Paul Christopher - The Sword of the Templars

“We get away from here.”

They tidied their clothes, then walked down the little alley and out onto the rue Latran. Nobody paid them the slightest attention; it was as though nothing had happened, which of course it hadn’t at least as far as the people on the street were concerned.

Peggy and Holliday walked down to the rue Saint-Jacques, then turned right and headed for the Seine and the Petit Pont. They walked past rue de la Huchette and reached the bridge. On the other side was the immense block of the Prefecture of Police and across from it the familiar shape of Notre Dame Cathedral.

Halfway across the bridge Holliday stopped and looked upriver. There were bookstalls set up against the stone embankment to his left. Down below on the quai by the river half a dozen homeless people huddled. A glass-topped tour boat slid under the bridge and headed west. A few fluffy clouds rolled peacefully through a mid-afternoon summer sky. Without a dead body decomposing in his hotel room, it would have been a perfect day to be in Paris.

“Somebody’s on our tail,” said Holliday.

“Who?” Peggy asked, gripping her shoulder bag and trying not to look nervous.

“We’re being double-teamed. They’re almost certainly with Renault,” answered Holliday. “There’s a guy back there in a leather bomber jacket even though it’s about ninety degrees out, and there’s another one who’s supposed to be a tourist, but he just doesn’t look right.”

“Most tourists don’t look right,” said Peggy. “I’ve taken a million pictures that prove it.”

“Tourists in Hawaiian shirts and fatigue hats with cameras around their necks don’t usually travel alone. They come in groups, pairs at least. And he’s too young for the whole Ugly American outfit.”

“More cops?”

“Cop or not, Monsieur Renault back there was working for Kellerman. We have to assume these two mooks are his men, too.”

“How do we get rid of them?”

“You know Paris better than I do. East and west, where will the subway get you?”

“The RER, the regional express, can get you out to Poissy and Cergy le Haut in the west, Chessy in the east-that’s Disneyland.”

“And the regular Metro?”

“La Dйfense in the west, Porte de Vincennes and the Paris Zoo in the east.”

“Where’s the closest Metro interchange, where the most lines cross?”

“Chвtelet, just across from here. A few blocks away. All the main lines cross there, including the RER.”

“Then that’s where we’ll lose them,” said Holliday.

The Chвtelet Metro station was built in 1900, and over the next century it expanded and grew up, down, and sideways, connecting the four main lines of the original Metro plus the high-speed lines of the RER located below the main lines.

The station has eleven access points, stairs, elevators, escalators, and even two moving sidewalks called “tapis roulants” or rolling carpets. You can go north, south, east, or west, get to the airport and any one of four major train stations, including the TGVs into Europe and under the English Channel to England, buy everything from condoms to croissants, have a glass of wine, eat pommes frites, or buy any one of a dozen newspapers.

At any one time during an average day in the summer there are between five and eight thousand people moving through the intricate web of platforms, corridors, and gateways into the station. Trains pull in, trains pull out, horns sound, recorded voices make announcements, beggars beg, and licensed chamber musicians play Johann Pachelbel’s entire Canon. Rock ensembles do all seventy-four minutes of Tommy, the rock opera by The Who.

With Peggy in the lead they slipped into the Metro at one of the three entrances on avenue Victoria, bought a carnet of tickets next to one of the turnstiles, and started up and down a dizzying array of walkways and corridors, trying to leave their surveillance behind.

They faked taking a ride on one of the westbound trains, but got off at the last second, doubled back, and finally climbed onto a train heading for Chвteau de Vincennes just as the doors were hissing closed. The horn gave its warbling warning, and they moved off. At the far end of the car a young woman with a clarinet started doing an excellent rendition of Benny Goodman’s “One O’Clock Jump.”

“Did they get on?” Peggy asked.

“American Tourist did, I think; three or four cars back. We ditched Bomber Jacket.”

“Presumably they’ll have cell phones. They’ll be in contact.”

“Where’s the best place to get off?” Holliday asked.

“To leave American Tourist behind?” Peggy shrugged. “Nation. It’s the next big multiple-line station, just this side of the Pйriphйrique, the ring road we took in from the airport, like the Beltway in D.C.”

“And after that?”

“Saint-Mandй, on the other side of the ring road.”

“What’s there?”

“Old apartment buildings. Upper middle class, doctors, lawyers. There’s some kind of farmers’ market there; I don’t know what days.”

“Taxis?”

“There should be a taxi stand right outside the Metro.”

Holliday looked up at the Metro diagram above the doors a few feet away. There were seven stations between Chвtelet and Saint-Mandй.

“How long to Nation?” he asked.

“Ten minutes.”

“Saint-Mandй?”

“Three minutes more. What are you thinking?”

“Get off at Nation. Make him believe it. Then get back on again. If we shake him, great. If we don’t, we get a taxi at the Saint-Mandй stop and see if we can lose him that way.”

“Okay,” she nodded.

Holliday looked at his watch. Three in the afternoon. The train was half-filled with tired looking civil service types. Men in jackets and ties, women in dresses and high heels. These people were going home.

A baguette was sticking out of a woman’s shopping bag, and Holliday realized that the only thing he’d eaten since getting off the plane had been a single slightly greasy sausage roll. Neither he nor Peggy had slept since leaving Jerusalem. If they didn’t find somewhere to go to ground soon they were both going to collapse.

The train pulled into Nation with a roar and shuddered to a screeching stop. The doors sucked open, and they stepped out onto the platform. The train was emptying almost completely. Three cars up they saw American Tourist, and they suddenly had a bit of luck. Somebody made a grab for the Nikon prop around the fake tourist’s neck and in the process dragged American Tourist off balance. They fell together in a tangle just as the warning horn sounded. Peggy and Holliday stepped back into the train. The doors shut, and they moved off, leaving American Tourist behind.

At Saint-Mandй they climbed up into daylight again. The farmers’ market, a double row of tent-like booths set up in a parking area, was winding up. The air smelled like fresh cabbage and chicken blood. Across from the Metro exit and the farmers’ market there was an intersection of two main streets with a florist on one side and a cafй with an awning and a red, glowing neon sign: LA TOURELLE.

They crossed to the cafй, picked a table where they could keep an eye on the Metro exit and sat down. A waiter came and sneered silently. They both ordered Kronenbourgs and a sandwich jambon with fries. The sneering waiter disappeared.

“We can’t stay exposed like this for too long. We have to get off the street.”

“Another hotel?”

“If Captain Renault was really with the Groupe d’Intervention de la Gendarmerie Nationale he’ll have the hotels covered. Every registered guest is on a police report somewhere. They’ve gotten even tighter since 9/11. They’ll find us within hours.”

“So what do we do?” Peggy asked.