The Titanic Secret Page 15

  He finished his tour, passing the main entrance again and pausing to check out the lobby. It was stark, befitting the lowly workers who toiled within, but functional. A wooden railing bisected the room, with a guard stationed at its only opening. The uniformed agent checked that each person entering had a proper identification badge. If not, Bell saw a reception counter along one wall with three women ready to process visitors.

  The hole beneath the doorknob looked right for the largest key on Marc Massard’s ring.

  He eventually found a taxi and gave an address some blocks from the Hôtel Lutetia. When he was certain the driver’s attention was on the congestion, he surreptitiously transferred the revolver to a coat pocket. He’d dump Massard’s strongbox in a public trash receptacle and walk the last half mile to his hotel.

  Once back at the Lutetia, he ate a light meal and returned to his room. There are two things that keep a body fueled—food and sleep. He closed the curtains to block out the late-afternoon light and made certain the delicate little clock on the bedside table was properly wound and its alarm set for midnight. Bell felt certain of his abilities. He fell asleep right away.

  When he woke, he turned on the Tiffany-style lamp and noted it was five minutes before midnight. He trusted his internal clock, but it was always good to have backup. He unset the alarm and rose from bed. He did about fifteen minutes of exercise and stretching before dressing in black slacks and a tight-fitting black turtleneck sweater. While the garment was très chic among the leftist elites in Paris, Bell had to admit it was terrific tactical wear. Next, he shrugged into the shoulder holster, clipping its bottom around the oiled black belt at his waist and checking for the two spare magazines. He retrieved the Colt Model 1911 from under his pillow, double-checked the magazine, and rammed the weapon home.

  He strapped the stiletto-thin knife to his right calf and slid on silk socks and a sturdy pair of black rubber-soled shoes. He clipped a slim pouch onto the shoulder rig opposite his pistol. In it were lockpicks and other tools of the trade. He finally slipped into his black overcoat.

  There was a string of taxis outside the hotel even at this late hour. Like New York, Paris had a vibrant nightlife seven days a week. He had the driver take him to another hotel about a half mile from the Société’s building.

  Seeing Bell’s attire and destination once they arrived, the cabman asked, “Une femme?”

  “Une femme fatale,” Bell replied, feeding the man’s fantasy.

  “Bonne chance, monsieur.”

  “Pas besoin de chance. La chasse, c’est fini.”

  Bell acted like he was going to enter the mid-level hotel until the taxi’s lights vanished around a corner. He then set off walking, as inky black as the deepest shadow. Pedestrian traffic was light once he got off the main boulevard. Unlike the touristy areas near his hotel, these were working neighborhoods, and most people needed the sleep in order to face the following day’s grind. The roads here were quieter too. Bell moved quickly but appeared unhurried. Streetlamps lined the road, casting their glow into the fog.

  He soon reached the back of the Société des Mines building and, with the street deserted, shinnied up the iron gate, rolled himself carefully over the top. He slid down the other side like a sailor descending a ladder on a Navy ship. He paused, listening, surveying, using his instincts to determine if his penetration had been detected.

  He waited three minutes before making his move, certain that no one was in the courtyard with him. He’d scanned all the darkened windows but saw no pale face peering down. He still moved slowly, oozing along one wall, dipping below windows and keeping a sharp watch out for any changes in the night. He reached a set of glass doors he’d noted earlier that lay at the far end of the lobby from the main entrance. He got down low and peered into the dark space. Light from the streets outside the front doors bathed the reception hall in an amber blush—not light, exactly, but enough illumination to tell him if anyone was guarding the building. He could clearly see that the area where the day guard checked in visitors was empty. So too the station where receptionists sat.

  Still, Bell had plenty of time and so he waited on the cold stone step for thirty minutes and watched the lobby because there was always a chance a roaming guard would check it on his rounds. Judging by the size of the building and assuming he’d missed seeing such a guard by seconds before taking up his watch, Bell gave a potential sentry ample time to wander from room to room and return to the lobby. He let thirty minutes stretch to forty-five to make sure no one paced through.

  Satisfied that the Société didn’t guard the bland paperwork shuffled within these walls, he retraced his steps around the courtyard and over the gate and circled the limestone edifice. The sidewalks were still deserted and there was little traffic in the street. As casually as an owner approaches his own house, Bell walked up to the door, slid home the largest of Marc Massard’s keys, and turned the lock. He slipped inside and closed the door softly. He looked around the doorframe quickly for any kind of wiring that would indicate an electromechanical alarm had been retrofitted to the door. If this was a new building, he could assume such wiring would be installed during construction and remain hidden from prying eyes. But this was an older structure, and digging through all the layers of plaster and drilling through the rough limestone wouldn’t be practical. He saw nothing in the carved woodwork.

  Knowing now he didn’t need to beat a hasty retreat, he snicked the lock’s tongue into the jamb and took a few calming breaths. The hard part was over. He waited a few minutes just to get a sense of how the place felt. To him, it was as quiet as a tomb. He was quite sure he was alone.

  The ambient light allowed him to navigate the room, past the daytime guard’s station, and reach a large staircase that rose up in right angle flights around a brass-cage elevator within a wrought iron–filigreed shaft. He looked up through a tangle of metal and saw the stairs spiraled up to the fourth floor. Above, all was in darkness. He climbed up past the second and third floors to the fourth, where Marc and Yves Massard shared an office with Foster Gly. He saw and heard nothing. Theresa Massard didn’t know her husband’s office number, but she told Bell it was on the fourth floor in the far left-hand corner and that it overlooked the street and not the building’s central courtyard.

  He’d asked if she could remember anything about the room or the building. Of the office, she said it was a plain room with three desks and some other furniture. She said there were blinds over the two windows with heavy velvet panels that sounded to Bell like blackout curtains. The only other thing Marc had shown her was a vault, like a bank’s, on the third floor directly below his office. The vault’s door was hidden behind a regular one like all the other offices.

  He fished a small flashlight from his pocket. The lens had been daubed with black paint so only a mere pinprick of light escaped. It would be enough. He had his finger on the switch when he heard a blustery “Ahhh-choo!” Bell froze, as did the blood in his veins. He’d been certain the building was empty. The sound had come from the floor or floors below. It was hard to be certain, and the man hadn’t been on the staircase but off in one of the wings. Bell thought it could have been a worker putting in extra hours, but he hadn’t seen any lights on. He then realized the man’s office could have blackout curtains similar to Massard’s.

  The horror sank in. There could be dozens of people toiling away in offices that gave no outward indication of their occupancy.

  He dismissed the idea. If that many people worked at night, there would be a few lights on in the hallways. But there was just a faint glow coming up the stairway from down below. The hallways themselves were pitch-dark.

  With one hand on the wall for orientation, Bell moved down the hall toward his destination, keeping his stride smooth and silent on the tiled floor. He reached the corner and after he rounded it he paused for a moment. He heard nothing and chanced turning on his light for just a few
seconds. His eyes had so adjusted to darkness that even the little pinlight’s illumination was enough for him to see that the walls were lined with identical wooden doors. It was as unremarkable as any office Bell had ever visited.

  He got his bearings and continued down the hallway. He heard nothing more from the sneezer downstairs, but knowing the guy was around kept Bell’s nerves on edge. A firm with the reputation of the Société des Mines wouldn’t bother Les Gendarmes with something as straightforward as an intruder. He fully imagined that if he was caught, he’d be tortured to find out why he’d broken in, followed by his weighted body being tossed into the Seine.

  He reached Massard’s office. He dropped to hands and knees to peer under the door. He could see the faint glimmering of the city’s lights passing through the room’s windows. Satisfied that the office was vacant—or at least dark—Bell fitted the next-largest key into the lock just below the knob and tenderly twisted it until it disengaged with a click no louder than the lid of a well-made pocket watch. He drew his .45 and disengaged the thumb safety. He pushed open the door in fractional increments so as to not let the hinges squeak.

  No one shouted out a challenge. When the door was opened wide enough, he squeezed through and shut it behind him. He locked it as well in case some security contingent was patrolling the halls and checking that all the rooms were properly secured. He shed his coat and lay it at the base of the door so no light could leak through the slim space between it and the tile floor.

  It was a large office, and the two windows in the far wall were broad and tall. Bell could see well enough by the light of the streetlamps outside. Two desks were perpendicular to the wall on his right, and one was perpendicular to the wall on his left, with file cabinets interspersed, as well as a long multi-drawer credenza under the windows. A coat-tree stood to the right of the door alongside an outdated wall-mounted telephone.

  Bell drew the heavy curtains closed and reminded himself to never let his light point in that direction as further precaution against alerting someone outside that the office was being burgled.

  One of the desks had been stripped of lamp and blotter and trays for incoming and outgoing correspondence. Its top was flat and barren. This had to have been the late Marc Massard’s station. The others were covered with files, pads of paper, inkpots, a cigarette box in tarnished silver, cups of pencils. By the glow of his little flashlight, Bell scanned these desks without touching a single item. On some level, he was concerned that Foster Gly would know his office had been searched just by the very fact the air might feel different in the morning.

  Nothing on the first glance indicated where the Société had stashed the nine Coloradans. There was a black leather booklet on the desk he determined belonged to Gly. Bell recognized it as a day-planning book, with each page earmarked for each day of the year. Bell kept a similar book on his desk in New York. He was about to open it but stayed his hand a few inches from its cover. He knelt so his face was just above the book. He played his light over its surface. Gly either lost all his hair young or, more likely, kept it shaved, so he wasn’t the source of the single golden hair sticking out between the cover and the first page. It almost looked like a dog’s—a retriever’s or Labrador’s. It definitely would have fallen unnoticed had Bell opened the day planner.

  He noted its exact position and how much of it peeked out before opening the book and catching the makeshift intruder’s alert in his palm. He set it carefully on the desk and leafed through the pages until he found the next day’s date.

  Bell let a smile cross his lips. Gly had a nine o’clock appointment with someone named Gravois at a restaurant on Île de la Cité near Notre-Dame, but at ten-thirty he was to pick up Joshua Brewster and Vernon Hall at the house and escort them to the offices of A. C. Bourgault in a part of Paris Bell wasn’t familiar with. He memorized the address. Henri Favreau, Bell’s Parisian fixer, would likely be able to give him background on the identity of Bourgault. He checked the next couple of entries in Gly’s schedule and saw that he was leading all nine miners to Le Havre in two days’ time. Bell knew if opportunity didn’t present itself the next day he could always make an approach on the boat train to the port city. Then he saw a notation for a motorbus hire. They were being driven to the docks.

  That just ratcheted up the pressure even more. Bell took a breath. Blew it out. Took another. Tomorrow would just have to work.

  As careful as a surgeon, he inserted the long yellow hair back onto the daybook’s first page and gently closed the cover on it so it was once again trapped in place. Bell had touched nothing else, but he swept the room just to be certain he hadn’t accidentally brushed against a stack of papers or knocked a lampshade askew. Everything was as it should be. If he could make his exit as stealthy as his entrance, he’d be home free.

  He opened the drapery to the position it had been in when he’d entered, shrugged back into his overcoat, and gently unlocked the door. Like before, he opened it just enough to squeeze his body through. The hallway was dark and deserted. He retraced his steps down the corridor, ever mindful that someone could be approaching through the gloom. He reached the stairs and paused. All he heard was the rush of blood through the vessels around his ears. He started down. He reached the head of the third-floor stairs when his luck failed him. Coming up from below were two men holding flashlights with red lenses to make them harder to detect in the dark building.

  “Je déteste la grippe,” one said miserably, and wiped at his nose.

  14

  In an intuitive flash, Bell understood the security decisions the company had made to protect the building. They pretended that there was no real security, to lure in unsuspecting thieves—likely, industrial spies from Krupp or some other big European conglomerate. The would-be spies make it inside, but guards silently roaming the darkened hallways with blacked-out lights would eventually find them. This way, the Société could get information out of the captured man and the Metropolitan Police would never know a thing.

  Had Bell not heard the flu-addled guard sneeze, he’d have assumed he was alone and been far less cautious. In the end, though, it didn’t matter, because the healthy other guard saw him at the top of the stairs in his light’s ruddy glow and shouted in alarm.

  Bell launched himself at the two, spreading his elbows just wide enough to hit both in the face. The impact knocked the men back down to the landing below, their bodies cushioning Bell’s as he fell on top of them. He got to his feet and leapt down to the next landing. Reaching out with his right arm, he hooked his hand onto one of the iron elevator shaft stanchions and whipped himself around before launching himself down another eight-stair flight. This was the second floor. He tore around the elevator shaft and leapt to the final mid-stairs landing, needing to throw up his hands to keep from smashing into the wall. He turned and jumped again, landing in position to whirl around another stanchion and gain the main floor. His shoulder felt like it was pulling from the joint, but his reckless flight had captured him seconds.

  The lights of Paris beckoned through the lobby windows, and a curtain of fresh rain fell from the heavens. He could hear the guards rushing down the stairs in his wake. Bell raced across the open space.

  Once the guards reported that an intruder had been in the building, someone as paranoid and clever as Gly would suspect information about his project had been the intended target and not whatever was kept in the vault. The Scotsman would immediately change his schedule. No meeting at A. C. Bourgault and no motorbus ride to Le Havre.

  He had two options. One was just to shoot the men in cold blood, a thought that was tempting but not Bell’s style. These men may work for a ruthless organization, yet that wasn’t enough reason for him to just execute them. His second option was to lure them someplace where he could subdue them and keep them stashed long enough for him to make contact with Brewster. It was the more dangerous plan but his conscience would be clear.

 
He paused just long enough for the pursuing guards to see him at the door before he pushed through the auto lock and out into the rainy night. He turned left toward the Métro station and started running. Behind him, he heard the door crash open and a shout as they spotted him heading down the middle of the sodden street.

  A sudden pistol shot blasted the night. The bullet never came close, but the game suddenly changed. Bell drew his .45 on the fly and kept going. Another shot rang out, and this one was close enough for Bell to hear the hot round sizzle its way through the rain. He quickened his pace. More bullets punched the air around him. He was too exposed. His plan had turned from subterfuge to survival.

  He veered at the last second and flew down the stairs under the glass and iron awning of the Métro station entrance. He expected to be able to stop at the bottom and shoot both men when they were silhouetted against the shimmering night sky. But when he got there, he saw a train made of stained wooden carriages with plain square windows was in the station. A couple of people were stepping off while a couple of others waited on the vaulted platform to board. The scene had a sleepy quality of commuters going through routines without thought. At the far end of the station, workers in heavy rain gear clustered around an open door that led to a deeper, hellish realm below the streets.

  Bell discreetly holstered his weapon and made his way onto one of the electric train’s four passenger carriages. A few Parisians sat on the benches, owl-eyed with exhaustion or asleep with their heads resting against the car’s interior. One drunk fellow gave him a loopy grin. Bell watched anxiously. The guards would know they’d be vulnerable coming down into the Métro system, so they would be cautious. If Bell had any luck left tonight, the train would glide out of the station before they reached the platform.