by Stuart Gibbs
We might have made it out without any trouble at all if Murray, the fifth one down, hadn’t lost his grip on the parachute and fallen onto one of the lunch tables, landing squarely in the middle of the charcuterie plate and catapulting several bowls of French onion soup into the laps of unsuspecting diners. Now tourists leapt to their feet, yelping in surprise and causing a commotion. One unfortunate elderly woman had gotten the worst of it: She was coated in bits of meat, and the cheese cap from her soup was now perched atop her head like a beret. Murray didn’t help matters much when he plucked a gob of goose liver pâté off her shoulder and asked, “Are you going to eat this, or can I have it?”
Catherine rappelled down into the midst of the chaos, ordered, “After me, children,” and quickly led the way off the terrace and into the museum. We crossed through the café, hooked a left into the Impressionist galleries, and promptly slowed our pace.
My instincts had been to run like crazy for the exit, but I instantly grasped why Catherine’s plan was better: We were not the only group of students in the museum. In fact, the galleries were mobbed with school groups, and there were dozens of small clusters of kids our age being herded about by adult chaperones like Catherine. We blended right in.
This was one of several times when being kids had worked to our advantage. Chances were that when the police arrived, looking for whoever had illegally parachuted onto the building, they would assume the perpetrators were all adults. And while the tourists on the terrace knew we were kids, it would be a while until the police got all the way up there and questioned them. In the meantime, if we didn’t draw attention to ourselves, we might have been able to walk right out the exit.
Sadly, that didn’t mean we had time to see the museum. Even though we were acting like kids on a school tour, we still had to move quickly—like kids on a school tour who had just discovered that their bus was about to leave without them. Once again, we had to rush right past numerous incredible works of art that I was dying to see: Monets, Renoirs, van Goghs, and Cézannes. I barely had a glimpse of them through the crowds as Catherine hustled us past.
The galleries were so tightly packed with tourists, it was like being in a subway train at rush hour. And since the tourists were all focused more on the art than on everyone else, they kept wandering into our path. It was difficult to wind our way through them all, especially for Erica, who still hadn’t completely regained her sight. After colliding with someone for the third time, she slipped her hand into mine once more, indicating that I needed to lead the way for her.
Zoe noticed this and promptly misinterpreted the reason for it yet again. I couldn’t really explain why it was happening at the moment, though, and I couldn’t release Erica’s hand. Zoe gave me an icy stare, then made a show of taking Mike’s hand as they wove through a display of sculptures by Edgar Degas. Mike seemed surprised by this, but he didn’t let go, either.
The Impressionist galleries were only a tiny part of the Musée d’Orsay. They ended at a wide metal balcony that gave us a great view of the main portion of the museum: a cavernous space, several stories high.
We could see all the way across it to the main entrance at the far end. Several policemen were clustered on a much lower balcony there. Some were scanning the main portion of the museum as well, while others were poring over museum maps, trying to figure out how to get to the roof. None of the police seemed to take any notice of us, most likely dismissing us as yet another school group, dozens of which were swarming around them.
We descended a large metal staircase and then crossed the main floor toward the exit.
The police now began to fan out into the museum. Several came our way, but as they approached, Catherine launched herself into a school chaperone act, speaking to us in perfect French. (I could tell because I spoke French myself; it was one of the few talents I had acquired before spy school.) “Move along, children! If we don’t meet the rest of our class at the entrance soon, we’ll miss lunch!”
Even though I knew Catherine was a secret agent, she still looked far more like a member of the PTA. The police bought her act, hurrying past us without a second glance.
We finally arrived at the entry hall. It was filled with tourists, but most were still streaming in, rather than heading out, so we finally had enough space around us that Catherine felt comfortable enough to talk without being overheard. “Those coordinates Benjamin found for us are on the Île Saint-Louis. It’s only a brisk walk along the Seine from here. We can be there… ”
She was interrupted by a sudden, startled shout from behind us. I fought the urge to turn around and give us away, as did Catherine and Erica—but Mike, Zoe, and Murray all gave in to it. In the reflection of the glass doors ahead, I saw a French policewoman staring after us suspiciously. When the others turned toward her, her eyes widened in surprise, and she promptly glanced at her phone, as if comparing us to an image there. “That’s them!” she shouted, but in French.
I had no idea how she had noticed us. But we weren’t going to stick around to find out.
Catherine bolted for the doors, and the rest of us followed her lead. We raced out into the plaza in front of the museum, which was jammed with tourists. Long lines of them snaked up to the ticket booths, while others clustered around mimes, musicians, and caricaturists. We used the crowd as cover, slipping through it as fast as we could. Behind us, the police burst from the museum and scanned the plaza for us.
There was a subway entrance at the corner ahead, a stairway descending into the ground. More tourists were surging up to the surface from it.
Murray suddenly broke away from us. “I’ll distract them!” he cried. “Get to the subway!” And with that, he dashed in the other direction.
His actions caught all of us by surprise. Perhaps, if Erica’s sight hadn’t been compromised, she wouldn’t have let him get the jump on her, but now he had several steps’ head start on us. I glanced after Murray, unsure what to do, as did everyone else. I had a hard time believing he could possibly be doing anything so chivalrous—and yet he was definitely trying to attract the attention of the police. If he had really wanted to escape free and clear, he could have skulked off quietly, but he was making quite a scene, bumping into as many tourists as possible. He also shoved over a mime who was performing for a small crowd, though he might have done this only because he hated mimes. The police quickly spotted him and homed in on him. Now if we went after him, we would certainly end up captured.
So Catherine led us in the other direction. While the police were watching Murray, we raced toward the subway. Just as we reached the stairs, I heard a policeman shout, “Over there! The children! At the Metro!”
Murray had bought us some time, but not quite enough to fully escape. We had perhaps a thirty-second head start.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t quite enough time to buy subway tickets. There was a line for the machines, and even though I could read French, the instructions were long and complicated enough that I feared it would take me several minutes to sort them out. The turnstiles had gates, so we couldn’t jump them, and there were Metro police patrolling them anyhow.
However, there was a door halfway down the stairs marked DEPARTMENT OF SANITATION. NO ADMITTANCE. (In French.) The door was old, with an outdated lock that any decent thief could have picked in thirty seconds.
Erica picked it in fifteen. Even with her eyes in bad shape.
We slipped through the door and found ourselves in a wide, dark tunnel with a narrow concrete walkway running along a deep trench. It was too dim to see what was in the trench, but I could certainly smell it. Running parallel to the subway line, which shuttled millions of human beings from place to place, there was a sewer line, which shuttled what came out of millions of human beings from place to place. The odor assaulted us so hard, it was like being punched in the face.
The concrete walkway ran only a few feet before coming to a large iron grating that blocked the entire tunnel. There was a gate in the grating, but
it had a lock on it that looked far more time-consuming to pick than the one on the door we had come through. We were trapped.
Erica locked the door behind us. Through it, I could hear the police approaching.
The lock on the door probably wasn’t going to stall the police much longer than it had stalled us.
Catherine turned to us and spoke in the same tone my mother did when she had to inform me that my goldfish had died. “I’m afraid there’s only one way out of this.”
Sadly, I knew exactly what she meant.
14 NAVIGATION
The sewer
Directly underneath Rue de Lille
Paris, France
April 1
1300 hours
I had often dreamed of going to Paris. I had already done plenty of research for that day. There were hundreds of places I wanted to visit.
The sewers were not one of them.
I had imagined that my first hours in Paris would be delightful: visiting museums, strolling through the parks, taking in the sights. Instead, within half an hour of arriving there, I had been thrown out of a helicopter against my will, chased by the police—and then fully submerged in human waste.
My first visit to Paris wasn’t a dream. It was a nightmare.
Mike had been the most resistant to getting in the sewer. While the rest of us had dutifully held our noses and prepared to dive in, he had held firm on the concrete walkway. “No,” he said. “No, no, no, no, no. I’m not going in there.”
“I’m afraid you are,” Catherine had told him, and then shoved him in.
I leapt in right afterward. I had assumed it was going to be the most disgusting thing I had ever experienced in my life—and it turned out to be far worse than I had imagined.
Judging from the gagging and retching sounds my friends were making around me, they weren’t enjoying it any more than me.
A second later, the door we had come through rattled. I heard a policeman on the other side say, “Maybe they came through here!”
“It’s locked,” said a second.
“They might have locked it behind them,” the first replied. “We should check.”
The door rattled again, harder this time.
“Stand aside,” said the second policeman. Then the door flew open as he drove his foot into it.
I took a deep breath and sank into the sewage. Through the murk, I could hear the police react with disgust as they were hit by the smell. I listened to them as they swept the trench with their flashlights. They spent only a few seconds doing it, but in my position, a few seconds was an eternity. It was the worst thing I had ever experienced—and I’d had people try to kill me on a regular basis.
Finally, the first policeman said, “No sign of them.”
“Must have gone into the subway, then,” the second said.
Even with my ears clogged with human waste, I could tell the police didn’t want to spend any more time down there than they had to.
Then I heard them leave, shutting the door behind them.
I burst out of the sewage, gasping for air—and then found that my mouth was filled with toxic sewage fumes, which made me want to vomit. Mike and Zoe emerged beside me, having almost the exact same experience.
Erica and Catherine were much calmer as they emerged, though neither of them looked happy.
We all scrambled out of the trench as quickly as we could, not that our situation was improved much by standing on the concrete ledge, still covered head to toe with effluent.
“This is not what I signed up for when I agreed to be a spy,” Mike grumbled. “Spies are supposed to go to swanky parties and visit fabulous places and have car chases and cool stuff like that. No one said anything about being covered up to my head in poop!”
“Sometimes we all have to make sacrifices for the greater good,” Catherine said.
“James Bond never had to hide in a sewer!” Mike exclaimed.
“James Bond isn’t real,” Erica informed him. Instead of heading out the door, she took her penlight from her utility belt and shone it around the concrete ledge.
“You know who should have been down in here with us?” Zoe asked. “Murray. That weasel chose the perfect moment to sacrifice himself—if he was even really sacrificing himself at all.”
“It certainly looked like he was sacrificing himself,” Catherine said. “Those were real police up there, and he wasn’t going to get away from them.”
“Murray isn’t the sacrificing sort of person,” Zoe said. “He’s the ‘What’s in it for me?’ sort of person. I’ve seen him shove a nun out of the way to get to a doughnut.”
“People can change,” Catherine suggested.
“I’d like to change,” Mike said. “I’d like to change into clothes that aren’t saturated in human waste. And then I’d like to spend the rest of the day in the shower, scrubbing myself clean.”
“What are you looking for?” I asked Erica.
“There must be a hose around here somewhere,” Erica replied. “The concrete walkway’s clean. Or it was until we showed up. The sewer people must have some way to rinse it off…Ah! There it is!”
Sure enough, there was a thick red hose wrapped around a spigot off in a dark recess of the wall. The hose was grimy and caked with muck, but it was still one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen in my life.
We quickly turned on the spigot and hosed ourselves off. It was a far cry from a warm shower, but it was still wonderful to get clean. We passed the hose back and forth quickly, washing the gunk off our bodies, flushing the filth from our hair, and rinsing our clothes out while we were still wearing them. After a few minutes, we were sopping wet, bedraggled, and chilled, but that was still a big step up compared to how we had been feeling shortly before.
“We still don’t smell great,” I observed.
“We’re in France,” Mike said. “No one even uses deodorant here. We’ll fit right in.”
Catherine wandered over to the iron grating that blocked the rest of the sewer and peered down the tunnel through it. “This looks like it runs right along the Seine,” she observed. “That’s the exact direction we want to go.”
“Oh no,” Mike groaned. “You’re not suggesting we stay down here?”
“We’ve already been submerged in that filth,” Catherine replied. “This couldn’t possibly get worse than that. Besides, the police are probably still combing the area for us up above. This will keep us out of sight almost the entire way to where Mr. E is holed up.”
“Yes,” Mike said. “But this is a sewer. It smells like the inside of ten million people’s bowels. I’m willing to take my chances on the surface.”
“I’m sorry, Michael, but this is the prudent choice.” Catherine checked her utility belt, then looked to Erica. “Do you have any small explosives, darling? I think I used the last of mine last week.”
Erica checked a pocket on her own belt. “Nitroglycerine or C-4?”
“Oh, a spot of nitro ought to do the trick just fine. C-4 is a tad too loud. Don’t want to alert the police. Then we’d be in a pickle.”
“Sure thing.” Erica and Catherine appeared to have already fully recovered from the morning’s adventures, chatting about explosives the way most families might talk about doing the dishes. They had weathered everything far better than I had, looking relaxed and bizarrely stylish. Like they had merely been caught in a light spring rain, rather than plunged into a trench full of human waste and then doused with cold water.
Erica cautiously placed a dollop of nitroglycerine in the lock on the iron grating, then ignited the fuse and ran back to the rest of us. We all curled into protective balls, just in case something went wrong.
Nothing did, though. The charge worked exactly as it was supposed to. There was a hiss from the fuse, followed by a slight pop, and when we looked back at the gate, it was hanging open and tendrils of smoke were curling up from the lock.
“Very good,” Catherine said brightly. “Let’s move on,
children.”
She led the way through the grating and along the sewer.
The tunnel remained wide and high enough for us to walk without stooping, and except for the contents of the trench, it was surprisingly clean. If we hadn’t been walking along a river of human excrement, it would have almost been pleasant.
The tunnel curved slightly as we walked, following the bend of the river. We could hear cars rumbling along the road above us and subway trains hurtling past on the other side of the wall. Every so often, a few weak shafts of light would spear down into the darkness, indicating a manhole cover above. At each of these, metal rungs would be bolted into the concrete wall, leading up to the surface.
Erica’s vision seemed to have fully returned to her—or perhaps, in the dark tunnel, she realized that she could see just as well as me and no longer needed my help to guide her. She stayed close behind Catherine, who was leading the way, while Mike, Zoe, and I followed in single file.
Operation Screaming Vengeance was now down to only five members. We had lost Cyrus before we even got started. Alexander had flown away in the helicopter. Murray was off with the French police—or maybe he’d pulled a fast one on us. Either way, he was gone.
As we worked our way through the sewers, our team seemed awfully small to me. Yes, I trusted and believed in every member of it, but the idea that only the five of us were going up against the top rung of SPYDER still filled me with dread. Especially when I considered that Joshua Hallal, the police forces of two major cities, and possibly even a third team of bad guys, led by Jenny Lake, were after us.