Trust Me

49

Luke followed part of the fleeing mass of people and ran to the Champ de Mars Metro station across the street from the Tower, hurried down into the tunnel. The lines to buy a ticket were long and he jumped the turnstile, apologizing to the man in front of him. No one seemed to care about his lack of a ticket in the rush to get away from the shooting. It was a big station, different colored signs pointing to different lines, and then he caught an edge of what looked like Mouser’s burr haircut making a turn. He followed, cutting through the crowd.

Mouser. For sure. He headed for a station with a yellow line, an RER station with the large trains that traveled the lines running parallel to the Seine. The crowd – dozens thick – pressed forward as a large double-decker train pulled into the station. Children cried, people talked in a hubbub. Panic steamed the air. No one looked at Luke, even glanced at him. He was the cause of it all and he felt as small and anonymous as an ant.

He lost sight of Mouser. He pressed the earpiece Mouser had put in his ear but heard nothing. Mouser had killed the connection. Luke threw it on the floor. He didn’t want Mouser reactivating it and hearing him.

Luke went on tiptoe and surveyed the dozens of faces stretching away from him in a jostling human quilt. Damn it. Then he saw Mouser. Thirty feet away and to his left, scanning the crowd himself, his head slowly turning toward Luke’s position.

The sunglasses that helped camouflage Luke on the plane were gone, lost in the scuffles. Luke ducked, crowding a young woman who spat a volley of outraged French that questioned Luke’s basic intelligence. Her hair was a spike of black dye; her boyfriend next to her had shaved off his hair. A pair of sunglasses sat on his head.

The roar of an approaching train sounded. The crowd eased forward bare centimeters.

‘Are you trying to kiss asses?’ Luke thought he heard the boyfriend say. Luke ignored the comment and stayed kneeling on the floor.

The double-decker train stopped and the doors slid open.

The human tide surged forward. Luke grabbed a fistful of Drummond’s dollars from his pocket, handed them to the boyfriend, and said in bad French, ‘I would like to buy,’ then continued in English, ‘your sunglasses’, pantomiming the shades.

‘What is wrong with you?’ the boyfriend said. ‘No. I don’t want your dollars.’

But the girlfriend laughed and pulled the shades from his head, stuck them on Luke’s face. She grabbed the money. ‘There you go. I bought them cheap for him on the street. Now I can buy a dozen more in ugly matching colors.’ Her English was good. She gave Luke a thoughtful, measuring stare, as though trying to guess his motives for the bizarre offer.

From behind the dark lenses, Luke watched Mouser moving toward a seat on the ground car. Luke knew if he stayed on the ground car Mouser would see him, sunglasses or not. So he went up the steps, following the girlfriend and the boyfriend, his heart a piston in his throat. Mouser could get off at any station and he would lose him; he couldn’t easily monitor who got off and on the ground car. He stood near the stairs; it was his only hope. If Mouser came to the stairs and glanced up, he’d see Luke. Then Luke was dead.

If I lose him, how will I ever find Aubrey and my dad?

My dad. The words were like two muffled explosions in his chest. The entire past ten years of his life had been a charade. His father was alive.

Now that he had time to think, a hard bite of anger closed on his heart. Why? Why would his father pretend to leave his wife and child – why would he abandon them to a man like Henry Shawcross? Why would he let his wife and child suffer through a devastating grief? Why would he hide behind the deaths of his friends?

Luke had thought he didn’t know the real Henry; he clearly didn’t know his father, either. The realization felt like a punch in the stomach. He shook his head, as though physically clearing the thoughts from his mind. No. If he pondered this now emotion would drown him. Grief and bewilderment could wait.

The train jolted forward, people crowding on the stairs.

‘Are you still enjoying my sunglasses, crazy man?’ the boyfriend said, in serviceable English. He had apparently decided to indulge his girlfriend’s whim. ‘You want to buy a shirt next? Nice pants?’

The girlfriend giggled.

‘No. But I need help,’ Luke said. ‘You heard the shooting?’

The boyfriend rolled his eyes. ‘We walk out of the station, everyone running this way, we head back inside.’ He shrugged. ‘Crazy. The Tower will be there tomorrow for us to see.’

‘How do you need help?’ the girlfriend said. Luke saw she was the power in the relationship.

‘My girlfriend, she is a student here. She’s seeing a guy. Who’s not me.’ The train jostled them slightly as it picked up speed.

‘Ah.’ The girlfriend said. The boyfriend frowned.

‘He was going to meet her at the Tower today. She didn’t show and now I’m following him.’

‘Ah, the shooting was you shooting at him,’ the boyfriend joked. ‘Revenge is sweet, yes.’

‘Ah, no.’

‘And this man knows your face.’ The girlfriend guessed.

‘She had a picture of us on the bedside table. I’m sure he’s seen me.’ The lying was easy, because a real sense of betrayal swelled in his chest. His father had been the greatest liar of them all. ‘But he’s dangerous. A little crazy. I want to find out where he lives. But he’s below, on the ground car, and I don’t want him to see me.’

The girlfriend raised an eyebrow in amusement. ‘And he will be convinced by a disguise of cheap sunglasses.’ She muttered in French, unzipped the boyfriend’s backpack, pulled out a knit cap. ‘Cover your hair with this.’

‘That’s not, what you say, hygienic,’ the boyfriend complained. He spoke in a flood of French.

‘Your head is clean.’ She yanked the cap onto Luke’s head, tucked his light hair under its rainbow folds. Then she pulled out a scarf to match. Both were pink and green. ‘I make these for him, he never wears them.’

‘He will not wear them either,’ the boyfriend said.

‘I will,’ Luke said. He pushed some more cash into her hand. Her kindness overwhelmed him.

The girlfriend’s finger lingered against his palm, but she made a point of putting the hand she’d touched Luke with firmly against her boyfriend’s cheek. ‘And you, my sweet, you will get a new hat.’

‘A cowboy hat,’ the boyfriend said. The girlfriend laughed.

‘Where is the next stop?’ Luke asked, rubbing his arms. He couldn’t keep still.

‘Pont de l’Alma,’ the boyfriend said. ‘Les Invalides, the next one, is more of a hub for more lines.’

People around them were chattering, mostly in French and English, about the shootings. The girlfriend kept a look locked on Luke and he thought she saw the deception beneath the surface of his smile.

‘You must love this girl a lot to forgive her,’ she said.

‘Her I love,’ Luke said. ‘Him I don’t.’ The boyfriend laughed.

The train slowed as it approached the station. People pushed past them, eager to get down the few steps to the exit.

‘Are you getting off here?’ he asked them.

They shook their heads after a shared glance.

Luke risked a few steps down to the ground car, inching for position. He had wanted to ask them to see if they could spot if Mouser had got off the train, but too many people jammed the car. He couldn’t take the risk that they would miss him. He peered down, scanned the crowd. He could see the back of Mouser’s head. It looked like he was text-messaging on a phone, furiously. But not rising to leave.

The train stopped and the doors hissed open. A number of people left but many stayed put. Few climbed on.

Mouser remained in his seat, his back to Luke. The gun hidden along his side, covered by his jacket, pressed like an iron weight. The RER train pulled out of Pont de l’Alma. Mouser stood, began to move past the other seated passengers. He had a smile on his face.

Luke retreated up the stairs. ‘He’s getting off at the next station. Thank you for your help.’

‘You’re welcome, thanks for the money.’ The boyfriend shook Luke’s hand, and then Luke saw that the girlfriend had noticed his gun. Her mouth narrowed and her eyes widened. They knew there had been shots fired at the Tower, and now here was a man asking for glasses and hat for an instant disguise, with a gun tucked in the side of his pants, under his jacket.

The fear in her eyes churned his heart. She could scream. She could go to the first policeman in the next station.

‘Please,’ he said. ‘I’m not the bad guy. I’m not.’ He didn’t know what else to say.

She seemed unsure of what step to take next, and the boyfriend looked at her, aware of a strained communication passing between her and Luke, and misreading it. Suddenly not happy about it. He eased the girlfriend away from Luke, down the steps, toward the door. She looked at Luke with stark terror; her mouth trembled.

‘I’m not the bad guy,’ he mouthed again.

Les Invalides. The train stopped. Much more of the crowd poured out for this station, but Luke tried to hang back until the last second to see if Mouser exited. And this time he did, passing within fifteen feet of Luke, hurrying. He stepped off last, Mouser a good twenty feet ahead of him, the boyfriend and girlfriend between him and Luke.

Luke considered ducking behind the garish orange pillars but decided he had to risk staying close. He kept following the couple. The girlfriend pulled a phone from her purse and started talking into it.

At the top of the stairs, Mouser shot a glance across the crowd behind him. His gaze raked across where Luke walked but he did not notice him, wearing dark glasses, heavy cap and an ugly scarf across his chin and mouth.

Mouser turned back toward the front.

Luke hurried up the stairs, half-expecting to see Mouser waiting for him but he wasn’t. Mouser stood on a long moving sidewalk, feeding past abstract art, and Mouser returned his attention to the phone, texting, eyes close to the screen. An angry expression colored his face.

Luke realized that the girl and her boyfriend were gone. Vanished. Maybe they’d tucked into another line.

Mouser reached the end of the moving sidewalk and stepped off without a backward glance. Then Luke looked back at the end of the conveyor belt, spotted the couple from the train.

Talking to a policeman.

He had to hurry. If the cops stopped him before he stopped Mouser

… the panic tore through his chest. He’d put his father and Aubrey in this danger; he had to save them from it.

He hurried toward the station’s exit and took an escalator up. Ahead of him, across a stretch of parkland, was Les Invalides, the golden-domed complex of museums and monuments to French military history. To his right was the Musee d’Orsay, the more recent jewel of Parisian museums. Around him was a stretch of grass, a playground, people walking in lazy surrender to the brightening day.

Fifty feet ahead of him a black BMW stopped, the back door opened, and Mouser slid into the back seat. Luke pivoted; he couldn’t risk Mouser seeing him and now the car was headed toward him.

He heard the purr of the approaching motor and the air felt sealed in his lungs as he headed back toward the escalator that led down to Les Invalides station.

The policeman came out of the station. Looking straight at him.

Trapped. Between the cop and Mouser in the BMW. He took the risk and stopped. The sedan shot past, not braking. Luke crossed the street in the wake of the BMW’s passage.

In the back seat, he saw the burr of Mouser’s head. Then the driver turned full to speak to Mouser.

Henry Shawcross. His stepfather.

Oh, you bastard, he thought. Finally, to see the betrayal with his own eyes, Mouser and Henry together. No way he could let them escape, no way. Luke’s eyes darted everywhere; no taxi stand in sight. No way to follow them. He ran across the street now, in a full-blown sprint, toward the Musee d’Orsay.

He glanced back. The policeman was running now, too. Chasing him. The girlfriend had sold him out.

He reached the taxi stand at the museum and one of the cabs cut hard to the front of the line, earning a squeal of honks from the other drivers. Luke got in the back seat.

‘Thank you, go. Vite. Fast. Eiffel Tower.’

The driver, a young man about his age, nodded and roared down the street. Past the winded policeman, who had stopped running.

‘The Tower, very hectic, too much traffic,’ the cabbie said. ‘A shooting…’ His English was okay.

‘Okay,’ Luke said. He didn’t care where they went. The black BMW was gone. How was he going to find his dad or Aubrey, now? ‘Then – the police station.’

The cabbie kept watching him in the mirror. ‘You run from a policeman and now you want to go to the police.’

‘He mistook me for someone else.’

The cabbie did not seem to understand.

‘Wait.’ Drummond had said that he and Henry and his dad had all worked for the State Department. If Quicksilver was the replacement for the Book Club, then he should turn to State for help. ‘Take me to the American Embassy, please.’

‘I must call for address.’ He flipped open a phone, spoke a flurry of what sounded like Russian into it.

Luke fell against the back of the seat. The cabbie made turn after turn, speaking into the phone. He reached for a radio and turned it off.

‘How far to the embassy?’

The cabbie clicked off the phone and took a hard turn into a quiet street. He slammed on the brakes and twisted in the seat. He raised a small gun from the seat and aimed it at Luke. A pop sound, and Luke felt a thump hit the crocheted wool of the ugly scarf and a slight weight lodge in the fabric. He grabbed at the gun, his head scraping the ceiling. He turned the little gun back toward the cabbie and it fired again.

The dart pierced the cabbie’s throat and he sagged against the steering wheel. The car lurched forward, crumpling into a parked van. Luke yanked a dart from the scarf; it had gotten stuck in the thick knitting. The girlfriend’s impulsive gift had saved him.

Jesus, Luke thought. He was waiting for me. Cut ahead of the line to make sure I was his fare. He knew I was at that subway station. How?

The cabbie kept breathing in shallow panting gasps. Drugged.

Luke fumbled with the dart at the guy’s throat; his fingertip touched a leather string. He pulled on the cord and a small medal of an armed angel crept out of the cabbie’s shirt.

Saint Michael. Like his, like Drummond’s.

Was the angel a sign of Quicksilver? Drummond had the medal and was clearly a member. But if the cabbie was from Quicksilver, why would he attack him?

Luke picked up the dart gun and the cell phone the guy had used. He grabbed the cabbie’s wallet. He got out of the cab and ran. Three streets over, he opened the cell phone and looked in the call log. The number was one he recognized, one seared in his memory.

Jane. The kidnapping mastermind.

Never mind Quicksilver, never mind the Night Road, never mind the fifty million. Jane was the woman who had orchestrated all the chaos. The woman responsible for the hellish chessboard his life had turned into, she had sent this cabbie after him.

If the cabbie was part of Quicksilver, then he must be a traitor, working with Jane.

That was going to be her mistake, Luke thought. Because she’d just given him a way to track her down.

Pawn takes queen, he thought, as he ran away from the cab.

Luke knew he needed to avoid any place with security cameras – maybe the surveillance in the metro had helped the cabbie find him at Les Invalides, he thought – and so he ran until he found a library. But even the library had a camera near the door. He ducked his head, averted his gaze from its unblinking view.

He opened the cabbie’s wallet. A wad of euros, a driver’s license, a gray blank card. Like an electronic passkey.

Now he just needed to find an address to match the passkey.

He sat at a computer terminal. He entered in the web address he’d seen on Eric’s laptop in the old house: the Night Road’s online meeting room. He got to the television fan site, entered Eric’s password. It still worked; someone at the Night Road was being sloppy, not eliminating his account yet.

Or maybe they were just busy getting ready for Hellfire, whatever horror it was, and the thought chilled him.

He signed in as Eric and he started a new discussion with a request for help: I have a cell phone that I need to track. Immediately. Help please. And he typed in Jane’s cell phone number.

He waited. He clicked on a posting about a video link and to his horror the video started with a close-up of a guy he recognized as the man in Houston who’d been standing at the intersection waiting for Allen Clifford. The cheap jacket, the scarred cheeks – Luke remembered him running away in the dim streetlight in Houston. His eyes were wide and a razor began a slow draw across his throat.

Luke turned off the video before anyone around him could see the execution. He felt sick. That’s what they’ll do to you if they catch you. That’s what they’ll do to Aubrey and Dad.

He jumped to an English-language news site, and the shooting at the Tower was the top story. No suspects caught yet.

He went back to the Night Road site, hoping against hope. A reply waited for him. I have your phone info. What do you have to trade?

Inspiration struck and he wrote the kind of lie he thought would appeal: I have a nice set of bank accounts, established, ready for cleaned money.

He waited. It took an hour and he fought his impatience. Fine, the answer came in a private message to Eric’s account. The phone was registered to a Jane Mornay, she had a Paris address near Saint Germain, on a street called rue de l’Abbe-Gregoire. He signed off without posting the promised set of accounts. Betraying the guy who’d traced the phone probably meant his password would be invalidated and he couldn’t use the site again, but it didn’t matter. He would have the woman behind all his misery, the woman who had stolen his life.

And he would be closer to the truth about his father, his life, Hellfire. He thought Jane was at the nexus of all these events, an unseen hand, one he was about to drag into the sunlight.

He walked out the door, shielding his face again at the library’s doors. He was afraid every camera was an eye watching him.