The Paris Option Read online

  “It sure does,” Randi agreed. “But the most vital piece of information I overheard was that whatever they’re planning is going to happen soon. Two days, at the most.”

  “Then we’d best get a move on,” Peter told her. “Check in with your station chief yet?”

  “Not before I saw Marty. Is he asleep?”

  “Relapsed.” Peter sighed wearily. “With any luck, he’ll wake again soon. When he does, I shall be here in case he can tell us anything we haven’t learned.”

  “Is this your chair?” She headed for the armchair he had moved next to Marty’s bed. “Mind if I use it?” She sat without waiting for an answer.

  “Certainly,” he said. “Be my guest.”

  She ignored the sarcasm and picked up Marty’s hand. It had a natural warmth that was reassuring. She leaned forward and kissed his pudgy cheek. “He looks good,” she told Peter. Then she said to Marty, “Hi, Marty. It’s Randi, and I just want you to know how great you look. As if you’re going to wake up any moment and say something wonderfully disagreeable to Peter.”

  But Marty was silent, his jaw relaxed, his high forehead uncreased, as if he had never had an unpleasant experience. But that was far from the truth. After the Hades problem had been resolved, and Marty had returned to his solitary life in his bungalow hidden behind high hedges in Washington, he might have left bullets and terrifying escapes behind, but he still had to deal with the normal activities of everyday life. For someone with Asperger’s, they could be overwhelming. Which was why Marty had designed his home as a mini fortress.

  When Randi had arrived to visit him the first time, he had put her through her paces, demanding she identify herself even though he could see her in his surveillance camera. But then he had unlocked the barred interior cage, hugged her, and stepped back bashfully to welcome her into his cottage, where all the windows were protected by steel bars and thick drapes. “I don’t have visitors, you know,” he explained in his high, slow, precise voice. “I don’t like them. How about some coffee and a cookie?” His eyes made glittering contact and then skittered away again.

  He made instant Yuban decaf, handed her an Oreo cookie, and took her into a computer room where a formidable Cray mainframe and other computer equipment of every possible description filled all wall space and most of the floor, while the few pieces of furniture looked like Salvation Army discards, although Marty was a multimillionaire. She knew from Jon that Marty had tested at the genius level since the age of five. He had two Ph.D.s—one in quantum physics and mathematics, of course, and the other in literature.

  He had launched into a description of a new computer virus that had caused some $6 billion in damage. “This was a particularly nasty one,” he explained earnestly. “It was self-replicating—we call them worms—and it e-mailed itself to tens of millions of users and jammed e-mail systems around the globe. But the guy who started it left behind his digital fingerprint—a thirty-two-digit Globally Unique ID—we call them GUIDs—that identified his computer.” He rubbed his hands gleefully. “See, GUIDs are sometimes embedded in the computer code of files saved in Microsoft Office programs. They’re hard to find, but he should’ve made real sure his was erased. Once I located his GUID, I tracked it to files all over the Internet until I finally pinpointed one that actually contained his name. His whole name—can you believe it?—in an e-mail to his girlfriend. Dumb. He lives in Cleveland, and the FBI says they have enough evidence to arrest him now.” The smile on Marty’s face had been radiant with triumph.

  As she remembered all this, Randi leaned over Marty’s hospital bed to give him another kiss, this one on the other cheek. She stroked it tenderly, hoping he would stir. “You’ve got to get better soon, Marty, dear,” she told him at last. “You’re my favorite person to eat Oreo cookies with.” Her eyes felt moist. At last she stood up. “Take good care of him, Peter.”

  “I will.”

  She headed toward the door. “I’m off to check in with my station chief and find out what he can tell me about Mauritania and the DNA computer hunt. Then it’s Brussels. In case Jon does call here, remind him I’ll look for a message at the Café Egmont.”

  He smiled. “A message drop, just like the old days when tradecraft really mattered. Damn me, but it feels good.”

  “You’re a dinosaur, Peter.”

  “That I am,” he agreed cheerfully, “that I am.” And more soberly, “Off with you. I’d say there appears to be considerable urgency, and your country’s the most likely target.”

  Before Randi was out the door, Peter was back in his chair beside the silent Marty, talking and joshing, the quirkiness of their friendship in every light, bantering word.

  St. Francesc, Isla de Formentera

  Captain Darius Bonnard sat in the fishermen’s café on the rustic waterfront, eating a plate of langosta a la parrilla and gazing across the flat, spare landscape of the last and smallest of the main Balearic Islands toward the port of La Savina. Two of the islands in the chain—Mallorca and Ibiza—were synonymous with tourism and had once been the main vacation destination of well-to-do Britishers, while this one, La Isla de Formentera, had remained a little-known, underdeveloped, almost perfectly flat Mediterranean paradise. Captain Bonnard’s ostensible mission here was to bring back for his general’s table a generous supply of the famous local mayonnaise, first created in Maó, the picturesque capital of the fourth island, Menorca.

  He had finished his meal of lobster and the same ubiquitous mayonnaise and was sipping a glass of light local white wine, when the real reason for his trip sat down across the table.

  Mauritania’s small face and blue eyes shone with triumph. “The test was a complete success,” he enthused in French. “The smug Americans never knew what hit them, as they say in their barbaric language. We’re exactly on schedule.”

  “No problems?”

  “There is a problem with the DNA replicator that Chambord tells me needs to be corrected. Unfortunate, but not disastrous.”

  Bonnard smiled and raised his glass. “Santé!” he toasted. “Cheers! Excellent news. And you? How goes your end?”

  Mauritania frowned, and his gaze bore into Bonnard. “At the moment, my largest concern is you. If exploding the jet that was carrying General Moore was your work, as I think it was, it was a blunder.”

  “It was necessary.” Bonnard drained his wineglass. “My general, whose stupid nationalistic convictions enable me to work so well with you, has the unfortunate habit of exaggerating his position in order to impress doubters. This time he alarmed Sir Arnold Moore. We don’t need a suspicious British general alerting his government, which in turn is guaranteed to warn the Americans as well. Then both would be up in arms about a nonexistent danger that might easily be tracked back to us.”

  “His sudden death will do precisely that.”

  “Relax, my revolutionary friend. Had Sir Arnold reached Britain, he would’ve revealed the meeting on the Charles de Gaulle and what my general suggested. That would’ve been a serious problem. But now the prime minister knows only that one of his generals was flying to London to speak to him on a delicate matter and has now disappeared. He and his staff will speculate about it. Was it a private matter? A public matter? All of this will give us time, since their vaunted MI6 will have to dig around until it finds out what and why. They’ll probably never succeed. But if they do, enough days will have passed that by then”—Bonnard shrugged—“we won’t care, will we?”

  Mauritania thought for a time and smiled. “Perhaps you do know what you’re doing, Captain. When you first approached me to join you, I wasn’t convinced of that.”

  “Then why did you agree to the plan?”

  “Because you had the money. Because the plan was good, and our purpose the same. So we will smite the enemy together. But I still fear your action against the English general will draw attention.”

  “If we didn’t have the full attention of Europe and the Americans before, your tests have assured we do now.”<
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  Mauritania admitted grudgingly, “Perhaps. When will you come to us? We may want you soon, particularly if Chambord’s back needs more stiffening.”

  “When it’s safe. When I won’t be missed.”

  Mauritania stood. “Very well. Two days, no more.”

  “I’ll be there long before. Count on it.”

  Mauritania walked from the café to his bicycle, parked near the water. Out on the Mediterranean, white sails were unfurled against the blue sea. Above him, seagulls rode the salty air. A scattering of cafés, bars, and gift shops dotted the open area, with the Spanish flag whipping smartly overhead. As he pedaled away from the annoyingly Western scene, his cell phone rang. It was Abu Auda.

  Mauritania asked, “You were successful in Madrid?”

  “We weren’t,” Abu Auda told him, his voice angry and frustrated. He did not tolerate failure in anyone, including himself. “We lost many men. They are clever, those three, and the police arrived so quickly that we were unable to finish our mission. I was forced to eliminate four of our own.” He described the confrontation in the Madrid basement.

  Mauritania muttered an Arabic oath he knew would shock the puritanical desert warrior, but he did not care.

  “It was not entirely a loss,” Abu Auda said, his mind more on his chagrin at having failed than on Mauritania’s flouting of their religion. “We slowed and separated them.”

  “Where did they go, Abu Auda?”

  “There was no way to find out.”

  Mauritania’s voice rose. “Do you feel safe with them free to plot against us?”

  “We were unable to hunt them because of the police,” Abu Auda said, controlling his temper. “I was fortunate to escape at all.”

  Mauritania swore again and heard Abu Auda give a disapproving grunt. He hung up and muttered in English that he did not give a tinker’s dam about Abu Auda’s religious sensibilities, which were mostly humbug anyway and never prevented Abu Auda from being as devious as a snake striking its own tail when it suited him. What mattered was that the mysterious Smith, the old Englishman from the western Iraqi desert, and the shameless CIA woman were still out there.

  Paris, France

  The frumpy brunette who emerged from the entrance to the Concorde métro stop onto the rue de Rivoli bore a striking resemblance to the woman who had followed Jon Smith from the Pasteur Institute except that this woman wore a pastel pantsuit common to many tourists and walked with the hurrying steps of most Americans. She crossed the rue Royale into the avenue Gabriel, passed the Hôtel Crillon, and turned onto the grounds of the American embassy. Once inside, she acted distraught as she described an emergency at home in North Platte, Nebraska. She had to get home, but her passport had been stolen.

  She was sympathetically referred to a room on the second floor, and she almost ran up the stairs. Inside the room, a short, heavy man in an impeccable dark blue pinstripe suit was waiting at a conference table.

  “Hello, Aaron,” Randi said as she sat down at the table, facing him.

  Aaron Isaacs, CIA station chief in Paris, said, “You’ve been out of touch almost forty-eight hours. Where’s Mauritania?”

  “Gone.” Randi told him all that had happened in Toledo and Madrid.

  “You uncovered all that? Chambord alive, the DNA computer in the hands of some group calling itself the Crescent Shield? So why did the DCI have to get it from the White House and army intelligence?”

  “Because I didn’t uncover all that. At least not without help. Jon Smith and Peter Howell were there, too.”

  “MI6? The DCI’s going to go apoplectic.”

  “Sorry about that. Most of it came from Smith. He got the name of the group, he saw Chambord and his daughter alive. Even talked to them. Chambord told him the Crescent Shield had the computer. All I did was find out Mauritania was bossing the terrorists.”

  “Who the hell’s this Smith?”

  “Remember the one I worked with on the Hades virus?”

  “That guy? I thought he was an army doctor.”

  “He is. He’s also a cell and microbiology researcher at USAMRIID, a combat doctor in the field, and a lieutenant colonel. The army grabbed him to work on this because of his field experience and his knowledge of DNA computer research.”

  “You believe all that?”

  “Sometimes. It’s not important. What can you give me on Mauritania and the DNA computer hunt I don’t have?”

  “You say the last you saw Mauritania was heading south from Toledo?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know he’s from Africa. Most of his strikes with Al Qaeda and other groups have been launched from Africa or Spain. Most of the men he’s lost over the years in one group or another have been arrested in Spain. With him and his group heading south, North Africa seems a logical destination, especially after a rumor Langley picked up that says Mauritania may be married to at least one Algerian woman and could have a home in Algiers.”

  “Now we’re getting someplace. Names? Places?”

  “Not yet. Our assets are trawling for specifics. With luck, we’ll know something soon.”

  Randi nodded. “How about a terrorist named Abu Auda? A giant Fulani, older, maybe late fifties? Odd green-brown eyes?”

  Isaacs frowned. “Never heard the name. I’ll have Langley run it.” He picked up a phone that stood on the table near him. “Cassie? Send this through to Langley top priority.” He gave her the data on Abu Auda and hung up. “Want to know what we’ve come up with in the Pasteur bombing?”

  “Something new? Damn, Aaron, spit it out.”

  Isaacs gave a grim smile. “We got a clandestine call from a Mossad agent here in Paris, and maybe it’s pure gold. It seems there’s a Filipino postdoctoral researcher at the Pasteur, whose cousin tried to plant a bomb in the Mossad’s Tel Aviv HQ. The guy was from Mindanao, where the Abu Sayaaf group of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front was an ally of the Bin Laden faction and Ayman al-Zawahiri. The researcher has no known terrorist connections and has been away from Mindanao a long time.”

  “Then what made Mossad alert you to the family relationship?”

  “The researcher called in sick to the Pasteur that night. He was supposed to be there, according to his boss, who was badly injured in the blast. That was because he was needed for some important experiment they were conducting.”

  “Where’s their lab, if the boss was so badly hurt?”

  “On the floor below Chambord’s laboratory. Everyone in that lab was killed or maimed.”

  “Mossad thinks he was the inside man?”

  “There’s no evidence, but I passed it on to Langley, and they think it’s a hot lead. The Pasteur’s security isn’t state-of-the-art, but it’s good enough to keep out bombers, unless the bomber has some kind of internal contact. Particularly since my people believe the terrorists took not only a resisting Chambord, but the entire experimental setup for his DNA computer. And they did it all just minutes before the bomb went off.”

  “What about the researcher’s supposed illness?”

  “On the surface, legitimate. He consulted a doctor for chest pains and was advised to stay home a few days. Of course, chest pains and even heart irregularities can be chemically produced.”

  “They can, and relatively easily. Okay, where is this guy? Does he have a name?”

  “Dr. Akbar Suleiman. As I said, he’s postdoc and lives in Paris. We asked the Paris police to check, and they say he’s on leave from the Pasteur until his lab can be rebuilt. Mossad says he’s still in the city. I have his address.”

  Randi took the sheet of paper and stood up. “Tell Langley I’m going to be working on Mauritania and the DNA computer with Jon Smith and Peter Howell. Tell them I want authorization to commandeer any asset we have, anywhere.”

  Aaron nodded. “Done.” The phone rang. Aaron listened. Then, “Thanks, Cassie.” He hung up and shrugged. “Nothing on an Abu Auda at all. Must keep a really low profile.”

  Randi left, heading f
or de Gaulle again, then Brussels and Jon. If this Dr. Akbar Suleiman was part of the Crescent Shield, and they could find him, maybe he would lead them to Mauritania. She doubted there would be a third chance. Not in time.

  Chapter Twenty

  Brussels, Belgium

  At the airport thirteen kilometers outside Brussels in Zaventem, Jon rented another Renault and picked up the supplies Fred Klein had arranged to be waiting for him. Among them was a uniform, which he put on in preparation for his next destination. Carrying a small overnight bag in which were packed civilian clothes and a 9mm Walther, he drove onto the RO heading west. It was raining steadily, a gray, dismal downpour. Once past Brussels, he left the trunk road and took smaller highways and back roads, watching behind to be certain he was not being tailed.

  The countryside was green, flat, and bleak through the sheets of early May rain. Well-tended farms stretched into the distance to a horizon flatter than the great prairie of the American West or the steppes of Russia. In this low-lying land, the various roads crossed many small rivers and canals. Traffic was relatively heavy as he drove in the general direction of the French border—not as thick as in Los Angeles or London at rush hour, but far more than the wide-open interstates of Montana or Wyoming.

  From time to time he stopped at a country inn or simply pulled off into a grove of trees to search the sky for helicopters or light aircraft that might be tracking him. When he was satisfied no one followed, he drove on using the same tactics until at last he reached the outskirts of Mons, fifty-five kilometers southwest of Brussels. Wars and soldiers had been part of the history of Mons, or “Bergen” in Flemish, for more than two thousand years, since the days Roman legions first established a fortified camp here on their empire’s northern border. Here, too, the generals of Louis XIV engaged in one of their long series of bloody battles against their perpetual nemesis, John Churchill, duke of Marlborough. Mons had also been a bruising battle-field for the armies of the French Revolution, as well as for the heavily outnumbered British Expeditionary Force, which fought its first major engagement of World War I here.