It looked to him as if one was taking off his coverall.
“What’s going on?” asked Hadash.
“We’ve just found a formula to damage the top part of the Eiffel Tower using six bombs placed together on one of the main girders,” said Rubens. “We’re going to alert the French authorities. I’d like you to—”
Karr cut him off. “You’d better do it quick,” he said, running up the stairway. “They’re wearing explosive vests under their coveralls. That’s how they got the explosives in.”
81
Mussa checked his watch as the train passed Charles de Gaulle Airport and began to pick up speed. It took roughly an hour to reach the Chunnel from Paris; they had a little over forty-five minutes to go.
Forty-five minutes to be caught.
The brothers would be at the Eiffel Tower by now. Those two were maniacs — imbeciles, to put it more accurately. They would have others just like them to help.
Forty-four minutes to go. Forty-four chances to be caught.
Was he losing his resolve? Had he suddenly become a coward?
Hardly.
“The dragon lady is in a terrible mood,” said Ahmed, coming back from the other car. “She thinks there was some foul-up with the ticket system and she will somehow be held accountable. The train was supposed to be sold out.”
Mussa suppressed a laugh. To expedite the plan, they had filed a large number of phony reservations, aiming to keep the train nearly empty. Even the second-class cars, normally overflowing, were less than half-full. He had planned the attack for this run because there were few “walk-ups,” or last-minute ticket buyers. Fewer passengers meant less chance at interference.
“You have to bring one of the carts forward with the drinks,” said Ahmed. “It has to go to car nine.”
Mussa selected the cart and backed it out of the holding area. It bumped sharply on the metal furring between the rug and aluminum flooring. The jerk shocked him, and for a millisecond he thought that he had taken the wrong cart and had somehow set off the explosives. This was impossible, yet for the tiny space of time he thought, he felt, he knew it had happened. Even when the shock of the moment passed, he found it difficult to breathe properly.
Mussa pushed the cart into the passenger area of the train car. The clear plastic of the overhead rack caught his face in its reflections: a deep, worried frown. He forced himself to smile, or at least try to smile, and pushed forward, wheeling the cart to the end of the car. There were five people: an old woman, two young people in their twenties, a woman, and an older man in his fifties. The older man’s stare swept into Mussa’s face. Mussa felt himself wincing, as if the glance were a physical thing.
He made his way between the cars, pushing the cart forward. The other steward, an Englishwoman, met him in car twelve and went with him to car nine. She had him help her set the trays in the vestibule at the end of the car. As he helped, someone came to use the nearby restroom.
Mussa glanced up as the man came through the door. As the man turned to go into the restroom, Mussa swore it was Donohue, the Irish assassin.
Mussa stared after him for a moment, then realized that the man had a mustache. His hair had also begun to gray. And now that he thought of it, wasn’t he a little taller than the former IRA man and thinner?
82
Karr was about twenty feet below the nearest man when one of the others pulled an MP-5 submachine gun from beneath his coverall. Tommy started to duck down but lost his balance and slid down the stairway.
Bullets ripped against the metal. Slugs ricocheted everywhere.
Karr’s chin slapped against one of the treads so hard he thought he’d been nailed by a bullet. He was surprised to find his face intact when he finally stopped sliding.
He jumped up, then ducked away as another burst bounced through the iron rafters.
“Get the French here, now!” he shouted. “And get the people down off the tower.”
Piped over the Art Room’s loudspeakers, the bullets sounded like a drummer’s rim shots off the side of a snare. Rubens gritted his teeth and turned to Telach.
“Why aren’t the French moving?” he asked her.
“We’re working on it.”
“Work faster, Marie.”
“We’re hearing shots at the Eiffel Tower?” asked Hadash over the line to Air Force One.
“Yes,” said Rubens.
“The French President is just coming up,” said Hadash. “I’ll leave the line open.”
“Of course,” said Rubens.
Karr, pinned down, guessed he was still two hundred feet below the third floor of the tower, with the terrorists twenty or so feet above him. Except for the one firing at him, they were moving upward.
From what Rubens had said, the plan would be to put all of the explosive charges together. Which meant there was a little bit of time to stop them.
Easy enough if he had a gun.
The gunfire had stopped; the man had started climbing again.
Karr jumped up and took the steps two at a time, reaching the next flight before a fresh fusillade of bullets rattled around him. As he crouched down, he saw a ladder welded against some of the supports; if he could get to it, he’d be out of the gunman’s line of sight.
After a long burst from the submachine gun, Karr pushed through the steps, jumping up and swinging across to the ladder. His hand slipped as he transferred his weight, and for a moment he hung suspended between the stairwell and the beam.
Then gravity took over, and he began to fall.
83
Donohue could not believe that Mussa was on the train with him — and in the uniform of a train porter. But surely it had been Mussa — he could see the look of recognition in his eyes.
Or was this simply more paranoia?
Donohue bent to the faucet to run some water over his face. He rubbed his eyes and cheeks but kept his fingers away from his mustache.
It had definitely been Mussa.
