I had to get as close to Parsons and Lacey as I could without them knowing I was there. In a tight underground passage with stone underfoot they’d hear my shod footfalls from far off. Furthermore, with groundwater finding its way into these tunnels, all of the footing, stone or not, was going to be slippery.
So I crouched down and I took off my shoes and socks. In my bare feet I could be quieter in my movement, and I could also be surer in my footing on a slippery surface. I stuffed the socks into the shoes and set them aside.
I stood. Another measure for the sake of silence: I took the courier bag from my shoulder. I opened it and removed my flashlight and put it into a coat side pocket. I put the extra Luger magazine in another pocket. I took out the Luger itself and tucked it into the strap of my Mauser holster at my waist for now.
I put the courier bag beside my shoes.
I put my trilby on top of it.
I stepped into the center of the passageway.
The stone beneath me was smooth and chill. I shuffled my feet a little, rubbed the stone, told my body to be fully present on this path. I didn’t need to kick against the side of this box. It was a natural thing to be here. My feet knew that.
And one more natural thing. I put my hand to the Luger and drew it out. I liked the little Mauser in the small of my back but I was very happy to hold the Luger, my palm swaddling the walnut grip, the crotch of my thumb and forefinger wedging into the deep curve at the top of the grip beneath the breech toggle. Hand and pistol each fit the other precisely and fully. I would carry it with every step. It was true I might have to use it suddenly. But I was also happy for its heft and its assurance and its reminder of why I was feeling just fine down here.
I took a step into the darkness.
I stopped.
Even this short separation from the entryway rendered the darkness absolute.
One last moment for problem-solving.
I took out my flashlight. It was too bad. Going quietly was meaningless if I shone a heralding beacon of light before me. But if I could catch Parsons and Lacey at work, their work space itself would be lit. I’d see them first. And if they’d left it, they would be lighting their own way.
I was ready.
These moments of thought had allowed my eyes to adjust as much as they could to the dark.
And I saw a thing that drew me up sharply.
A light.
Small. Low. Up ahead.
It was not moving.
I figured I understood.
I turned on my flashlight.
The limestone walls were a foot or so more than an arm’s length away on either side. Empty at this point. Just walls. I strode forward.
Fifty yards along was a fork in the path. A gentle divergence but a choice. Two tunnels. That’s where I found the small, low light. Parsons and Lacey had lit two four-inch coach candles and placed them beside each other at the mouth edge of the tunnel to my right.
They’d planned carefully. Perhaps for a long while. There were maps of the Catacombs. They could blow any target beneath the Latin Quarter. The ceilings above were notorious in the city for their weak spots, even for their occasional cave-ins. These two were ready. Maybe they’d just gotten lucky with the conference being at the Lutetia. It was a prime target even on its own.
I took the turn they’d marked. I shone my flashlight out ahead of me and I broke into a careful jog, the beam bouncing before me, my mind focused only on the ever-changing few steps ahead, my feet focused only on the footing, toes gripping and releasing, bidding me to slow when the footing got damp, shifting my center of gravity lower or higher to keep me steady. And I counted my strides. A yard per stride, roughly. Not precise. But I’d get to a given number without worrying about anything but speed.
Four hundred, I decided. If they’d already set the bomb and were coming back this way within the four hundred strides, we’d have a sudden confrontation. At least I knew they could be coming, while I would be a surprise to them. But I was afraid that beam ahead of me obscured any similar beams beyond its reach.
A risk I had to take.
And the risk was probably even greater. Surely they had firearms. This was too important a bombing to chance anyone happening upon them. Their planning had been careful. They were ready and eager killers. I had to be prepared for a shoot-out.
I pressed on as fast as I could.
Another fork at just over two hundred strides.
I slowed and paused briefly.
A turn to the left. Not severe. Four hundred was probably still the right count. Only darkness down the marked tunnel. No approaching lights. I shone my beam, preparing to resume the run.
And movement before me.
I reared back.
Low. Scattering forms.
Rats.
I walked on for a time, focusing the beam a little closer to me. Keenly conscious of my bare feet. But the vermin were gone, it seemed. I didn’t like my chances with the rats if I fell and knocked myself out for a few minutes. But moving, with light, at my size, I was okay.
I took up the jog again.
The rats made me aware of smells. Their odor. Their shit. And then I was past their hangouts. And the smells were simply of mold and damp clay soil.
Then those smells suddenly ceased.
And a smell of something else came upon me, something old, like old stone or old wood but neither of those, a smell with perhaps a trace of quicklime. And then something rolling past me beyond the edges of my tungsten beam. A profusion. Faces. The walls were watching now, from floor to ceiling, large empty eyes, a crowd of thousands and thousands, the faces densely surrounded by the knobs and condyles of femurs and tibias, my first encounter now with the denizens of these tunnels, the legions of the dead, the disarticulated bones of millions. There were two of these Parisians of the Catacombs for every one Parisian walking around above us.
I’d seen enough of them. I kept my eyes ahead and focused on running and I gave myself to the rhythm of it. My legs moved as if on their own and my feet gripped and I held tight to the Luger and the light went before me and soon I was at four hundred strides.
I slowed to a walk. I stopped. I turned off my flashlight.
I was breathing heavily. But only from fast movement in heavy air. I was a denizen myself now of the Catacombs. I took a moment to let my breath abate and I peered carefully into the dark before me. No distant signs of light.
I turned my flashlight on.
I took out my watch.
Two minutes to ten.
Speed now. But quiet too. Before I’d begun to count I’d taken a number of steps at the start of this journey. And my strides were probably often longer than a yard. Perhaps many. I was surely drawing near.
I walked as fast now as I possibly could while putting each foot down with restraint, keeping the beam angled sharply before me. When finally a turn led directly to their work area, surely it would be visible from farther off than my beam. Silence was paramount now.
Almost with that thought the surface changed from stone to clay. This variance of footing had been common through these past fifteen minutes. I thought: This is good. I felt emboldened to go faster with the quieter footing.
I let my beam go out a little farther ahead to light a faster pace.
I’d been thinking too much. And I’d gone too long without turning off my light to look ahead for marker candles. So now my beam traveled before me and I was moving fast.
And by the time I noticed the pair of candles just a few feet ahead, my beam had already breached the mouth of the side tunnel where the candles sat, and my momentum carried me on even as I thought to turn off the flashlight and I began to move my thumb to the switch.
This transition from light to dark had gone fine before only because no one was there.
But now there was.
My flashlight had barely switched off when I arrived before the tunnel mouth where my light had already gone, and the two lights about ten yards down the tunnel
vanished as fast as I now saw them and Lacey’s voice said Shit and I was diving forward and downward in the total dark, angling off center toward the right-hand wall and I was landing, breaking the fall with my knees and my left hand and the tunnel clanged and a muzzle flashed in the direction of the space where I’d just been standing, and then another flash in the same direction.
Parsons and Lacey both had guns.
The echoes were still clanging in my head—and theirs—and I rose up to my knees and twisted my torso against the wall and extended my shooting arm to aim into the space of the muzzles and my thumb went to the safety catch and released it even as I heard Parsons and Lacey scuffling sharply and then going silent.
The shooters were no longer where they’d been.
The two of them were also pressed somewhere along the wall.
The blackness was absolute.
I held my breath.
I held my shooting pose.
I did not move.
In my head was an impulsive thought: Well, thank God they have guns.
I knew what I meant by that, but in these moments now, in the dark, deep under the ground beneath Paris, playing the role of Kit Cobb the unperturbably deadly American spy, with a bomb obviously set and its fuse burning an unknown distance down the tunnel, with my shooting arm stretched out toward two invisible men with their shooting arms stretched in my direction, I knew what I meant but it surprised me. I was glad I didn’t have to assassinate two unarmed men. Americans even. I was glad they were shooting back. Part of me insisted that was a stupid first thought and I had better things to consider.
I certainly had better things to consider.
In this hiatus I suspected we all three were arriving at the same conclusion: the next man to shoot, thus exposing his position, would himself be shot.
One against two, I had the worst of that deal.
Even if I outfoxed one of them and plugged him, I’d give the other a clean chance at a kill.
But Parsons and Lacey had a tough negotiation to pull off between them to make that work as a strategy. Very tough, under the circumstances.
I rested my shooting arm for a moment.
And I found something in my other hand.
My flashlight, clenched tight.
I slipped it into my pocket.
I listened.
One of them was breathing very heavily. Very fast. But the distance between us and the acoustics of the place made it impossible to turn a sound into a reliable target.
Suddenly Cyrus’s voice: “Go.”
And Lacey’s: “You.”
Negotiations had begun.
They had the pressure. Down the tunnel the bomb was ticking or burning. Probably a ten-minute fuse. They needed to haul ass far away. I had a much closer goal. The bomb and its fuse.
“Shoot,” Cyrus hissed.
“You,” Lacey hissed back, employing his Harvard debating techniques.
They both scuffled, but in place, no sound coming closer. They hadn’t gotten braver. They were simply shifting around, afraid I’d draw a bead on them from their echoing voices.
And I thought: I need to induce at least one of them to shoot, then make a kill, and at the pull of my trigger move smartly in an unexpected direction.
Right. Just that.
And then: There are two of them but I have two guns.
I knew a quiet sound was more localized than a voice. So I was very very gentle in leaning forward and squaring my torso around just enough to let my left hand go inside the back of my coat. I put my hand on the Mauser. I was trying to draw it from its holster backwards.
I waited.
Somebody down the way scuffled again and I took the soundcover to draw the Mauser and bring it out.
More scuffling, going from low to the floor to higher up a wall, generally from the direction of the left side of the tunnel, and I arranged the Mauser for shooting from my left hand.
This whole stand-off was spooking one of them, probably Lacey. I didn’t blame him.
The Mauser was ready.
I turned my torso gently again and pressed flat back against the wall. From where I was pressed I extended my Mauser hand as far as I could into the middle space of the tunnel. I didn’t have to hit anything. Just imply a body in space.
I sharply angled my hand toward me at the wrist, so the muzzle would face directly down the tunnel. As if I’d stepped out squarely into the path.
More scuffling down there.
I squeezed the Mauser trigger and let the pistol go and twisted my body back around while falling forward along the wall, getting lower, and I was falling and watching down the tunnel and whipping the Mauser hand back toward the Luger and my head was ringing as I was falling and before me now on the right was a bang and flash and I was on the ground and my Luger arm was straight and my left hand found my right and I fixed on the flash and I adjusted a little upward and I squeezed one round and instantly another, and I rolled to my left and a second muzzle flashed from the left side, aiming at where I just was, and my Luger came up and I put one round into that space and another, and I rolled onward and fired one more round to the right and one to the left and rolled back right even as all I heard was the echoing blare of my gunshots, and I aimed low and shot my last two rounds about six inches off the ground, one to the left and one to the right.
Hoping I was shooting dead or dying bodies now.
My eight shots done.
My hand went into my pocket instinctively, pulling out the other magazine, and by the time I realized what I was doing, my head started to quiet down and everything else was quiet too.
Very quiet.
I realized there had been no more muzzle flashes but mine from my second shot onward.
But I went ahead and rolled back left, popping the spent magazine and loading the other.
Still quiet.
I lifted the Luger and waited.
And listened.
I thought: It’s done.
To which my body replied with an abrupt clenching in my chest.
Not done. There was the unfinished business of a bomb.
I dipped into my pocket and pulled out the flashlight.
One last precaution.
I rose to my knees, aiming the reloaded Luger into the space before me. Then I turned on the light and scanned the tunnels quickly.
Two sprawled assemblies of shoe bottoms and knees and arms.
I stood up.
I moved to them.
I shined the light on Lacey’s gaping mouth, his fixed and empty eyes.
Then on Cyrus.
His eyes were closed. His mouth was closed. As if he were peacefully sleeping.
I put a bullet into the center of his forehead.
Now the bomb.
But I paused.
The thought of the bomb presented the details of what was ahead.
“Shit,” I said. So softly there was no echo.
I had overlooked one tool.
But I figured I knew where to find one.
I knelt to Cyrus. I felt inside his coat, along his belt line, and I found his sheath. I had to get going. I almost grabbed the knife from the sheath. But I was about to run. It would do no good to fall on the wet stones and stab myself. So I took time to unbuckle his belt and remove the sheath and put the whole thing into my inner coat pocket.
And now I was moving fast.
I did not try to figure the chances. How many minutes ago they’d set the fuse. How long the fuse would burn.
I just focused on the ground ahead.
Clay.
I pushed on fast. Too fast. Wet clay. My foot slipped, I pulled up, throwing my balance lower, stumbling, going to one knee.
I had to stay calm.
A slower pace to avoid a greater delay.
I rose back up and moved off. Quick but precise.
And all that I saw was the flow of ground into my light. Stones again now under my feet and more ahead and more.
Minutes were f
lowing too. My mind wouldn’t let go of a sense of that. One minute. Two. Three, I guessed.
Then suddenly I was upon a pair of candles and another turn and I took it, and thirty yards ahead was light. A bright white light. I approached. The white glow of the gas mantle of a Coleman lamp, casting its radiance far into the tunnel. Parsons and Lacey had left it behind. Less to carry. It lit the start of their escape. The end of their lives.
Too bad, boys.
I strode now into an abrupt expansion of the tunnel. A chamber held up by four pillars of massive stone blocks. Three dark entries—other tunnels—converging here.
And in the center were the stacked rolls of dynamite. Dozens of sticks. From the center bottom stack ran the long, looped fuse, twenty feet long and smooth white. A Bickford fuse. Inside its tar-varnished exterior the jute yarn was burning unseen. No sparks. Safe as hell. Only a hiss. I had no time to figure out where the fire was. The fuse burned at two feet per minute. A ten-minute fuse. Not much time left.
I plunged to the starter stick and its blasting cap, pulling the knife from my inside pocket, ripping the blade from the sheath.
And now I could hear it.
A hissing.
Very near.
Coming this way.
I crouched to the fuse, grasped it near the cap, put my foot on the fuse about a yard along. In between foot and hand I laid the upturned blade beneath the cord and I sliced upward.
Not quite enough.
Upward again and the cut went through and the loose end held down by my foot thrashed away.
The hissing was very close, somewhere in that length of fuse flailing back toward its blasting cap, the flame about to arrive at the cut end.
It was going to spark into the air.
I grabbed the fuse and lurched away from the dynamite and pressed the exposed jute squarely against the stone of the floor.
The flame arrived, sizzling, the spark pressing to escape.
I stubbed it out like the butt of a Fatima.
Then silence.
32
I carried the Coleman lamp through the Catacombs of Paris making the joint seem bright and big and a swell place to take a stroll in your bare and battered feet. Even as my knees and my hands felt a little bit shaky.
Paris in the Dark Page 22
