But then the odd smell registered. Chalk?

And with that came a flash of memory. Harold . . . that night five years ago when, in the highest heat of their affair, he had brought her here to Paris for a weekend. Dinner at Taillevent, a three-hundred-euro Haut Brion. And to impress her even more, a trip to the restaurant’s wine cellar. There, the sommelier told them that the sleek vault used to be a dank cave, part of a network of tunnels below Paris that had once been the city’s thriving chalk quarries. The tunnels ran for hundreds of miles below apartments, cafés and shops. All but a few had been abandoned and boarded up.

Tesla drew in a breath and stepped into the darkness.

The swinging bulb offered up moving slices of black and white. But beyond thirty feet, all light disappeared.

Tesla stood perfectly still, senses pricked for the slightest sound of movement. The drug-rush of adrenalin had dulled the pain in her shoulder.

She advanced slowly. With the dying sway of light, she could see now that the tunnel ahead branched off into two others.

A skitter. Rats.

A drip of something on her neck. Water.

A smell of something dead and close.

The blow came from the left, aimed at her bad shoulder. But she was quick enough to jerk away so the wine bottle hit her upper arm instead.

Tesla gritted her teeth against the pain and gripped the gun tighter.

A crash over her head and she was sprayed with glass and doused in something cold. Another bottle exploded and she shut her eyes against the sting of the wine in her face.

Nearby, a slap of wood against wood and Tesla saw Jana fleeing out a service door. Struggling to control the pain, struggling to breathe, the wounded woman followed her assailant as quickly as she could.

The foot pursuit, south through subdued streets of upscale townhouses and private hotels, seemed to last forever and ended only when Jana streaked across L’avenue de New York, making for Pont d’Alma. But despite her pain and exhaustion, Tesla closed in. And just as Jana made it to the bridge, she collapsed. Unable to see any further, hiding the gun, Tesla hurried through the traffic, heading directly for her assailant.

Jana managed to pull herself to her feet. She glanced up and saw that Tesla had now crossed the road and was getting closer.

Resignation and despair filled Jana’s dark face.

Had Tesla not been in such pain, had she not seen in vivid memory the young NATO soldier’s arm shredded by the blast Jana had ordered, had she not known what carnage this woman was capable of, she might’ve felt pity for her.