The basement of Thorne's Hardware didn't smell like the shop upstairs. Up there, it was cedar shavings and WD-40. Down here, past the heavy oak door and the steep, narrow stairs, the air was thick with the scent of salt and rotting limestone. It was the smell of a city built on a rock, fighting a losing battle against the English Channel.
"Stay close to the center of the path," Elias whispered.
He didn't turn on the overhead lights. Instead, he used a small, professional-grade penlight, keeping the beam low to the ground.
"The flagstones at the edges are loose. If you trip, the sound will carry through the ventilation shafts right up to the street."
Sarah followed him, her breathing still ragged. She had tucked her hair into the hood of her jacket, her eyes darting toward the shadows that danced along the damp walls.
"How long have these been here?"
"Since the 17th century. Smugglers used them to avoid the King's customs. During the Occupation, the Resistance used them to move radios. My father… he just maintained the tradition."
They reached a heavy iron grate. Elias didn't pull it. He reached into a gap in the masonry and turned a rusted valve. With a groan of metal on metal, the grate swung inward on greased hinges. Jacques Thorne might have been a dying man, but he was a meticulous one. He had kept the exit route ready.
"You said they're 'cleaning house,'" Elias said, his voice low and steady as they moved deeper into the dark. "Who is 'they'? The Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure? The remnants of the SVR?"
"It's not an agency, Elias. Not officially," Sarah said.
She stumbled slightly, and he caught her arm, his grip firm and impersonal.
"It's a group called Vauquelin. Think of them as a private equity firm for state secrets. They don't care about ideology. They care about the 'Librarian's' index because it contains the location of several 'Sleeper' accounts—untouchable funds set up in the eighties that have been accruing interest for forty years."
Elias stopped. He shone the light on a map etched directly into the stone wall—a crude but accurate guide to the tunnels under the Old Town (intra-muros).
"Billions," Elias muttered.
"Billions," she confirmed. "And enough Kompromat to collapse half the European Parliament. Your father was the last man who knew how to read the physical logs. Without the 'key'—the substitution cipher—the numbers in that notebook are just noise."
"And you think I have it."
"Jacques said he left it in the 'most honest place in the shop.' I thought that meant the ledger, but I checked the digital files before I came here. Nothing."
Elias thought back to the shop. The most honest place. A hardware store was built on weight and measure. Nails sold by the kilo. Screws sold by the dozen. There was no room for ambiguity in a well-made bolt.
"We'll worry about the key later," Elias said. "Right now, we need to get to the harbor. If they saw you enter the shop, they've already flagged my truck. We need a boat."
They continued in silence for another ten minutes. The tunnel began to slope upward, and the sound of the tide became a rhythmic thrumming against the stone. Elias led her to a wooden door reinforced with steel bands. He listened, pressing his ear to the wood.
Beyond the door was a private slipway, tucked under a crumbling stone archway near the Port de la Mer. It was one of a dozen small, anonymous docks used by local fishermen.
He opened the door an inch. The salt spray hit his face, cold and sharp. The black van he'd seen earlier wasn't here, but a grey sedan was idling near the quay, its headlights dimmed.
Two men were standing by the water, smoking. They weren't looking at the boats; they were looking at the exits from the Old Town.
"They're ahead of us," Sarah hissed.
"They're checking the public slips," Elias noted.
He reached into his jacket and checked the weight of the Sig Sauer. He didn't want a firefight. A gunshot in Saint-Malo at midday would bring the Gendarmerie in minutes, and the last thing he needed was to be processed by the local police. His fingerprints were on file in places that would trigger red flags from Langley to Moscow.
"See that blue skiff? The Marie-Louise?" Elias pointed to a weathered boat with a reliable-looking outboard motor. "That's my father's. He kept it fueled. It's registered to a shell company in Jersey. It's our best bet."
"How do we get to it without them seeing us?"
Elias looked at the grey sedan, then at the heavy chains used to secure the larger trawlers to the quay.
"We don't go around them. We go under them."
He handed her the penlight.
"When I move, stay behind the crates of lobster traps. Count to thirty. If I haven't signaled you by then, run back into the tunnel, lock the door, and head for the cathedral. There's a priest there named Father Simon. Tell him the Librarian is overdue. He'll know what to do."
"Elias, wait—"
He didn't wait. He stepped out into the grey light of the harbor, moving with a predatory grace that belied his forty years. He didn't run; he walked with the steady, purposeful gait of a dock worker. He had swapped his shop apron for a heavy canvas jacket. To a casual observer, he was just another local preparing for the afternoon tide.
The two men by the sedan turned. One of them, a younger man with a buzz cut and a jagged scar across his chin, squinted.
"Hey! You!" the man called out in accented French. "Is this pier private?"
Elias didn't stop. He kept walking toward the Marie-Louise, his hand buried in his pocket, gripping the textured handle of the Sig.
"Read the sign, friend. No mooring for tourists."
The second man, older and broader, stepped away from the car. He didn't look like a tourist. He looked like the kind of man Elias had spent his thirties trying to forget—the kind who did the dirty work for people who sat in air-conditioned offices.
"We aren't tourists," the older man said, his hand sliding toward the small of his back. "We're looking for a friend. A man named Thorne."
Elias stopped ten feet from them. The wind whipped the sea spray between them.
"You're a bit late. The funeral was three months ago."
"We aren't looking for Jacques," the younger one said, a cruel smile touching his lips.
"We're looking for the son. The one who spent time in Kyiv. We heard he was… talented."
Elias felt the familiar surge of adrenaline. It was a cold, sharp clarity. The world slowed down. He saw the way the older man shifted his weight. He saw the glint of metal as the younger man reached for a suppressed pistol.
Elias didn't draw his gun. Not yet. Instead, he kicked a heavy wooden bait crate toward the younger man's shins and lunged for the older one.
The older man was fast, but Elias was desperate. He caught the man's wrist, twisting it with a sickening pop, and used the momentum to slam him against the side of the grey sedan. The younger man stumbled over the crate, his first shot going wild, the muffled thwip of the suppressor lost in the crashing of the waves.
Elias spun, drawing the Sig Sauer in one fluid motion. He didn't fire. He used the heavy slide of the pistol to strike the younger man across the temple. The man went down hard, his gun skittering across the wet pavement.
It had taken exactly six seconds.
Elias stood over them, his chest barely heaving. He looked at the older man, who was clutching his broken wrist and cursing in Russian.
"Tell your friends at Vauquelin something for me," Elias said, his voice as cold as the Atlantic. "The hardware store is closed. Permanently."
He turned and whistled—a sharp, short burst.
Sarah appeared from behind the lobster traps, her eyes wide. She looked at the two men on the ground, then at Elias. She didn't say a word. She just climbed into the Marie-Louise.
Elias untied the lines, jumped in, and yanked the starter cord. The engine sputtered, then roared to life. As they pulled away from the quay, heading toward the open sea and the coordinates of Les Noires, Elias looked back.
The grey sedan was still there. The men were getting up. But more importantly, the man in the charcoal coat was standing on the upper pier, watching them through binoculars. He didn't look angry. He looked like a man watching a hunt begin.
"What now?" Sarah asked over the noise of the engine.
"Now," Elias said, steering the boat into the chop, "we find out what my father thought was worth dying for."