The Altman Code

by Robert Ludlum

  “You’ve got a point.”

  The secretary questioned, “You think this al-Sayed prisoner is the real thing? A top leader of the Mindanao Islamic guerrillas?”

  “Sure looks like it.”

  “Why? Because they want to hold on to him, get all the credit?”

  “Those who don’t want to nail him to a wall and skin him alive, and those who don’t want to make a fast deal and cut him loose so he’ll keep mum about what they’ve been doing.”

  “You’ve insisted we be present at all interrogations?” the secretary pressed.

  General Rose nodded, his jowls quivering, on the verge of outrage. “Damn right. If they neglect our wishes, they don’t get any more aid or tech training from us. Just to be sure, I’ve put my own men on the guard detail.”

  “Good.”

  The general paused to smoke and watch the street. He seemed to see nothing that disturbed him. He glanced at the secretary. “You brought a team?”

  “A CIA interrogation expert as well as an air force captain who speaks Moro.” Kott did not bother to mention he had also brought his chef. “My aide’s with them in the Humvee. Tomorrow, we’ll have a go at him.”

  “Yeah. You will if you convince the Filipinos at the dinner tonight to let us.”

  Kott smiled confidently. “That won’t be a problem.”

  Soon after, both vehicles arrived at the sprawling country estate that was the temporary command headquarters of the American military mission, courtesy of the Manila government. Making small talk for the benefit of anyone who might be eavesdropping, General Rose escorted Secretary Kott to his air-conditioned quarters to rest and freshen up before the all-important dinner meeting tonight with the Filipino politicians and military men.

  “This evening then, General.” Kott extended his hand.

  Rose shook it. He growled around the butt of his cigar, “I’ll be ready. Get a good nap. You’re going to need it.”

  As his air conditioner whistled from the corner of his suite, Kott closed the door and waited five minutes. He opened it and peered in both directions along the hallway. No one was in sight.

  Crouched outside beneath a window of the frame building, a slim woman wearing the uniform of a U.S. Air Force captain pressed a contact microphone against the wall. She had arrived on the cargo jet with Secretary Kott.

  Inside his suite, Kott’s footsteps marched across the floor. There was the click of keys on a keypad being depressed, and the sound of a telephone receiver being lifted.

  “I’m here,” he said. “Yes. I have to be back by six tonight. In two hours? Fine. Where? The Corregidor Club? Right. I’ll be there.”

  The receiver dropped into its cradle, a wooden chair creaked, footsteps walked away, and finally shoes clattered onto the floor. Bed springs sighed. Kott was relaxing before going to meet whomever he had been talking to. Probably lying on the bed wide awake and looking up at the ceiling where assorted strange insects waited to drop onto the mosquito netting.

  The air force captain was also Secretary Kott’s Moro interpreter. Her name tag read Captain Vanessa Lim. She left the window. She was not headed off to rest, and her name was not Vanessa Lim.

  Hong Kong

  The most difficult action for an undercover agent was to do nothing. Jon stood in the bow of the ferry, pretending to feast on the kaleidoscopic cityscape that filled the horizon. Although the skin on the back of his neck puckered, he did not turn again to check the two men who had been moving forward through the press of passengers, studying clothes, faces, and the attitudes of everyone they passed. There was no way they could know what the caller to Donk & LaPierre looked like. In fact, the chance that Feng Dun or anyone else in China knew Lt. Col. Jon Smith was even in Hong Kong was minimal.

  But a minimal chance was still a chance. Possible, but not probable. As Damon Runyon once said, “The race isn’t always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong. But that’s the way to bet.” A matter of odds.

  Smith remained at the front of the ferry, apparently unworried, no sign he was aware anything unusual was occurring around him. He appeared transfixed by all the exotic sights and sounds, as the ferry drew closer to its terminal on Hong Kong Island.

  When the boat slid and thudded along the pilings, dockhands in blue uniforms pulled it in. The crowd moved forward, ready to trample onto land the instant the ferry stopped and the gates opened. Jon joined them. Above them, seagulls circled and cawed, while a wave of impatience rushed through the waiting throngs. Finally, the gates opened. The surge of humanity carried Jon down the wood ramp and up the concrete one. When he looked back, the two hunters had vanished.

  Manila

  Secretary of the Army Jasper Kott had changed into a loose-fitting blue shirt, linen sports coat, tan slacks, and bone-colored loafers. He was sitting relaxed, enjoying the stream of cool air from the air conditioner, as he studied a special forces report on a guerrilla force that had made a lightning incursion and strike on a Filipino army garrison in northern Mindanao.

  When someone knocked, he marked his place, set the report on a table beside his chair, and went to the door.

  The special forces sergeant who had driven him to the headquarters stepped inside. “Good evening, sir.”

  “All clear, Sergeant?”

  “Yessir. Most of their people are taking siestas. Ours are busy with the antiterrorist training. Your car’s at the side door. The only sentry is one of my guys.”

  “I appreciate the help. Very discreet. Thank you.”

  Sergeant Reno smiled. “We all need a little R and R sometimes, sir.”

  Kott smiled back, man to man. “Then let’s go.”

  He strode down the silent hallway, the sergeant respectfully three paces behind. Outside, the same camouflage-painted command car waited, its engine on. The secretary nodded approval: A quietly running engine attracted far less notice than one starting suddenly.

  He climbed into the backseat, which was empty. The sergeant closed his door, got behind the wheel, and drove the car off. Bored by the poverty-stricken scenery of greater Manila, Jasper Kott settled back, crossed his arms, and considered how he would handle the afternoon’s tasks. Once a highly successful executive in private industry, his last position was CEO of Kowalski and Kott—K&K, Inc.—mass supplier of artillery gun mounts to arms manufacturers around the globe. It was true he had grown wealthy and influential, far more wealthy and influential than most of his competitors realized. Still, numbers were useful only in keeping score, not in judging satisfaction.

  He was a fastidious man in all ways, from dress to personal habits, from social relations to business deals. He had used his meticulousness as a tool to disarm competitors. In today’s rough-and-earthy corporate climate, he simply did not fit the mold. Who would suspect his raging ambition? Who would credit him with a razor-sharp coldness that allowed him to cut his losses without ever looking back? While others ignored him as too prissy to be strong, he rose. By the time they noticed, they were too far behind to hurt or stop him.

  He had never had a business opportunity to match the potential of this new one. With pleasure, he contemplated what success would mean . . . untouchable wealth, power beyond the imagination of his colleagues . . . a guaranteed future of more deals, each bigger than the last—

  On a quiet street, the sergeant pulled into the driveway of an imposing house on a large lot in one of the better parts of Manila. A high hedge rimmed the property. On the rolling green lawn, palms grew tall against the sky, while tropical flowers in a rainbow of colors spread against the white-plastered walls. It was a hacienda from the Spanish era, stately and secluded.

  Kott leaned forward. “Give me a few hours, Sergeant. You have your cell with you?”

  “Right here, sir.” The sergeant patted the shirt of his uniform. “Take your time.”

  Secretary Kott marched across terra-cotta tiles up to the long porch. The front door was massive—rich mahogany, while the fittings, including an ornate knocker in
the shape of a coiled snake, were polished brass. He knocked and sensed rather than saw a peephole open and close. The door swung open, and a tiny Filipina bowed. She was no more than sixteen and stark naked, except for a pair of high-heeled purple shoes and a purple lace garter as high on her thigh as it could get. Kott’s expression did not change.

  She ushered him inside to a heavily furnished room where some twenty other women of various ages in various stages of undress stood, sat, and lounged. A well-stocked bar stretched along a wall. The teenager continued on through the room, Kott following, the twenty pairs of eyes assessing him. They climbed a sweeping stairway that could have been in a noble house in Madrid. On the second floor, she led him down a maroon-carpeted hall to the last door. The naked girl opened it, smiled again, and stood aside.

  Kott entered. The room was spacious, with gold-flecked maroon wallpaper, gilded woodwork, a comfortable upholstered sitting area, a small bar, and a giant four-poster bed. Still unspeaking, the girl closed the door, and her footsteps faded away.

  “Enjoy your usher, Jasper?” Ralph McDermid asked from his easy chair. He was grinning from ear to ear, his joviality on display. His round body and round face looked thoroughly relaxed.

  “She’s my daughter’s age, for God’s sake, Ralph,” Kott complained. “Did we have to meet in a place like this?”

  “It’s excellent cover,” the chairman and CEO of the Altman Group said, giving not an inch. “I’m known here. They protect me. Besides, I enjoy the company, the merchandise, and the services, eh?”

  “Everyone to their own taste,” Kott grumbled.

  “How broad-minded and egalitarian of you, Jasper,” McDermid said. “Sit. Sit down, dammit, and have a drink. Loosen up. We both know you’re not the old grandpa you want everyone to think. Tell me about Jon Smith.”

  “Who?”

  “Lieutenant Colonel Jon Smith, M.D.” McDermid pressed a button on the table beside the armchair where he sat, and a white-coated Filipino materialized behind the bar.

  “An army officer?” Kott shook his head. “Never heard of him. Why? What’s he to us?” He called to the barman, “Vodka martini, straight up with a twist.”

  “He’s dangerous, that’s what he is. As for why he’s important . . .” McDermid related the events from the time Mondragon was killed to Smith’s extraction from the Chinese coast.

  “He’s got a copy of what the ship’s actually carrying? Holy—”

  “No,” McDermid interrupted. “He nearly had a copy, but we took it back. I don’t know whether he saw it, or understood it if he did. But Mondragon definitely did, which no longer matters since that bastard is dead. However, here we walk a fine line: We want them to know what The Dowager Empress is carrying, but not be able to prove it.”

  The barman arrived with Kott’s martini on a sterling tray. Kott sipped appreciatively. “So there’s no problem. We’re go then?”

  “We’re all-go, but I wouldn’t say there’s no problem.” McDermid held up his empty highball glass and angled it toward the barkeep, who immediately went to work to replace it. “I doubt Smith, or whoever employs him, is going to give up.”

  “What do you mean, whoever employs him? He’s got to be CIA. They recruit army personnel sometimes.”

  “I meant exactly what I said. As far as my people, and apparently the Chinese secret police, can figure, he doesn’t belong to the CIA or to any of the other of our intelligence agencies.”

  Kott scowled. “You said he works for USAMRIID, and that’s the excuse he used to enter China. So he’s probably a one-time CIA asset. But he failed to get his job done. So now he’s out, and he’s probably out of our hair, too.”

  “Perhaps. But my people say he’s very skilled and hardly sounds like a one-time recruit.”

  Kott drank more deeply. “Some competitor of yours looking to hurt you?”

  “That’s possible, I suppose. Some renegade agent. FBI maybe, considering how they’re getting around these days. But whatever he is, all of us had better be extraordinarily cautious . . . for a multitude of reasons.”

  “Of course.” Kott drained the martini, set the glass down. “But for now, we’re on course?”

  McDermid nodded. “The frigate Crowe is already shadowing the Empress in the Indian Ocean.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Any more news about military appropriations?”

  Kott related the military appropriations meeting in the cabinet room in greater detail. “As I said, Brose and Oda were the only ones willing to give Secretary Stanton full support, and Oda’s unimportant. Everyone else has a weapon in development they don’t want to lose. It was an edgy meeting.”

  “And the president?”

  “He’s worried, and we know why, don’t we? It’s the Empress and a potential blowup with China. If that happens, he’s got to have everything activated, whether it’s in our arsenal or on the drawing board. If we’ve got the weapons for a big war in a big area, that’ll scare the crap out of the Chinese.” Kott sat back, smiling. “I’d say our plan’s going smoothly, wouldn’t you?”

  “But we still have to be careful. If the doves in Zhongnanhai have gotten wind something’s up, and if they compare notes with President Castilla, we’re as good as dead. That real manifest can’t fall into anyone’s hands.”

  Kott was growing impatient. “So eliminate all the copies.”

  “It’s not that easy. We’ve gotten rid of the one in Shanghai that Flying Dragon had. But there’s still one in Basra. The Iraqis think no one can penetrate their security, so they refuse to destroy it, because they don’t trust us to deliver if they do. Anyway, they claim to be fully confident the Empress will make it through. There was a third copy in Hong Kong, but I’ve ordered it destroyed.”

  “The Empress will never pass the Strait of Hormuz. So what’s really worrying you?”

  “Yu Yongfu—the Flying Dragon president. He was vain, ambitious, unpredictable, nervous, and would never hold up under pressure. You know the type. He had delusions of empire, but a backbone of jelly.”

  “Had?” Kott asked.

  “He’s dead. When he learned of this Jon Smith’s being in Shanghai, he fell apart. We applied pressure. He committed suicide.”

  “God dammit, Ralph!” Kott exploded. “That’s two more corpses! You can’t keep a secret this way. Murder complicates everything!”

  McDermid shrugged. “We had no choice. Now we’ve got no choice with Smith either.” He grinned and held up his glass in a toast. “Let’s enjoy the pleasures of the house. There’s time.”

  “Damnation, Ralph, they could all be my daughter! Don’t you have any civility in you at all?” Kott shuddered.

  McDermid laughed loudly. “None the way you define it. I have a couple of daughters around her age, too. I can only hope they’re enjoying themselves as much as I plan to.”

  Kott stood. “You haven’t seen your daughters in at least ten years. I have an hour before I can call my driver. Put me in an office somewhere with a phone. I’ll get some work done.”

  McDermid touched the button on the side of the table, signaling the waiter to return. He looked up at Kott, who had stood, eager to leave. There was a wide smile of amusement on the Altman founder’s mouth, but his eyes were cold. “Whatever your pleasure.”

  Chapter

  Seventeen

  Hong Kong

  Constructed of steel, glass, and slate, the building where Donk & LaPierre had its offices was a towering showplace of modernity. Judging by the exacting architectural details and the international renown of its designer, whose name was engraved on black glass beside the front doors, offices here were shockingly expensive and the address coveted.

  Wearing his dark-blond wig again, Jon paused outside to check the bustling street. He was back in his cover as Major Kenneth St. Germain. Satisfied he had not been followed, he stepped inside the revolving doors and was deposited into the foyer. He headed across the slate floor toward the stainless-steel elevators. The bui
lding’s air had been filtered so many times it smelled like a virus-free clean room. But then, the whole place was antiseptic looking.

  The thought of viruses brought him back to his cover’s latest project, and he began to submerge his own personality into Ken’s. As a top USAMRIID researcher, Ken St. Germain, Ph.D., had been galvanized by a virus discovered recently in northern Zimbabwe. The still-unnamed virus resembled the Machupo strain, which came from a distant continent—South America. Ken was using field mice to study his theory that the new virus was a form of Machupo, despite thousands of miles and an ocean separating the occurrences.

  By the time he left the elevator, reached the glass doors of Donk & LaPierre, and pushed through, he was eager to ask for help with his research from Charles-Marie Cruyff, managing director of Donk & LaPierre’s Asian branch. Then, of course, there was his real motive. . . .

  “Major Kenneth St. Germain to see Mr. Cruyff,” he announced to the woman behind the desk, who looked more like a cover model than a receptionist. “We called ahead.”

  “Of course, Major. Monsieur Cruyff is expecting you.” She had a megawatt smile, perfect golden skin, and just a touch of makeup to enhance her considerable natural assets.

  The secretary, or assistant, who came to usher him into the inner sanctum was an entirely different matter. Unsmiling, white-blond hair coiled severely, clothes loose and frumpy . . . she was all Donk and no LaPierre.

  “You will please follow me, Major.” Her voice was a baritone, and her English was Wagnerian. She led him over a Delft-blue carpet to an ebony door. She knocked and opened it. “Major St. Germain from America, Monsieur Cruyff,” she announced.

  The man inspiring this deference proved to be short, broad, and muscular, with the massive thighs of a professional bicyclist. He glided forward from around his desk in his costly beige suit as if he could bend his knees only marginally.