Wolfgang hit the auto button and slammed on the gas.
11
People screamed, and the Ferrari roared. Wolfgang was hurled into the plush leather seat as the back wheels spun, and then the car launched out of the portico and hurtled toward the street.
Wolfgang slammed on the brakes and cut the wheel to the right, sliding around a corner in the parking lot before hitting the gas again and rocketing into the street. He couldn’t hear the screaming pedestrians or fire engines now, only the bellow of the V12 engine filling his ears as the car hit redline and the dash lit up with a warning light. Wolfgang hit the paddle shifter, and the transmission clicked like a fine watch. The Ferrari blasted forward as if a rocket were launching him from behind. He swerved to dodge taxicabs and late-night busses as the blinding lights of Paris filled his view.
He turned to the dash and poked at the navigation screen next to the tachometer. Wolfgang saw what looked like a voice command button, and he smashed it.
“Take me to the Eiffel Tower!” he shouted.
“Bienvenue dans votre Ferrari. Veuillez dire une commande.”
“I don’t speak French! English!”
“Veuillez dire une commande.”
Wolfgang looked up from the nav system just in time to pull the wheel to the right and slide into the roundabout surrounding Napoleon’s Arch. Buses, cars, bicycles, and motorbikes surrounded him on all sides as people shouted and horns blared. He narrowly missed colliding with a taxicab as he completed a full circle of the arch, the Ferrari still roaring. A marker appeared on the nav screen, just a mile south of the arch on the other side of the river Seine. It was the Eiffel Tower.
Wolfgang turned back to the left, exiting his hectic orbit of the arch and shooting onto Avenue d'Iéna. Trees leaned over the street on both sides, hugging the bright-red car as he flashed forward at over eighty miles per hour. Shoppes, apartments, tall office buildings, and squat cafés flashed past on both sides, and then he rocketed around another much smaller roundabout.
He could see the tower now, rising out of the cityscape in majestic, semi-illuminated glory, with odd dark patches covering the middle section. Wolfgang slowed the Ferrari as he screeched into Jardins du Trocadéro. Directly ahead, the massive Trocadéro Garden’s pool stretched out to either side, with a jet of water shooting out and arcing in graceful glory before falling into the pool halfway down its length. Soft lights illuminated the fountain and the surrounding green space, and directly to his left, the Eiffel Tower shot skyward, just on the other side of the river.
Wolfgang jerked the wheel to the left and slammed on the gas. He wasn’t intimidated by the car anymore. He knew what it could do, and he knew he could handle it. He rocketed through the Gardens and then hit the bridge, laying on the horn to alert the handful of late-night pedestrians and lovers who leaned over the water under the light of the Eiffel Tower. They screamed and scattered as the Ferrari screeched across the river and then blew through the next intersection. Directly ahead, the tower’s four legs spread out, surrounded by a low metal fence that blocked pedestrians from walking beneath it. Wolfgang hit the gas and burst through the fence at fifty miles an hour. Metal screeched down the sides of the car, and he cut the wheel to the right, spinning to a halt directly beneath Paris’s most iconic monument.
Wolfgang threw the door open and rolled out as police sirens wailed in the distance. He tilted his head back and stared up into the interior of the tower, shielding his eyes. The tower was lit all along its frame, stretching up over one thousand feet into the Parisian sky. At odd intervals along the graceful metallic superstructure, tarpaulins blocked off the light, and scaffolding covered the tower. Stacks of barrels rose like a small mountain at the base of the tower, and the main tourist entrance was completely blocked off with yellow construction tape.
The tower was closed for maintenance. Wolfgang remembered reading about it in the travel brochure he picked up on the plane. Every seven years, the entire thing was repainted to preserve the metal from decay. The process took three years and consumed over sixty tons of iconic, bronze-colored paint.
The same paint that Spider’s shoes were stained with.
Wolfgang scanned the base of the tower and immediately saw the elevator, the entrance of which was closed off with a metal gate. Faint footprints marked the concrete leading up to the elevator, with parallel tire marks running behind them. Small tires, like you might find on a hand truck. The gate swung open without resistance, but when Wolfgang reached for the keypad, nothing was there. The entire control panel had been smashed in and obliterated. There was no way to call the car.
Wolfgang felt the tension rising in his stomach, and he ran a hand through his hair.
Think. Think!
Spider must have smashed the control panel, which meant he had in fact been here. But there must be another way.
The stairs. The brochure said there were 674 steps between ground level and the second floor of the structure. 674 steps, at one step a second. That was eleven minutes. But there was no way he could travel that fast for that long.
Screw it.
It didn’t matter. He had to go, now.
Wolfgang rushed to the nearest leg of the tower and tore aside the construction tape. He started running, clearing the first flight in seconds and turning up the
