He let Clara take the lead. The trapped passengers were more likely to make way for a young woman with a dachshund poking out of her coat than a man with a swollen face.
Duval reached the end of their car, close enough for Ben to see his jaw tense with each breath. It looked like the broken ribs were taking their toll—and keeping his anger piqued. Ben saw a group of uniformed cops approaching. He touched Clara’s elbow. “Wait.”
“What is it? What do you see?”
“A distraction.”
The two froze until the uniforms engaged Duval. By the looks of their angry gestures, the cops didn’t know why they’d been called to the station. It seemed Duval had been acting on his own. He shouted back at them, looking away from the train.
Ben bent close to Clara’s ear. “Go now. Walk fast.”
They hurried through the cars joined by rubber gaskets and steel plates, until they reached the last. Ben flashed his Jacob Roy International Wool Merchant’s Association card at a woman standing with her daughter at the rear door. “Pardonnez-moi, madame,” he said, continuing in French. “Metropolitan Transit Security. Please stand aside and remain on the train.”
She didn’t question his false authority. No one ever did.
The lever turned, and a sharp jerk broke the magnetic seal designed to deter passengers. Ben hopped out first, then took the dog so Clara could follow.
“How did you know we could get out that way?” she asked.
“Madrid and London.” He helped her up onto a narrow walkway at the tunnel’s edge and shoved Otto back into her hands. In answer to her questioning look, he pressed his lips together and gestured for her to keep going. “Madrid and London—the train bombings in the mid-2000s trapped many passengers. Today most trains have a fail-safe evacuation route. Tough magnetic seals give the illusion of a locked door to discourage jumpers, but the rear exit should always open.”
Thirty meters from the train, a red ACCÈS DE MAINTENANCE sign pointed them to the way out—an alcove with a steel staircase leading up to an alarmed door. Ben pushed through and set it off, blinking in the winter sunlight. He turned north on the sidewalk, away from the station entrance. “Come on. I have to make a call.”
Clara hurried after him. “You don’t have a phone?”
“It died.”
“Mine still works. You should’ve asked.”
“I’m asking now. Can I borrow it?”
Shifting the dog into an awkward position, Clara dug into her purse. A moment later she held up the phone.
“Thanks.” Without breaking his quick stride, he swept the device from her hand and chucked it sidearm across the street, skipping it into a sewer drain.
“Hey!”
He shot her a flat look. “Given everything you’ve experienced so far, are you really that surprised?”
“Yes. I am.”
Ben sighed. “This is gonna be a long day.”
His plan of hopping a B train to Montrouge looked less and less likely with each moment. Hagen had been in Rome, almost certainly driven by this Jupiter character and the organization rumored behind the attacks—Leviathan, according to the Dark Web whispers. But how did Duval fit in? Were he and his partner acting alone—two dirty cops—or had Leviathan infiltrated the Police Nationale’s higher echelons? The uniforms in the station looked angry and out of the loop, but Duval couldn’t have stopped the train without support from his headquarters. From that moment on, for Ben and Clara, no more train stations.
Several blocks north of the station, Ben found what he needed—a boutique electronics store with the kind of cheap knockoff products most people avoid. “Stay out here,” he told Clara before going in. “Keep an eye out for police and our two friends.”
She set Otto down to let him stretch his legs. “So these cheap phones are better than mine?”
“I’ll only be a few minutes.”
The concept of a burner phone all but died in the United States and Europe in the early 2010s. Most current sellers require an ID, and most service providers require a credit card and address to connect the device. Only the most disreputable dealers still sell cash phones. Fortunately, Paris has more disreputable dealers than most cities.
Ben picked a Chinese knockoff of a Motorola Razr and handed it to the short man behind the counter. His name tag read YNOVIK—JE PEUX VOUS AIDER? French for May I help you?
Ynovik scanned the package. “Cinquante euro.”
Ben drew a fifty halfway from his wallet, then paused. “How much to activate the phone for me?”
“Another twenty-five, but I need a name and address. It’s the law. Seventy-five in total.”
Ben pulled out a second bill and handed both over. “Here’s a hundred. The name is Jean Tout-le-monde. The address Number Five, Avenue Anatole.”
Jean Tout-le-monde. Jean Everyman. He might as well have said John Doe.
Ynovik considered the name and address, pupils drifting, then grinned. “So, Monsieur Tout-le-monde. You live beneath the Eiffel Tower?”
“It’s a very expensive flat.”
“Yes, it is.” Ynovik snatched the bill away and held out his palm again. “That’ll be another fifty.”
Ben didn’t hang around the store to make his call. He and Clara found a small garden park, surrounded on three sides by a wedge-shaped block of homes and businesses. A wrought-iron fence, overgrown with ivy, offered a touch of cover from the street. He sat down on a bench and dialed the number. “I’ll catch no end of grief for what I’m about to do. But we need an exit, and my boss needs to know what’s happening. His people will take care of us.”
Static buzzed on the line—no surprise with a Chinese knockoff—but Ben could hear it ringing. One. Two. Three. An automated voice answered. “If you know your party’s extension, please dial it now.” He punched in a nine-digit emergency code. “Thank you,” the automated voice said. “One moment, please.”
More ringing. One. Two.
Otto trotted over to him, whimpering. The dog met his eyes with a concerned gaze and then turned his head to watch the street. In the next instant, a cacophony of distant sirens grew loud enough to overcome the hum and bustle of the nearby traffic.
Clara looked toward the sound.
Ben tried to reassure her. “We set off an alarm when we used the maintenance exit, that’s all. They’ll blow right past us a few blocks south, closer to the station. Count on it.”
Six rings. Seven.
The sirens grew louder, closer—at least three cars.
“Ben?”
“Hang on. I’m almost through.”
Nine. Ten. A screeching tri-tone beep sounded in his ear. “We’re sorry. The number you have dialed is no longer in service.”
He closed the phone and stood, staring down at it. “This can’t be right.”
The incoming sirens grew to a deafening blare, accompanied by the chaotic flashing of blue and red lights. Police cars stopped nose to nose, blocking the park’s wrought-iron gate.
“Ben Calix! Ne bougez pas!” A voice said through a loudspeaker, then repeated itself in English. “Don’t move!”
14
Ben crushed the phone under his heel. “I’m really sorry about this.”
“Sorry about what?”
He let the ferocity in his eyes give her his answer. With a rough hand, he spun her around and jerked her back against his chest, while Otto yipped and barked. The dog had trusted him before, but manhandling Clara clearly crossed a line. Ben ignored him. He drew the Beretta he’d stolen from Duval and pointed it at the police cars. “Leave me alone!”
A locked gate at the park’s rear barred Ben’s access to a cobblestone path—the start of a network of residential walkways leading deeper into the block of buildings. Most blocks south of the river had similar networks, and none were alike. Centuries of building and rebuilding had created mazes of paths. Some had street outlets. Not all.
The police showed no inclination to obey his previous command. They poured fr
om their vehicles, taking cover behind the hoods and doors.
“Back!” he yelled and put one round each into the front tire of the closest two.
The men ducked. The Beretta’s sharp reports earned him a startled cry from Clara.
She pounded his arm with a fist. “Let me go!” Either she had turned against him, as she should have long before, or she was playing along. He couldn’t tell.
One policeman shouted into a radio, and a motorcycle sped in from behind a building, halting next to him—the on-scene commander by the look of things. He pointed east. The motorcycle shot away. The commander was positioning his men, raising the walls of Ben’s cage. Good man.
A swift kick busted the park’s back gate open. High limestone buildings on either side caused a funnel effect, masking Ben and Clara in shadow as he dragged her through.
The cops maneuvered to keep him in sight but stayed behind their vehicles.
“I said leave us alone!” He aimed the muzzle at Clara’s head. “I’ll kill her, I swear!”
One brave man made a rush for the front fence, and Ben let out a frustrated growl. He bounced two shots off an iron post, sending up sparks. The man dove for cover behind a bush.
“That’s right. Stay back!”
Ben had fired four shots with Duval’s gun, two in the tires and two to put hero-cop into the bush. He had three left—he hoped. He didn’t know Duval’s habits. Maybe he liked to carry a round chambered. Maybe not. Maybe he’d left the office that morning without a full clip. Ben had one more shot for sure. He’d need at least two.
The path curved, hiding them from the cops’ sightline. Ben relaxed his hold. “Are you with me?”
“Yes,” she said, pushing his arm away. But the anger in her eyes said otherwise. She punched him in the shoulder. “Don’t you ever use me as a human shield again.”
He made no promises. “Argue later.”
Without gunfire to pin them down, the cops would be on them in moments. The path ended at a T-intersection, with cobblestones leading right and downward steps leading left. “Steps,” Ben said, pointing.
Clara scooped up her dog. “Why?”
“The motorcycle went east.”
As if that were a reasonable answer, she nodded and followed. They jogged down into a low courtyard, then took a right and jogged up again. Another bend brought them within sight of an arched exit. Ben saw no cars in the two-lane street beyond. He never expected to.
If the motorcycle cop had followed standard procedure, he’d cleared the street of traffic and barricaded himself behind his bike. But to which side of the arch was he waiting? Ben couldn’t afford to sneak up and look. He had only seconds, if that, before more cops arrived.
He increased his speed, pushing farther ahead of Clara and staring at a narrow patch of empty street visible through the arch. “Come on, buddy. Give me a sign.”
The motorcycle cop did not oblige. No matter. A man in an apron stared out from a café window across the street, looking to Ben’s left—just the signal he needed.
He twisted his torso as he ran through the arch, hitting the street with his weapon tracking, seeking the bike and its owner. In an instant, he locked on and pumped one round into the engine. The next two went skimming across the vinyl seat into the cop’s upper right chest.
The Beretta’s slide locked back. Ben let the weapon drop and kept running.
“You shot him!” Clara yelled, fighting to keep up. “That makes two today!”
“This one’ll be fine. He had a vest.”
“And the gun? You don’t want to keep it?”
“No.”
A chopper passed overhead. Ben took the dog, and with Clara in tow, he ran two blocks farther east and cut through a hall of shops, slowing and looking left and right as he ran out into the light again at a well-traveled boulevard. “All right, kids. Where are you?”
Clara came puffing up behind him. “What kids?”
“Here comes one now.”
Scooters took over Paris in 2019—not Vespas, but in-line skateboards with a post and handlebars—strewn about the city by four or five companies, including Uber. Rent a scooter with an app, ride it across the city, and leave it for the next person. Unhindered by traffic, rules, or any sense of civilized behavior, they’ve become the fastest way around Paris.
But you need a smartphone.
Ben had no smartphone. He did have a gun and a wad of cash, though.
Four scooters headed Ben’s way, two in the bike lane and two on the sidewalk. He chose the Bounce brand. They had fatter tires and bigger weight limits.
The young man on the Bounce hit his brakes hard, skidding to a stop with his back wheel off the ground and his face six inches from Ben’s Glock and a pair of fifty-euro bills.
“A hundred euros for your ride.”
The kid nodded, took the bills, and ran.
Ben made room between his body and the handlebars and nodded at Clara. “Hop on. Once his phone breaks the Bluetooth connection, we’ll only have a minute or two of run time.”
The chopper had drifted into a slow outward spiral. If the crew ever had a visual on Ben and Clara, they seemed to have lost it. Maybe they wouldn’t notice a couple joy-riding on a scooter—at least until someone reported the hijacking.
Ben drove north and east until the scooter died. Its speed took them outside the net of police, but that net would grow fast. He parked on the sidewalk and pulled Clara under an awning. “French cops don’t react well to being shot at. I mean”—he bobbled his head—“no cops like it, but these guys have a rep. They’ll bring in SWAT teams by the truckload and shoot me on sight without too much worry about who gets caught in the crossfire. We need a place to lie low.”
“It is Sunday,” Clara said, stroking Otto’s ears. “Perhaps we should go to church.”
“You’re kidding, right? Too many people.”
She leaned to look past him down a long lane and thrust her chin at an island in the river. “Not in that one.”
Notre Dame. The cathedral had been under renovation for years, with years of work still to come.
“There are no workers on Sundays. I’m sure of it.”
He had to give her credit for the idea, but it wouldn’t work. Notre Dame was a national treasure standing empty in a city known for persistent squatters. To keep them out, the government had surrounded the renovations with a ten-foot wall of sheet metal, topped with concertina wire and bristling with cameras. “Too much security. We might as well break into the École Militaire.”
“You think so?”
He sensed a smile in her tone. She knew something he didn’t.
Clara took his fingers—just his fingers—and led him toward the river. “You’re not the only one in Paris with secrets.”
15
Ben and Clara sat on the stepped foundation of Hôtel-Dieu, a giant seventh-century medical center on the Paris river island of Île de la Cité, waiting for the street bordering the construction zone to clear.
A cathedral-shaped shell of pipes and plywood covered two thirds of Notre Dame. Ben shook his head. “Between the lead poisoning of workers and the pandemic, I hear the restoration will drag on late into the decade.”
Clara laughed. “She took more than a century to build. What are two or three extra years when you consider the endless backdrop of history?”
Giselle had said something similar before the team left for Morocco.
Ben missed her. Whenever the high stress of a mission threatened to drag him under, even before they started dating, Giselle’s c’est la vie outlook brought balance. Now, after his failed attempt to contact the Company had brought the entire Paris police force down on his head, he needed some balance.
Ben rested his back against the hospital bricks and saw himself falling into her arms, hearing her whispered comfort. The world had gone off-kilter. Together they’d set it right again. As long as he reached her before Jupiter and Leviathan did.
Clara touched his arm. “
You ready?”
Ben sat forward. “No.”
The police were spreading an ever-widening net, checking all trains moving out of the city. Giselle might as well be a world away. He had to focus on the present. Ben made a slow nod at a panel in the steel construction wall—one Clara had shown him when they first arrived. “It doesn’t look loose to me.”
“The workers are not idiots. They pull it tight to keep up appearances.”
“And the hazmat procedures?” The fire had vaporized the cathedral’s lead roof. After a string of poisonings among the crews, the government mandated new gear and protocols.
“A show for the public. If the crews had to shower every time they wanted a smoke break or a coffee, they’d spend more time in lines than on the job.” She tugged at his fingers. “Street’s clear. Now’s our chance.”
The positioning of the security cameras gave credence to her claims. The closest two pointed away from each other, creating a blind spot. Ben ran ahead and pulled the panel’s lower corner away for Clara. “How’d you know about this? Are you seeing one of the crewmen?” He cringed at the touch of jealousy in his voice. Where had that come from?
She scrunched her nose and gave him a mysterious smile before squeezing through. “Come inside and I’ll tell you.”
The loose panel let them into the yard, and Otto trotted ahead into the cathedral, dwarfed by the four-story Portal of the Last Judgement where the central doors had hung. Inside, scorch marks marred the open floor of the cathedral nave. The dachshund spun in a circle and wagged his tail. He seemed to know the place.
Ben turned in a slower circle behind him. “Unbelievable.” So much had been stripped away—a throwback to the cathedral’s medieval days. Two wings of the old hospital next door might fit end to end in the great emptiness.
Patches of sunlight filtered in through white tent coverings far above. Nearer, below the vault supports and buttresses, a metal net stretched across the nave. Scattered chunks of masonry lay in its grasp. The cracked face of a cherub stared down at Ben through the mesh. He shuddered and looked to Clara. “Haven’t they recovered all the debris yet?”
The Paris Betrayal Page 6