As she got closer to the stairs leading up to the first level, she saw Quentin Fox flipping a much younger man over his shoulder. The man landed hard on the pavement. When the man came to his feet, he was holding a gun. The tourists all around him started screaming and clawing at each other to get away. Kate fought her way through, just as the man leveled his barrel at Quentin. She slid out her Glock and put it against the back of his neck. The man froze, not sure what to do next.
“Drop the gun,” Kate said.
The man complied, but a fresh wave of panicked tourists engulfed them. Kate was swept away, nearly falling over. When she regained her bearings, the man was gone. So was Quentin.
* * *
Nick searched frantically for his father, until he spotted two more men coming after him. One of them might have been the biggest man Nick had ever seen in his life. Nick hurried across the deck level, trying to find another staircase.
With all of the lower lifts closed, a guard was now standing at the gate to shoo people away. Nick glanced behind him and saw the two men closing in on him. He tried to push his way past the guard, but the man put up a hand to stop him.
“Do me a favor and stop them,” Nick said, slipping by the guard just as the two men were about to grab him. The guard and the men tangled with each other, until the big man literally lifted the guard with one hand and threw him aside. It was just enough of a delay to let Nick climb his way around to the tracks on which the lower lifts rode up and down the tower’s pedestal. There was a service ladder next to the tracks. Nick started climbing down the ladder, but when he looked up, he saw one of the men coming after him. When the man was close enough, he tried kicking Nick in the head. Nick ducked, grabbed on to the man’s leather boot, and pulled. The man lost his grip and fell, half sliding, half bouncing his way to the bottom.
Nick kept going, but when he looked up again he saw the big man coming down next. With such long legs, the giant was able to take five and six rungs at a time. Nick grabbed on to the handrail next to the ladder and stepped off, sliding down the railing like a fireman going down a pole. Thank God for the gloves, he thought.
When he looked up, the big man was right on top of him, holding on to the same railing and moving fast. Nick squeezed the railing with his gloves, slowing himself down as much as he could. He knew he’d have to time this just right.
When the big man was just a few feet away, Nick put one foot back onto the ladder. He slipped off a few of the rungs, finally caught one, and came to a bone-rattling stop. He stepped away from the railing just as the big man’s fingers brushed against his arm.
Nick watched as the big man, now a prisoner to the basic physics of way more mass-times-acceleration, kept sliding past him on the railing. The big man’s speed was too much to handle, and as he tried to slow himself down, he caught one foot and launched himself right off the pedestal, falling a hundred feet to the pavement below.
Nick continued down the ladder until he reached the ground. He turned to look back up at the tower.
“I hope you got out, Dad.”
* * *
Thirty minutes later, Nick arrived at La Terrasse. He sat down at a table, his back to the wall so he could see anyone coming in. His father came through the door a few minutes later.
“I didn’t even get to ask you,” Quentin said, joining him at the table. “Did you find what we were looking for?”
Nick nodded. “You don’t have the first piece anymore, do you?”
Quentin reached under his shirt, opened the money belt around his waist, and brought out the original map section he had stolen from the Vatican. “They did a lousy search on me last night,” he said. “They were just holding me until the Interpol agent could get there.”
Nick reached under his own shirt and brought out the second map section from the tower. They glanced around to make sure they had a little privacy, then they put the two pieces together and leaned over to examine them.
The second piece was just as cryptic as the first, with squiggly lines that seemed to suggest topography, dotted with a random assortment of ancient runes. As on the first piece, this second piece had a separate line of text inside a banner, running down the right side. Der verrückte König würdigt den Schwanenritter.
Nick took out his phone and entered the words into the Google translate app. “The insane king? Something about paying tribute, and a swan and a knight? Any idea what that means?”
“You got me,” Quentin said. “But something tells me we’re not done yet.”
They had a couple of drinks, and then Nick wandered outside while Quentin paid the bill. Nick walked down through the patio area, to the dock, and stood there for a while watching the boats cruising by on the Seine. He wondered where Kate was. Surely she had gotten his note. She was missing out on all the fun.
The barrel of a gun pressed into his lower back. “Where is he?” a man’s voice asked.
“What are you going to do?” Nick asked. “Shoot me right here?”
“That’s up to you. And your father.”
Then another voice. “Put it down.”
Kate!
Nick turned, saw Kate standing behind the man. She had her gun on him, while he still had his gun on Nick. It would have been a Mexican standoff if they weren’t doing it in France.
“Put it down now,” Kate said.
“Go ahead,” the man said. “Mr. Fox and I will both die together.”
Nick flashed Kate his charming smile. “Took you long enough,” he said to her.
“Seriously? It looks like I’m right on time. Saving your ass once again.”
“I’ve been told it’s one of my best features,” Nick said. “I see you got my note?”
“It was a bit cryptic.”
“I’m glad you figured it out. I wanted to give you something you could show Jessup. Something that would hopefully keep you from wasting away in a cubicle.”
“Hey!” the man said, jabbing Nick with the gun. “Both of you, shut up!”
Nick turned, as if to answer the man, and saw his father come into view. The man with the gun sensed the same movement, diverting his attention for a quarter of a second. Nick pushed the gun barrel away with his left hand, chopped down on the man’s wrist with his right. He kept twisting the gun counterclockwise, away from the man’s trigger finger, away from his grip strength. As the gun came free, he put one hand in the center of the man’s chest, gave him a good shove, and watched him fall into the river, five feet below the dock.
When he looked up, his father had Kate in a wrist lock, her gun pointed harmlessly toward the sky.
“I’m glad I got this chance to thank you,” Quentin said to her. “Kate, is it?”
“Yes,” Kate said. “Let’s all go somewhere where we can talk about this.”
A sharp whistle cut through the air, as several Paris officiers de police came charging down from the street.
“I’m sorry, Kate,” Quentin said, “but we can’t do that right now.”
Then he pushed her into the river, too.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Kate dragged herself out of the Seine River to see a throng of onlookers staring at her. Nick and his father were long gone. She stood dripping on the dock, in a country where she had no dry clothes to change into and she didn’t speak the language. She had no hotel room, nobody to help her, just the wet clothes wrapped around her body, wet shoes and socks on her feet, wet hair, wet face, wet bills in her pocket, wet passport, wet cell phone, wet knife strapped to her leg, and a wet gun.