“Buggers,” Nessa muttered to herself. Then she raised her voice to read the name of the Metro station, making sure the microphone tacked below her collar could pick it up and broadcast it to her companions.

Plunging down the stairway, she broke into a trot trying to find her subject. Jairdain should be coming down the other side somewhere—she looked for him as she jostled the contents of her purse for a Metro ticket.

They’d foreseen this, talked about it, planned for it, and yet here she was, nearly falling to pieces.

Inside, the place was a maze. Left or right at the tunnel intersection? There were different lines traveling in cross directions.

Jairdain would take one, but which?

“Go right,” he said in her ear.

“Oui. Thank you.” Nessa turned and trotted onward, craning her neck upward, ducking around a small pack of Korean tourists. A man with a suit was walking about twenty meters ahead. Music filtered in from the platform beyond the access, then the soft rush of the rubber-wheeled train arriving.

“Damn,” she said, throwing herself into a run.

Too late. The rush had been of the train leaving, not arriving.

Nessa was so busy cursing herself she almost bumped into the tall, thin American standing in front of the advertisement for the Louvre at the end of the platform. He held his elbows in his palms like an X across his chest, and frowned at her severely as she recovered her balance.

Crisscrossing aimlessly on the subway lines, Elata arrived finally at Sully-Morland with only a half hour more to kill. He came up from the Metro and walked down the Rue de Birague, turning toward the Maison de Victor Hugo, the home of the famous author, which had been turned into a museum.

He glanced at his watch. Though less than five minutes had passed since he had emerged from the subway, fear paralyzed him—he was going to be late. He turned and began running, streaking across the Place des Vosges, dodging the strollers like a madman. He ran up Rue de Turenne, bolting through traffic. Elata ran every day at home, but rarely this hard; he reached the Musée Picasso with fifteen minutes to spare.

He was at the far end of the ground floor, studying the greens of Woman Reading when the fire alarm sounded. By then he had caught his breath. He walked down the steps deliberately, went straight as directed by the guards, down another flight, moved back, turned left, and found the steps.

A woman in her thirties pushed into him. Her strong perfume caressed his nose. He felt her push the envelope into his pocket; he slipped it into his breast pocket and continued to walk, once more following the guards’ directions.