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
