Peter May - Extraordinary People

Enzo really didn’t. ‘All the same, I am going.’ Madeleine had already made the decision for him. Samu had no idea why he wanted to go down into the catacombes , and Enzo wasn’t about to enlighten him.

Samu glanced at Raffin. He knew there was more to this than he was being told. But he just shrugged. ‘Your funeral.’ He turned and leaned over the desk, sifting through the various maps. ‘I’m only going to give you three plans. No point in confusing you.’ He smoothed the first of them out on top of the others. It was headed, GRANDE AVENUE DU LUXEMBOURG (NORD). He clamped his roll-up between wet lips and screwed his eyes up against the smoke as he searched in his pockets for a red marker pen. When he found it, he leaned over the map again, spilling ash and brushing it aside with the back of his hand. ‘This is your master map. I’m going to mark out your route on it. You don’t deviate from this, my friend, or you’re fucked, okay? It’s a labyrinth down there, a maze. Once you’re lost, you’re lost. Lots of the tunnels are murée , they’ve been bricked up by the authorities. We’ve knocked cat holes in some of them.’ He looked appraisingly at Enzo. ‘But you’re a big guy. You could have trouble squeezing through. Most of them were made for skinny guys like me.’

He took his marker pen and traced a thick red line along a route running north to south. ‘This is the Grande Avenue du Luxembourg. Most people get access to it through a couple of hidden entrances in the Luxembourg Gardens. The authorities deny they’re there. But they exist all right. Trouble is…’ he glanced at Enzo again, ‘…I doubt if you’re up to climbing the railings. But I know another way in. We’ll come to that.’ He returned to the Grande Avenue du Luxembourg. ‘You keep following this straight down. It’s pretty easy going. You don’t take any of these turnoffs until you get to here.’ He stopped his pen tip at a junction which branched off to the west. ‘If you miss this one you’ll know soon enough, because the tunnel comes to a dead-end where they’ve built a multilevel underground car park.’

Enzo wondered fleetingly if it was the one where Diop had tried to murder him.

‘You’re around ten meters down at this level. The deepest you’ll go is fifteen.’ His pen followed the turnoff. ‘Keep going west. You can’t go wrong. Ignore any branches, just stick to my line. Until you get to here….’ At which point he pulled over a second map. This one was headed, RESEAU DES CHARTREUX. ‘This shows the area in more detail. You can see the German bunker marked out here at the top left, and down below it are the tunnels quarried by the Chartreux monks. Right down at the bottom here is the Fontaine des Chartreux. It’s a big, hollowed out chamber with a stone sink to collect water that runs down the walls. They call it the Fontaine des Chartreux because the water is green, just like the liqueur made by the monks. If you find yourself there, you’ll know you’re in the wrong place. It’s a dead-end. You used to be able to get in from the tunnels under the Rue d’Assas, but it’s all been bricked up. If you do get lost, you can always try and get into the Rue d’Assas through some of the chatières at the south-west corner of the German bunker. It’ll be a tight squeeze, but you might make it. If you get into the Rue d’Assas you’ll see there are two tunnels, one either side of the street. They’re linked by these transversals, kind of shallow tunnels that cross under the road at right-angles. You might need to use one or more of them to find an exit up to the street above. It’s a general principle. Most of the main over-ground avenues and boulevards have two tunnels running beneath them linked by transversals.’

Samu stood up to roll another cigarette, and Enzo could only see his hands in the light of the desk lamp as they manipulated the paper and tobacco shreds. His voice came disembodied from the darkness outside the circle of light. ‘Anyway, the main thing is not to get lost. And you won’t, if you follow the red line.’

From his brief visit to the catacombes beneath the Place d’Italie, Enzo had a good sense of what to expect. Low, arching tunnels, cold, damp, fetid air, darkness, claustrophobia. He would be completely and utterly alone, venturing voluntarily into a trap set for him by the woman who had stolen his daughter. It was madness. Madeleine had every possible advantage. And he had absolutely no idea what he was going to do when he got there. He felt a creeping cloak of hopelessness start to wrap itself around him. But there was nothing else for it. He had to follow this through.

‘Okay, this is where you’ll come in off the Luxembourg map.’ Samu had lit his roll-up and was tracing his red line into the Chartreux map from the top right-hand corner. ‘Down to what looks like a roundabout here. You’re more or less below the Rue Auguste Comte at this point. It was walled up in eighty-eight, and we knocked a chatière in it in ninety-two. A lot of people have squeezed through that hole, so you might just make it.’ He switched maps again, to a detailed plan of the bunker, and circled the roundabout at the top right. ‘Okay? You see where we are?’

Enzo nodded.

‘Right, now you’re in the bunker. It’s a mess. A real bugger’s muddle.’ He drew a careful red line that zigzagged south and then west through what seemed like an impossible maze. Then he made a small circle and stood up triumphantly. ‘And that’s it. The Salle des Fresques.’ Enzo could barely see his grin through the smoke. ‘It’s quite something. A bit like a bad trip.’

Enzo thought that this whole undertaking was one big, bad trip. ‘How long will it take me?’

Samu shrugged. ‘Thirty to forty minutes. Depends how fast or how slow you are. Could be quicker, could be longer.’ He unfolded three, clear plastic ziplock bags. ‘I’m going to put the maps in these to protect them from the wet. After all this rain you might find there’s a bit of water down there.’ He began slipping the maps into their bags. ‘Guard them with your life, my friend, because it may well depend upon them.’

The marble woman reclining on the left slope of the triangular headed doorway opposite held her sword upright in the rain, impervious to the wet, unblinking in the glare of the floodlights that washed the building. There was something stoic about her. She wore a Mona Lisa smile of quiet confidence. Enzo sat in the dark by the window of Raffin’s study, and regarded her jealously. He wished he could find an inner calm to mirror her stony self-confidence. But in truth, he was afraid. More afraid than he had ever been in his life. Afraid for Kirsty, for what might already have become of her. Afraid that he lacked both the courage and the resources to be able to change her destiny. Or his. The rain made tracks down the glass, like tears, and in the light from the street, their shadows streaked his face.

A shaft of pale electric yellow fell across the floor as the door opened from the séjour . Enzo heard the television, and the low murmur of voices coming from the other room. Raffin closed the door behind him and shut them out. He stood for a moment before crossing to the window. He had a parcel of soft cloth in his hand, which he held out and unwrapped to reveal the shiny, blue-black barrel of a gun with a polished wooden hand-grip. ‘It’s loaded. I want you to take it.’

Enzo shook his head. ‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I could never use it.’

‘Enzo….’

‘No, Roger!’

Roger stood for a long time in the dark, the gun still in his hand, before finally he wrapped it up again. Enzo heard his shallow breathing. ‘You’ve got about ten minutes.’