Anarchy of the Mice

Chapter Sixty-Three

Quaid added Claude's usual fifty-cent tip to the €9 tab, then exited to Quai Saint-Bernard and walked two blocks to the mark's Aston-Martin. He found the man's briefcase and propped it open on the passenger seat, replacing pens and memos with more useful items.

Roche Rivard was a straight shot through the 17th arrondissement, but gridlock and bombed-out pavement made it an hour's drive. Quaid, still cooling off from the bathroom encounter, took the time to get into character. He raised his chin at lesser vehicles, chortled when a teenager tried carjacking him and got bounced by the silver beauty's top-end security system.

Finally, escaping Paris proper, Quaid joined the first of several feeder roads through the Boulonge Woods and into Roche Rivard. This section of the drive was placid, the roads immaculate thanks to automated laser turrets discouraging crime.

In another ten minutes, he crossed into the fortress's shadow. The temperature dropped precipitously. Quaid, fastening another button of Claude's suitcoat, angled the sportster to the first of a dozen security tollbooths set into rock.

"Glisser vôtre badge," a guard ordered through smoked glass. Beyond his booth—beyond all the booths—lay black nothing.

Quaid reached Claude's badge out the window and pressed it to a reader.

The reader blipped green.

In his booth, the guard consulted a screen. "Le deuxième prénom de votre sœur?"

Quaid scanned the list of security question-answer pairs Durwood had taped to a free patch of dashboard.

"Jennett," he said, pronouncing the ts, though he wasn't sure he ought to have.

The guard remained impassive, but a mechanism clicked in the void ahead. Simultaneously the Aston-Martin's tires were seized from below, and the car jolted forward without Quaid's having moved a muscle.

He gripped the steering wheel, but it wouldn't budge left or right. A pillbox attached to Claude's visor blinked red. The gas and brake pedals began moving independently, taking the car on a blind ride into the rock.

Quaid sensed other vehicles converging on either side.

Were they being guided by some central controller?

The temperature became even colder—he rubbed his arms and blasted the heater. The Aston-Martin's speedometer showed twelve kilometers-per-hour. Whether he was being taken up or down, left or right, Quaid couldn't tell.

Heavy thuds sounded from within the rock, mixed in with the piercing shriek of an air ratchet. The dark was thick and total. Quaid had ridden Space Mountain once during a governors' convention, and this felt like that—if you added the possibility of Mickey Mouse wringing your neck with piano wire at any moment.

The car accelerated. After a minute of steady ascent, they descended rapidly. Quaid lost his stomach. The briefcase slid to the passenger floorboard.

A sliver of blue appeared ahead. Sky?

"Not good, not what I was expecting..." he muttered, wrestling the wheel again, again having no luck.

Did they already sniff me out? How?

Are they ejecting me out the side of the mountain?

As the sliver of blue broadened—no question now it was sky—it seemed they were doing exactly that. The car vroomed down an even steeper grade. Quaid's shoulder restraint pinned his chest.

The sky came closer and closer, bigger and brighter.

A lake came into view, a far below speck. Quaid wondered in a flash if he still had control of the door-locks, if there would be any chance of jumping.