Engineman - Eric Brown [103]
Chapter Seventeen
The Mercedes raced through the rain-slicked Paris streets.
When Dan released him from the painful bear-hug, Mirren sank back into the padded upholstery and closed his eyes, disbelief and relief sweeping through him. He laughed aloud. "Christ, Dan. If you only knew what I've been through..."
"You? Fernandez, Ralph! What about me?"
"They came after you?"
Dan nodded. "But thanks to these gentlemen..." He indicated the two men in the front of the car. Mirren recognised Hunter's bodyguards. "They got me out minutes before my place was trashed by an air-to-ground missile." Dan hesitated. "You heard about the others?"
Mirren stared at him, shaking his head.
"Jan was shot dead last night. They fixed Caspar's flier sometime yesterday. He didn't stand a chance. They got Christiana the same way a couple of days ago."
Mirren watched the buildings blur by outside.
"How the hell did you get away from the Blue Shift?" Dan asked.
"You heard about it?"
"Heard about it? It was all over Paris in minutes. A vid-cast gave your description. I thought they'd got you."
Something caught in Mirren's throat. "I was with a security guard from Orly. I wouldn't have made it without her."
"Hunter stationed his men around my place in case you got away and decided to look me up. Thank Fernandez you didn't go back to your apartment. The bastards have it pretty well covered."
Mirren started. "What about Bobby?"
"Don't worry. He's safe."
Mirren let out a long breath. "So much for Hunter's assurance that this caper wouldn't be dangerous."
He noticed the bodyguards, in front, exchange a look and then turn their attention back to the road.
They were moving at speed along the Boulevard St Michel towards the Seine. "Where are we going?"
Dan turned to him, the great bush of his hair catching the light from the street-lamps outside. "We're meeting Hunter, Ralph. We're due to phase out in a little under three hours."
Mirren stared through the rain-beaded window at the passing city. After the adrenalin-charged last few hours, this news came as less of a surprise than an inevitability - a just reward for the rigours and hardships undergone. Mirren considered the flux, and the aches and pains of his body seemed to drain away, or rather lose significance beside the fact that soon he would be transcending such petty concerns as he mind-pushed the smallship through the nada-continuum.
He took Dan's arm in sudden panic. "Look, don't breathe a word to Hunter about the Heine's, okay? I don't want him to think I can't push."
Dan reassured him. "I won't say a thing, Ralph."
The Mercedes braked suddenly. They were on a cobbled plaza on the Left Bank. The bodyguards climbed out, withdrawing semi-automatic rifles from beneath their jackets. They slammed the front doors, stood beside the roadster and scanned the parking lot before opening the rear doors for Mirren and Dan.
They hurried across the cobbles to a boat-house beside the river. Over the water, Notre-Dame loomed magnificent and gothic against the deep blue light of dawn, its towers and spires dilapidated by years of neglect. The first bodyguard opened a small door in the side of the boathouse and they slipped inside, while the second brought up the rear and locked the door behind them. An ancient bulb snapped on, its sulphurous light revealing rotting wooden rowing-boats and the first bodyguard, hauling open a trap-door in the floor. They descended a flight of steep, narrow stairs until it seemed they were below the level of the river, then hurried for a hundred metres along a concrete corridor dank and dripping with foul-smelling water, their way patchily illuminated by a torch in the possession of the bodyguard behind them. Mirren followed Dan's bulking figure up a flight of steps identical to the first, then through another trap-door. They were in what might have been a wine-cellar or a tomb, its ancient stones scabbed