all the loose ends.
At the bottom of the road, the avenue opened onto the Place de L’Alma. That in turn led past the Alma-Marceau metro station to the Pont de l’Alma, or Alma Bridge. The Alma Tunnel ran crosswise, below. Say what you like about the French. But when they found a name they liked, they stuck with it.
Or was there some other reason Max needed him out of the way, something to do with this operation? But what made this operation so different from the rest?
He bore right across the Place de l’Alma, passing right over the car crash he’d caused just a few minutes earlier. As yet there were no ambulances, no police cars’ flashing lights. At ground level, there seemed to be no sign at all of any accident.
Carver hit the bridge a hundred meters, maybe a little more, ahead of the Ducati, heading across the river Seine. He was going to make a right and get onto the freeway that ran along the south bank of the river, making for the périphérique, just like before. But he realized that would be crazy. The Ducati was a much bigger, more powerful bike. Even with two onboard it would soon run him down on the open road. He needed a battleground where he co
uld fight his attackers and win.
And then he saw it.
On the far side of the bridge, across the other side of the road, stood a small white kiosk surrounded by low hedges. It looked like a giant geometric mushroom: a short, squat tower topped by a wide, gently sloping octagonal roof. Just in front of it stood a blue sign that read, “Visite des Egouts de Paris.”
Carver grinned. He knew what that was. And it would do just fine.
Ahead of him he could see a long articulated bus, its two halves held together by a rubber concertina. It was about to turn left, off the main road that ran along the Left Bank, onto the Alma Bridge, going back the way Carver had just come.
He needed to get across the road. The bus would cut right across his path. He played one last game of chicken, turning his bike hard left, skidding across the path of the oncoming bus, sensing its bulk loom above him, seeing the look of horror on the driver’s face.
The bus screeched to a halt in midturn. Or at least its front half did. The rear end kept going, fishtailing as the link between its two halves acted as a hinge, swinging the bus around to the right. Somehow, the driver brought the bus under control before the momentum of the spin flung it onto its side. But now it was sprawled across the bridge, with traffic piling up around it. A perfect roadblock.
Carver brought his bike to a halt beside the kiosk. He jumped off, pulled off his helmet, and grabbed the laser torch.
Next to the kiosk a low, white metal gate guarded a stone stairway that spiraled underground. A sign on the gate read, “Acces interdit”—entry forbidden. He kicked open the gate, then headed down the stairs.
8
The first underground sewer was dug beneath the streets of Paris in 1370. Now there were 1,300 miles of tunnels beneath the city, known as les egouts. They carried away 1.2 million cubic meters of water and waste a day, and they directly followed the lines of the roads up above. Every tunnel was signposted with the name of the avenue, boulevard, street, or square whose filth it removed.