Dark Zone

70

Tommy Karr stared at the small metro ticket, momentarily unable to remember which way it was supposed to be fed into the machine so the magnetic strip could be read. He finally decided strip-down; the reader grabbed the ticket from him, whisking it through its mechanism and spitting it out at the other side. The green light on the panel flashed as he grabbed the ticket and walked through, wending his way through the tile-lined tunnels down to the platform. A train trundled in just as he arrived; he joined what looked like the smallest triangle queuing for the doors.

The doors began to close as he got in. Two men jumped in behind him, pulling a large black case; in the half second or so it took Karr to grab the pole and turn around they had snapped the top of the case open to reveal an amplifier, CD setup, and microphone. As the train began to move, one of the men produced a small and silvery alto sax. The subway car exploded with a jaunty blare of music that was part rap, part American blues, part rock.

Karr caught the glance of an elderly woman sitting nearby; she rolled her eyes but then dug into her purse for a few coins to toss into their cup. The two men sang a decent harmony — or at least it might have been decent had it not been distorted by the amplifier. Their words were a French-Croatian-English patois; rather than translate them directly, Karr’s brain began supplying its own version of the song:

Whether the words had really come from the performers or not, Karr couldn’t say.

The tune stayed with him as he changed trains, remaining in his head even when he ascended the steps at Champ de Mars near the Eiffel Tower. A policeman frowned at him as he stepped near the curb at the middle of the block; Karr smiled and then walked over toward the corner, joining a small knot of people as the light turned green.

“So, Rockman, what’s going on?” he asked his runner as he crossed toward the tower. “They have more dump trucks here than a construction site.”

“Marie’s going to update you in a second,” replied Rockman. “We’re in the video system. We can see what’s going on in the elevators and have limited views on each of the floors.”

“Étage,” said Karr, letting the French word roll off his tongue. “Where are Dean and Lia?”

“Marie’ll give you the low-down,” said the runner. “It’s complicated.”

A black man with a ring of Eiffel Tower souvenirs came up to Karr as he reached the curb. The man jangled the metal towers as if they were keys and said, “One euro,” indicating the price. Three or four other souvenir sellers came up behind him; when Karr shook his head and walked past the first a second approached and gave him the same pitch, then a third and a fourth. The sellers wouldn’t compete with one another directly, but each felt entitled to try his own selling techniques where another failed.

“Ponclare was assassinated,” said Rubens over the com system.

“Hey, Chief,” said Karr. “Who killed him?”

“We’re not sure yet. Dean saw someone leaving the area who looked like a man he saw in the hotel in England. He and Lia are following him.”

“You want me to help?”

“I don’t believe that will be necessary,” said Rubens. “In any event, we’re still trying to piece together what’s going on. The French don’t know themselves. Continue where you are,” added Rubens. “We’re working on new information and we may need you to communicate it directly to the commander in charge at the tower scene. His name is Georges Cunard.”

“Should I introduce myself now?”

“I’d prefer you didn’t break cover unless necessary,” said Rubens. “Not until we understand what’s going on.”

“Ducky.”

Rubens didn’t get the pun — cunard was “duck” in French — a fact Karr found even funnier than the joke itself.

Karr glanced at the massive concrete pillar that anchored the tower. Blow it up? No way. It seemed to him that if you had a bus of explosives, it would be much easier to park near a big department store over by the Opera district. A bus loaded with explosives would demolish Au Printemps, the fancy department store; people would be afraid to shop anywhere, not just in France. But then again, he wasn’t a terrorist — he didn’t quite get the symbolic value involved in hitting a place like the Eiffel Tower. He understood, obviously, that it was important, but he didn’t really think like a madman.

Karr walked across the plaza, studying the line to the tower entrance at the north pier. There were several policemen as well as military gendarmes near the entrance, checking backpacks and handbags. They weren’t what made the line so long, however; the double-decker elevator inside the pier could only hold a few dozen people at a time.

The south pier, however, had no line.

It had no elevator, either. If you went in there you had to climb the stairs.

“If I were a terrorist,” Karr said aloud, “I’d walk up to where the beams weren’t quite so thick.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Rockman.

“Nothing much,” Karr told him, digging in his pocket for some euros. “Frenchies got the ground covered. I’m going to take a look upstairs.”