“And this would be an adult-education course in geography that you’re taking?”
“Naw,” Dupree said. “Took me a long time to get this stuff. I had to go through the computers at passport control and the major airlines, too. Major pain in the ass, I can tell you. But these are all airports that you traveled through at some point over the past fifteen years. A lot of them direct from Dulles, some of them with a connecting flight through Frankfurt or Paris. So here I am, and I’m looking at this scatter of points. All these dreary goddamn airports and what do they have in common?”
“I expect you’re going to tell me,” Bartlett said, a look of chilly amusement in his eyes.
“Well, Christ, take a look at the scatter. What would you conclude? It’s obvious, isn’t it? They’re in a circle of points within a two-hundred-mile radius of Zurich.
They’re all a hop and a skip from Switzerland—that’s what these places got in common. They’re all places you’d go if you wanted to go to Switzerland and maybe didn’t want to have ‘Switzerland’ stamped on your passport. Either of your passports, in your case: I was impressed to see you have two authorized passports.”
“Which is not uncommon among officials in my particular line of work. You’re being absurd, Mr. Dupree, but I’ll play along. Let’s say I have indeed visited Switzerland—so what?”
“Right, so what? No harm, no foul. Only, why’d you tell me you didn’t?”
“You’re really being deliberately dense, Mr. Dupree, aren’t you? If I choose to discuss my vacation plans with you, you’ll be the first to know. Your behavior today calls into question your fitness to discharge your official responsibilities. It also, if I may say so, verges on insubordination.”
“I don’t report to you, Bartlett.”
“No, because seven years ago, when you sought transfer to our unit, you were turned down. Judged not to be of ICU caliber.” Bartlett’s voice remained cool, but his cheeks had colored. Dupree knew he had rattled him. “And now, I’m afraid, I’ll have to call this conversation to an end.”
“I’m not finished with you, Bartlett,” Dupree said, standing up.
A death’s-head smile: “‘Great works are never finished. Only abandoned.’ So said Valéry.”
“Harper?”
“Good-bye, Mr. Dupree,” Bartlett said serenely. “Your commute home to Arlington is a long one at this time of day, and I know you’ll want to beat the rush hour.”
Ben awoke, aware first of the soft early-morning light, then of Anna’s soft breathing. They had slept in the same bed. He sat up slowly, feeling the dull ache in his limbs, his neck. He could feel warmth radiating from her nightgown-clad body a few inches away.
He walked slowly to the bathroom, the pain now awakening too. He realized he’d slept through an entire day and night. Ben knew he was badly battered, but it was better to move around, stay as limber as possible, than to confine himself to bed. Either way it would take time to recover.
He returned to the bedroom, quietly picking up his phone. Fergus O’Connor in the Caymans was expecting his call. But when he tried to switch the phone on, he discovered that the battery was dead. Anna had apparently forgotten to charge it. He heard her stirring in the bed.
He slipped the phone into its charger cradle and called Fergus.
“Hartman!” Fergus exclaimed heartily, as if he’d been waiting for Ben’s call.
“Give me some news,” Ben said, hobbling to the window and looking out over the traffic.
“Well, I’ve got good news and bad news. Whaddaya want first?”
“Always the good first.”
There was a beep on the line—another call coming in—but he ignored it.
“Right. There’s one shady lawyer in Liechtenstein who came to his office this morning and discovered there’d been a break-in.”
“Awful sorry to hear that.”
“Yes. Particularly since one of his files is missing—the folder on an Anstalt he manages for some unnamed party or parties who reside in Vienna.”
“Vienna.” His stomach tightened.
“No names, unfortunately. A set of wire instructions, ID codes, and all that shit. But definitely Vienna-based.
The owners were careful to keep their names secret, even from this guy. Who, by the way, probably isn’t going to be calling the Liechtenstein cops about a missing file. Not with all the illegal shite he’s into.”
“Well done, Fergus. So what’s the bad news?”
“You’ve run up quite a bill. The job in Liechtenstein alone cost me fifty grand. You think those guys come cheap? They’re fucking thieves!” Even for Fergus, that was a significant charge. But given the information he’d turned up—which no law-enforcement agency could ever have gotten—it was worth it.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any receipts for me,” Ben replied.
As soon as he disconnected the call, the phone rang. “Yes?”
“Anna Navarro, please!” a man’s voice shouted. “I need to talk to her!”
“She’s—who is this?”
“Just tell her it’s Sergio.”
“Ah, yes. Yes. Just a moment.”
Anna was awake; the ringing had awakened her. “Machado?” she murmured, her voice raspy from sleep. Ben gave her the phone.
“Sergio,” she said. “I’m sorry, I had the phone turned off, I think… All right, sure, that’s… What?… What?…Sergio, hello? Are you there? Hello?”
She pressed the Off button. “How weird,” she said.
“What is it?”
She stared at him, obviously mystified. “He said he’d been trying to reach me all night. He was calling from his car, in a part of town called San Telmo. He wants to meet at the Plaza Dorrego Bar, I think he said—he’s got a gun for me.”
“Why did he sound so frantic?”
“He said he didn’t want any part of this investigation any longer.”
“They got to him.”
“He really sounded frightened, Ben. He said—he said he’d been contacted by people, threatened—that these weren’t the usual locals who watch out for the fugitives.” She looked up, shaken. “And the call ended in midsentence.”
They could smell the fire even before they entered Plaza Dorrego. As their cab pulled up to the side of the Plaza Dorrego Bar, they saw a large crowd, ambulances and police cars and fire trucks.
The cabdriver spoke quickly.
“What’s he saying?” Ben asked.
“He says he can’t go any farther, there’s been some kind of accident. Come on.”
She asked the driver to wait for them, then she and Ben leaped out of the car and raced into the square. The smoke had mostly dissipated, but the air smelled of sulfur and carbon and combusted gasoline. Peddlers had temporarily abandoned their tables in the park at the center of the plaza, leaving their cheap jewelry and perfumes untended while they gathered to watch. Residents huddled in the doorways of the ancient tenements, to stare in fascinated horror.
It was immediately obvious what had happened. A car had been parked directly in front of the Plaza Dorrego Bar when it exploded, shattering the window of the bar, and blowing out windows across the street. Apparently it had burned for quite a while before the fire trucks were able to put it out. Even the white zebra stripes painted on the road near the wreck had been blackened.
A white-haired old woman in a brown print blouse was screaming, over and over, “Madre de Dios! Madre de Dios!”
Ben felt Anna grab his hand and squeeze it tight as they watched the emergency medical workers hacksawing at the burnt-out carcass of the once-white Ford Escort, trying without success to extricate the charred body.
He felt her shudder when one of the workers managed to wrench back a chunk of metal, revealing the black incinerated arm, the wrist encircled by the blackened gold chain, the scorched claw of a hand gripping the little cell phone.
Chapter Thirty-eight
They sat, stunned, in the back of the cab.
No
t until they had gone several blocks did either one speak.
“Oh, my God, Ben. Dear God.” Anna leaned back against the seat, eyes closed.
He put a hand on her shoulder, nothing more than a moment of comfort. There was nothing he could say to her, nothing that would mean anything.
“When Machado and I had dinner last night,” she said, “he told me that in all his years of investigations, he was never afraid. That I shouldn’t be afraid either.”
Ben didn’t know how to reply. He couldn’t shake the horror of seeing Machado’s incinerated body. The hand clutching the cell phone. Some say the world will end in fire. Shuddering, he flashed on Chardin’s faceless countenance, the man’s testimony that the horrors of surviving could be far greater than those of perishing. Sigma seemed to have a fondness for incendiary solutions. As gently as he could, he said, “Anna, maybe I should do this alone.”
“No, Ben,” she said sharply. Ben saw her steely resolve. She was staring straight ahead, her face tense, her jaw clenched.
It was as if what they’d just witnessed had fueled her determination instead of deterring her. She was intent on visiting Strasser, no matter what, and getting to the bottom of the conspiracy that was Sigma. Maybe it was crazy—maybe they were both crazy—but he knew he wasn’t going to turn back either. “Do you think either of us can just go back to our lives after what we’ve learned? Do you think we’d be allowed to?”
Another long silence elapsed.
“We’ll make a circuit,” she said. “Make sure no one’s staking out the house, waiting for us. Maybe they assume that since they’ve eliminated Machado, there’s no more threat.” There seemed to be relief in her voice, but he couldn’t be sure.
The cab barreled through the crowded streets of Buenos Aires toward the wealthy barrio of Belgrano. It occurred to Ben what a strange and terrible irony it was that a good man had just died so that they could try to save the life of an evil one. He wondered whether the same notion had occurred to her. Now we’re about to risk our lives to save the life of a world-historic villain, he reflected.
And the true scope of his villainy? Was there any way of knowing?
The harrowing words returned to him.
Wheels within wheels—that was the way we worked.… It never crossed anyone’s mind that the West had fallen under the administration of a hidden consortium. The notion would be inconceivable. Because if true, it would mean that over half of the planet was effectively a subsidiary of a single megacorporation—Sigma.
In recent years, one very special project of Sigma’s had come to the fore. The prospect of its success would revolutionize the nature of world control. No longer would it be about the allocation of funds, the directing of resources. It became, instead, a simple matter of who the “chosen” would be.
Was Strasser himself one of the “chosen”? Or maybe he, too, was dead.
Ben said, “I talked to Fergus, in the Caymans. He’s traced the wire transfers all the way back to Vienna.”
“Vienna,” she repeated without inflection.
She said nothing further. He wondered what she was thinking, but before he could ask, the cab pulled to a stop in front of a red-brick villa with white shutters. A white station wagon was parked in the small driveway.
Anna said something to the driver in Spanish, then turned to Ben. “I told him to circle the block. I want to look for parked cars, loiterers, anything suspicious.”
Ben knew it was time, once again, to defer to her. He’d simply have to trust that she knew what she was doing. “What’s our approach going to be?” he asked.
“All we have to do is get in the door. Warn him. Tell him his life’s in danger. I’ve got my DOJ credentials, which should be enough to make us legitimate in his eyes.”
“We’ve got to assume that he’s been warned—by the Kamaradenwerk thugs, by Vera Lenz, by whatever other sort of early-warning systems he has in place. And then what if his life isn’t in danger? What if he’s the one behind the killings? Have you considered that?”
After a beat of silence, she conceded, “It’s a real risk.”
A real risk. That was a colossal understatement. “You don’t have a weapon,” Ben reminded her.
“We only need his attention for a moment. Then if he chooses to listen further, he can.”
And if he was the one behind the killings? But it was useless to argue.
When they had made a complete circuit, the cab stopped, and they got out.
Although it was a warm, sunny day, Ben felt a chill, no doubt from fear. He was sure Anna was frightened, too, but she didn’t show it. He admired her strength.
Twenty-five feet before Strasser’s house there was a security booth on the sidewalk. The guard was a stooped old man with wispy white hair and a drooping mustache, a blue cap perched almost comically atop his head. If ever there were a serious incident on the street, this guard would be useless, Ben thought. Still, it was best not to alert him, so the two of them continued their determined stride as if they belonged here.
They stopped before Strasser’s house, which was surrounded, like most of the houses on this street, by a fence. This one was of dark-stained wood, not wrought iron, and it was no higher than Ben’s chest. It was purely ornamental and seemed to send the message that the inhabitant of this house had nothing to hide. Anna un-latched the wooden gate, pulled it open, and they entered a small, well-kept garden. From behind they heard footsteps on the pavement.
Nervously, Ben turned. It was the security guard approaching, maybe twenty feet away. He wondered whether Anna had an alibi prepared; he didn’t. The guard smiled. His dentures were ill-fitting and yellow. He said something in Spanish.
Anna muttered, “He wants to see our identification.” To the old man she said, “Cómo no, señor!” Certainly.
The guard reached into his jacket, oddly, as if to offer identification of his own.
Ben noticed a slight movement across the street, and he turned to look.
There was a man standing across the street. A tall man who had a ruddy face, a thatch of black hair going gray, and thick wheat-field eyebrows.
Ben felt a jolt of recognition. The face was horribly familiar.
Where have I seen him before?
Paris—the rue des Vignoles.
Vienna. The Graben.
And somewhere before that.
One of the killers.
He was aiming a gun at them.
Ben shouted, “Anna, get down!” He flung himself onto the concrete garden path.
Anna dove to her left, out of the line of fire.
There was a spit, and the guard’s chest erupted, a gusher of crimson, and he fell backward to the flagstone sidewalk. The ruddy-faced man raced toward them.
They were trapped inside Strasser’s yard.
The assassin had shot the guard! Ben and Anna had ducked, and the poor guard had been caught in the line of fire.
Next time the killer would not miss.
Even if I could run, Ben thought, it would be toward the killer.
And both of them were unarmed!
He heard the man shout in English, “It’s O.K.! It’s O.K.! I’m not going to shoot!”
Ruddy-face had his gun at his side as he raced toward them.
“Hartman!” he yelled. “Benjamin Hartman!”
Ben looked up, startled.
Anna screamed, “I’ve got a gun! Back off!”
But the ruddy-faced man still did not raise his weapon. “It’s O.K.! I’m not going to shoot!” The man flung his gun to the pavement in front of him, his hands outstretched. “He was about to kill you,” the ruddy-faced man said as he ran up to the body of the old man. “Look!”
Those were the last words the ruddy-faced man spoke.
Like a mannequin twitching with incipient life, the ancient guard moved an arm, yanking a slim, silenced revolver from his trousers, and pointing it at the ruddy-faced man who stood over him. There was a phut and then a soft-nosed slug slammed into
his forehead and blew out the back of his skull.
What the hell was going on?
The ancient guard now began to sit up, even as blood still dribbled from his shirtfront. He had been wounded, perhaps mortally, but his firing arm was absolutely steady.
An impassioned bellow came from behind them: “No!”
Ben turned to see another man, stationed by an oak tree, at a diagonal from them: their side of the street, but twenty yards to their left. This man was holding a large rifle with a sniper scope, a marksman’s special.
The ruddy-faced killer’s backup?
The barrel was directed in their general direction.
There was no time to escape its deadly aim.
Immediately, Ben heard the blast of the high-powered rifle, too paralyzed with fear even to flinch.
Two, then three bullets hit the ancient guard in the center of his chest and he slumped back to the ground.
Once again they had been spared. Why? With the scoped rifle, there was no way the sniper could have missed his intended target.
The man with the rifle—a man with glossy black hair and olive skin—raced over to the crumpled, bloodied body of the watchman, ignoring them.
It made no sense. Why were the gunmen so intent on killing the old guard? Who was their real target?
Ben stood up slowly, and saw the man reach inside the jacket of the old man’s uniform, and pull out another weapon: a second slim automatic revolver, silencer screwed on to the barrel.
“Oh, dear God,” Anna said.
The olive-skinned man grabbed a fistful of the guard’s wispy white hair and tugged at it, and it came off in one floppy piece, like the pelt of a rabbit, revealing the steel-gray hair underneath.
He yanked at the white mustache, which came off just as easily, then grabbed at the loose skin of the old man’s face, lifting off wrinkled, irregular patches of flesh-colored rubber.
“Latex prostheses,” the man said. He pulled off the nose, then the wrinkled bags under the old man’s eyes, and Ben recognized the smooth, unlined face of the man who had tried to kill him in front of Jürgen Lenz’s house in Vienna. The man who tried to kill them all in Paris.
The Sigma Protocol Page 49