Andre grinned. "You think they will mind lending us their clothing?"
"Well, why don't we go ask them?" Lucas said.
Finn and Cobra, accompanied by one other agent, ran as fast as they could toward the Louvre. They had been forced to leave the luckless agent Jaguar behind them in the alley by Moreau's. His leg had broken in his fall and there was no time to waste on tending to him. Besides, Cobra was feeling far from charitable. The three of them reached a small gate at the side of the palace, in the Rue de PEchelle. Cobra asked for Germain and, when he arrived, he said the words, "Tours and Bruxelles." Germain nodded. "How may I serve you, Monsieur?" "We must see Constance Bonacieux at once," said Cobra. "It is a matter of life and death." "Say no more, Monsieur. Please follow me." Germain took them into the palace, through a series of back corridors and several secret passages until they arrived just inside the doorway of the outermost chambers of the queen's apartments.
"Please wait here," Germain said. "And pray, be silent. There are guards stationed just outside this door."
He left them alone for a few minutes which seemed like hours and, finally, the doors on the far side of the room were opened and Constance Bonacieux, alias agent Sparrow, entered. Upon seeing Cobra, her eyes widened and she beckoned them to her urgently, holding a finger to her lips.
She admitted them into the next room, shut the door, and immediately turned to them, an expression of alarm upon her face.
"What is it? What's happened?" she said, anxiously.
"It's hit the fan," said Cobra. "We made our move, but Taylor got away. We figure he had his plate preset with the coordinates for another hideout, just in case. He wasn't taking any chances. He's probably on his way here right now, if he hasn't already arrived."
"Here! The palace?"
Cobra nodded. "His target's here. It could be the queen, it could be Louis, it could be Richelieu, or it could be all three."
"My God," she said. "What do you want me to do?"
"You have your laser?"
"I've got it hidden in my room," she said.
"Get it. And don't let the queen out of your sight. If you see Milady, don't even hesitate. Waste her."
She nodded. "What are you going to do?"
"We've got to get next to the king and Richelieu somehow," said Cobra. "Got any ideas?"
She thought a moment. "I've discovered a secret passageway that leads from the queen's bedchamber to the king's. It seems that there's never been much trust in royal relationships. But the queen is in her bedroom now."
"Can you get her out for a couple of minutes?"
"I'll think of something," she said. "But I have no idea how you can get to the cardinal without being challenged in the halls. There are guards stationed outside the queen's chambers."
Cobra pursed his lips, thoughtfully. "All right. Get us in that passageway and we'll just have to improvise from there. Remember, don't let the queen out of your sight, no matter what. Now think up some excuse to get Anne out of her bedroom, quickly."
Lucas and Andre, dressed in ill-fitting uniforms of the cardinal's guard, entered the main gate. Two of the four guards they had attacked lay tied up and unconscious in a nearby alley. The other two had both been wounded, although not fatally, and they were also bound and gagged with torn strips of clothing and ignominiously covered over with refuse. If they survived the rats, they would come out of it with nothing but their dignity impaired.
"What do we say if we are stopped?" said Andre.
"We bluff our way through," said Lucas. "I'm wearing the uniform of a captain of the guard. I don't even remotely resemble the man to whom this uniform belongs, but if we both act as though we know what we're doing, we just might get away with it."
"And if we do not?"
"Then do everything you can to avoid killing anybody. If we have to fight our way in, use the laser and aim for the extremities."
"What do we do once we're inside?"
"We've got to get to Richelieu. We have to make sure that he never takes delivery of those two studs."
"Suppose he already has them?" Andre said.
"Then we'll have to find a way to get them away from him," said Lucas.
"One thing occurs to me," said Andre. "What if the two studs that the cardinal is to receive from Taylor are, in fact, genuine and it is two of the studs upon the ribbon that D'Artagnan is bringing back that are the false ones?"