“That’s the man!” It was a shout.
The Viper recognized Eslée’s voice; he might not have if he hadn’t seen the doctor in the corridor outside.
He shoved the muzzle of the pistol into the belly of this Corsican, this mass murderer, this betrayer of his own army, and pressed the trigger.
As the hammer dropped, he felt a shudder:
Bonaparte’s shock, communicated directly through the pistol into his hand.
Simultaneously there was a blur of flesh, slicing downward. A gasp of pain.
No spark was struck. The man in the flat hat had jammed the edge of his hand between the hammer and the powder charge. The firing pin had torn the flesh.
The Viper uncoiled, twisting loose the weapon and compounding the injury. The hammer fell a thirty-second of an inch, without detonating the powder. He recocked it; but Bonaparte wasn’t there. His grenadiers had wrestled him to the floor. Their bodies were in the way.
Hacking was required. He switched hands on the pistol and grasped the haft of the late colonel’s saber with his right: shrill scrape of metal on metal as it left its scabbard.
Another hand—God, was the world made of hands?—clamped his wrist, yanking it upward. Blood spilled onto his wrist. It belonged to the man in the flat hat.
The saber fell, clattering to the marble floor. But the hand that held him was slippery with blood. The Viper twisted free. He switched hands again, but the pistol was not for this man. He flicked his left arm, bringing the dagger into play. He made an underhand stab for the gut; but an arm in a uniform sleeve got in the way. The blade slashed fabric, sliced tendons. Flat Hat cried out.
The cry distracted one of the grenadiers shielding Bonaparte on the floor. He looked back over his shoulder, supporting himself on one knee and leaving the First Consul exposed. The Viper’s gaze locked with Bonaparte’s. They stared at each other as if across a battlefield.
He aimed for the heart, squeezed the trigger. The copper cap cracked, powder ignited. The grenadier threw himself across Bonaparte. The leaden ball struck him in the middle of the back, collided with bone, and burst, spraying razor shards through vital organs. He died instantly.
To the crowd on the ground, the report was lost in the thunder of drums and crash of cymbals; but on the balcony, the echo of the double explosion, the thick smoke of the discharge, and stink of sulfur stoked confusion. The Viper raced across the balcony, dropping dagger and pistol to grasp the railing, and hurled himself over the balustrade. The crowd, seeing movement, cheered the First Consul; but their cries trailed off as the figure hung from the railing by both hands, gathering himself for the drop. He let go.
He hit the cobblestones hard, pain splintering up both ankles. One at least was shattered; but he found his balance and broke into a run before the pain could set in.
The crowd opened a path for the man wearing the uniform of the French Army. He dove into it.
Dr. Charles Eslée, acting on professional instinct, stepped toward the Police Prefect, who was bleeding from both his hand and his arm; the grenadier who’d stepped in to save the First Consul was emphatically dead. But Dubois pushed the physician away, clawing for his own pistol.
General Delaborde was bawling orders.
Musketeers of the Guard stood on the balcony, shouldering their weapons. Those armed only with sabers had bundled the First Consul and his wife—the latter sagging heavily in her husband’s arms—to safety. Bonaparte’s face was black with rage.
Dubois’ pistol fell from his hand. His slashed wrist had no strength. He picked it up with his other hand; the action of the moment sent pain into the background.
The musketeers shouldered their weapons but held their fire.
“Why don’t you shoot?” Fouché had joined Dubois and Delaborde at the railing.
“Impossible,” said the general. “Too many innocents.”
“What of that? Are we going to let him slip through our fingers twice in one day?”
“With respect, Minister, I’m in command.”
“To hell with your respect!” Fouché leaned forward, cupping his skeletal hands round his mouth. “Citizens! Stop that man! He’s slain the First Consul!”
Delaborde opened his mouth to say something; didn’t.
The shout rang across the crowded courtyard.
“Jesu.” Dubois would have crossed himself if his hands weren’t otherwise engaged. The whispered word alone was more significant than the pious celebration: The Church had returned to France.
The Viper ran out from under his tall bearskin.
The crowd continued to make way for the man in uniform, hobbling now but desperately still in motion.
The gates were open. Even if they’d been ordered closed, the press of people would have prevented them from swinging.
Once outside the palace, he’d find a horse. Once outside Paris, he’d smear mud on his military dress and find another Pontoise; some quiet village, anyway, get medical attention for his ankles, shave his whiskers, don peasant’s clothes, find transportation—kill for these things if anyone resisted—and take the smugglers’ roads to the Channel. The mariners who crossed it regularly made no distinctions between human contraband and goods; they demanded payment only. His tunic and waistcoat were lined with currency, which would buy him passage to England.
The Cutthroat Club would refuse him the rest of his compensation; but they’d pay to prevent him from betraying them to their own authorities, who frowned publicly on foreign intrigues while supporting them in private. They’d be made to serve as examples.
Later, when the Viper was forgotten, or thought dead, he’d resurface and return, if only to preserve his record.
Dieu! It was like wading through splinters of glass. This was the price he paid for mixing work with desire. Bonaparte was the only mission he’d ever accepted for reasons beyond pure profit. The man had slain starving Parisians to protect the same corrupt Directorate he’d displaced later at his own convenience, cast lots with the lives of the men who followed him in Italy, and abandoned them in Egypt. The Viper had embraced the chance to kill him, savored the irony of making money on the deal.
Bellowing came from the direction of the palace. He couldn’t make out the words at first.
Of course there’d be shouting. The volume would be great, to equal the extent of the failure to capture him. Then he heard the words, carried mainly by repetition from the crowd:
“Stop him.…”
“Slain…”
“Slain the First Consul…”
“Slain Bonaparte!”
“Butcher!”
“Where is he?”
A shout in his ear, this. It was the uniform; the man thought the man wearing it was chasing the assassin.
It was a chance. “Outside the gate!” he cried. Faces turned that direction. The gate was fifty meters away.
His legs were ablaze with pain. He gritted his teeth, sucking air between them, pumped his knees. It was worth amputation to get through that gate.
Forty-five meters.
“Stop that grenadier!” Another shout from the balcony. “He’s the killer!”
A hand seized his arm.
He twisted free, stumbled forward. Hands clawed at his tunic. He twisted loose with a shrill tearing of wool, almost lost balance, caught it running. To fall was to be flayed alive. He tore open the tunic, buttons flying, clambered out of the sleeves. He left his pursuers holding only part of the uniform of a Grenadier of the Consular Guard—and six thousand pounds sterling sewn into the lining. He’d pay twice that for forty meters more.
In that moment he surrendered his last protection.
Even a mob sure of its purpose hesitated to desecrate the Tricolor. Those who wore it had flung the ogres from the frontiers, chased them all the way back to their corrupt capitals, bearded them in their dens, and forced them to sign over their territories to the Republic, then returned laden with treasures for the people of the pavement to admire.
But a man stripped to his waistcoat, running for his hide, was no soldier, no invincible.
A deserter.
A coward.
A Judas in the costume of the Republic.
“Slain … Slain the First Consul … Slain Bonaparte.”
“Slain Bonaparte!”
“Seize the assassin!”
“Kill him!”
Hands clawed at him, tore his shirt sleeve at the shoulder. He groped for dagger, saber, pistol. All gone. A hand horned with calluses closed on his right biceps. The arm went dead. Other hands plucked at his clothing, sundered the seams, dug their nails into flesh. For the first time in his life he understood fear.
Hands on his arms, on his legs, fingers raking at his eyes, at the corners of his mouth. Something snapped. White-hot pain shot to the top of his skull.
Then he remembered the arsenic in its sausage-casing, stitched under the skin of his right hand. He bit at the heel, for the mercy the capsule would bring; but his jaw wobbled, couldn’t get a purchase. It was broken.
He tried to call out.
For what, help?
In any event he had no voice; a brutal grip closed his throat.
So this was despair.
It tasted like brass.
His feet went out from under him. He hadn’t fallen; he was lifted off the ground, tipped onto his back, borne away in a rip current, turned over and over, a pig on a spit. His torn sleeve came away like the skin from an orange.
That led to inspiration.
They pulled apart his waistcoat, another two thousand in notes spilling from the lining, ripped away at his shirt and breeches, jerked the boots from his feet, snatched at his underdrawers.
He was naked.
Nothing more to tear now but flesh.
They passed him from hand to hand, from the tallest to the shortest, ever downward. The sky cast over with red faces, rained curses stinking of garlic and sour wine. Then they let go with a team shout.
He fell three feet onto cobblestones. His lungs emptied. He lay gasping. Then the crowd bent over him and went to work in cold earnest.
Clumps of his hair were torn out by the roots. Fists pummeled his face until the burning stopped and he could no longer feel the blows, even when the cartilage in his nose crumpled like pie crust. He began to strangle then, drowning in his own blood and mucus. Feet kicked him, feet shod in stiff hide and hobnails, some in fine leather: Mobs didn’t distinguish between classes. He heard straw crackling in a hearth; his ribs breaking. A foot found his groin. His stomach turned. Another collided with his head, and he heard the bellow of the beast no more from that ear, a half-mercy.
Something flashed in the sun. A butcher’s long-handled meat cleaver. Where had that come from? It slashed down and across, left to right, right to left, like a scythe mowing grain. Things came away from his face, his head, his body. Armless and legless, he twisted and thrashed, writhed, tried to coil in on himself, opened his shattered jaw wide, hissed. His back arched. His torso convulsed, right, left, right again, slower, slower.
Still.