The Accident Man

7

Carver’s route out of town was simple. He planned to follow the river till he reached the périphérique, 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 périphérique. 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 périphérique, 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.