by Steve Berry
She did not appear comforted. “You still haven’t answered my question about the Paris Club.”
“We meet tomorrow morning at the Eiffel Tower. Eliza has rented the banquet room on level one and plans to take everyone to the top around noon. As I said, Lyon likes timelines. Noon is when the explosion will occur, and the club will have the perfect vantage point.”
“Do the members know what’s going to happen?”
He shook his head. “Heavens, no. Only she and I, and our South African. I would assume most of them would be appalled.”
“Though they won’t mind profiting from it.”
The tour headed farther into the bowels of London’s darkened east side.
“Morality rarely plays into the quest for profit,” he said.
“So tell me what I really want to know. How do we finally connect with Lyon?” she asked.
“The same way I did.”
“Not good enough. I want him delivered.”
He stopped walking. “How do you propose I do that? I’ve only seen him once, and he was totally disguised. He communicates with me at his choosing.”
They were keeping their voices down, walking behind the main group. Even though he’d worn his thickest wool coat and fur-lined gloves, he was cold. Each exhale vaporized before his eyes.
“Surely you can arrange something,” she said. “Considering we won’t be prosecuting you.”
He caught the unspoken threat. “Is that why I’m honored tonight with your presence? You came to deliver an ultimatum? Your representative wasn’t authoritative enough?”
“Game’s over, Ashby. Your usefulness is rapidly diminishing. I’d suggest you do something to increase your value.”
He’d actually already done just that, but he wasn’t about to tell this woman anything. So he asked, “Why did your people take the book in the Invalides?”
She chuckled. “To show you that there’s been a change in management on this end. New rules apply.”
“Lucky for me that you’re so dedicated to your profession.”
“You really think that there’s some lost treasure of Napoleon out there to find?”
“Eliza Larocque certainly does.”
She reached beneath her coat, removed something, and handed it to him. “That’s my show of good faith.”
He gripped the volume through his gloves. In the ambient glow of a nearby street lamp he caught the title. The Merovingian Kingdoms 450–751 A.D.
The book from the Invalides.
“Now,” she said, “give me what I want.”
The tour approached Ten Bells pub and he heard the guide explain how the establishment had played host to many of Jack the Ripper’s victims, perhaps even the Ripper himself. A fifteen-minute break was announced and drinks were available inside.
He should head back to Salen Hall and Caroline. “Are we finished?”
“Until tomorrow.”
“I’ll do everything possible to make sure you get what you want.”
“I hope so,” she said. “For your sake.”
And with that the woman named Stephanie Nelle walked off into the night.
He stared down at the book. Things really were finally falling into place.
“Good evening, Lord Ashby.”
The unexpected voice came near his right ear, low and throaty, below the rhythmic sound of soles slapping pavement around him. He turned and, in the glow of another street lamp, caught a reddish hue in thick hair and thin eyebrows. He noticed an aquiline nose, scarred face, and eyeglasses. The man was dressed, like the others around him, in thick winter wear, including scarf and gloves. One hand clutched the roped handles of a Selfridges shopping bag.
Then he saw the eyes.
A burnt amber.
“Do you ever look the same?” he asked Peter Lyon.
“Hardly.”
“It must be difficult having no identity.”
“I have no problem with my identity. I know exactly who and what I am.” The voice this time seemed almost American.
He was concerned. Peter Lyon should not be here.
“You and I need to speak, Lord Ashby.”
FORTY-FOUR
PARIS, 8:50 PM
SAM FOLLOWED MEAGAN DOWN A SPIRAL STAIRCASE THAT CORKSCREWED into the earth. They’d dined at a café in the Latin Quarter after being granted a temporary release from Stephanie Nelle’s protective custody.
“Where are we going?” he asked her as they kept descending into pitch blackness.
“To Paris’ basement,” Meagan said.
She was ahead of him, her flashlight dissolving the darkness below. When he reached the bottom, she handed him another light. “They don’t keep flashlights down here for trespassers like us.”
“Trespassers?”
She motioned with her beam. “It’s illegal to be here.”
“What is here?”
“The quarries. A hundred and seventy miles of tunnels and galleries. Formed when limestone was torn from the ground, used for buildings, to make gypsum for plaster, clay for bricks, and roof tiles. Everything needed to build Paris, and this is what’s left. The Paris underground.”
“And the reason we’re here?”
She shrugged. “I like this place. I thought you might, too.”
She walked ahead, following a damp passage clearly hewn from solid rock and supported by a chalky framework. The air was cool but not cold, the floor uneven and unpredictable.
“Careful of the rats,” she said. “They can pass leptospirosis.”
He stopped. “Excuse me?”
“Bacterial infection. Fatal.”
“Are you nuts?”
She stopped. “Unless you plan on letting one bite you or swishing your fingers in their urine, I’d say you’re okay.”
“What are we doing here?”
“Are you always so antsy? Just follow me. I want to show you something.”
They started back down the corridor, the roof just above his head. Her light beam revealed about fifty feet of tunnel ahead of them.
“Norstrum,” he called out to the blackness.
He wondered why he’d disobeyed and come, but the promise of an adventure had been too enticing to ignore. The caves were not far from the school, and everyone knew about them. Funny how no one ever used the word orphanage. Always the school. Or the institute. Who were his parents? He had no idea. He’d been abandoned at birth, and how he arrived in Christchurch the police never determined. The school insisted students know all they could about themselves. No secrets—he actually appreciated that rule—but there was simply nothing for him to learn.
“Sam.”
Norstrum’s voice.
He’d been told that Norstrum, when he’d first arrived at the school, had named him Sam Collins, after a beloved uncle.
“Where are you?” he called out to the blackness.
“Not far.”
He aimed his light and kept walking.
“It’s just up here,” Meagan said, as the tunnel ended in what appeared to be a spacious gallery, with multiple exits and a high ceiling. Stone pillars supported a curved roof. Meagan shone her light on the rough walls and he spied myriad graffiti, paintings, inscriptions, cartoons, mosaics, poetry, even musical lyrics.
“It’s a collage of social history,” she said. “These drawings date back to the time of the French Revolution, the Prussian siege in the late 19th century, and the German occupation in the 1940s. The Paris underground has always been a refuge from war, death, and destruction.”
One drawing caught his eye. A sketch of a guillotine.
“From the Grande Terreur,” she said, over his shoulder. “Two hundred years old. A testament to a time when bloody deaths were a part of everyday life here. That was made with black smoke. Quarrymen of that day carried candles and oil lamps, and they’d place the flame close against the wall, which baked carbon into the stone. Pretty smart.”
He pointed with his light. “That’s from the French R
evolution?”
She nodded. “This is a time capsule, Sam. The entire underground is that way. See why I like it?”
He glanced around at the images. Most seemed conceived with sobriety, but humor and satire were also evident, along with several titillating pornographic additions.
“This is a pretty amazing place,” she said to the darkness. “I come here a lot. It’s peaceful and silent. Like a return to the womb. Going back to the surface, to me, can be like a rebirth.”
He was taken aback by her frankness. Apparently cracks did exist in her tough veneer. Then he understood.
“You’re scared, aren’t you?”
She faced him and, in the glow from her light, he caught sincerity in her eyes. “You know I am.”
“I am, too.”
“It’s okay to be scared,” Norstrum had said when he finally found him in the cave. “But you should not have come here alone.”
He knew that now.
“Fear can be an ally,” Norstrum said. “Always take it with you, no matter what the fight. It’s what keeps you sharp.”
“But I don’t want to be afraid. I hate being afraid.”
Norstrum laid a hand on his shoulder. “There’s no choice, Sam. It’s the circumstances that create fear. How you respond is all you can control. Concentrate on that, and you’ll always succeed.”
He gently laid his hand on her shoulder. It was the first time they’d touched, and she did not pull away.
Surprising himself, he was glad.
“We’ll be okay,” he told her.
“Those men yesterday, in the museum, I think they would have eventually hurt me.”
“That’s really why you forced things, while I was there?”
A hesitation, then she nodded.
He appreciated her honesty. Finally. “Looks like we’ve both bit off a lot.”
She grinned. “Apparently so.”
He withdrew his hand and wondered about her show of vulnerability. Through emails, they’d communicated many times over the past year. He’d thought he was speaking to a man named Jimmy Foddrell. Instead, an intriguing woman had been on the other end of the Internet. Thinking back, she’d actually reached out in some of those communiqués. Never like this—but enough that he’d felt a connection.
She pointed with her light. “Down those corridors you’ll eventually find the catacombs. The bones of six million people are stacked there. Ever been?”
He shook his head.
“Don’t.”
He kept silent.
“These drawings,” she said, “were made by ordinary people. But they’re a historical essay. The walls down here, for miles, are covered in pictures. They show people’s life and times, fears, and superstitions. They are a record.” She paused. “We have a chance, Sam, to do something real. Something that could make a difference.”
They were so much alike. Both of them lived in a virtual world of paranoia and speculation. And both of them harbored good intentions.
“Then let’s do it,” he said.
She chuckled. “I wish it were that easy. I have a bad feeling about this.”
She seemed to draw strength from this underground spectacle. Perhaps even some wisdom, too.
“Care to explain that one?”
She shook her head. “I can’t, really. Just a feeling.”
She came closer. Barely a few inches away. “Did you know that a kiss shortens life by three minutes?”
He considered her strange inquiry, then shook his head.
“Not a peck on the cheek. A real kiss, like you mean it, causes palpitations to such a degree that the heart works harder in four seconds than it normally would in three minutes.”
“Really, now?”
“There was a study. Hell, Sam, there’s a study for everything. 480 kisses—again, like you mean it—will shorten a person’s life by one day. 2,300 will cost a week. 120,000? There goes a year.”
She inched closer.
He smiled. “And the point?”
“I can spare three minutes of my life, if you can.”
FORTY-FIVE
LONDON
MALONE WATCHED AS STEPHANIE DISAPPEARED INTO THE night and another man immediately approached Graham Ashby, toting a Selfridges shopping bag. Malone had immersed himself among the walking tour, embracing the talkative crowd. His task was to cover Stephanie’s back, keep a close eye on things, but now they may have finally caught a break.
He noted the features of Ashby’s companion.
Reddish hair, thin nose, medium build, about 160 to 170 pounds, dressed like everybody else in a wool coat, scarf, and gloves. But something told him that this was not just anybody else.
Many in the tour were making their way into the Ten Bells pub, the rattle from a multitude of conversations spilling out into the night. Entrepreneurs were actively hawking Jack the Ripper T-shirts and commemorative mugs. Ashby and Red loitered on the sidewalk, and Malone crept to within thirty feet, a spate of boisterous people between them. Flashbulbs strobed the darkness as many in the group stole a picture before the pub’s colorful façade.
He joined in the revelry and bought a T-shirt from one of the vendors.
ASHBY WAS CONCERNED.
“I thought it best we speak tonight,” Peter Lyon said to him.
“How did you know I was here?”
“The woman. Is she an acquaintance?”
He thought back to his conversation with Stephanie Nelle. They’d kept their voices low and had stood apart from the crowd. No one had been nearby. Had Lyon heard anything?
“I have many female acquaintances.”
Lyon chuckled. “I’m sure you do. Women provide the greatest of pleasures, the worst of problems.”
“How did you find me?” he asked again.
“Did you think for one moment that I wouldn’t discover what you are doing?”
His legs began to shake, and not from the cold.
Lyon motioned for them to drift across the street, away from the pub, where fewer people stood and no street lamps burned. Ashby walked with trepidation, but realized that Lyon wouldn’t do anything here, with so many witnesses.
Or would he?
“I’ve been aware of your contacts with the Americans from the beginning,” Lyon said to him, the voice low and controlled. “It’s amusing you think yourself so clever.”
No sense lying. “I had no choice.”
Lyon shrugged. “We all have choices, but it matters not to me. I want your money, and you want a service. I assume you still want it?”
“More than ever.”
Lyon pointed a finger at him. “Then it will cost triple my original fee. The first hundred percent for your treachery. The second for the trouble you’ve put me to.”
He was in no position to argue. Besides, he was using club money anyway. “That can be arranged.”
“She gave you a book. What is it?”
“Is that part of the new arrangement? You are to know all of my business?”
“You should know, Lord Ashby, that I’ve found it hard to resist the urge of placing a bullet between your eyes. I detest a man with no character and you, sir, have none.”
Interesting attitude for a mass murderer, but he kept his opinion to himself.
“If not for your money—” Lyon paused. “Please, don’t try my patience any further.”
He accepted the advice and answered the man’s question. “It’s a project I’ve been working on. A lost treasure. The Americans confiscated a vital clue to keep me compliant. She returned it to me.”
“A treasure? I learned that you were once an avid collector. Stealing objects already stolen. Keeping them for yourself. Quite the clever one, you are. But the police put a stop to that.”
“Temporarily.”
Lyon laughed. “All right, Lord Ashby, you go after your treasure. Just transfer my money. By dawn. I’ll be checking, before events start to happen.”
“It will be there.”
He
heard the guide draw the crowd together, telling them it was time to move on.
“I think I’ll finish the tour,” Lyon said. “Quite interesting, Jack the Ripper.”
“What about tomorrow? You know the Americans are watching.”
“That I do. It will be quite the show.”
MALONE DISSOLVED INTO THE TOUR AS THE CROWD INCLUDING Red, drew into the guide’s wake and they all ambled off into the darkness. He kept Red just inside his peripheral vision, deciding he was far more interesting than Ashby.
The tour continued another twenty minutes down coal-black streets, ending at an Underground station. Inside, Red used a travel card to pass through the turnstile. Malone hurried over to a token machine and quickly purchased four, making his way past the gate to the escalator just as his quarry stepped off at the bottom. He did not like the bright lights and the sparse crowd, but had no choice.
He stepped off the escalator onto the platform.
Red was standing twenty feet away, still holding his shopping bag.
An electronic billboard indicated the train was 75 seconds away. He studied a schematic of the London subway hanging on the wall and saw that this station serviced the District Line, which paralleled the Thames and ran east to west the city’s full length. This platform was for a westbound train, the route taking them to Tower Hill, beneath Westminster, through Victoria Station, and eventually beyond Kensington.
More people filtered down from above as a train arrived.
He kept his distance, positioning himself well behind, and followed his quarry into the car. He stood, hugging one of the stainless-steel poles, Red doing the same thirty feet away. Enough people were crammed into the car that no one face should draw much attention.
As the train chugged beneath the city, Malone studied his target, who seemed an older man, out for the evening, enjoying London.
But he spotted the eyes.
Amber.
He knew Peter Lyon possessed one anomaly. He loved disguise, but a genetic eye defect not only oddly colored his irises, but also made them overly susceptible to infection and prevented him from wearing contact lenses. Lyon preferred glasses to shield their distinctive amber tint, but had not worn any tonight.
