Seven Ancient Wonders - Matthew Reilly [89]
As the bus hit the surface of the Seine, the four people on its doors went flying to the side of it, also crashing into the water, albeit with smaller splashes.
But to the shock of those in the two pursuing French helicopters, they never surfaced.
Underwater, however, things were happening.
Everyone had survived the deliberate crash, and they regrouped with West, all of them now wearing divers’ masks and breathing from pony bottles.
They swam through the murky brown water of the river, converging on the cobblestoned northern wall of the Seine, underneath the Charles de Gaulle Bridge.
Here, embedded in the medieval wall, under the surface of the river, was a rusty old gate that dated back to the 1600s.
The padlock sealing it was new and strong, but a visit earlier that morning by Pooh Bear with a boltcutter had altered it slightly. The padlock hung in place and, to the casual observer, it would have looked intact. But Pooh Bear had cut it cleanly on the rear side, so that now he just pulled it off the rusty gate by hand.
Beyond the gate, a brick-walled passageway disappeared into the murky gloom. The team swam into the passageway—with the last person in the line, Big Ears, closing the underwater gate behind them and snapping a brand-new padlock on it, identical to the one that had been sealing it before.
After about twenty yards, the underwater passageway rose into a tight sewer-like tunnel.
They all stood in the sewer-tunnel, knee-deep in foul-smelling water.
‘How very Gothic,’ Stretch said, deadpan.
‘Christian catacombs from the 17th century,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘They’re all over Paris, over 270 kilometres of tunnels and catacombs. This set of tunnels runs all the way along the Boulevard Diderot. They’ll take us past the Economics Ministry, right to the Gare de Lyon.’
West checked his watch.
It was 12:35 p.m.
‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve got a train to catch.’
The three remaining French Army Panhards descended on the Charles de Gaulle Bridge, disgorging men. The big red bus was still actually half-afloat, but in the process of sinking.
The two choppers patrolled the air above the crash-site, searching, prowling.
Curious Parisians gathered on the bridge to watch.
Extra commando teams were sent into the Ministry complex and also into the Gare d’Austerlitz, the large train station that lay directly across the Charles de Gaulle Bridge, on the southern side of the Seine.
Every train that hadn’t yet departed from it was barred from leaving. As a precaution, trains from the Gare de Lyon—further away to the north, but still a possibility—were also grounded.
Indeed, the last train to depart the Gare de Lyon that day would be the 12:44 TGV express service from Paris to Geneva, first stop Dijon.
An hour later, and now dressed in dry clothes, West and his team disembarked from the train in Dijon, smiling, grinning, elated.
There they boarded a charter flight to Spain, where they would rendezvous with Sky Monster and the Halicarnassus and commence their journey back to Kenya.
But their smiles and grins said it all.
After two failed attempts—or three if you counted the Mausoleum Piece—they had finally obtained a Piece of the Capstone.
They were now in a position to bargain.
They were now well and truly in the game.
ST PETER’S BASILICA
VATICAN CITY, ROME
18 MARCH, 2006, 12:45 P.M.
2 DAYS BEFORE THE ARRIVAL OF TARTARUS
At the same time, 2,000 kilometres away in Rome, a long-bearded man wearing the all-black robes of a Catholic priest strode across the wide square in front of St Peter’s Basilica, the magnificent domed cathedral designed by Michelangelo, the most holy place of worship in the Roman Catholic Church.
With his long grey beard and stooping walk, Max Epper looked very much the part: an old and wizened priest, perhaps even an Eastern Orthodox one, making a pilgrimage to the Vatican.
With him walked Zoe and Fuzzy, and as they crossed St Peter’s Square in the midst of hundreds of tourists, Zoe gazed up at the gigantic stone obelisk