The Ambler Warning

by Robert Ludlum

  Ambler ordered a coffee, black, from one of the harried but pleasant attendants and lingered over the various business publications on the small table nearby: the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, the Far Eastern Economic Review, Newsweek International, and The Economist. When he picked up The Economist, he felt a small twinge: on the cover was a photograph of Liu Ang looking cheerful, above the sprightly legend BRINGING THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC BACK TO THE PEOPLE.

  He quickly flipped through the cover story, his eyes skimming through the copy, pausing at the bold subheads. THE SEA TURTLE RETURNS, ran one; AMERICAN INFLUENCE DEBATED was another. At frequent intervals, his eyes flicked up, watching the hotel guests come and go. Before long, he found a promising candidate: an Englishman in his early forties, with graying blond hair, someone in banking, to judge by his spread collar, his finely patterned yellow tie. He had just entered the hotel and looked slightly annoyed with himself, as if he had foolishly left behind an item that he needed. His round cheeks were still pink from the cold, and his black cashmere topcoat bore a few flakes of snow.

  Ambler hurriedly left a few francs by his coffee cup and caught up with the businessman just as he was striding into a waiting elevator; Ambler stepped into the car moments before the door closed. The businessman had pressed the fourth-floor button. Ambler pressed the button again, as if he had not realized it was already lit. He glanced at the man’s conference badge: Martin Hibbard, it read. Moments later, Ambler followed him out of the elevator and down the hall, noting the number of the room where the businessman stopped but taking care to walk past him with a steady gait, vanishing at the turn at the end of the hall. Just out of sight, Ambler stopped, listened as the door shut behind the Englishman and then, half a minute later, opened again. The Englishman emerged clutching a leather portfolio and returned to the elevator bank. Given the time of day and his late-for-a-meeting air, it was a safe assumption that he had a lunch appointment and had a need of whatever documents were in the portfolio. In all likelihood, he would then head to the Congress Center for one of the two-thirty sessions and would not be back to his hotel room for hours.

  Ambler returned to the lobby and scanned the various clerks at the front desk, an elegant station of mahogany and marble. One of them, a woman in her late twenties with slightly too much lipstick and eye shadow, would be his best chance, he decided. He would not take his chances with the shaven-headed man in his forties, although he was free, nor with the older, graying woman with the fixed smile and an under slept look about her eyes.

  When the younger woman had finished up with the guest she had been dealing with—an African frustrated by his inability to exchange nairas for Swiss francs—Ambler stepped forward with a sheepish expression.

  “I’m such a moron,” he said. “Can you tell?”

  “I’m sorry?” Her English was only lightly accented.

  “I’m sorrier. Left my key card in my room.”

  “Not to worry, sir,” the woman said pleasantly. “That happens all the time.”

  “Not to me it doesn’t. The name’s Marty Hibbard. Martin Hibbard, I should say.”

  “And the room number?”

  “What is it now?” Ambler pretended that he was racking his memory. “Oh, I remember—four seventeen.”

  The woman behind the marble counter rewarded him with a commending smile, keyed a few codes into her computer. Moments later, a new key card emerged from a machine behind her, and she handed it to him. “Hope you’re enjoying your stay,” she said.

  “You know, I am, actually,” Ambler said. “Thanks to you.”

  She smiled gratefully at the rare compliment.

  Room 417 turned out to be spacious and grandly appointed, with light, airy colors and delicate furniture: a Sheridan-style highboy, a wing chair, a small desk and hard-backed wooden chair in the far corner. There was not a room for rent in the whole Davos-Klosters area, not during the last week of January, but the one he had taken momentary possession of would serve, at least for a while.

  He made the phone call, turned off the lights, drew the curtains shut, including the inner, room-darkening ones, and waited.

  The knock at the door came ten minutes later. Ambler pressed himself against the wall adjacent to the unhinged side of the door. That was standard placement, something that he had learned in training. Something that was second nature to an operative like Harrison Ambler.

  If Harrison Ambler was really who he was.

  An effluent of black anxiety arose in him like a toxic plume from a smokestack. He unlatched the door, opened it a crack.

  The room was dark. But he did not have to see; he could smell her—smell her shampoo, the fabric softener on her clothes, the honeyed scent of her skin.

  “Hal?” Her voice, barely more than a whisper. She closed the door behind her.

  He spoke quietly, too, in order not to startle her. “Over here,” he said, and his mouth formed a smile as involuntary as a sneeze, a sob, a laugh. It almost seemed to light the room by itself.

  She stepped toward Ambler’s voice, reached a hand out to his face like a blind person, found his cheek, caressed it, and now stood very near him. He felt her warmth, could feel her lips brushing his—and the contact was electric. He put his arms around her and drew her close, feeling her cheek against the top of his chest, and now he kissed her hair, her ear, her neck, inhaling deeply. He had to savor every moment he had with her. Though he knew he might not survive the day, a curious radiance swelled within him—the assurance that whatever happened to him, he would not die unloved.

  “Laurel,” he breathed, “I—”

  She pressed her mouth to his, silencing him and seeming to draw courage from his kiss. “I know,” she said after a pause.

  He cradled her face in both his hands and gently moved his thumbs across her cheeks, along the tender skin beneath her eyes; they were wet, had just become so.

  “You don’t have to say the words,” she said, her voice thickened by emotion but still hushed.

  She stepped into his embrace again, on her tippy-toes, he realized, pressing her mouth to his once more. For a long moment, he was aware of nothing else but her: her warmth, her smell, her firm, soft, trembling flesh pressed against his, even the slow beating of his—her?—heart. The rest of the world vanished for him, the hotel room, the town, the mission, the world itself. Nothing else existed but the two of them, a twoness that was somehow no longer a twoness at all. He felt her clutching him, no longer desperately but with an odd serenity that had somehow suffused them both.

  Now they both relaxed and stepped back, a twoness again. He flipped the switch near the door. With illumination, the space they were in changed, too; it became smaller, cozier, rendered more intimate by the opulent textures and colors. Laurel somehow did not change; she was exactly as he had pictured her, as if the image in his mind had materialized before his eyes: the large green-flecked hazel eyes, filled with yearning, love, concern; the porcelain skin and full, slightly parted lips. It was a look that radiated utter devotion, a look of the sort one rarely saw outside the movies—only it was real; it was here, within arms’ reach. It was the realest thing there was.

  “Thank God you’re safe, my darling, my love,” she said quietly. “Thank God you’re safe.”

  “You’re so beautiful.” He spoke the thought aloud without consciously intending to. My Ariadne.

  “Let’s just leave,” she said, a sudden wild sense of hope transforming her features. “Let’s ski down that mountain and never look back.”

  “Laurel,” he said.

  “Just us,” she said. “What happens will happen. We’ll have each other.”

  “Soon,” he said. “In just a few hours.”

  Laurel blinked slowly; she had been trying to keep her fear at bay, but it was spilling over now, unstoppable. “Oh, my darling,” she said. “I have a bad feeling about this. I can’t shake it.” There was a quaver in her voice; her eyes glistened moistly.

  The fea
r that ran through him now was fear for her—for her own safety. “Did you talk to Caston about it?”

  She smiled ruefully through her tears. “Talk to Caston about feelings? He just started talking about odds and probabilities.”

  “Sounds like Caston.”

  “Long odds, and slim probabilities.” She was no longer smiling. “I think he has a bad feeling, too. Only he doesn’t admit to having feelings.”

  “Some people find it easier that way.”

  “He says you’re going to do what you’re going to do, no matter how long the odds of success are.”

  “Did his handheld calculator tell him that?” Ambler shook his head. “But he’s not wrong.”

  “I don’t want to lose you, Hal.” She closed her eyes briefly. “I can’t lose you.” She spoke louder than she had meant to.

  “My God, Laurel,” he said. “I don’t want to lose you, either. And then, somehow, there’s a strange way that . . .” He shook his head, for there were words he could not speak, could not expect anyone to understand. His life had been cheap before—cheap to himself. He had never thought of it that way, was only now in a position to recognize it. Because it was no longer cheap. It contained something of infinite value. It contained Laurel.

  Yet it was because of Laurel that he was here; it was because of Laurel that he would do what had to be done. He could not go to ground, disappear within some sprawling South American metropolis, living out an anonymous existence while warfare broke out among the great powers. A world that contained Laurel was a world that suddenly and intensely mattered to him. These were the things Ambler thought and could not say. He just gazed at her for a few moments, both of them gathering their fortitude for what lay ahead of them.

  Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

  The words returned to him like acid splashing in his throat. He could not begin to fathom the sort of global upheaval that would occur if the Palmerite conspiracy succeeded.

  Ambler moved to the window, peered out toward the low-slung complex of buildings across the street: the Congress Center. Military policemen stood in clusters, almost entirely clad in midnight blue—it was the color of their zippered trousers, nylon-shelled jackets, and woolen caps—save for a turquoise stripe on the inside of their flipped-up jacket collars and their black high lace-up boots. When they stood close together, it was as if they brought the night with them. Tall fences of tubular steel, partly buried in snow, funneled visitors to a precisely indicated point of egress. Ambler had seen maximum-security prisons that were more inviting than this.

  “Maybe Caston will figure out a way,” Laurel said. “He got me in. Not that I learned a damned thing.”

  “He got you in?” Ambler was astonished.

  She nodded. “He figured out that, technically, I’ve got an intel-service classification. High-level clearance, right? The WEF office was able to get official confirmation of that. Fact is, the groundskeepers at Parrish Island have high-level clearance, too—them’s the rules at a facility like that—but how were they to know? It’s all about these letters and numbers that go after your name, and Caston’s a whiz at working the system.”

  “Where is he, by the way?”

  “Should be here any minute,” Laurel said. “I came early.” She did not have to explain why. “But maybe he’s hit on something—found one of those ‘anomalies’ of his.”

  “Listen, Caston is a good man, but he’s an analyst, a numbers guy. What we’re dealing with is people, not the electronic vapor trail they leave.”

  Someone rapped on the door three times; Laurel recognized the tattoo and let Clayton Caston in. His tan raincoat bore epaulets of snow, which were dissolving into rivulets down the front. Caston himself looked exhausted, even more pallid than usual. He had a black tote bag in one hand, silk-screened with the logo of the World Economic Forum. He looked at Ambler without a flicker of surprise.

  “You find out anything?” Ambler asked him.

  “Not a whole lot,” the auditor said soberly. “I was inside the conference center for an hour and a half. Like I said, I was here once before, on a panel to do with offshore financial institutions and international money laundering. They’ve always got a lot of technical seminars, along with the glitzier events. This morning I wandered around the place, went in and out of the seminars. I ought to have a button that says ‘Ask Me About Transnational Capital Flows.’ Laurel got around, too, but it sounds like she didn’t strike gold, either.”

  “The whole place kinda gave me the willies,” Laurel admitted. “So many faces you recognize from magazines and the TV news. Makes you dizzy. It’s just a reflex, but at first you keep nodding at people, because they look familiar and you somehow think you must know each other. Then you realize they just look familiar because they’re famous.”

  Caston nodded. “Davos makes Bilderberg look like the Muncie Chamber of Commerce.”

  “Kept feeling that I stood out somehow, that everybody could tell I didn’t belong,” Laurel went on. “And the thought that one of them—just one of them—might be this maniac . . .”

  “We’re not dealing with a maniac,” Ambler said carefully. “We’re dealing with a professional. Far worse.” He paused. “But there’s good news, too—the simple fact that both of you were able to gain entrance,” Ambler said. “That was your doing, Caston, and I’m still not sure how you pulled it off.”

  “You forget that I’m a senior officer of the Central Intelligence Agency,” the auditor said. “I had my assistant call the office of the executive chairman, get my name added to the D.C. retinue. An official-sounding call from Langley, with lots of callback info, security assurances. They didn’t argue.”

  “They don’t mind having spooks at the table here?”

  “Mind? They love it. You still don’t get it—Davos is all about power. Power of every kind. They’d be delighted to have the DCI himself—he was here a couple of years ago—but they’re quite pleased to have a senior CIA official, too.”

  “And you got Laurel on the books the same way?”

  “My assistant swung it, actually. We described her as a psychiatric specialist with the Joint Intelligence Services—which happens to be her technical designation. She’s also got a 12A-56J level of clearance, which happens to be mandatory for Parrish Island personnel. The last-minute nature of the request was slightly irregular, but not remarkably so, especially given their dealings with U.S. intel folks. The rest was a matter of elision, shall we say.”

  “But the WEF security people wouldn’t just take your word for it, would they?”

  “Of course not. They called Langley, reached my office through the switchboard—that’s standard, as I say, the callback procedure—and had a second discussion with my assistant. I gather he intimated things about how it would be a ‘special favor’ to the DCI and the Secretary of State, that sort of thing. Then he provides them a zero-knowledge pass code for purposes of verification. See, there’s a system for limited-access intranet verification, developed for collaborative operations with other nations. Upshot is that they can get an abbreviated personnel listing—a stub is the term—which provides C-level confirmation of what they’ve been told. My office then transmits a digital photograph for the security card—there’s a JIS pic on file—and we’re in like Flynn.”

  “You know, I almost understand what you just said.” Ambler tilted his head. “But hang on. You agreed the security system here was foolproof.”

  “Pretty much foolproof, yeah. Do I look like a fool?”

  “So can you do the same for me?”

  “Um, let me think. Are you on the employee rolls at the CIA?” Caston’s lids fluttered with a suppressed eye roll. “Do you have a personnel record with the Joint Intelligence Services division? If they call the switchboard at Langley to verify your employment and rank, what are they going to be told?”

  “But—”

  “Harr
ison Ambler does not exist,” Caston snapped. “Or have you forgotten? Hate to be the one to break the news, but they erased you, all right? The World Economic Forum traffics in data, bits and bytes. It’s a world of digital signatures, digital records, digital confirmation. I’d have an easier time getting a WEF security badge issued to Bigfoot or Yeti or the goddamn Loch Ness Monster. They don’t exist, either, but at least you can find them on the Internet.”

  “You finished?”

  “My fear is, we’re all finished.” Caston’s eyes blazed. “All this time I figured you were holding back some grand scheme you had. The hell of it is, you’re even more reckless than I’d imagined. You race pellmell into a potential disaster area without a plan! You don’t think ahead—hell, you don’t think, period. From the outset, our chances were between slim and none. Well, slim’s just left the house.”

  Ambler felt as if the force of gravity had suddenly doubled; his limbs felt like lead. “Just break it down for me—tell me how the badge system is organized physically.”

  “You can’t bullshit your way in, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Caston grumbled. “And you can’t get in by doing whatever the opposite of bullshitting is, that peephole-to-the-brain trick you do. The system is very simple, and damn near impossible to spoof.” He unbuttoned his gray wool-and-polyester suit jacket—Ambler noticed a faint smell of mothballs about it—and showed them the identification badge he was wearing on a white nylon string around his neck. It was deceptively simple: a white plastic rectangle, with a photograph of Caston to the left of his name; there was a silvery square hologram below, a blue color stripe above. He turned it around, exposing the magnetic stripe on the back.