Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [83]
‘This changes things. Everyone. Switch of plans. We’re not going to do the Obelisk first anymore. We’re going to take the Louvre first, in the way we planned. Then we’ll grab a look at the Obelisk on the way out.’
‘You have got to be kidding,’ Stretch said. ‘We’re going to be running for our lives. Half the gendarmerie will be on our asses by then.’
‘Confronting the Europeans at the Obelisk now will attract too much attention, Stretch,’ West said. ‘I was hoping to climb up and down it unnoticed. I can’t do that now. But after we do what we plan to do at the Louvre, Paris is going to be in uproar—a state of chaos that’ll give us the cover we need to get past those guards at the Obelisk. And now that I think about it, our intended escape vehicle will also come in handy.’
‘I don’t know about this. . . ’ Stretch said.
Pooh Bear said, ‘What you know or don’t know is irrelevant, Israeli. Honestly, your constant doubting grates on me. You’ll do as Huntsman says. He is in command here.’
Stretch locked eyes with Pooh Bear, biting his tongue. ‘Very well then. I will obey.’
West said, ‘Good. The Louvre plan remains the same. Big Ears: you’re with Lily and me; we’re going in. Pooh, Stretch: get the escape vehicle and make sure you’re in position when we jump.’
‘Will do, Huntsman,’ Pooh Bear nodded.
Twenty minutes later, West, Lily and Big Ears—gunless—strode through the metal detectors at the entrance to the Louvre.
The building’s famous glass pyramid soared high above them, bathing the great museum’s atrium in brilliant sunshine.
‘I think I’m having another Dan Brown moment,’ Big Ears said, gazing up at the glass pyramid.
‘They didn’t do what we’re going to do in The Da Vinci Code,’ West said ominously.
Lily provided the perfect cover; after all, how many snatch-andgrab teams enter a building holding the hand of a small child?
West’s cell phone rang.
It was Pooh Bear. ‘We have the exit vehicle. Ready when you are.’
‘Give us ten minutes,’ West said and hung up.
Eight minutes after that, West and Big Ears were both dressed in the white coveralls of the Louvre’s maintenance crew—taken from two unfortunate workers who now lay unconscious in a storeroom in the depths of the museum.
They entered the Denon Wing and ascended the impressive Daru Staircase. The staircase wound back and forth in wide sweeping flights, disappearing and reappearing behind soaring arches, before it revealed, standing proudly on a wide landing. . .
. . . the Winged Victory of Samothrace.
She was, quite simply, breathtaking.
The goddess stood with her chest thrust forward into the wind, her magnificent wings splayed out behind her, her wet tunic pressed against her body, perfectly realised in marble.
Six feet tall and standing on a five-foot-high marble mounting, she towered above the tourists milling around her.
Had her head not been missing, Winged Victory would almost certainly have been as famous as the Venus de Milo—also a resident of the Louvre—for by any measure, the artistry of her carving easily outdid that of the Venus.
The management of the Louvre seemed to recognise this, even if the public did not: Winged Victory stood high up in the building, proudly displayed up on the First Floor, not far from the Mona Lisa, while the Venus stood in confined clutter on an underground level.
The marble mounting on which the great statue stood resembled the pointed prow of a ship, but this had never been a ship.
It had been the armrest of Zeus’s throne, the broken-off tip of the armrest.
If you looked closely, you could see Zeus’s gigantic marble thumb beneath Winged Victory.
The natural conclusion was mind-blowing: if Victory was this big, then the Statue of Zeus—the actual Wonder itself, now vanished from history—must have been absolutely gigantic.
Victory’s position on the First Floor of the Denon Wing, however, created a problem for West.
As with the other key exhibits in the Louvre, all items on the First Floor were laser-protected: as soon as a painting or sculpture was moved, it triggered