The Paris Option Read online

  The identified survivors include Martin Zellerbach, Ph.D., a computer scientist from the United States, who suffered head injuries….

  Smith’s heart seemed to stop. Martin Zellerbach, Ph.D., a computer scientist from the United States, who suffered head injuries. Marty? His old friend’s face flashed into Jon’s mind as he gripped the printout. The crooked smile, the intense green eyes that could twinkle one moment and skitter off, lost in thought or perhaps outer space, the next. A small, rotund man who walked awkwardly, as if he had never really learned how to move his legs, Marty had Asperger’s Syndrome, a rare disorder at the less severe end of the autism spectrum. His symptoms included consuming obsessions, high intelligence, crippling lack of social and communications skills, and an outstanding talent in one particular area—mathematics and electronics. He was, in fact, a computer genius.

  A worried ache settled in Smith’s throat. Head injuries. How badly was Marty hurt? The news story did not say. Smith pulled out his cell phone, which had special scrambler capabilities, and dialed Washington.

  He and Marty had grown up together in Iowa, where he had protected Marty from the taunts of fellow students and even a few teachers who had a hard time believing anyone so smart was not being intentionally rude and a troublemaker. Marty’s Asperger’s was diagnosed when he was older and at last he was given the medication that helped him function with both feet firmly attached to the planet. Still, Marty hated taking meds and had designed his life so he could avoid them as often as possible. He did not leave his cozy Washington, D.C., bungalow for years at a time. There he was safe with the cutting-edge computers and the software he was always designing, and his mind and creativity could soar, unfettered. Businessmen, academicians, and scientists from around the globe went there to consult him, but never in person, only electronically.

  So what was the shy computer wizard doing in Paris?

  The last time Marty consented to leave was eighteen months ago, and it was far from gentle persuasion that convinced him. It was a hail of bullets and the beginning of the near catastrophe of the Hades virus that had caused the death of Smith’s fiancée, Sophia Russell.

  The phone at Smith’s ear began to ring in distant Washington, D.C., and at the same time he heard what sounded like a cell phone ringing just outside his laboratory door. He had an eerie sense…

  “Hello?” It was the voice of Nathaniel Frederick (“Fred”) Klein.

  Smith turned abruptly and stared at his door. “Come in, Fred.”

  The chief of the extremely secret Covert-One intelligence and counterintelligence troubleshooting organization stepped into the laboratory, quiet as a ghost, still holding his cell phone. “I should’ve guessed you would’ve heard and called me.” He turned off his phone.

  “About Mart? Yes, I just read about the Pasteur. What do you know, and what are you doing here?”

  Without answering, Klein marched past the gleaming test tubes and equipment that crowded the line of lab benches, which soon would be occupied by other CDC-USAMRIID researchers and assistants. He stopped at Smith’s bench, lifted his left hip, and sat on the edge of the stone top, arms crossed, face grim. Around six feet tall, he was dressed as usual in one of his rumpled suits, this one brown. His skin was pale; it rarely saw the sun for any length of time. The great outdoors was not where Fred Klein operated. With his receding hairline, wire-rimmed glasses, and high, intelligent forehead, he could be anything from book publisher to counterfeiter.

  He contemplated Smith, and his voice was compassionate as he said, “Your friend’s alive, but he’s in a coma. I won’t lie to you, Colonel. The doctors are worried.”

  For Smith, the dark pain of Sophia’s death could still weigh heavily on him, and Marty’s injury was bringing it all back. But Sophia was gone, and what mattered now was Marty.

  “What the hell was he doing at the Pasteur?”

  Klein took his pipe from his pocket and brought out his tobacco pouch. “Yes, we wondered about that, too.”

  Smith started to speak again…then hesitated. Invisible to the public and to any part of the government except the White House, Covert-One worked totally outside the official military-intelligence bureaucracy and far from the scrutiny of Congress. Its shadowy chief never appeared unless something earthshaking had happened or might happen. Covert-One had no formal organization or bureaucracy, no real headquarters, and no official operatives. Instead, it was loosely composed of professional experts in many fields, all with clandestine experience, most with military backgrounds, and all essentially unencumbered—without family, home ties, or obligations, either temporary or permanent.

  When called upon, Smith was one of those elite operatives.

  “You’re not here because of Marty,” Smith decided. “It’s the Pasteur. Something’s going on. What?”

  “Let’s take a walk outside.” Klein pushed his glasses up onto his forehead and tamped tobacco into his pipe.

  “You can’t light that here,” Smith told him. “DNA can be contaminated by airborne particles.”

  Klein sighed. “Just one more reason to go outdoors.”

  Fred Klein—and Covert-One—trusted no one and nothing, took nothing for granted. Even a laboratory that officially did not exist could be bugged, which, Smith knew, was the real reason Klein wanted to leave. He followed the intelligence master out into the hall and locked his door. Side by side, they made their way downstairs, past dark labs and offices that showed only occasional light. The building was silent except for the breathy hum of the giant ventilation system.

  Outside, the dawn sunlight slanted low against the fir trees, illuminating them on the east with shimmering light while on the west they remained tarry black, in shadows. High above the campus to the west towered the Rocky Mountains, their rough peaks glowing. The valleys that creased the slopes were purple with night’s lingering darkness. The aromatic scent of pine filled the air.

  Klein walked a dozen steps from the building and stopped to fire up his pipe. He puffed and tamped until clouds of smoke half-hid his face. He waved some of the smoke away.

  “Let’s walk.” As they headed toward the road, Klein said, “Talk to me about your work here. How’s it going? Are you close to creating a molecular computer?”

  “I wish. The research is going well, but it’s slow. Complex.”

  Governments around the world wanted to be the first to have a working DNA computer, because it would be able to break any code or encryption in a matter of seconds. A terrifying prospect, especially where defense was concerned. All of America’s missiles, secret systems at NSA, the NRO’s spy satellites, the entire ability of the navy to operate, all defense plans—anything and everything that relied on electronics would be at the mercy of the first molecular computer. Even the largest silicon supercomputer would not be able to stop it.

  “How soon before the planet sees an operational one?” Klein wanted to know.

  “Several years,” Smith said without hesitation, “maybe more.”

  “Who’s the closest?”

  “Practical and operational? No one I’ve heard of.”

  Klein smoked, tamped down his burning tobacco again. “If I said someone had already done it, who’d you guess?”

  Precursor prototypes had been built, coming closer to practicality each year, but an actual, complete success? That was at least five years away. Unless…Takeda? Chambord?

  Then Smith knew. Since Klein was here, the clue was the Pasteur. “Émile Chambord. Are you saying Chambord is years ahead of the rest of us? Even ahead of Takeda in Tokyo?”

  “Chambord probably died in the explosion.” Klein puffed on his pipe, his expression worried. “His lab was completely destroyed. Nothing left but shattered bricks, singed wood, and broken glass. They’ve checked his home, his daughter. Looked everywhere. His car was in the Pasteur parking lot, but they can’t find him. There’s talk.”

  “Talk? There’s always talk.”

  “This is different. It comes from top Fre
nch military circles, from colleagues, from his superiors.”

  “If Chambord were that near, there’d be more than talk. Someone knew.”

  “Not necessarily. The military checked in with him regularly, but he claimed he was no farther along than anyone else. As for the Pasteur itself, a senior researcher of Chambord’s stature and tenure doesn’t have to report to anyone.”

  Smith nodded. This anachronism was true at the renowned institute. “What about his notes? Records? Reports?”

  “Nothing from the last year. Zero.”

  “No records?” Smith’s voice rose. “There have to be. They’re probably in the Pasteur’s data bank. Don’t tell me the entire computer system was destroyed.”

  “No, the mainframe’s fine. It’s located in a bombproof room, but he hadn’t entered any data in it for more than a year.”

  Smith scowled. “He was keeping longhand records?”

  “If he kept any at all.”

  “He had to keep records. You can’t do basic research without complete data. Lab notes, progress sheets. Your records have to be scrupulous, or your work can’t be verified or reproduced. Every blind alley, every mistake, every backtrack has to be chronicled. Dammit, if he wasn’t saving his data in the computer, he had to be keeping it longhand. That’s certain.”

  “Maybe it is, Jon, but so far neither the Pasteur nor the French authorities have found any records at all, and believe me, they’ve been looking. Hard.”

  Smith thought. Longhand? Why? Could Chambord have gotten protective once he realized he was close to success? “You figure he knew or suspected he was being watched by someone inside the institute?”

  “The French, and everyone else, don’t know what to think,” Klein said.

  “He was working alone?”

  “He had a low-level lab assistant who’s on vacation. The French police are searching for him.” Klein stared toward the east, where the sun was higher now, a giant disk above the prairie. “And we think Dr. Zellerbach was working with him, too.”

  “You think?”

  “Whatever Dr. Zellerbach was doing appears to have been completely unofficial, almost secret. He’s listed only as a ‘general observer’ with Pasteur security. After the bombing, the police immediately went to his hotel room but found nothing useful. He lived out of one suitcase, and he made no friends either there or at the Pasteur. The police were surprised by how few people actually recalled him.”

  Smith nodded. “That’s Marty.” His reclusive old friend would have insisted on remaining as anonymous as possible. At the same time, a molecular computer that was near fruition was one of the few projects that might have seduced him from his determined isolation in Washington. “When he regains consciousness, he’ll tell you what Chambord’s progress was.”

  “If he wakes up. Even then it could be too late.”

  Jon felt a sudden anger. “He will come out of the coma.”

  “All right, Colonel. But when?” Klein took the pipe from his mouth and glared. “We’ve just had a nasty wake-up call that you need to know about. At 7:55 Washington time last night, Diego Garcia Island lost all communications with its aircraft. Every effort to revive them, or trace the source of the shutdown, failed. Then precisely five minutes later, communications were restored. There were no system malfunctions, no weather problems, no human error. Conclusion was it had to be the work of a computer hacker, but no footprints were found, and every expert short of heaven says no existing computer could’ve pulled it off without leaving a trace.”

  “Was there damage?”

  “To the systems, no. To our worry quotient, one hell of a lot.”

  “How does the timing compare to when the Pasteur was bombed?”

  Klein smiled grimly. “A couple of hours later.”

  “Could be a test of Chambord’s prototype, if he had one. If someone stole it.”

  “No kidding. The way it stands, Chambord’s lab is gone. He’s dead or missing. And his work is destroyed…or missing.”

  Jon nodded. “You’re thinking the bomb was planted to hide his murder and the theft of his records and prototype.”

  “An operational DNA computer in the wrong hands is not a pretty picture.”

  “I was already planning to go to Paris, because of Marty.”

  “I thought so. It’s a good cover. Besides, you’ll have a better chance of recognizing a molecular computer than anyone else in Covert-One.” Klein raised his anxious gaze to stare out across the enormous prairie sky as if he could see ICBMs raining down. “You’ve got to find out whether Chambord’s notes, reports, and data were destroyed, or whether they were stolen. Whether there really is a functional prototype out there somewhere. We’ll work the usual way. I’ll be your only contact. Night or day. Whatever you need from any part of the government or military on both sides of the pond, ask. But you must keep a lid on it, understand? We don’t want any panic. Worse, we don’t want an eager Second or Third World country cutting a unilateral deal with the bombers.”

  “Right.” Half the nonadvanced nations had little love for the United States. Neither did the various terrorists who increasingly targeted America and Americans. “When do I leave?”

  “Now,” Klein said. “I’ll have other Covert-One experts on it, of course. They’ll be following other leads, but you’ll be the main thrust. The CIA and FBI have sent people out, too. And as for Zellerbach, remember I’m as concerned as you. We all hope he regains consciousness quickly. But there may be damn little time, and many, many other lives are at stake.”

  Chapter Two

  Paris, France

  It was the end of his shift and nearly six p.m. when Farouk al Hamid finally peeled off his uniform and left L’Hôpital Européen Georges Pompidou through an employees’ entrance. He had no reason to notice he was being followed as he walked along the busy boulevard Victor to the Massoud Café tucked away on a side street.

  Worn out and depressed from his long day of mopping floors, carrying great hampers of soiled linen, and performing the myriad other backbreaking jobs of a hospital orderly, he took a seat at a table neither outside nor inside, but exactly where the series of front glass doors had been folded back and the fresh outside spring air mingled with the aromatic cooking odors of the kitchen.

  He glanced around once, then ignored his fellow Algerians, as well as the Moroccans and Saharans, who frequented the café. Soon he was drinking his second glass of strong coffee and shooting disapproving glances at those who were indulging in wine. All alcohol was forbidden, which was a tenet of Islam ignored by too many of his fellow North Africans, who, once they were far from their homelands, felt they could leave Allah behind, too.

  As Farouk began to seethe, a stranger joined him at the table.

  The man was not Arabe, not with those pale blue eyes. Still, he spoke in Arabic. “Salaam alake koom, Farouk. You’re a hardworking man. I’ve been watching you, and I think you deserve better. So I have a proposition to make. Are you interested?”

  “Wahs-tah-hahb?” he grumbled suspiciously. “Nothing is for free.”

  The stranger nodded agreeably. “True. Still, how would you and your family enjoy a holiday?”

  “Ehs-mah-lee. A holiday?” Farouk asked bitterly. “You suggest the impossible.”

  The man spoke a higher-class Arabic than Farouk did, if with some odd accent, perhaps Iraqi or Saudi. But he was not Iraqi, Saudi, or Algerian. He was a white European, older than Farouk, wiry and darkly tanned. As the stranger waved for the waiter to bring more coffee, Farouk al Hamid noted that he was well dressed, too, but again from no particular nation he could identify, and he could identify most. It was a game he played to keep his mind from his weary muscles, the long hours of mindless labor, the impossibility of rising in this new world.

  “For you, yes,” the old stranger agreed. “For me, no. I am a man who can make the impossible possible.”

  “La. No, I will not kill.”

  “I haven’t asked you to. Nor will you
be asked to steal or sabotage.”

  Farouk paused, his interest growing. “Then how will I pay for this grand holiday?”

  “Merely by writing a note to the hospital in your own hand. A note in French saying you’re ill and you’ve sent your cousin Mansour to take your place for a few days. In exchange, I’ll give you cash.”

  “I do not have a cousin.”

  “All Algerians have cousins. Haven’t you heard?”

  “That is true. But I have none in Paris.”

  The stranger smiled knowingly. “He has only now arrived from Algiers.”

  Farouk felt a leap inside him. A holiday for his wife, for the children. For him. The man was right, no one in Paris would know or care who came into work at the mammoth Pompidou Hospital, only that the work was done and for small money. But what this fellow, or someone else, wanted would not be good. Stealing drugs, perhaps. On the other hand, they were all heathens anyway, and it was none of his affair. Instead, he concentrated on the joy of going home to his family to tell them they would be holidaying…where?

  “I would like to see the Mediterranean again,” Farouk said tentatively, watching the man closely for a sign that he was asking too much. “Capri, perhaps. I have heard Capri’s beaches are covered by silver sand. It will be very expensive.”

  “Then Capri it is. Or Porto-Vecchio. Or, for that matter, Cannes or Monaco.”

  As the place names rolled off the stranger’s tongue, magical, full of promises, Farouk al Hamid smiled deep into his tired, hungry soul and said, “Tell me what you wish me to write.”

  Bordeaux, France

  A few hours later, the telephone rang in a shabby rooming house tucked among the wine warehouses on the banks of the Garonne River outside the southern city of Bordeaux. The only occupant of the room was a small, pasty-faced man in his mid-twenties who sat on the edge of his cot, staring at the ringing phone. His eyes were wide with fear, his body trembling. From the river, shouts and the deep braying of barge horns penetrated the dismal room, and the youth, whose name was Jean-Luc Massenet, jerked like a plastic puppet on a string as each loud noise sounded. He did not pick up the telephone.