The Sigma Protocol

by Robert Ludlum

  Ben shook his head blearily. “It sounds like you both got pretty immersed in this stuff. And it sounds like I’m way out of my depths.” He knocked back the rest of the brandy.

  “Yes, I suppose we did get rather deep into all of this. We had to. I remember something Peter told me. He said the real question isn’t where they are. It’s where they aren’t. That the real question isn’t who can’t be trusted, but who can be. Once it sounded like paranoia.”

  “But no longer.”

  “No,” Liesl agreed, her voice trembling slightly. “And now they have arrayed their forces against you, through both official and unofficial channels.” She hesitated. “There is something else I must give you.”

  Once more, she disappeared into the bedroom, and then came back with a plain cardboard box, the sort a dry cleaner might package a shirt in. She opened it on the rough-hewn table in front of them. Papers. Laminated ID cards. Passports. The folding currency of modern bureaucracy.

  “They were Peter’s,” Liesl said. “The fruits of four years in hiding.”

  Ben’s fingers quickly sorted through the identity papers as if they were playing cards. Three different names, all appended to the same face. Peter’s face. And, for all practical intents, his own. “‘Robert Simon.’ Smart. There must be thousands of people with that name in North America. ‘Michael Johnson.’ Likewise. ‘John Freedman.’ These look like good work, professional work, if I’m any judge.”

  “Peter was a perfectionist,” Liesl said. “I’m sure they are flawless.”

  Ben continued to go through the documents and saw that the passports came with matching credit cards. In addition, there were documents for “Paula Simon” and other spousal identities: if Robert Simon needed to travel with his “wife,” he’d be prepared. Ben marveled, but his admiration was shadowed by a deep sadness. Peter’s precautions were meticulous, obsessive, exhaustive—and yet they could not save him.

  “I’ve got to ask, Liesl: Can we be sure that Peter’s pursuers—the Sigma group or whoever they are—aren’t on to them? Any of these could be flagged.”

  “Possibilities are not likelihoods.”

  “When was the last time he used ‘Robert Simon’? And under what circumstances?”

  Liesl closed her eyes in concentration, retrieving the details with remarkable precision. After twenty minutes, Ben had satisfied himself that at least two of Peter’s aliases, unused in the last twenty-four months, were unlikely to have been detected. He tucked the papers into the capacious inside pockets of his leather coat.

  He placed a hand on Liesl’s and looked into her clear blue eyes. “Thank you, Liesl,” he said. What an astonishing woman she was, he thought once more, and how lucky his brother was to have found her.

  “The shoulder wound will scab over and heal in a matter of days,” she said. “You will find it considerably harder to shed your identity, though these documents will help.”

  Liesl opened a bottle of red wine and poured each of them a glass. The wine was excellent, deep and rich and tannic, and Ben soon began to relax.

  For a few moments the two of them silently watched the fire. Ben thought: If Peter had hidden the document here, where could it be? And if not here, where? He’d said it was hidden away safely. Had he left it with Matthias Deschner? But that made no sense: Why would he go to such lengths to open a bank account because of the vault that came with it, and then not put the incorporation document in the vault?

  Why hadn’t any document been in the vault?

  He wondered about Deschner. What was his role, if any, in what had happened at the bank? Had he secretly alerted the banker that Ben was in the country illegally? If so, the timing didn’t track: Deschner could have done so before Ben had been admitted to the vault. Was it possible that Deschner had gotten into the vault—as he easily could have despite his claim that he could not—months or years before, taken the document, then given it to his brother’s pursuers? Yet Liesl had said she trusted her cousin… Contradictory thoughts swirled around in his brain, warring with one another until Ben couldn’t think clearly anymore.

  Liesl spoke at last, interrupting his troubled ruminations. “The fact that you could so easily follow me here worries me,” she said. “No offense, please, but again, you’re an amateur. Think of how much easier it would have been for a professional.”

  Whether or not she was right, it was crucial to reassure her, Ben sensed. “But keep in mind, Liesl, that Peter had told me you two lived in a cabin in the woods, near a lake. Once I figured out which hospital it was, that narrowed things down considerably. If I didn’t know as much, I’d probably have lost you pretty early on.”

  She said nothing, just stared with unease at the fire.

  “You know how to use that thing?” Ben asked, glancing toward the revolver she’d left on a table by the door.

  “My brother was in the army. Every Swiss boy knows how to fire a gun. There’s even a national holiday where Swiss boys go off to shoot. My father just happened to believe that a girl is every bit the equal of a boy and should learn to use a gun too. So I’m prepared for this life.” She rose. “Well, I’m famished, and I’m going to make some dinner.” Ben followed her to the kitchen.

  She lit the gas oven, then took a whole chicken from the tiny refrigerator, buttered it and sprinkled it with dried herbs, and put it in the oven to roast. While she boiled some potatoes and sautéed some greens, they made idle conversation about her work and his, about Peter.

  After a while, Ben retrieved the photograph from his jacket pocket. He’d verified, en route, that the wax envelope had protected it from water damage. Now he showed it to her. “Do you have any idea who these men might be?” he asked.

  Her eyes suddenly registered alarm. “Oh, my God, that has to be your father! He looks so much like you two. What a handsome man he was!”

  “And these others?”

  She hesitated, shook her head, clearly troubled. “They look like important men, but then they all did in those heavy business suits. I’m sorry, I don’t know. Peter never showed this to me. He just told me about it.”

  “And the document I mentioned—the articles of incorporation—did he ever mention hiding it somewhere here?”

  She stopped stirring the greens. “Never.” She said it with absolute certainty.

  “You’re sure? It wasn’t in the vault.”

  “He would have told me if he’d hidden it here.”

  “Not necessarily. He didn’t show you this photograph. He may have wanted to protect you, or maybe keep you from worrying.”

  “Well, then your guess is as good as mine.”

  “Would you mind if I looked around?”

  “Be my guest.”

  While she finished making dinner, he searched the cabin methodically, trying to put himself into his brother’s head. Where would Peter have hidden it? He ruled out any place that Liesl would have regularly cleaned or had any reason to look. Liesl and Peter’s bedroom was one of two small rooms off the living room area, the other being Peter’s study. But both rooms were spartanly furnished and yielded nothing.

  He checked the floor all over for any loose planks, then inspected the log-and-plaster walls, but nothing.

  “Do you have a flashlight?” Ben asked, returning to the kitchen area. “I want to look outside.”

  “Of course. There’s a flashlight in every room—the lights go out often. There’s one on the table by the door. But we’ll be ready to eat in just a few minutes.”

  “I’ll make it quick.” He took the flashlight and stepped outside, where it was cold and completely dark. He made a cursory tour of the grassy area surrounding the cabin. There was a scorched place where they obviously cooked outdoors, and a large log pile covered with a tarpaulin. The document might have been hidden in a container beneath a rock, but that would have to wait until the light of morning. He beamed the flashlight on the exterior of the cabin, made his way slowly around the walls, poking around a propane tank, but again tur
ned up nothing.

  When he went back inside, Liesl had already set out two plates and silverware on a red-and-white-checked tablecloth over a small round table against a window.

  “Smells delicious,” Ben said.

  “Please, sit.”

  She poured two more glasses of wine and served both of them. The food was wonderfully flavored, and Ben devoured it. They both concentrated on eating, and only began to talk after they’d satisfied their hunger. The second glass of wine made Liesl melancholy. As she spoke about Peter and how they met, she cried. She recalled how Peter had taken such pride in furnishing their cabin, their home, building the bookcases and much of the furniture himself.

  The bookcases, Ben thought. Peter had built the bookcases…

  He got up suddenly. “Would you mind if I looked a little closer at the shelves?”

  “Why not?” she said with a tired wave.

  The bookcases appeared to have been built as several separate units and assembled in place. They weren’t open shelves; you could not see the log-and-plaster walls behind them. Instead, Peter had built a backing of wood.

  Shelf by shelf, Ben removed all of the books and looked behind them.

  “What are you doing?” Liesl called out in vexation.

  “I’ll put them all back, don’t worry,” Ben said.

  Half an hour later, he hadn’t found anything. Liesl had finished doing the dishes and announced that she was exhausted. But Ben kept at it, removing each shelf of books, looking behind them, becoming more and more frustrated. When he came to the row of novels by F. Scott Fitzgerald, he smiled sadly. The Great Gatsby had been Peter’s favorite.

  Then, behind the Fitzgeralds, he found a small compartment that had been flush-mounted, almost invisibly, into the wooden shelf backing.

  Peter had done an impeccable job of carpentry: even with all the books off the shelf, you could barely see the faint rectangular outline of the compartment. He pried at it with his fingernails, but it didn’t yield. He poked at it, pressed in, and then it popped open. A neat piece of craftsmanship. Peter the perfectionist.

  The document was carefully rolled up. A rubber band held the roll together. Ben pulled it out, removed the rubber band, unrolled it.

  It was a fragile, yellowed sheet of paper covered with mimeographed lettering. Just one page. Merely the front page of a corporate filing.

  It was headed SIGMA AG. There was a date: April 6, 1945.

  Then a list of what had to be the company’s officers and directors.

  Dear God, he thought, thunderstruck. Peter had been right: there were names he recognized. Names of corporations that still existed, that made automobiles and weapons and consumer goods. Names of moguls and corporate chairmen. In addition to the figures he’d recognized from the photograph, there was the fabled magnate Cyrus Weston, whose steel empire had exceeded even that of Andrew Carnegie’s, and Avery Henderson, who was regarded by business historians as the twentieth century’s most important financier after John Pierpont Morgan. There were the chief executive officers of the major automotive companies; of early-generation technology firms that had taken the lead in developing radar, microwave, and refrigeration technologies—technologies whose full potential wouldn’t be realized for years, decades, to come. The heads of the three largest petroleum companies, based in America, Britain, and the Netherlands. Telecommunication giants, before they were called that. The mammoth corporations of the time, some as intact and as vast as ever, some of them now subsumed into corporate entities even greater than themselves. Industrialists from America, Western Europe, and, yes, even a few from wartime Germany. And toward the very top of the list was the name of the treasurer: MAX HARTMAN (OBERSTURMFÜHRER, SS).

  His heart was hammering away crazily. Max Hartman, a lieutenant in Hitler’s SS. If this was a forgery… it was certainly well done. He had seen documents of incorporation many times before, and this looked very much like a page from such a document.

  Liesl emerged from the kitchen. “You have found something?”

  The fire was dying, and the room was beginning to get cold.

  “Do you know any of those names?” Ben asked.

  “The famous ones. The mighty ‘captains of industry,’ as Peter called them.”

  “But almost of all them are dead now.”

  “They would have heirs, successors.”

  “Yes. Well-protected ones,” Ben said. “There are other names here, too, names that I don’t recognize. I’m not a historian.” He pointed to a few of those names, those that were not from the English-speaking world. “Are any of these names familiar to you? And any of them alive?”

  She sighed. “Gaston Rossignol, I know, must still live in Zurich, everyone’s heard of him. A pillar of the Swiss banking establishment for much of the postwar era. Gerhard Lenz was an associate of Josef Mengele, who did all those terrible medical experiments on prisoners. A monster. He died somewhere in South America many years ago. And, of course…” Her voice trailed off.

  “Peter was right,” Ben said.

  “About your father?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s strange. Der Apfel fällt nicht weit vom Stamm, my people say—the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. You and Peter are really so alike. And when I look at Max Hartman as a young man, I see you in him. Yet you’re both so utterly different from your father. Appearance is an uncertain guide.”

  “He is an evil man.”

  “I’m sorry.” She looked at him for a long while. Whether it was out of sorrow, or pity, or something more, Ben couldn’t decide. “Just now you look more like your brother than ever before.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You look… haunted. As he came to look in the last—the last months.” She closed her eyes, blinking back tears. After a moment, she said, “The couch in Peter’s study pulls out into a bed. Let me get it ready for you.”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “I can do it.”

  “Let me at least get you some linens. And then I’ll say good night. I’m about to drop from exhaustion and too much wine. I was never a drinker.”

  “You’ve been through some hard times recently,” he said. “We both have.”

  He said good night, undressed, then carefully folded the document and tucked it into the pocket of his leather jacket, next to Peter’s identity papers. Within moments he had fallen into a deep, almost drugged sleep.

  He and his brother were packed into a sealed boxcar, jammed with other people, unbearably hot, foul-smelling, because none of the prisoners had bathed in days. He was unable to move his limbs. Soon he passed out, and the next thing he knew they were somewhere else, again in a crowd of prisoners, walking skeletons with shaved heads. But Peter looked relieved, because at last he would be allowed to take a shower, and so what if it was a communal shower? Ben was overcome with panic, because he knew. Somehow he knew. He tried to shout: “Peter! No! This is not a shower—it’s a gas chamber! Get out! It’s a gas chamber!” Yet his words would not come out. The others stood there like zombies, and Peter just glared at him, not understanding. A baby was crying, and then a few young women. He tried to shout again, but nothing came out. He was wild with terror. He felt suffocated, claustrophobic. He saw his brother’s upturned head, welcoming the water he expected to come from the nozzles. At the same time, he could hear the knobs being turned, the rusty squeak-squeak-squeak of the valves opening, the hiss of the gas. He shouted, “No!” opened his eyes, and looked around at the pitch-dark study.

  Slowly he sat up, listening. There was no rusty squeak; he had dreamed it. He was in his late brother’s cabin in the woods, and he had been sleeping.

  But had he heard a noise, or had he dreamed that, too?

  Then he heard the thunk of a car door closing.

  It was unmistakable; there is no other sound like that. And it was a big car, perhaps a truck. His Range Rover?

  He bolted out of bed, grabbed the flashlight, slipped quickly into his jeans and sne
akers, and threw on his leather jacket. He thought: Could it be Liesl who’d gotten into, or out of, the Range Rover for some reason? He passed by her bedroom and pushed open the door.

  She was in bed, eyes closed, asleep.

  Oh, God. It was someone else. Someone was out there!

  He rushed to the front door, grabbed the revolver from the table, opened the door silently. He looked around the clearing, illuminated by the pale light of a crescent moon. He didn’t want to switch on the flash-light, didn’t want to call attention to himself or alert whoever was out there.

  Then he heard an ignition turn and the roar of an engine coming to life. He raced outside, saw the Range Rover still parked there, caught the red taillights of a truck.

  “Hey!” he shouted, running after it.

  The truck was barreling down the narrow dirt path at maximum speed, constrained only by the closeness of the trees. Ben ran faster, gun in one hand, clutching the Mag-Lite flashlight in the other like a baton at one of his college track meets. The taillights grew farther away even as he put on a burst of speed, the branches whipping his face, though he barely noticed. He was a machine, a running machine, a track star once again, and he would not let that truck get away, and as he tore down the dirt road that connected with the path from the cabin he thought, Did they hear a noise in the cabin? Were they planning a break-and-enter but were frightened away? and he kept on going, faster and faster, and the red lights grew smaller and smaller, the truck getting away from him, and then he knew that he’d never catch it. The truck was gone. He turned around, headed back toward the cabin, suddenly remembering the Range Rover. He could try to chase them down in the Rover! There were only two directions the truck could have gone; he could race after them in his vehicle. He ran back down the path toward the cabin, and was suddenly jolted by a tremendous, ear-splitting explosion in front of him, coming from the cabin, an explosion that turned the night sky orange and red like a giant Roman candle, and then he saw with terror that the cabin was ablaze, a ball of fire.