The Paris Option Page 17

  She was no longer wearing the dowdy, ill-fitting clothes and plain shoes of Paris. Instead, she was dressed in a slim, black jumpsuit, a black watch cap rolled up above her ears, and snug black boots. A change that revealed a far from frumpish shape, and also suited the requirements of her current activity. As Smith watched, she moved as calmly and smoothly as if she were on a firing range, releasing a series of careful bursts of three as she swept the MP5K across the semicircle in front of her. There was a precision, but at the same time a controlled carelessness to her work, as if her instincts were as well honed as her craft, which was impressive. As she released her last burst, somewhere to the left, there was another shriek of pain, and she jumped up and ran back, retreating deeper into the woods.

  Smith followed, fast and low to the ground, attracted by the fact that not only were she and he fighting on the same side, but he suddenly realized there was something about her that was familiar, something that had little to do with the events of today or yesterday. Her coolness and skill, the shape of her body, the intuitive risk-taking while at the same time the almost machinelike exactness. The right move at the right time.

  As he watched, she dropped again, this time behind bushes. Simultaneously, bursts of gunfire and a round of swearing showed that the terrorists had arrived at the oak and found she had flown.

  Smith remained motionless, hidden behind a poplar tree, as the sense of familiarity grew. Her face was wrong, her hair was wrong, and yet? Her body in the slim coveralls, the way she held her head, the sure, powerful hands. And then there were her movements. He had seen it all before. It had to be her. What she was doing? Being here. CIA was in on this, that was certain. Randi Russell.

  He smiled briefly, feeling the same surge of attraction he experienced every time he saw her under any circumstance. That was because of her close resemblance to her sister, Sophia. At least he always accounted for it that way, knowing he was not being completely honest with himself.

  She glanced away over her shoulder, clearly planning her next move, a certain angry desperation on her face. He would have to help her, despite the fact that if they survived, she would interfere with his investigation. In fact, she already had. But her chances of getting away alone were minimal.

  The terrorists had stopped their frontal assault and were moving around her in two arms, while holding her pinned down from in front. Smith could hear the men padding through the murky woods on both flanks. She glanced nervously right and left, listening, too, her desperation deepening. It was like the jaws of a trap closing in on her, and if she was caught alone, she would be unable to recover.

  The first man slipped into view. It was time to remind the Fulani and his men that they were dealing with more than just one opponent.

  Smith unscrewed his Sig Sauer’s silencer and opened fire. As the sound of his gunshot cracked like a thunderbolt in the quiet, woodsy air, the terrorist spun back, clutching his wounded firing arm. Another man appeared suddenly to the first one’s right, still not understanding the danger. Quickly, Smith shot again. As the new man screamed and fell, there was a babble of shouts, scurrying feet scrambling for cover, and the angry voice of the leader. Almost simultaneously, Russell squeezed off three bullets aimed at assailants on her other side, where Smith could not see.

  More shouts followed, and then more noise of feet in retreat. Smith turned to run when a flash of white attracted his attention, from the direction of the farmhouse. He looked more closely and saw the dark Fulani had arisen to his full, erect height and was standing defiant in his white robes at the edge of the windbreak. His voice was furious as he raged at his people to hold their ground.

  Then Smith heard another sound and turned again: Randi Russell was speeding toward him. “Never thought I’d be glad to see you.” Her whisper was filled with both relief and annoyance. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

  “Seems like every time we meet, you’re on the run.”

  She glowered at him, and they bent low and bolted in the direction of the main road.

  He was on her heels. “What did you do to your face?”

  She did not answer as they tore through the timber. Their pursuers were momentarily disorganized, and that was going to be their only break. They had to make time while they could. They pounded onward, ducking under tree branches, dodging patches of scrub, terrifying the wildlife with their ferocious pace.

  At last they dove over a stone wall, scrambled back up to their feet, and ran onward, gasping for breath, sweating, until, finally, they found the main blacktop road. They lurked inside the woods and studied the road both ways, weapons ready.

  “See anything?” she asked.

  “Not two-legged and armed.”

  “Smart-ass.” In the shadowy trees, she looked at him as a crooked smile of greeting curled up the corners of his mouth. He had a great face, one she had always liked. His high, flat cheekbones and chiseled chin were very male. She pushed that from her mind as she continued to study the road, the woods, the shadows.

  Jon said, “We’d better move on back toward Toledo, try to keep ahead of them. And I really do want to know about your face. Please don’t tell me it’s plastic surgery, I’d be devastated.” They trotted off again, alongside each other now on the dark road.

  “Hold out your hand.”

  “I have a feeling I shouldn’t.” He stuck out his free hand anyway.

  She reached inside her upper lip, left side, right side, and removed inserts. She extended her hand, intending to drop them onto his palm.

  He yanked his hand away. “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  She grinned, unzipped a pocket on her web belt, and slipped them inside. “The wig stays on. It’s bad enough you’re running around in that neon Hawaiian shirt. At least it’s a dark blue. My blond hair would be like a beacon.”

  She really was good; she knew how to use very little cosmetic change to great effect. With the inserts, her features had been lumpy and wide, making her eyes seem too close together, and her chin too small. But now her face was the one he remembered. Her wide-set eyes, straight nose, and high forehead radiated a kind of sexy intelligence that he found intriguing, even when she was her usual prickly self.

  He was thinking about all that as he watched for the terrorists. He half-expected a truckload of them to roar down the road, a machine gun attached on top, when he heard engines thunder to life behind them from the direction of the farm house.

  “Hear that?” he asked.

  “I’m not deaf.”

  The noise changed, and the chop-chop of rotors was added to the booming engines. Soon, from behind them in the direction of the farm house, three helicopters rose into the night like the shadows of giant birds, one after the other, their red and green navigational lights blinking as they circled and headed south. Dark, bruised-looking clouds scudded across the sky. The moon peeked out and disappeared, and so did the helicopters.

  “We’ve just been abandoned,” she complained. “Damnation!”

  “Shouldn’t that be ‘amen’? That was a damn close call for you.”

  She bristled. “Maybe, but I’ve been tailing M. Mauritania for two weeks, and now I’ve lost him, and I damn well don’t know who the rest of them were, much less where they’ve gone.”

  “They’re an Islamic terrorist group called the Crescent Shield. They’re the ones who bombed the Pasteur Institute, or had it done by a front group to cover their tracks.”

  “What front group?”

  “The Black Flame.”

  “Never heard of them.”

  “Not surprising. They’ve been out of action for at least ten years. This operation was their attempt to raise money so they could get back to their game. Tell your people the next time you check in, and they can warn the Spanish authorities. The Black Flame also kidnapped Chambord and his daughter. But it’s the Crescent Shield who’s holding them prisoner, and they have Chambord’s DNA computer, too.”

  Randi stopped running as if she had hit a wal
l. “Chambord’s alive?”

  “He was in that farm house, so was his daughter.”

  “The computer?”

  “Not there.”

  They resumed moving, this time walking in silence, busy with their own thoughts.

  Jon said, “You’re part of the search for the DNA computer?”

  “Of course, but peripherally,” Randi told him. “We’ve got people out investigating all known terrorist leaders. I was already surveilling Mauritania, because he’d reemerged from whatever hole he’d been hiding in the last three years. I tailed him from Algiers to Paris. Then the Pasteur was bombed, it looked as if a DNA computer had been stolen, and all of us were put on high alert. But I never saw him make contact with any other known terrorist except that big Fulani, Abu Auda. They’re friends from the old days of Al Qaeda.”

  “Just who or what is this Mauritania that he was on the CIA’s to-be-watched list?”

  “You’ll hear him called Monsieur Mauritania,” Randi corrected. “It’s a sign of respect, and he insists on it. We think his real name’s Khalid al-Shanquiti, although sometimes he goes by Mahfouz Oud al-Walidi. He was a top lieutenant of Bin Laden but left before Bin Laden moved his people to Afghanistan. Mauritania keeps a damn low profile, almost never shows up on intelligence radar, and tends to operate more in Algeria than anywhere else, when we do spot him. What do you know about this Crescent Shield group?”

  “Only what I saw in that farm house. They seem to be experienced, well trained, and efficient—at least their leaders are. From the number of languages I heard, I’d say they’re from just about every country that has Islamic fundamentalists. Pan-Islamic, and damn well organized.”

  “They would be, with Mauritania in charge. Organized and smart.” She turned her X-ray eyes on Smith. “Now let’s talk about you. Clearly you’re part of the hunt for the molecular computer, too, or you wouldn’t have appeared at that farm house in the nick of time to save my skin, and know what you know. When I spotted you in Paris, the story Langley told me was you’d flown to Paris to hold poor Marty’s hand. Now—”

  “Why was the CIA having me watched?”

  She snorted. “You know the services spy on each other. You could be an agent working for a foreign power, right? Supposedly you don’t work for CIA, FBI, NSA, or even army intelligence, no matter what anyone says, and the ‘I’m only here for poor Marty’ story is obviously bull. You had me fooled in Paris all right, but not here, so who the hell do you work for?”

  Smith feigned indignation. “Marty was almost killed by that bomb, Randi.” Inwardly he cursed Fred Klein and this secret life to which he had agreed. Covert-One was so clandestine—black code—that even Randi, despite all her CIA credentials, could not learn about it. “You know how it is with me,” he continued with a self-deprecating shrug. “I can’t not find out who nearly killed Marty. And we both know that won’t satisfy me. I’ll want to stop them, too. But then again, what else would a real friend do?”

  They stopped at the base of a long, low hill and gazed up. It was such a gentle incline that Smith had not even noticed it while he was following Elizondo. But now, for the return trip, the upward slope seemed long and hard. They looked at it as if they could make it go away.

  “Nuts,” she told him. “Last time I heard, Marty was in a coma. If he needs you anywhere, it’s in the hospital, bugging the doctors. So give me a break. Once it was personal, like with the Hades virus, because of Sophia. But now? So who do you really work for? What don’t I know that I should?”

  They had stood there long enough, he decided. “Come on. Let’s go back. We’ve got to check the farm house. If it’s empty, maybe they’ve left something to tell us where they’ve gone. If there’s still someone there, we’d better question them and find out what they know.” He turned around, retracing their steps, and she sighed and caught up. “It’s all about Marty,” he told her. “Really. You’re too suspicious. All that CIA training, I suppose. My grandmother used to warn me to not look for filth in a clean handkerchief. Didn’t your grandmother ever tell you something useful like that?”

  She opened her mouth to retort. Instead, she said, “Shhh. Listen.” She cocked her head.

  He heard it, too—the low purr of a powerful car engine. But no headlights. They darted off the road and into a grove of olive trees. The sound was coming toward them, down the hill, heading toward the farmhouse. Abruptly, the engine stopped, and all he could hear was something strange, something he could not quite identify.

  “What the devil is that?” Randi whispered.

  Then he knew. “Rolling car wheels,” he whispered back. “See it? It’s that black, moving lump on the road. You can almost make it out.”

  She understood. “A black car, no headlights, no engine. Coasting down the hill. Crescent Shield?”

  “Could be.”

  They made quick plans, and Jon darted across the road to an olive tree that stood alone, probably cut off from the little grove when the road was put in.

  The vehicle emerged from the dark like a mechanical apparition. It was a large, old-fashioned touring car of the type favored by Nazi officers during World War II. The top was open, and it looked as if it could have glided straight out of an old newsreel. There was only one person inside. Jon held up his Sig Sauer to signal Randi. She nodded back: The Crescent Shield would not have sent one man to attack them.

  As the elegant touring car continued coasting, it had gained speed and now was just a hundred feet away. Randi pointed to herself and then at Jon and nodded toward the car. Jon got the message: She was tired of walking. He grinned and nodded back: So was he.

  As the car passed, still dark and silent, they jumped onto the old running boards on either side. With his free hand, Jon grabbed the top of the door, and with the other he pointed his Sig Sauer at the driver’s hat. Amazingly, the driver did not look up. In fact, he did not react at all. And then Jon saw that the man wore a black suit and clerical collar. He was an Episcopal minister—Anglican over here.

  Randi grimaced across the car at him. She had noticed, too. She rolled her eyes, her message clear: It was not good international relations to steal a car from a parson.

  “Feeling a shade guilty, are we?” the British voice boomed, still not looking up. “I expect you would’ve managed eventually to get back to Toledo by yourselves, but it would’ve taken too bloody long, and, as you Americans say, time it is a-wasting.”

  There was no mistaking that voice. “Peter!” Jon grumbled. “Are there any agencies not chasing the DNA computer?” He and Randi climbed into the backseat of the open car.

  “Not bloody likely, my lad. Our world has the wind up. Don’t blame them, actually. Nasty scenario.”

  Randi demanded, “Where the hell did you come from?”

  “Same place you did, Randi girl. Watched your little dustup from a hill above the farm house.”

  “You mean you were there? You saw it all,” Randi exploded, “and you didn’t help?”

  Peter Howell smiled. “You handled the situation nicely without me. Gave me a chance to observe our nameless friends and saved you the trouble of going back, which, of course, you were already on your way to do.”

  Jon and Randi looked at each other. “Okay,” Jon said, “what did happen after we got away?”

  “They bunked lock, stock, and barrel in their helicopters.”

  “You went down to search?” Randi asked.

  “Naturally,” Peter said. “Food still warm in the kitchen, waiting to be served. But the house was empty of people, dead or alive, and no clues to who’d been there or where they’d gone. No maps in the house, no papers, absolutely nothing, except great heaps of burned paper in the fireplace. And, of course, there was no sign of the beastly machine itself.”

  “They have it all right,” Jon assured him, “but it was never there, or at least that’s what Chambord believed.” As Peter turned the car around in a wide place on the road, Jon and Randi filled him in on what they had lea
rned about the Crescent Shield, Mauritania, the Chambords, and the DNA computer.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Elizondo Ibargüengoitia licked his lips and dropped his gaze. His wiry body was hunched, the red beret askew, his demeanor harried. “We thought you were leaving Toledo, M. Mauritania. You say you have another job for us? The money is good?”

  “The others left, Elizondo. I’ll join them soon. There was too much I still had to do here. Yes, the rewards for this new job are impressive, I assure you. Are you and your people interested?”

  “Of course!”

  They were inside the vast, echoing Cathedral, in the famed chapel of the White Madonna with its white statues, columns, and rococo stone and plaster decorations. Abu Auda was leaning against the wall next to the Christian icon Mary and the infant Jesus, where his white burnoose seemed to mimic the statue itself.

  As Mauritania talked to the three Basques—Elizondo, Zumaia, and Iturbi—he smiled, leaned on a cane, and studied Elizondo’s face.

  Elizondo nodded eagerly. “What’s the job?”

  “All in good time, Elizondo,” Mauritania said. “All in good time. First, please describe for me how you killed the American Colonel Smith. You’re certain his body’s in the river? You’re positive he’s dead?”

  Elizondo looked regretful. “When I shot him, he fell into the river. Iturbi tried to pull his body out, but the current captured him, and he was gone. We would’ve preferred to bury him, of course, where he wouldn’t be found. With luck, his corpse will float all the way to Lisbon. No one there will know who he is.”

  Mauritania nodded solemnly, as if considering whether there would be problems when the corpse was eventually recovered. “All of this is strange, Elizondo. You see, Abu Auda there”—he nodded at the silent terrorist—“assures me that one of the two people who attacked us at the farm house after you left was the same Colonel Smith. That makes it unlikely you killed him.”