Cat & Mouse

Across Saint-Michel stood the Sorbonne, with its foreboding chapel, its huge clock, its open cobblestone terrace. A second bus filled with soldiers was parked in the plaza. Students tentatively wandered up rue Champollion to have a look-see. The tiny street had been named after Jean-Francois Champollion, the French Egyptologist who had discovered the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics while deciphering the Rosetta stone.

A police inspector named Rene Faulks shook his head as he pulled onto rue Champollion and saw the crowd. Faulks understood the common man’s sick fascination with “Mr. Smith.” It was the fear of the unknown, especially fear of sudden, horrible death, that drew people’s interest to these bizarre murders. Mr. Smith had gained a reputation because his actions were so completely incomprehensible. He actually did seem to be an “alien.” Few people could conceive of another human acting as Smith routinely did.

The inspector let his eyes wander. He took in the electronic sign hanging at the Lycée St. Louis corner. Today it advertised “Tour de France Femina” and also something called “Formation d’artistes.” More madness, he thought. He coughed out a cynical laugh.

He noticed a sidewalk artist contemplating his sidewalk chalk masterpiece. The man was oblivious to the police emergency. The same could be said of a homeless woman blithely washing her breakfast dishes in the public fountain.

Good for both of them. They passed Faulks’s test for sanity in the modern age.

As he climbed the gray stone stairway leading to a blue painted door, he was tempted to turn toward the crowd of onlookers massed on rue de Vaugirard, and to scream, “Go back to your little chores and your even smaller lives. Go see an art movie at Cinéma Champollion. This has nothing whatsoever to do with you. Smith takes only interesting and deserving specimens-so you people have absolutely nothing to worry about.”

That morning, one of the finest young surgeons at L’Ecole Pratique de Médecine had been reported missing. If Mr. Smith’s pattern held, within a couple of days, the surgeon would be found dead and mutilated. That was the way it had been with all the other victims. It was the only strand that represented anything like a repeating pattern. Death by mutilation.

Faulks nodded and said hello to two flics and another low-ranking inspector inside the surgeon’s expensively furnished apartment. The place was magnificent, filled with antique furniture, expensive art, with a view of the Sorbonne.

Well, the golden boy of L’Ecole Pratique de Médecine had finally gotten a bad break. Yes, things had suddenly gotten very bleak for Dr. Abel Sante.

“Nothing, no sign of a struggle?” Faulks asked the closest flic as he entered the apartment.

“Not a trace, just like the others. The poor rich bastard is gone, though. He’s disappeared, and Mr. Smith has him.”

“He’s probably in Smith’s space capsule,” another flic said, a youngish man with longish red hair and trendy sunglasses.

Faulks turned brusquely. “You! Get the hell out of here! Go out on the street with the rest of the madmen and the goddamned pigeons! I would hope Mr. Smith might take you for his space capsule but, unfortunately, I suspect his standards are too high.”

Having said his piece and banished the offending police officer, the inspector went to examine the handiwork of Mr. Smith. He had a procès-verbal to write up. He had to make some sense out of the madness somehow. All of France, all of Europe, waited to hear the latest news.

Chapter 80

FBI HEADQUARTERS in Washington is located on Pennsylvania Avenue between Ninth and Tenth Streets. I spent from four until almost seven in a BOGSAAT with a half dozen special agents, including Kyle Craig, BOGSAAT is a bunch of guys sitting around a table. Inside a Strategic Ops Center conference room, we vigorously discussed the Cross attack.

At seven that night, we learned that Alex Cross had made it through the first round of surgery. A cheer went up around the table. I told Kyle that I wanted to go back to St. Anthony’s Hospital.

“I need to see Alex Cross,” I told him. “I really do need to see him, even if he can’t talk. No matter what condition he’s in.”

Twenty minutes later, I was in an elevator headed to the sixth floor of St. Anthony’s. It was quieter there than the rest of the building. The high floor was a little spooky, especially under the circumstances.

I entered a private recovery room near the center of the semidarkened floor. I was too late. Someone was already in there with Cross.

Detective John Sampson was standing vigil by the bed of his friend. Sampson was tall and powerful, at least six foot six, but he looked incredibly weary, as if he were ready to fall over from exhaustion and the long day’s stress.

Sampson finally looked at me, nodded slightly, then turned his attention back to Dr. Cross. His eyes were a strange mixture of anger and sadness. I sensed that he knew what was going to happen here.