She was in the middle, trapped in the darkness. Was the intruder below her savior or a.s.sa.s.sin? From above there was a flash and a brutally loud retort. A bullet crashed into the woodwork of the steps a few feet from her. Then there was a second shot at her and then a third.

Her hand whipped upward as she ducked away from where she had stood. She went into a low crouch, pointed her weapon upwards, and pulled the trigger. Either G.o.d guided her hand or just plain dumb luck prevailed.

Or maybe it was her years of training, because the agonized profane scream from the top of the stairs, followed by a torrent of obscenity in Russian-not Ukrainian but Russian!-told her that she had hit her target.

Alex heard the man's body slump toward the wall. Then in the darkness she saw the erratic wavering flash of his pistol and heard the ear-splitting "bang" as he fired twice rapidly again and still tried to kill her.

The bullets shattered against the wall above her. One hit several feet above her head. The other pa.s.sed so close to her right ear that she felt it go by. The impact sprayed powdered wood and concrete from the wall.

She steadied her own weapon. She could see a silhouette in the darkness and fired twice at the midpoint of it. She hit the target, heard the impact of the bullets and then heard the tumbling crashing sound of the man's body on the stairs. All this rose above the sound of other heavy footsteps rushing upward from below.

She shifted her position, standing now. She leaned flat, her back to the wall.

"Rizzo? Cerny?" she asked.

Mistake. The response was the repet.i.tive flash and loud bang of an automatic weapon and more shots impacting against the wall behind her.

She lowered her own weapon, fired toward her second a.s.sailant, and scored another hit. She heard a howl of pain and the clunk of his weapon hitting the floor, followed by the heavier thud of his body, followed by groans and cursing.

She heard the weapon rattle across the wooden floor and drop down two or three steps. She moved toward her only possible escape. She raced down the stairs and tried to step past the fallen body. The man who had tried to kill her cursed profanely and grabbed at her. Clearly she had not hit him in a vital spot.

He slashed at her body. With a powerful arm, he brought her down.

She fell hard to a knee. He cursed her in Russian. He had one strong hand on the shoulder of her jacket. His other hand, wet with blood, pushed at her throat. She threw an elbow at him and made contact. But he still fought, cursing in Russian that he would kill her. She could tell that the other hand was grasping for his gun.

She swung downward again with an elbow and smashed at him with the hand that held her gun. Both blows landed hard, catching him on the side of the face, then on the side of the skull. She felt his grip on her weaken. She swung hard again with the hand that held her weapon. It cracked across his forehead.

His grip on her shoulder weakened. She followed with the same elbow crashing downward, pile-driver style, onto the top of his skull.

She fought and pulled away. She struggled to her feet. In the dim light from the outside, she then saw him access his gun. Alex had no choice. She pushed her Glock to the man's chest and pulled the trigger. The bang was enormous, and she could feel the spray of blood as his body tumbled away and sprawled backward.

She felt sickened but kept moving.

She found her way to the door, swung it open, and found the street blocked by another huge man. For an inexplicable second they glared each other in the eye.

"Kaspar," she said, recognizing him from Kiev.

"Alex LaDuca," he said calmly.

Once again, Alex was faster. She brought her knee up and caught him hard between the legs. He bellowed and reached for his weapon. She hit him again, chopped at his hand to freeze it. She knew he had a huge advantage in physical force. If she gave him the slightest chance to overpower her, she was dead. In turn, she knew she had the advantage of speed and surprise: he hadn't expected her to survive the trap inside the building. She kicked him in the shins, then the kneecap. Somehow she thought of Robert and the carnage in Kiev as she was fighting.

Where was Rizzo? Where was Cerny?

Kaspar staggered. He slumped slightly.

She smashed him across the back of the neck, and with all the strength that remained in her, she shoved at him. He staggered backward into a car but rebounded like a tiger. He kicked at her and got lucky, catching her in the wrist, sending her Glock flying from her hand. Her wrist was. .h.i.t so hard that it felt frozen. Her fingers wouldn't move. Kaspar lunged at her gun. She chopped him hard behind the neck then followed with a kick to the ribs. Momentarily he blocked her access to her own gun.

Then she turned and ran like the devil himself was chasing her.

She dashed toward Cerny's car. And then she saw what had happened. The front windshield had been riddled with bullets, probably from a silencer-equipped automatic. She saw Cerny's body in the front seat, slumped on the wheel, blood all over his skull.

She would have been sick. But there wasn't time. She ran past his car, ran faster than she had run in years. She heard the profane shouting of Kaspar struggling up from the sidewalk behind her.

Something hit a parked car nearby as she fled. She knew it was a bullet, fired by a pistol equipped with a silencer, probably the same one that had dispatched Cerny.

She ducked and wove between parked cars.

In front of her, the rear window exploded on another parked car. It was a good thing that even in trained hands the best handgun was only accurate-in terms of hitting a human sized target-to about seventy yards. Obviously she had inflicted some pain on her a.s.sailant; his aim was wildly inaccurate.

She kept low, zigzagged, and wove. At one point she slipped and was thankful that she was wearing boots, otherwise she could have torn up an ankle.

Another silent round smashed into the bricks above her head. She heard yet another one smash into a plate-gla.s.s shop window.

The police judiciaire were going to have a ball with this one, she thought for no good reason.

Then she turned the corner.

She was on the Quai Conti by the river. Some isolated traffic pa.s.sed.

Then there was a shout from a doorway, a crash of some heavy gla.s.s shattering a few feet away. A human form. A man. Rising to his feet, moving toward her.

Alex nearly expired from heart failure and figured this was the end of her life. She was about to be killed unless she somehow eluded him.

She stepped up her pace. No traffic, the skyline of nighttime Paris across the river, Notre Dame Cathedral illuminated like a giant wedding cake.

Her legs felt strong. She ran on the wet pavement and turned the next corner. She breathed heavily and leaned against the wall.

Good. No one had seemed to follow. Yet she knew from long experience that there was no subst.i.tute for getting as far away as quickly as possible from any place of trouble. She reached into her coat pocket, gripped the cell phone and opened it. She waited. And waited. No answer.

She turned left and ran into the dark Paris night, not yet knowing where to run, just wanting to escape.

Come on, Rizzo! Answer, answer, answer!

Please pick up, please pick up, please pick up.

Then Rizzo did answer.

Her mind scrambled. It rejected Italian. They spoke French.

"C'est moi! Alex!" she blurted out. It's me, Alex, she said, breathlessly.

"Qu'est-ce qui ne va pas?

" Rizzo asked. What's wrong?

"Tout!" Everything, she said, continuing to run.

She turned slightly as she moved and saw Kaspar in pursuit.

She turned westward. She stepped out into the busy traffic. Her ankle caught on something, twisted, and she went down. A taxi blared its horn, swerved, and sped by, barely missing her. She pulled herself back up, her ankle throbbing, a knee bleeding. She gathered up her cell phone and stumbled back onto the sidewalk.

She ran hard. She turned toward him and saw he was limping badly too. But Kaspar must have packed another clip into his weapon. The sidewalks and asphalt around her exploded with the pattern of bullets that just missed her on each side.

Her heart was pounding in her throat and she ran for her life as the Ukrainian a.s.sa.s.sin followed.

EIGHTY-ONE.

She flipped open the cell phone. Rizzo was still there.

"Find your way to the Metro," Rizzo said, referring to the Parisian subway. "Then get to the Odeon station. That was the closest stop to your apartment. We have a team of people there," he said.

She knew her way around Paris but in her haste to escape had run in exactly the wrong direction to get to the Odeon stop. She now would have to take a circuitous route.

"Or do you want them to abandon their positions and come find you?" Rizzo asked.

"No. They'll never find me," she said breathlessly. "I'll get there."

She tried to a.s.similate everything that had happened, but the horror of it acted as a block. She wondered about the men she had shot.

Had she left them dead? Dying?

Who knew, though she was sure she'd be reading about it in the newspapers, if not watching it on the news. A wave of disgust overcame her, quickly followed by an urge to survive.

Her thoughts were punctuated by police sirens. The distinctive European ones, like the ones in the open car of police going to round up "the usual suspects" at the beginning of Casablanca.

The traffic was heavy on the quai. But she darted into it, barely missing a car, then another. She was on the bank of the paved promenade above the river. The floodlit Cathedral of Notre Dame was behind her. One of the great views in the Western world, and she was scared out of her mind. No time to be a tourist.

Heavy drops of rain were falling. A gift from heaven maybe. If Kaspar was trailing her, it would make her more difficult to see. She kept her head down. She couldn't see the rain but she could feel it on her face. What she could see was her breath against the humid mist of the night, that and the recurring image of Maurice's body tumbling out of the closet.

She moved as fast as she could on a bad ankle, urging herself to run and resisting the urge at the same time. She broke into a fierce sweat and crossed the river on the Pont du Carrousel. The ma.s.sive Musee du Louvre loomed on the other side. She came off the bridge and was on the right bank.

Alex looked over her shoulder and thought she saw Kaspar's dark figure still crossing the bridge, limping badly also, following her.

Suddenly a police car approached, its siren wailing, its blue light flashing, heading in the way she had come. She tried to flag it down, but in the rain the gendarmes didn't see her. They kept going. So did she.

She limped two blocks eastward, keeping Rizzo on the phone. She could see the lights of the Place de la Concorde up ahead. She knew there was a Metro station there and she figured it would be crowded. From Concorde, there would be a short ride to safety. It was too risky to cross a bridge again on foot. A perfect route? No, but she prayed it would work.

Alex picked up her pace. The rain intensified as she pa.s.sed the gardens of the Tuileries. She cursed her original decision to run north, not south, when she fled the scene of the shooting.

Her body trembled. Within minutes, she arrived at the busy Place de la Concorde and, looking over her shoulder, still saw Kaspar in pursuit. She darted through the maniacal traffic and accessed an entrance to the Metro.

Alex ran down the old concrete steps to the platform. Her footsteps echoed noisily. She slipped badly on the wet stairs. She skinned her other knee and her ankle wailed in pain. But she struggled up to her feet and continued.

She found the Number 12 line southbound. She had thrown Kaspar, at least for a few moments. Without seeing her, he would have no idea which line and which platform she had fled to. Where was he? She was torn between leading him to the Odeon stop and losing him completely. She wished now she had worn a bulletproof vest. What would protect her if he tried to pick her off?

She went to the far end of the platform. She kept her head down, her eyes on the steps. Then, amidst the crowd on the other side of the platform, waiting for a train in the opposite direction, there stood Kaspar.

From a distance of about fifty feet, directly across the tracks, their eyes met. He had a clear shot now, across the tracks. In the distance, she heard the sound of a train approaching the station.

Kaspar glared at her, reached for his weapon but then realized the train rumbling into the station would take his shot away. So he turned and ran. He was trying to cross over.

A train roared into the station. A crowd flowed off the train and another crowd surged on. It was almost midnight but the subway was moderately busy.

She stepped onto the last car. Just before she boarded, she saw Kaspar descend the distant steps in pursuit. She couldn't see whether he had gotten on or not. She a.s.sumed he had. She turned against the wall of the subway car. She wished she had recovered her gun. The empty holster made her feel naked.

The train rumbled along. Why did these Parisian subways have to zigzag like snakes beneath the city? Stations were often only two hundred yards apart.

One stop. Two. She got off and switched cars, trying to throw her pursuer. The train arrived at the Sevres Babylone station.

She stepped off, stayed in the crowd, and transferred to the Number 10 line going east to the Gare d'Austerlitz, the ancient train station. The 10 would take her to Odeon within two minutes.

She finally started to catch her breath. Under her clothing, her body was soaked. Sweat rolled off her. This train was crowded too. She kept waiting to see if Kaspar would come through looking for her. The doors between the cars were only for emergency use but were unlocked in case emergency use was required.

She took out her phone again. She found Rizzo on the other end.

"Where are you?" he asked.

She told him.

"Still got Kaspar after you?" he asked.

"Probably. I haven't seen him for several minutes."

"We're ready for you," he said. "When you arrive at Odeon, get off as quickly as possible. You'll see some musicians playing. Walk toward them as quickly as possible."

"Where will you be?" she asked.

"Watching," he said.

In ninety seconds, the train arrived at Odeon.

She stepped out at the south end of the platform. Her ankle continued to kill her.

This station too was busy. But she could hear some street musicians, a small band playing for change in the subways. Accordion, violin, and sax until 1:30 in the morning. Only in Paris. They were at the other end of the platform, about a hundred feet away. It was strange they were playing so late.

She looked in every direction.

She saw no help. She spoke into her phone.

"I don't see anyone," she said.