The Ambler Warning

by Robert Ludlum

  “Adrian,” he said abruptly. “I have a ceramic urn filled with black balls and white balls.”

  “You do?” The young man looked around Caston’s office cautiously.

  “Pretend I do,” the auditor groused.

  “Super.”

  “You know that precisely half the balls are black and half of them are white. There are a thousand balls. Five hundred black, five hundred white. You’re going to draw a ball at random. What odds will you give me that it’s black?”

  “Fifty-fifty, right?”

  “Now, let’s say I’ve got another urn, filled at the same ball factory. In this case, you know it contains black balls or white balls or both. But that’s it. You have no idea whether most of the balls are white or black. Maybe all the balls are black. Maybe all of them are white. Maybe they’re evenly divided. Maybe there’s only one ball in the urn. Maybe there’s a thousand. You just don’t know.”

  “So this time I’m pig ignorant,” Adrian said. “Beyond the fact that there are black and/or white balls in the urn, I don’t know anything. That the deal?”

  “Exactly. Give me odds that you’ll draw a black one.”

  Adrian furrowed his unlined brow. “But how can I know what the odds are? They could be a hundred percent. They could be zero percent. They could be anywhere in between.” He ran a hand through his mop of thick black hair.

  “Right. And if you had to lay odds? Would you give me ten-to-one odds that the ball you draw is black? A hundred to one? A hundred against? What?”

  The young man shrugged. “I’d have to say . . . fifty-fifty again.”

  Caston nodded. “That’s what any expert would say. You ought to behave the same way in the second case, where you know almost nothing, as you do in the first case, where you know a great deal. Back in the 1920s, an economist named Frank Knight distinguished between ‘risk’ and ‘uncertainty.’ With risk, he said, you could tame randomness with probabilities. With uncertainty, he said, you don’t even have knowledge of probabilities. But here’s the thing. As von Neumann and Morgenstern saw, even ignorance gets quantified. Our systems couldn’t work otherwise.”

  “This have anything to do with an urn called ‘Tarquin,’ master?” Adrian’s labret stud twinkled in the fluorescent light.

  Caston made a noise that was somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. He picked up a photocopy of a Taiwanese newspaper that was included in the manila file that had arrived that morning. Caston could not read it, and no translation had been provided. “I don’t suppose you know Chinese?” he asked hopefully.

  “Let me think. Does dim sum count?”

  “Sorry, it’s Korean that you speak, right?” Caston faltered.

  “Not a word,” Adrian said serenely.

  “Your parents were Korean immigrants, weren’t they?”

  “That’s why.” A slow grin. “They had to learn to say ‘Clean your room’ in English. I bought a lot of time that way.”

  “I see.”

  “Sorry to disappoint. I don’t even like kimchi. Hard to believe, I know.”

  “So we have at least one thing in common,” Caston said dryly.

  PARIS

  There was a great deal to do and little time within which to do it. Ambler could no longer turn to Fenton’s people for supplies—not when executing a double play on them. Ingenuity and opportunism would have to replace the well-supplied stockroom.

  By late afternoon, Ambler had begun to collect the items he would need. He decided to appropriate Director-General Deschesnes’ pied-à-terre near Boucicaut Station; it would serve as well as any for a rudimentary workshop. Using a can opener on three containers of bouillon, he produced three circular pieces of steel. He backed these with rubber cement and a thin layer of foam—packaging material that accompanied a cheap clock radio. He fashioned the blood packs out of extra-thin latex prophylactics and a bottle of viscous FX blood that he bought at a costume shop, Les Ateliers du Costume, in the Ninth Arrondissement.

  Finally he laboriously removed the primer charge from a couple of the 0.284-inch centerfire rifle cartridges that had been supplied by Fenton’s armorer. It was harder than he had expected. The Lazzeroni cases made it difficult to decap the primer, which was just below, flush with the cartridge base. He had to work without proper tools, making do with the kind of wrenches and pliers he could get at the nearest quincaillerie, or hardware store. If he twisted the rim with too much pressure, he risked detonating the factory-loaded primer compound and injuring himself. The work was slow, painstaking. The centerfire primer contained less than a grain of priming compound; he would need to collect the primers from four cartridges in order to produce one workable squib.

  It was another hour and a half before he completed the ensemble: the latex-wrapped blood pack glued on top of the primer charge; the small wire that would run to a 9-volt battery.

  When Ambler met up with Laurel in the gallery on the top floor of the Pompidou Center, he had been away for hours, assembling the props for the drama—a theater of death meant to substitute for death itself.

  Laurel’s response to his careful explanation began with incredulity, but before long her remarkable self-possession came to the fore. Yet there was a problem with the plan, as became increasingly clear when he talked it through with her. She saw it, too.

  “If people see a man shot,” she said, “they’re going to summon an ambulance.”

  Ambler frowned; he kept going over the sticking point in his mind. “It would take a medical tech two seconds to discover what was going on. The whole ruse would be blown. And that can’t happen.” He had to think of a solution, or the whole plan would have to be abandoned. “Damn,” he said under his breath. “We’ve got to use an ambulance of our own. Set the whole thing up ahead of time. Hire a driver somehow.”

  “ ‘Somehow’?” Laurel echoed. “Is that one of those special spycraft terms?”

  “You’re not helping, Laurel,” he said, in a tone midway between entreaty and complaint.

  “That’s the problem,” she said. “Or maybe the solution. You need to let me help. I’ll drive it.”

  His hard stare melted into one of admiration. He did not bother to argue. She was right. It was the only way. The two discussed the details further as they ambled, arm-in-arm, southward toward the Seine. The man in the Brooks Brothers suit had reappeared. It was important that they not look hurried; Fenton must not suspect what he was planning. Laurel may have entered a fun-house, as she said, but she had come to realize that for her, just then, there was no other reality. She would make a home of it, as he had.

  He turned toward her, taking in her lithe frame, her wavy auburn hair, her warm hazel eyes, flecked with green like inclusions on a cut stone of topaz. Every look she gave him, every question she asked, every gentle pressure on his arm told him that she trusted him and was ready to do whatever he asked.

  “OK,” she said. “So now all we need to do is to commandeer an ambulance.”

  Ambler gazed at her in fond admiration. “Did anyone ever tell you that you were a quick study?”

  The Clinique du Louvre was in an elegant building that filled most of a city block—wide arching windows on the ground floor, an array of smaller double-hung windows above, large beige stones giving way to small beige bricks—and was situated between the Louvre, Paris’s premiere museum, and Les Grands-Magasins de la Samaritaine, the city’s premiere department store. Opposite it, to the north, was the church of Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois; a block south was the Quai du Louvre, a few hundred yards from the Pont Neuf, which crossed the river. It was central and easily approached from many directions. It was also the perfect place to go looking for an ambulance. Municipal rules had ensured that it had a large fleet of emergency medical vehicles—and not to mention a pool of emergency medical technicians—far in excess of its actual needs.

  Ambler stood by himself near the hospital, willing himself into a condition of glacial calm. He inhaled the violet-tar aroma of damp pavement, the me
tallic fug of exhaust, and, more faintly, the organic stench of dog excrement, for Paris was a city of dog lovers and innocent of laws regulating their leavings. Now it was time for the tableau to begin.

  At Ambler’s signal, Laurel walked over to the guard who sat in a glass booth at the entrance to the circular parking garage. She was a tourist seeking directions. The guard—an unprepossessing man with a parrot nose and some sort of port-wine birthmark on his balding scalp—was alone but for the telephone, an outmoded computer, and a spiral notebook in which he marked vehicular comings and goings. He gave her a look that was wary but not hostile. To a man confined to a guard’s booth, a pretty woman was scarcely an unwelcome sight. Her French was scant, as was his English. Soon she was unfolding an enormous map of the city and holding it up to him.

  As the parrot-nosed guard’s view was blocked by what seemed an acre of Michelin street map, Ambler silently vaulted over the low, swinging safety gate and strode up the curved concrete ramp to the parking level above and over to a small fleet of Renault ambulances—painted a stark, sanitary white, with an orange stripe and blue lettering. Most of them were boxy, with foreshortened hoods and low-to-the-ground chassis. These were backup vehicles, seldom used, but they clearly had been regularly washed and maintained, and they gleamed whitely in the dim light. He chose a mini-ambulance that seemed to be the most elderly vehicle on the lot. The key cylinder was quickly dismantled. Slower work was filing a key blank with a corresponding pattern of indentation. But ten minutes later, the work was done. He tested the key more than once, confident that the sound of the motor would be lost amid the noisier rattlings of other vehicles both within the garage and outside of it.

  Yet his sense of satisfaction quickly paled before his recognition of the difficulties ahead. Too many things could go wrong.

  Two hours later, at the Hotel Beaubourg, Ambler broke down and stripped the TL 7 rifle, making sure that all the parts were properly lubricated and clean. Then he reassembled it, except for the muzzle. With the hinged stock in collapsed position, the object was inconspicuous in an athletic bag. He changed into a sweat suit and sneakers, as if he were going off to a gym. At the lobby, he waved toward the concierge at the hotel desk. “Le jogging,” he said, smiling.

  The concierge laughed, shrugging his shoulders. It was obvious what he was thinking. Americans—obsessed with fitness. “See you later, Monsieur Mulvaney.”

  Laurel joined him a few minutes later at the plaza outside of the Pompidou Center, and they quietly, hurriedly, reviewed the step sequence ahead of them, as Ambler’s eyes swept the arena repeatedly, with a ratcheted-up sense of awareness. Nothing seemed out of place—nothing he could detect, anyway. The operational sequence had been established; it could not be safely interrupted.

  At a quarter to five, Benoit Deschesnes appeared, as he did most evenings, for a walk in the Luxembourg Gardens, that sixty-acre redoubt of tranquility and play in the Sixth Arrondissement. Ambler watched him through his pair of field glasses, relieved that the dignitary’s movements were unself-conscious and fluid. He seemed lost in thought, and perhaps he was.

  Decades ago, Ambler had once been told, members of the Lost Generation snatched doves at the Luxembourg Gardens in order to fend off hunger. These days there were more children than artists about. The gardens, in the best French manner, were formally arrayed, the trees in geometric patterns. Even in the winter, children could ride on an aging carousel or watch a display of Grand Guignol puppetry.

  Such scenes flitted through Ambler’s head but left little impression; he was intent on mounting his own work of Grand Guignol theater. He had already ascertained that he had picked up his followers, as he had hoped; the Brooks Brothers–clad American affected to be reading the plaques at the bases of various statues. A few hundred feet away, a small group of jeans-wearing Frenchmen busied themselves in a game of pétanque, while others huddled over chess tables. Still, the park was relatively vacant.

  Deschesnes, as another glance verified, was walking as instructed, his coat open to the breeze, displaying his white shirt. He sat for a moment on a bench in the park, apparently admiring the fountain, still pulsing even in winter. The day was cloudless and the evening sun cast shadows across the empty flower beds. The physicist shivered.

  Ambler hoped that Deschesnes had remembered all of his instructions. Directly over the bloodpacks, his white shirt was invisibly scored with a razor blade, to ensure that when the tiny explosive charges were detonated the fabric was punctured.

  “Remember,” Ambler had cautioned the physicist, “when the squibs go off, don’t try anything overly dramatic. Forget about what you’ve seen onstage or on screen. Don’t throw yourself backward; don’t fall forward; don’t fold your hands together on your chest. Just slump, gently, to the ground, as if you were hit by an immense wave of drowsiness.” Ambler knew that though the metal would protect Deschesnes from injury, the man would be genuinely startled by the squib explosions; they were bound to be somewhat painful, whatever precautions were taken. That was a good thing: it would make his reaction to the “gunshots” all the more convincing.

  It took Ambler several minutes to locate the man with binoculars who was watching the scene from a window in one of the elegant apartment buildings overlooking the gardens. The man would be able to see only Deschesnes’ back, at the moment, but that would suffice. Only another professional could tell that Ambler was anything more than an exercise enthusiast in a sweat suit, returning from his exercise, his gym bag slung over his shoulder. Ambler continued to scan the area until he found the brunette in the midlength coat. Then he waited for events to unfold.

  They were his audience, though he could not swear there were no others. When Ambler was sure that none of the civilians were watching, he disappeared silently into the evergreen bushes sixty yards from the fountain and set up the rifle. He had Deschesnes plainly in view once more. Ambler activated the small walkie-talkie he had stowed in his bag. Holding the microphone close to his mouth, he spoke quietly.

  “Deschesnes. If you can hear me, scratch your ear.”

  A moment later the physicist did so.

  “I’m going to count down from five. When I reach one, squeeze the device in your pocket and close the circuit. Don’t worry. This’ll all be over soon.” He looked around. A young woman passed close to the bench and moved on. Another group of people was approaching from thirty yards away. They would make good witnesses. He raised the rifle and let the barrel emerge a couple of inches from the bushes. He wanted Fenton’s brunette to see it. “Five, four, three, two, one—” He fired twice, then a third time. A distinct spitting sound punctuated each squeeze of the trigger, the sound of a silenced rifle. A faint plume of gas would have been visible from the muzzle; the human eye would not be able to detect the fact that no actual projectile came from it.

  In perfect sequence, a spurt of red fluid burst through the front of Deschesnes’ shirt, and then two more. Deschesnes made a loud grunt—Ambler could see, through the scope, the startled look in his eyes—and slumped from the bench to the cold ground. Red stains were visible on his stiff white shirt, seeping and spreading.

  The men playing pétanque saw what had happened and ran first toward the body and then, as one of them realized the dangers, away. Ambler swiftly dismantled the rifle and put it back in his bag. Then he waited. For a long minute, nothing happened. Then he heard the sound of an ambulance. He took a white coat from the athletic bag and put it on. Laurel stopped the ambulance, as they had arranged, and ran toward the body.

  Now Ambler ran to the ambulance, his white coat flapping, and grabbed a stretcher. It took him about thirty seconds. When he got there, Laurel, white-coated like him, was standing mute and pale, staring down at Benoit Deschesnes. “He’s dead,” she said in a quavering voice.

  “Right,” Ambler said, and heaved the body onto the gurney.

  Something was wrong.

  “No, I mean he’s really dead.” Laurel gave him a stricken look.

>   Ambler felt as if he had swallowed ice. It was impossible.

  Yet the body had the limpness, the heaviness, of death.

  “We need to get him out of here,” Ambler murmured, his eyes only now focusing on the fallen man. Then he saw it.

  A tiny trickle of blood falling from the man’s hairline, a tiny, circular area of matted hair above. Ambler felt the man’s scalp with his fingertips and was overcome by a roiling wave of vertigo. There was a small-caliber bullet hole a few inches above his forehead. It was the kind of shot that bled very little and caused instantaneous death. A shot that could have come from above—from too many potential sniper nests to count. Someone, somewhere in the park or the adjoining buildings, had shot the UN’s chief arms inspector through the head.

  Numbly, the two moved the body as quickly as they could to the ambulance. It could not be left behind or the squibs would give away Ambler’s failed intrigue. Yet too much time had elapsed. The vehicle had by now attracted a group of curious onlookers. Ambler closed the rear door and began to remove Deschesnes’ clothes. He took off the makeshift squib vest and wiped the fluids off Deschesnes’ chest.

  Now Ambler heard pounding on the door of the ambulance. He looked up.

  “Ouvrez la porte! C’est la police!”

  Why? Did one of the policemen want to ride with them to the hospital? Was that standard procedure? It could not be permitted. They were two Americans in a stolen ambulance, with a dead body. Ambler moved swiftly to the front of the vehicle and climbed into the driver’s seat. The engine was still running. They had been planning to drive out of Paris to the Bois de Boulogne, where Deschesnes had parked a rented car. Now there was no point. But they needed to go somewhere. He put the vehicle in gear. This was not the moment for a conversation with the gendarmerie.

  Ambler glanced at the scene behind him in the rearview mirror. A policeman was shouting angrily into his walkie-talkie. At the edge of the park, a little set off from the rest, the brunette in the midlength coat was talking on her cell phone. Ambler hoped she was reporting only that he had accomplished his mission. But then he noticed something over her shoulder that sent a chill running through his body.