Jack Silver stepped out of the car. “Brian!” he shouted. “Get in!”
“Like hell!” Brian yelled back as he and Larissa reversed direction.
Silver ran after them from the right, with Merz closing from the left. Brian and Larissa veered toward the nearest alley.
“Take the lead,” he told Larissa as they ran down the alley.
“What! Why?”
“This is your city. You have to find us a place to hide.” Brian looked over his shoulder and saw Silver and Merz enter the alley. “And fast!”
CHAPTER 17--SANCTUARY
The sensuous aroma of baking bread permeated the air. Toulouse’s many boulangeries, seemingly one per block, were coming to life as the first hints of the sun tinged the sky. Brian closed his eyes and imagined hundreds of baguettes browning in dozens of nearby ovens. The fragrant air longed to embrace him, to pull him into sleep.
Why not? Brian thought. Why Not? He surrendered to the warm, buttery scent and felt his conscious thoughts melt.
Larissa shook him awake. “If you fall asleep, I fall asleep,” she said. “And then we both will die.”
They were in another alley, kneeling behind a stack of wooden produce crates. “Sorry,” Brian said as he roused himself.
For thirty minutes they had sprinted through narrow streets and twisting alleys. Silver, with his bad leg, had been easy to lose, but Merz was tenacious. After doubling back into this alley, Brian and Larissa ceased to hear his footsteps pulsing behind them. Peering through the slats of the crates, they had seen Merz pass the mouth of the alley three times without entering it.
Brian looked at his watch. Merz had not appeared for half an hour. “Let’s give it another fifteen minutes,” he said, “then if the street is clear …”
Then what? He had no idea. During their flight he got upset with Larissa because she didn’t have an immediate list of hiding places. She snapped, “I live in the suburbs, not the city,” as they ran, and he wasn’t ready to press her again.
“If the street is clear,” Brian repeated, “we just keep moving. When more businesses open, we can lose ourselves in the crowds of a department store or something. Then we can eat. You’re probably as starved as I am.”
Larissa nodded. “I know some suitable places,” she said with a hollow voice.
“What’s the matter?” Brian asked.
Larissa did not look at him, but continued to stare ahead. “Did she die because of us?”
“No. They were after her, not us.”
Larissa turned to him. A tear drew a wet line down her cheek. “How can you be so sure?”
“Because Skyrm was surprised to see us.” Brian placed a hand on Larissa’s shoulder. “They were waiting for her.” He realized neither of them were using Harte’s name. Their guilt had turned her into a pronoun. “They even had a body bag ready,” he continued. “They probably were going to search her apartment once they hid the body. I think that’s why Skyrm brought a team.”
“Why did that man Silver arrive late?”
“I don’t know.” Brian didn’t want to share his anxiety about Silver’s appearance, but their situation was far graver now, because they had witnessed one American intelligence officer at the scene of another’s murder. Brian also worried about his own judgment. He had pegged Silver as a rogue, not a traitor.
“I think we were able to escape because getting rid of the body was Skyrm’s top priority,” Brian went on. “Otherwise he would have come after us himself.”
“What do you think they did with it—I mean, the body?”
“I’d rather not imagine.”
A nervous silence followed as they willed themselves not to imagine. Larissa’s tears stopped, which left Brian conflicted. Clear-eyed determination was vital to their survival, but he hated wishing coldness into Larissa’s heart. By any right, they should both be sobbing. He looked again at his watch.
“I think we can move now,” he said.
The rising sun had thrown a shadow across one side of the alley. Brian and Larissa crept along the darkened wall. Brian peered around the corner. The city was waking, its early risers buying croissants, baguettes, and travel cups of coffee at the boulangerie across the street. Brian watched for several minutes, occasionally drawing back into the alley to scan the other direction. He saw no sign of Merz, Silver, or the others.
“All right,” he said. “Now we find another hiding spot.”
“How long will this hiding go on?” Larissa asked as they stepped out to the sidewalk.
“Until we come up with a plan.”
“How long will that take?”
“I don’t know. Do you have a plan?”
“Is it my job to think of a plan?” she asked with a rising voice.
“No,” Brian replied as they passed a clothing shop, “but I don’t have a plan, and if you do, I’m willing to listen.”
Larissa shoved him so hard he bounced off the shop’s door. The impact caused the fermé sign on the other side of the glass to swing in tiny drunken arcs.
“I’m kidding,” Brian said. “See the smile? Kidding.”
“Nothing about this is funny,” she said.
He did not reply. Larissa’s anger and fear were justified. Since Brian showed up on her doorstep last night, a goon had broken into her house and she had witnessed a murder. Saying another word now might cause her to crack, and Brian did not want a fight with his only ally on Earth. He remained quiet, hoping Larissa would cool off.
Brian’s stomach growled, reminding him of his own fragile state. He was famished and exhausted. His emotions, too, were frayed. His horror at Harte’s murder was conflated with deep shame; was he more distressed that she had lost her life or that he had lost his passage to safety? Brian wanted nothing more than to drop to the sidewalk in a fetal position. He kept walking because if he stopped, he would collapse.
They were following a street that twisted its way toward the Basilique St-Sernin. The tip of its steeple rose above the buildings just ahead. From the Michelin guide he had read on the train yesterday, Brian remembered that St-Sernin was Toulouse’s landmark and that it was the largest remaining Romanesque church in the world. He didn’t know the difference between Romanesque, Renaissance, or Rococo, but the fact that it was the world’s largest stuck in his mind.
Knowing that fact didn’t prepare Brian when their street angled in a new direction and St-Sernin stood before him, less than a block away. He did what was unimaginable only seconds earlier. He stopped. Brian said, “Holy …” As his voice trailed off, he realized the appropriateness of his unfinished thought.
Except for the bell tower, St-Sernin looked more like a medieval fortress than a church. Brian could picture archers, not priests, perched behind the small, narrow windows arrayed across the wide, pale stone. The roof was high—perhaps one hundred feet—but the structure was so broad it appeared squat rather than lofty. St-Sernin occupied an entire city block and was ringed by a street that might have been a moat ages ago.
Brian’s eyes were drawn to the bell tower, which defied the rest of the building’s reality. Even with his scant knowledge of architectural history, he could tell the bell tower had been added centuries later, some bishop’s attempt to place a halo on a brute. The tower sprouted from the basilica’s roof, exactly at the point toward the rear where the nave crossed the transept (terms Brian had learned just days ago touring Baroque cathedrals in Austria). The tower’s features were more delicate than the building beneath it, more inspiring. It stretched skyward in arched tiers, like a tall, tapered wedding cake. The levels were capped by a needle-sharp green steeple, which in turn was topped by a cross that gleamed some two hundred feet in the sky. The bell tower appeared to be reaching toward heaven, miraculously lifting the hulking basilica with it.
Brian could do nothing but gawk. Larissa, who had kept walking, turned to look at him. “What now?” she asked.
“It’s magnificent,” Brian said.
Larissa look
ed over her shoulder at the church. “Yes, I suppose it is.”
Her blasé attitude baffled Brian, but then he remembered reading that New Yorkers seldom look up at the Empire State Building and that Parisians go months without seeing the Eiffel Tower.
“My mother used to lead tours there,” Larissa said as Brian caught up to her. “She taught me its secrets. I could show you around inside, but St-Sernin won’t be open to the public for another hour and we might still be still running for our lives.”
Brian hoped that was a joke, a sign that Larissa’s mood was improving, but he couldn’t tell. They had reached the street that circled St-Sernin, and they needed a plan or they would wander the city all morning.
Brian’s stomach gurgled again. “We need to eat,” he said.
Larissa nodded. “There are many shops and cafés on the far side of St-Sernin,” she said. Her voice was stronger and the bitterness gone. “Food might improve our moods.”
They waited for a break in traffic to cross the street when something about an approaching black sedan twigged Brian’s memory. He looked at the driver. Recognition was instantaneous and mutual.
Brian cried, “It’s Silver!”
Silver slowed sharply and steered for the curb, but a cacophony of car horns erupted behind him. The sedan accelerated and rejoined the flow of traffic because Silver did not want to attract the police. At least, that’s what Brian assumed. Larissa grabbed his hand. “Come with me,” she said, pulling him down the sidewalk. Brian looked back to see Silver turn at the nearest intersection and vanish.
“He’s got to park,” Brian said. “That buys us time, but I don’t know how much. We have to hide quickly.”
“I know,” Larissa said as she yanked him off the curb into the path of an oncoming car. It squealed to a stop inches from them. Brian and Larissa ran, dodging sedans and convertibles as the air again erupted with caterwauling horns and irate Gallic shouts. They reached the opposite sidewalk and Larissa quickened her pace, leading Brian along a six-foot-tall iron fence toward the rear of St-Sernin.
“Where are we going?” he asked.
“Inside,” Larissa said.
“I thought you said the church was closed.”
“I know a door that should be open—if we have luck.” As soon as she had said this, they came to a break in the fence and a walkway leading to the basilica. Larissa turned down the pathway so abruptly Brian nearly overshot it. The path curved slightly and ended at a doorway guarded by two large bushes.
“The first person who arrives in the morning usually leaves this door unlocked for the others,” Larissa said. “My mother told me this.” She pressed her thumb down on the latch and smiled when it clicked. “Et viola,” she said. “We have luck.” She opened the door just wide enough for them to slip through. Once they were inside, she quietly shut the door.
“OK,” Brian whispered, “but if the door was open, then somebody is already in here. How do we avoid them?”
“Do not worry. No one will be where we are going.”
“And where’s that?”
“The crypt.”
CHAPTER 18--RELICS
To Brian, crypt sounded like a dead end in every sense of the word. He glared at Larissa. “Are you kidding?”
“You said we had to hide, right?”
Brian wanted to suggest alternatives—maybe ducking beneath the pews—but he had no time to argue. Silver might have reached the street in time to see them sprinting toward St-Sernin. He might be heading down the path this very moment.
“Right,” Brian said, “lead the way.”
“We must move quickly but quietly,” Larissa said in a low voice. “The smallest noise will echo like a bomb.” She turned and headed toward the altar, sprinting on the balls of her feet. Brian followed.
He had only seconds to take in his surroundings, but the first impression was overpowering. If the exterior of St-Sernin was beastly, the interior was beatific. The church was brighter and airier than Brian had assumed. Looking down the aisles, he was stunned by the sight of white columns rising seventy feet to the arched ceiling, like proud trees in an alabaster forest. In the distance, perched above the main entrance, was the organ, dwarfed by clusters of shining silver pipes that framed the instrument. Statues of angels playing harps pranced atop the pipes.
Larissa veered behind the altar. Brian glimpsed a statue depicting a saint floating on a cloud before Larissa slipped into a doorway set in the curved wall beneath the raised altar. They descended a short flight of stone steps to a hexagonal chamber with a low, vaulted ceiling. Brian had just enough time to take in busts of saints recessed into the walls when Larissa grabbed his hand.
“We must go to the lower crypt,” Larissa whispered. She drew him down an adjacent set of stairs. Serving as a handrail was a thick rope, blackened by age and riveted into the stone wall.
“Oh, this just gets better and better,” Brian muttered. A wood carving of six Apostles flashed in his peripheral vision near the bottom of the stairs. When they reached the crypt’s floor, he saw that gray arches supported the low ceiling, like a cave designed by Michelangelo. Alcoves penetrated the walls, each holding what appeared to be a small coffin. Larissa headed toward one of the alcoves and lithely vaulted over the brass rail at its entrance. Brian copied her movements, glad that he nailed the landing despite his fatigue.
Larissa was stowing her backpack on a ledge behind the little coffin, which up close resembled two giant, bronze-plated Monopoly hotels joined by an annex.
“Toss me your knapsack,” Larissa said. Brian did, and Larissa placed his atop hers and then plumped them as if fluffing a pillow. The gesture told Brian why Larissa led him to this spot.
“If anyone finds us here,” he said, “we’ll be trapped.”
“No one will find us. I used to hide here from my mother, and she never found me. Once she was right there”—Larissa pointed just beyond the railing—“with a tour group, and not one of them realized I was behind the reliquary.”
She looked at the narrow ledge and added, “I was smaller then, however.”
Brian looked doubtfully at the ledge, which was about two feet wide. “Can we do this?”
Larissa nodded. “Fortunately, we are both thin. You first. Place your back to the wall.”
They arranged themselves on their sides with Larissa lying in front of Brian, her back to his belly. The top of Larissa’s head came up to his chin. “Pull your feet up,” she said. “And hold me closer. Don’t be modest.”
Brian cinched his arms around Larissa’s stomach. This was majorly unfair, he thought, to be pressed so tightly to such a beautiful girl on a cold stone slab. In a crypt.
To hide his embarrassment, Brian whispered, “So whose body are we hiding behind?”
“Not a body,” Larissa said. “Relics.”
“Oh, like teeth and knuckle bones? Well, whose relics are we hiding behind?”
“Philip and Jacques the Lesser, the Apostles.”
“There was no Apostle named Jacques.”
“You would call him James.”
“Ah,” Brian said. “Well then, saints preserve us.”
“What?”
“It’s a common phrase,” Brian said. “In English.” He resolved to leave the quips to Foster Blake. Luckily he didn’t say it with a British accent, or he would have sounded like a total dink.
They remained silent for a while, until Larissa said, “I did not understand something she said, Lenore Harte.”
“What’s that?”
“She called us Nancy Drew and Encyclopedia Brown. I know of Nancy Drew, but who is Encyclopedia Brown?”
“Oh,” Brian said. “He’s a boy detective in a series of books. Each book has a bunch of short mystery stories. You’re supposed to spot the clues and solve the mystery yourself, then check the answers in the back of the book. I remember one solution about polar bears being from the North Pole and penguins from the South Pole. I forget what the crime was, though.”
“She should have called you Tintin,” Larissa said. “You are more like him, running from criminals and spies.”
“Oh yeah, that kid reporter who looks like a teenage Charlie Brown.”
Her voice defensive, Larissa replied, “Tintin was being printed twenty years before Charlie Brown. You would be more accurate to say Charlie Brown looks like a young Tintin.”
With no desire to pursue a cultural war over cartoon characters, Brian mulled his next words carefully. Before he could speak them, a noise from above echoed down into the crypt. Larissa tensed in his arms. They listened. Thump kwish-ump. Thump kwishump. Footsteps—the footsteps of a person with an irregular gait.
Silver.
The footsteps neared the altar. Just keep walking, Brian willed. Don’t come down here. But then shoe leather clapped onto the first step leading to the crypt. Brian worried his feet were sticking out from behind the reliquary. Could he draw them up without knocking Larissa off balance? He felt Larissa’s stomach clench as she held her breath. Brian did the same and pulled her tighter. He would risk leaving his feet where they were.
The footsteps continued downward then halted, probably in the upper crypt. Brian wondered why the intruder had stopped until he heard a second set of footsteps. These grew louder and more rapid as they approached the crypt’s entrance. Then, from the top of the stairs, a man’s voice:
“Monsieur! Monsieur! La basilique n’est pas encore ouverte de public.”
Silver’s voice replied, “I’m sorry, Father, I thought the church was open.”
“No,” the priest responded in English. “I am afraid St-Sernin will not open to visitors until eight-thirty.” His shoes clicked down the stairs until he reached Silver. Stay there! Brian thought. Both of you stay there! Sweat beaded on his forehead.
“You are welcome to return in fifty minutes, of course,” the priest continued, “but the crypt will not open until ten-thirty.”
“Really?” Silver replied. “Because I thought I saw someone come down here, a boy and a girl.” More descending footsteps sounded, Silver’s followed by the priest’s.
The Boy Who Knew Too Much Page 10