Cauldron

by Larry Bond

  According to the blueprints he’d memorized, the window in front of him opened directly onto a corridor leading straight to their objective, the factory’s computer center. It was almost a perfect entry point. He glanced toward the nearby staff canteen — far too near for his taste. Still…

  He shrugged. Second-guessing a good plan was usually a certain road to disaster. Speed and convenience should outweigh any risk.

  Woerner was already hard at work, his thick fingers flashing nimbly through long-practiced tasks. The big man pulled a piece of metal shaped as a flattened U out of his vest and smeared a fast-acting adhesive across both ends. Then he clamped the metal bar onto the window and held it in place for several seconds, waiting for the glue to take hold. Satisfied, he let go and stepped back, leaving room for his superior to take over.

  Duroc moved forward with a diamond-edged glass cutter in his right hand. They had their door handle. Now to make the door. He dragged the glass cutter through the window in four steady strokes, two vertical and two horizontal, grunting softly at the effort it took.

  When he was done, Woerner grabbed the metal handle with both hands and tugged straight outward, levering a solid piece of glass right out of the window. While the giant Alsatian carefully set his burden down on the grass, Duroc unrolled a thick sheet of black matting across their new-cut opening. The steel strands woven through both the matting and his gloves would protect his hands and legs while he climbed through the gap.

  Without waiting for further orders, Woerner knelt down and put his own hands together to form a makeshift stirrup. Duroc stepped up into the other man’s locked hands, reaching for the edges of the cut glass as his subordinate boosted him toward the hole. He threw one leg over the protective matting, leaning inward…

  An outside door banged open.

  Duroc almost lost his balance as he jerked his head around toward the entrance to the factory’s cafeteria. A blue-uniformed security guard carrying a steaming cup of coffee stood there staring back at him. Shock and surprise combined to stretch time itself, turning a single second into an endless, frozen pause.

  Sudden motion shattered the illusion as the security guard tossed his coffee cup away and fumbled for the pistol holstered at his side. “Halt!”

  Duroc swore inwardly, unable to reach for his own weapons while he teetered practically spread-eagle against the window. For all his size and strength Michel Woerner was even more helpless. Neither could move without disastrously unbalancing the other.

  With his pistol out and steadied in a two-hand grip, the guard edged closer, visibly more confident as his eyes sorted out the spectacle in front of him. Duroc forced himself to look beyond the muzzle aimed at his stomach. The other man was young, and young-looking despite the thick mustache curling above his upper lip. An ex-conscript perhaps, fresh from his military service and still eager for action. That was unfortunate. An older man might have been more reasonable or more worried about his own survival. But younger men prized glory above all else.

  “Do not move or I will shoot.”

  Duroc’s mouth twisted at the clumsy, phrase-book Hungarian. Nevertheless, he obeyed and stood motionless, still perched in Woerner’s cupped hands, silently willing the guard to keep walking. A little further, he thought. Just a little further.

  The young man stepped away from the open cafeteria door, moving out onto the lawn to give himself a clearer field of fire. He lowered one hand from his pistol toward the radio clipped to his belt. Duroc felt his jaw muscles clench. An alert now would ruin everything.

  Crack.

  The security guard’s chest exploded in a red rain of blood and broken bone — torn open by a 7.62mm bullet that hit him squarely in the back and threw him forward onto the grass. He shuddered once and then lay still.

  Duroc scrambled down from the window and knelt beside the body, feeling for a pulse. Nothing. He glanced toward the wooded hills three hundred meters away and punched the transmit key on his own radio. “Confirmed.”

  Two answering clicks sounded in his earphones as the sniper he’d placed there on overwatch acknowledged the kill.

  He pulled the pistol out of the dead man’s hand and rose to his feet. “Who was he?”

  “Monnet, Jacques.” Woerner read the guard’s bloodied name tag aloud.

  Duroc recognized the name and shook his head slowly and sadly from side to side. Monnet had been the sentry stationed at the main door. He ought to have been safely on duty and out of the way. But he evidently couldn’t wait for his shift change to get his coffee. So now the young fool was dead. A pity. His death would complicate matters.

  He nodded toward the window. “Bring him.”

  Woerner grunted his assent and bent to his task. Together they manhandled the guard’s body through the gap and dumped it into the corridor beyond.

  Nose wrinkling at the smell of blood and voided bowels, Duroc wiped his gloves clean on the grass and checked his watch. They were behind their timetable — but still well within the planned margin for error. “Right, Michel. Let’s finish this and get home to our beds, eh?”

  “Oui, m’sieu.”

  A humorless smile ghosted across the big man’s face. “I’ve had enough excitement for this night.”

  Thirty seconds later, Duroc glided down the dark hallway alone while Woerner waited outside to guard his retreat. The Frenchman was tired of unpleasant surprises.

  A thick, fireproof steel door blocked access to the computer center. And a tiny red light blinked steadily on a nearby ten-key panel controlling the door’s electronic lock. Security might be lax everywhere else, but the Sopron plant’s data banks held information that Eurocopter’s Japanese and American competitors would dearly love to see — production schedules and costs, precise formulas for rotor metal and plastic composites, reports on advanced R&D projects, and all the thousands of other facts and figures generated by any major industrial concern.

  Duroc focused a small penlight on the keypad and carefully punched in the six-digit security code he’d memorized. Yesterday’s security code. As he’d expected, the massive steel door stayed obstinately shut. Good. He tried the code again. This time the panel’s tiny red light stopped blinking. Even better. The simpleminded computer controlling the lock would now have a record of two failed attempts using a code that would have worked just a few hours before.

  He snapped the penlight off and clipped it back in place on his web gear. Moving quickly, he molded an ounce of pliable plastic explosive around the lock control panel. More ounces covered the door’s hinges. When he was finished, the Frenchman stepped back and eyed his work appreciatively. Wires ran from igniters buried inside each piece of plastic explosive to a small, inexpensive, and old-fashioned wristwatch set for a two-hour delay. He nodded to himself. It had the right feel to it. Effective but amateurish. Even the type of explosive he’d used was appropriate. Czechoslovakia’s old communist government had doled out odorless, colorless Semtex to terrorists around the world.

  Duroc moved back up the corridor. Time for the finishing touches to this night’s work. He uncapped a small can of red paint, shook it, and sprayed. “Death to French pigs!” and “Liberty, not slavery!” in meter-high letters across one wall. Duroc had been careful to memorize the nationalist slogans in Hungarian, and even used the characteristic lettering. Even the smallest details were important in a job of this kind. All of the signs would point to Hungarian terrorists, angry with French “economic colonialism.”

  Woerner was waiting for him at the window. “It’s still quiet.”

  “Not for long.” Duroc dropped onto the grass and stood waiting while the big man rerolled their black steel mat and carefully set the cut-out piece of glass back in place. Then the two men turned and trotted back toward the hills rising above the factory complex.

  The watch-driven bomb they’d left behind clicked another minute closer to detonation.

  Duroc and his team were forty kilometers away when the timer reached zero.

&
nbsp; The Sopron factory administration building rocked on its foundation, torn by a powerful explosion. A searing white light flared behind every ground-floor window milliseconds before the shock wave blew them apart. Behind that first shock wave, a wall of fire and superheated air roared outward from the detonation point, killing five Hungarian maintenance workers who had just come on-shift and setting everything flammable ablaze.

  Even before the first emergency sirens wailed over the Eurocopter complex, flames could be seen dancing eerily through the shattered building.

  AUGUST 2 — EUROCOPTER ROTOR-FABRICATION PLANT, NEAR SOPRON

  Pale sunshine streamed over a scene of barely contained chaos. Fire trucks and other emergency vehicles surrounded the bomb-damaged administration center — parked seemingly at random on its scarred, wreckage-strewn lawn. Workers carrying salvaged office equipment and furniture outside mingled with weary firemen, structural engineers, and worried-looking company officials. Restless security guards armed with automatic weapons instead of their standard-issue pistols stood watch at the main gate and near the explosion site.

  A thin, acrid smell of smoke and charred paper lingered in the muggy, windless air. The computer room’s halon fire extinguishers and steel doors had saved the factory’s data processing systems, but they hadn’t stopped blast-sparked fires from roaring through the rest of the ground floor.

  Fifty meters from the building, a short, round-faced man fought hard to control his temper. Even during the best of times, Colonel Zoltan Hradetsky had never much liked Francois Gellard, the Eurocopter factory’s general manager. The Frenchman had always been officious, arrogant, and all too ready to look down a long, thin nose at everything and everybody Hungarian. At the moment, the man’s worst traits were magnified a thousandfold.

  “For the last time, Colonel, I must refuse your request to investigate this affair.” The manager folded his arms. “Your presence here is unnecessary… and disruptive.”

  “Disruptive? You…” Hradetsky swallowed the string of curses that rose in his throat. “You misunderstand me, M. Gellard.”

  He jabbed a finger toward the wrecked administration center. “That is a police matter. So is the cold-blooded murder of five of my countrymen. As the ranking police officer for this district, I am not making a ‘request.’ I’m issuing an order.”

  “Impossible,” Gellard sneered. “Your orders carry no weight within this compound, Colonel. I suggest you reread the terms of the contract between your government and my company. For all practical purposes, this is French soil. This terrorist crime has been committed against a French corporation. And it will be investigated under French authority.”

  That damned contract! Hradetsky ground his teeth together. He didn’t need to peruse the fine print to know that the factory manager was on safe ground. When the Sopron plant was being built, Hungary’s shaky military junta had been desperate for French and German financial assistance. To the generals in Budapest, meeting Eurocopter’s demands for tax-free status and complete control over its facilities had appeared a small price to pay for the jobs and low-interest loans its factory would provide. And they’d granted the same special privileges to dozens of other Franco-German business interests.

  The police colonel shook his head. He’d supported the two-year-old Government of National Salvation as a regrettable but necessary emergency measure. Hungary’s weak, faction-riddled, post-communist democracy couldn’t cope with economic chaos and failing harvests. Heavy-handed rule by soldiers had seemed better than misrule by inept, quarreling politicians. Now he was starting to have second thoughts about that. In effect, the generals had mortgaged their nation’s sovereignty to feed the hungry, unruly people who had put them in power. After forty-five years of military and political domination by the Soviets, his poor country had staggered into the grasp of a new set of masters — France and Germany, Europe’s new economic and military superpowers.

  “Well, Colonel?”

  Hradetsky looked up. “What you say may be legally correct, but I do not think it is especially wise.” He tried to keep his voice dispassionate. “If there are terrorists operating in this region, surely you can see that it will take all our combined efforts to hunt them down?”

  “What do you mean, ‘if there are terrorists’?” Gellard demanded. “There’s no ‘if about it! What’s more, it’s obvious that they were aided by traitors inside our own work force. By some of your lazy, shiftless countrymen!”

  The factory manager frowned. “Given that fact, Colonel, even an idiot should be able to understand why my company can’t trust this investigation to you or your men. Hungarians hunting Hungarians? The very idea is ludicrous.”

  Hradetsky’s irritation flared into open rage. He could stomach arrogance, but he’d be damned if he’d put up with deliberate insults. He stepped closer to Gellard — a move that wiped the easy assurance off the Frenchman’s long, aristocratic face. “I think you should reconsider your choice of words, monsieur. Some of my countrymen might say that you have a tongue so sharp that it must wish for the touch of a knife. Do I make myself clear?”

  The manager paled, evidently aware that he’d gone too far. “I didn’t mean… that is, what I said was…”

  A helicopter roared low overhead, drowning out his stuttered apology. Both men turned to stare as it circled, flared out, and clattered in to land in the administration center’s parking lot. Hradetsky scowled at the blue, white, and red tricolor emblazoned on the helicopter’s tail-rotor pylon. Clearly the French government wasn’t wasting any time before poking its own nose into this matter.

  Three men climbed out of the aircraft, ducking under its slowing rotor blades. Two were big men, mere muscle. The third wore a dark gray civilian suit, carried a bulging leather briefcase, and walked with the easy assurance of a man used to command.

  When Hradetsky turned back to face Gellard, the Frenchman had regained his poise. “That will be the security specialist dispatched by my embassy, Colonel. An expert on terrorism and counterterrorist tactics. You can deal with him in future.”

  The Hungarian police colonel eyed the short, grim-faced man striding briskly toward them. Something told him this wasn’t going to be a pleasant or productive meeting. “What’s his name?”

  Gellard smiled coldly. “Major Paul Duroc.”

  CHAPTER 2

  Minuet

  AUGUST 4 — PLACE DU PALAIS-ROYAL, PARIS

  Paris lay oddly quiet beneath a cloudless blue sky — its wide, tree-lined boulevards and parasol-shaded outdoor cafés empty and deserted. For most Parisians, August was a time for vacations, for a month-long flight from their government jobs, factory floors, and schools. But now the tourists who would ordinarily have taken their places were gone, too — discouraged by the visa restrictions, high prices, and official harassment that were part of the world’s ongoing trade war. Only the growing armies of the unemployed and the homeless were left in the capital. And they were too busy looking for work or food to saunter through the abandoned fashionable districts.

  The Place du Palais-Royal showed its own signs of abandonment. The shops and kiosks that normally catered to foreigners eager for postcards and subway maps were padlocked. Instead of block-long lines of sightseers and chattering schoolchildren, only a few scattered art lovers wandered in and out through the Louvre’s north gate, dwarfed by the museum’s gray bulk. A handful of bored cabdrivers loitered near the Métro stop’s escalators, exchanging gibes and the latest gossip through a thin haze of cigarette smoke.

  Across the square, the Palais-Royal seemed wrapped in the same kind of August inertia. Soldiers in full dress uniform stood motionless behind the tall iron gates that blocked access to its inner courtyard and main entrance. Others, clothed more comfortably in camouflaged battle dress and fully armed, manned rooftop observation posts. Pairs of hard-faced policemen patrolled the pavement along the fence, looking for beggars or street Arabs to muscle.

  Most of the massive building’s windows were ei
ther shuttered or blocked by heavy drapes. Few official cars were parked in the inner courtyard, and most of those were covered by tarpaulins to keep the dust and city grime off while their usual passengers and assigned drivers were away on vacation. Despite the tight security, the Palais-Royal appeared as deserted as its surroundings.

  But appearances were, as usual, deceiving.

  Built during the 1600s, the Palais-Royal had first served as the residence of the Red Eminence, the Cardinal Richelieu. As the twentieth century drew to a close, it contained offices for several high-ranking French officials.

  Nicolas Desaix’s private office had its own aura, one matched perfectly to its master — an air of close-held power and restrained elegance. A carpet worn thin by a hundred years of use and embroidered in rich tones of royal blue and scarlet covered the floor. A tapestry commissioned by Richelieu himself graced the wall behind a massive oak desk, and paintings of famous French military victories filled the other walls, on permanent loan from the Louvre. As head of the French intelligence service, the DGSE, Desaix had two other suites — one at the Élysée Palace itself, close to that of the republic’s President, and another at his directorate’s headquarters. But this history-filled sanctuary was the place he preferred for important work.

  Now the late afternoon sun slanted through its tall windows, filling half the room with rectangles of red-tinged gold and leaving the rest in shadow.

  Alexandre Marchant paused by the door, momentarily dazzled by the sharp contrast between light and dark.

  “My dear Marchant! Come in. Come in.” Desaix rose from behind his desk and strode forward, motioning him toward a pair of high-back armchairs off to one side of the room. “You’re looking well.”

  “As are you, Director.” Marchant sat down gladly. Years of devotion to good food, good wine, and desk work had saddled him with increasing weight and an expanding waistline. Few of his old schoolmates would have recognized him as the same short, skinny young aeronautical engineer who had once dreamed only of designing the world’s most advanced aircraft. Now those dreams were dead — crushed by the day-to-day considerations of profit margins, costs, and personalities involved in managing the huge industrial conglomerate called Eurocopter.