Suddenly, at the foot of the arch, the man crossed the road, practically in front of them, but without noticing them. He started heading down Boulevard Saint-Denis.
"Shit," Paul said. "It's one-way."
Schiffer sat up. "Park. We'll continue on-fuck it, he's taking the metro!"
The figure had trotted across the boulevard, then disappeared down the steps of Strasbourg-Saint-Denis station. Paul swerved the car violently and pulled it to a halt just in front of a bar called L'Arcade, on the off-road alongside the arch.
Schiffer was already out.
Paul lowered the sun visor marked POLICE and leapt out of the Golf. The Cipher's raincoat was flapping between the cars like a banner. Paul felt a surge of fever. In a second, he drank it all in, the excitement in the air, Schiffer's rapidity the determination that united them for once.
He, too, zigzagged between the traffic on the boulevard and caught up with his partner just as he was heading downstairs.
The two officers rushed into the station entrance. A crowd was hurrying along beneath the orange vault. Paul stared around: to the left, the glass fronts of the ticket offices; to the right, the blue metro map; in front, the automatic doors.
No Turk.
Schiffer dived into the mass, performing an extraordinary slalom in the direction of the doors. Paul stood up on tiptoe and caught sight of the man, who was turning right.
"Line four!" he yelled to his partner, who was now invisible among the passengers.
Already, at the end of the ceramic corridor, the swishing sound of opening metro doors could be heard. A wave of panic ran through the crowd. What was happening? Who was shouting? Who was shoving? Suddenly, a roar broke through the din.
"Open the fucking gates!" It was Schiffer's voice.
Paul dashed toward the ticket office, just to his left. He leaned over to the window and yelled, "Open the gates!"
The metro employee froze. "What?"
Far off, the siren marked the departure of the train.
Paul shoved his card up against the glass. "Fucking hurry up and open the fucking gates!"
The doors opened.
Paul elbowed his way though, stumbled, then managed to force himself past. Schiffer was running beneath the red vault, which now seemed to be palpitating like a living organ.
He caught up with him by the stairs. He took them four at a time. They had not even covered half the distance when the train doors clicked shut.
Schiffer bellowed as he ran. He was about to reach the platform when Paul grabbed his collar, forcing him to stay back. The Cipher was speechless. The lights of the train passed before his staring eyes. He looked like a madman.
"He mustn't see us!" Paul shouted into his face.
Schiffer kept staring at him, stunned, unable to get his breath back. Paul then added, more softly as the whistling of the metro faded away, "We've got forty seconds to get to the next station. We'll bag him at Chateau d'Eau."
They glanced at each other in mutual understanding, then ran back up the stairs, dodged through the traffic and leapt into the car.
Twenty seconds had already gone by.
Paul drove around the arch and swerved right, while lowering his window. He stuck the magnetic light on the roof and shot off down Boulevard de Strasbourg with the siren blaring.
They covered the five hundred yards in seven seconds. When they reached the junction with Rue du Chateau d'Eau, Schiffer motioned to get out. Once again. Paul held him back.
"We'll wait for him on the surface. There are only two exits, on either side of the boulevard."
"What makes you think he'll get out here?"
"Well let twenty seconds go by. If he stays in the train, then we'll have another twenty seconds to grab him at Gare de l'Est."
"And what if he doesn't get out there?"
"He won't leave the Turkish quarter. Either he'll hide somewhere or else he'll go and warn someone. Either way, it will be here on our turf. We'll have to follow him all the way. To see where he goes."
The Cipher looked at his watch. "Let's go."
Paul peered around one last time, right, left, then shot the car off again. In his veins, he could feel the vibrations of the metro as it passed beneath the car's wheels. Seventeen seconds later, he stopped in front of the grating of the courtyard of Gare de l'Est, stopped the siren and the flashing light.
Once more, Schiffer went to leap out, but Paul said, "We're staying here. We can see just about all the exits. The main one's on the courtyard. There's another to the right on Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin. Then to the left on Rue du 8 Mai 1945. That gives us three chances out of five."
"Where are the other two?"
"On either side of the train station. On Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin and Rue & Alsace."
"What if he takes one of them?"
"They're farther away from the platform. It'll take him over a minute to get there. We'll wait for thirty seconds. If he doesn't materialize. I'll drop you off on Rue d'Alsace, and I'll take Saint-Martin. We can stay in contact using our cell phones. He can't escape us."
Schiffer remained silent. Wrinkles of thought were furrowing his brow "How do you know where all the exits are?"
Despite his fever. Paul grinned. "I learned them by heart, in case of pursuit."
The face of gray scales smiled back at him. "If our boy doesn't reappear, I'll have your balls for breakfast."
Ten, twelve, fifteen seconds. The longest ones in his existence. Paul observed the figures emerging from the each metro exit, shaken by the wind. No Adidas jacket.
Twenty, twenty-two seconds.
The flow of passengers became more staccato, beating to the rhythm of his heart.
Thirty seconds.
He shifted into first and said, "I drop you on Rue &Alsace." The car screeched away, turned left down Rue du 8 Mai 1945 and let the Cipher out at the beginning of Rue d'Alsace, without giving him a moment to say anything. Then Paul spun it around and, with his foot flat down, reached Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin.
Ten more seconds had ticked by.
This part of Rue du Faubourg Saint-Martin was very different from its lower reaches, in the Turkish quarter. All that could be seen here were empty sidewalks, warehouses and administrative buildings. An ideal exit route.
Paul watched the second hand on his watch. Each click dug into his flesh. The anonymous crowd broke up, scattering into the excessively large street. He stared toward the interior of the train station. He saw its huge glass roof, which made him think of a greenhouse. full of noxious shoots and carnivorous plants.
Ten seconds.
The chances of seeing the Adidas jacket reappear were now practically nil. He thought of the metro trains passing beneath the earth, of the departures of main-line and suburban trains, dispersing beneath the open sky, of the thousands of faces and minds dashing below the gray girders.
He could not have been mistaken. It just was not possible. Thirty seconds. Still nothing.
His cell phone rang. He heard Schiffer's guttural voice: "Useless fucker."
Paul joined him at the foot of the staircase that cut Rue d'Alsace in the middle, thus raising it above the immense gulf of rail lines. The policeman climbed into the car and repeated, "Dickhead.”
“We can always try Gare du Nord. You never know. We-”
“Shut your trap. We've lost him. It's over."
Paul nevertheless accelerated the car toward Gare du Nord.
"I should never have listened to you," Schiffer went on. "You've got no experience. You know nothing. You-'
"There he is."
To the right. at the end of Rue des Deux-Gams, Paul had just spotted the Adidas jacket. The man was now trotting along the upper part of Rue d'Alsace, just over the railway.