by Cara Black
She heard footsteps. More shouts. “A woman’s escaped! A civilian.”
She fought her impulse to run. That would be stupid.
She adjusted the hat. Play the part, and get out of here.
Didn’t this corridor lead to the cellar with the staircase? What if it didn’t? She turned the corner, and her ugly black shoes skidded on the worn pavers.
She’d run into a soldier. “Merde” was the first thing that popped out of her startled mouth.
“Excusez-moi,” said the soldier, snapping to attention and saluting, a Kalashnikov strapped across his chest. A tang of rifle oil came from his freshly oiled machine gun.
She executed a poor imitation of a salute she remembered from a movie.
“The counterterrorism team’s in there,” he said.
Who the hell did he think she was? She brushed down the jacket, feeling the multiple stripes and gold braid of a high-ranking officer. She straightened her spine, copying his rod-stiff posture, and her thong tightened over her wallet. She followed the young soldier. Out of the frying pan, as that old saying went, and into the flames.
Maybe she could at least learn something. “Get me up to speed . . .” She didn’t want to misstep, say something that revealed she was an imposter. “No one’s updated me on progress with the bombing suspect. Who do I talk to first?”
“Colonel Rondot in the command center.”
Great.
With soldiers massing in the courtyard to protect le Sénat, René’s bogus bomb scare had done more harm than good. They’d never catch Mirko; he’d gone underground.
She spied a small door by an exit sign with the symbols for staircase and evacuation route.
“Dismissed,” she said to the soldier.
With a salute he was gone. If only they were all that easy.
A loud voice boomed from a room packed with men in uniform. She saw a wall-sized map of Paris’s twenty arrondissements. She looked at the men—a rainbow of hard-set faces. Mercenary types who’d entered the Foreign Legion, exiting with a new name, a French passport.
Guedilen stood less than a meter away, his phone cupped to his ear, lips pursed. No use trying to persuade him to shift the search, to believe her that Mirko would go into the tunnels. No time to uncover the snake’s real agenda. She wanted to shake him, but that would only land her behind bars.
Head down, she kept a measured pace. She looked both ways and slipped inside the stairway exit. Closed the door.
Right then she needed her penlight, Converse high-tops, and a crowbar. All, except for the crowbar, sat in her bag back in the room where she’d been held. So did Chloé’s baby pictures. Aimée’s heart ached at the thought. At least a lock of Chloé’s hair was wrapped in a sugar cube paper and tucked among coins in Aimée’s wallet.
She made herself focus. Right now getting out unnoticed was all that mattered.
She pulled the jacket sleeve over her fist, punched and broke the glass cabinet protecting a fire extinguisher. Holding her breath, she waited, counting to five. No alarm. No shouts.
Five kilos heavy, she thought, clutching the fire extinguisher’s handle in her left hand. With her right she felt her way down the steep stairs, following a smoky, faint blue glow from the war-era lanterns. Her fingers came back chalky and damp from the dirty residue on the sweating stones. Down, down. The steps kept going. Her ears popped. The air smelled dead and old, reminding her of a mausoleum.
In the dimness she came face-to-face with a grey metal door, rivets beading it in what seemed a happy face design. Had she come down all this way to be locked in? To her surprise, the well-oiled door yielded to her yank. It opened with a sighing whoosh of metal. Well used.
She flicked on the rounded porcelain light switch. Now she saw a dim row of bare lightbulbs, strung on a cord hanging from hooks along the stone-walled tunnel. The temperature felt even, not too cold or humid, almost pleasant. The air here had a musty, earthy fragrance she could almost taste. Nothing too intimidating apart from the old German signs painted on the walls: rauchen verboten—smoking forbidden. She’d never wanted a cigarette so much in her life.
She closed her eyes. Listened. Silent as a tomb.
She visualized the quarry and catacomb map, the tunnels and exits she’d seen. Remembered an all-night party she’d been to as a student, in the bowels of Lycée Montaigne. With her direction in mind, she moved fast.
She needed to get out and use Bellan’s influence on Mad Max to refocus the troops. Mirko would wait it out. In his shoes, she’d hide out down here.
Except she wasn’t in his shoes; she was in someone else’s. The disgusting pumps were too big, slowing her down. She was constantly afraid she would walk out of them. Armed with the heavy fire extinguisher, she headed west. At least, she hoped it was west.
Parts of the tunnel were so low she had to bend down. She hunched her way through an abri, a bomb shelter for the Luftwaffe, past rotting benches where they’d placed their derrieres, a metal toilet, rusted and leprous. Wartime graffiti was scratched into the soft limestone: “Hansi liebt Muti, April 1942,” “Fritz und Inga” scratched by a heart dated 1941. She imagined young men crouched here in wartime, far away from home and occupying a country that hated them. She wondered if any of them who’d sheltered here ever made it home.
Ghosts hovered, their lives unremembered except here. A sad feeling, a miasma of loss that she couldn’t explain, propelled her to cover the distance here below faster than she’d cover it above. No stranger here in her partying days, she still remembered how the bunker linked to rue Guynemar and the northern side of Jardin du Luxembourg. There it was, the ancient, dried-out Chartreux fountain of the Carthusian monks. Just beyond that, the old stairs up to the street.
She almost made it.
Saturday, Early Evening
The skipping of her heart didn’t mask a faint rhythmic thumping on the earth. The sound of tires coming toward her . . . ? She could swear it sounded like a bicycle with a flat. Closer and closer.
The stairs were just a few steps ahead. She gulped the musty air and ran.
The man came into view on a trottinette. Attached to his cap was a head lamp, and he wore a jumpsuit with a roll of rope sticking out of the pocket.
A city worker or one of the cataphiles who roamed the underground exploring the quarries?
But when he looked up, she saw those eyes. Her heart beat so hard she thought it would jump out of her chest. No mistaking that face.
Mirko.
The tunnel rat. A nondescript man with a sallow face, this killer of little girls. No one you’d notice in a crowd. Only the dead eyes gave him away.
The head lamp illuminated the limestone-powdered earth and her shoes. As he directed the beam, he took in her uniform. She moved the fire extinguisher behind her back, her mind racing. No service down here—she couldn’t call for help.
“Where’s my contact?” No fear in his accented French.
Contact? Think quick. Her uniform was army—he must have been expecting an army officer.
“I’m ordered to guide you to safety,” she said, keeping the tremble out of her voice with effort.
“You? Some bitch called in a bomb scare,” he said, his tone amused. “How the hell will you help me?”
Play on appearances; don’t give him time to think. “Plans changed. We’re moving you.”
“Don’t I deserve respect?” he said. “The big man should come himself. Not send a minion.”
He struck a match, lit up what she figured was an Aura, and checked a walkie-talkie hooked to his utility belt. The same high-tech one Robert Guedilen had carried.
Robert Guedilen, whom Jean-Marie, she now remembered, also had called his team’s fixer.
Who would have known about Isabelle’s bee allergy, Erich Kayser’s report.
“I’m just following orders,” s
he said, thinking fast. “I’m to escort you to the safe house.”
“What safe house? He said nothing—”
“No time to debate. This bomb scare complicated things. The van’s arriving”—she pretended to consult her watch, edging toward the stairs—“in one minute up on rue d’Assas. You need to be on it.”
A flicker of distrust crossed his eyes. “I’m supposed to meet him at the—”
“It’s a contingency. Plan B. Guedilen sent me to meet you.”
“Bet he gives you a nice cut, too.” Mirko hadn’t blinked an eye at Guedilen’s name. Good God, Guedilen had had his own team members assassinated . . . and for what? To silence rumors about some arms dealings?
Mirko set the scooter against the wall. Unzipped his jumpsuit, stepped out of it. Underneath he wore jeans, a dark sweatshirt. Then she noticed the crowbar in his fist.
“Why do you need that?” Panic flooded her as she edged backward.
“For real, you don’t know?” He snorted. “To open the sewer manhole up there.”
Crowbars were used for opening manhole covers from the street, not below.
Liar. He took two steps toward her and raised the crowbar. “Why don’t you show me what’s behind your back?” He sneered. His cigarette dangled from his mouth.
Her mouth went dry. When she didn’t answer quickly enough, he said, “Those shoes don’t fit. See, I knew Guedilen wouldn’t send me a low-ranking officer.”
“You’re so important?” she said, stepping back. She had to get the hell out.
A big grin. “Matter of fact, yes, I’m that valuable.” Cocky. He exhaled a puff of smoke at her. “What do you know? I’m his, how you say, ace in the hole. I feed his bank account.”
“But what about Gourmelon?” she blurted.
A snicker. “That’s a code name. Seems you’re not in the know.” He stood back. “Maybe you’re the one he called a pest,” he said, “the one who took that cripple for a ride on a pink scooter. Yes, I recognize you now. That busybody brunette in Kayser’s apartment.” He advanced with the crowbar in one hand, unzipping his pants with the other. “That’s okay. I know what to do with a busybody.”
“I don’t think so.” She pulled out the fire extinguisher pin, squeezed the lever, and aimed the hose at his face. Dry white powder exploded in a cloud, covering everything. He roared, blinded momentarily, raised his hands to wipe his face. The crowbar fell, clanking against stone. But he was coughing, shouting, coming at her, fighting his way through the cloud.
She swung the heavy tank. Heard a thwack as it hit the wall. Then swung it again. A cry of pain, more coughing.
She couldn’t see. More cries of pain. A ruse?
She held the fire extinguisher aloft, her eyes tearing, feeling her way along the wall.
Then he grabbed her ankle in a viselike grip.
Thrown off balance, she squeezed the lever again, spraying wildly until he let go. In the hazy cloud, she swung until she hit something. Hard. She heard a crack. An ouf . . . then quiet.
In the dissipating haze, she saw him sprawled on the dirt. Then she whacked him again.
“You really should have put out your cigarette,” she said. “Didn’t you see the no smoking sign?”
While he was unconscious, she took off his belt and looped his ankles together. Pulled off his sweatshirt and used it to tie and knot his wrists behind his back. Strapped his head lamp onto her military hat.
As she was finishing up, he moaned. Struggled in the dirt, his shoulders twitching.
A kick in the head shut him up. Then another for the little girls. And for Isabelle and Erich, Suzanne in lockup . . . Caught herself before she kicked him to a pulp.
Death was too good for him. So she removed his walkie-talkie and stuck it in the belt of her uniform, lugged and dragged him toward the Chartreux fountain. Leaving him there, she climbed two, three flights, up to the fourth level running under the street. Sweat dripped between her shoulder blades, behind her knees. Her breath came in gasps. She needed to get back before he woke up or someone came for him.
She pulled herself up the rusted metal rungs to the overhead manhole. Awkwardly she reached up and ran her hands over the worn greasy manhole cover illuminated by the head lamp. Pushed. It didn’t budge.
Nothing for it but to climb higher on the rungs, put her shoulders below the manhole cover and push up from her bent legs, using them like a piston. She shoved and pushed the cover, using all her strength, sweating and gasping for breath. Again and again until finally, little by little, the heavy metal cover budged. She kept at it until she could wedge herself through and pull herself out. She’d never been so happy to breathe humid air and feel the beating sun. Staggering to her feet, she pulled the burner phone and a SIM card from her sweat-soaked bra and called René.
“Mirko’s tied up,” she said.
“Quoi?” René said, incredulous.
“I mean literally. But I don’t know for how long. Tell Bellan to put on his flashing blue light and get here. Rue d’Assas.”
“Are you all right, Aimée?”
“Fine.” Took a deep breath and looked around. Noticed a jeep at a hastily set-up army checkpoint by the law school. “Alors, René, Colonel Rondot and Guedilen are protecting Mirko. Guedilen is the one using him for arms deals. Who’s that contact you’ve got at Le Parisien?”
“You want to call the press?”
“Paparazzi will do.”
“You need to get the hell away, Aimée.”
All of a sudden she was going to lose it, break down. She choked back a lump in her throat.
“Listen to me, René,” she said. “They’re going to hide the murders, the guns, everything. They don’t care about crimes against humanity, what he did to those little girls. They’ve been hiding him, and they’ll keep doing it—he’s important to the military.”
“How?”
“I’ll tell you when you get here. Hurry.”
She punched in the number René gave her to Le Parisien’s tip line.
“Where’s the escaped Balkan war criminal?” said the perspiring press photographer, cameras slung around his neck. Almost a caricature. “I brought my climbing shoes like I was told.”
“Five floors down to the left,” Aimée said.
He was snapping pictures already as she leaned against the grilled gate in the torn army jacket.
“Non, no photos of me,” she said.
“That’s the deal, chérie. Make or break. You decide.”
He wanted a coup—a female army officer capturing a fugitive war criminal, who’d murdered members of an ICTY team and was wanted by the ICTY and Interpol.
She thought. Maybe a good idea. “Give me your sunglasses.” She couldn’t be identified; impersonating an officer was a crime.
Too bad she didn’t have lipstick. She put on his Ray-Bans, opened two buttons of her army jacket, stuffed her hair under her hat. Pinched her cheeks for color.
He clicked away. “Sexy. I like it.”
Bellan had pulled up with a squeal of brakes, flashing lights, and a flotilla of police vans.
“Better hurry up or the flics will beat your scoop,” she said.
Aimée paced in the anteroom of Hôtel de Brienne, the Ministry of Defense’s plush heart of operations.
A double door opened, and Bellan rushed out. He tossed her bag onto the gilt chair, dropped her sandals on the floor.
“Thank God,” she said, rummaging inside for a baby wipe and lipstick.
“We’re keeping this quiet for now.”
“What?”
“Just listen, Aimée—”
“Guedilen, aka Gourmelon, is the one who furnished Mirko all the info he needed to assassinate the ICTY team. It’s a big damn cover-up. Deliberately distracting from the investigation of Guedilen’s shady business.”
“Which is?”
“Suzanne knows details. All I know is that Mirko helped Guedilen supply French arms to paramilitary groups in the Balkans. Geudelin needed Mirko’s connections to a network he’d inherited from a dead Croatian arms dealer named Dravić. They both must have gotten rich off of it. And meanwhile, French weapons were used to carry out ethnic cleansing.”
“And Mirko’s here why?”
Aimée pulled out her phone, checked for messages. One from Melac.
“The ICTY operations were at odds with Guedilen’s shady dealings, so Guedilen had Mirko removed from the Balkans to France—the whole explosion in Foča was a sham,” she said. “Guedilen’s a fixer. Got Mirko to do his dirty work here in Paris.”
“How are we going to prove that?”
“Look at Guedilen’s financials; that will tell you. Mirko boasted about how important he was. He’s a murdering rapist who gets away with everything.” She wanted to hit something. “I could have taken care of him down there myself.”
“Oh, that,” said Bellan with a little smile. “Mad Max has taken care of him.”
“You mean . . . killed him and destroyed the evidence?”
“Not quite. If it makes you feel better, Guedilen and Rondot get a one-way ticket to prison.”
“So you already knew this?”
And let her spout off anyway?
“I just found out. But they’re handling it their way.”
“Meaning?”
“A sexy sergeant’s solo capture of a fugitive war criminal. Nice touch, eh? Backslapping the army.”
He pulled out page proofs of Le Parisien’s special evening edition. Her photo, air-brushed to make it look as if several more buttons were undone. “Quite an accomplishment, Aimée. They’re secretly pleased you gave them the capture and sabotaged Guedilen’s operation.”
And did all the work. She got it.
