The Sigma Protocol

by Robert Ludlum

  Sonnenfeld’s words resounded. His father’s crimes. How bizarre that Lenz and I should be in a similar situation.

  “The prophet Jeremiah, you know, he tells us, ‘They shall say no more, the fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.’ And Ezekiel says, ‘The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father.’ It is very clear.”

  Ben was silent. “You say Strasser may be alive.”

  “Or he may be dead,” Sonnenfeld replied quickly. “Who knows about these old men? I’ve never been able to make certain.”

  “You must have a file on him.”

  “Don’t speak to me of such things. Are you in the grip of the fantasy that you will find this creature and he will tell you what you want, like some genie?” Sonnenfeld sounded evasive. “For years I have been dogged with young fanatics seeking vengeance, to slake some sense of disquiet with the blood of a certified villain. It is a puerile pursuit, which ends badly for everyone. You had persuaded me you were not one of them. But Argentina is another country, and surely the wretch is dead.”

  The young woman who had answered the door when Ben arrived now reappeared, and a murmured conversation ensued. “An important telephone call which I must take,” Sonnenfeld said apologetically, and he withdrew to a back room.

  Ben looked around him, at the huge slate-colored filing cabinets. Sonnenfeld had been distinctly evasive when the subject came to Strasser’s current whereabouts. Was he holding out on him? And if so, why?

  From Sonnenfeld’s manner, he inferred that the telephone call was expected to be a long one. Perhaps long enough to allow a quick search of the files. Impulsively, Ben moved to an immense, five-drawer filing cabinet marked R–S. The drawers were locked but the key was on top of the cabinet: not exactly high security, Ben noted. He opened the bottom drawer, found it densely packed with yellowed file folders and crumbling papers. Stefans. Sterngeld. Streitfeld.

  STRASSER. The name penned in brown faded ink. He plucked it out, and then had a sudden thought. He went to the K–M file. There was a thick file for Gerhard Lenz, but that wasn’t the one he was interested in. It was the thin file next to it—the file for his widow—that he wanted.

  This one was tightly wedged in. He heard footsteps: Sonnenfeld was returning, more quickly than Ben had expected! He tugged on the folder, worried it from side to side until it was slowly released from the others. Taking the trench coat he’d draped on an adjoining chair, he quickly shoved the yellowed folders under it and returned to his seat just as Sonnenfeld entered.

  “It’s a dangerous thing to disturb the peace of old men,” Sonnenfeld announced as he rejoined him. “Maybe you think they’re toothless, wizened creatures. Indeed they are. But they have a powerful support network, even now. Especially in South America, where they have extensive loyalists. Thugs, like the Kamaradenwerk. They are protected the way wild animals protect their enfeebled elders. They kill whenever they must—they never hesitate.”

  “In Buenos Aires?”

  “There more than anywhere else. Nowhere are they so powerful.” He looked weary. “This is why you must never go there and ask about the old Germans.”

  Sonnenfeld got up unsteadily, and Ben rose, too. “Even today, you see, I must have a security guard at all times. It is not much, but it is what we can afford to pay for.”

  “Yet you insist on living in a city where they don’t like questions about the past,” Ben said.

  Sonnenfeld put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “Ah, well, you see, if you are studying malaria, Mr. Hartman, you must live in the swamp, no?”

  Julian Bennett, assistant deputy of operations at the National Security Agency, sat facing Joel Skolnik, the deputy director of the Department of Justice in the small executive dining room in the NSA’s Fort Mead headquarters. Though Skolnik, lanky and balding, held a higher bureaucratic rank, Bennett’s manner was peremptory. The National Security Agency was structured in such a way as to insulate people like Bennett from bureaucratic oversight outside of the agency. The effect was to encourage a certain arrogance, and Bennett was not one to disguise it.

  An overdone lamb chop and a lump of steamed spinach, mostly uneaten, sat on the plate in front of Skolnik. His appetite had long since disappeared. Past a thin veneer of amiability, Bennett’s manner was subtly hectoring, and his message frankly alarming.

  “This doesn’t look good for you,” Bennett was telling him, not for the first time. His small, wide-spaced eyes and light-colored eyebrows gave him a vaguely porcine look.

  “I realize this.”

  “You’re supposed to be running a tight ship here,” Bennett said. His own plate was clean; he had devoured his porterhouse in several swift bites: plainly a man who ate simply for fuel. “And the stuff we’ve been coming across is pretty damn disquieting.”

  “You’ve been clear about that,” Skolnik said, hating the way it came out—deferential, even cowed. He knew it was always a mistake to show fear to a man like Bennett. It was like blood in the water to a shark.

  “The recklessness about matters of national security your people have shown—it compromises us all. I look at the way your staffers have conducted themselves, and I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. What’s the use of bolting the front door when the back door is swinging in the wind?”

  “Let’s not exaggerate the possible exposure at issue,” Skolnik said. Even to himself, the starchy words sounded defensive.

  “I want you to assure me that the rot is contained with the Navarro woman.” Bennett leaned over and patted Skolnik’s forearm in a gesture that was half intimate and half menacing. “And that you’ll use all means at your disposal to bring the woman in.”

  “That much goes without saying,” the DOJ man said, swallowing hard.

  “Now stand up,” the goateed man said, waving the Makarov in his left hand.

  “It’ll do you no good. I won’t put my finger on the sensor,” said the detective, Hans Hoffman. “Now get out of here, before something happens that you’ll regret.”

  “I never have regrets,” the man said blandly. “Stand up.”

  Hoffman stood up reluctantly. “I tell you—”

  The intruder rose too and approached him. “I tell you again,” Hoffman said, “it will do you no good to kill me.”

  “I don’t need to kill you,” the man said blandly. In one lightning-swift movement he lunged.

  Hoffman saw the glint of something metallic even before he felt the unbelievable pain explode in his hand. He looked down. There was a stump where his index finger had been. The cut had been perfect. At the base of where his finger had been, right next to the fatty part of the thumb, he could see a white circle of bone within a larger circle of flesh. In the millisecond before he screamed, he saw the razor-sharp hunting knife in the man’s hand, and then he noticed with dazed fascination the dismembered finger lying on the carpet like a useless discarded chicken part flung there by some careless butcher.

  He bellowed, a high-pitched scream of disbelief and terror and excruciating, incomprehensible pain. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

  Trevor picked up the dismembered finger and held it aloft. At the severed end, blood still wept.

  Chapter Thirty

  Anna put in a call to David Denneen.

  “Is that you, Anna?” he said tersely, his customary warmth crimped by uncustomary wariness. “The shit’s flying.”

  “Talk to me, David. Tell me what the hell’s going on.”

  “Crazy stuff. They’re saying you’re…” His voice trailed off.

  “What?”

  “Crazy stuff. You on a sterile line?”

  “Of course.”

  There was a pause. “Listen, Anna. The department’s been ordered to place a P-47 on you, Anna—full-out mail, wire, phone intercepts.”

  “Jesus Christ!” Anna said. “I don’t believe it.”

  “It gets worse. Since this morning, you’ve been a 12–44: apprehend on sight. Bring in by any means
necessary. Jesus, I don’t know what you’ve been up to, but you’re being called a national security risk. They’re saying you’ve been accepting money from hostiles for years. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

  “What?”

  “Word is the FBI’s discovered all sorts of cash and jewelry in your apartment. Expensive clothes. Offshore bank accounts.”

  “Lies!” Anna exploded. “All goddamn lies.”

  There was a long pause. “I knew they had to be, Anna. But I’m glad to hear you say it, all the same. Someone’s messing with you in a very serious way. Why?”

  “Why?” Anna closed her eyes briefly. “So I don’t get in a position to discover why. That’s my guess.” She rang off hurriedly.

  What the hell was going on? Had “Yossi” or Phil Ostrow put poison in Bartlett’s ear? She’d never called them; maybe Bartlett was angry that they’d found out about her investigation in the first place, even though she wasn’t the responsible party. Or maybe Bartlett was angry that she hadn’t gone along with their request to bring Hartman in.

  She suddenly realized that neither agency official had mentioned Hans Vogler, the ex-Stasi assassin. Did that mean “Yossi” knew nothing about it? If so, did that mean that the Mossad freelancers had nothing to do with hiring Vogler? She retrieved Phil Ostrow’s card and dialed the number. It went to automated voice mail; and she decided against leaving a message.

  Maybe Jack Hampton would know something about it. She phoned him at home, in Chevy Chase. “Jack,” she began. “It’s—”

  “Jesus Christ, tell me you’re not calling me,” Hampton said in a rush. “Tell me you’re not jeopardizing the security clearance of your friends by a misjudged phone call.”

  “Is there an intercept on your end?”

  “My end?” Hampton paused. “No. Never. I make sure of it myself.”

  “Then you’re not in danger. I’m on a secure line on this end. I don’t see any way by which a connection could be traced.”

  “Let’s say you’re right, Anna,” he said dubiously. “You’re still presenting me with a moral conundrum. Word has it you’re some primo villainness—the way I’ve heard you described, it’s like you’re a combination of Ma Barker and Mata Hari. With the wardrobe of Imelda Marcos.”

  “It’s bullshit. You know that.”

  “Maybe I do, Anna, and maybe I don’t. The kind of sums I’ve heard bandied about would be awfully tempting. Buy yourself a nice spit of land in Virgin Gorda. All that pink sand, blue sky. Go snorkeling every day…”

  “Goddamn it, Jack!”

  “A word of advice. Don’t take any woolen kopeks and don’t whack any more Swiss bankers.”

  “Is that what they’re saying about me?”

  “One of the things. One of the many things. Let’s just say it’s the biggest pile-on I’ve heard of since Wen Ho Lee. It’s a bit overdone, to tell you the truth. I keep asking myself, Who’s got that kind of money to throw around? Russia’s so strapped for cash that most of its nuclear scientists have left to drive taxicabs in New York. And what kind of hard currency does China have—the place is Zambia with nukes. I mean, let’s get real.” Hampton’s voice seemed to soften. “So what are you calling me for? Want our current missile codes to sell to the Red Chinese? Just let me jot down your fax number.”

  “Give me a break.”

  “That’s my hot tamale,” Hampton teased, relaxing further.

  “Screw you. Listen, before all this shit fell from the sky, I had a meeting with your friend Phil Ostrow…”

  “Ostrow?” Hampton said, guardedly. “Where?”

  “In Vienna.”

  There was a flare of anger: “What are you trying to pull, Navarro?”

  “Wait a minute. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Something in her voice gave him pause. “Are you shitting me, or was somebody shitting you?”

  “Ostrow’s not attached to Vienna station?” she asked hesitantly.

  “He’s on O-15.”

  “Help me out here.”

  “That means he’s kept officially on the lists, but he’s really on leave. Sow confusion among the bad guys that way. Diabolical, what?”

  “On leave how?”

  “He’s been stateside for a few months now. Depression, if you want to know. He had episodes in the past, but it got real bad. He’s actually been hospitalized at Walter Reed.”

  “And that’s where he is now.” Anna’s scalp became tight; she tried to quell a rising sense of anxiety.

  “That’s where he is now. Sad but true. One of those wards where all the nurses have security clearances.”

  “If I said Ostrow was a short guy, grayish-brownish hair, pale complexion, wire-rim glasses…?”

  “I’d tell you to get your prescription checked. Ostrow looks like an aging surfer bum—tall, slim, blond hair, the works.”

  Several seconds of silence ensued.

  “Anna, what the hell is going on with you?”

  Chapter Thirty-one

  Stunned, she sat back on the bed.

  “What’s wrong?” Ben asked.

  “I really can’t get into it.”

  “If it concerns the business we’re both working on—”

  “It doesn’t. Not this. Those bastards!”

  “What happened?”

  “Please,” she exclaimed. “Let me think!”

  “Fine.” Looking irritated, Ben took his digital phone from the pocket of his jacket.

  She thought: No wonder “Phil Ostrow” had called her late at night—when it was too late to call the American embassy and check out his bona fides. But then who was it she’d met with at CIA station?

  Was it in fact CIA station?

  Who were “Ostrow” and “Yossi”?

  She heard Ben speaking quickly in French. Then he fell silent, listening for a while. “Oscar, you’re a genius,” he finally said.

  A few minutes later, he was talking on his phone again. “Megan Crosby, please.”

  If “Phil Ostrow” was some kind of impostor, he had to be an enormously skilled actor. And what was he doing? “Yossi” could indeed have been Israeli, or of some other Middle Eastern nationality; it was hard to tell.

  “Megan, it’s Ben,” he said.

  Who were they? she wondered.

  She picked up the phone and called Jack Hampton again. “Jack, I need the number of CIA station.”

  “What am I, directory assistance?”

  “It’s in the building across the street from the consular office, right?”

  “CIA station is in the main embassy building, Anna.”

  “No, the annex. A commercial building across the street. Under the cover of the Office of the United States Trade Representative.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. CIA doesn’t have any cover sites outside of the one right in the embassy. That I know of anyway.”

  She hung up, panic suffusing her body. If that hadn’t been a CIA site where she’d met Ostrow, what was it? The setting, the surroundings—every detail had been right. Too right, too convincing?

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” she heard Ben say. “Jesus, you’re fast.”

  So who was trying to manipulate her? And to what end? Obviously someone, or some group, who knew she was in Vienna, knew what she was investigating, and knew which hotel she was staying in.

  If Ostrow was some kind of impostor, then his story about the Mossad had to be false. And she had been the unwitting victim of an elaborate scam. They’d planned to kidnap Hartman—and have her deliver the “package” right into their clutches.

  She felt dazed and lost.

  In her mind she ran through everything, from “Ostrow’s” phone call, to the place she’d met him and “Yossi.” Was it really possible the whole thing had been an elaborate ruse?

  She heard Hartman say: “All right, let me write this down. Great work, kid. Terrific.”

  So the Mossad story, with all its rumors and undocumented
whispers, was nothing but a tale spun by liars out of plausible fragments? My God, then how much of what she knew was wrong?

  And who was trying to mislead her—and to what end?

  What was the truth? Good God, where was the truth?

  “Ben,” she said.

  He held up an index finger to signal her to wait, said something quickly into his phone, then flipped it closed.

  But then she quickly changed her mind, decided not to reveal to Ben anything of what she’d just found out. Not yet. Instead, she asked, “Did you learn anything from Sonnenfeld?”

  Hartman told her about what Sonnenfeld had said, Anna interrupting every once in a while to clarify a point or ask for a fuller explanation.

  “So are you saying your father wasn’t a Nazi, after all?”

  “Not according to Sonnenfeld, at least.”

  “Did he have some inkling as to the meaning of Sigma?”

  “Beyond what I said, he was vague about it. And downright evasive when it came to Strasser.”

  “And as to why your brother was killed?”

  “Obviously he was killed because of the threat of exposure. Someone, maybe some group, feared the revelation of those names.”

  “Or of the fact this corporation existed. Clearly someone with a major financial stake. Which tells us that these old guys were—” Suddenly she stopped. “Of course! The laundered money! These old guys were being paid off. Maybe by someone controlling the corporation they’d all helped form.”

  “Either paid off, as in bribed,” Ben added, “or else they were receiving an agreed-upon distribution, a share of the profits.”

  Anna stood. “Eliminate the payees, then there’s no more wire transfers. No more big paydays for a bunch of doddering old men. Which tells us that whoever’s ordering the murders stands to gain financially from them. Has to be. Someone like Strasser, or even your father.” She looked at him. She couldn’t automatically rule it out. Even if he didn’t want to hear it. His father might have been a murderer himself—might have blood on his hands, might have been behind the murders at least.