Read Chapter 28: The Grand Palais

The Grand Palais glowed like a lantern against the bruised Parisian twilight. Mercer killed the Peugeot’s engine half a block from the Place Clemenceau, letting the car roll silent into the shadow of a delivery van. Camille was already out, smoothing the creases from her stolen warehouse jacket, her eyes tracking the line of limousines crawling toward the iron-and-glass cathedral of the exhibition hall.

“We walk in like we belong,” she said. “Or we don’t walk in at all.”

Mercer checked his watch. The train would hit its final waypoint in under an hour. If Remi was here to watch the crash, they had maybe forty minutes to find him, maybe less to find a way to stop what Doucet had already set in motion.

They crossed the boulevard at a brisk pace, falling into step behind a cluster of diplomats in black tie and couture. Mercer caught a fragment of conversation—something about the tunnel’s safety record, a toast to modern engineering—and felt the bile rise in his throat. These people had no idea they were standing over a bomb.

The Grand Palais’s nave opened before them like a cathedral to glass and steel. Chandeliers dripped light over a sea of tuxedos and jewel-toned gowns. A string quartet sawed through a Mozart adagio, barely audible beneath the murmur of a hundred conversations. But Mercer’s eyes weren’t on the glittering crowd. They were on the far end of the nave, where a temporary partition wall had been erected, marked with discreet signage: *Channel Tunnel Safety Commission — Private Exhibit.*

“There,” Camille said, her voice barely a whisper. “The maintenance car. They shipped it in through the service entrance.”

Mercer followed her gaze. Behind the partition, visible through a gap in the draping, sat the unmistakable curved roof of a Eurostar carriage—the final car, the one Doucet had rigged as the spearhead of his collision course. It squatted on temporary rails like a sleeping beast, its windows dark, its doors sealed.

He pulled two glasses of champagne from a passing tray, handed one to Camille, and used the other to gesture toward the partition. “Sokolov and Remi. Ten o’clock, by the carriage door.”

Camille didn’t turn her head. She took a sip of champagne, let it settle. “Sokolov’s men were supposed to be dead. You said Remi killed him.”

“I said Remi *claimed* he killed him.” Mercer watched the two men over the rim of his glass. Sokolov stood with his arms crossed, the posture of a man doing business, not a ghost. Remi was in a tuxedo that probably cost more than Mercer’s flat, his silver hair swept back, his smile a blade. “Looks like he was lying about that too.”

They drifted closer, weaving through the crowd with the practiced ease of people who had spent careers being invisible in plain sight. Mercer kept his champagne at chest level, a shield against recognition. Camille’s hand rested on her hip, inches from the knife she’d lifted from the freezer.

“The car’s been here for hours,” Camille murmured. “If Remi wanted to watch the crash, he’d be watching the tunnel, not the cargo.”

Mercer’s jaw tightened. “Unless the car isn’t cargo. Unless it’s the point.”

They found a vantage point behind a marble column, close enough to read the tension in Sokolov’s shoulders. The Russian said something in rapid French, his hand slicing the air toward the carriage. Remi laughed—a sound like glass breaking—and shook his head.

“He’s not watching anything,” Mercer said, the pieces clicking into place with a sickening finality. “He’s not here to observe. He’s here to make sure it lands.”

A waiter passed with a tray of canapés. Mercer flagged him down, traded his empty glass for a napkin, and used the moment to study the carriage’s access points. Two guards flanked the partition—private security, not Sokolov’s crew, which meant they belonged to someone else.

“Who runs the exhibit?” Camille asked, reading his mind.

“Channel Transport Commission,” Mercer said. “The same people who signed off on the tunnel’s safety record. The same people Doucet wants to kill.” He paused. “The same people Fournier audited right before he died.”

Camille’s face went still. “The same people who buried the report.”

Mercer nodded slowly. “If Doucet crashes that train into this building, he doesn’t just kill the commission. He destroys the evidence. Every file, every witness, every corrupted signature. The cover-up dies with the people who built it, and Doucet walks away clean—a hero who exposed the truth by burning it.”

He turned to face her, and for the first time since the warehouse, he let her see the calculation in his eyes. “Except Remi’s not here for the crash. He’s here for the carriage.”

“The vial,” Camille said. “The one Doucet mentioned.”

“Remi’s been playing both sides. Doucet thinks he’s helping with the grand gesture.” Mercer’s voice dropped. “But Remi doesn’t want to destroy the evidence. He wants to *own* it. The carriage is sitting in the middle of Paris with enough political pressure to reshape the Channel’s future. He’s not watching the crash—he’s waiting for the moment of impact, when everyone else is dead and he can walk into the wreckage and take what he wants.”

Camille’s hand tightened on her knife. “Then we stop waiting.”

She moved before Mercer could catch her arm—not toward Remi, but along the edge of the nave, toward the service corridor that wrapped around the exhibition space. He followed, cursing under his breath, keeping his pace casual while his heart hammered against his ribs.

The corridor was dimmer, cooler, lined with crates and rolled cables. A security guard glanced up from his phone, and Mercer smiled, raising his napkin in a mock toast.

“Lost,” he said. “The lavatories?”

The guard jerked his thumb toward the far end. Mercer nodded his thanks, kept walking, and didn’t exhale until the corridor bent and the guard’s silhouette vanished behind a stack of flats.

“Here,” Camille said.

She had found a service hatch—a low metal door set into the partition, unlocked, labeled *Maintenance Access.* She pulled it open, revealing a narrow stairwell descending into the exhibition’s undercroft.

Mercer looked down into the dark, then back toward the nave, where Remi and Sokolov still stood by the carriage, their heads bent together in conspiracy.

“We don’t know what’s down there,” he said.

“We know what’s up here,” Camille replied. “Two men who want to kill us, a train full of poison heading for a building full of politicians, and a plan that changes every time we think we understand it.”

She stepped onto the stairwell, the metal groaning under her weight. “I’m done being reactive. Whatever’s down there, we control it.”

Mercer followed, pulling the hatch shut behind him.

The undercroft smelled of oil and old dust. A single fluorescent light buzzed at the far end, casting a sickly glow over a row of service lockers. And chained to a heating pipe, slumped in a pool of shadow, was a woman.

Her dark hair was matted with sweat. Her wrists were raw where the restraints had bitten. Dr. Élise Vernet looked up when they approached, and there was something broken in her eyes—but also something sharp.

“You’re not Remi,” she said. Her voice was a rasp, but it held no fear. “That means you’re either my rescue or my last mistake.”

Mercer crouched beside her. “We need to know what’s on that train.”

Vernet laughed—a hollow, bitter sound. “You think that’s the train?” She jerked her chin toward the ceiling, toward the carriage parked in the nave above them. “The train is a decoy. The *real* device is already in the wall, wired to the Palais’s gas lines. When the train hits, it’s not the impact that kills them.”

She met his eyes.

“It’s the explosion they’ll set off to make sure no one survives to talk.”