Island of Doom: Hunchback Assignments 4 (The Hunchback Assignments) (10 page)

At the end of the room was a ramp leading to the loading doors. When he reached the top of the ramp, he discovered that the doors were locked and barred. He put his back to them and strained, swearing and pushing until the bars snapped and the doors flew open. He charged out into the dark shouting,
“Intrus! Intrus!”
He couldn’t think of anything else to say. His French was failing him.

A siren sounded, screaming from the top of the building, then the barking of dogs; the guards had let loose the hounds. He ran past the nearest guard station and the dogs turned their snouts toward him and leapt into action.

Behind him, from the upper floors of the bureau, someone used a voice trumpet to shout,
“Fermez les portes! Fermez les portes!”

They were going to close the gates! He was still fifty yards from the exit. He could see the guards swinging the gates closed. He was sweating madly now, his hair disheveled. They’d shoot him before they even recognized him as Bélanger.

“Arretêz-vous!”
a guard shouted.
“Arrêtez-vous!”

“Je suis Bélanger! Je suis Bélanger!”
Modo repeated as he ran full speed down the lane.

But the guard at the front gate raised his rifle and pointed it directly at him, forcing Modo to stop and wait for the hounds that would tear into his flesh at any second.

T
he siren sent a shiver down Octavia’s spine; the barking of dogs doubled her fear. She stared out the fiacre window but could only see the guards running back and forth across the courtyard. “Something has gone dreadfully wrong!” she said.

Colette shoved open the door and shouted,
“Allez vers la porte!”
The fiacre began to roll down the street toward the gates, but it was clear from the carriage’s slowness that the driver was apprehensive. Colette banged her fist on the ceiling.
“Dépêchez-vous!”

The fiacre picked up speed, then slowed again as they neared the gates. Octavia spotted a man running across the courtyard, dogs pursuing him. It was too dark to tell if it was Modo, but who else could it be?

“The driver’s a white-livered muffin face,” she muttered. “I’ll jaw with him.”

She pushed open the door, and without so much as a glance at the cobblestone street below, in fact with a joyous beating of her heart, she grabbed onto the top rail, climbed the side of the carriage, and plopped down next to the driver.
“Sacré bleu!”
he exclaimed. She would have laughed at the look of shock on his face if she wasn’t in such a desperate hurry.

“Through the gates!” she shouted, pointing madly at the bureau gates.
“Donnez la porte!”
She didn’t know if those were the right words. “Through the gates right now!”

“Non! Non!”
he shouted back.

“Well, off with you, then!” She gave him a shove. He tumbled from the driver’s seat and bounced along the street. Octavia grabbed the reins and shook them, shouting, “Go! Go!” She had only a thimbleful of experience with horses, but she knew they answered to the whip, so she grabbed it from the holder and snapped it above their backs.

The man who’d been fleeing was now standing about twenty yards from the gates, two soldiers pointing rifles at him. Another soldier was holding a pair of hounds by their leashes as he approached the man from behind.

Octavia turned the fiacre toward the gates. The horses had worked themselves into such a frenzy that they were frothing at the mouth. She began yelling, “Mad horses! Mad horses!”

Then Colette shouted out,
“Ces chevaux sont fous!”

The horses smashed through the gates, knocking two guards out of the way. “Sorry, sorry!” she shouted. Colette
kept yelling
“Ils sont les chevaux fous!”
The guards were so taken aback that they didn’t think to raise their guns.

Octavia turned the horses, and as the guards scattered, she pulled up right in front of Modo. She would have paid a thousand quid for a painting of that moment: his eyes wide, mouth hanging open in shock. She pulled back on the reins and let out a laugh, slowing the horses and turning them so that Modo had time to leap through the open fiacre door. She yanked hard on the reins to circle back toward the gate.

They were heading straight for the fence! The hounds had been released and were nipping at the hooves of the horses, causing them to kick and buck. One gave a hound a good kick and he rolled away; a second hound was soon outdistanced as they began to gallop again. Octavia brought the horses parallel to the gate as she urged them to gallop harder. They were going with such speed that she worried the carriage would shake apart.

Behind them orders were shouted. A bullet hit the back of the driver’s seat and split the wood. Octavia laughed.
As mad as the horses
, she thought. Then the fiacre was through the gates and bouncing down the cobblestones. She laughed again when she thought about Modo and Colette rolling around in the cabin; soon they’d be scrambled eggs. She raced down the empty streets, turned sharply left, then right, then left, having no idea where she was going, only wanting to get as far from the bureau as possible.

“You can stop now!” Colette shouted through the window after several more minutes.

Octavia pulled on the reins, but the horses didn’t obey. In desperation, she yanked so hard that one rein snapped.
“They’ve gone wild!” Octavia shouted to Colette. The horses were still frothing, their excited frenzy turning to fear. They wouldn’t stop whinnying as they galloped even faster through the night.

“I said stop!” Colette yelled. “Stop!”

“Easier said than done,” Octavia shouted back. She yanked on the remaining reins, digging her feet into the driver’s box. Another rein snapped and the horses veered to the right. She had lost all control. The carriage was already off the road and bumping along the sidewalk, missing lampposts by inches. They brushed against a wall and a wheel was knocked from the fiacre.

“Jump!” Octavia shouted. “Jump for your lives!” And she leapt, aiming for the straw piled at the edge of the street, landing hard and rolling. She was on her feet again immediately, pleased she hadn’t brained herself. The carriage had already careened down the street and was breaking into pieces as the horses dragged it out of sight. Momentarily she thought her companions were still inside, but then she saw something move in the gutter. It was Modo! He was helping Colette to her feet.

“This way,” Colette said, gesturing.

Curious men and women, alarmed by the noise, were opening windows and stumbling out of doors, rubbing the sleep from their eyes or shaking the drink from their heads. Colette grabbed Modo and pulled him down an alley, Octavia a few steps behind. They ran, twisting and turning up ever-narrowing alleys, until Octavia felt her heart would burst. Finally Colette led them into an abandoned building and they stopped to rest next to a stinking cistern.

“Remind me never to let you drive again,” Modo said.

Octavia laughed. “You should be thanking me. Not that I’m keeping count, but if I were, that would be the fourth time I’ve saved your life.”

“I had the situation under control.”

She chortled.

“Well, perhaps I am thankful,” he admitted, between panting breaths. “However, you did come within inches of running me down.”

“Did you get the documents?” Colette asked.

“I managed to take several, but then I was interrupted by someone: a man named Laroche.”

“Laroche? Has he been assigned to your case now?”

“Yes.”

“He’s a good agent. Very thorough,” Colette said.

“Far too thorough; he saw through my disguise. We had a pleasant conversation and a struggle, and then I escaped.” He patted his bulging pocket. “I do hope the answers we seek will be found in one of these pages.”

Colette smiled with anticipation. “We’ll go through them as soon as we reach my apartment.”

Modo shook his head. “No. Laroche said they’ve been watching you for several weeks. We can’t go there. We’ll need to find some other shelter. Any suggestions?”

“Obviously we can’t go to a hotel. Nor would the home of my mother be safe. No, they’ll have eyes on all those places within the hour.”

“We need a safe spot for just a night,” Octavia said. “A place where we can read the documents and sleep.”

Colette snapped her fingers. “I know the perfect location to hide.”

M
odo ducked behind a half-collapsed wall, out of sight of Colette and Octavia, and struggled to change his shape back to the Knight. He was exhausted, and switching to another form was only going to make it worse. But if he walked around Paris with a netting mask on he’d be easily remembered by any passersby or gendarme.

When he was done he joined his companions. They both gave him a long look, as though searching for imperfections. “Good, good,” Colette said, but he sensed disappointment in her voice.

She turned on her heel, leading them out of the ruined building and down an alley that opened onto a wide street. Several feet away was a fiacre stand, not much more than a shed painted black; a place for a driver to warm himself.
Colette grabbed Modo by the elbow and marched him up to the stand. She knocked on the side to wake the driver, a white-haired man who sat with a blanket of open newspapers over his legs. He shook the papers off and stood up. Without a word, he climbed into his fiacre.

Colette elbowed Modo and whispered, “Tell him to take us to Notre Dame Cathedral.”

“Really?” he asked. “Why?”

“Give the instructions. He will expect them to come from the man.”

Modo gruffly told the driver their destination and they climbed inside. It began to rain softly and his heart went out to the driver, though the man had likely been through much worse. The window was fogged and spattered with droplets; it was hard to see the outside world, as though they were traveling underwater.

“Shouldn’t we worry about the driver identifying us?” Octavia asked.

“The gendarmes won’t post our descriptions until tomorrow,” Colette replied. “The afternoon paper may publish them, but we’ll be gone by then.”

“Why are we going to the cathedral?” Modo asked.

“It is a sanctuary,” Colette said.

“We won’t find sanctuary from the bureau there,” Octavia said.

“I do not expect true sanctuary, but I know the building. There are places to hide if only for a night, and if we need to escape quickly it is easy enough to dive into the river. Let us hope it does not come to that.”

“Once we’re there, what next?” Octavia asked.

“We will make our decision at the cathedral. You seem to think this is all my fault.”

“It was your plan to enter the bureau,” snapped Octavia.

“Modo, how do you work with such a viper?” Colette asked.

“Very carefully,” Modo said.

They glared at him and he imagined them both slapping his face at the same time. He snickered. A moment later they were laughing too.

“The church will be as safe as anywhere,” Modo said finally. “No one would expect us to go there.”

The fiacre jostled down the street. When the rain let up, Modo could see that the city planners hadn’t been stingy with the gas lamps; the city really was a “city of light.” The buildings were just as close together as those in London, but they were more colorful and better kept. The night air certainly wasn’t as foggy.

After forty minutes they crossed a stone bridge onto an island on the Seine. The fiacre passed a large building lined with pillars and countless windows. “Is that Notre Dame?” Modo asked.

“
Non
, that is Hôtel-Dieu de Paris, a hospital.”

The fiacre stopped and Modo got out, taking Octavia’s hand and then Colette’s, to help them to the ground. One had to keep up the pretense that they needed help. He gave the shivering driver five francs and bid him goodnight. When the fiacre moved on, Modo found himself standing in a small cobblestone courtyard, and right in front of him, blocking a good number of the evening stars with its massive size, was
Notre Dame de Paris. The red quarter moon lit the stained-glass windows and the stone goblins that crouched along the side of the building.

He had an overwhelming sense that he had stood on this very spot before. It was impossible for him to have any memory of this place; he had been an infant when he had been brought here by his parents. Perhaps it was the French blood in his veins that made him feel this way. Then he recalled how often he had read
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
—far too many times—and imagining that a mere book could make a place seem so familiar, he shook his head and laughed.

“Why do you laugh?” Colette asked.

“No reason,” he said, feeling his love of the book was a private matter. “Where exactly shall we hide? I do need to rest. Any moment now I’ll collapse from exhaustion.”

“Follow me.” Colette led them to a side door on the east wall of the church and they quietly crept inside. It was dark, but Colette grabbed Modo’s hand and guided him through the pitch black. He in turn held his hand out to Octavia. Hers was warm.

Colette’s eyes seemed to adjust much faster than his, for she was leading them past pews, around pillars, and up a set of winding stone stairs that were only dim shapes to him. Their footsteps sounded impossibly loud, as did their breathing. Even the thudding of his heart pounded in his ears, as if the church were amplifying his heartbeat. But the higher they climbed, the more comfortable he felt.

Colette opened an iron grate door and they were hit by the cold. They crossed an open-air walkway lined with gargoyles who vigilantly watched over Paris. The lights of the
city were far below, as though the stars and the earth had reversed themselves. They were nearing one of the bell towers! Modo was certain of it, even though the way ahead of them was dark.

Colette pushed open another iron door, into a dark room. It was warmer, at least, but Modo shivered when he heard the fluttering of bat wings above him. Somewhere in that darkness were the bells of the church.