Cold, viscous gel was rubbed on her exposed stomach, the rest of her covered by a white cotton sheet. She felt pressing on her stomach. Heaviness.
The medic strapped the mask back on. “Breathe deep, again and again,” he said. “No spotting. That’s good. Relax. Keep still so I can listen to your baby’s heartbeat.”
She felt pressure. More heaviness.
“Give me the other gel,” said the medic.
“We’re out,” said his partner with a quick shake of his head. The siren rose, drowning the rest of his answer.
The ambulance made a sharp turn. Stopped with a screech. Cymbals, a wheezing accordion then shouts over the siren.
“Merde! And now a traffic accident, too?” he said. “We need a Doppler to check fetal heartbeat. This one only checks blood flow.”
“You mean it’s not the right one?” she shouted. The mask fogged. She tore it off again. “My baby’s not even six months. Give me something to prevent contractions.”
The medic sucked in his breath. Not good, she could tell.
“We need to prep you.”
A throbbing cramped her stomach. She shook her head as he tried to put the mask back on her. Bit down hard on his finger.
The medic yelled out in pain.
“I feel a contraction.” Tears brimmed her eyes. “You’ve got to save my baby.”
“This will shut her up.” She felt a jab in her arm.
The rest happened in a cold, white blur.
Tuesday, 9:15 P.M.
SWEAT BEADED ZACHARIé’S forehead in the moist, decaying air. The team’s headlamp beams bobbed over the lichen-encrusted stone. Water dribbled down the walls, and rats scurried in the dark. Layers upon layers, centuries of muck and detritus surrounded them in this narrow tunnel. Dervier had tunneled into the ancient sewer and excavated with precision. In single file, they stepped over the jagged concrete into a storeroom.
Their headlamp beams caught on silver tea sets, old masters in antique frames and jewelry filling glass display cases. This subterranean storeroom of H?tel Drouot, the auction house, reminded him of a glorified pawnbroker’s, overflowing for the upcoming auction.
Ramu grinned, took out the tools from his bag. “Like old times, eh?”
Ripe for the team’s picking. And three minutes ahead of schedule.
“Hurry up, old man,” said Tandou, wiping his hands. He was grinning, too.
The cavern storeroom was lined with shelves of porcelain dinner plates, bronze statues, silver bowls, paintings, more display cases of jewelry and even a nineteenth-century mattress-delousing machine. Dervier’s men got to work filling the canvas sacks with the jewelry and smallest items first.
Zacharié spotted his destination, a metal door lit by a lantern. Dervier had already snipped its padlock with his wire cutters—they would replace it on their way out—and Zacharié followed him to a second old, rusted padlock on a second metal door. With a quick tug, Dervier opened the door to reveal a mildewed abri, a bomb shelter from the war. Peeling notices dated March 1942 indicated a thirty-person capacity. Seconds later Dervier cut the third door’s rusted padlock, rubbed olive oil on the door’s hinges and pulled it open. Ahead, a short series of concrete steps led up to the courtyard.
Two key cards were slipped into Zacharié’s hand.
“The yellow for the rez-de-chaussée entrance and the white for the top floor.” Dervier checked his watch. “You’ve got ten minutes from when I disable the alarm. Then I padlock all three doors and trigger open the courtyard exit.”
“I knew you could do it, Dervier.” Zacharié hit his stopwatch. “See you in nine minutes.”
While he went into the next building, Dervier’s crew would be stocking up on a haul worth a good number of zeros to waiting auction houses in Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Aix-en-Provence and Nice. By next week, when the items were discovered missing, Dervier would have re-cemented the tunnel hole and replaced the re-rusted locks on the metal doors.
The added beauty to their plan was that once Dervier disabled the alarm with his remote, Zacharié would be able to enter the temporary Ministry storage depot via the subterranean bomb shelter, only crossing through the building’s unmonitored courtyard, without leaving any trace on the video cameras stationed in the front foyer or street entrance.
A quick in and out.
His goal lay in the temporary repository of Ministry files that had been stored here after a basement had flooded. While his team busied themselves emptying the auction house’s cavern, he’d remove the file Jules had hired him to steal.
There’d be no connection between the jobs. If later, during inventory audits, the file couldn’t be found, it would be assumed it had been misfiled, misrouted to another location in the usual bureaucratic fashion. At least that’s what Jules was counting on.
It took him a minute and a half, according to his stopwatch, to reach the top floor and slide the white key card into the storage room’s lock. A tiny click, and he entered. The grey room smelled of damp and wet paper. Consulting Jules’s diagram, he bypassed cartons, boxes, shelves of files as innocuous as in a doctor’s office. His headlight beam revealing the labels, he located iixx.450dsM, a box like all the others. The Ministry file. He flipped it open with his gloved fingers.
Clipped on top was a note: Addendum in ixx.451dsM1.
Better take that, too.
He slipped both inside his jumpsuit.
He crossed the ivy-covered courtyard to the sewer access door—oiled and left unlocked by Dervier. Once he’d gone down the steps and was back inside the old sewer, Zacharié checked his time in the dripping tunnel. Four minutes ahead of schedule.
He heard a shout followed by a series of muffled pops coming from the auction house’s cavern down the tunnel. His pulse thudded. Shots? This wasn’t part of the plan.
Had the flics appeared?
Zacharié hunched down, terrified for his team, that he’d be next, the job ruined, his Marie-Jo …