The Nemesis Program

Chapter Twenty-Eight

By the time Ben and Roberta had left the bank and returned to the waiting Mercedes, the taxi driver had finished up his packet of snacks and was crumpling the empty wrapper into his map compartment with a hundred others. He gave a belch and asked laconically, ‘Where to now, folks?’

Ben told him an address near the Gare d’Austerlitz railway station. The driver nodded, took the wheel in his chubby fists and pulled unhurriedly away into the traffic.

‘Of all the speed-freak psychopathic taxi racers in Paris, we had to pick the Incredible Human Sloth,’ Roberta said, loudly enough for the driver to have heard if he’d understood any English. ‘So where are we going?’ she asked Ben.

‘You’ve been there before,’ Ben replied. ‘Fred’s garage. He’s a guy I go to if I need quick transport with no questions asked.’

‘I remember. The place we bought that little Peugeot that time? The one that ended up shot full of holes in a field.’

‘That wasn’t my fault,’ Ben said.

The driver chugged his way eastwards up Boulevard Kellerman and then took a left onto Avenue d’Italie, aiming for the river. Ben glanced at his watch, contained his impatience and gazed up at the blue sky over Paris.

‘What is it?’ Roberta asked when he’d been craning his neck at the window for almost a full minute.

‘Maybe nothing,’ he said. Was it his imagination playing tricks on him, or was that helicopter up there deliberately keeping pace with their taxi? He lost it for a few moments behind some tall buildings, then saw it again, hovering slowly a couple of hundred feet above the rooftops. Without binoculars, he could just about make out that it wasn’t a police chopper. It was either black or very dark green, with no markings that he could see.

‘Take a right here,’ he ordered the driver.

‘That’s not the way.’

‘Just do it, okay?’

The Mercedes turned off the main street, cutting down between tight rows of parked cars. ‘Now take that left,’ Ben said, pointing.

‘That’s a one-way street,’ the driver complained.

‘Twenty euros.’

‘You got it, pal.’ They made the illegal turn, frightening a cyclist.

‘What’s happening? Are we being followed?’ Roberta asked anxiously.

‘We’ll know for sure one way or the other in a minute,’ Ben said. He kept glancing up out of the windows and the sunroof as they cut through the maze of backstreets. With luck, he was just being paranoid; if he wasn’t, grey Mercedes taxis were everywhere in Paris and it shouldn’t be too hard to blend in.

But when they rejoined the main street a few minutes later, Ben saw that he’d been wrong on both counts. The chopper was still there, hovering lower over the rooftops, very obviously tracking them and showing no sign of losing them in the traffic.

‘Change of plan,’ Ben told the driver. ‘We need to head southwest back towards the Boulevard Périphérique.’

The driver shrugged. What did he care? It was their ride. They could take him all over Paris if they wanted.

‘And step on it a bit,’ Ben said. ‘I’ll make it worth your while.’

‘Why the ring road?’ Roberta asked him.

‘When you’re being watched from the air, the thing to do is go underground,’ he said. Paris’ circular dual carriageway was dotted with road tunnels. Just a few minutes’ drive and a quarter circuit to the west from their nearest access route, Porte de Gentilly, the boulevard passed through two that were each more than half a kilometre long. Stopping in the fast-moving flow of traffic wasn’t exactly permitted, but Ben reckoned than an extra fifty euros might persuade the driver to fake a breakdown, giving his passengers time to slip away on foot and disappear through one of the service exits that led off from the inside of the tunnel. When the taxi reappeared in the chopper’s sights, it would be an empty grey Mercedes that would be leading its pursuers on a merry dance around the city, its driver supplied with a fistful of cash and instructions to keep dawdling about in circles all day long.

Ben soon saw that it wasn’t going to happen that way, though. As the taxi changed course, cutting southwards towards Porte de Gentilly, he realised with a sinking feeling that his plan was already thwarted before it had even begun. ‘Shit,’ he muttered.

Roberta looked at him with wide eyes. ‘What now?’

‘Behind us. Three cars back. The black Audi Q7. They must be in radio contact with the chopper.’

Roberta turned to look through the rear window. The Audi SUV was weaving quickly through the traffic to catch up. Its occupants were hidden behind tinted glass. ‘How could they have picked us up?’ she asked breathlessly. ‘Are you sure?’

Ben could read the vehicle’s body language like a person’s. He was certain it was deliberately tailing them. There was one way to find out.

‘Slow down,’ he ordered the driver. ‘Do it now. Right down to a crawl.’

The driver gave him an irritable look in the mirror, then reluctantly nudged the brakes and brought his speed down enough to elicit a chorus of enraged honking from the Parisian drivers behind them. Cars shot past on either side. A hand poked out of the window of a red Renault and gave them the finger as it sped by.

‘This slow enough for you?’ the driver said resentfully.

Ben looked back. The Audi had slowed down with them and was keeping pace, making no attempt to overtake. That was good enough for him. ‘It’s too slow,’ he ordered the driver. ‘Put your foot down.’

‘Go slower, go faster,’ the driver muttered under his breath, picking up speed again. ‘Doesn’t know what he wants, this fucking guy.’

As they began to catch up with the rest of the traffic, the Audi surged forward as if it wanted to draw level with them. ‘Faster,’ Ben said to the driver. The Mercedes edged ahead.

‘Oh, shit, Ben, there’s another behind us,’ Roberta said. A second identical black car had appeared in their wake, gaining rapidly on them. ‘What are they going to do?’

‘They want to box us in,’ Ben told her. Outwardly he seemed calm, but he was thinking furiously fast. ‘Any minute now a third will appear and try to head us off, force us to stop. After that, it could go two ways. Kill or capture.’

‘We need to do something, Ben,’ she muttered anxiously, eyes fixed on the two Audis. The second Q7 was now close up behind them. The thudding beat of the helicopter was clearly audible above the engine and traffic noise. They were being systematically hemmed in.

Ben slipped the Browning out of his belt. He dropped the mag, checked it, snicked it back into place. Eased back the slide far enough to verify the round in the chamber. It was the pre-battle check he’d done so many times that he did it without thinking. He kept the gun out of sight behind the seat backrest in front of him. ‘Are your brakes sticking or something?’ he said harshly to the driver.

The fat neck twisted back towards them. ‘Hey, you want me to lose my license? I’m already doing over the limit, pal.’

‘This meathead’s going to get us both killed,’ Roberta said.

A pedestrian crossing was coming up ahead. At the side of the road, waiting for the lights to change, was a young woman with a pushchair and an additional toddler in tow. ‘Don’t slow down,’ Ben told the driver as he prepared to brake. ‘Another twenty if you burn the red light.’

Thankfully, the driver was as greedy for cash as he was for sugary snacks. As the lights changed he took his foot off the brake and went straight on through. The young woman shot the Mercedes a hostile look and then stepped out into the road, yanking her elder child along behind her.

Ben looked back. The two Audis had come to a sharp halt behind the crossing and were waiting impatiently to get through. He saw his moment. ‘Pull over. Quickly. Just there.’

The driver shrugged carelessly and swerved the Mercedes to the kerbside. Ben thrust his Browning back in his belt and got out. He marched up to the driver’s door and wrenched it open. Grabbing the driver’s beefy arm, he hauled his bulk roughly from the driver’s seat before the fat man could utter a sound in astonished protest. The driver staggered unbalanced across the pavement, eyes popping with fury.

‘Thanks for the ride,’ Ben said. He jumped in behind the wheel and flicked three twenty-euro notes out of the window. ‘Don’t eat it all at once.’

Behind them, the woman with the pushchair had reached the far side and the lights were changing again. The Audis shot forward with a squeal of tyres.

‘They’re coming,’ Roberta said anxiously.

‘All right,’ Ben said, watching them loom up fast in the rear-view mirror. ‘They want to play, so let’s play. Buckle up.’ He floored the pedal and the Mercedes took off with a revving roar, leaving the irate driver standing there shaking his fist.

Roberta was pressed back in her seat as Ben accelerated up the road. Parked cars and buildings flashed past in a blur.

The Audis weren’t about to be left behind. The chase was on for real now.