The Accident Man

14

There was no way out of Paris at that hour of the morning. Trains weren’t running. Carver wasn’t going anywhere near an airport. You couldn’t hire a car. He could easily steal one, but he never liked to commit minor offenses when he was working. They got Al Capone for failing to pay his taxes. They weren’t going to bust him for a stolen car.

So they were stuck. They couldn’t risk checking into a hotel, even under assumed names. They needed somewhere to go for a few hours, a place that would stay open till dawn, where they could be anonymous. He didn’t think that would be too hard to find, not on a Saturday night.

They walked down the main stairs – Carver, carrying the laptop, stopped to pick up his SIG-Sauer – then out the back of the house, through formal gardens to a small door set into the back wall, where Alix had left her bag. Then they headed down to the Rue de Rivoli. Carver threw his old T-shirt and jacket in a trash can on the way. His actions were methodical and unhurried. Nothing about his manner betrayed the intensity of what he had been through that night. Then, without warning, he came to a sudden stop.

He was standing in front of a shuttered electronics store. Half a dozen televisions in the front window were tuned to the same channel. A news reporter was standing in the middle of a road silently speaking into the camera. He was standing in front of a police line, surrounded by a crowd of other journalists, photographers, and TV cameras. The reporter stepped slightly to one side so that his cameraman could shoot past him.

“Hang on a second,” said Carver, putting out a hand to hold Alix back.

Six images of the Alma Tunnel filled the shop window. The camera zoomed into the tunnel, where an ambulance was parked by the crumpled wreck of a black Mercedes.

Alix stood next to Carver, watching the same images with a look of incomprehension that gave way to shock as their meaning struck her. “Dear God. Is that the car? The one we…”

“Yeah. That’s what I did to it after you and Kursk whipped it in my direction. But what the hell’s that doing there?”

“What do you mean?”

“The ambulance. I can’t believe anyone got out alive. But if they did, surely they’d be in the hospital by now. I mean, the crash was” – he looked at his watch – “an hour ago. What are they hanging around there for?”

“An hour?” she murmured, half to herself. “Is that all?”

The pictures had changed. They’d cut back to the studio. A news anchor was sitting behind her desk, a picture of the Princess of Wales inset into the screen. She said a few words, then the picture cut to footage of the princess lounging on a massive yacht, surrounded by smaller boats packed with people trying to get her picture. Carver shook his head. He had nothing against the princess. She’d visited his unit once and charmed every man on the base. When he’d served under an oath of loyalty to the Crown, he’d taken that oath seriously. He’d never had any interest whatever in gossip columns or celebrity gossip.

“Come on, this isn’t going to tell us anything we need to know,” he said, moving on down the road.

He walked to the edge of the pavement and watched the late-night traffic cruising down the Rue de Rivoli.

“We need a cab,” he said.

The impish, cheeky grin that broke across her face brought an unexpected light to her eyes.

“Leave that to me,” she said.