The Lost Key

86

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 ru

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 tu

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 spi

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 pi

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

87

Nicholas 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 tu

They found Dendritte in an adjoining tu

“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 tu

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?”