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“Who was the victim?”
“Lourdes Latrelle,” he said. “One of France’s foremost intellectuals and best-known writers.”
Chapter 44
6th Arrondissement
2:58 a.m.
WEARING GLOVES, ROCK-CLIMBING shoes, and dark clothes, Epée adjusted the straps on his knapsack as he walked along the Rue Mazarine. His heart was beating wildly because he believed that the greatest act of his life was at hand.
It was audacious. It was daring. It was absolutely in-your-face, and Epée was beside himself with excitement. He hung a right onto the narrow sidewalk that ran between the Rue de Seine and a huge, five-story limestone building. The road ahead curved left. The wall of the building traveled a deeper arc, which created a larger, triangular space between it and the road.
Motorcyclists often parked there during the day, when it was in use almost constantly by pedestrians. But at that hour, the Rue de Seine and the sidewalks that bordered it were empty. Epée broke into a jog toward an arched passage, seeing through it to the bright lights of the Quai de Conti.
Instead of entering the passageway, he looked around one last time before taking two steps to a stout metal downspout that dropped straight down from the eaves and roof high overhead. Hefty metal brackets every thirty inches held the drainpipe solidly to the wall. Epée grabbed hold of the second bracket and then stepped up onto the first, finding that the gummy soft soles of the climbing shoes easily clung to the protruding half inch of metal.
In seconds, Epée clambered up the pipe and onto the narrow second floor ledge, where he paused to take in the scene below him. Still empty. He did the same at the third floor, and was near the top of the drain when he heard voices.
He had to freeze in an awkward position when a couple came through the arched walkway from the Quai de Conti, lingered, and kissed before finally continuing south on the Rue de Seine. Epée’s fingers were cramping before the couple was gone, and for the first time he thought about the long fall to the pavement.
No way. Not when he was this close to becoming a legend.
Epée had rehearsed this climb dozens of times. He’d taken photographs of the route from every angle and pored over them, studying every inch of the building’s face, eaves, and roofline until he believed he could climb it blindfolded.
He shinnied up against the eaves where the downspout disappeared. He got his right foot up onto a ledge about three inches wide.
Epée rotated his body over into a three-point bridge, with his left foot free. His core trembled as he pushed hard against his right hand and right toe before he stabbed up and over the eaves with his left hand, catching the bottom of the roof. He took a strained breath and then transferred his weight entirely to his left hand, and dangled there for a split second before throwing up his right hand and grabbing the roof.
Grunting with effort, he pulled his head, shoulders, and ribs up onto the roof. He scooted sideways into a valley where several rooflines came together and squirmed his hips and legs up into it.
Epée lay there, soaking wet and panting with effort, but also knowing that the worst of it had been conquered. When he’d regained some of his strength, he got up on all fours and used opposing pressure to ascend the roof as a climber would a chimney opening in a rock. He made the ridge a few moments later and sat there, straddling it.
Before la crise, with the spotlights shining on the front of the building, he’d have been easy to spot up there. But the recession had forced Paris to shut off the lights on its famous buildings and monuments after midnight. In the dark like this, he might as well have been a phantom.
Twisting around, Epée quickly surveyed the avenue and the pedestrian bridge that crossed the Seine to the Louvre Museum, which was also dark. There was no one on the bridge that he could see, and very few cars on the avenue. He got up on the curving peak of the roof and followed it toward a giant domed tower that rose fifty feet above the main building.
To his relief, he found the safety line, a three-quarter-inch cable discreetly mounted up the side of the tower, exactly where he’d spotted it the month before. Men cleaning the walls of grime, restoring the pale limestone color, had put the line up, and Epée used it now. Unzipping his jacket, he felt for the mechanical devices known as Jumars that were attached to a harness he wore and favored by rock climbers. The cams of these devices ran only in one direction: up. When pressure was applied downward, they locked.
Ep?
?e unclipped one of the ascenders. He attached it and the one still tied to the harness to the safety line, and then frogged up the side of the tower, taking rests at the various articulations in the dome.
The last ledge was underhung, and Epée had to make another contortionist move to get up onto it, right next to the base of the cupola. In daylight or under lights, the mosaics were a deep, cerulean blue. But now they were black as coal, which suited Epée’s purposes perfectly.
He got in position in line with the Louvre and the Pont des Arts bridge, looking straight down on the plaza in front of the building and the Quai de Conti. He paused a moment to reflect on the sheer magnitude of the moment.
Then he got out the spray paint and set to work.
Chapter 45
11th Arrondissement
3:40 a.m.
ACCORDING TO LOUIS, Le Chanticleer Rouge was the greatest of Parisian clubs for les échangistes, the swingers of France. Like most things French when it came to sex, the practice of going to places like the Red Rooster to engage in anonymous physical relations was accepted with a shrug.
Politicians and their wives did it. So did the big bankers and their girlfriends. That infamous chairman of the International Monetary Fund practically lived in one of these clubs. So did well-known painters, musicians, and television personalities, and, of course, writers.
