The accident man sc-1 Page 4

  Grigori Kursk placed his feet on the ground astride his Ducati M900 Monster, sat upright, and raised his visor. His eyes burned with the rapacious hunger of a man for whom killing was not just a job but a compulsion-one that he would gratify whether he was paid to do so or not.

  He turned to look at his passenger, who was just stowing the camera in a basket on the side of the bike.

  "Did you see that?" he crowed, speaking in Russian. "Did you see the look on that driver's face? The poor bastard didn't know what to do. Well, he's just French pate now!" He paused for a second, then continued more calmly, getting back to business: "Okay, that was just as easy as I promised. Now, let's pick up the other half of the money."

  "Just pick it up fast, I'm in agony back here," his passenger replied. "My knees are up around my ears."

  Kursk laughed. "Ha! I thought you liked it like that!"

  He drove on another few meters till he found a gap in the parked cars just big enough for the bike. He positioned himself facing out from the curve, giving himself just enough clearance to see the exit of the tunnel. He then took a night-scope from the chest pocket of his biker jacket and held it up to his right eye, through the gap in his helmet. He was looking for the man who'd been on the bike at the far end of the tunnel.

  Kursk knew two things about this man. He was ex-British special forces. And he was the next target.

  7

  Carver's route out of town was simple. He planned to follow the river till he reached the peripherique, the freeway that ringed Paris, then to circle the city counterclockwise before hitting the A5 expressway away from the city to the southeast. He'd be over the Swiss border before dawn.

  He was just about to open the throttle when a flash of light caught his eye, no more than a hundred meters ahead, a reflection off a glass lens. It was only there for a fraction of a second, but that was long enough to draw Carver's attention and alert him to the curve of a motorcycle tire protruding from behind a parked car.

  Someone was watching him. And he was riding straight toward them.

  Carver needed to get off the road. He looked to his right. There was a turning. No good-a dead end. There was only one option now. He swung the Honda onto the broad expanse of pavement and raced past a line of trees and a low, black-painted iron railing that provided some sort of barrier between himself and whoever was waiting for him.

  To his right loomed the gray white bulk of the Palais de Tokyo. Its wings wrapped around a vast expanse of open plaza that rose uphill on four levels, separated by flights of shallow steps that stretched the full width of the building. At the very back ran two rows of tall classical columns, raised on a high pediment between the two wings. Behind them was the Avenue du President Wilson, which would give him another route out of town.

  Carver swerved toward the giant building, aiming the bike at the pediment. He hugged the curved wings of the plaza, racing past a knot of skateboarders huddled around a glowing joint, who looked at him in stoned bafflement. As he hit the first line of five steps, he rose in his saddle, letting his legs and arms act as shock absorbers as the Honda juddered up and over the obstruction.

  With his helmet on and the engine screaming, Carver didn't hear the gunfire. He just saw a spark of light to his left, followed instantaneously by the impact of bullets smashing into the back of the bike, punching holes in the rear mud flap, and blasting through the exhaust pipe.

  Behind him, the skateboarders were woken from their trance. A couple threw themselves to the ground. The rest just ran, screaming in panic across the expanse of open stone.

  Carver crouched over the handlebars, pressing his head down as low as possible as the wall next to him erupted in a spattering of miniature explosions, little puffs of stone fragments and dust. He had nowhere to go but straight ahead. Jinking his bike from side to side, he raced across the pavement, then hit the next set of steps.

  He was in a heavy sweat now, almost pulling the machine beneath him over the steps by sheer physical effort and bloody-minded determination. But as his body rocked back and forth in the saddle, his mind was working on another problem. Who was shooting at him? The obvious answer was someone working with or for Ramzi Narwaz. But if he had protection, why hadn't they defended his car? It had to be someone else. And unless the assassination party had an uninvited guest, that only left one alternative. "Shit!"

  Kursk shook his head in disgust and shoved his Mini Uzi submachine gun back in his jacket. He had been forced to shoot twisted around in the saddle of his bike, which was pointing in the wrong direction, away from the plaza where the Englishman was making his escape. There were trees in the way and he was aiming at a moving target. He was just wasting ammunition.

  Then he looked again. The Englishman seemed to be riding into a dead end, trapping himself at the far end of the inverted U-shaped plaza, beneath a wall at least four meters high. Kursk saw that there were more steps rising, much more steeply this time, diagonally up the side of the wall. Mother of God, was the man planning to ride up those as well?

  If he did, Kursk would not be able to follow. His bike wasn't built for that kind of stunt. Not with a passenger onboard. Of course, he'd have time to get off the bike, set the gun to fire single-shot, and aim at leisure as his target struggled upward. But the range would be well over a hundred meters. At that distance his gun, designed for close-range work, had greatly reduced stopping power.

  There was another issue. Suppose he put enough shots into the Englishman to kill him. Kursk would still be left with a body on the steps of a public building, with witnesses to the shooting, less than four hundred meters from the initial crash. Even for the guys who'd hired him, that would be hard to cover up.

  He swore under his breath. Things were getting out of hand. Kursk had to get one move ahead of his opponent.

  "Hang on," he said to his passenger, and punched the Ducati back to life. He drove another few meters down the Avenue de New York, then made a right onto a side street and roared uphill, beside the Palais de Tokyo. Now he was running parallel to Carver, separated by the bulk of the building, heading away from the river. But he'd be closing in on his quarry soon enough. At the far side of the plaza, Carver had reached the foot of the pediment steps. He revved the bike, prayed that its low-gear grunt was as good as advertised, then hurled himself at the steps, heaving the handlebars and pushing with his thighs, as if forcing an exhausted horse over a series of fences. The engine screamed in complaint as it rose to the demand. But it kept going up.

  Finally, with one last howl of protest, the bike made it to the top, spun its rear wheel for a second on the slick marble surface, then raced forward, between the columns, out onto the tiny semicircle of the Place de Tokyo, which led directly to the Avenue du President Wilson and-

  "Damn!"

  Carver needed to turn left, across the oncoming traffic, into the far right-hand lane of the road. That was the way to the peripherique. But there were two solid lines of parked cars, backed by trees, running down the middle of the road, blocking his way.

  Then, emerging from a side street about fifty meters to his left, he saw the same bike that had been chasing the Mercedes. It was a big, powerful machine but it looked like a scooter beneath the massive bulk of its rider, who dwarfed the passenger riding pillion. Their two heads scanned from side to side, then the smaller man tapped the rider on the shoulder and nodded down the road in Carver's direction. The rider responded immediately, turning right and gunning it downhill.

  By then Carver was already blazing down the road. He'd answered his own question. Max had set his people after him. But why would he want him dead? Carver ran through the alternatives in his mind as he sent the Honda's engine back into the red zone, ignoring traffic lights, swerving in and out of traffic coming out of the cross streets.

  Was it the money? Three million bucks was a lot to splash out on one job. If Max got him out of the way, he could keep the unpaid half of the cash for himself.

  Parisian drivers don't give a
damn. They're famous for it. But even they hit their brakes at the sight of a motorcycle racing across their front fenders. Carver weaved between cars as they skidded to a halt, rear-ending one another in a cacophony of shrieking brakes, squealing tires, and furious French insults. That suited him fine. Every stopped car was just one more obstruction slowing down the men on his tail.

  Had Carver outlived his usefulness? It had been pretty clear from their conversation that this was the last job he'd be doing for a while. Max might want to tie up all the loose ends.

  At the bottom of the road, the avenue opened onto the Place de L'Alma. That in turn led past the Alma-Marceau metro station to the Pont de l'Alma, or Alma Bridge. The Alma Tunnel ran crosswise, below. Say what you like about the French. But when they found a name they liked, they stuck with it.

  Or was there some other reason Max needed him out of the way, something to do with this operation? But what made this operation so different from the rest?

  He bore right across the Place de l'Alma, passing right over the car crash he'd caused just a few minutes earlier. As yet there were no ambulances, no police cars' flashing lights. At ground level, there seemed to be no sign at all of any accident.

  Carver hit the bridge a hundred meters, maybe a little more, ahead of the Ducati, heading across the river Seine. He was going to make a right and get onto the freeway that ran along the south bank of the river, making for the peripherique, just like before. But he realized that would be crazy. The Ducati was a much bigger, more powerful bike. Even with two onboard it would soon run him down on the open road. He needed a battleground where he could fight his attackers and win.

  And then he saw it.

  On the far side of the bridge, across the other side of the road, stood a small white kiosk surrounded by low hedges. It looked like a giant geometric mushroom: a short, squat tower topped by a wide, gently sloping octagonal roof. Just in front of it stood a blue sign that read, "Visite des Egouts de Paris."

  Carver grinned. He knew what that was. And it would do just fine.

  Ahead of him he could see a long articulated bus, its two halves held together by a rubber concertina. It was about to turn left, off the main road that ran along the Left Bank, onto the Alma Bridge, going back the way Carver had just come.

  He needed to get across the road. The bus would cut right across his path. He played one last game of chicken, turning his bike hard left, skidding across the path of the oncoming bus, sensing its bulk loom above him, seeing the look of horror on the driver's face.

  The bus screeched to a halt in midturn. Or at least its front half did. The rear end kept going, fishtailing as the link between its two halves acted as a hinge, swinging the bus around to the right. Somehow, the driver brought the bus under control before the momentum of the spin flung it onto its side. But now it was sprawled across the bridge, with traffic piling up around it. A perfect roadblock.

  Carver brought his bike to a halt beside the kiosk. He jumped off, pulled off his helmet, and grabbed the laser torch.

  Next to the kiosk a low, white metal gate guarded a stone stairway that spiraled underground. A sign on the gate read, "Acces interdit"-entry forbidden. He kicked open the gate, then headed down the stairs.

  8

  The first underground sewer was dug beneath the streets of Paris in 1370. Now there were 1,300 miles of tunnels beneath the city, known as les egouts. They carried away 1.2 million cubic meters of water and waste a day, and they directly followed the lines of the roads up above. Every tunnel was signposted with the name of the avenue, boulevard, street, or square whose filth it removed.

  If you wanted to have a gun battle right in the middle of a major city, without anyone noticing, the sewers were the place to have it. But Paris went one better. It didn't just have sewers, it had a sewer museum, a concrete-and-steel warren of tunnels and chambers, right underneath the south end of the Alma Bridge.

  Carver scuttled down the narrow stairs, bare concrete walls on either side. At the bottom, the passage turned a sharp left. In front of him was a solid steel door. On it was a white sign with a red banner across it announcing Danger. Below the sign a padlock held a massive bolt in place.

  He put a bullet through the padlock, blowing it open, then pushed against the door, which swung away from him into a pitch-black void filled with chill, damp air that smelled of drains. He turned on his dazzler, twisting the end to widen the beam, filling the black void with a ghostly, radioactive green glow. Ahead, the passage seemed to open up into a low, broad chamber. There was another lock on the inside of the door, operated by a metal wheel. Carver closed the door and turned the wheel. There wasn't much chance the guys who were after him would come in that way. Only an idiot would charge down a narrow, dark corridor toward a man known to have a dazzler and almost certainly a gun as well. They'd find another way in. Even so, it never hurt to cover your back.

  Carver walked on into the sewers, his torch in his left hand, the SIG-Sauer in his right, trying to work out the direction from which his enemy's attack would come.

  The first chamber consisted of two old sewer tunnels that ran side by side. The sewer was filled in with concrete to make a flat floor. The wall between the tunnels had been punctured by a series of low, egg-shaped arches to make a single space. Carver walked through one of the arches, then hurled himself to the ground, bringing his gun to bear as he rolled across the concrete. To his left, in the shadows on the edge of the green dazzler light, he'd seen a group of figures in boiler suits and miners' helmets. It took him half a second to realize they were waxworks, part of the museum's exhibition.

  He got up sheepishly and dusted himself off. To his right there was another, smaller tunnel. A notice: "This Way for the Tour." Carver followed it and went deeper into the tunnel. Grigori Kursk had reached the far end of the Alma Bridge a few seconds after Carver. He'd tracked the Englishman right up to the point where he'd pulled that crazy stunt in front of the oncoming bus. By the time the bus had moved out of the way, he'd lost him.

  For a second he thought the man had got away. Then, across the far side of the road, he saw Carver's bike abandoned next to the kiosk. He drove the Ducati onto the sidewalk at the end of the bridge, parking it next to a waist-high metal cage that stood over an open manhole. Beneath the cage a metal spiral staircase descended into the ground.

  Kursk gestured to his partner to approach the Englishman's abandoned bike from the right. He moved left. The two of them dashed across the bridge. Kursk ran around the front of the stranded bus, while his partner darted between the bus and the cars piling up behind. As they approached the bike, they saw no sign of its rider. Then Kursk noticed the open gate and the concrete stairway behind it.

  He stared at the signs on the kiosk, trying to work out what they meant from the mass of different languages and symbols. Okay, so this was some sort of visitors' entrance to something. Which meant somewhere there had to be an exit, or maybe a fire escape. Which would need a manhole. Beneath his helmet, Kursk grinned. Now he knew how to beat the Englishman.

  He told his partner what to do. Then he jogged back across the bridge to where his bike was parked against the metal cage. The top of the cage was hinged in the middle. One half opened up to allow access to the manhole underneath, and it was held in place with a padlock and chain.

  Kursk took off his helmet, reached into the bike's top box, and pulled out a tool kit in a black, roll-up nylon pouch. From this he removed a small pair of bolt-cutters, casually leaned over the cage, and cut the links of the chain. He lifted the hinged lid of the cage, stepped over the side railings, and started walking down the metal stairs. Once he was below ground, he reached into his jacket and took out his gun before clipping a small black flashlight onto a mount on top of the barrel.

  At the bottom of the shaft, there was a double door that shone scarlet in the beam of the flashlight. It was an emergency exit, opening out, toward him. Kursk fired a three-bullet burst into the locking mechanism.

  The
sound of the gunfire reverberated into the darkness. The Englishman was bound to hear, but that was good. Kursk did not want to waste time wandering around the sewers of Paris, playing blindman's bluff. He'd much rather draw his opponent on, tempting him into an ambush. But he still had to find a way of setting up that ambush.

  He pulled open the splintered door, walked a few paces forward, and entered a sort of man-made cave, maybe fifty feet square and twelve to fifteen feet high. He could hear the sound of rushing water somewhere beneath him. The flashlight tracked across the concrete floor until it came to an inset metal grille, running the full width of the cave, maybe six feet across. A thick brown soup of sewage and drain water was running beneath it, filling the air with a heavy fecal smell. And people actually paid to come down here?

  Kursk looked around for cover. The huge space was almost entirely bare. The only means of access to the cave were two tunnels, one narrow and floored with concrete, the other broader, with another grille floor, directly over the open sewer. They turned to the left, a few feet apart.

  On the right was an alcove. Its far wall had a huge circle cut into it, maybe ten feet in diameter. In the middle of the circle, held on a low wooden frame, was a gigantic black sphere, like a huge cannonball, so high that Kursk could not reach its top. There was a scale model of the ball down on the floor, demonstrating that it was made of wooden planks, with a hollow core. An illustrated notice showed how the ball had once been used as a cleaning device, dragged through the main sewers, bashing against the sides and knocking the crud from the walls. Kursk scanned the notice. He examined the ball and the way it was held on its frame. Now he had a new plan. Carver had heard the muffled echo of gunfire in front of him, somewhere in the distance, just as he emerged from a low, narrow tunnel into an underground plaza. He swept his dazzler around and tried to get his bearings. It looked like some kind of a junction, where a warren of underground routes converged at a single point. On all sides there were arches beyond which he could see nothing but the blackness of passageways disappearing into the depths. But the only tunnel that interested Carver opened directly ahead of where he was standing. He was sure the gunfire had come from its far end.