The Paris Option

by Robert Ludlum

  In the capital, Vaduz, twilight had cast dark shadows across the thoroughfare that edged the Rhine River. This suited Abu Auda. Still dressed in his Western clothes, he moved briskly along, avoiding eye contact, until he arrived at the door to the small, undistinguished private residence that had been described to him. He knocked three times, waited, and knocked four times.

  He heard a bolt disengage inside, and the door cracked open.

  In Arabic, Abu Auda spoke into the small space; “Breet bate.” I want a room.

  A man’s voice answered, “May-fah-hem-tiksh.” I don’t understand.

  Abu Auda repeated the code and added, “They have Mauritania.”

  The door swung open, and a small, dark man stared worriedly up. “Yes?”

  Abu Auda pushed his way in. This was a major European stop for hawalala, an underground Arab railroad for moving, banking, laundering, and investing money. Unregulated and completely secret, with no real accounts that regulators could track, the network financed not only individuals but causes. This past year, nearly a billion U.S. dollars had moved through the European system alone.

  “Where did Mauritania get his money?” Abu Auda continued in Arabic. “The source. From whose purse did the financing come?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that.”

  Abu Auda removed the pistol from the holster under his arm. He pointed it, and as the man stepped backward, Abu Auda followed. “Mauritania is being held by the people with the money. They are not of our Cause. I know the money was paid by a Captain Bonnard or a Dr. Chambord. But I do not believe they are alone in this. So now you will speak, and you will be thorough.”

  Aloft over France

  A half hour after taking off again from Mâcon, Jon, Peter, and Randi finished the sandwiches they had bought at the small airport, and continued their analysis and discussion of the situation.

  Peter said, “Whatever we decide to do to find Chambord and Bonnard, we’d best do it quickly. Time’s not on our side. Whatever they’re planning, they’ll want to make it happen very, very soon.”

  Jon nodded. “Mauritania had planned to attack Israel this morning. Now that we know there’s still a working molecular computer out there somewhere, and that Chambord and Bonnard are free and traveling, my guess is that we’ve bought ourselves some time, but not much.”

  Randi shivered. “Maybe not enough.”

  The sun had set, and darkness was creeping across the land. Ahead, an ocean of lights sparkled in the gray twilight. Paris. As they stared at the great city’s sprawl, Jon’s mind went back to the Pasteur Institute and the initial bombing that had brought him to Paris and Marty. It seemed a long time ago, although it was just last Monday that Fred Klein had appeared in Colorado to ask him to take on this assignment, which had led across two continents.

  Now the focus was narrowed, and the price for failure was still unknown, except, they all agreed, it would be high. They must find Émile Chambord and his molecular computer. And when they found them, they were going to need a healthy and alert Marty.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Paris, France

  Dr. Lochiel Cameron could see that Marty was irritated and frustrated. Marty was coming off his meds, pacing the room in his stiff, awkward gait as Dr. Cameron observed from a comfortable armchair, a bemused smile on his face. He was an upbeat, easygoing man who had seen enough war and devastation to find turning back the clock for aging beauties of both sexes in his exclusive plastic surgery clinic a not-unpleasant career.

  “So you’re worried about your friends,” Dr. Cameron prompted.

  Marty stopped and waved his chubby arms with aggravation. “What could they possibly be doing? While I decompose in this plush and I’m sure usuriously—if not criminally—overpriced butcher shop of yours, where are they? How long can it take to reach Grenoble and return? Is it located on Pluto? I don’t think so.”

  He resumed his rolling prowl across the room. The curtains were drawn against the night, and the place was cozy with nice furniture and warm lamplight—none of that overhead fluorescent glare that made most hospital rooms seem harsh. There was even the refreshing scent of a bouquet of newly cut peonies. But the comforting atmosphere was lost on Marty. He was thinking about only one thing: Where were Jon, Randi, and Peter? He was afraid that they had gone to Grenoble not to rescue Jon from possible death, but to all die together.

  Dr. Cameron said mildly, “So you’re upset.”

  Marty stopped in mid-step and turned to the doctor in horror. “Upset? Upset! Is that what you think I am? I am distraught. They are in trouble, I know it. Injured. Lying somewhere desolate in their own blood!” He clasped his hands together and shook them in front as his eyes gleamed with an idea. “I’ll rescue them. That’s it. I’ll swoop down and pluck them from the talons of evil. But I must know exactly where they are. It’s so frustrating…”

  The door opened, and Marty turned, a sharp remark ready to be flung at whoever dared interrupt his misery.

  But it was Jon standing there, tall, muscular, and imposing in his dark bomber jacket. Although his dusky face was battered, a grin as wide as the Atlantic Ocean was aimed at Marty. Crowded behind were Peter and Randi, also grinning. As he was growing up, Marty had not been good at reading people’s emotions. Learning that the corners of an upturned mouth were a smile, which meant happiness, and that a frown could mean sadness, anger, or a range of other less joyful feelings had taken some time. But now Marty saw not only that his three friends were happy to be here, but they also had a sense of urgency about them, as if they had arrived only to leave again. Things were not good, but they were putting a brave face on the situation.

  They strode into the room, Jon talking: “We’re all right here, Mart. Great to see you. No need to worry about us.”

  Marty let out a whoop and then drew back and scowled. “Well, it’s about time. I hope you three have been enjoying yourselves.” He pulled himself up to his full height. “I, however, have been vegetating in this boring abattoir with no one but that…that”—he glared at Dr. Cameron in the armchair—“Scottish barber.”

  Cameron chuckled. “As you can see, he’s in fine shape. Tip-top and well on his way to complete recovery. Still, best keep him from any more injuries. And of course, if he gets nauseated or dizzy, he’ll need to have his head examined.”

  Marty started to protest, but Jon laughed and threw an arm around Marty’s shoulders. Marty grinned and looked Jon, Randi, and Peter up and down. “Well, at least you’re back. You appear to be all in one piece.”

  “That we are, lad,” Peter agreed.

  Jon added, “Thanks to Randi and Peter.”

  “Fortunately, Jon was in a mood to be saved,” Randi explained.

  Jon started to release Marty’s shoulder, but before he could, Marty turned quickly and hugged him. As he gave Jon one last little squeeze and moved away, Marty spoke in a low voice: “Gosh, Jon. You scared the willies out of me. I’m so glad you’re safe. It just wasn’t the same without you. For a long time, I really thought you were dead. Couldn’t you start living a more sedentary life?”

  “You mean like you?” Jon’s navy-blue eyes twinkled. “You’re the one who got the concussion from the bombing at the Pasteur Institute, not me.”

  Marty sighed. “I thought you might bring that up.”

  As Dr. Cameron said his good-byes and left, the disheveled and weary trio sank into chairs. Marty returned to his bed, punched and patted his pillows into a white mound, and settled back against them, a plump sultan on a cotton throne. “I sense urgency,” he told them. “Does that mean it’s not over? I’d hoped you’d tell me we could go home now.”

  “I wish,” Randi said. She pulled off the band that held her ponytail and shook her hair free. She massaged her scalp with both hands. Blue half-circles of weariness showed under her black eyes. “We think they’re going to try to strike again soon. I just hope there’s time for us to stop them.”

  Marty asked, his eyebrows knit,
“Where? When?”

  To save time, Jon described only the high points of what had happened since his capture at the villa in Algeria, ending with their conclusion that Émile Chambord and Captain Bonnard had been using the Crescent Shield not only to do most of their dirty work, but to hide their complicity in a scheme to use the DNA prototype. Now the pair had disappeared with Thérèse Chambord.

  “My thought is,” Jon concluded, “that they’ve got to have a second prototype. Is that possible?”

  Marty sat upright. “A second prototype? Of course! Émile had two so he could test various molecular sequences for efficiency, speed, and capacity at the same time. You see, molecular computers work by encoding the problem to be solved in the language of DNA—the base-four values are A, T, C, and G. Using them as a number system, the solution to any conceivable problem can be encoded along a DNA strand and—”

  Jon interrupted. “Thanks, Marty. But finish what you were saying about Chambord’s second prototype.”

  Marty blinked. He looked at the blank expressions on Peter’s and Randi’s faces and sighed dramatically. “Oh. Very well.” Without missing a beat, he picked up where he had left off. “So, Émile’s second setup vanished. Poof! Into thin air! Émile said he’d dismantled it because we were so close to the end that there was no need for another system. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but it was his decision to make. All the bugs were ironed out, and it was only a matter of fine-tuning the prime system.”

  “When did the second one disappear?” Randi asked.

  “Less than three days before the bombing, even though all the remaining big problems had been ironed out more than a week earlier.”

  “We’ve got to find the second one right away,” Randi told him. “Was Chambord missing from the lab for any length of time? A weekend? A holiday?”

  “Not that I remember. He often slept on a bed he had put into the lab.”

  “Think, lad,” Peter pressed. “A few hours perhaps?”

  Marty screwed up his face in concentration. “I usually went to my hotel room for a couple of hours’ sleep every night, you see.”

  But he continued to think, summoning memory the way a computer does. From the hour the bomb had exploded at the Pasteur, his mind screened back minute by minute, day by day, his neural circuits connecting in a remarkably accurate reverse chronology until at last he nodded vigorously. He had it.

  “Yes, twice! The night it disappeared he said we needed pizza, but Jean-Luc was off somewhere, I don’t recall exactly where, so I went. I was gone perhaps fifteen minutes, and when I returned Émile wasn’t there. He came back in another fifteen minutes or so, and we zapped the pizza in our microwave.”

  “So,” Jon said, “he was gone at least a half hour?”

  “Yes.”

  “And the second time?” Randi urged.

  “The night after I noticed the second setup was gone, he was gone nearly six hours. He said he was so tired he was driving home to sleep in his own bed. It was true he was pooped. We both were.”

  Randi analyzed it. “So the night it disappeared, Chambord wasn’t gone long. The next night, he was gone about six hours. It sounds to me as if the first night he probably just took it home. The second night, he drove it somewhere within three hours of the city, probably less.”

  “Why do you think he drove?” Peter asked. “Why not fly or go by rail?”

  “The prototype’s too big, too clumsy, with too many parts and pieces,” Jon told him. “I’ve seen one, and it’s definitely not portable.”

  “Jon’s right,” Marty agreed. “It would’ve required at least a van to transport, even dismantled. And Émile would’ve trusted no one but himself to move it.” He sighed sadly. “This is all so incredible. Horribly incredible. Incredibly horrible.”

  Peter was frowning. “He could’ve driven anywhere from Brussels to Brittany in three hours. But even if we’re looking for a place less than two hours away, we’re talking hundreds of square miles around Paris.” He considered Marty. “Any way you could use that electronics wizardry of yours to solve our problem? Locate the bloody prototype for us?”

  “Sorry, Peter.” Marty shook his head. Then he picked up his new laptop from his bedside table and put it on his crossed legs. The modem was already connected to the phone line. “Even assuming Émile left the security software we designed for it in place, I wouldn’t have the power to break through. Émile has had plenty of time to change everything, including the codes. Remember, we’re up against the fastest, most powerful computer in the world. It evolves its codes to adapt to any attempt to locate it so swiftly that nothing we have today can track it.”

  Jon was watching. “So why have you turned your laptop on? Looks to me as if you’re going online yourself.”

  “Clever of you, Jon,” Marty said cheerfully. “Yes, indeedy. As we speak, I’m logging onto my supercomputer at home. I’ll simply operate it from this laptop. With the use of my personally designed software, I hope to make a lie out of what I’ve just told you was impossible. Nothing to lose, and it’ll be fun to try—” He stopped speaking abruptly, and his eyes grew large with astonishment. Then dismay. “Oh, dear! What a rotten trick. Darn you, Émile. You’ve taken advantage of my generous nature!”

  “What is it?” Jon asked as he hurried to the bed to look at Marty’s screen. There was a message in French on it.

  “What’s happened?” Randi asked worriedly.

  Marty glared at the monitor, and his voice rose with indignant outrage. “How dare you enter the sanctity of my computer system. You…you sinister satrap! You’ll pay for this, Émile. You’ll pay!”

  As Marty ranted, Jon read the message aloud to Peter and Randi in English:

  Martin,

  You must be more careful with your defensive software. It was masterful, but not against me or my machine. I’ve taken you offline, closed your back door, and blocked you out totally. You are helpless. The apprentice must yield to the master.

  Émile

  Marty raised his chin, defiant. “There’s no way he can defeat me. I’m the Paladin, and the Paladin is on the side of truth and justice. I’ll outwit him! I…I…”

  As Jon moved away, Marty’s fingers flew over the keyboard, and his gaze grew hard and focused as he tried to convince his home system to power itself back on. Glumly, Jon, Peter, and Randi watched. Time seemed to be passing much too swiftly. They needed to find Chambord and the prototype.

  Marty’s fingers slowed, and little spots of sweat appeared on his face. He looked up, miserable. “I’ll get him yet. But not this way.”

  Outside Bousmelet-sur-Seine, France

  In his quiet, windowless workroom, Émile Chambord inspected the message on his monitor. As he suspected he would, Zellerbach had contacted his home computer system in Washington, at which point he had received Chambord’s message and the system had shut itself off. This made Chambord laugh out loud. He had outwitted the arrogant little American. And now that he had a trace on him, he would also be able to find him. He typed quickly, beginning the next stage of his search.

  “Dr. Chambord.”

  The scientist looked up. “You have news?”

  Brisk and compact, Captain Bonnard took the chair beside Chambord’s desk. “I just received a report from Paris.” His square face was unhappy. “Our people showed your photo of Dr. Zellerbach to the store clerk. He said Zellerbach wasn’t with the man who used the credit card to buy the laptop. However, it did sound as if he could be one of Jon Smith’s accomplices. But when my man checked the records for the sale, the address given was for Washington, D.C. There were no notations of any Paris address or phone number. Of course, since Zellerbach could merely have sent this man into the store, our people canvassed with the photo. Bad results again. No one recognized Zellerbach.”

  Chambord gave a small smile. “Don’t give up, my friend. I’ve just learned a lesson—the power of the DNA computer is so limitless that one must readjust one’s thinking of what’s po
ssible.”

  Bonnard crossed his legs, swinging one foot impatiently. “You have another way to locate him? We must, you know. He and the others understand too much. They won’t be able to stop us now. But later…ah, yes. That could be catastrophic to our plans. We must eliminate them quickly.”

  Chambord hid his annoyance. He knew the stakes better than Bonnard. “Fortunately, Zellerbach visited his home system. I anticipate that he took precautions first, probably bouncing the signal around from country to country, from whatever phone number his modem is using. He may also have tried to further disguise his path by going through a large number of servers and an equal number of aliases.”

  “How can you trace through all that?” Bonnard asked. “That’s standard to disguise an electronic trail. It’s standard, because it works.”

  “Not against my molecular machine.” With confidence, Dr. Chambord returned to his keypad. “In minutes, we’ll have the phone number in Paris. And then it’ll be a simple matter to discover the address that goes with it. After that, I have a little plan that’ll put an end completely to anyone’s pursuit.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Paris, France

  “So here’s our situation,” Jon was telling Randi, Peter, and Marty. “All of our agencies are working on this. Our governments are standing at highest alert. Our job is to do what they can’t. From what Marty’s told us about the second prototype, Chambord and Bonnard have to be somewhere two hours or so from Paris. Now, what else do we know, and what don’t we know?”

  “They’re an ivory-tower scientist and a junior French officer,” Randi said. “I wonder whether they did it all alone.”

  “Me, too.” Jon leaned forward in his armchair, his face intense. “The whole operation smacks of someone else pulling the strings. We’ve got Captain Bonnard, who was operating around Paris with no apparent connection to the attack on the Pasteur, while the Pasteur was bombed and Dr. Chambord was ‘kidnapped’ by the Basques. The Basques spirit Chambord to Toledo, where they deliver him to the Crescent Shield. Then they turn right around and return to Paris, snatch Thérèse, and deliver her to Toledo, too. Meanwhile, Mauritania is sometimes in Paris, sometimes in Toledo, while Dr. Chambord and Captain Bonnard apparently don’t contact one another until the villa in Algiers. Mauritania believes he’s in equal partnership with Bonnard and Chambord until Grenoble. So…who’s watching over the whole thing, orchestrating, coordinating all the various people and aspects? It has to be someone close to both Frenchmen.”