Donohue’s anger suddenly flared. He tightened his fists, trying to control it, trying to control himself. His plan was a good one — he was safe, surely.
Unless Mussa was following him to order his death.
He stared at the door. He had no weapon but his hands.
He would kill Mussa if he had to. Mussa and whoever he sent. Kill them gladly with his bare hands.
Nearly trembling with his anger, Donohue punched the large square button next to the door to let himself out.
84
Tommy Karr saw colors and then brown, felt nothing and then fierce pain. His head snapped forward and he twisted, broken in half.
The moment pushed outward and then collapsed, time bending and twisting in three different directions at once.
He wasn’t falling anymore.
He was across a beam, and the world was on a slant.
He’d fallen onto the grid work. The fall had knocked the wind out of him and battered his body, but considering the alternative, he was in great shape.
Gradually, Karr recovered his breath. He’d fallen only a few feet, slipping down to one of the cross members, landing like a noodle across it. His head had jammed against a metal screen. His left leg hung free, but his right rested on one of the tower lights, twisted in thick cable that connected the light to the others nearby.
“OK,” he said aloud, “let’s get this show on the road.” But he couldn’t move.
He couldn’t find his hands. They seemed to be severed from his body. Finally he managed to turn his head and see his fingers gripping the meshwork near his face. Karr moved them slowly, then pushed his head back against the stabs and jolts at his neck.
“Go, let’s go,” he told himself. “Go, go, go. Come on, Tommy!”
He forced himself to start climbing.
The screen ran up the side of one of the girders near the elevator. While the rectangular holes were too narrow for footholds he found he could push his toes against the metal for traction.
The terrorists were clustered above, no longer paying attention to him. He pushed himself to move faster, but his head spun and he had to stop for a moment, rest.
The elevator began moving downward. Two of the terrorists swung down from above the girder where the others were working — they’d been on the top floor, which probably explained why the police hadn’t tried to get down from above.
Karr watched impotently as the two men began firing at the elevator. The machine continued downward as the bullets sprayed through it. He saw the face of a woman screaming and blood splattered against the glass doorway as the gondola disappeared below.
Kill them. Throw them off the tower. Now!
He started moving again.
The air around him exploded as the helicopters swooped in, one raking the side of the tower with its 7.62mm machine gun. Karr gripped the wire, the structure reverberating with the torrent of bullets the wash from the rotor.
A voice told Karr to leave, to get out of there now. It took a moment for him to realize it was the Art Room.
“There’s a helicopter firing on them!” he shouted.
“Get down!” yelled Rockman. “Get out of there. Go!”
Yeah, right, Karr thought. Move and I’m dead. I don’t even know why I’m not dead now
The terrorists began firing back. Between the forest of iron grids and the buffeting winds, the helicopters had a hard time getting their bullets close to the terrorists. Finally one of the terrorists above slumped against the beam.
Two figures came down from farther up, down on the stairs. They were policemen.
“Tell the cops they’re almost directly above the terrorists,” said Karr.
“What cops?” said Rockman. “There are no policemen on the third level.”
“Are you talking to the French or what? There are two cops or gendarmes or whatever…”
One of the men had a case in his hand. White smoke flared from the stairs and there was a huge explosion — the man had fired an antiair missile point-blank into the fuselage of one of the helicopters. The craft pitched hard to the right, then disappeared.
85
Johnny Bib admired his boss — William Rubens was, he had to admit, one of the few people in the organization who truly appreciated the worth of a prime number. Still, Johnny had long ago concluded that Rubens was not a “people person.” Johnny was willing to dismiss his rude behavior as a result of the pressure of the present operation. Still, Rubens irked him so much that he lost his entire train of thought. So when Blondie ran into the room waving a computer DVD-R disk in her hand, Johnny Bib had no idea what she was talking about.
“The computer that accessed the library. It’s part of a network in a printing plant. They back up their drives several times a day on RAID-5 disk arrays,” she said.
“What do you mean?” asked Johnny.
“The computer system that was used to access the library: it had a backup system that wrote files to two disks at once. They uploaded the formulas, probably because they had to work them at times the library computers weren’t up. There were copies on the drive. They must have erased the originals, but I have some copies of deleted backups. They didn’t erase them all, Johnny. They did it on some sort of schedule, but they didn’t get parts of the temporary backups. There is a whole set of files they never erased.”
Blondie put the disk into a nearby computer. The drive began to whirl.
“This is the most interesting, this series. Look — it’s another set of formulas, an explosion simulation. It’s almost the whole thing! It’s like the Eiffel Tower, but one of much greater power. Look at all these formulas and the size of these numbers.”
“What’s being modeled?” he asked.
“A three-dimensional area affected by an explosion,” said Blondie. “These values are so high — I think it’s an earthquake of six-point-oh magnitude. Maybe it was to shake down the concept behind the formula, get the process right. They must have started here, figured out how to get the program to work, then revised it for the Eiffel Tower. Can we find somebody to try and re-create what’s missing?”
“Wait,” said Johnny Bib. “I’ve seen this before.”
Johnny Bib stared at his screen. The numbers of some of the equations would produce a Fibonacci series.
No, not precisely; no, he was wrong.
It was a progression, though. And one he’d seen recently.
It was a wave amplification.
He’d seen a similar model on the computer the French had compromised a few months before, the one the terrorists had stopped using.
“Hmmm.”
“Part of this is just like the Eiffel Tower with the modular thing,” added Blondie. “Where they had a routine to add the explosions together. But look, it’s like weird, because there are these waves being focused and stuff? I don’t get it.”
Another equation with waves, but this clearly wasn’t designed to calculate or demonstrate the effects of a tsunami. It looked more like a three-dimensional compression of some sort.
Numbers were strewn across the screen. Johnny Bib’s brain pulled them into a coherent shape — focused wave formulas.
What would you want to compress with an explosion?
“Those variables are a multiple of the values from the explosives that are used in the Eiffel Tower simulation?” asked Johnny, pointing at the screen.
“I think yes,” answered Blondie.
“They wouldn’t yield that large an explosion.”
“No way. I mean, I’d have to work through the math, but I would just about—”
“Bring the team here quickly,” said Johnny Bib, jumping up. “Bring everyone — everyone. And someone from the history department. Two people from history! Someone from special weapons — whoever worked on the French warhead that’s missing from Algeria. Hurry!”
86
Karr tried to push upward while the terrorists were still distracted by the helicopters. But his arms wouldn’t move.
The second helicopter roared toward the tower from behind him. Karr closed his eyes, sensing that he was being targeted this time. Flares shot into the air, and then gunfire. The world shook violently.
The helicopter wasn’t firing at him but at the stairway above, where the missile-wielding terrorists were. Another missile shot away from the tower and the chopper wheeled away.
A dozen smells began to choke him. The helicopter buzzed back.
A body toppled past, rebounding in the grid work until it wedged against a pair of V-shaped cross members.
More gunfire.
Another terrorist slid down the steps until Karr couldn’t see him anymore, something clattering with him.
A gun?
Karr had no idea, but he decided it was a gun and that he was going to get it.
“Rockman, if you can tell the helicopter not to shoot me, I’d appreciate it,” he said, starting to claw his way back around the mesh to the stairwell.
“Tommy, get out of there!”
A rocket-propelled grenade whipped from the cluster of terrorists working with the explosions and vests. It exploded right beneath the helicopter’s chin, and the aircraft seemed to rear up and then nose down, plunging to the earth after rebounding against the side of the tower.
Karr closed his eyes and snaked his way through the metal, diving back toward the steps in a tumble. As he was stunned, it took a moment before he could start crawling upward.
As he turned the corner onto the fourth set of steps, a large pole shot through the grid work a few feet from his head. He ducked belatedly, then turned to see where the pole had gone. It was only when he saw the object explode in the sky a hundred yards away that he realized it was a missile, launched by another helicopter.
“Tell the helicopter not to do the job for them!” Karr yelled to the Art Room.
“Tommy, get out of there. Get down!” said Telach.
“Yeah,” he muttered. “I’m working on that.”
Two eyes stared down at him as he turned the next corner: the dead terrorist lay across the stairwell, head and body at different angles.
His body lay atop something. A gun.
Karr crawled to the man as fast as he could. The only thing he thought of, the only thing he saw, was the gun.
Except it wasn’t a gun. It was an empty launching tube for a rocket-propelled grenade. He pounded the dead man’s body in his rage, pounded and pounded, felt something hard against his fist.
He clawed at the man, pulling away his clothes.
A pistol.
He grabbed it, made sure it was ready to fire, and turned in the direction of the white coveralls a few feet away.
87
Lia pulled a bag of chips from the rack at the refreshment counter, then realized she had only a twenty-euro bill. The attendant sighed but dug into the register dutifully. Lia took the money and walked toward the end of the car opposite the one she’d come in through, as if she were an absent-minded passenger who’d lost her bearings. She’d already been through the train once without finding their quarry, but there was little to do now until they reached England, which wouldn’t be for more than an hour; they were still a good ten or fifteen minutes or so from the entrance to the Chunnel.
Most likely, the suspect had found some other entrance at the Eurostar terminal to sneak out of. Dean had blown it when he decided to come on the train.
About time he messed something up. Maybe he wouldn’t be so high-and-mighty, Mr. Perfect Ex-Marine.
She was angry at him for no good reason, just to be angry.
And she loved him.
Lia forced herself to concentrate on the job, scanning the faces in the seats as she walked through the cars. She continued through to the end, attracting a few odd stares as she pretended to hunt for her seat. As she turned around, she overheard one of the male passengers whispering to his companion something about a nice piece of meat.
She spun and unleashed a flood of French curse words at him. The man turned white and managed a meek apology as she spun away.
“What was that about?” asked Sandy Chafetz, popping onto the communications line. She’d just taken over for Rockman.
“Called me a sweet meal,” said Lia.
“You sure he meant you, not his lunch?”
“Does it matter?” snapped Lia, passing between cars.
* * *
Dean shifted in the seat, staring at the door at the end of the coach. If the suspect — now tentatively ID’d as a Mr. McCormack, birth location and place unknown — had gotten onto the train, he must have disguised himself somehow. The easiest way to do that was by changing clothes, but he must have done more or Dean would have found him by now.
“Charlie, this is Sandy Chafetz. I’ve come in to help out. I’m going to run your end of the mission. There’s a lot going on in Paris right now.”
Dean turned toward the window, cupping his hand over his face so the fact that he was talking to himself wouldn’t be so conspicuous. “Like what?”
“‘The Eiffel Tower is being attacked. And the President is still at de Gaulle.”
“Is he the target?”
“We don’t think so.”
“Where’s Tommy Karr?”
“He’s all right. We want you to keep focused on your mission. We have a list of the passengers who checked in. Your subject was in a second-class car, seat number—”
“I went through this with Rockman,” Dean told her. “There’s a kid in that seat about nine years old. I even looked at her ticket.”
He had pretended to be confused about the seat. The girl’s mother, sitting next to her, showed the proper ticket. It was possible that she’d switched with someone, but the woman didn’t seem to understand his question when he asked. In any event, McCormack was no longer nearby.
“We’re using a pattern recognition program to review the images we captured from the security cameras in the station and compare them with the ones Lia took earlier,” said Chafetz. “The first pass hasn’t shown any hits, but we’re widening the parameters. We’re going to ask the British authorities to meet the train and quarantine it. They may have to do that outside the station; we’re not sure yet. We don’t have to make a decision for a while; the train actually goes pretty slowly once it comes out of the Chunnel.”
“How good is your program?”
“Still experimental,” Chafetz admitted. “But if we get a straight-on shot or a decent profile, we can match. Once we get beyond the first pass, things get a little more problematic. We’re also looking at it ourselves.”
“You can’t just match up person for person?”
“We’re trying, Charlie. The problem is we didn’t start with a good shot in the first place and we didn’t have direct coverage inside the waiting area. The French video surveillance system is not what you would call cutting-edge, and it wasn’t set up to watch the Eurostar area. They obviously figured the security at the gates would suffice. So we have to enhance images from cameras on the far platform, and it’s not quite a piece of cake. At the same time, your subject obviously changed his appearance. Since we don’t know who he is, we have to work backward — we’re matching the people who haven’t changed. The computer program was not designed to do what we’re trying to do, so even if we had good images to start with, it wouldn’t be easy. It doesn’t mean that we won’t get it. Just that it’ll take a few minutes. OK?”
“OK. I appreciate the explanation.”
Lia came into the car and sat down across from him.
“The Eiffel Tower is under attack,” he told her.
“Where’s Tommy?”
“They won’t say.”
“Then he’s in the middle of it.”
There was a tone on the loudspeaker. The train master spoke, repeating the same message in French and English:
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are approaching the English Channel. We will be in the Chunnel for a short ride.”
“Ahead of schedule,” s
aid Lia.
“We have six possibilities,” said Chafetz. “We’ll be able to download them to you in about three minutes. See if you can check each one out, get any additional information.”
“Can you transmit when we’re in the Chunnel?” asked Dean.
“Uh, no. All right, I’m sorry — the train is ahead of schedule. We may have to wait until you’re but. We won’t be able to transmit while you’re in the tunnel. But it won’t be long. It only takes ten minutes or so. You’re not going anywhere.”
“Just to the restroom,” said Dean, getting up.
88
“French television is just getting images of the battle at the Eiffel Tower,” Telach told Rubens.
“The surveillance network we tapped into?”
“That went out when the terrorists blew up the stairs and the elevator on the north and south legs. The news feed is all we can get.”
“Put the French news feed on the screen,” he told her.
A blurred blue image filled the screen, too shaky and distant for Rubens to make out. Then the Eiffel Tower came into view, the old grid work stark against the backdrop of the sky. Smoke curled from the side and top.
Rubens knew from Tommy’s description that the terrorists were clustered around a girder about twenty feet below the third level. There wasn’t enough detail for Rubens to make out what was going on, but he assumed that they were stitching their bomb vests together. They’d be almost done now.
“Tell the French not to let them put their bomb packs together,” Rubens told Telach.
“We already have.”
“Tell them again.”
Johnny Bib burst through the door at the side of the room, two of his analysts behind him.
“Johnny, things are chaotic here,” warned Rubens.
“I know where the old French atomic warhead is,” said Johnny Bib. “We found another simulation, this one involving a nuclear device.”
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