by Fritz Galt
“The man from the bazaar,” she whispered.
Alec felt for a pulse, but shook his head. “He’s dead.”
It was a clean shot through the heart.
A fisherman was just pulling out the suitcase.
“What’s in it,” Alec asked.
Anaïs reached for the suitcase. Her delicate fingers curled around its edges and pressed its twin releases. Under the lid was a cosmetics mirror. On the bottom lay neat rows of blush, eyeliner and light-colored cream, a kind of foundation for changing the color of one’s skin.
Confused, Natalie looked at Alec for an explanation.
“Where’s the man in the white suit?” he demanded at once.
Natalie looked through the crowd. He was gone.
Several sweaty sailors stepped forward and began to close in on Alec. In the absence of police, they seemed to be the law.
“Crap.” He set the wet revolver on the dock and raised his hands. “We don’t need this now.”
“Messieurs,” Anaïs said, rising to address the sailors.
Her long-legged jeans and loose T-shirt worked their magic on the men. They hesitated.
“It’s no problem,” she explained in French. “The dead man was a criminal, an imposter.” She indicated the cosmetics in his suitcase.
The sailors studied the white, blistered face with the stubble of a beard. It was a man dressed in woman’s clothing. Clearly to their minds, not someone worth defending. They slinked back into the crowd.
Alec thanked her. “Now let’s get out of here.”
He pulled the two women out of the crowd, and they hurried back in the direction of the restaurant. Checking inside, they confirmed that the man in the white tuxedo was gone.
“Around back,” Alec said, and led them behind the restaurant.
Nothing there.
“We had him within our grasp,” Natalie said.
“Maybe he’s in the crowd,” Anaïs suggested.
The number of people on the wharf had multiplied.
“Forget about Brahim,” Alec said. “Let’s get out of here before they lynch us.”
“No,” Natalie said. “Absolutely not. I haven’t sacrificed so much and degraded myself so far only to give up.”
Anaïs watched her in astonishment. “You haven’t sacrificed anything. You have only been brave. Now go back to Mick. He’s miserable without you.”
She studied the young woman’s round face, distorted by her appalled expression. “How do you know about Mick?”
“We saw him at the airport in Casablanca. I never saw such a depressed man.”
Depressed? About her?
Natalie took a deep breath and turned toward the sea.
She knew that at the cemetery, she had completely and utterly shunned her husband. And before that, he had dumped her for a seductress of some sort.
So what was Anaïs saying?
“I’ll inform the U.S. Embassy in Rabat,” Alec said softly. “They’ll handle things from here. I’m taking you home.”
“I understand what you’re trying to do,” Natalie responded mechanically. “But no one knows Brahim better than I do.”
“I do.”
Who said that? The words came from behind them.
Natalie turned. The man in the white tuxedo stood there, carrying the brown suitcase. He slowly unwrapped the gauze from his face.
It was Brahim.
“You needn’t inform your embassy in Rabat,” he said, the revolver glistening in his hand. “You just killed the embassy’s man.” He nodded toward the body on the wharf. “Your own man.”
“So he was American,” Natalie said, remembering the man’s dying words.
“August Carlucci was his name. He stole my suitcase, too, but I’m thankful you recovered it.”
He was silent for a moment, seagulls cawing overhead, daylight seeping away.
“But you’re Khalid,” Anaïs said weakly.
Brahim’s cruel smile assured everyone there that he wasn’t the former bumbling Khalid they thought they knew.
“Now what?” Alec asked.
“I’m taking you out of Morocco.”
“Why not just shoot us?” Alec said bitterly.
“I won’t as long as you’re useful to me,” Brahim said. His voice had lost all traces of its former immaturity in Geneva and throughout Morocco. He was cold and callous, like the time Natalie had heard him speak with the sheiks in the garden.
He motioned with the revolver toward a speedboat that was moored to the pier. “Get in.”
“Where are you taking us?” Natalie asked.
He approached her, his eyelids flaring. “To Switzerland,” he said. “You’ll be more valuable there than you ever were here.”
“Yeah, I suppose you make more money pimping in Switzerland,” she said, and spat in his face.
Brahim wiped his cheek with the back of his sleeve. When he dropped his arm, he revealed a broad grin.
“We’ll see who still wants you,” he said.
Anaïs was in tears. “Khalid, how could you act like this? Whatever happened to the Khalid we loved?”
“Simple answer, my dear,” he said. “I’m not Khalid.”
“Okay, then Brahim, whatever your name is.”
“I’m not Brahim either,” he said.
“Then who the hell are you?” Anaïs cried.
“I’m Proteus.”
Chapter 50
Sir Trevor O’Smythe was having a good day.
His cancer was in remission, and the medication’s side effects were tolerable. His stomach had lost its queasiness for the moment, and his legs felt strong again.
One could almost forget the pain.
Just after spending dinner alone, he heard the phone ring in his study.
He jumped up to answer it.
“O’Smythe here.”
“Trevor, old chap. It’s me.”
He could place the Oxford accent, but didn’t recognize the caller. “Who is this?”
“Can’t you guess, old man? Somebody you know and see every day.”
“I can’t—”
“Look in the mirror.”
“Myself?” By God, he was listening to himself talking. He would be the last person to recognize his own voice.
He shook his head. It was Proteus, of course. “You’re back in touch. Did you get my message?”
“I received your letter in Morocco,” Proteus said, his British accent consistent, a strange drone in the background. “What do you mean by calling off the presidential assignment?”
“The letter didn’t say that.”
“It’s right here in black and white. Signed and dated by you.”
Damn. Mick Pierce must have forged a new letter to replace the one he had written. “I believe that there’s been a bit of a mix-up.”
“Not a mix-up, old chap. You’ve been jolly well sending agents out to do me in. First it was Natalie Pierce. Then Mick Pierce. Now it’s August Carlucci.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. You’re delusional. I don’t even know where you are.”
“Well, I’ll make it easy for you, old chum. I’m making my way back to Switzerland where I have some unfinished business.”
“Wonderful,” Trevor said. “That’s what I wanted. I wanted you to complete your contract, as well as to find and deliver the substrate to me.”
“The substrate, too? Now, that’s a tall order.”
“I’m certain you have your means. It shouldn’t be too difficult.” Trevor wasn’t about to tell Proteus that Robert Zimmer, Mick Pierce and probably the entire American Secret Service, were aware of the impending attempt on the president’s life. Proteus could kill the president more easily without feeling the pressure. Or they would kill him. Either way would be fine with him.
“You’ll be interested to know,” Proteus said, “that I’m bringing along some human cargo.”
“A woman and her brother-in-law?” Trevor guessed
“Exactly.”
Trevor closed his eyes. Proteus had captured Natalie and Alec. “Are you sure you still want them hanging around your neck?”
“They might make useful pawns.”
“Sounds a tad risky.”
“This whole business is not without risk, wouldn’t you say?”
Trevor nodded to himself. His own health was at risk if Proteus didn’t succeed in obtaining the substrate. After all, one couldn’t cure cancer without unlimited computer power.
“I’ll ring off now,” Proteus said.
“Hold up,” Trevor said. “There must be some way to contact you.”
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
In the background, waves thudded against the hull of a boat. Then the line went dead.
Proteus was on his way.
The phone was ringing in Everett Hoyle’s office. He turned away from his wall map of Switzerland and picked up the phone.
It was Tobias Bürgi.
“Not with the president?” the inspector asked.
“No. I’m spending the evening going over different scenarios.”
Although the president had already landed in Switzerland, Everett had requested of the ambassador not to be given specific duties during the visit. He needed the freedom to hunt Proteus down. And Ambassador Pistol had agreed.
“Big news,” Tobias said over the phone. “Proteus has made contact with O’Smythe.”
“Encrypted?”
“Not this time.”
“What did they talk about?”
“The assassination is still on.”
Everett frowned. “Any details?”
“Very few. We still don’t know where, when, or how. But he did say, ‘I’m making my way back to Switzerland where I have some unfinished business.’”
“That’s enough for me. Thanks,” Everett said. “I’ll inform my people.”
“One more thing,” Tobias said. “Proteus has Natalie and Alec Pierce with him. Apparently as hostages.”
“Please God, no.”
Everett didn’t want a hostage crisis. He could visualize being asked to trade the Leader of the Free World for the two American hostages. That would be messy. Very messy. President Charles Damon, being the gentleman he was, might defy normal protocol and offer himself up for Natalie and Alec. Then what?
Everett hung up the phone and immediately dialed the mobile number of Paul Schroeder, who was acting as the embassy’s liaison with the president’s security team.
Where would Paul be now?
Everett looked at the numbered stick pins in his wall map. They denoted all the stops on the president’s itinerary, including the Bernese Oberland, Geneva and Zermatt.
“Security,” Paul answered. Everett could hear wind whistling in the background.
“Paul, where are you?”
“In Mürren. Staring the Jungfrau right in the face.”
Everett had been to that part of the Bernese Oberland, and could picture the view. “Listen, we’ve just intercepted another call from Proteus. He’s still planning to kill the president in Switzerland. The president has to recognize this as a credible threat.”
“Everybody’s already on maximum alert. We’re even frisking the marmots.”
“Paul, he might have hostages with him. Natalie and Alec Pierce.”
“Good Lord.”
Then Everett heard the distant sound of a helicopter over the phone.
“Gotta go,” Paul said. “The Eagle is landing.”
In a dark, musty safe house in Foggy Bottom, Mick settled behind the laptop he had borrowed from Eli Shaw. He had moved to that part of the city in order to cover his tracks and avoid being discovered by O’Smythe’s men, who would have tracked all four transmitters as originating from Dupont Circle.
Close to the State Department and in a clean CIA apartment, Mick felt safer for having moved.
As he waited for the laptop to boot up, he stared at his reflection on the screen. After a day spent shopping around town, he was a reborn man.
He had to recite his social security number and his deceased mother’s maiden name to a teller, all for a mere three-hundred-dollar withdrawal from his own bank account.
Perhaps the bank should remove the word “Trust” from its name.
He had then returned to Dupont Circle, paid for his hotel room in cash and checked out.
Then he had turned the corner and entered a clothing store. Minutes later, he emerged wearing a combination of a tattersall shirt and chino slacks.
It helped to have a standard body frame. Thirty-by-thirty-inch pants, size fifteen neck. Absolutely universal, like Da Vinci’s rendering of a well-proportioned man. Only the shoulders felt snug.
He reached under the writing desk to find a modular phone jack to connect the laptop’s telephone wire.
There was none.
The apartment’s phone was hard-wired to the wall.
What did the CIA think he was going to do? Steal their phone?
He pulled Eli’s mobile phone out of his pocket. Lo and behold, it had a phone jack built in. He connected the laptop to it.
He turned the mobile phone on, faced the standard Windows desktop, opened up the communications software, typed in the number of his Swiss internet provider and logged in to his internet account.
He ticked off the seconds it took to retrieve all of the incoming mail. Two full minutes later, his inbox was still loading messages.
When the transfers finally finished, he logged off and clicked on his Inbox icon. All the new messages had come from the superconducting newsgroup.
What a bonanza.
All told, within fifteen hours, his initial posting had generated thirty-five replies.
He began opening messages from the research enclaves of various corporations such as Westinghouse, IBM and AT&T. Then he moved on to notes from various national laboratories, ominous and serious-sounding names like Los Alamos, Fermilab, Argonne, Brookhaven and Oak Ridge.
He found the text technical, but at least he knew what he was looking for. Suddenly the magic words seemed to jump off the active matrix display. A message from “dmayfield” at “ornl.gov” said all the right things, with just the right sentiment.
“We at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and other DOE sites are actively working with industry as well as the DOD to develop practical methods of introducing defects or creating crystalline faults during processing of thin film superconductors. Our recent research at CERN has yielded promising results. Let me know how we can help you.”
Mick composed a message back to dmayfield. “Urgent to meet with you. I’ll arrive at Oak Ridge tomorrow. Mick Pierce.”
Where on earth was Oak Ridge?
He turned the mobile phone on, dialed his ISP in Switzerland, logged in, and sent his message. After the final audible click of the phone line, he disconnected the wire between laptop and phone.
Sitting back to relax, he heard his door click open.
What the hell?
He ducked behind the desk and scrambled toward the kitchenette.
From an oblique angle, he observed a man entering the room with a pistol drawn. Damn, he had escaped their white van on Memorial Bridge and ditched the last transmitter in Dupont Circle. He thought he had gotten rid of those goons.
The gunman wore no mask and moved into the room with confidence.
Mick looked around. All he had were a few kitchen utensils. And one large fire extinguisher.
He hefted it to one hip, pulled the pin, aimed the hose and squeezed.
White chemical foam shot out of it hitting the man full in the face.
The man started to gag and his pistol dropped to the floor.
Mick sprang forward and slung the pistol out his open window. He checked that he had his wallet and passport, then grabbed the laptop, mobile phone and shopping bag full of clothes.
Stepping into the foyer, he saw the man crawl into the kitchenette and try to wash the foam out of his eyes. Careful not to slip on t
he foam, Mick exited quickly and shut the door behind him.
After all his precautions that day, how the hell had O’Smythe found him?
If it was O’Smythe.
It was nearing midnight on a fishing vessel somewhere east of Gibraltar.
At sunset, Natalie and the other two hostages were transferred from the speedboat near Essaouira to a fishing boat. Now, cold and fighting seasickness, they were locked away in a rank-smelling fish hold under the wheelhouse.
The only reason Natalie knew that they had left the Atlantic for the Mediterranean was the increasing turbulence in the water, followed by the captain calling out that he was turning due east, and the sudden settling of the water.
She lay back on a moldy canvas cot. She needed sleep, but it wasn’t coming.
In the darkness, she listened to Alec and Anaïs’ hushed, intermittent discussion about their captivity.
“Thinking Lucerne,” she repeated over and over again to the rhythm of the waves, each time placing an accent on a different syllable. When the accent fell on “-cern,” she stopped.
“CERN,” she said aloud. At the hospital in Montreux, the doctor had simply misunderstood the man’s dying words.
She rolled onto her side.
“You guys,” she whispered. “I just figured out what Omar Naftir was trying to say when he died.”
Both heads turned to her. She kept her voice low.
“The transcript of his dying words went something like this, ‘Tell him the bastard’s from the Proteus organization of Morocco. A jihad. He speaks English, French, Spanish, Arabic. He’ll track thinking to CERN.’ You get it? CERN, the laboratory.”
“Okay, I get the CERN part,” Alec said. “But what about ‘track thinking?’”
“I don’t know,” she conceded. “But that’s not the important point here. Brahim has zeroed in on CERN. And I think that’s where the assassination attempt will take place.”
Alec grunted. “And how will we get word to the embassy?”
Chapter 51
Everett opened the door to his office early Monday morning and tossed his keys onto his desk.