“When you ran up the stairs, you went so fast I could not keep up,” she explained. “Then I heard the shots and realized there were people up there. I thought, okay, maybe I can go back out through the gates, but the car was in the way, about to explode. So then I did not know what to do. I guess I was in a panic. I could hear the shouts from outside, then the man running down the stairs. I had to hide, so I just went through the door the other men had come out of. The men you shot…”

She paused for a second.

“Anyway, I went through there and I could see some stairs in front of me and I remembered about the place having back stairs. I thought I would take those and find out what had happened to you. If I could help you escape, maybe we would have a chance. And, well, you know about the rest…”

“Well, I’m glad you did, anyway.”

“So am I. I mean… that sounds terrible. People are dead. But I am glad. Does that make me a bad person?”

“No worse than the rest of us,” he said.

They were driving up the Boulevard de Sebastopol when Carver saw the green neon sign of an all-night pharmacy and told the driver to stop.

“Sorry,” he said to Alix. “One last interruption.”

He walked into the store and bought some eyeglasses – the weakest prescription he could find – a pair of scissors, and three packs of wash-in hair color: black, brunette, and red. Alix was going to lose that long blond mane. It was a pity, but it might just keep her alive.

“What did you get?” she asked him when he got back into the cab. “A little protection, maybe? In case you get lucky tonight?”

“Protection, yeah, for you.” He showed her his purchases in their paper bag. “You can be anything you like, but not blond.”

He said it like a man who expected an argument. But Alix didn’t fuss. “Okay. I’m not the same woman I was an hour ago. I’m not wearing the same clothes. Why should I have the same hair?”

They got to the destination Carver had negotiated with the cabbie, a club just off Sebastopol. There was no name visible anywhere, but the entrance was underneath a high arch. Two golden statues of women in classical robes held up lanterns on either side of the door. A throng of people pressed up against the gold-tipped black railings in front of the club, begging to get in. From the looks on their faces, most of them were begging in vain.

“Damn!” muttered Carver. “Should’ve thought of that.”

Alix said nothing. She seemed completely unperturbed. She just got out of the cab, smoothed down her dress, tossed back her hair, and walked straight through the crowd to the entrance.

There was a bouncer at the door: 250 pounds of West African muscle in a silver gray suit. He took one look at Alix and unhooked the rope that was keeping the masses at bay. She swept in like a movie star. Carver tried to follow her.

The bouncer stopped him. Carver leaned forward and said a few words in French. Then he tucked something into the breast pocket of the bouncer’s jacket. The man paused a moment, letting Carver sweat, then waved him in too.

“What were you saying?” asked Alix.

“I told him I was your bodyguard. Then I slipped him a hundred bucks.”

“Hey! It was me who saved your life, remember?”

“Sorry. That bit of the story slipped my mind. Come on, let’s eat.”

Within seconds of walking into the club, Carver had noted three possible exit routes. He’d spotted two groups of men who might be threats. And he’d discovered there was some kind of restaurant upstairs. Another hundred-dollar bill for the maître d’ bought them a corner table with clear sightlines. If anybody came for them, Carver would get plenty of warning. He handed Alix the scissors and dye.

“Go and do, you know, whatever it takes.”

“I could be a while.”

“That’s okay. I’m not going anywhere.”

Carver watched Alix disappear toward the ladies’ room. Then he summoned a waitress and ordered a double Johnnie Walker Blue Label, no ice. He didn’t know how many more drinks he’d get to have. He might as well stick to good ones.

The ladies’ room looked like the last days of Rome. A couple was screwing in one of the cubicles. Two girls were kissing passionately up against a wall. Another cubicle was being used as a market stall for a scrawny North African guy in an Iron Maiden T-shirt, who was selling speed, cocaine, and smack.

Women were chopping powder into lines on the edge of the sink basins, snorting it, then using their fingers to dab stray dustings of snow from their nostrils onto their tongues. A few more conventional types were peeing, checking their makeup, and gossiping about the men they’d left behind in the club.

Alix found a spare basin. She looked at her reflection for a second in the mirror that ran along the wall. Then she started cutting. A few women looked at her. One of them started talking in French. Alix looked at her and mimed incomprehension.

“You crazy?” the woman repeated in English. “You cut that beautiful hair, your man, he won’t recognize you.”

“Exactly,” said Alix, and smiled.

The woman laughed. “But chérie, there must be an easier way of escaping from him, no?”

“Maybe it’s not him I want to escape.”

“Okay, a woman of mystery!”

Alix went back to her cutting. She stopped once her hair had been reduced to a neat blond bob that fell halfway down her neck. She ran her hands through her new cut, tossing her head from side to side to feel how it moved and fell. “No,” she muttered to herself. “Too boring.” She picked up the scissors again.

A few minutes later, she was left with a short, almost boyish crop. She looked at the mirror again, happier this time. Then she picked up each box of hair color in turn, holding it by her face before coming to a decision.

She filled her basin with warm water, bent down, and dunked her head. Then she shampooed in the black dye. Now came the boring part: She had to wait twenty minutes for the dye to work properly. So she sat on the edge of her basin, smoked a Marlboro, and watched the world go by.

The couple who’d had sex emerged from their cubicle. The woman dashed to the mirror to check her face and hair, while the man scowled at her impatiently. Neither of them seemed too interested in romance. Alix wondered if it had been a professional transaction. She decided probably not. A decent hooker would at least have pretended she’d enjoyed it. That way the John might pay for a second helping.

The dealer’s trade slackened off for a few minutes. He tried to persuade Alix to buy, then settled for a broken English conversation about the difficulties of doing business with clients who were, by definition, screwups. Alix sounded like she knew what she was talking about. The dealer was impressed.

“You sell powders too?” he asked.

“No,” she said. “Something else.”

A pair of blonds walked in, teetering on four-inch stilettos, and for a second the ladies’-room babble fell silent. The two newcomers were identical, but eerily, unnaturally so in their doll-like perfection. They had wide turquoise eyes, perfect little noses, and puffy, pouty lips. They looked around with blank indifference, as if long since bored by the effect their looks had on the world around them. Either that, thought Alix, or their faces had simply been stuffed with so much Botox they were no longer capable of any expression at all.

The dolls stood next to Alix in front of the mirror, bitching about the man they were with. Bitching in Russian. One of them glanced at Alix in the mirror and attempted a puzzled frown.

“Ya znayo vas?”

She was asking, “Do I know you?” but now it was Alix’s turn to look wide-eyed and clueless. “Sorry,” she said, making her accent as all-American as she could manage. “I don’t understand what you said. But I sure love that twin thing you’ve got going.”