The full extent of Malone’s duplicity struck hard.
“Whatever is at Saint-Denis, you’re going to have to find it without him,” Malone made clear.
He grabbed hold of his emotions. “Goodbye, Cotton. We shall never speak again.”
He clicked off the phone.
MALONE CLOSED HIS EYES.
The acid declaration—we shall never speak again—burned his gut. A man like Henrik Thorvaldsen did not make statements like that lightly.
He’d just lost a friend.
Stephanie watched from the other side of the car’s rear seat. They were headed away from Notre Dame, toward Gare du Nord, a busy rail terminal, following the first set of instructions Lyon had called back to them after his initial contact.
Rain peppered the windshield.
“He’ll get over it,” she said. “We can’t be concerned with his feelings. You know the rules. We have a job to do.”
“He’s my friend. And besides, I hate rules.”
“You’re helping him.”
“He doesn’t see it that way.”
Traffic was thick, the rain compounding the confusion. His eyes drifted from railings to balconies to roofs, the stately fa?ades on both sides of the street receding upward into a graying sky. He noticed several secondhand-book shops, their stock displayed in windows of advertising posters, hackneyed prints, and arcane volumes.
He thought of his own business.
Which he’d bought from Thorvaldsen—his landlord, his friend. Their Thursday-evening dinners in Copenhagen. His many trips to Christiangade. Their adventures. They’d spent a lot of time together.
“Sam’s going to have his hands full,” he muttered.
A spate of taxis signaled the approach of the Gare du Nord. Lyon’s instructions had been to call when they were in sight of the train station.
Stephanie dialed her phone.
SAM STEPPED FROM THE MéTRO STATION AND TROTTED through the rain, using the overhangs from the closed shops as an umbrella, racing toward a plaza identified as PL. JEAN JAURèS. To his left rose Saint-Denis basilica, its medieval aesthetic harmony marred by a curiously missing spire. He’d taken advantage of the Métro as the fastest way north, avoiding the late-afternoon holiday traffic.
He searched the frigid plaza for Thorvaldsen. Wet pavement, like black patent leather, reflected street lamps in javelins of yellow light.
Had he gone inside the church?
He stopped a young couple, passing on their way to the Métro, and asked about the basilica, learning that the building had been closed since summer for extensive repairs, that fact confirmed by scaffolding braced against the exterior.
Then he saw Thorvaldsen and Meagan, near one of the trailers parked off to the left, maybe two hundred feet away.
He headed their way
ASHBY FOLDED HIS COAT COLLAR UP AGAINST THE RAIN AND walked down the deserted street with Caroline and Peter Lyon. An overcast sky draped the world in a pewter cloth. They’d used the boat and motored west on the Seine until the river started its wind north, out of Paris. Eventually, they’d veered onto a canal, stopping at a concrete dock near a highway overpass, a few blocks south of Saint-Denis basilica.
They’d passed a columned building identified as LE MUSéE D’ART ET D’HISTOIRE, and Lyon led them beneath the portico.
Their captor’s phone rang.
Lyon answered, listened a moment, then said, “Take Boulevard de Magenta north and turn on Boulevard de Rochechouart. Call me back when you find Place de Clichy.”
Lyon ended the connection.
Caroline was still terrified. Ashby wondered if she might panic and try to flee. It would be foolish. A man like Lyon would shoot her dead in an instant—treasure or no treasure. The smart play, the only play, was to hope for a mistake. If none occurred, perhaps he could offer this monster something that could prove useful, like a bank through which to launder money where no one asked questions.
He’d deal with that when necessary.
Right now, he simply hoped Caroline knew the answers to Lyon’s coming questions.
Malone 5 - The Paris Vendetta
SIXTY-EIGHT
THORVALDSEN AND MEAGAN TRUDGED DOWN A GRAVELED PATH adjacent to the basilica’s north side, away from the plaza.
“There’s a former abbey,” Meagan told him, “located on the south side. Not as old as the basilica. Nineteenth century, though parts date way back. It’s some kind of college now. The abbey is at the heart of the legend that surrounds this place. After being beheaded in Montmartre, the evangelist St. Denis, the first bishop of Paris, supposedly started to walk, carrying his head. He was buried where he fell by a saintly woman. An abbey developed at that spot, which eventually became”—she motioned at the church—“this monstrosity.”
He was trying to determine how to get inside. The north fa?ade contained three portals, all iron-barred on the outside. Ahead, he spotted what was surely the ambulatory, a half circle of stone pierced with colored-glass windows.
Rain continued to fall.
They needed to find shelter.
“Let’s round the corner up ahead,” he said, “and try the south side.”