Taylor battled his way back to the surface. Almost at once, his face became flushed with perspiration, his breath came in irregular gasps.
"Control, control," he said through gritted teeth. "Don't lose it now, not yet, stay in control-"
He was interrupted by a throaty, rippling, feminine laugh that burst forth from his lips even as the upper half of his face remained twisted in a concentrated frown, eyes staring wildly, beginning to glaze.
"No! No!"
"We've reached the palace, Milady," said the coachman, opening the door.
"Thank you, Maurice," she said, sweetly. "Will you assist me?"
14
As D'Artagnan started on his journey back to Paris, a trip he would make at breakneck speed in just over twelve hours, word was passed quickly among the TIA agents, with mixed efficiency. The operation which, up until that point, had gone off like clockwork began to fall apart.
The suddenly disorganized agents had to move quickly, since Taylor's hand had been forced and there was now no way of telling where he would strike or at whom. There was no time for detailed planning and coordination. There was little opportunity to check new, unsurveyed destination settings programmed hastily into the chronoplates. As a result, there was a great deal of confusion and there were several casualties.
One agent, clocked out to cover Aramis, had the misfortune to arrive in the middle of the English Channel. He also had the misfortune of not being a strong swimmer.
Another agent, assigned to Porthos, clocked in much closer to his destination than he had intended, appearing inside the musketeer's room at a tavern in Beauvais. The wounded musketeer, who had been recovering at the innkeeper's expense by consuming massive quantities of food and drink and refusing to pay for same, turned over in his bed and saw what appeared to be an armed man about to attack him in his room. Thinking that the innkeeper had hired someone to exact payment in a pound or two of flesh, Porthos grabbed his pistols off the table by his bed and shot the man to death.
Two of the men departing to look after Athos never arrived. A too hastily programmed chronoplate consigned them to the limbo that soldiers of the Temporal Corps had named "the dead zone." Trapped somewhere in nonspecific time, they would, theoretically, continue to exist, but no one could say exactly where or in what form.
Several of the agents, clocking out from different points, tried to arrive in the safehouse in the Rue Servadoni in the same place, at the same time. The agent that Cobra had stationed there watched in horror as the shapeless mass of flesh that materialized before him briefly became a writhing grotesquerie of thrashing arms and legs that flopped spastically on the floor, making a sound that no human ear should ever be subjected to. It died in seconds and was quickly clocked out to a prehistoric time, where its bones would be picked clean by reptilian scavengers.
Lucas and Andre both had a close call. They had tried for the vicinity of the palace and they materialized in the middle of the street outside the Louvre, in a spot where, scant seconds later, a carriage driven by a team of horses was to pass. No sooner had they materialized than Lucas, reacting quickly to the sound of thundering hooves almost on top of them, pushed Andre to one side and then threw himself in the opposite direction. The carriage hurtled by them and they missed being run down by inches. The coachman was a bit shaken. He had been directed to drive full speed toward the palace, not a wise thing to do in the streets of Paris at that hour, and he had been watching very carefully to avoid running anybody down. It was a mystery to him where those two people had come from. Suddenly, they were simply there. There had been no way to avoid them. Had they not jumped out of the way, they would surely have been seriously injured, if not killed. He would have had to stop. It would have meant disobeying the instructions of Milady, but he would have had to stop. As it was, he glanced quickly over his shoulder, saw that the two pedestrians appeared to be unharmed, hastily crossed himself, said a silent prayer of thanks, and turned into the gateway to the palace.
"Maurice," he told himself, "it's past time that you retired to the country and became a farmer."
Lucas and Andre picked themselves up and dusted themselves off.
"I will never grow accustomed to this method of travel," Andre said, taking a deep breath. "Be it magic, be it science, I care not. It is unnatural."
"That's true," said Lucas. "However, you will find that in my time, it is quite natural to live with the unnatural. We call it progress."
"Well, at any rate, we appear to have arrived safely," Andre said. "What happens now?"
"Ever break into a palace?" Lucas said.
"Not one such as this," said Andre, "and not without armor."
"This won't be quite as elaborate as a siege," said Lucas, "but we will be wearing armor, in a sense." He indicated a group of four of the cardinal's guards who had just left by the main gate. "I think that out of the four of them, we should be able to find two uniforms that we can fit into."
Andre grinned. "You think they will mind lending us their clothing?"
"Well, why don't we go ask them?" Lucas said.
Finn and Cobra, accompanied by one other agent, ran as fast as they could toward the Louvre. They had been forced to leave the luckless agent Jaguar behind them in the alley by Moreau's. His leg had broken in his fall and there was no time to waste on tending to him. Besides, Cobra was feeling far from charitable. The three of them reached a small gate at the side of the palace, in the Rue de PEchelle. Cobra asked for Germain and, when he arrived, he said the words, "Tours and Bruxelles." Germain nodded. "How may I serve you, Monsieur?" "We must see Constance Bonacieux at once," said Cobra. "It is a matter of life and death." "Say no more, Monsieur. Please follow me." Germain took them into the palace, through a series of back corridors and several secret passages until they arrived just inside the doorway of the outermost chambers of the queen's apartments.
"Please wait here," Germain said. "And pray, be silent. There are guards stationed just outside this door."
He left them alone for a few minutes which seemed like hours and, finally, the doors on the far side of the room were opened and Constance Bonacieux, alias agent Sparrow, entered. Upon seeing Cobra, her eyes widened and she beckoned them to her urgently, holding a finger to her lips.
She admitted them into the next room, shut the door, and immediately turned to them, an expression of alarm upon her face.
"What is it? What's happened?" she said, anxiously.
"It's hit the fan," said Cobra. "We made our move, but Taylor got away. We figure he had his plate preset with the coordinates for another hideout, just in case. He wasn't taking any chances. He's probably on his way here right now, if he hasn't already arrived."
"Here! The palace?"
Cobra nodded. "His target's here. It could be the queen, it could be Louis, it could be Richelieu, or it could be all three."
"My God," she said. "What do you want me to do?"
"You have your laser?"
"I've got it hidden in my room," she said.
"Get it. And don't let the queen out of your sight. If you see Milady, don't even hesitate. Waste her."
She nodded. "What are you going to do?"
"We've got to get next to the king and Richelieu somehow," said Cobra. "Got any ideas?"
She thought a moment. "I've discovered a secret passageway that leads from the queen's bedchamber to the king's. It seems that there's never been much trust in royal relationships. But the queen is in her bedroom now."