The Sigma Protocol

by Robert Ludlum

  “But the dental records—I mean, Christ, Peter, they identified your body positively, beyond any doubt.”

  Peter shook his head. “They matched the body’s teeth with the dental records back home in Westchester, the assumption being that those were really my dental X-rays in Dr. Merrill’s office.”

  Ben shook his head, perplexed. “Whose body…?”

  “Liesl got the idea from the prank that the medical students at the University of Zurich pull almost every year at the end of the spring semester. Some joker always steals the cadaver from the gross anatomy class. It’s sort of a morbid springtime ritual, medical-student humor—one day their cadaver just disappears. It’s always reclaimed, sort of ransomed. Instead, she arranged to have an unclaimed body stolen from the hospital morgue. Then it was a simple matter to pull the dead guy’s medical records, including dental records—this is Switzerland, everyone’s documented.”

  Ben smiled in spite of himself. “But to switch the X-rays…?”

  “Let’s just say I hired someone to do a simple, low-risk breaking-and-entering job. Dr. Merrill’s office isn’t exactly Fort Knox. One pair of films was substituted for another. No big deal. When the police came to him requesting my dental records, they got the substituted ones.”

  “And the plane crash?”

  Peter explained, leaving out no significant detail.

  Ben watched him as he spoke. Peter had always been soft-spoken, quiet, the deliberate, thoughtful one. But you’d never call him calculating or devious, and deviousness was what this plan had required. How frightened he must have been.

  “A few weeks earlier, Liesl applied for a position at a small hospital in the canton of St. Gallen. Of course they were delighted to hire her—they needed a pediatrician. She found us a small cabin in the countryside, in the woods by a lake, and I joined her. I posed as her Canadian husband, a writer working on a book. All the while I maintained a network of contacts, my antennae.”

  “People who knew you were alive—that must have been risky.”

  “Trusted people who knew I was alive. Liesl’s cousin is an attorney in Zurich. He was our listening post, our eyes and ears. She trusts him completely, and therefore so do I. An attorney with multiple international interests has his contacts in the police, in the banking community, among private investigators. Yesterday he learned about the bloodbath at the Bahnhofplatz, about a foreigner who was brought in for questioning. But as soon as Dieter had told me about the murder attempt on you, I realized what had happened. They, the inheritors, whoever on that list is still around, have probably always been suspicious that my death was faked. They’ve always been on the alert—either for my reappearance in Switzerland, or else for some sign that you were carrying on my investigations. I know for a fact that they’ve got a lot of Swiss policemen in their pocket, a bounty on my head. They practically own half the cops. I assume the bank where you had a meeting that morning, UBS, was the tripwire. So I had to come out of hiding to warn you.”

  Peter risked his life for me, Ben thought. He felt the sting of tears coming to his eyes. Then he remembered Jimmy Cavanaugh, the man who wasn’t there. Hurriedly, he filled Peter in on the mystery.

  “Incredible,” Peter said, and he took on a faraway look.

  “It’s like they’re trying to gaslight me. You do remember Jimmy Cavanaugh?”

  “Of course. He spent Christmas with us at Bedford a couple of times. I liked the guy, too.”

  “What could he have had to do with the Corporation? Did they turn him, somehow, make every trace of his existence disappear at some point?”

  “No,” Peter said, “you’re missing the point. Howie Rubin must have been right. There is no Jimmy Cavanaugh and there never was.” He began speaking more quickly. “In a twisted way, there’s a logic to this. Jimmy Cavanaugh—let’s call him that, whatever his real name was—was never turned. He was working for them all along. Here’s a kid who’s older than the rest of the class, lives off campus, and before you know it, he’s your ass-hole buddy. Don’t you see, Benno? That was the plan. For whatever reason, they must have decided it was important to keep a close eye on you at that point. It was a matter of taking precautions.”

  “You’re saying Cavanaugh was… assigned to me!”

  “And probably somebody was assigned to me, too. Our dad was one of the principals. Did we learn something that might jeopardize the organization? Were we going to be a threat to them in some way? Did they need to worry about us? Maybe they needed to be sure. Until you went off to your ghetto and I went off to Africa—basically put ourselves out to pasture, as far as they were concerned.”

  Ben’s mind reeled, and all this talk of they only made matters worse.

  “Doesn’t it make sense for a group of industrialists to bring in an operative, a killer, whose highly specific qualifications included knowing you by sight?”

  “Hell, Peter, I suppose…”

  “You suppose? Benno, if you think about it—”

  The sound of shattering glass.

  Ben gasped, saw the jagged hole that suddenly appeared in the windowpane. Peter seemed to bow his head, leaning forward deliberately onto the table in an oddly comic gesture, as if kowtowing exaggeratedly, genuflecting, giving a courtly salaam. In that same freeze-frame moment it was the expulsion of breath, the throaty haaah, that made no sense, until Ben saw the obscene crimson exit wound in the middle of Peter’s forehead, the flecks of gray tissue and splinters of white bone fragments that sprayed over the table, on the plates and silverware.

  “Oh, my God!” Ben keened. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” He toppled backward in his chair, tumbling to the floor, his head slamming against the hard oak floor-boards. “No,” he moaned, barely aware of the volley of silenced gunfire exploding everywhere in the small dining room. “Oh no. Oh, my God.” He was frozen, paralyzed by terror and shock and disbelief, so unfathomable was the horror in front of him, until some primitive signal of self-preservation emerged from deep within his hindbrain, propelling him to his feet.

  Now he looked out of the shattered window, saw nothing but blackness, and then, illuminated by a muzzle flash preceding another gunshot, there was a face. The image lasted no longer than a split second, but it was emblazoned indelibly in his mind. The assassin’s eyes were dark and deep-set, his face pale and unlined, the skin almost tight.

  Ben leaped across the small dining room as, behind him, another windowpane shattered, another bullet pitted the plaster in the wall not a foot away.

  The assassin was aiming at him now, that was clear. Or was it? Was he still aiming at Peter, this shot just wildly astray? Had he seen him, too? Did he see him?

  As if in answer to his unspoken question, a bullet splintered the doorframe just inches from his head as he vaulted through it into the dark corridor that connected the dining room to the entrance area. From ahead, in the foyer, came a female shout, presumably the innkeeper yelling in anger or in fear; suddenly she loomed directly in his path, arms flailing.

  He knocked her aside as he bounded into the foyer. The innkeeper squawked in protest.

  He was barely thinking now, he was moving fast and frantically, dazed and numb and robotic, not having to think about what had just happened, not thinking about anything now except survival.

  His eyes adjusting to the near-darkness—a small lamp in the far corner of the room, behind the reception counter, cast a tiny circle of light—he saw there was only the front door and another hallway that led to the guests’ rooms.

  A narrow staircase off the hallway, visible from here, led to more rooms upstairs. There was no window in the room he was now standing in, which meant it was a safe haven from incoming bullets, at least for a few seconds.

  On the other hand, the lack of a window meant he was unable to see whether the shooter had run around to the front of the building. Peter’s killer would have realized he had missed one of his targets, and so he’d have run either to the front or the back of the inn. Front entrance or back
, unless there were others Ben didn’t know about. That gave Ben a fifty-fifty chance of making it out through the front door.

  Fifty-fifty.

  Ben didn’t like the odds.

  And what if there were more than one of them?

  If there were several, they’d have fanned out to stake out all entrances, all exits from the building. Either way, one or several killers out there, escaping through the front or the back was out of the question.

  A scream issued from the dining room: the innkeeper had no doubt just discovered the sickening carnage.

  Welcome to my world, madame.

  From the floor above Ben could hear the heavy tread of footsteps. Other guests awakening.

  Other guests: How many were staying here?

  He rushed toward the front door, turned the heavy steel safety lock.

  Rapid footfalls thundered from the staircase on the other side of the room, then a hulking figure of a fat man appeared at the foot of the stairs. He was wearing a blue bathrobe, looking as if it had been hastily thrown on. The man’s face was fearful. “Was geht hier vor?” he cried.

  “Call the police,” Ben yelled back in English. “Polizei—telephone!” He pointed at the phone behind the reception desk.

  “The police? What—is someone hurt?”

  “Telephone!” Ben repeated angrily. “Go! Some-one’s been killed!”

  Someone’s been killed.

  The fat man lurched forward clumsily as if he’d been pushed. He rushed to the reception desk, picked up the telephone, listened for a brief moment, then dialed.

  The fat man was now speaking in German, loudly and quickly.

  Where was the gunman—gunmen?—now? He’d burst inside and look for him and do to him what he’d done to Peter. There were other guests here, others who would get in the way… but that wouldn’t stop him, would it? He remembered the massacre in the Zurich arcade.

  The fat Swiss hung up the phone. “Sie sind unterwegs,” he said. “Police—is coming.”

  “How far away are they?”

  The man looked at him for a moment, then understood. “Just down the road,” he said. “Very near. What happened—who was killed?”

  “No one you know.”

  Again Ben pointed, this time toward the dining room, but the woman innkeeper burst through the doorway, shrieking, “Er ist tot! Sie haben ihn erschossen! Dieser Mann dort draussen—Dein Bruder, er wurde ermordet!” Somehow she’d concluded that Ben had killed his own brother. Insanity.

  Ben felt his stomach turn over. He’d been in a haze, a deadened stupor, and suddenly the reality of it, the horror, was sinking in. The guest shouted something at her. Ben ran toward the hall that he guessed led to the rear of the house.

  The woman was screaming at his back, but Ben kept running. The high caterwauling of a police siren joined the innkeeper’s shrill hysteria, then grew louder as the police car came closer. It sounded like a single siren, a single car. But that was enough.

  Stay or go?

  They own half the cops, Peter had said.

  He ran down the hall, turned sharply to the right, then saw a small painted wooden door. He flung it open: wooden shelves piled with linens.

  The siren grew louder, now accompanied by the crunch of a car’s wheels on gravel. The police were arriving at the front of the building.

  Ben ran toward another wooden doorway at the end of the hall. A small louvered window next to it told him the door led to the outside. He turned the knob and pulled at the door. It stuck; he pulled again, harder, and this time it yielded and the door came open.

  The area outside had to be safe by now: the police sirens would have scared the gunmen away. No one would be lurking in the dense woods back here for fear of getting caught. He leaped forward into the underbrush, his foot snagging on a vine, knocking him painfully to the ground.

  Christ! he thought. Must hurry. The police had to be avoided at all costs. They own half the cops. He scrambled to his feet, lunged forward into the pitch-black.

  The siren had gone silent, but now there were shouts, both female and male, the crunch of feet on the gravel. Running forward, he pushed branches away from his face, but still one scraped him, just missing an eye. He kept going, not slowing for a second, turning this way, juking that, through the close vegetation, the narrow tunnels, under canopies formed by interlaced branches. Something tore at his pants. His hands were scraped and bloodied. But he kept plowing through the trees, machinelike, unthinking, until he came to the hidden clearing where Peter’s truck was still parked.

  He opened the driver’s side door—unlocked, thank God—and of course there was no key in the ignition. He felt under the floor mat. Nothing. Under the seat. Nothing.

  Panic overcame him. He inhaled sharply several times to try to calm himself. Of course, he thought. I’ve forgotten what I know.

  He reached into the mess of wires beneath the dash, pulled them out to inspect the tangle by the weak overhead light. Hot-wiring, their beloved family groundskeeper, Arnie, had told him and Peter one summer morning. This is a skill you may never have a use for. But if you do, you’ll sure be glad you got it.

  In a few moments he’d paired the two wires, and the ignition turned over, roared to life. Slamming the gearshift into reverse, he backed out of the clearing onto the dark road. No headlights in either direction. He shifted into drive; the old truck balked, but then lurched ahead, surging down the deserted highway.

  Chapter Nine

  Halifax, Nova Scotia

  The next morning was cold and dreary. Fog had settled gloomily over the port, visibility no more than ten feet ahead.

  Robert Mailhot lay on a steel examination table, clothed in a blue suit, his face and hands rosy with the funeral home’s garish makeup. The face was bronzetinted but heavily lined, angry, the thin mouth sunken, the nose a prominent beak. He looked to be five foot ten or eleven, which meant he’d probably been six feet tall as a young man.

  The medical examiner was a corpulent, ruddy-faced man in his late fifties named Higgins: a thatch of white hair, small suspicious gray eyes. He was perfectly cordial, while at the same time guarded, neutral. He wore a green surgical gown. “So you’ve got reason to believe this was a homicide?” he said jovially, his eyes watchful. He was dubious and made no attempt to mask it.

  Anna nodded.

  Sergeant Arsenault, in a bright red sweater and jeans, was subdued. Both of them were rattled by their long and difficult interview with the widow. In the end, of course, she had given permission for the autopsy, saving them the headache of having to ask for a court order.

  The hospital morgue reeked of formalin, which always made Anna uneasy. Classical music played tinnily from a portable radio on the stainless-steel counter.

  “You’re not expecting to find any trace evidence on the body, I hope,” Higgins said.

  “I assume the body was pretty thoroughly washed at the funeral home,” she said. Did he think she was an idiot?

  “What are we looking for, then?”

  “I don’t know. Puncture marks, bruises, wounds, cuts, scratches.”

  “Poison?”

  “Could be.”

  She and Higgins and Arsenault together removed Mailhot’s clothing, and then Higgins swabbed the body’s hands and face clean of makeup, which could hide marks. The eyes had been sutured shut at the funeral home; Higgins cut the stitches and inspected for petechial hemorrhages—tiny pinpoints of blood under the skin—that might indicate strangulation.

  “Any bruising inside the lips?” Anna asked.

  The mouth, too, had been sutured closed. The medical examiner quickly sliced through the twine with a scalpel, then poked around inside the mouth with a latex-gloved finger. When someone is smothered with a pillow with enough pressure to stop the flow of air, Anna knew, you usually find bruises where the lips were forced against the teeth.

  “Uh-uh,” he said. “None that I can see.”

  All three began inspecting the shriveled body wi
th magnifying glasses, inch by inch. With an old person this is difficult work: the skin is covered with dings and bruises, moles and broken capillaries, the marks and accretions of age.

  They looked for needle marks in all the usual places: the back of the neck, between fingers and toes, the backs of the hands, the ankles, behind the ears. Around the nose and cheeks. Injection marks could be disguised with a scratch, but nothing turned up. Higgins even checked the scrotum, which was large and loose, the penis a tiny stub nestled on top. Pathologists rarely checked the scrotum. The guy was thorough.

  They spent over an hour at it, then turned Mailhot over and did the same. Higgins took photographs of the body. For a long time no one spoke; there was just the staticky crackle of a clarinet, the lush swell of strings, the hum of refrigerators and other machinery. The formalin smell was unpleasant, but at least there was no smell of decay, for which Anna was thankful. Higgins checked the fingernails for tears or rips—did the deceased fight an assailant?—and scraped under the nails, putting the scrapings into small white envelopes.

  “Nothing on the epidermis out of the ordinary, far as I can see,” Higgins declared at last.

  She was disappointed but not surprised. “Poison could have been ingested,” she suggested.

  “Well, it’ll turn up in the tox,” Higgins said.

  “Maybe not,” she said. “There’s no blood.”

  “May be some,” Higgins said. If they were lucky. Usually, when the funeral home prepared the body, the blood was completely removed except for small residual pockets, and replaced with embalming fluid. Methanol, ethanol, formaldehyde, dyes. It broke down certain compounds, poisons, rendering them untraceable. Maybe there’d be some urine remaining in the bladder.

  He cut the usual Y-shaped incision from the shoulder down to the pelvis, then reached inside the thoracic cavity to remove the organs and weigh them. This was one of the aspects of an autopsy Anna found particularly repellent. She worked with death regularly, but there was a reason she hadn’t become a pathologist.

  Arsenault, looking pale, excused himself to get a cup of coffee.