The Apocalypse Watch

by Robert Ludlum

  “I’m afraid it is far worse than we imagined,” he said quietly, breathing deeply to find his own control. “In a macabre way, perhaps it’s best that Claude was cut down where he was if it had to be. For if he had survived, he would have found his beloved wife shot to death at their home.”

  “Goddammit!” shouted Drew, then lowered his voice to a guttural murmur. “No quarter,” he said, “no quarter at all for those sons of bitches! We see, we kill; we find, we kill.”

  “There is something else, and I consider it totally irrelevant, for Claude Moreau was my mentor, my instructor-father in so many things, but it is a fact. By the order of the President of France, I am the temporary director of the Deuxième and must return to Paris.”

  “I know you never wanted it this way, Jacques,” said Latham, “but congratulations. You wouldn’t have been chosen if you weren’t the best. Your mentor trained you well.”

  “It doesn’t matter. Regardless of what happens in the next sixteen hours, I will resign and find other work.”

  “Why?” asked Karin. “You could be made the permanent director. Who else is there?”

  “You’re very kind, but I know myself. I am a follower, a very good follower, but I am not a leader. One must be honest with oneself.”

  “I hate what’s happened,” said Latham, “but we’ve got to go back to work. You owe it to Claude and I owe it to Harry. Start from the beginning, General,” he went on. “We temporarily lost you.”

  “I must return to Paris,” repeated Bergeron. “I don’t want to, but those are my orders—orders from the President—and I must obey them. Orders must be obeyed.”

  “Then do so,” said Karin gently. “We’ll do our best, Jacques.”

  “Right. You go down to Paris and stay in touch with London and Washington,” said Latham firmly. “But, Jacques—keep us informed.”

  “Au revoir, mes amis.” The Deuxième officer turned and walked disconsolately out of the room.

  “Where were we, General?” asked Drew, leaning over the table, Dietz and Anthony on either side, Karin across from them.

  “These are the armed personnel I’ve dispersed throughout the area,” began the old soldier, pointing at the huge map of the reservoir and its surrounding woods. “From long years of experience, including in Southeast Asia, where the enemy’s guerrilla forces presented similar concerns for penetration, I cannot think of any additional defenses we haven’t considered. A squadron of fighter planes is on an alert at an air base thirty kilometers from here, and they are fully armed. We have over twelve hundred troops throughout the woods and the roads, all units in constant contact with one another, as well as twenty anti-aircraft emplacements with instant trajectory guidances. Seventeen bomb squads have been working without rest, studying the banks, searching for time-set explosives. There is also a patrol boat with chemical-analysis equipment crisscrossing the areas nearest the major flows. At the first signs of toxicity, the sluice gates will send signals, the valves on alert for alternative sources from other districts.”

  “If that’s necessary,” asked Drew, “how long will it take for the alternative sources to start flowing?”

  “According to the manager, who will be back shortly, the longest time on record was four hours and seven minutes in the middle thirties—due to machinery failure. However, the first major problem is a drastic lowering of water pressure everywhere, followed by initial massive impurities from the unused flows.”

  “Impurities?” Karin broke in.

  “Nothing like toxic poisoning; some dirt or mud, or pipe residue. Perhaps enough to cause upset stomachs, vomiting, diarrhea, but not fatal. The potential real danger is with the underground hydrants; the pressure might preclude their use in case of fires.”

  “Then the potential crisis has geometric proportions,” said De Vries. “Because if Water Lightning somehow, some way does succeed, and your solutions are activated, the pressure still goes down and fires could be set all over Paris. Günter Jäger used the phrase ‘fire and lightning’—fire and lightning. It could be significant. If I remember my history, Hitler’s last order to his evacuating commanders was ‘Burn Paris down!’ ”

  “All too true, madame, but I ask you, and I’ll ask you again after we take a tour of our defenses, can you really believe this Water Lightning can succeed?”

  “I don’t want to, General.”

  “What about London and Washington?” said Latham. “Moreau … Moreau told me you were in touch with both.”

  “You see the bald man at the desk over there with the red telephone?” The old soldier gestured at an army major across the room, a red telephone at his ear. “He is not only my most trusted adjutant, he is my son. The baldness comes from his mother’s side, poor fellow.”

  “Your son?”

  “Oui, Monsieur Latham,” replied the general, smiling. “When the Socialists took over the Quai d’Orsay, many of us in the military practiced nepotism for our own protection until we discovered that they weren’t such bad fellows.”

  “How very Gallic,” said Karin.

  “Again, too true, madame. La famille est éternelle. However, my hairless son is an exceptional officer, for which I thank my side of the family—we are extremely astute. He is also on the telephone with either London or Washington right now. The lines are constantly open, a single button changes the capital.” The major hung up the phone and the general called out. “Adjutant-Major, is there anything new?”

  “Non, mon général,” answered the stern-faced, bald major, turning to reply to his father. “And I would appreciate it if you would not continue to ask the same question. I will inform you when there is anything unexpected or a suggested change in our strategies.”

  “He’s also impudent,” said the general softly, “again his mother’s influence.”

  “My name’s Latham,” said Drew, interrupting.

  “I know who you are, sir. My name is Gaston.” The major rose from his desk and extended his hand to each member of the N-2 unit. The hands were shaken awkwardly, as if the command had been shifted from father to son. “I must tell you that the general has deployed extraordinary defenses, as only a man with his experience in incursion and infiltration can, and we are all grateful. He has been through such campaigns and we have not, at least I haven’t, but as technology has changed, so the rules have changed. London and Washington have upgraded their fortifications, as we have, employing the newest electronics.”

  “Like what specifically?” asked Drew.

  “Infrared sensor beams throughout the woods as well as webs of spun plastic matting along the roads that, when penetrated, activate clouds of vapor immobilizing everyone in the vicinity—naturally, our troops have masks. In addition, radar and radio signals that flare out over the trees on all sides, capable of intercepting missiles as far away as two hundred kilometers; they trigger our own heat-seeking countermissiles—”

  “Like the Patriots in D-Storm,” Captain Dietz interrupted.

  “When they worked,” said the lieutenant, barely audible.

  “Precisely,” agreed the major, in his enthusiasm not hearing the subordinate officer.

  “What about the reservoir itself?” inquired Karin.

  “What about it, madame? To anticipate you, if there are scores of huge drums filled with toxins, and attached to pre-set explosives to blow them apart, our divers have not found them. They’ve searched, I assure you, and considering the sheer mass of metal required, the underwater sonar would have. Finally, even in normal times the reservoir is constantly under observation, the perimeters fenced, penetration instantly known. How could it happen?”

  “It obviously couldn’t, I’m just trying to think of everything. You’ve undoubtedly done so already.”

  “This is not necessarily so,” disagreed the old general. “You are all accomplished intelligence personnel, and you know the enemy, you’ve been dealing with him. Once—before Dien Bien Phu—a spy whose cover was as an accountant, which he actually
was in Lyons, told me that the antigovernment forces could afford far greater firepower than Paris acknowledged. Paris scoffed and we lost a country.”

  “I don’t see the relevance,” said Karin.

  “Perhaps there is none, but you may see something we’ve missed.”

  “That’s what Moreau said to me,” interjected Drew.

  “I know. We talked. So let us get into an open truck and each of you—all of you—see for yourselves. Dissect us, pick us apart, as you Americans say, find our flaws, if they exist.”

  The “tour” throughout the forests, the fields, and the adjacent roads was not only exhausting in the roofless truck that seemed to gravitate to every ditch and minor gully, but it took over three hours. Everyone made notes, in the main affirmative; only the two commandos were negative, in terms of underbrush incursion.

  “I could send fifty men on their bellies through a sector of this foliage, taking out the soldiers and putting on their uniforms,” exclaimed Captain Dietz. “This is nuts!”

  “And once you get into the uniforms,” added Lieutenant Anthony, “you can waste away your flanks and create a big, wide boulevard.”

  “The roads are protected by plastic webs, they set off alarms!”

  “You freeze ’em with cold nitro sprays, General,” said Dietz. “They close down electrical impulses.”

  “Mon Dieu.…”

  “Let’s face it, guys,” said Latham when they were back at the waterworks, “your theories may have merit, but you’re thinking too small. There wouldn’t be fifty men, there’d have to be five hundred to be effective. See what I mean?”

  “The general asked for criticisms, Mr. Latham,” replied Captain Dietz. “Not solutions.”

  “Let’s look at the photographs,” said Drew, approaching the table and seeing that they had been spread out in rows in some sort of precise order.

  “I have arranged them from top to bottom as determined by the farthest distance from the reservoir to the nearest,” explained the general’s son. “All were taken by infrared cameras at relatively low altitudes according to aerial radar, and where suspicious images occurred, they were repeated frequently, no more than a few hundred feet above the objects.”

  “What are these?” asked Dietz, pointing at several dark circles.

  “Farm silos,” replied the major. “To make certain, we had them examined by the local police.”

  “And those?” said Karin, her index finger on a series of three photographs depicting long, dark rectangular images with muted lights on one side. “They look dangerously like missile sites.”

  “Railroad stations. You’re seeing the lamps under the overhang, next to the tracks,” answered Gaston.

  “And these?” Latham used the pointer and touched a photograph that showed the outlines of two large airplanes on what appeared to be a field off the major runway of a private airport.

  “Aircraft purchased by Saudi Arabia, awaiting transport to Riyadh. We checked the Ministry of Export and found everything to be in order.”

  “They bought French, not American?” said Gerald Anthony.

  “Many do, Lieutenant. Our aircraft industry is superb. Our Mirages are considered to be among the finest fighter planes in the world. Also, one saves millions of francs by having them flown from Beauvais instead of, say, Seattle, Washington.”

  “I’ll grant you that, Major.”

  And so it went for the rest of the morning, every photograph scrutinized with magnifiers, a hundred questions asked and answered. Everything led to nowhere.

  “What is it?” exclaimed Latham. “What is it they’ve got that we don’t see?”

  In the restricted cavernous hall in the bowels of British intelligence, the most experienced analysts and cryptographers of MI-5, MI-6, and Her Majesty’s Secret Service pored over the cartons of material from Günter Jäger’s house on the Rhine. Suddenly there was a firm, controlled voice that rose above the hum of nearby machines.

  “I’ve got something,” said a woman in front of one of the endless computers around the huge room. “I’m not sure what it means, but it was buried in the deep code.”

  “Explain, please.” The MI-6 director in charge rushed to her station, the silent Witkowski at his side.

  “ ‘Daedalus will fly, nothing can stop him.’ Those are the decoded words.”

  “What the devil do they mean?”

  “Something about the sky, sir. In Greek mythology, Daedalus escaped from Crete with feathered wings attached to his arms by wax, but his son, Icarus, flew too high and the sun melted his wax. He fell to his death into the sea.”

  “What in blazes has that got to do with Water Lightning?”

  “Frankly, I don’t know, sir, but there are three gradations of codes, A, B, and C, C being the most complex.”

  “Yes, I’m aware of that, Mrs. Graham.”

  “Well, this was in the C classification, which is equivalent to our top secret, which means it’s the most restricted of the ciphers. Others in the neo movement might intercept it, but it’s doubtful they could break it. The message was meant for very few eyes.”

  “Any idea where it came from?” asked the American colonel. “Is there a date, a time?”

  “Fortunately, to both questions, yes. It was a fax from here, from London, and the time was forty-two hours ago.”

  “Well done! Can you trace it?”

  “I have. It’s one of yours, sir. MI-Six, Euro-Division, German section.”

  “Shit! Sorry, old girl. There are over sixty officers in that section—just a moment! Each has to enter a two-digit marker, the machine won’t transmit without it. It has to be there!”

  “It is, sir. It’s Officer Meyer Gold, chief of the section.”

  “Meyer? That’s impossible! He’s a Jew, to begin with, and lost both sets of grandparents in the camps. He requested the German section for just that reason.”

  “Perhaps he’s not actually Jewish, sir.”

  “Then why did we all attend his son’s bar mitzvah last year?”

  “Then the only other explanation is that someone else used his marker.”

  “The manual makes clear that each individual keeps his marker to himself.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you any further,” said the clear-eyed, gray-haired Mrs. Graham, returning to her stack of materials.

  “I may—or I may not,” said another analyst several stations away, a black West Indian officer, a Rhodes scholar from the Bahamas.

  “What is it, Vernal?” asked the MI-6 director, walking quickly to the Bahamian’s table.

  “Another Code C entry. The name Daedalus appears, only with no marker, no London, and it was sent thirty-seven hours ago from Washington.”

  “What’s the communication?”

  “ ‘Daedalus in position, countdown begun.’ And then it ends, and I’ll say it in German. ‘Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer Jäger.’ How about that?”

  “Did you trace the fax?” asked Witkowski.

  “Naturally. The American State Department, the office of Jacob Weinstein, undersecretary for Middle Eastern affairs. He’s a highly regarded negotiator.”

  “Good God, they’re using well-respected Jewish personnel for their covers.”

  “That shouldn’t surprise us,” said the Bahamian. “The only thing that could top it would be to use us blacks.”

  “You’ve got a point,” agreed the American. “But color doesn’t come over a fax.”

  “Names do, sir, and the fact that Daedalus appears twice in two top-secret ciphers nine hours apart has to mean something.”

  “They’ve already told us. The countdown’s begun and they’re too damned confident of its success to suit my skin.” The MI-6 officer walked to the center of the large room and clapped his hands. “Listen up, everyone!” he cried. “Listen up, if you please.” The room went silent except for the soft humming of the computers. “We seem to have found a significant piece of information related to this bloody Water Lightning. It’
s the name Daedalus. Have any of you run across it?”

  “Yes, rather,” replied a slender middle-aged man with a chin beard and wearing wire-rimmed glasses, quite professorial in appearance. “About an hour past. I considered it to be the code name for a Nazi agent or agents, Sonnenkinder, no doubt, and saw no relevance to Water Lightning. You see, Daedalus was the builder of the great labyrinth of Crete, and as we all recognize, labyrinthine connotes circuitous thought, concealed avenues, that sort of thing—”

  “Yes, yes, Dr. Upjohn,” interrupted the impatient MI-6 director, “but in this case it may refer to the mythological flight he took with his son.”

  “Oh, Icarus? No, I doubt that. As the legend has it, Icarus was a headstrong moron. Sorry, old man, but my interpretation is far more academically valid. Where in heaven’s name does Water Lightning fit in? It simply doesn’t, don’t you see?”

  “Please, Professor, just dig the damn thing out, will you?”

  “Very well,” said the wounded academic, his voice resounding with superiority. “It’s here somewhere in the reject pile. It was a facsimile, I believe. Yes, here it is.”

  “Read it, please. From the top, old fellow.”

  “Its point of origin was Paris, and it was sent yesterday at 11:17 A.M. The message is as follows. ‘Messieurs Daedalus in splendid condition, prepared to strike in the name of our glorious future!’ Obviously, either he or they are misguided zealots with functions to perform following this Water Lightning. Quite possibly assassins.”

  “Or something else,” said the gray-haired Mrs. Graham.

  “Such as, dear lady?” asked Professor Upjohn patronizingly.

  “Oh, stop it, Hubert, you’re not in a Cambridge classroom now,” she snapped. “We’re all searching.”

  “You obviously have an idea,” said Witkowski with sincerity. “What is it?”

  “I don’t really know, I’m merely struck by the French plural. ‘Messieurs,’ not ‘monsieur’; not one but more than one. That’s the first time Water Lightning—if it is Water Lightning—has been described in such a way.”

  “The French are inordinately precise,” offered Dr. Hubert Upjohn acidly. “They cheat so frequently, it’s in their nature.”