Now she felt stinging points of pain. Pieces of falling fire had burned through her clothes. The damage was on her back where she couldn’t see. It didn’t matter.
“It’s nothing.” Her throat was raw from breathing in the smoke. She swallowed and tasted ash. “At the other door. There will be a soldier. Go.”
“There are men headed that way.” Hawker pulled out a handkerchief, spit on it, and swiped across her eyes. “I’ve got to find the Englishman. For God’s sake, get away from the fire. And move these damn idiots along.” He was gone, dodging through the crowd, his friend Paxton at his back.
She ran to catch up with Napoleon. He strode through this tumult alone, sending his soldiers to help others. It would be easy, easy, for someone to slip toward him and shoot. That might be their plan all along. In the madness of the fire, to kill him and escape.
Napoleon took his place in the center of the marble entry hall under the great chandelier. Men rushed by in this direction and that, shouting. Then they saw him, and chaos ceased.
Suddenly, officers’ voices could be heard. Men formed quickly moving lines, passing buckets. The injured and grimy survivors of the fire were helped outside. The doors cleared.
Napoleon treated this as he would a battlefield. He stayed where he could be seen and consulted. He issued orders to one man and sent him on his way. Spotted another and motioned him forward. Gave more orders. Men came to him in panic and departed with purpose.
She set herself four feet from his back and drew her gun from her pocket, cocked it, and held it at her side, pointed to the floor, hidden by the folds of her skirt. Ready. She studied the eyes of every man who approached him, watched the hands of every man and woman who hesitated in the corridor and stared.
The First Consul had escaped one threat. He must be guarded from the next. That was her job, in this confusion, to guard his back.
Leblanc came from the courtyard outside. He’d washed his face somewhere, but his hair was still full of black ash. He breathed raggedly as he approached the First Consul, whether from exertion or fear, she did not know. “The Englishman got away. We’re searching the building for him. I will send—”
“It is not the English.” Napoleon commanded armies in the field. Now he raised his voice so it could be heard above the shouting, over the weeping of women who had collapsed on benches in the corridor, over the tromp of soldiers. “This is an unfortunate accident. The fire has been controlled.” In a lower voice, he said to Leblanc, “See that nothing else reaches the papers. This is a small fire that accidentally broke out.”
“The Englishman lit the—”
“There is no Englishman. This is a plot of the Jacobins. There are a number already under suspicion of treasonous activities. I want them arrested. Find Fouché. I must talk to him.”
“Of course, First Consul, I—”
The First Consul would naturally blame the Jacobins. He would take any excuse to harass them. And he did not wish to go to war with England. Not at this minute. Not before he prepared.
Leblanc tried to say more, but Napoleon had already turned away to listen to a sergeant who spoke of pumps. Then he called over to him a man in the clothing of a clerk, saying again that this was an accident only. Not the first fire in these old buildings. This information must appear, just so, in the press.
Vezier came from the direction of the fire, his face smeared, his eyes tearing tracks down to his mustache. He saw the gun she held ready, and at once understood the danger to the First Consul. He gestured three men from the work of carrying buckets to set them in a phalanx around Napoleon. They were ordinary soldiers, but they took up positions, as if by instinct, putting their own bodies between the threat of an assassin and the future of Europe.
Leblanc stalked toward her, determined and furious, and closed his fist around her arm. “We will find the Englishman who did this. Come with me.”
Thirty-seven
HE DIDN’T WANT TO LEAVE OWL, BUT HIS JOB WAS to find the Englishman before the French did.
She was alive. Coughing, wheezing, eyes watering, with a nasty burn on her back, but alive. She’d feel the hurt later, when she stood still.
He spent one minute with her, just long enough to hear her breathing clear. No time to say he’d thought she was going to die—thought they both were going to die—and he would have traded his life to get her out.
No time, no place, to kiss her. They’d do that later. He’d find the Englishman and wring his damn neck. Then he’d take Owl to bed.
He signaled Pax, and they took off, following the route the Englishman must have taken, down the corridor and out the door, into the courtyard between the Tuileries and the Louvre.
Ten feet from the door he let himself look back. Owl had attached herself to that bastard Napoleon, playing guard. She was drawn up straight, all steel, ready to shoot anybody who looked at Bonaparte cross-eyed.
The best strike came after the first one failed and the target relaxed. If he was running an operation to kill that cove, he’d do it now.
Clever Owl. Consummate professional. Nothing she didn’t see.
Smoke plumed out of a line of windows to his left. The whole side of the building was covered with a blanket of black. Men pumped water into the horse trough, scooped it up, and ran with buckets into the Tuileries.
He motioned Pax to the center of the courtyard and some clear space. “Our Englishman is six foot, built heavy, brown hair going thin on top, red face. Fifty years old. Dark blue coat with brass buttons. Blue vest.”
“I got one look at him, running away.” Pax kept up. “He won’t be out here where everybody can see him.”
“He’ll stay, though. Stay to see what happens.”
“Amateur.”
“This all stinks of the amateur.”
A hundred people had come out to stare at the fire. Office clerks, maids, cooks, and floor scrubbers from the Tuileries. Gaggles of art lovers running across from the Louvre, pointing and shouting. Soldiers headed in from all quarters, dodging the gawking idiots, trying to get to the fire and do something useful.
The Englishman was here, somewhere.
“A professional would have killed you so you couldn’t move that heavy bit of furniture away from the door. He’d have shot Napoleon when he came out of the smoke. And he’d be halfway to Montmartre by now.”
“That’s what you’d do.”
“That’s what anyone sensible would do.” They were jostled by men wanting a better view of the fire. “Only a bloody amateur traps six dozen people in a fire. When you set out to kill a man, you kill the man. You don’t burn half a bloody palace doing it.”
“Lots of places for him to hide and watch.” Pax looked from door to door, window to window, rooftop to rooftop. “Or set up a gun.”
He stripped away the anger and considered the kind of man who put together a plot with so many deaths. “He doesn’t have a gun. He planned one big, showy spectacular moment. Mopping up afterward isn’t in his calculations.”
“He doesn’t kill face-to-face.”
“Right. It’s not the gut hit and the blood he’s after. He wants to wind everything up like a clock and set it down and watch it happen. He wants to be . . . like the ceilings in this place. All those gods sneering down from the clouds. Jupiter. That lot.”
“The classical gods.” Amusement from Pax, but he was thinking about it too.
“He wants to look down on everybody. He’s tucked himself up where there’s a good view.”
Lots of places to hide in the attics of the Louvre. The top floor, up under the roof, had big, wide windows with pointed tops and—what were they called?—plinths running up beside them. Arrogant-looking windows. “What’s on the top floor over there?”
Pax would know. He was like Owl, always running over to the Louvre to see some picture or other. He tapped finger to finger as they walked, counting off. “Exhibits on the ground floor. The office of the curator upstairs. Top floor, it’s workshops. The s
tudios where they do restoration. There’s storage.”
“He’ll use a storage room. Damn, but I need a map of this place.” They were in step, eating the distance across this churned-up gravel. Not moving so fast they stood out in the general mob scene. “He’s upstairs, watching the Tuileries.”
“Likely.”
They crossed one of the charcoal arrows he’d drawn on the ground. “Who did Carruthers send?”
“Hawk, everybody’s scattered out. She’ll send what she can, but . . .”
“Damn.” He thought about it for a while and said, “Damn,” again. “We’re on our own. There’s at least three others with the Englishman. They needed that many to block both doors at once.”
“Let’s hope we don’t run into them all at once.” Pax touched one pocket of his coat and then another. “I have two shots.”
“The Frenchmen have sense enough to get out of—” In a high window, a patch of light color moved against dark. Somebody stood there. “See that? Someone’s taking an interest. What do you want to bet that’s the ballock-sucking pustule who sets fire to a room with women and kids?”
“I never bet with you, Hawk.”
They ran the last fifty paces. In a minute, Napoleon was going step out into the courtyard and show himself to everybody, letting the world know he was safe. The Englishman was going to realize he’d failed. He’d run.
Through the door, into this piece of the Louvre. Pax drew his gun and cocked it. Acres of white marble on the floor. Marble and bronze people on pedestals, not wearing clothes. Archways and columns. Three hundred places for some cove to jump out and shoot a hole in you.
At the end of this gallery, the steps going up were more goddamned marble. A hell bitch to run on. Carved marble grapes and cherubs frolicked around the banister, flight after flight, all the way up. Pax followed him up, keeping an eye behind. If anybody had a gun, he and Pax were going to get holes shot in them on these stairs.
On the second floor, they met two men jabbering their way along the hall, all excited.
“Get back in your office. Stay there.” It was enough to send them skittering. Ten years of war and riot had taught people to get out of the way fast when somebody barked orders.
Outside, shouts and cheering echoed sharp on the stone. Napoleon must have walked out into the courtyard.
Pax said, “The First Consul of France escapes again. Let joy be unconfined.”
“I should have put a knife in him as I passed by. There are some opportunities it is just a sin and a shame to miss.”
Pax whispered, “We do not assassinate foreign heads of state.” They were at top of the stairs, backed to the wall. He leaned to look down the row of doors. “Without orders.”
“I would have saved ten thousand English lives on the battlefields of Europe.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Listen.” Somebody was up here. Footsteps. The middle door opened, and a man ran past, headlong.
Got ’im. He grabbed the man’s coat. Swung him to crash against the wall. Now we do a little talking. Twisted an arm behind his back. For all the brute size and muscle, it was easy to force the gasping, thrashing ape to his knees. “Who’s in it with you? Talk to me, you bastard.”
Pax grabbed the man’s hair and pulled his head back so they could see him.
From the man, in English, “I don’t understand. I don’t speak French.”
This wasn’t the man in charge. This was somebody’s cat-spaw. This was the fool. Le fou. He switched languages, “Who are you working for? Give me their names.”
“You’re English!” Relief filled the man’s face. “Thank God. You have to get me out of here. They’ll be after us in a minute.”
“Who sent you to France?”
“I can’t be taken by the garde. I have important work to finish.”
Killing women and kids. “Who gave the orders?”
“I have to get away. He has to be stopped.”
“Who gave you the fire starter?” He ratcheted the man’s wrist tighter. It was pointless. The stupid lump was incoherent with fear and frenzy. He didn’t feel anything. “You didn’t think of this yourself.”
“Napoleon must die. No peace till he dies.” He was fighting, trying to get up, sputtering, “Have to try again. I’ll get him next time.”
Pax had his head to the side, listening. “They’re coming. A lot of them.”
The man was spewing English loud enough to tell the world they were up here. “He killed my boy. Killed my Roger. Roger Cameron, Lieutenant of The Valorous. My boy died at the Battle of Aboukir. He killed my boy.”
A man willing to murder a hundred innocents because his son died in a naval battle. He’d do this again. The next bomb might go off in the middle of the Comédie-Française.
Shouts from below and the tromp that meant soldiers. They were about to deal with the French authorities.
“Napoleon must die.” Spittle and gasps from the Englishman. “Only way to save England. The army’s behind me. Important men. Highest levels. They know what he is.”
“Give me the names.” But this man didn’t know anything. He was a tool in somebody’s hands. He hadn’t been sent here to kill Napoleon. He’d been sent here to be captured and talk.
“I’m doing this is for England. For England.”
Casus belli. This blind idiot, this bull-headed, stupid animal would be the cause of war.
Soldiers shouted back and forth in the marble halls downstairs. No getting the Englishman away where they could question him. Only one choice.
“Get back.” He wouldn’t make Pax part of this. He’d keep the load on his own conscience.
It didn’t take strength. It took knowing how to balance the weight. It took being used to the work of killing. It took being the Hawker.
The Englishman rolled over the banister with chilling grace. The man let out one yelp on the way down. He had a second to be scared. Probably less.
The body sprawled faceup at the bottom. It had a cleanly broken neck, among other things. A fast and clean way out of life. Better than dying in a fire.
Better than what the French would do to him and Pax, if they caught them. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
They took off with the soldiers pounding up the stairs after them.
Thirty-eight
THE GALLERIES OF THE LOUVRE WERE ALMOST DESERTED. Pax didn’t see anyone as he strolled past a fine collection of art looted from Italy. More of Napoleon’s contribution to the history of plunder. The statue of Laocoön wrestling a snake took most of the end of the hall. A reminder he wasn’t the only one with problems.
He and Hawk had been spotted killing the Englishman. The soldiers had their description. Time to run.
“Paxton.”
Carruthers. She wore crow black, all the respectable widow. At her side, Althea was in a neat dress and heavy fichu that said “comfortable, old-fashioned maidservant.” God help the man who thought that’s what they were.
“The Englishman is dead,” he said, skipping the preliminaries.
“We heard.” Carruthers was disapproving. “A regrettable accident to mar the general rejoicing for the First Consul’s escape from the fire. Did you learn anything before killing him?”
“We didn’t have much time.”
“That is unfortunate.”
“You, my dear boy, are sought as one of the radical Jacobins who set the fire.” Althea smiled. She’d filled a handkerchief with gray ash from the fire. “You were seen and described. Your hair is most impressively memorable.” She moved behind a plinth which carried a Roman copy of a fifth-century bust of Pericles. “Lean down, please. That’s right.”
He took his hat off and let her dust gray into his hair.
“Not wholly convincing at close quarters.” She brushed at his face with the back of her fingers. “It will do from a distance. There. Turn around. I’ll tie your hair back.”
Carruthers stood, concealing them. “At least his deat
h will placate the French. They’ll know we tidied him up. Adrian?”
“Took off the other way. I don’t know where he is.” Althea had picked up an art pencil from one of the easels standing around. He couldn’t speak while she drew lines on his face.
“Enough.” Carruthers looked him over. “Let us dodder harmlessly away.”
The Head of Section for Paris at his side, a senior agent of the British Service trailing behind, he hobbled down the long gallery. In the jubilation at Napoleon’s narrow escape, no one paid attention to an old man, overcome by excitement.
The guards at the door argued over whether a dead Englishman had been shot or tossed out a window and didn’t even glance up as he shuffled down the stairs.
Down the Rue de Rivoli, left, two streets over, and one up. They entered the alley behind a boulangerie. It was stacked with old barrels, smelling of flour and yeast, hot from the bakery ovens. This led to a storage room that was one of the safe houses of the British Service.
Carruthers said, “I’ll send the fiacre for you at dusk. You will grace England with your presence for a while.”
He put out a hand. “Wait.” And he told her he was a Caché.
Thirty-nine
JUSTINE FOLLOWED LEBLANC INTO THE CROWD, keeping an eye out for any dark, slim man decorated with ashes. She saw no one of interest, neither Hawker nor his friend with the so-obvious hair. The fire in the Pavillon de Marsan had dusted everyone with bits of black. If Hawker had stupidly remained to hide among the crowd, he would blend in.
“He was seen,” Leblanc pointed, “headed that way. We go to the main building.”
Two guards followed them, armed. “Yes, monsieur.”
It was dim inside, after the bright sun of the courtyard, even with the long windows that reached to the ceiling. They passed no one. All the world was in the courtyard, cheering the arrival of the pumping engine. The galleries of the Louvre led one into another, endless canyons of paintings, studded with statues. It was as good an escape as most, and Hawker would not linger to admire the artwork. He was gone from here. Long gone.
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