The Accident Man:A Novel

6

The other motorcycle pulled up two hundred meters farther up the road, on the Avenue de New York, just beyond the vast neoclassical expanse of the Palais de Tokyo, home of the Paris Museum of Modern Art.
Grigori Kursk placed his feet on the ground astride his Ducati M900 Monster, sat upright, and raised his visor. His eyes burned with the rapacious hunger of a man for whom killing was not just a job but a compulsion—one that he would gratify whether he was paid to do so or not.
He turned to look at his passenger, who was just stowing the camera in a basket on the side of the bike.
“Did you see that?” he crowed, speaking in Russian. “Did you see the look on that driver’s face? The poor bastard didn’t know what to do. Well, he’s just French paté now!” He paused for a second, then continued more calmly, getting back to business: “Okay, that was just as easy as I promised. Now, let’s pick up the other half of the money.”
“Just pick it up fast, I’m in agony back here,” his passenger replied. “My knees are up around my ears.”
Kursk laughed. “Ha! I thought you liked it like that!”
He drove on another few meters till he found a gap in the parked cars just big enough for the bike. He positioned himself facing out from the curve, giving himself just enough clearance to see the exit of the tunnel. He then took a night-scope from the chest pocket of his biker jacket and held it up to his right eye, through the gap in his helmet. He was looking for the man who’d been on the bike at the far end of the tunnel.
Kursk knew two things about this man. He was ex-British special forces. And he was the next target.



7

Carver’s route out of town was simple. He planned to follow the river till he reached the périphérique, the freeway that ringed Paris, then to circle the city counterclockwise before hitting the A5 expressway away from the city to the southeast. He’d be over the Swiss border before dawn.
He was just about to open the throttle when a flash of light caught his eye, no more than a hundred meters ahead, a reflection off a glass lens. It was only there for a fraction of a second, but that was long enough to draw Carver’s attention and alert him to the curve of a motorcycle tire protruding from behind a parked car.
Someone was watching him. And he was riding straight toward them.
Carver needed to get off the road. He looked to his right. There was a turning. No good—a dead end. There was only one option now. He swung the Honda onto the broad expanse of pavement and raced past a line of trees and a low, black-painted iron railing that provided some sort of barrier between himself and whoever was waiting for him.
To his right loomed the gray white bulk of the Palais de Tokyo. Its wings wrapped around a vast expanse of open plaza that rose uphill on four levels, separated by flights of shallow steps that stretched the full width of the building. At the very back ran two rows of tall classical columns, raised on a high pediment between the two wings. Behind them was the Avenue du President Wilson, which would give him another route out of town.
Carver swerved toward the giant building, aiming the bike at the pediment. He hugged the curved wings of the plaza, racing past a knot of skateboarders huddled around a glowing joint, who looked at him in stoned bafflement. As he hit the first line of five steps, he rose in his saddle, letting his legs and arms act as shock absorbers as the Honda juddered up and over the obstruction.
With his helmet on and the engine screaming, Carver didn’t hear the gunfire. He just saw a spark of light to his left, followed instantaneously by the impact of bullets smashing into the back of the bike, punching holes in the rear mud flap, and blasting through the exhaust pipe.
Behind him, the skateboarders were woken from their trance. A couple threw themselves to the ground. The rest just ran, screaming in panic across the expanse of open stone.
Carver crouched over the handlebars, pressing his head down as low as possible as the wall next to him erupted in a spattering of miniature explosions, little puffs of stone fragments and dust. He had nowhere to go but straight ahead. Jinking his bike from side to side, he raced across the pavement, then hit the next set of steps.
He was in a heavy sweat now, almost pulling the machine beneath him over the steps by sheer physical effort and bloody-minded determination. But as his body rocked back and forth in the saddle, his mind was working on another problem. Who was shooting at him? The obvious answer was someone working with or for Ramzi Narwaz. But if he had protection, why hadn’t they defended his car? It had to be someone else. And unless the assassination party had an uninvited guest, that only left one alternative.
“Shit!”
Kursk shook his head in disgust and shoved his Mini Uzi submachine gun back in his jacket. He had been forced to shoot twisted around in the saddle of his bike, which was pointing in the wrong direction, away from the plaza where the Englishman was making his escape. There were trees in the way and he was aiming at a moving target. He was just wasting ammunition.
Then he looked again. The Englishman seemed to be riding into a dead end, trapping himself at the far end of the inverted U-shaped plaza, beneath a wall at least four meters high. Kursk saw that there were more steps rising, much more steeply this time, diagonally up the side of the wall. Mother of God, was the man planning to ride up those as well?
If he did, Kursk would not be able to follow. His bike wasn’t built for that kind of stunt. Not with a passenger onboard. Of course, he’d have time to get off the bike, set the gun to fire single-shot, and aim at leisure as his target struggled upward. But the range would be well over a hundred meters. At that distance his gun, designed for close-range work, had greatly reduced stopping power.
There was another issue. Suppose he put enough shots into the Englishman to kill him. Kursk would still be left with a body on the steps of a public building, with witnesses to the shooting, less than four hundred meters from the initial crash. Even for the guys who’d hired him, that would be hard to cover up.
He swore under his breath. Things were getting out of hand. Kursk had to get one move ahead of his opponent.
“Hang on,” he said to his passenger, and punched the Ducati back to life. He drove another few meters down the Avenue de New York, then made a right onto a side street and roared uphill, beside the Palais de Tokyo. Now he was running parallel to Carver, separated by the bulk of the building, heading away from the river. But he’d be closing in on his quarry soon enough.
At the far side of the plaza, Carver had reached the foot of the pediment steps. He revved the bike, prayed that its low-gear grunt was as good as advertised, then hurled himself at the steps, heaving the handlebars and pushing with his thighs, as if forcing an exhausted horse over a series of fences. The engine screamed in complaint as it rose to the demand. But it kept going up.
Finally, with one last howl of protest, the bike made it to the top, spun its rear wheel for a second on the slick marble surface, then raced forward, between the columns, out onto the tiny semicircle of the Place de Tokyo, which led directly to the Avenue du President Wilson and—
“Damn!”
Carver needed to turn left, across the oncoming traffic, into the far right-hand lane of the road. That was the way to the périphérique. But there were two solid lines of parked cars, backed by trees, running down the middle of the road, blocking his way.
Then, emerging from a side street about fifty meters to his left, he saw the same bike that had been chasing the Mercedes. It was a big, powerful machine but it looked like a scooter beneath the massive bulk of its rider, who dwarfed the passenger riding pillion. Their two heads scanned from side to side, then the smaller man tapped the rider on the shoulder and nodded down the road in Carver’s direction. The rider responded immediately, turning right and gunning it downhill.
By then Carver was already blazing down the road. He’d answered his own question. Max had set his people after him. But why would he want him dead? Carver ran through the alternatives in his mind as he sent the Honda’s engine back into the red zone, ignoring traffic lights, swerving in and out of traffic coming out of the cross streets.
Was it the money? Three million bucks was a lot to splash out on one job. If Max got him out of the way, he could keep the unpaid half of the cash for himself.
Parisian drivers don’t give a damn. They’re famous for it. But even they hit their brakes at the sight of a motorcycle racing across their front fenders. Carver weaved between cars as they skidded to a halt, rear-ending one another in a cacophony of shrieking brakes, squealing tires, and furious French insults. That suited him fine. Every stopped car was just one more obstruction slowing down the men on his tail.
Had Carver outlived his usefulness? It had been pretty clear from their conversation that this was the last job he’d be doing for a while. Max might want to tie up all the loose ends.
At the bottom of the road, the avenue opened onto the Place de L’Alma. That in turn led past the Alma-Marceau metro station to the Pont de l’Alma, or Alma Bridge. The Alma Tunnel ran crosswise, below. Say what you like about the French. But when they found a name they liked, they stuck with it.
Or was there some other reason Max needed him out of the way, something to do with this operation? But what made this operation so different from the rest?
He bore right across the Place de l’Alma, passing right over the car crash he’d caused just a few minutes earlier. As yet there were no ambulances, no police cars’ flashing lights. At ground level, there seemed to be no sign at all of any accident.
Carver hit the bridge a hundred meters, maybe a little more, ahead of the Ducati, heading across the river Seine. He was going to make a right and get onto the freeway that ran along the south bank of the river, making for the périphérique, just like before. But he realized that would be crazy. The Ducati was a much bigger, more powerful bike. Even with two onboard it would soon run him down on the open road. He needed a battleground where he could fight his attackers and win.
And then he saw it.
On the far side of the bridge, across the other side of the road, stood a small white kiosk surrounded by low hedges. It looked like a giant geometric mushroom: a short, squat tower topped by a wide, gently sloping octagonal roof. Just in front of it stood a blue sign that read, “Visite des Egouts de Paris.”
Carver grinned. He knew what that was. And it would do just fine.
Ahead of him he could see a long articulated bus, its two halves held together by a rubber concertina. It was about to turn left, off the main road that ran along the Left Bank, onto the Alma Bridge, going back the way Carver had just come.
He needed to get across the road. The bus would cut right across his path. He played one last game of chicken, turning his bike hard left, skidding across the path of the oncoming bus, sensing its bulk loom above him, seeing the look of horror on the driver’s face.
The bus screeched to a halt in midturn. Or at least its front half did. The rear end kept going, fishtailing as the link between its two halves acted as a hinge, swinging the bus around to the right. Somehow, the driver brought the bus under control before the momentum of the spin flung it onto its side. But now it was sprawled across the bridge, with traffic piling up around it. A perfect roadblock.
Carver brought his bike to a halt beside the kiosk. He jumped off, pulled off his helmet, and grabbed the laser torch.
Next to the kiosk a low, white metal gate guarded a stone stairway that spiraled underground. A sign on the gate read, “Acces interdit”—entry forbidden. He kicked open the gate, then headed down the stairs.



8

The first underground sewer was dug beneath the streets of Paris in 1370. Now there were 1,300 miles of tunnels beneath the city, known as les egouts. They carried away 1.2 million cubic meters of water and waste a day, and they directly followed the lines of the roads up above. Every tunnel was signposted with the name of the avenue, boulevard, street, or square whose filth it removed.
If you wanted to have a gun battle right in the middle of a major city, without anyone noticing, the sewers were the place to have it. But Paris went one better. It didn’t just have sewers, it had a sewer museum, a concrete-and-steel warren of tunnels and chambers, right underneath the south end of the Alma Bridge.
Carver scuttled down the narrow stairs, bare concrete walls on either side. At the bottom, the passage turned a sharp left. In front of him was a solid steel door. On it was a white sign with a red banner across it announcing Danger. Below the sign a padlock held a massive bolt in place.
He put a bullet through the padlock, blowing it open, then pushed against the door, which swung away from him into a pitch-black void filled with chill, damp air that smelled of drains. He turned on his dazzler, twisting the end to widen the beam, filling the black void with a ghostly, radioactive green glow. Ahead, the passage seemed to open up into a low, broad chamber. There was another lock on the inside of the door, operated by a metal wheel. Carver closed the door and turned the wheel. There wasn’t much chance the guys who were after him would come in that way. Only an idiot would charge down a narrow, dark corridor toward a man known to have a dazzler and almost certainly a gun as well. They’d find another way in. Even so, it never hurt to cover your back.
Carver walked on into the sewers, his torch in his left hand, the SIG-Sauer in his right, trying to work out the direction from which his enemy’s attack would come.
The first chamber consisted of two old sewer tunnels that ran side by side. The sewer was filled in with concrete to make a flat floor. The wall between the tunnels had been punctured by a series of low, egg-shaped arches to make a single space. Carver walked through one of the arches, then hurled himself to the ground, bringing his gun to bear as he rolled across the concrete. To his left, in the shadows on the edge of the green dazzler light, he’d seen a group of figures in boiler suits and miners’ helmets. It took him half a second to realize they were waxworks, part of the museum’s exhibition.
He got up sheepishly and dusted himself off. To his right there was another, smaller tunnel. A notice: “This Way for the Tour.” Carver followed it and went deeper into the tunnel.
Grigori Kursk had reached the far end of the Alma Bridge a few seconds after Carver. He’d tracked the Englishman right up to the point where he’d pulled that crazy stunt in front of the oncoming bus. By the time the bus had moved out of the way, he’d lost him.
For a second he thought the man had got away. Then, across the far side of the road, he saw Carver’s bike abandoned next to the kiosk. He drove the Ducati onto the sidewalk at the end of the bridge, parking it next to a waist-high metal cage that stood over an open manhole. Beneath the cage a metal spiral staircase descended into the ground.
Kursk gestured to his partner to approach the Englishman’s abandoned bike from the right. He moved left. The two of them dashed across the bridge. Kursk ran around the front of the stranded bus, while his partner darted between the bus and the cars piling up behind. As they approached the bike, they saw no sign of its rider. Then Kursk noticed the open gate and the concrete stairway behind it.
He stared at the signs on the kiosk, trying to work out what they meant from the mass of different languages and symbols. Okay, so this was some sort of visitors’ entrance to something. Which meant somewhere there had to be an exit, or maybe a fire escape. Which would need a manhole. Beneath his helmet, Kursk grinned. Now he knew how to beat the Englishman.
He told his partner what to do. Then he jogged back across the bridge to where his bike was parked against the metal cage. The top of the cage was hinged in the middle. One half opened up to allow access to the manhole underneath, and it was held in place with a padlock and chain.
Kursk took off his helmet, reached into the bike’s top box, and pulled out a tool kit in a black, roll-up nylon pouch. From this he removed a small pair of bolt-cutters, casually leaned over the cage, and cut the links of the chain. He lifted the hinged lid of the cage, stepped over the side railings, and started walking down the metal stairs. Once he was below ground, he reached into his jacket and took out his gun before clipping a small black flashlight onto a mount on top of the barrel.
At the bottom of the shaft, there was a double door that shone scarlet in the beam of the flashlight. It was an emergency exit, opening out, toward him. Kursk fired a three-bullet burst into the locking mechanism.
The sound of the gunfire reverberated into the darkness. The Englishman was bound to hear, but that was good. Kursk did not want to waste time wandering around the sewers of Paris, playing blindman’s bluff. He’d much rather draw his opponent on, tempting him into an ambush. But he still had to find a way of setting up that ambush.
He pulled open the splintered door, walked a few paces forward, and entered a sort of man-made cave, maybe fifty feet square and twelve to fifteen feet high. He could hear the sound of rushing water somewhere beneath him. The flashlight tracked across the concrete floor until it came to an inset metal grille, running the full width of the cave, maybe six feet across. A thick brown soup of sewage and drain water was running beneath it, filling the air with a heavy fecal smell. And people actually paid to come down here?
Kursk looked around for cover. The huge space was almost entirely bare. The only means of access to the cave were two tunnels, one narrow and floored with concrete, the other broader, with another grille floor, directly over the open sewer. They turned to the left, a few feet apart.
On the right was an alcove. Its far wall had a huge circle cut into it, maybe ten feet in diameter. In the middle of the circle, held on a low wooden frame, was a gigantic black sphere, like a huge cannonball, so high that Kursk could not reach its top. There was a scale model of the ball down on the floor, demonstrating that it was made of wooden planks, with a hollow core. An illustrated notice showed how the ball had once been used as a cleaning device, dragged through the main sewers, bashing against the sides and knocking the crud from the walls. Kursk scanned the notice. He examined the ball and the way it was held on its frame. Now he had a new plan.
Carver had heard the muffled echo of gunfire in front of him, somewhere in the distance, just as he emerged from a low, narrow tunnel into an underground plaza. He swept his dazzler around and tried to get his bearings. It looked like some kind of a junction, where a warren of underground routes converged at a single point. On all sides there were arches beyond which he could see nothing but the blackness of passageways disappearing into the depths. But the only tunnel that interested Carver opened directly ahead of where he was standing. He was sure the gunfire had come from its far end.
He moved forward, accepting the implied invitation. Whoever had fired those shots had wanted them to be heard. Carver understood completely: He wanted to get this over and done with too. There was something almost reassuring about the absolute nature of the game they were playing. All the whys and wherefores could be forgotten. He just had to kill the other guy before the other guy killed him. It was a simple, straightforward task. He liked that.
A dozen paces down the tunnel, there was an opening on the left. From it, Carver could hear the sound of rushing water, moving much faster than anything he’d heard so far. He stopped by the opening, flattening himself against the wall. He took a deep breath to calm his pulse, and placed his left hand holding the dazzler directly under his right hand holding the gun, so that each steadied the other. Then he stepped out into the open, feet apart, legs bent, arms straight out in front of him.
There was no one there. In front of Carver stretched another, much bigger tunnel. From the ceiling, placards and display cases were suspended in midair on steel wire, the whole history of the Paris sewers stretching away into the distance. Directly underneath all the displays, thick steel mesh covered a working, gushing sewer. That was where the noise of water was coming from. To the sides, along the walls of the tunnel, concrete walkways kept visitors firmly on dry land.
Carver stepped back into the cross tunnel and walked on. There was still water flowing all around him, but much more sluggishly now. And the smell was suddenly more intense, a nauseating stench of human waste.
Up ahead, a massive pipe hung from the ceiling, banded with striped warning tape to prevent people from banging their heads. Beyond it was another junction, where the tunnel split in two. The left-hand fork was a narrow tube of concrete; the right-hand one was wider, with a walkway running beside a sewer covered with a raised metal cage. Carver went left. There was no big strategic logic, he just figured the concrete tunnel would smell less rank.
Carver went on, shifting the dazzler beam forward and back, listening intently for any sound of human movement. He almost fell into the huge open space at the end of the tunnel, stopping himself just in time before he crashed onto the floor. He pulled back a couple of feet, wondering why there hadn’t yet been a shot. The hostiles must be close now. Why didn’t they fire? Had they gone down the other way without him noticing? Was he outflanked?
He shone the dazzler back the way he had come. No one there. He turned again, hands together, stepped out into the space, and . . . nothing, just a cavernous emptiness. He stepped forward a few more paces. The beam of the dazzler caught a vast black ball in its alcove and the splintered body of a half-open red wooden door, through which Carver could see stairs curving up to ground level. That was how his enemy had got in, but where the hell were they?
Carver stepped forward, stopped, then began a slow, deliberate rotation, sweeping the whole space with light, his gun following the dazzler all the way. He was halfway around when he heard a grunt behind him, a human sound, like a weightlifter struggling to shift a massive load. It was immediately followed by the creaking of wood under pressure. Carver spun around just as the massive spherical mass came free from its housing and started rolling toward him. He fired four shots straight at the giant black ball, but the bullets ricocheted off the wood, leaving barely a mark on the rock-hard surface, the reverberating gunfire mixing with the deep, hard rumble of the ball against the concrete.
He turned to run back toward the mouth of the narrow tunnel, just a few feet away, but slipped on a patch of water on the bare concrete floor and stumbled. The ball was almost on top of him. Desperately Carver scrabbled to his feet, dropping the dazzler, which was crushed beneath the ball like a tin can beneath a jackboot. The man-made cave was plunged into darkness, and Carver threw himself back into the tunnel. He heard the giant ball smash against the entrance, too big to penetrate any farther.
Frantically, he started running into the pitch-black void in front of him. He shifted his gun into his left hand and placed the fingers of his right hand against the wall to act as his guide. He was totally blind, but he forced himself to sprint flat out into nothingness, though every instinct screamed at him to go slowly.
He reckoned the tunnel was about twenty paces long. Then came the junction. The other guy would be coming that way. Carver listened. He could just hear one set of slow, steady, watchful footsteps—the steps of a man who wants to hunt down his enemy without becoming the prey himself.
Carver looked left and saw a faint flashlight beam emerging from the darkness. It was sweeping from side to side as the man behind it searched for him. He turned toward the opening of the other tunnel and fired three quick shots. He wasn’t expecting to score any hits, he just needed to force the other guy to take cover, even for a few seconds.
He could still make this work. He turned again, reached for the wall, and ran on into the blackness.
Kursk was on the offensive. He had forced his enemy to retreat and smashed his most important weapon. Without the dazzler to light up his target, the Englishman’s gun was far less of a threat. Now Kursk had to press home his advantage.
He had gone no more than five paces down the other tunnel, walking parallel to the one down which the Englishman had fled, when he saw the glint from a pistol barrel in the flashlight beam.
Kursk flung himself to the ground as three bullets ricocheted off the walls around him. The moment he hit the ground, he switched off the flashlight, making himself invisible again.
He heard the Englishman’s footsteps moving away from him, fast. Kursk turned the flashlight back on and kept going to the end of the tunnel. He saw the pipe with its striped tape, but beyond that, nothing. The Englishman must have turned off the passage somewhere, gone down another way.
Ahead on the right, Kursk could see the arch of another tunnel, from which came the sound of fast-moving water. He ran toward it, then, without stopping, flung himself to the floor, rolling across the open arch, firing into it as he went. As he reached the far side, two bullets smashed against the wall, showering him in dust and concrete chips. Well, that answered one question. The Englishman had found a new escape route.
As the echoes of gunfire faded away, Kursk thought he could hear something over the sound of water: a scuffling movement in the darkness, then a louder bang and a muffled curse. It was all he could do not to laugh. The poor bastard had bumped into something, trying to run away in the dark.
Okay, time to see where the Englishman was hiding. Kursk got to his feet, then sprinted back across the open archway, holding his gun away from him, so that anyone aiming at the flashlight would not hit him. This time, he looked down the tunnel, seeing the boards and display cases suspended between the ceiling and the metal-grate floor. Maybe the Englishman thought he could hide behind them. Well, he’d see about that.
He switched off the flashlight. Now they were both blind. He slipped to the floor and slid on his belly to the center of the archway. Then he moved forward until he could feel the surface beneath him change from concrete to metal. A blast of chill, damp, fetid air hit him from the sewage water racing beneath him. He reached forward and felt the first wire, as taut as the guy rope of a tent, holding a Plexiglas display case in place. Slowly, silently, he slithered underneath the case, making his way through the tangle of wire securing it to the floor.
When he came out the other side, into the gap between the cases, he paused, listening for any sound of the Englishman. Where had the bastard gone? Kursk darted his head from side to side, cocking his ear, suddenly nervous that the Englishman was nearby. The two men could be centimeters apart. With the darkness, and the noise and smell of the water, they’d never know it. He willed himself to wait, be patient. This was a matter of who lost their nerve and made the move that gave away their position.
The Englishman cracked first. There was another brief scurry of feet up ahead. Kursk put both hands on his gun and leaned forward into the firing position. He was just about to pull the trigger when the blackness of the tunnel was lit up by a white-hot ball of flame, a deafening crack of explosive, and a sudden blast of air. It picked Kursk up, smashed him against the ceiling of the tunnel, then flung him back down in an avalanche of wire and debris, down through the gaping hole where the metal grating had been, slamming him into the torrent of water and filth down below.


9

Two short cross tunnels led from the display area of the Belgrand gallery to the Bruneseau gallery, which ran parallel to it. Carver had set the timer detonator on his packet of C4 putty to five seconds, then dashed down one of these cross tunnels, the Avaloir. The flame from the explosion flared down the passage, chasing after Carver, scorching his back as it licked against him.
Now he just had to get back to the surface. But which exit? There were two people on the bike chasing him, so one of them was still up there. Carver wanted him, alive if possible. He tried to put himself in the guy’s place. Where would he station himself if he were up top? The smart move would be to find a place where you could cover both exits. On that basis, it made no difference where he came up. The risk would be the same.
There was another factor to consider. The area around the ticket kiosk was an ambusher’s paradise. There was cover everywhere and no passersby to witness what happened. But if Carver’s sense of direction was in working order, the other exit must be near the south end of the Alma Bridge. That was much more open, with many more cars and people.
So that was where he’d take his chances.
It took him several minutes to work his way back through the darkness toward the man-made cave where the giant ball had been. At last there was a glimmer of light. He dashed toward it with intense relief, running toward the stairs, past the open red door, and almost up to the stairwell before he forced himself to stop.
He edged into the stairwell, then looked up, sighting his gun vertically, ready to fire at the slightest movement above him. There was a grille of some kind across the top. He couldn’t see any padlock or chain holding it in place. He walked steadily up the circular steel staircase, pausing every few steps to watch and listen for any sign of suspicious activity.
The steps ended at a small platform a couple of feet from the surface. Carver crawled onto it on his belly, keeping himself below the lip of the manhole. He slithered as close as he could get to the side of the hole, then placed his hands on the ground level with his shoulders, the left hand flat, the right bunched around the grip of his gun. Next, he shifted his weight onto his arms, leaning his torso forward and bringing his feet up so that his knees were pressed against his chest.
He sprang forward, throwing himself out of the manhole, keeping his trajectory as low as possible, so that he landed flat on the tarmac sidewalk. As soon as he hit the ground, he rolled to his left, bringing his hands together in front of him, clasping the gun. He kept his head up, his eyes focused forward, along the line of his arms and his weapon.
He saw nothing. Just a couple of cars crossing the Alma Bridge. There was no sound of gunfire, no smack of a silenced bullet hitting the tarmac beside him.
Carver had rolled through 270 degrees onto his right shoulder when his legs slammed into something hard. He grimaced at the impact of bare metal on his anklebone. He looked around and saw that he’d come to rest against the dead man’s Ducati. The man’s helmet was still hanging from one of the handlebars. The sharp, almost nauseating bolt of pain from Carver’s ankle had been inflicted by the foot rest.
He pulled himself into a sitting position, leaned back against the bike, and again checked his surroundings. Still no sign of an enemy. He looked down at his ankle and flexed his foot. It rotated without any trouble, so the bones and ligaments were undamaged and his movement would be unimpaired. He’d certainly have a nasty bruise in the morning, but if he lived long enough to see it, there’d be no reason to complain.
As he sat on the pavement, two young Parisians walked by, a boy and a girl, arm in arm. Carver tried to look relaxed and nonchalant, as though it were perfectly normal to be leaning against a motorcycle, covered in concrete dust and scorch marks. He needn’t have bothered. The young lovers were far too busy gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes to care about anyone else.
He got up and used the kids as cover, following them as they crossed the road at the end of the bridge, walking toward the riverside embankment and the kiosk by the entrance to the sewers. The Honda was still where he had left it. He walked toward it, holding his gun straight down by his side, still sheltered by the two lovebirds in front of him.
There was no sign of the other man. Carver looked at the trees on the river side of the walk—nothing. He scanned the bushes: nothing. To the right of the kiosk ran the Quai d’Orsay, the main road along the Left Bank of the Seine. It led down to the National Assembly and the Musée d’Orsay art museum. Carver walked a few paces down the road.
A bus shelter stood no more than twenty meters away. It was shaped like a rectangular, three-sided box, open to the quai on the fourth side. A woman, a blond, was leaning up against the outside of the shelter, looking down the road in Carver’s direction. She was wearing a skimpy sleeveless black tanktop, no bra, and a tiny denim miniskirt. The black nylon strap of the bag on her back crossed her chest diagonally, separating and emphasizing the swell of her breasts.
Carver let his glance linger on her a second longer than it should have. She felt his appraising look, pulled the bag off her back, held it in front of her chest, and replied with a frank, uncompromising stare of her own.
He lowered his eyes, like any other guy caught with a prick for a brain. Now he saw the woman’s boots. They were heavy, black, calf-length, buckled at the ankle and midcalf: motorcycle boots. He’d seen them before; he’d seen the black nylon bag before. And why was the blond looking in his direction? Any bus on this side of the road would be going the other way.
Christ, he’d been stupid. He raised his eyes, bringing his gun up from his side and running toward her flat out as she reached into the bag, pulled out a silenced Uzi, and brought it to bear.
Carver slammed into her before she could fire, grabbing her gun and ripping it from her hands. He spun her around and smashed her face-first against the side of the bus shelter. He kicked the gun away, then he wrapped one arm around the woman’s chest, pinning her arms by her side. He held her tight against him, squeezing her between his body and the side of the shelter, making it impossible for her to wriggle free.
He felt the softness of her body against his and caught a trace of her rich, dark scent. For a second, something about it, an unexpected familiarity, distracted him. The hell with that. He stuck his gun against her temple.
“Listen carefully,” he hissed into her ear. “Your boyfriend is dead. You’ll be dead too, unless you do exactly as I say.”
She did not react in any way.
He tried again. “You speak English?”
No response.
Carver took a pace back, aiming his pistol straight at her. Still keeping his eye on the blond, he bent his knees and picked up the submachine gun, stuffing it into his jacket.
“Turn around.”
She didn’t move.
Carver stepped forward and kicked out at her legs, hitting her in the side of the shin. She crumpled to the ground, landing to the left of the bus shelter. As her knees hit the pavement, Carver stamped his left foot between her shoulder blades, pinning her to the ground.
She let out an involuntary grunt as the air was forced from her lungs. Now she was lying along the back of the shelter, hidden from the road.
Carver fired a single shot into the pavement, six inches from her head. She flinched as the dust and stone fragments hit the side of her face.
“The next one goes through the back of your skull. Now, let’s stop pissing around. Do you speak English?”
This time she responded with a nod of her head.
“Good. Now, very slowly, put your arms by your side, palms of your hands facing me.”
She did as she was told.
“Thank you. Now stay completely still.”
Carver shifted his position, sliding his foot down her back and over her rump, bringing it to rest on the ground between her upper thighs. Then he bent his left knee until it came to rest on the base of her spine. His right foot was flat on the ground. All his weight was bearing down on her lower back. She whimpered in pain.
He unzipped one of the thigh pockets of his cargo pants and took out a thin strip of plastic that was looped into a figure eight. The loops were secured by tiny locking boxes through which the plastic strips passed.
“Put your hands side by side in the small of your back.”
Carver placed a plastic loop over each hand, then pulled the loose ends until the plastic was tight around each wrist.
“Roll over onto your back.”
He waited as she obeyed. When she looked at him, there was a momentary flash of pure rage in her eyes, in the setting of her jaw, the pursing of her lips. She looked away and took in a single, short, harsh breath through her nostrils. When she met Carver’s eyes again, less than five seconds later, she had regained her self-control. Her face was blank, as if she knew there was more to come. She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of watching her lose her temper, still less cry or beg for mercy.
“Sit up against the shelter.”
She levered herself upright, then shuffled backward until she was leaning against the shelter wall, her legs flat on the pavement in front of her. Carver was on his haunches opposite her. Anyone passing by would take him for a boyfriend trying to help a sick or stoned girlfriend. They wouldn’t look too closely. They wouldn’t want to get involved. They’d pass right by, just like city people always do, in any city, anywhere.
“Why does Max want me dead?”
Still she gave nothing away. But her eyes were more tightly focused on him now, more calculating this time, as if she were waiting to see what he had before she made her first move.
Carver wanted to needle her, provoke a reaction. “Look, I don’t blame you for being pissed off. I would be too if I’d screwed up. You shouldn’t have tried to take the gun out of the bag, right? You should have just shot through it. So what is it—you’re no good at your job? You’re out of practice? Maybe it isn’t your usual line of work.”
She did react, but not in the way he’d expected. She just looked at him with utter contempt, as if he hadn’t a clue. As if he weren’t even close.
He went back to Plan A. “You never answered my question. Why does Max want me dead?”
Finally she spoke. “I don’t know anyone named Max.” Her voice was flat, unyielding. She sounded like a suspect in a police interrogation cell who knows the cops can’t prove their case. Her accent was American, but spoken by a foreigner. Carver guessed Eastern European.
“Okay.”
He got to his feet and took a couple of steps to where the black bag was lying on the ground. Bending down, keeping his gun and his eye on the woman all the while, he picked up the bag, then stepped back to his original position, right beside her.
“Let’s see what we’ve got here. . . .”
He put his free hand into the bag, pulled out a purse, and flicked it open. There were half a dozen credit cards arranged in slots, one above the other. Carver slid a couple of cards out with his thumb. They bore the name “A. Petrova.” He took another look at the outside of the purse, checking out the pattern stamped into the leather: Louis Vuitton. He was starting to put the pieces together, but he needed a little more information to be sure.
“What does the A stand for?”
She shrugged. “What A?”
“On your credit card: A. Petrova.”
“You mean, like a . . . for ‘a*shole’?” This time she let a slight, mocking smile play around the corners of her mouth. She’d scored another point.
He kept riffling through the bag. There was a mobile phone. He opened it up and accessed the address book, keeping one eye on the woman. There were lots of Russian names. Some were people; others he guessed were shops, clubs, or restaurants. There was nothing under “Max.” He snapped the phone shut and pocketed it.
Next, his fingers wrapped themselves around a piece of thin card. It was inserted into a small, stiff booklet: an airline ticket in a passport. He pulled them out of the bag. The ticket was an Aeroflot return from Moscow to Paris. The outward segment had already been torn off and used. Now he knew where she’d come from.
He knew her full name too. The passport was Russian. It named her as Alexandra Petrova, date of birth September 21, 1967. So she was almost thirty. She looked younger. Maybe she was. Maybe she’d just assumed an older identity. And maybe he’d arranged her death about three hours ago.
“You’ve got a Louis Vuitton bag. It contains underwear, a couple of T-shirts, a pair of high-heeled shoes, and some kind of silky dress. So, what, you were planning to party once you’d finished the job?”
This time he knew he’d got through. She didn’t say anything, but she frowned. For the first time, the defiance in her eyes was clouded by uncertainty.
Carver pressed on. “You left the bag in a one-bedroom apartment on the Rue Saint-Louis-en-l’Ile. The bag was on the bed. There was a white Chanel carrier bag next to it, with some perfume, lipsticks, and a small black box—I’m guessing a watch—inside it. You picked that up at duty free, right? Mixing the hit with a nice bit of shopping. I like it, the feminine touch.”
She wasn’t impressed. “What are you trying to tell me? You’re some kind of stalker?”
“No, I’m telling you they planned to kill you too. I’ve got to admit, it was elegant. They got each set of killers to eliminate the other. See, when Max briefed me, he said the apartment belonged to the target. I was supposed to booby-trap it in case he escaped the hit. But it wasn’t the target’s apartment, was it?”
She said nothing. Carver let the silence hang between them. He watched Petrova. She wasn’t looking at him anymore. She was looking down at the ground, thinking, working out the next move. A minute or more went by before she raised her eyes toward Carver again, her hostile glare replaced by a searching examination of his face, as though she were looking for the final clues that would help her reach a decision. Then she made up her mind, nodded to herself, and spoke.
“Okay. Kursk—the man you say you killed—was given our orders when we arrived in Paris. Someone called him—I don’t know if that was this man you call Max. They told us to go to the apartment and wait for further instructions. There were new clothes, boots, and helmets there, one set for each of us, weapons and a key. Also a camera, with a big flash attachment.”
“You got changed?”
“Yes.”
“So why were your clothes the only ones in the apartment? What about Kursk’s?”
“He threw them away when we left.”
“Why?”
“How should I know? Maybe he likes to travel light. Anyway, about eight thirty, they called again. We were told to go to Rue Duphot. It’s off Rue de Rivoli, near Place Vend?me. When we got there, just before nine, Kursk got another call. We were told our target would be a black Mercedes. We had to follow it and use the camera with the flash to scare the people in the car and make them drive faster. After that we had to go back to the apartment, spend the night there, and then fly out in the morning. About an hour later Kursk got another call. It seemed to give him great satisfaction.”
Carver nodded. “It fits. They got you out of the apartment before I arrived. They waited to see that I had completed my work there. Once they knew that you would be killed, they called Kursk to deal with me. Like I said, neat. So now we have a new question: Why did they want us dead?”
“I don’t know. Truly.”
“It must have something to do with the job. Did you see inside the car?”
“Not really. I had my visor down and the flash from the camera was, you know, reflecting off the windows. I think there were four people: two in front, two in back. One of them might have been a woman. I don’t know.”
“Where’s the camera now?”
“The motorcycle. In the box at the side.”
“Was there film inside it?”
She thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. It just flashed.”
“That makes sense. No photographic evidence.”
She looked at him. “So now what?”
Carver had been watching her as she spoke. She had a wide mouth, full lips, and cool blue eyes. One lid was slightly heavier than the other, one pupil fractionally out of line. Those minuscule asymmetries should have marred her looks, yet the imperfection was mesmerizing, drawing him in. With an averagely pretty, even beautiful girl, he’d look once. With this one, it took an effort to drag his gaze away.
“Now we make a decision,” he said. “I could shoot you, right here and now, and disappear into the night. That has the advantage of simplicity. But I don’t want to kill you unless I absolutely have to. So, have you heard the expression ‘My enemy’s enemy is my friend’?”
“Yes, I understand.”
“I think we should work on that basis. We’ve both been set up by the same people. Our best hope is to get to them before they get to us. So, they’re our enemy. I guess that makes us friends.”
She raised her eyebrows, gave a little pout, and shrugged her shoulders. “Okay, if you say so, let’s talk about that. But first, prove to me that you are a friend. Get me a cigarette. There is a pack in my bag, Marlboro Lights.”
He felt around in the bag, still keeping his eyes on her, until he felt the cigarette pack. He pulled it from the bag, flipped open the top, and shook it so that a couple of cigarettes poked farther out than the rest. Then he reached over, holding the packet close to her mouth.
She leaned forward, feeling for the cigarettes with her lips, using her tongue to separate one from the rest. She slumped back against the bus shelter wall with the cigarette in her mouth.
“Got a light?”
There was a lighter in the bag. He put the flame to her cigarette. As she breathed in, igniting the tobacco, their eyes met, no more than a foot apart. She didn’t say anything, just let him feel the tension as her unflinching, disconcerting gaze held his.
Several seconds went by before Carver realized he’d broken a basic rule. Their heads were so close she could easily have butted him, smashing his nose. He jerked back, as if evading a blow that never came. She didn’t move, just kept looking at him.
“Do you still have the helmet?” he asked.
“In the bushes, over there, with the leather jackets,” she replied, nodding toward a clump of greenery that lay between the bus shelter and the sewer museum’s ticket kiosk.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. First we make them think that they’ve won. That means getting ourselves killed, the more publicly, the better. So . . .”
Carver explained what he intended to do and what Petrova’s role would be. She nodded occasionally. Every so often she asked a question or suggested an alternative course of action. The hostility had ebbed, however temporarily, from her voice. Her tone was practical, functional, getting the job done.
At the end he said, “What do you think?”
“I think we have the same enemy and I think your plan has a chance of success. Beyond that, I don’t bother to think. I have only one more question.”
“Yes?”
“What is your name?”
“Samuel Carver. Most people just call me Carver.”
“Okay. Most people call me Alix. And now that we have been introduced, are you going to untie my hands?”
Carver nodded, then pulled a pair of scissors from the same pocket the plastic cuffs had been in. He stepped behind Alix as she shuffled forward, making some space between her back and the shelter. Then he got down on his haunches and forced one blade between the plastic and Alix’s left wrist, making her wince as the metal and plastic dug in. Once he’d cut it free, he repeated the process on her other wrist. As he stood up and came around to face her again, she started to rub her lower arms, in an effort to restore circulation.
Then she held out a surprisingly dainty hand toward Carver. He reached out and shook it, as if sealing their deal.
“No, you fool,” she said. “I want you to help me up.”
Carver chuckled edgily and Alix smiled back. For the first time there was a flicker of warmth, a hint of the woman behind that calculating facade. He pulled her back onto her feet, then slung her bag around his shoulder. She let out a pained sigh as she straightened her spine, then felt the small of her back with her hands.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “You know, just business.”
He regretted the crass words the moment he’d spoken them. There was bitterness in her short, humorless laugh, and when she glanced at him again her eyes had the battered vulnerability of a woman who’s no stranger to violence.
“It’s never just business,” she said.
Then she picked up her helmet and they walked together toward the Alma Bridge.