The Paris Option

by Robert Ludlum

  Jon was dead. The news ripped at his heart. He had loved Jon as only two friends of such dissimilar talents and interests could love each other, bound by the elusive quality of mutual respect and seasoned by the years. For Marty, the loss was so large as to be inexpressible. Jon had always been there. He could not imagine living in a world that had no Jon.

  Randi sat down beside the bed and took his hand. With her other hand, she wiped the tears from her own cheeks. Across the room, Peter stood against the door, stone-faced, only his slightly reddened skin betraying his grief.

  “He was doing his job,” Randi told Marty gently. “A job he wanted to do. You can’t ask for more than that.”

  “He…he was a real hero,” Marty stammered. His face quivered as he struggled to find the right words. Emotions were difficult for him to express, a language he did not fully have. “Did I ever tell you how much I admired Bertrand Russell? I’m very careful about my heroes. But Russell was extraordinary. I’ll never forget the first time I read his Principles of Mathematics. I think I was ten, and it really startled me. Oh, my. The implications. It opened everything to me! That was when he took math out of the realm of abstract philosophy and gave it a precise framework.”

  Peter and Randi exchanged a look. Neither knew what he was talking about.

  Marty was nodding to himself, his tears splashing helplessly out onto the bedclothes. “It had so many ideas that were exciting to think about. Of course, Martin Luther King, Jr., William Faulkner, and Mickey Mantle were pretty heroic, too.” His gaze roamed the room as if looking for a safe place to alight. “But Jon was always my biggest hero. Absolutely, positively biggest. Since we were little. But I never told him. He could do everything I couldn’t, and I could do everything he couldn’t. And he liked that. So did I. How often can anyone find that? Losing him is like losing my legs or my arms, only worse.” He gulped. “I’m going to…miss him so much.”

  Randi squeezed his hand. “We all are, Mart. I was so sure he’d get out in time. He was sure. But…” Her chest contracted, and she fought back a sob. She bowed her head, her heart aching. She had failed, and Jon was dead. She cried softly.

  Peter said gruffly, “He knew what he was doing. We all know the risk. Someone has to do it so the businessmen and house wives and shop girls and bloody playboys and millionaires can sleep in peace in their own beds.”

  Randi heard the bitterness in the old MI6 agent’s voice. It was his way of expressing his loss. Where he stood he was alone, as in reality he always was, the wounds on his cheek, left arm, and left hand half-healed and unbandaged, livid in his repressed rage at the death of his friend.

  “I wanted to help this time, too,” Marty said in that slow, halting voice that resulted from his medication.

  “He knew, lad,” Peter told him.

  A sad silence filled the room. The traffic noises rose in volume again. Somewhere far off, an ambulance siren screamed.

  Finally Peter said in gross understatement, “Things don’t always work out the way we want.”

  The telephone beside Marty’s bed rang, and all three stared at it. Peter picked it up. “Howell here. I told you never to…what? Yes. When? You’re sure? All right. Yes, I’m on it.”

  He set the receiver into its cradle and turned to his friends, his face a grim mask as if he had seen a vision of horror. “Top secret. Straight from Downing Street. Someone has taken control of all the U.S. military satellites in space and locked the Pentagon and NASA out. Can you think of any way they could’ve done that without a DNA computer?”

  Randi blinked. She grabbed tissues from the box beside Marty’s bed and blew her nose. “They got the computer out of the villa? No, they couldn’t have. What the hell does it mean?”

  “Damned if I know, except that the danger isn’t over. We have to start finding them all over again.”

  Randi shook her head. “They couldn’t have gotten the prototype out. There was nowhere near enough time for that. But…” She stared at Peter. “Maybe Chambord somehow survived? That’s the only thing that makes sense. And if Chambord…”

  Marty sat straight up in the bed, his distraught face quivering with hope. “Jon may be alive, too!”

  “Hold on, both of you. That doesn’t necessarily follow. The Crescent Shield would’ve done everything to get Chambord away safely. But they wouldn’t have given a ragman’s damn about Jon or Ms. Chambord. In fact, you heard automatic fire, Randi. Who else could it have been aimed at? You said in your report that Jon had to have died either in a firefight or when the missile hit. The bloody bastards were cheering. Victorious. Nothing changes that.”

  “You’re right. It doesn’t, dammit.” Randi grimaced. “Still, it opens a possibility we can’t just ignore. If he’s alive—”

  Marty threw back his covers and jumped out of bed, swaying and holding to the frame, suddenly weak. “I don’t care what either of you says. Jon’s alive!” His pronouncement was firm. He had made up his mind, dismissing the news that was too painful to believe. “We must listen to Randi. He could desperately need us. Why, when I think of what he might be suffering, lying wounded and alone somewhere in the hot Algerian desert…or perhaps as we speak those ghastly terrorists are preparing to kill him! We must find him!” His medication was wearing off, and life was looking more possible. A superman armed with a computer and the power of genius.

  “Calm down, my boy. You know how you tend to take flight beyond the logical universe.”

  Marty drew his portly body up to its full height, which brought his indignant eyes on a level with Peter’s breastbone. He announced with great restraint, “My universe is not only logical, but far beyond your insignificant powers of comprehension, you ignorant Brit!”

  “Quite possibly,” Peter said dryly. “Still, remember we’re working now in my universe. Say Jon is alive. From what Randi’s reported, he’s a prisoner. Or at the very least wounded, pursued, and in hiding. The question becomes where is he, and can we get in touch with him? Except possibly for short distances and brief contact, our electronic communications were locked out when the satellites were taken over.”

  Marty opened his mouth to make some sharp response, then his face screwed up in helpless frustration as he tried to make his still-slowed brain function on the problem as he wanted it to function.

  Randi wondered, “If he did manage to escape—especially if Chambord is with him—the Crescent Shield would’ve pursued. Mauritania would make sure of that. Probably sent that killer, Abu Auda, after them. From what I’ve seen, Abu Auda knows what he’s doing. So if Jon and any of the others are alive, they’re probably still in Algeria.”

  “But if he didn’t escape,” Peter reasoned, “if none did—and from what just happened to the American satellites I’d say the Crescent Shield still has Dr. Chambord in its hands—then Jon’s a prisoner. And we have no earthly idea where.”

  Impatient and more worried than ever, Fred Klein sat on the scarred wooden bench that the president had transferred from his private office in his Taos ranch to this private office in the upstairs residence suite of the White House. He peered around at the massive bookcases, not really seeing them as he thought about what he needed to discuss. He desperately wanted to light his pipe. It was still in the breast pocket of his baggy wool suit jacket, the stem poking up. He crossed his legs, the top one almost instantly swinging like the arm of a metronome.

  When the president entered, he saw the agitation of the chief of Covert-One. “I’m sorry for your loss, Fred. I know how much you valued Dr. Smith.”

  “The condolences may be premature, sir.” Klein cleared his throat. “As well as the celebration of our so-called victory in Algeria.”

  The president’s back stiffened. He walked to the old roll-top desk, his favorite from Taos, and sat. “Tell me.”

  “The team of rangers we sent in right after the missile attack never found the bodies of Colonel Smith, Dr. Chambord, or Thérèse Chambord.”

  “It’s probably too soon. I
n any case, the bodies could’ve been either badly burned or blown into fragments.”

  “Some were, that’s true. But we sent in our own DNA experts as soon as I got Agent Russell’s report, and the Algerian army and police sent in more people. So far, we have no matches to our three. None. Plus, there were no female parts. If Ms. Chambord survived, where is she? Where’s her father? Where’s Colonel Smith? If Jon were alive, he would’ve reported to me. If Chambord and his daughter had survived, they would certainly have been heard from by now.”

  “Unless they were prisoners. That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?” The president could not remain seated. He arose stiffly and paced across the Navajo rugs. “You think there’s a chance some of the terrorists escaped, and that they took our three with them?”

  “That’s what worries me. Otherwise…”

  “Otherwise, you’d be celebrating Smith’s and the Chambords’ survival. Yes, I see what you mean. But it’s all circumstantial. Speculative.”

  “I deal in circumstance and speculation, sir. All intelligence services do, if they’re going about their jobs properly. It’s up to us to see dangers before they occur. Possibly I’m wrong, and their bodies will be found.” He clasped his hands and leaned forward. “But for all three to be unaccounted for is too much to be ignored, Sam.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Keep searching the ruins and testing, but—”

  The telephone rang, and the president snapped up the receiver. “Yes?” He grimaced, the lines on his forehead knitting. He barked, “Come up to my private office, Chuck. Yes, now.” He hung up and closed his eyes a moment as if trying to wipe away the contents of the call.

  Klein waited, his general unease heightened.

  Castilla said in a tired voice, “Someone has just readjusted the computer processors aboard all of our military and private satellites so we can’t retrieve data. All the satellites. No data. It’s a catastrophic systems failure. What’s even worse, no one on the ground can get them programmed back to the way they were.”

  “We’re blind from space?” Klein bit off a curse. “It sounds like the DNA computer again, dammit. But how? That’s the one thing Russell was sure of. The missile struck the villa, and the computer was inside. Smith told her he and Chambord were about to escape, all three of them, and to call in the strike. Even if Smith and Chambord hadn’t destroyed it already, it should’ve gone up with the building.”

  “I agree. It should’ve. It’s the logical conclusion. Get into the other room now, Fred. Chuck’s going to be here in a moment.”

  Just as Klein slipped away, Charles Ouray, the president’s chief of staff, hurried into the office. “They’re still trying, but NASA says whoever readjusted the computers has locked us out. Completely. We can’t break through! It’s causing problems everywhere.”

  “I’d better hear what they are.”

  “For a while, it looked as if the North Koreans were sending off a missile strike, but we had a contact on the ground that said it was just a heavy fog that was masking the heat from a truck that was near the missile silo in question. We lost an agent in South Beirut, Jeffrey Moussad. His 3-D directional finder failed. We believe he’s been killed. Also, there was a near-miss in the Pacific with one of our carriers and a submarine. Even Echelon’s ears are deaf.” In the Echelon program, the United States and Britain intercepted calls handled by satellites as well as tapping intercontinental undersea telephone cables.

  The president forced himself to take a deep breath. “Reconvene the Joint Chiefs. They’re probably not out of the building yet. If they are, get Admiral Brose and tell him to instruct the others to assume the worst—an immediate attack on the United States. Anything from biological warfare to a nuclear missile. Scramble every defense, and everything we don’t have, officially.”

  “The experimental anti-missile system, sir? But our allies—”

  “I’ll talk to them. They’ve got to know, so they can alert their own people. We feed a lot of them information off our satellites anyway. Hell, many buy time, too. Their systems have to be reflecting a loss of data, some of it dramatic. If I don’t call them, they’re going to call me. I’ll put it up to some wild-haired hacker, the best we’ve ever seen. They’ll believe it for a while. Meanwhile, we scramble everything. At least the secret experimental system should be totally secure because no one knows we have it, and it should be able to handle everything short of a massive missile attack, which terrorists won’t be able to mount. No one but the Brits and Moscow can do that, and they’re on our side this time, thank God. For any other kinds of strikes, we’ll have to rely on our conventional military, the FBI, and the police every damn where. And Chuck, this doesn’t get leaked to the press. Our allies won’t want their media people to get wind of it either. This makes none of us look good. Get going, Chuck.”

  Ouray ran out, and the president opened the other door. Klein’s face was gray with worry as he returned to the room.

  “You heard?” the president asked.

  “Damn right.”

  “Find out where the hellish thing is, Fred, and this time finish it!”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Paris, France

  When Marty fell asleep again in his hospital room, Peter slipped away to contact local MI6. Randi waited ten minutes and left, too. But her journey was much shorter—down to the phone booth she had spotted off the main lobby. She hovered at the top of the fire stairs, waiting as a few employees came and went, serving the rich patients who would soon emerge with new faces or new bodies or both. As soon as the lobby was clear, she padded down to it. Lilacs, peonies, and jonquils were arranged in showy springtime displays in tall cut-glass vases. The place was as fragrant as a florist’s, but it was making a lot more money.

  Enclosed in the glass booth, she dialed her Langley chief, Doug Kennedy, on a secure undersea fiber-optic cable line.

  Doug’s voice was grim. “I’ve got bad news. In fact, rotten news. The surveillance and communications satellites are still offline. Worse, we’ve lost everything in orbit, both military and civilian. NASA and the Pentagon are working like demons with every tool they have, and they’re making up the rest as they go along. So far, we’re zilch, kaput, aloha, and good luck. Without those satellites, we’re blind, deaf, and dumb.”

  “I get your point. What do you think I’m working on? I told you the prototype had been destroyed, period. The only thing that makes sense is that Chambord survived, although I still can’t figure out how. I also can’t figure out how he could’ve built a new prototype so fast.”

  “Because he’s a genius, that’s how.”

  “Even geniuses have only two arms and ten fingers and need time and materials—and a place to work. A stable place. Which brings me to my reason for calling your august self.”

  “Hold the sarcasm, Russell. It gets you into trouble. What do you want?”

  “Check with every asset we have on the ground within a two-hundred-mile radius of the villa and find out if they noticed, heard of, or even suspect any unusual traffic on the roads and in the ports, no matter how small, all along the coast near the villa for twelve hours after the explosion. Then do the same with everything we have, sea and air, over the Mediterranean, in the same time frame.”

  “That’s all?”

  She ignored the acid tone. “For now, yes. It could tell us for sure if Chambord survived.” She paused. “Or whether we’re dealing with some unknown factor, which scares the hell out of me. If he did survive, we need to know that, and where he went.”

  “I’m convinced.”

  “Yesterday, okay?”

  “If not sooner. What about you?”

  “I’ve got some other leads, unofficial, you understand?” It was total bravado. The only possible leads she had were from Peter’s highly developed, far-flung, idiosyncratic private assets, and Marty’s brain at its most manic.

  “Don’t we all. Good luck, Russell.” He ended the connection.
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br />   Aloft Somewhere over Europe

  Gagged and blindfolded, Jon Smith sat upright in a passenger seat at the back of a helicopter, his hands bound behind him. He was anxious and worried, his wounds aching, but still he was recording in his mind as much information as possible, while twisting his wrists against the ropes. Every once in a while, he felt the bonds loosen a bit more. It gave him hope, but Abu Auda or his men could easily discover what he had been up to when they reached wherever they were going, if he had not broken free by then.

  He was in a helicopter, a large one. He could feel the throb of twin, high-powered engines. From their size, the placement of the door through which he had been shoved aboard, and the interior arrangement that he had deduced by stumbling against each row of seats as he was pushed to the rear, he figured the chopper was a Sikorsky S-70 model, known by several names—the Seahawk in the navy, Black Hawk in the army, Pave Hawk in the air force, and Jayhawk in the coast guard.

  S-70s were troop carriers and logistical aircraft, but they often carried out other duties like medical evacuation and command-and-control. He had flown in enough while in the field and during his command days—courtesy of both the army and air force, with a navy chopper or two thrown in—to remember the details well.

  After he had decided all this, he overheard Abu Auda talking nearby with one of his men. Their conversation had confirmed that it was a Sikorsky all right, but it was the S-70A model, the export version of the multi-mission Black Hawk. Maybe a leftover from Desert Storm, or acquired through some fellow terrorist whose day job was in the procurement division of some Islamic country’s army. In any case, it meant the chopper could easily be armed for combat, which made Jon even more uneasy. Shortly after that, Abu Auda had moved out of listening range.

  Jon had been straining to hear any other talk for what he figured was nearly three hours, trying to pick up more information over the roar of the motors, but he had learned nothing useful. The chopper must be near the end of its fuel range. Then it would have to land. At the villa in Algeria, Mauritania had decided he could be useful in the future, and he must still think so, or they would have killed him. Eventually, they would get rid of him, or Abu Auda would get tired of dragging him along and kill him. Hostile witnesses made poor long-term companions.