The Paris Option

by Robert Ludlum

  “He did, and I agree his actions were far from medical.”

  “Possibly an agent? Placed in the hospital by someone who’s unconvinced by our charade?”

  “If Smith is, he’s not CIA or MI6. I’m familiar with all their people in Europe and on the European desks at Langley and London SIS. He’s definitely American, so unlikely Mossad or a Russian. And he’s not one of ours. That I’d definitely know. My sources within American intelligence say he’s simply an army research scientist assigned to a U.S. military medical research facility.”

  “Absolutely American?”

  “The clothes, the manner, the speech, the attitude. Plus the confirmation by my contacts. My reputation on it.”

  “Perhaps he could be a Company man whom you don’t know? Langley lies about such things. Their business is to lie. They’ve grown rather good at it.”

  “My contacts don’t lie. Plus, he’s in none of our files at military intelligence.”

  “Could he be an agent from an organization you don’t know, or don’t have sources to?”

  “Impossible. What do you take us for? If the Second Bureau doesn’t know any such organization, it doesn’t exist.”

  “Very well.” Mauritania nodded. “Still, we’d better continue to watch him, your people and mine.” He rose in a single fluid motion.

  With relief, Captain Bonnard struggled to his feet from the low chair. His legs felt nearly paralyzed. He had never understood why these desert people were not all cripples. “Perhaps,” he said, massaging behind his knee, “Smith is nothing more than what he appears. The United States thrives on a culture of guns, after all.”

  “But he’d hardly be allowed to carry one to Europe on a commercial flight without some predetermined reason, and a very important one at that,” Mauritania pointed out. “Still, perhaps you’re right. There are ways to acquire guns here, too, including for foreigners, yes? Since his friend was the victim of violence, Smith may have come for revenge. In any case, Americans always seem to feel less vulnerable when they have a weapon. Rather silly of them.”

  Which left Captain Bonnard with the distinct impression that the enigmatic and occasionally treacherous terrorist chief did not think Bonnard was right at all.

  On high alert, Jon Smith strolled toward the boulevard Pasteur, all the while pretending to look for a taxi to hail. He kept turning his head left and right, apparently studying the traffic for a potential ride, but really probing for whoever was out there watching him.

  Automotive exhaust filled the air. He looked back toward the institute’s entrance, where the guards were checking identifications. Finally he decided on three potentials: A youngish woman, mid-thirties or so, dark-haired, no figure to speak of, lumpy face. Altogether unremarkable in a dull black skirt and cardigan. She had stopped to admire the gloomy brick-and-stone church of Saint-Jean Baptiste de la Salle.

  The second potential was a middle-aged, equally colorless man, wearing a dark blue sports coat and corduroy jeans, despite the warm May weather. He stood before a street vendor’s cart, poring over the items as if he were looking for a lost masterpiece. The third person was a tall old man, leaning on a black ebony cane. He was standing in the shadow of a tree near the curb, watching the smoke at the Pasteur drift upward.

  Smith had close to two hours before the meeting President Castilla had arranged with General Henze, the NATO commander. It would probably not take that long to lose whoever was interested in him, which meant maybe he could get some information first.

  All this time, he had continued to pretend to be looking for a taxi. With a dramatic shrug of disgust, he walked onward toward the boulevard Pasteur. At the intersection, he turned right, sauntering toward the bustling Hôtel Arcade with its glass, steel, and stucco facade. He glanced into store windows, checked his watch, and finally stopped at a café, where he chose an outside table. He ordered a demi, and when the beer arrived, he sipped and watched the passing parade with the relaxed smile of a recently arrived tourist.

  The first of the trio to appear was the tall old man who had been leaning on his cane in the shadow of a tree, watching the smoke from the bombed building, which could be suspicious in itself. Criminals were known to be drawn back to the scene of an attack, although this man looked too old and disabled to have taken on the duties of a sneak bombing. He limped along, using the cane expertly, and found a seat at a café directly across the street from Smith. There he took a copy of Le Monde from his pocket and, after the waiter brought coffee and pastry, unfurled it. He read as he sipped and ate, apparently with no interest in Smith. In fact, he never looked up from his newspaper again.

  The second to arrive was the lumpy-faced young woman with the dark hair and nondescript appearance, who suddenly was walking past the café not five feet from where Smith sat. She glanced directly at him and continued on without showing the faintest interest, as if he were simply empty space. Once past, she paused as if considering stopping for a drink, too. She seemed to dismiss the thought and moved on, disappearing into the crowded Hôtel Arcade.

  The third person, the man who had been shopping with such concentration at the street vendor’s cart, did not appear.

  As he finished his beer, Smith replayed his observations of the tall old man and the nondescript woman—their facial features, the rhythm of their movements, the way they held their heads and used their hands and feet. He did not leave until he was certain he had memorized them.

  Then he paid and moved briskly back along the boulevard toward the Pasteur métro station at the intersection with the rue de Vaugirard. The old man with the cane soon appeared behind, moving well for his age and apparent infirmity. Smith had seen him instantly. He monitored the fellow with his peripheral vision and continued to watch for anyone else who appeared suspicious.

  It was time to use an old tradecraft trick: He ducked into the métro, watching. The man with the cane did not follow. Smith waited until a train pulled into the station, and then he joined the stream of passengers that was exiting back to the street. A block away, under the leaden sky, the old fellow was still walking along. Smith hurried after, keeping just close enough to observe, until the man turned into a bookstore with a gone to lunch sign in French posted in the glass door. Key in hand, he unlocked the door. Once inside, he turned the sign around to open, dropped his cane into a stand by the door, and shrugged out of his suit coat.

  There was no point in pressing the situation, Smith decided. After all, the fellow did have a key. On the other hand, he wanted to make certain. So he stopped outside the big plate-glass window and watched as the man shoved his arms into a beige sweater-vest and methodically buttoned it from the top down. When the man finished, he took a seat on a high stool behind the counter, looked up, saw Smith, and smiled and gestured for him to come in. He obviously either owned or worked at the bookstore. Smith felt a stab of deep disappointment.

  Still, someone had been surveilling him, and he had narrowed the potentials to the dark-haired woman or the man who had been checking out the street vendor’s wares. In turn, whichever of the two it was, he or she had also recognized Smith’s suspicions and exited the chase.

  He gave the bookseller a friendly wave and hurried back to the métro station. But then, with a sinking feeling, he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise again. Someone was still nearby, studying him. Frustrated, worried, he stood outside the station and gazed all around. He saw nothing. He had to lose his tail. He could not lead them to his meeting with the general. He turned and rushed down into the station.

  In a doorway partially shielded by a bush, the dull-looking woman in the shop keeper’s black outfit scrutinized Smith as he carefully surveyed the area. Her hiding place was recessed and dark, which was perfect, since it allowed her dusky clothing to disappear into the gloom. She took care to keep her face far back in the shadow, because although she was tan, the paler color of her skin might reflect just enough light for the very observant Smith to notice.

  He looked
uneasy and suspicious. He was handsome, with almost American Indian features—high cheekbones, a planed face, and very dark blue eyes. Right now the eyes were hidden behind black sunglasses, but she remembered the color. She shivered.

  At last he seemed to make a decision. He hurried into the métro. There was no further doubt in her mind: He had realized he was being followed, but he did not know it was specifically she, or he would have followed after she passed his table outside the café and stared straight at him.

  She sighed, irritated by the situation. It was time to report in. She pulled her cell phone from a pocket beneath her heavy black skirt. “He figured out he was being tailed, but he didn’t make me,” she told her contact. “Otherwise, he appears to be here really because he’s worried about his injured friend. Everything he’s done since he arrived is consistent with that.” She listened and said angrily, “That’s your call. If you think it’s worthwhile, send someone else to tail him. I’ve got my own assignment…. No, nothing definite so far, but I can smell something big. Mauritania wouldn’t have come here unless it was imperative…. Yes, if he’s got it.”

  She clicked off the cell phone, looked carefully around, and slipped out of the shadows. Jon Smith had not reappeared from the métro, so she hurried back to the café where he had sat. She searched the pavement beneath the chair he had used. She nodded to herself, satisfied. There was nothing.

  Smith made four changes of trains, returned rapidly to the street, and plunged back down again at two of the stations. He watched everywhere until, finally, after an hour of this, he was confident he had lost his tail. Relieved but still wary, he caught a taxi to the address Fred Klein had given him.

  It turned out to be a private pension in an ivy-covered, three-story brick building on a small courtyard off the rue des Renaudes, secluded from the street and the bustle of the city. At her post inside the elegant front door, the concierge was as discreet as the building itself. A matronly woman with steel-trap eyes and a face that revealed nothing, she showed no reaction when he asked for M. Werner, but she came from behind her counter to lead him up the stairs with decidedly unmatronly movements. He suspected that more metal than just her house keys was hidden under her cardigan and apron.

  He did not have to guess about the bantamweight sitting on a chair in the second-floor corridor, reading a Michael Collins detective novel. The concierge vanished back down the stairs like a magician’s rabbit, and the small ramrod on the chair studied Smith’s ID without getting up. He wore a dark business suit, but there was a bulge under his armpit that, all things considered, looked to Smith to be an old regulation-issue 1911 Colt semiautomatic. The man’s stiff and precise mannerisms hinted at an invisible uniform that was all but tattooed to his skin. Obviously, he was a career enlisted man; an officer would have stood. In fact, he was a privileged enlisted man, to still be carrying the old Colt .45—probably a master sergeant for the general.

  He returned Smith’s ID, gave a slight nod of his bullet head as a salute to rank, and said, “What’s the word, Colonel?”

  “Loki.”

  The bullet head pointed. “The general’s waiting. Third door down.”

  Smith walked to it, knocked, and when a guttural “Come in” sounded, he opened the door and stepped into a sunny room with a large window and a view of tangled, blooming gardens that Monet would have liked to paint. Standing inside was another bantamweight, but ten years older and forty pounds lighter than the one in the hallway. He was rail thin, his back turned to Smith as he stared out at the watercolor-perfect gardens.

  As Smith closed the door, the general demanded, “What’s going to happen with this new technology that’s supposed to be out there somewhere, Colonel? Are we looking for a result on the order of a nuclear bomb, or is it more like a peashooter? Or maybe nothing at all? What are they planning?” Small as he was, his voice was six feet tall and should have belonged to a heavyweight. It was as rough as redwood bark and hoarse, probably from a youth spent bellowing orders over gunfire.

  “That’s what I’m here to find out, sir.”

  “You have a gut hunch?”

  “I’ve been in Paris just a few hours. A would-be assassin has threatened me and Dr. Martin Zellerbach, who worked with Dr. Chambord, with an automatic weapon.”

  “I heard about that,” the general admitted.

  “I’ve also been tailed by someone who knows their job. Plus, of course, there’s the incident at Diego Garcia. I’d say it’s definitely not nothing.”

  The general turned. “That’s all? No theories? No educated guesses? You’re the scientist. An M.D. to boot. What should I be worrying about? Armageddon in the hands of sweet damn-all, or just a schoolboy’s bloody nose and our vaunted American ego bruised?”

  Smith gave a dry smile. “Science and medicine don’t teach us to theorize or make wild guesses in front of generals, sir.”

  The general brayed a laugh. “No, I suppose not.”

  General Carlos Henze, U.S. Army, was the Supreme Allied Commander of Europe (SACEUR) for NATO’s combined forces. As wiry as a coiled spring, Henze wore his graying hair short, which, of course, was expected in the military. But it was not the boot-camp buzz affected by marine generals and other stiff-necks to show they were plain, no-nonsense soldiers who slogged through the muck like any other hero. Instead, his hair grew down to an inch above the collar of his immaculately tailored, charcoal-brown, two-piece suit, which he wore with the easy familiarity of the CEO of a Fortune 500 corporation. He was the new breed of general, integrated and fully prepared for the twenty-first century.

  The general gave a crisp nod. “All right, Colonel. What say I tell you what I know, okay? Have a seat. That couch will do.”

  Smith sat on the ornate velvet couch from the time of Napoleon III, while the general returned to his window and bucolic view, his back again to Smith, who found himself wondering if this was Henze’s way of focusing a roomful of division and regimental commanders on the matter at hand. It was a good trick. Smith thought he might try using it in one of the meetings with his notoriously disorganized fellow research scientists.

  The general said, “So we’ve maybe got some kind of new machine that can access and control all the world’s electronic software and hardware, including any country’s codes, encryptions, electronic keys for launching missiles, command structures, and instructions. That about sum up what the gizmo will be able to do, assuming it exists?”

  “For military purposes, yes,” Smith agreed.

  “Which is all that concerns me and, right now, you. History can handle the rest.” His back still facing Smith, the general raised his gaze to the steely clouds that hid the May sky, as if wondering whether the sun would ever shine again. “Every sign is that the man who built it is dead, and his records are ash. No one claims responsibility for the bomb that killed him, which is unusual among terrorists but not unheard of.” This time Henze simply stopped speaking, an almost imperceptible stiffening of his back and shoulders indicating he expected a response, either yes or no.

  Smith repressed a sigh. “Yes, sir, except that we can add the probable assassin, affiliation unknown, who attempted to kill Dr. Zellerbach in the hospital this morning.”

  “Right.” Now Henze turned. He stalked to a brocade chair, dropped into it, and glared at Smith as only a general could. “Okay, I’ve got some information for you, too. The president said I was to extend all help, and keep mum about you, and I’m not in the habit of ignoring orders. So this is what my people and the CIA have found out: The night of the explosion, a black van was seen parked behind the Pasteur annex on the rue des Volontaires. Just minutes before the explosion, it left the area. You know Chambord had a research assistant?”

  “Yes. Last I heard, the French authorities were looking for him. He’s been found?”

  “Dead. Suicide. He killed himself last night in a miserable little hotel outside Bordeaux. He’d been vacationing in a village on the coast, painting the fishermen, of all fool thin
gs. According to one of the kid’s Paris friends, Chambord had told him he was working too hard, take a vacation, and that’s his idea of fun. These French. So what was he doing in a fleabag on the wrong side of the Garonne?”

  “They’re sure it was suicide?”

  “So they say. The CIA tells me the owner of the fleabag remembers the assistant was carrying a briefcase when he checked in. He noticed, because it’s more luggage than most of his so-called guests have. You know what I mean—it’s that kind of ‘hotel.’ The deal was that the assistant was alone, no girlfriend, no boyfriend. And if he did have a briefcase, it’s missing now.”

  “You figure the bombers hit again, made the murder look like a suicide, and then took the briefcase and whatever was in it.”

  Henze jumped up, paced, and marched back to his favorite post at the window. “Thinking about it is, the president tells me, your job. But I will say the CIA is of the opinion the suicide has a rank odor, even though the Sûreté seems satisfied.”

  Smith pondered. “The research assistant would’ve known Chambord’s progress, but that alone wouldn’t necessarily have been enough reason to kill him. After Chambord’s death, and the rumors of success, we’d have to act as if Chambord built a working molecular machine anyway. So I’d say there had to be more reason. Most likely, the briefcase, as you suspect. The assistant’s notes…maybe Chambord’s own notes…something inside that they considered dangerous or critical.”

  “Yeah,” Henze growled, and turned to give Smith a baleful stare. “So, because Diego Garcia happened, it looks like the bombers have the data for whatever Chambord created, which you think’s an honest-to-God working molecular supercomputer—”

  “A prototype,” Smith corrected.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It’s probably bulky, not easily portable. Glass and tubes and connections. Not yet the sleek commercial models we’ll see in the future.”