Jeffery Deaver - Watchlist

In the lobby, Tesla quickly assessed the situation. Body behind the desk, two bewildered and bedraggled Americans. But no Jana.

Holding the Hawlen at her side, Tesla scaled the mountain of luggage blocking the door, ignoring the American man’s yelling. She slid to a stop on the street.

Tesla mentally clicked through the options with computer-speed.

Taxi? You couldn’t hail one on any Paris street and there were no cabs at the nearby stands.

Metro? The nearest was George V, a good five-minute hike.

No, Jana would try to contact the person who had sent her.

Tesla gave the street a quick scan. Even at the busiest times of day, rue Pierre 1er de Serbie was a staid street of stone-facade apartment buildings. Now, at seven on this cold October morning, there was only one café owner out, the crank of his unrolling shutters breaking the quiet.

Except…

A lone figure in white just disappearing around the far corner. Tesla took off in pursuit.

But when she reached the corner, she came to an abrupt stop.

A swirl of motion, sound, smells and people.

Damn. Saturday. Market day.

Tesla started down the narrow aisle, eyes darting between the overflowing stands of vegetables, fruits, fish and cheeses. The crowd pressed close-young women pushing strollers, old women toting straw baskets, boys on mopeds. Tesla was careful to keep the gun down, hoping her loose slacks offered some cover. The last thing she needed was a panicked crowd.

She pushed on, her eyes raking the crowd for Jana. The woman couldn’t go unnoticed for long. Her face was a pulpy mess and her white trench coat was covered in blood.

Where the hell was she?

Tesla grimaced in pain. She caught a glimpse of herself in a café window. Wild hair and a fresh stain of blood on her blouse from her seeping shoulder wound.

Her reflection was framed by orange and black crepe paper hung from the café window. Paper skeletons and black cats. Halloween. Today was Halloween, a holiday the Parisians had just recently appropriated from Americans. Tonight the Champs d’ Élysées would teem with drunken kids in vampire teeth and theater blood.

Two women stumbling down the street drenched in the real thing would hardly get a glance today.

Twenty yards away, a flash of white amid the riot of color at a far stall. Tesla reached the flower stall just as Jana disappeared again. To the left was a narrow alleyway, just like the impasse back at the hotel. Tesla made a quick choice and raced to the open door about half-way down.

Kitchen. Deserted.

A brush of a heavy drape and she was in the bistro’s small dining room. A thin man in a white serving coat had been folding napkins but now was just staring.

“Where did she go?” Tesla demanded.

The young man’s eyes widened when he saw her gun.

“ La femme dans blanc! Où est-elle allée ?”

“ La bas .” He pointed to a spiral staircase.

Removing the silencer, Tesla drew in a shuddering breath and started down the narrow stairs.

She quickly searched the two small toilets. Nothing. There was a third door. It opened into a small dark storage room. Tesla slapped the cold wall and her hand found a switch. The small room came to life under the single hanging bare bulb. Rough stone walls, a cracked tile floor. Piles of old tables, broken bistro chairs, boxes and crates. It was filled with junk, except for a path leading to the wine rack that stretched across the length of one stone wall.

Tesla swept the gun slowly across the shadows. She knew Jana didn’t have a weapon but she wasn’t taking any chances. She crept through the debris, her two-handed grip on the Hawlen tight.

She stopped and stood perfectly still, listening for any sound.

Nothing.

But then she felt it. A hard stream of cold air at the back of her neck.

She spun and leveled the gun toward the bistro chairs. She approached carefully, her eyes alert for any movement behind the ten-foot-high tangle of legs and shredded rattan seats. The stream of air grew stronger.

Tesla grabbed a leg atop the pile and gave a sharp pull. The top chairs clattered to the tile, one clipping the hanging bulb, sending it swinging wildly.

Jesus.

A small open door in the stone wall. With each sway of the bulb, Tesla could glimpse what lay beyond.

Tunnels. Not stone but some rough gray-white material. A low curved ceiling not more than six or eight feet above the dirt floor.

A dusty stench poured out.

What was this?

But then the odd smell registered. Chalk?

And with that came a flash of memory. Harold… that night five years ago when, in the highest heat of their affair, he had brought her here to Paris for a weekend. Dinner at Taillevent, a three-hundred-euro Haut Brion. And to impress her even more, a trip to the restaurant’s wine cellar. There, the sommelier told them that the sleek vault used to be a dank cave, part of a network of tunnels below Paris that had once been the city’s thriving chalk quarries. The tunnels ran for hundreds of miles below apartments, cafés and shops. All but a few had been abandoned and boarded up.

Tesla drew in a breath and stepped into the darkness.

The swinging bulb offered up moving slices of black and white. But beyond thirty feet, all light disappeared.

Tesla stood perfectly still, senses pricked for the slightest sound of movement. The drug-rush of adrenalin had dulled the pain in her shoulder.

She advanced slowly. With the dying sway of light, she could see now that the tunnel ahead branched off into two others.

A skitter. Rats.

A drip of something on her neck. Water.

A smell of something dead and close.

The blow came from the left, aimed at her bad shoulder. But she was quick enough to jerk away so the wine bottle hit her upper arm instead.

Tesla gritted her teeth against the pain and gripped the gun tighter.

A crash over her head and she was sprayed with glass and doused in something cold. Another bottle exploded and she shut her eyes against the sting of the wine in her face.

Nearby, a slap of wood against wood and Tesla saw Jana fleeing out a service door. Struggling to control the pain, struggling to breathe, the wounded woman followed her assailant as quickly as she could.

The foot pursuit, south through subdued streets of upscale townhouses and private hotels, seemed to last forever and ended only when Jana streaked across L’avenue de New York, making for Pont d’Alma. But despite her pain and exhaustion, Tesla closed in. And just as Jana made it to the bridge, she collapsed. Unable to see any further, hiding the gun, Tesla hurried through the traffic, heading directly for her assailant.

Jana managed to pull herself to her feet. She glanced up and saw that Tesla had now crossed the road and was getting closer.

Resignation and despair filled Jana’s dark face.

Had Tesla not been in such pain, had she not seen in vivid memory the young NATO soldier’s arm shredded by the blast Jana had ordered, had she not known what carnage this woman was capable of, she might’ve felt pity for her.

But Jana’s face clearly explained that she knew the end had come and that she wasn’t going to allow herself to be tortured any longer. She glanced over the side of the Pont d’Alma toward the Seine and noticed the approach of one of the famed bateaux mouches -the “fly boats” that take tourists up and down the river. Jana’s eyes met Tesla’s and they struggled up the railing of the bridge.

“No!” Tesla cried, thrusting out her hand.

Jana hesitated only a moment and then tumbled into the murky water, directly into the path of a boat. Tesla saw her vanish under the prow.

The ship passed, the captain unaware of the tragedy. The tour guide’s voice echoed uninterrupted over the water. Tesla waited only a moment until she could see in the wake the outline of the woman’s torso, floating on her belly, arms outstretched, head bent completely under the brown water.