The Sigma Protocol

by Robert Ludlum

  “And I laughed in his face!” Fred was saying, having talked over Ben’s interjection. “I told him, maybe that’s what you get from your creepy English boarding schools, but I’m a Deerfield man myself, and there’s no way on God’s green earth that…”

  “I appreciate the vote of confidence, Fred. The thing is…”

  “Top-seeded in tennis, I told him. You were, weren’t you?”

  “Well, actually…”

  “Track and field? I was a track and field man myself—did I ever show you my trophies? Louise thinks it’s ridiculous that I’m still boasting about them fifty years later, and she’s right. But I’m incorrigible.”

  “Fred, I’ve got a really, really, really big favor to ask.”

  “For you, Benny? You’re practically family, you know that. One day you might actually be family. Just say the word, my boy. Just say the word.”

  As Anna said, it was the beginning of a plan, no more. But foolproof would take more time than they had. Because the one thing that was certain was that they had to make their way to Vienna as fast as possible, or it would be too late.

  Unless it was, as Chardin had suggested, already too late.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The hotel was in Vienna’s seventh district, and they had selected it because it appeared to be suitably anonymous, catering mostly to German and Austrian tourists. Traveling to Brussels in uniform as David Paine, Ben arrived first, by several hours; Anna, using the Gayatri Chandragupta alias for one last time, had traveled on a separate flight, connecting through Amsterdam. McCallan’s pilot, a genial Irishman named Harry Hogan, was perplexed by the odd garb of his guests, and further perplexed that they’d refused to tell him in advance where they planned on going, but the old man had been vehement in his instructions: whatever Ben wanted, Ben would get. No questions asked.

  Compared to the luxury of the Gulfstream, and the open-faced companionability of Harry Hogan, the hotel seemed drab and depressing. All the more so because Anna hadn’t arrived yet: they agreed that traveling together from the airport was a risk best avoided. They’d travel separately, and by different routes.

  Alone in the room, Ben felt caged and anxious. It was noontime but the weather was foul; rain spattered against the room’s small windows, deepening his sense of gloom.

  He thought about Chardin’s life, about the incredible ways in which the governance of the Western world had been molded and directed by these corporate managers. And he thought about his father. A victim? A victimizer? Both?

  Max had hired people to watch out for him—minders, baby-sitters, for God’s sake. In a way, that was typical of the man: if Ben wouldn’t let old secrets stay buried, then Max would try to control him his own way. It was both infuriating and touching.

  When Anna arrived—they were sharing the room as Mr. and Mrs. David Paine—he embraced her, placing his face next to hers and feeling some of his sense of anxiety ebb.

  Feeling grimy from the long flight, they each showered. Anna took a long time, emerging from the bathroom in a terry-cloth robe, her dark brown hair combed straight back, her skin glowing.

  As she went to her suitcase to pick out clothes, Ben said, “I don’t want you to see Lenz alone.”

  She didn’t look up. “Oh, is that right?”

  “Anna,” he said, exasperated, “we don’t even know who Jürgen Lenz really is.”

  Holding a blouse in one hand and a navy skirt in the other, she turned to face him. Her eyes flashed. “At this point, it doesn’t matter. I have to talk to him.”

  “Look, whoever he is, we can assume that he was at least involved in the murder of eight old men around the world. My brother, too. And it’s a plausible assumption that he’s become a principal in a conspiracy that, if Chardin is right, has no real outer bounds. Lenz knows my face, and now he no doubt knows where I’ve been. So it’s a fair assumption that he knows I’ve been traveling with you, which means he may well have seen a photograph of you. It isn’t safe for you to go see this man.”

  “I’m not disputing that, Ben. We don’t have the luxury of choosing between the safe thing and the dangerous thing: whatever we do at this point will involve danger. Even doing nothing. Besides, if I’m killed shortly after asking him questions about a series of murders around the world, he’d immediately be the focus of suspicion—and I seriously doubt he wants that.”

  “What even makes you think he’ll see you?”

  She set the clothes down on the edge of the bed.

  “The best way to play him is not to play him.”

  “I don’t like the sound of this.”

  “This is a man who’s used to being in control, used to manipulating people and events. Call it arrogance or call it curiosity, but he’ll want to see me.”

  “Listen to me, Anna…”

  “Ben, I can take care of myself. I really can.”

  “Obviously,” he protested. “It’s just that—” He stopped. She was looking at him strangely. “What?”

  “You’re the protective type, aren’t you?”

  “I don’t know about protective, exactly. I’m just—”

  She approached him, examining him as if he were an exhibit in a museum. “When we met, I just assumed you were another rich, spoiled, self-centered preppy.”

  “You were probably right.”

  “No. I don’t think so. So was that your role in the family—the caretaker?”

  Embarrassed, Ben didn’t know how to reply. Maybe she was right, but for some reason he didn’t want to say it. Instead, he drew her close. “I don’t want to lose you, Anna,” he said quietly. “I’ve lost too many people in my life.”

  She closed her eyes and hugged him tight; both of them were agitated, nervous, exhausted, and yet as they embraced a moment of calm passed between them. He inhaled her delicate floral scent, and something in him melted.

  Then, gently, she withdrew. “We have a plan, and we’ve got to follow it, Ben,” she said, her voice soft but resolute, and she dressed quickly. “I have to make a pickup at the DHL office, and then make a business call.”

  “Anna,” Ben said.

  “I’ve got to go. We can talk later.”

  “Oh, sweet Jesus,” said Officer Burt Connelly. He had been on the I66 Virginia highway patrol for only six months, and he still wasn’t accustomed to the sight of roadside carnage. He felt his stomach heaving, scurried to the side of the road, and vomited. A splash got on his crisp blue uniform, and he wiped it off with a tissue. Then he tossed the tissue out, too.

  Even in the low light of the early evening, he could see only too clearly the blood spattered across the windscreen and the man’s head on the dashboard. It had been severed from the body and horribly flattened by the impact—the “second collision,” as they called it, which was the collision of the passenger inside the crashed vehicle itself.

  Connelly’s partner, Officer Lamar Graydon, had been on highway patrol for more than a year. He’d seen a few gruesome accidents before, and he knew how to keep his lunch down.

  “It’s a bad one, Burt,” Graydon said, walking over and patting his partner’s back. A sort of weary bravado played in his brown eyes. “But I’ve come across worse.”

  “Did you see the guy’s head!”

  “At least there’s no little kids involved. Let me tell you, last year, I was at an accident scene where a baby got ejected through the open window of an Impala, thrown thirty feet in the air. Like a goddamn rag doll. Now, that was horrible.”

  Connelly coughed a few times, and straightened up. “Sorry,” he said. “It’s just that guy’s face… I’m O.K. now. Ambulance on the way?”

  “Should be here in ten minutes. Not that he’s feeling any pain.” Graydon nodded toward the decapitated accident victim.

  “So what’s the situation here? SVF?” Statistically, a single-vehicle fatality was the most common sort.

  “Not a chance,” Graydon said. “No guardrail does that. This is what happens when you slam into on
e of those Kenworth car haulers, and there are plenty of ’em on this highway. With monsters like that, the back hangs low, and it’s one flat steel edge—like a blade. If you’re behind one of those things and it stops short, either you duck or it takes your head off. I’ll betcha that’s what you’re looking at.”

  “Then what happened to the other guy? Where’s the goddamn truck?” Connelly was starting to regain a sense of self-possession. Oddly, he even felt a little hungry again.

  “Looks like he decided not to stick around,” Gray-don said.

  “Well, are we going to find it?”

  “I’ve radioed it in. Dispatcher’s got the info. Between you and me, though, I wouldn’t bet money on it. Thing to do right now is try to ID the guy. Search the pockets.”

  Though the top of the red Taurus was smashed in, the door on the driver’s side opened easily. Connelly put on latex gloves before rummaging through the headless man’s pockets; that was procedure when clothing was blood-soaked.

  “Give me a name, and I’ll radio that in, too,” Gray-don called out.

  “Driver’s license says Dupree, Arliss Dupree,” Connelly said. “Lives on Glebe Road, in Arlington.”

  “That’s all we need to know,” Graydon said. “And you don’t have to freeze your ass off, Burt. We can wait in the patrol car now.”

  The building that housed the Lenz Foundation was, Bauhaus style, all glass and marble. The lobby was flooded with light, furnished simply with white leather chairs and sofas.

  Anna asked the receptionist to call the office of the director. That he was at the foundation she’d already verified with an earlier phone call.

  “Who shall I say wishes to see Dr. Lenz?” she inquired.

  “My name is Anna Navarro. I’m an agent with the U.S. Department of Justice.”

  She’d earlier considered and rejected the idea of approaching him under some false alias. But as she’d told Ben, she’d decided that the best way to play him was not to play him. If Lenz did even a cursory background check, he’d learn of her outlaw status. But would that make him less likely to see him, or more? If their theories about Alan Bartlett were correct, Jürgen Lenz might already know a fair amount about her. But he wouldn’t know—couldn’t know—precisely what she had learned, and might have conveyed to others. She had to rely upon his curiosity, his arrogance, and, most of all, his desire to control the situation. He would want to know whether she posed a threat to him, and he would want to assess that himself.

  The receptionist picked up her desk phone and spoke quietly, then handed Anna the handset. “Please.”

  The woman on the phone was courteous but firm. “I’m afraid Dr. Lenz has a full schedule today. Perhaps you’d like to make an appointment for another day? I’m afraid that with the International Children’s Health Forum, all the people here have their hands full.”

  He had to be evading her, but was that because he’d heard her institutional affiliation, or because he already knew her name? Maybe the woman hadn’t even bothered to convey the message.

  “It really can’t wait,” Anna said. “I need to see him as soon as possible on an extremely urgent matter.”

  “Can you tell me what you wish to speak with Dr. Lenz about?”

  She hesitated. “Please tell him it’s a personal matter.”

  She put the phone down and paced nervously around the lobby.

  Here I am in the lair of the beast, she thought. The heart of darkness, airy and full of light.

  The white Carrara marble walls were bare except for a line of large blowups of photographs depicting the wide range of humanitarian causes supported by the Lenz Foundation.

  There was a picture of several generations of a refugee family—a toothless, hunched old woman, a weathered and beaten-down husband and wife, their ragged children. This was entitled simply KOSOVO.

  Meaning what? What did the Lenz Foundation have to do with refugees?

  There was a portrait of a peculiarly wizened girl with a beaked nose, parchment skin, prominent eyes, long hair that was obviously a wig. She was smiling with crowded, irregular teeth, at once a young girl and an old woman. This photograph was labeled HUTCHINSON-GILFORD PROGERIA SYNDROME.

  There was the famous stark and shocking photograph of emaciated concentration-camp inmates looking curiously at the camera from their bunk beds. THE HOLOCAUST.

  A strange array of causes. What connected them?

  Anna sensed a presence and looked up. A matronly woman had appeared in the lobby, a pair of reading glasses hanging from a chain around her neck. “Ms. Navarro,” she said. “You’re quite fortunate. Dr. Lenz has managed to free up a few minutes to see you.”

  At a security station on the floor above, a technician hunched over a control panel. Manipulating a joystick, he swiveled and zoomed in one of the wall-mounted cameras. The visitor’s light brown face now filled the flat screen plasma display. The press of a button froze the image. By means of a thirty-seven point physiognomic metric, the face could be digitally compared with a set of image files in the system’s extensive database. Somehow the technician suspected that it would not take long to come up with a match.

  He was right. A quiet electronic chirp alerted him that the image matched a file from the watch list. As a column of information scrolled down the monitor, he picked up the phone and called Lenz, dialing a number that rang directly on his desk.

  Jürgen Lenz was just as Ben had described him: whippet-thin, silver-haired, elegant, and charming. He wore a perfectly cut suit of dark gray flannel, a neatly pressed white shirt, a foulard tie. He sat in a Chippendale-style chair facing her, his hands folded in his lap.

  “Well, you’ve got me,” he said as he handed her credentials back to her.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’ve piqued my curiosity. I’m told a woman is here to see me from the American government in connection with a ‘personal matter’—how could I possibly resist such a lure?”

  She wondered how much he knew about her. She could see already that he was as smooth and hard as polished stone.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” Anna returned courtesy with courtesy. “I’ve been on special assignment, investigating a series of murders around the world—”

  “Murders?” he said. “What in heaven’s name can I tell you about murders?”

  She knew she had one chance, and she’d have to hit him hard. Any weakness, any hesitation, any uncertainty, and the game was over. She would stick to one issue of narrow concern: the Sigma homicides.

  “The murder victims were all involved in a corporation known as Sigma, of which Gerhard Lenz was a founder. We’ve established a direct connection between the deaths and a subsidiary of the chemical giant Armakon, on whose board you sit…”

  Lenz seemed to relax. He laughed deeply, mellifluously. “Ms. Navarro, in all my years of crusading against the evil that my father did, I’ve been accused of many terrible things—disloyalty to family, disloyalty to my country, opportunism, insincerity, you name it—but no one has ever accused me of murder!”

  Anna had known what to expect. He would be poised, nonconfrontational, evasive. So she had tried to anticipate his every response, and she was ready with a reply. “Dr. Lenz,” she said, “I hope you’re not denying that you’re on the board of Armakon.”

  “It’s purely honorary.”

  She hesitated, then said, “I don’t want to waste your time. As you know, Armakon is the secret owner of a biotech start-up in Philadelphia called Vortex.”

  She watched his face. His eyes were neutral, guarded. “I’m sure Armakon owns many inconsequential start-ups around the world. So?”

  “Vortex,” she went on, “is the inventor and manufacturer of a synthetic substance that’s used in basic research, for molecular tagging. It’s also a deadly poison that, once injected into a person’s bloodstream, induces immediate death by heart failure, and is then undetectable in the blood.”

  He replied in a flat voice, “How interesting.”
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  “That particular toxin was found in the ocular fluid of several of these murder victims.”

  “Do you have a point?”

  “I do,” she said quietly, eyes locked on his. She was momentarily startled by what she saw there: absolute searing contempt. “I have evidence linking you directly to those murders.”

  For a moment there was only the ticking of a clock. Somberly, Lenz clasped his hands. He looked like a Lutheran minister. “Agent Navarro, all these terrible charges you hurl at me. These terrible things you say I’ve done. I took time out of an extremely busy day—time I can scarcely afford to squander—because I thought we could help each other in some way. Perhaps a friend of mine was in trouble. Perhaps someone needed my help, or vice versa. Instead, you come here on what I believe is called a ‘fishing expedition.’” He rose from his chair. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”

  Heart hammering, she thought: Not so fast, you bastard. “I’m not done yet,” she said with a firmness that she could see surprised him.

  “Agent Navarro, I really don’t have to talk to you. Correct me if I’m wrong, but anyone who visits me as an agent of American law enforcement is here as a guest of my country. If you wish to interrogate me because of who my father was, you must ask permission of the Austrian government, yes? Have you done that?”

  “No,” she admitted, flushing. “But let me be clear—”

  “No, madame,” he said, raising his voice. “Let me be clear. You haven’t done that because you are no longer in the employ of your country. In fact, you are yourself a fugitive from justice. Let us both put our cards on the table. Your investigations have taken you outside the boundaries of lawful conduct. My secretary conveys the insistent requests of an American agent to see me. At my behest, she makes a few phone calls to verify your identity.” His eyes didn’t leave her face. “She discovers that you are a wanted woman. But then you must have expected we would take such precautions. And yet you came to see me all the same. Which piqued my curiosity further.”