The Paris Option

by Robert Ludlum

Taken together with the scattered electronic crashes in those secret systems that were already occurring—which Sir Arnold should have been the only one there to know about—he was more than startled. He was deeply alarmed.

  Had La Porte learned about them, too? If so, how was that possible?

  Sir Arnold had the information only because President Castilla had personally informed the prime minister, explaining that the U.K. was the only ally he was alerting, while the only NATO official he was telling was its supreme European commander, General Henze.

  So how had French General La Porte learned of the terrifying electronic attacks?

  Sir Arnold dug his knuckles into his forehead. He had a dreadful headache, and he knew the cause: He was worried that La Porte was somehow connected to whoever was causing the electronic crashes, and that was why and how he had the information.

  The British general could barely consider the possibility. The whole thing was unthinkable, preposterous, and yet he could not ignore the logic of it. He could not escape his worried conclusions about La Porte. He must not speak of them to anyone but the PM himself. And it must be in person.

  This kind of speculation, which might be wrong but would still tarnish a good man’s reputation, could be trusted to not just anyone. Which was why he sat alone in the backseat of the dark command car, waiting for his personal driver and pilot to oversee the servicing and refueling of the Tornado F3 jet that would speed them to London.

  As he waited, he continued to mull the entire bizarre meeting. Had he been mistaken? Was he overreacting? But every time he raised those questions, he was more convinced: He was worried about what La Porte’s hints implied, and the ghastly danger they suggested.

  He was rehearsing the words he would use to communicate these conclusions to the PM when Stebbins tapped on the closed car window. He opened the door.

  Sir Arnold looked up. “We ready, George?”

  “Sir!” Staff Sergeant George Stebbins inclined his head to signal the affirmative.

  “A simple yes would do nicely, George. You’re not a company sergeant major in the Grenadiers now, you know.” He climbed out of the car, briefcase in hand.

  “Nosir. Thank you, sir.”

  Sir Arnold sighed and shook his head. You could get the man out of the guards, but you could almost never get the guards out of the man. “You think, former Sergeant Major Stebbins, that when your warrant is final, you could forget the household brigade, just a little?”

  Stebbins finally smiled. “S’pose I could try, sir.”

  Sir Arnold chuckled. “All right, Stebbins. I appreciate a straight answer and an honest effort. So what do you say to our finding out if you remember how to fly that thing out there?”

  They entered the station ready room to put on their insulated suits and helmets for the high-level flight, and twenty minutes later, Stebbins, in the pilot’s seat, was taxiing the sleek jet across the dark airfield to the runway. In the navigator’s seat directly behind Stebbins sat Sir Arnold, who continued to rehearse the shocking news that he must deliver to the PM, certainly to the defense minister as well, and probably to old Colin Campbell, who was commander in chief now.

  The supersonic Tornado took off and soon left behind Gibraltar, the southernmost point of Europe. It streaked high through the sky, far above the clouds. The dramatic panorama of stars against the black velvet sky always made Sir Arnold choke up, because he believed in God. Surely no other force could have created such beauty. He was alternately thinking about that and worrying what General La Porte was up to when, out of hearing of anyone on earth, the aircraft exploded in a massive burst of flame. From below, the fireball looked simply like another shooting star.

  Madrid, Spain

  Madrid had a vibrant energy all its own, and residents and visitors alike reveled in it, particularly at night. Palpitating music and a festive spirit infused the air. From rushing taxis to unrepentant fun, Madrileños were a tolerant people, occasionally known to flaunt their anarchist streak in a search for a wild time amid the cobbled streets and pretty fountains under big, old trees.

  Peter left the borrowed touring car in the garage of its owner, a trusted friend, then led Jon and Randi onto the metro. Carrying their few pieces of luggage, they kept careful watch everywhere, fighting off the conflicting emotions of urgency and mental exhaustion, although Randi and Jon had each taken good naps during the drive, while Peter, the stalwart Brit, had already had more sleep than either of them and so had driven them on in to Madrid.

  With relief, they disembarked at the San Bernardo metro station and entered the Malasaña, known to locals as the Barrio de Maravillas, or District of Miracles. Here in the city’s colorful bohemian quarter, nightlife was in abundance, and they passed bars, restaurants, and clubs, some a bit decayed but always charming. But then, this was a haven for not only artists and writers but expatriate yuppies who toted their dreams and assumptions with them around the world. Everywhere Jon, Randi, and Peter walked, lively music vibrated out into the streets.

  The MI6 safe house was on Calle Dominguin, not far from Plaza del Dos de Mayo, the hub of this spirited area. It was a six-story stone building in a row of identical attached and semiattached stone buildings, with painted wood shutters, shuttered doors that opened onto traditional iron balconies, and shops and restaurants on the street level below. The odors of liquor and cigarette smoke drifted along the street as Jon, Randi, and Peter arrived at the address. Advertisements for Langostino Plancha and Gambas al Ajillo showed in the dark windows of the first-floor shop.

  They stopped at an inconspicuous door, and Jon and Randi kept watch as Peter unlocked it. With a final look all around, they slipped inside and upstairs.

  The place was decorated with comfortable furniture that had seen better days, but then, a safe house’s purpose had nothing to do with being a decorator’s showplace. They chose bedrooms, changed into casual trousers and shirts, and met in the second-floor living room.

  Jon announced, “I’d better contact army intelligence.” He used his cell phone to dial Fred Klein. As the phone’s electronic codes and numbers were scanned and cleared, there were the usual clicks, silences, and hums.

  Finally, Fred’s voice announced simply: “Not a word. Hang up. Now.”

  The line went dead, and Jon quickly switched off the phone. Startled, dismayed, he muttered, “Damn. There’s more trouble.” He repeated what his “army contact” had said.

  “Maybe it’ll be different with Langley,” Randi said, and dialed her cell phone. The phone in far-off Virginia rang for a long time, and she grimaced and shrugged at Jon and Peter. “Nothing yet.”

  At last there was a short, sharp series of clicks. “Russell?”

  “Who did you expect?”

  “Hang up.”

  Randi clicked the cell phone off. “What the hell could it be?”

  “Sounds to me as if someone’s compromised your secure dedicated electronic intelligence communications systems,” Peter decided. “Which could also mean those at SIS in London, including MI5 and MI6.”

  Randi swallowed hard. “Good God. At least they didn’t learn anything from us.”

  “Ah,” Peter told her, “but I’m afraid they might have.”

  “Yes,” Jon said, understanding. “They could know now where you and I both are, Randi, assuming they’re interested, know who they’re tracking, and have the DNA computer up and running.”

  “That’s a lot of ‘ifs,’ Jon. You said the machine wasn’t at the farm house, and the last we saw of Mauritania’s people, they were taking off in helicopters.”

  “All too true,” Peter said. “But I doubt the prototype’s ever far away from Mauritania, which makes me think they had a second safe house nearby and used that farm house to meet and pay off Elizondo and his Basques and store the Chambords. Which is why I will not call London. Too bloody close to Madrid. I think we need to assume for the time being that all our electronics are under siege. Which means it’s entirely possible they hav
e a bead on you two now. They don’t necessarily know about me, but if I whip out my cell phone and report into MI6, there’s the chance they’ll figure out about me faster than a hare across the highlands, and about MI6.”

  “It’s ridiculous to have to hop on planes and fly home to report in person,” Randi decided. “But it’s true we used to do business this way, with messengers hand-carrying information back and forth. Good Lord, we could be going back to the Dark Ages in intelligence.”

  “Goes to show how dependent we’ve become on our oh-so-convenient electronic communications,” Peter said. “Still, we must somehow figure out how to contact our superiors about the Crescent Shield, Mauritania, the DNA machine, and the Chambords. They must be told.”

  “True.” Jon pushed his cell phone back into his pocket with a gesture of finality. “But until we can, we’re going to have to operate on our own. Looks to me as if Mauritania himself is our best hope to track. Where he likes to operate, hide out. What his mental quirks are.” In intelligence, quirks, patterns, and habits were often a fugitive’s weak spots, revealing to experienced analyses far more than anyone might guess. “And then there’s the elusive Captain Darius Bonnard. As General La Porte’s aide, he’s got damned high access and cover. And he of course could’ve made the phone call from NATO.”

  Peter’s leathery face showed deep worry lines. “All true. And Randi’s probably right about the wisdom of getting back to old-fashioned intelligence communications.” He suggested, “London’s a lot closer than Washington. If need be, I can flog myself over there to check in.”

  “Our embassies in Madrid will have fully coded communications,” Randi said. “But considering the last assault when every code was cracked, the embassies’ communications are probably compromised, too.”

  “Right. Anything electronic is out,” Peter said.

  Jon paced in front of a stone fireplace that looked as if it’d had no fire in years. “Maybe they didn’t disrupt everything everywhere,” he said cautiously.

  Peter looked at him sharply. “You have an idea, Jon?”

  “Is there a real phone in this house? Nothing electronic.”

  “On the third floor, in the office. That just might work.”

  Randi glared from one to the other. “You two mind telling me what you’re talking about?”

  Jon was halfway up the stairs as Peter said, “Regular phone wires. A direct call. Fiber-optics, don’t you know.”

  “Of course.” She followed Jon, Peter close behind. “Even if the Crescent Shield had the technology or the time to tap a cable, they’d still have all the problems of sorting through the dreck. A technician told me once that so much data went through fiber-optics lines that to tap into it was like getting sprayed in the face by a high-pressure hose.” She had been told a cable as narrow as her wrist could carry an astronomical forty thousand phone conversations all at once, comparable to the entire trans-Atlantic voice traffic handled by satellites back in Cold War days. The way fiber-optics worked was to translate phone calls, faxes, e-mail messages, and data files into beams of light that traveled through a single strand of glass as thin as a human hair. Most undersea cables contained eight such strands, or fibers. But extracting the data required gaining access to the minute light beams in the ocean’s black, high-pressure depths—a dangerous, almost impossible task.

  Peter grumbled agreement: “Even if they had the time and technology to tap a cable, would they waste their time listening in to a million long-distance phone calls, give or take, discussing in detail Aunt Sarah’s bunions and the Queen Mum’s shocking gin intake? I doubt it.”

  “Exactly,” Randi agreed.

  As soon as the threesome reached the bare-bones office, Jon tapped his calling card number into the telephone on the desk. Then he entered the number he wanted in Washington. As he waited for it to ring, he pulled out the desk chair and sat. Peter leaned on a nearby desk, and Randi fell into an old, padded rocker.

  A brisk female voice answered. “Colonel Hakkim’s office.”

  “It’s Jon Smith, Debbie. I need to talk to Newton. It’s urgent.”

  “Hold on.”

  The strange vacuum of hold, and a man’s concerned voice: “Jon? What’s up?”

  “I’m in Madrid, and I need a favor. Could you send someone over to E block to the Leased Facilities Division and office 2E377, and have him tell the woman there to tell her boss to call Zapata at this number?” He read the number of the safe house phone. “Make sure whoever you send uses that name—Zapata. Can you do it?”

  “Should I ask what this is all about or who’s really in that office?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’ll go myself.”

  “Thanks, Newton.”

  Newton’s voice was cool and calm, but Jon heard anxiety, too. “You’ll have to tell me the whole story when you get back.”

  “Count on it.” Jon hung up and checked his watch. “It should take him about ten minutes. E block’s a long way from his office. Figure another two minutes for contingencies. Twelve minutes, tops.”

  Randi said, “Leased Facilities Division? A cover for army intelligence, no doubt?”

  “No doubt,” Jon said noncommittally.

  Peter pressed a finger to his lips and padded to the shuttered front window, which was next to the shuttered door that opened onto the balcony. He angled the slats open a fraction wider and looked down at the dark street. He stood there motionless as the pulsing night sounds of the city drifted up from below—the rumble of heavy traffic on the Gran Via, voices calling from windows down to the street, the slam of a car door, a drunk’s serenade, a guitar’s liquid chords.

  Peter left the window and sank onto the sofa, relieved. “False alarm—I think.”

  “What’s wrong?” Randi asked.

  “I thought I heard an odd sound from the street. It’s something I’ve run across a few times before and learned rather quickly to heed.”

  “I didn’t hear anything unusual,” Jon said.

  “You’re not meant to, my boy. It’s a blowing sound, with a tiny whistle at the center. It seems to be far away, the call of a weak whippoorwill, that simply fades away. In reality, it’s a muted whistle no one actually hears. Resembles a random night sound—the wind, an animal turning in sleep, the earth itself creaking as if it really were set in a three-pronged nest. I heard it more than once in northern Iran on the border of the old Soviet Union’s central Asian republics, and in the 1980s I heard it in Afghanistan during that barbarous blowup. It’s a signal used by the central Asian Muslim tribes. Rather close tonight signals your Iroquois and Apache used.”

  “The Crescent Shield?” Jon asked.

  “Could be. But there was no answer to the call. Since I didn’t hear it a second time, I was probably mistaken.”

  “How often have you been wrong on a matter like that, Peter?” Jon said.

  The ring of the telephone made them jump. Jon grabbed the receiver.

  Fred Klein’s voice said, “We got everything back online, but the computer warfare specialists tell us that all the electronic encryption codes may have been cracked, so no one’s to use any electronic communication until further notice. Nothing that goes through the air either, because that would be easy for them to tap into. Meanwhile, they’re changing all the codes and developing emergency measures to protect them better. We’ve told them we think there’s a DNA computer out there, and they’ve got to do more than try. Why Madrid? What did you find in Toledo?”

  Without preamble, Jon reported, “The Black Flame was a hired front. The Crescent Shield seems to be the real power behind everything. And Émile Chambord is alive. Unfortunately, the Crescent Shield has both him and his daughter and the DNA computer.”

  There was a stunned silence. Klein said, “You saw Chambord? How do you know about the computer?”

  “I saw and talked to both Chambord and his daughter. The computer wasn’t at that site.”

  “Chambord alive explains how quickly the
y got the machine working, and makes the worldwide danger a hell of a lot worse. Especially if they have the daughter, too. They’ll use her to control him.”

  “Yeah,” Jon said.

  Another silence. Klein said, “You should’ve killed Chambord, Colonel.”

  “The DNA computer wasn’t there, Fred. I tried for the save, to get him out of there alive so he could build one for us to fight back. How do we know what they’ve forced Chambord to tell them? Maybe enough for another scientist to duplicate his work.”

  “What if you don’t get a second chance, Jon? What if we don’t find him or the machine in time?”

  “We will.”

  “That’s what I tell the president. But we both know there are no miracles, and the next time will be harder.”

  It was Jon’s turn to be silent. Then, “I made a judgment call. That’s what you pay me for. If in my judgment I can’t pull Chambord out, or destroy the computer, I’ll kill him. That make you happy?”

  Klein’s voice was as flat and hard as poured concrete. “Can I count on you, Colonel? Or do I have to send someone else?”

  “There’s no one else who knows what I know. Not in the beginning, and especially not now.”

  If the phone had been a television phone, they would have been staring each other down. Finally there was a slow outlet of breath in the far-off Pentagon. “Tell me about this Crescent Shield. Never heard of them.”

  “That’s because they’re newer and have stayed out of sight,” Jon told him, repeating what Randi had said. “They’re pan-Islamic, apparently pulled together for this specific attack by a man named Mauritania. He’s—”

  “I know who he is, Jon. Only too well. Part Arab, part Berber, and with rage over the fate of his poor country and its starving people to add to his endemic Muslim and Third World rage about corporate globalization.”

  “Which, in truth, motivates these terrorists more than their religion.”

  “Yeah,” Klein said. “What’s your next step?”

  “I’m with Randi Russell and Peter Howell now.” He filled Klein in on how Randi and Peter had shown up at the farm house of the Crescent Shield.