Tesla grimaced in pain. She caught a glimpse of herself in a café window. Wild hair and a fresh stain of blood on her blouse from her seeping shoulder wound.

Her reflection was framed by orange and black crepe paper hung from the café window. Paper skeletons and black cats. Halloween. Today was Halloween, a holiday the Parisians had just recently appropriated from Americans. Tonight the Champs d’ Élysées would teem with drunken kids in vampire teeth and theater blood.

Two women stumbling down the street drenched in the real thing would hardly get a glance today.

Twenty yards away, a flash of white amid the riot of color at a far stall. Tesla reached the flower stall just as Jana disappeared again. To the left was a narrow alleyway, just like the impasse back at the hotel. Tesla made a quick choice and raced to the open door about half-way down.

Kitchen. Deserted.

A brush of a heavy drape and she was in the bistro’s small dining room. A thin man in a white serving coat had been folding napkins but now was just staring.

“Where did she go?” Tesla demanded.

The young man’s eyes widened when he saw her gun.

“La femme dans blanc! Où est-elle allée?”

“La bas.” He pointed to a spiral staircase.

Removing the silencer, Tesla drew in a shuddering breath and started down the narrow stairs.

She quickly searched the two small toilets. Nothing. There was a third door. It opened into a small dark storage room. Tesla slapped the cold wall and her hand found a switch. The small room came to life under the single hanging bare bulb. Rough stone walls, a cracked tile floor. Piles of old tables, broken bistro chairs, boxes and crates. It was filled with junk, except for a path leading to the wine rack that stretched across the length of one stone wall.

Tesla swept the gun slowly across the shadows. She knew Jana didn’t have a weapon but she wasn’t taking any chances. She crept through the debris, her two-handed grip on the Hawlen tight.

She stopped and stood perfectly still, listening for any sound.

Nothing.

But then she felt it. A hard stream of cold air at the back of her neck.

She spun and leveled the gun toward the bistro chairs. She approached carefully, her eyes alert for any movement behind the ten-foot-high tangle of legs and shredded rattan seats. The stream of air grew stronger.

Tesla grabbed a leg atop the pile and gave a sharp pull. The top chairs clattered to the tile, one clipping the hanging bulb, sending it swinging wildly.

Jesus.

A small open door in the stone wall. With each sway of the bulb, Tesla could glimpse what lay beyond.

Tunnels. Not stone but some rough gray-white material. A low curved ceiling not more than six or eight feet above the dirt floor.

A dusty stench poured out.

What was this?