The Lost Key (34 page)

Paris Underground

Off rue Saint-Jacques

2:00 a.m.

Their flashlights barely made a dent in the dark. The air smelled ancient, musty, and dead flat, like a tomb. Mike wondered how Marie Curie could stand to come down here day after day. She looked at Sophie, saw her face was white and set.

As they walked, their feet crunched on trash and broken glass. She saw rivulets of water running down some of the walls and wondered where the water came from. And wondered why it didn't simply burst through the tunnel ceiling. She stepped over and through puddles of stagnant stinking water, eyes ahead, trying not to dwell on how alien and terrifying this world was.

They'd climbed at least forty feet down a series of wooden ladders, then struck out in the direction Dendritte pointed. The ceiling over their heads was lower in some places, making Nicholas bend down. There were only the four of them. The rest of Dendritte's cops were stationed around the aboveground area, with photos of Manfred Havelock, guarding known exits out of the underground in case they were too late. They were the fail-safe—if
the four of them didn't return in an hour, her other men were to come in after them.

Dendritte was right, there were street names, of a sort. Some were very old, carved into the stone, some much newer, spray-painted on the walls. They went deeper and deeper, sometimes angling up, then down, mostly downward, lower and lower beneath the real world above. Dendritte seemed like she knew exactly what she was doing, where she was going.

They saw walls covered in red and black graffiti, insults written by the cataphiles to the police. She'd heard Dendritte say the cataphiles used the tunnels to host parties, drink with their friends, or escape from the police after committing crimes.

Mike wondered if they would cancel their parties if they knew what was down here behind a locked door in a hundred-year-old lab.

She heard Sophie breathing heavily behind her. Despite the pain meds, Mike knew her back had to be hurting badly, but she hadn't said a word. Sophie had guts.

Sophie stumbled and Nicholas caught her, righting her before she slammed headfirst into Mike.

“You okay?”

“I am. This place—it's like it's dead, yet I can almost feel it breathing around me. Isn't that strange?”

Nicholas agreed. He wondered about Commander Dendritte. Why had she chosen this assignment? He couldn't imagine trying to track a criminal down here, with only a flashlight and a map that was always changing. And that meant Havelock had to be somewhat familiar with the catacombs, or had a guide like they did. Even so, he was taking a huge risk.

Dendritte stopped, shined her light on the walls.

“
Regardez-vous.
Look at this.”

They gathered around her. She ran her hands along a carving in the stone wall. “See?
RUE JACQUES.
In the
Révolution
, the street names with
Saint
in them were dropped. The Rats have made certain that guideposts down here match what is above. And see the other numbers? We are twenty-five meters below the street. That is over eighty feet,” she added to Mike.

Mike glanced at Nicholas. “As deep as the sub under the loch. Incredible.”

Sophie asked, “Are we close?”

Dendritte dropped her light from the walls. “
Oui,
yes, very close. Follow me.” She walked for another one hundred feet, then stopped and shone the light on the walls again.

“Ah,
ici.
Here, you look.”

Mike shined her flashlight on the wall as well. “Nineteen G thirteen R
.
This is it. We have found the spot. I do not see a door, only the wall—”

The wall began to crumble. The cinder base slid open with a loud grind and two men burst out. There was an odd whistling sound, and the commander suddenly fell to the ground, her flashlight spinning to hit against the tunnel wall. Nicholas grabbed Mike and Sophie and dragged them down to the floor behind her. In that instant Nicholas realized exactly how Havelock had known where to come. He'd hired Rats, and they'd not only showed him the way, he'd set them to guard the tunnel entrance. They were dressed in heavy overcoats, big boots, their faces unshaven and brutal.

Mike grabbed the unconscious commander to protect her from the two men, but one of them was coming her way. Before she could draw her Glock, he hit her hard in the back with his fists,
then wrapped his big hands around her neck. She heard Nicholas and the other Rat scuffling next to her. She tried to kick back at him, tried to twist away, but he was squeezing harder and harder. She was getting light-headed and dizzy.

A second later, the beam of a single flashlight began bouncing around. Sophie, she'd found Dendritte's flashlight. The sudden light distracted the Rat and she was able to jerk free and whirl around to face him. She looked into the man's face as she kicked him hard in the hip, then launched herself two steps up the wall, twisted hard in a somersault, landing behind him, and slammed her Glock on the back of his head. He fell hard, landing on her ankle, twisting it under him. She had no choice but to fall as well; it was that or let the ankle snap.

As she went down, she saw Nicholas and one more man, this one even bigger, punching each other, twisting, kicking. But this Rat wasn't März. Nicholas kneed him in the face, then knocked him onto his back. Then he was on him, his neck between his hands, and Nicholas was choking him. It didn't take long. When Nicholas let his head drop, he came slowly to his feet.

“Mike?”

“Here. I'm okay, but this idiot is unconscious and he's pinned my leg. Where are Sophie and Commander Dendritte?” She yelled their names, and their names came back to her as a hollow echo.

She yelled again. There was no answer. The two women were gone.

N
icholas heaved the man off Mike's leg and pulled her to her feet. She cursed under her breath, but Nicholas heard her and tightened his hold around her. “My ankle's sprained and isn't that just wonderful?”

He said, “At least your thick boots kept the ankle from breaking. Can you walk?”

She gritted her teeth and took a couple of steps. It hurt, but she could do it. Mike said, “Those two men—the Rats—they ambushed us to take the commander and Sophie?”

He played the light in the tunnel behind them, then up ahead. “Maybe. Havelock knew we would come down here after him. How, I have no idea.”

They found Dendritte in an adjoining tunnel. She was moaning softly. Nicholas knelt beside her, felt the pulse in her throat. It was steady. “Are you all right, Commander?”

“Bad knock on the head,” she whispered. “The Rat must have flung a rock at me. Go, go, find Sophie. I'll be all right.”

Nicholas said, “Where do we go from here, Commander?”

But Dendritte's eyes were closed.

“Nicholas, look!” Mike shone her light on the wall, to the spot
where the two Rats had burst out. She realized it was cracked open, meant as the escape for the Rats after they'd killed her and Nicholas. “Through here, look, there's another tunnel. See, the floor slopes down, going even deeper than where we are now. This is it, Nicholas.”

He felt Dendritte's pulse again. Still steady.

There was nothing they could do for her. He stood. “Let's go.”

Nicholas shoved against the walled door. It was old, maybe built by Rats in the nineteenth century. Once through, he shined his flashlight on the ground. “Yes, this is it.” Nicholas leaned down to look at the scuff marks in the dirt floor, long drags. “There was at least one more Rat. He took Sophie and dragged her through here. Can you walk, Mike?”

Oh, yes, she could run now, if she had to.

They went deeper, slapping away cobwebs. The smell of rot and slime was nearly overwhelming. Something skittered away from Nicholas's foot. This narrow tunnel seemed untouched by man for a very long time—maybe since Madame Curie had walked through here a hundred years ago.

The corridor narrowed. Nicholas's shoulders touched the wet walls. He closed his eyes a moment, breathed through his nose. This was worse than diving to the sub.

Mike called out, “It widens out again down here, Nicholas. And I see it, a chamber.”

He swallowed and followed her. She was right. The tunnel was getting wider, the ceiling higher. His breath came easier now.

Mike was shining her flashlight along one long tunnel wall. They stood shoulder to shoulder, staring at four side-by-side wooden doors, each with warped brown wood panels and rusted
black hinges. They looked half a foot thick. On each door was a big lock. “They look like dungeon doors,” Mike said, only to hear her own voice echo back to her. “Why four doors? Are there labs behind all of them?”

“Look above the doors, at the carvings,” Nicholas said. “Gargoyles of sorts, mythical figures—griffins and dragons and chimeras.”

Mike whispered, “They're meant as warnings, to scare away anyone who stumbled across this place. But why four doors? Are there chambers behind each one? Did she use them all?” She looked back over her shoulder and gave him a smile. “Four doors—you pick the one you think is Curie's main lab.”

He whispered in her ear, “Step back. I'll shut off my torch. Radium can be luminescent; perhaps Curie's new polonium is as well. Let's see if it can help us choose the right one.”

They shut off their lights, and the world turned black. And they saw that the third door glowed in the darkness, a bluish light that seemed to seep out of the wood itself. They realized the door wasn't completely closed.

“I have a theory,” Nicholas whispered.

“And what would that be?”

He looked dead serious. “If you do bad things, bad people will come visit you.” He pulled his Glock and started to push the door open.

He sensed the slash of a knife through the darkness.

Another Rat, this one bigger than the other two. He seemed to come out of nowhere, with no warning. Nicholas caught his arm as the blade came down, and the knife disappeared between them.

The man was growling, panting, cursing him in French. They grappled in the dark. Slowly, inch by inch, Nicholas was turning the Ka-Bar knife until he had the Rat pressed back against the tunnel wall. He jerked the man's hand up, twisted the knife inward and shoved it into the big man's throat.

Madame Curie's Lost Laboratory

Paris Underground

3:00 a.m.

Havelock was sadly disappointed when he'd unlocked the third door. The lab was old, but then what could he expect? He couldn't imagine having to work day in and day out in this dank hollowed-out room with its dead air, a hundred feet below the street. There weren't any precautions then against radioactive materials. He thought of Curie's long, slow death.

Beakers were lined up on the counters with liquid still in them; the chamber was practically airtight. There were two microscopes, state-of-the-art for the time, that is. Was one for the assistant who'd betrayed her?

Havelock found the small microgram of super-polonium in a cabinet, unsecured, in a glass bottle with a stopper. It glowed an eerie kind of bluish yellow in the tube. It was lovely, a color not on the spectrum. He supposed he'd have to name that as well.
Elise
. He'd name it for her.

It wasn't safe to transport as is, but that was no matter. Using specially made gloves, he picked up the tube, and brought it over to Sophie Pearce.

Havelock's heart speeded up as he looked at her. He wanted to see the marks of his whip on her back. He knew she was frightened, her face utterly white in the soft lights in Curie's old lab. He wondered if the Rat who'd taken her from the tunnels and was now guarding the door had been more frightened than she was when he'd looked around Madame Curie's lab. He'd hired him and his two cohorts because they knew the tunnels well and they knew how to kill.

He said in a voice eerie and strangely hollow in the closed confines of the ancient lab, “You do realize, Ms. Pearce, that you are in the presence of genius and a hundred-year-old weapon of such magnitude, only I can make it what it was meant to be? I thought it only fitting that Rothschild's blood was here in the chamber with me. When I finish the assembly, I will take you back to the house and kill both you and your wretched brother.” And he and Elise would celebrate.

He wanted to sing. He'd won, he'd won. Soon his Rats would be back from finally ridding him of those FBI agents.

“You're scared, aren't you? But you're trying to act brave. It's charming.”

Sophie stared through him, saying nothing.

If only he had a whip with him. He wanted to kiss that pale pinched mouth, but he'd have to remove the crude gag. And then she would scream, and he didn't want that, it would break the exalted moment.

“Isn't it pretty, my dear? Something worth dying for, don't you think?” He mimed pouring the small bottle on her, and he thought she'd faint, but she made no sound.

He laughed, moved back to the table. The microscopes still worked, though they were in poor condition. It was a crude
workplace, but serviceable. He prepared his station. A scalpel to break open the seal on the tube, then to work the stopper free. The polonium, warmed by the movement, glowed merrily, as if happy to see him.

Using a specially made pipette, he gently extracted a tiny amount from the tube, and carefully, carefully, placed it into the trigger mechanism from the small box sitting on the table.

The reaction was immediate. The bluish yellow turned a deep violet, the color of a dying sunset, or a freshly made bruise. The atoms bonded together, and the new element was formed. He'd done it!

He reverently closed the lid. He'd made the world's first micro–nuclear weapon, ready to be deployed, with a payload that could kill thousands of people with a single small explosion. His own personalized MNW.

His other miniaturized bombs were paltry in comparison. This was his masterpiece. The explosion itself would take down a block at least, and the radioactive cloud would disperse into the air and people would breathe it in. Death on the wind. And he controlled it all.

He stashed the MNW into the metal briefcase he'd made for it, secured the polonium in its own separate metal casing, then put both back into his backpack. They were ready to go.

He reached for Sophie's arm. “Shall we, my dear?”

A man's voice said from behind him, “Yes, we shall.”

Havelock turned slowly. The two accursed FBI agents stood in the door to the lab. His Rats had failed.

Havelock jerked Sophie to his side, and pressed the tip of the scalpel into her neck. “No, the two of you will stay right there. Agent Drummond, you killed März. I must admit that astonished
me. No one's ever beaten him before. However, enough is enough. I have had it with you people. You need to learn how to die.”

Drummond said, “No, I don't believe so. Put down the backpack, Havelock, and let Sophie go.”

Havelock laughed. “You haven't a clue, do you? There is nothing you can do to stop me.”

Mike said, “We can shoot you.”

He laughed again. “And risk poor Sophie's life?” He pressed the scalpel in, and a drop of blood appeared. Sophie stared out at them, white-faced, silent.

“And you. I know all about you, Michaela Caine. You are not like your partner here, Nicholas Drummond. He would have no qualms about shooting me dead where I stand. He's done it before, he'll do it again. But—” He pressed the scalpel deeper into Sophie's neck, her blood now a steady drizzle. “I suggest you put down your weapons, or I will dig around until I slice her carotid artery.

“You see my backpack? If you try to shoot me, Drummond, I'll drop my precious little bundle, and it will go boom and we will go boom with it. How much of the world up there will it bring down? You want to test it out?”

Nicholas said, “Nothing will happen.” He looked around. “You can't make your weapon in this lab, it's a wreck. I've seen your files, I know what you need, and it wasn't here. Put the knife down, now.”

“Snooping into my company? You and young Adam. You don't seem to understand what I have in my hands, Drummond. No great need for modern equipment, Madame Curie left me the final ingredient I needed. Now both of you will immediately place your guns on the floor and kick them to me, or I will slit this
sweet girl's throat. Can you imagine how much blood will spray out of her?”

Nicholas and Mike slowly bent over and set the guns on the wooden floor.

“Kick them to me!”

They did. Now they were unarmed, and he had the control, the power. Havelock breathed in deep and smelled the strawberry scent of Sophie's hair mixing with the sulfur breath of the room, the perfect combination of heaven and hell.

“Tell me why, Havelock,” Nicholas said. “Tell me why you murdered your own father, betrayed your friends and all you've ever known to get this weapon.”

“Betrayal, murder? Who truly decides these things, my dear Drummond? Even Madame Curie had to make a choice all those years ago. She could have given the polonium to the Order, as they'd planned. Instead, she decided to keep it all to herself, and hide it down here. And it's taken someone like me to find it. I know exactly how to use her weapon to its best advantage. Listen to me, both of you, and listen carefully. I will stop wars. I will end centuries of violence. I am giving the world a gift.

“With my technology, with my tiny little implants, you'll be able to see things happen even as they're being communicated. I have single-handedly changed the gathering of intelligence. I will be able to target the real villains, our true enemies, and I will destroy them before they do any more harm.”

Nicholas said, “You actually believe that another weapon of mass destruction will save the world?”

“Of course. With my power, and your knowledge and acceptance of my power, every country in the world will do exactly as I say. No longer will one country have dominance over another. No longer
will one country be rich at the expense of another. All the power will reside in the palm of my hand, in a four-inch-square box. I will give the world peace and hope, and the will to lead a better life.”

“With you making all the decisions? How people will act, what their futures hold? Will you have everyone bow before you? Will you have huge statues of yourself erected everywhere so that people may bow down and worship you?”

Havelock appeared to consider this. He smiled. “Perhaps inside buildings there will be walls with my image on them, always watching. So no one will forget.”

Mike said, “Every law enforcement agency on the planet is after you. There is no way you will make people bow down in front of you. You're certifiable.”