The Paris Option

by Robert Ludlum

  There was another surprised hesitation. “Howell and Russell? CIA and MI6? What have you told them?”

  “They’re right here,” Jon said, letting him know he could say no more.

  “You haven’t told them about Covert-One?” Klein demanded.

  “Of course not.” Jon kept the irritation from his voice.

  “All right. Cooperate, but keep the confidence. Understood?”

  Jon decided to let the admonition pass. “We need anything and everything you can dig up about Mauritania’s personal history. Any patterns he’s shown. Where he’s most likely to hole up, where we should look for him.”

  Klein regrouped and said, “I can tell you one thing. He’ll have chosen a secure hole to hide in and a carefully planned target we won’t like one bit.”

  “How long will the electronic communications be compromised?”

  “No way to tell. Could be until we find that computer. Meanwhile, we’ll switch to couriers and drops, verbal and manual codes, and a dedicated surface phone line over secure diplomatic fiber-optic phone cables where we can monitor for any break-ins and fix them in seconds. We used to get a lot of intelligence accomplished that way in the old days, and we can do it again. The DNA computer won’t help them there. That was smart to get to me through Colonel Hakkim.

  Here’s the new secure private phone number they’ll have up as fast as they can, so you can call direct next time.”

  Klein relayed the number, and Jon memorized it.

  Klein continued, “What about General Henze and that hospital orderly who tried to kill Zellerbach?”

  “False alarm. Turns out the ‘orderly’ was Peter guarding Marty for MI6. He ran because he couldn’t taint his operation. He went to Henze’s pension to interview Henze’s sergeant, not the general.” Jon explained what Peter had wanted with Sergeant Matthias.

  “A phone call out of NATO headquarters? Damn, that doesn’t sound good to me. How do we know Howell isn’t lying?”

  “He isn’t,” Jon snapped flatly, “and there are a lot of people at NATO. I’m already wondering about one of them, a Captain Bonnard. The Black Flame expected me in Toledo, so either I was tailed or they were tipped. Bonnard is the personal aide to a French general, Roland la Porte. He’s the—”

  “I know who he is. Deputy supreme commander.”

  “Right. Bonnard is the one who gave La Porte the data about the fingerprints and DNA analysis in Chambord’s file, proving he was dead. He also brought La Porte the file on the Black Flame and Toledo. His position with the general is ideal. Just where anyone would put a spy if they could. He’d have access to just about whatever he wanted in NATO, France, and most of Europe, in the name of the general.”

  “I’ll see what I can dig up on Bonnard and on Sergeant Matthias. Meanwhile, you’d better go back to Henze. NATO’s got Europe’s most complete data on current terrorist groups and alliances. Whatever I can dig up here, I’ll shoot over to Henze.”

  “That’s it?” Jon asked.

  “That’s all…no, wait! Damn. Because of Chambord and the Crescent Shield, I almost forgot. I just got a call from Paris that Marty Zellerbach started talking an hour ago. Out of the blue. Full sentences. Then he fell back asleep. Not much, and he’s not completely coherent yet. That could be the Asperger’s Syndrome, I suppose. But stop in Paris on your way to Brussels.”

  Excitement rushed through Jon. “I’ll be there in two hours or less.” He hung up and turned, almost laughing with relief. “Marty’s out of the coma!”

  “Jon, that’s wonderful!” Randi flung her arms around his neck in a joyous hug.

  He hugged back and swung her up off her feet.

  From the sofa, Peter cocked his head, listening closely…. And jumped up. “Quiet!” He ran back to the window and leaned toward it, listening intently. His thin, muscular body was like a coiled spring, taut, nervous.

  “Did you hear it again?” Randi’s whisper was tense.

  He gave one sharp nod. He whispered back, “That same breathing whistle on the wind in the night. It was there. This time I’m certain. A signal. We’d better—”

  Above them, there was a faint clink of metal striking stone. Jon padded to the staircase and pressed his ear against the wall, feeling for vibrations.

  “Someone’s on the roof,” he warned.

  And then all three heard it: A strange sound, like a breathy whistle through the teeth of someone in restless sleep. Or perhaps from a lonely nightbird far away. Not just from below, but from above. They were surrounded.

  Chapter Eighteen

  The harsh, splintering sound of a door being forced open below signaled the attack.

  Randi jerked her head up. “The stairs!”

  Her weapon aimed ahead of her, she sprinted from the office, her blond hair flashing with white light as she bolted past Jon.

  Peter’s leathery face was grim as he sped toward the shutters that covered the balcony door, snapping off lights as he ran. “Check the back windows.”

  As gloom descended, Jon raced through the bedroom behind the office to the rear, while at the stairwell Randi peered down and opened up with her H&K MP5K in careful bursts of three. There was a scream from below, followed by the sound of feet and two wild shots. She held her fire.

  In the sudden vacuum of sound, Jon checked out the windows. Beneath the safe house, the back patio appeared inhabited only by benches and plants awash in moonlight and shadows. He studied the area, looking for movement, but then heard a muted shuffle in the office behind him.

  As he tore back to investigate, there was a choking gasp. Jon stopped just inside the door. Peter was crouched over the fallen figure of a man in black street clothes, wearing heavy black gloves, and a flat hat like those worn by Afghan mujahedeen. His head and face were completely hidden by a black balaclava.

  “Glad you haven’t lost your touch.” Jon stepped past Peter to check the balcony. It was empty, except for a nylon rope that dangled from the roof. “Not particularly clever, but it got him inside.”

  Peter wiped the blood from his old Fairbairn-Sykes stiletto on the attacker’s pants. “Fellow thought he was quiet as a dormouse.” He peeled up the balaclava, revealing brown, sundried skin, a beard trimmed short, and an expression of outrage. “I’ve got a plan. If I’m right about their plan, it should give us a chance.”

  “And if you’re wrong?”

  There was another burst of gunfire from Randi on the stairs followed by another cry of pain from below. Eerie silence again settled over the safe house.

  Peter shrugged. “Then we’re probably cooked, as the goose said to the gander.”

  Jon hunched down beside him in the shadows. “Tell me what you have in mind.”

  “We’re in a box, true. But they’re in a bind, because we’ve shown sharp teeth, and the gunshots will bring the police. They know that. They must make their move soon. Any forced action leads to carelessness and thus errors. They attacked openly from the street level, which I think was cover to send our dead friend here”—he gestured at the corpse at his feet—“to hold the balcony, while others would come down from the roof to trap us between them and the bottom assault team.”

  “So why don’t we hear a charge down the stairs from up top? What are they waiting for?”

  “I suspect for a signal from the forward reconnoiterer—this poor sod here. A weakness in their plan, and now we can take advantage of that weakness.” Peter put on the dead man’s balaclava and flat Afghan hat. He stepped out onto the balcony.

  Seconds later, Jon heard the soft night-whistle signal once more. This time it came from Peter. Soon after, a door creaked upstairs. An old door, warped and damaged by the weather where it opened onto the roof, as was true of so many Madrid buildings.

  Peter stepped back into the room. “That should do it.”

  Jon ran into the room he had chosen as his bedroom, aimed his Sig Sauer at his laptop, and fired. He was going on the run, and the laptop could hold him back. He sped back acr
oss the landing and told Randi, “Fire a burst, and get in here.”

  Randi shot one volley, then a second, and bolted back into the office, where she joined Jon on the balcony. Peter was already climbing the rope, while Jon steadied it with both hands, one foot anchoring it.

  Randi gazed down warily. The street was deserted, but she could almost feel the eyes of terrified innocents hiding in doorways and behind windows, poised to flee, but also drawn almost hypnotically to witness others’ violence and danger. It was that atavistic grip of the hunt, the ancient will to survive that lurked in the Cro-Magnon brain and influenced so many human actions.

  Jon looked up and saw that Peter had reached the top. “You next,” he breathed into her ear. “Go.”

  She slung her submachine gun over her back and jumped up onto the balcony railing. She grabbed the rope, and—as Jon continued to steady it—climbed. She saw Peter extend his head over the roof parapet to make sure she followed safely. He touched his forehead in salute and vanished, his teeth white in a Cheshire Cat grin. She climbed harder, faster, worried because Jon was exposed where he stood alone on the balcony, but it could not be helped.

  Meanwhile, as Jon held the rope, he surveyed carefully all around for trouble. His Sig Sauer seemed very far away, although it was simply tucked into his holster. He looked up, noting Randi’s rapid progress. His chest tight, he saw what an easy target she was for anyone who spotted her. As he was thinking that, footsteps sounded: They were searching the rooms on the floor directly above him. They would be down to this floor any moment. And now the undulating wail of police cars had begun. Yes, they were heading in this direction.

  With relief he saw Randi had disappeared onto the roof. He jumped up and climbed, hand over hand as fast as he could, his fingers and palms burning on the corded nylon. He had been lucky so far, but now he must be on the roof before the terrorists discovered their dead comrade, and before the police arrived. Second only to staying alive was not being caught by the police.

  Alarmed oaths in Arabic came from inside the house below as the terrorists found the body of their comrade and the destroyed laptop. At that moment, Jon reached the roof. He gave a powerful final pull, surged over the edge, and flopped onto the shallow slope of red tiles, still holding to the rope to keep from sliding backward. With a tug, the rope moved, dragging him up toward the ridge line. He could see the top of Peter’s head. As he slid over headfirst and started to fall, Randi grabbed his shoulders to keep him from nose-diving onto flag-stones. He shoulder-rolled up onto his feet and looked around. They were in a small, rooftop garden.

  “Nice job.” Peter sliced through the rope, and the cut end rushed back over the rooftop. A shout of rage rose from below, followed by a despairing shriek and crash.

  Without another word, the three agents leaped, grabbed the peak of the rooftop, and pulled themselves up to their feet. Straddling it, they ran carefully, one after the other, Jon in the lead, jumping gaps and dodging birds’ nests as fast as they could without slipping and falling the six stories to the ground. They were five attached roofs away from the safe house when their pursuers burst up and out to the rooftop garden behind them.

  As a fusillade of shots buzzed, whined, and ricocheted around them, they dropped flat on the other side of the incline, only their fingers exposed to the gunfire as they gripped the rough tiles that crowned the peak. Below, police cars were roaring onto Calle Dominguin. There were angry Spanish shouts and running feet.

  “¡Cuidado!”

  “¡Vamos a sondear el ambiente!”

  As the police consulted below, Jon was thinking about their attackers. “They’ll try to get ahead of us, break into any building they can, and find a way to get up here and cut us off.”

  Randi said nothing. The street lamps had been shot out, and the two police cars were parked side by side in the middle of the street, their headlights on bright, doors wide open. “It’s the Policía Municipal,” she decided as the men ran behind the cars for protection, shotguns pointing out and around like porcupine quills, while one grabbed his radio phone and shouted into it. “He’s probably summoning shock units of the Nacionals or the Guardia Civil antiterrorist units. We should be out of here when they arrive. They’ll have too much firepower, and too many inconvenient questions.”

  “I’ll second that,” Peter agreed.

  Randi listened. “They say they’ve got a witness who saw our attackers, and the police have deduced terrorists may be behind the trouble tonight.”

  “That’ll take some of the heat off us.”

  Jon saw a head pop up above the balcony railing on the safe house five buildings back. The terrorist fired a burst from an Uzi. Jon quickly pulled himself up so that his armpits were caught on the ridge, aimed carefully, and returned fire. There was a yelp and a curse as the terrorist pulled back inside the safe house, his arm bloody.

  “They’ll try to hold us here until their buddies get ahead of us,” Jon said.

  “Then we best be on our way.” Peter’s pale gaze swept the area. “You see that taller apartment building at the end of this row? If we can reach it and climb up to the roof, it looks as if it leads to those two other apartment buildings. We may be able to get to the next street from there, where it’ll be easier to lose them.”

  The heads of two terrorists rose above the wall that rimmed the safe house’s roof garden. Jon, Randi, and Peter immediately dropped back behind the ridge, and the terrorists laid down a line of withering fire. But as soon as there was a pause, the trio rose again, returned fire, and when the terrorists ducked, the agents jumped up and ran. They had almost reached the taller apartment building that was their goal when another hail of bullets and polyglot shouts burst out from the rear. Gunshots slammed into the building’s wall, shattered windows, and raised shouts of terror from within the apartments.

  “Inside!” Jon made a headlong dive through a shattered apartment window. Two terrified women in nightgowns sat bolt upright in twin beds and screamed, sheets pulled tight against their throats, eyes wide in horror.

  Randi and Peter dove in after him, and as Peter rolled to his feet, he bowed to the frightened women and apologized in flawless Castilian, “Lo siento,” as he rushed after Randi and Jon, through the apartment, and out into a broad corridor. One of them was leaving a trail of blood drops.

  They passed the elevator and ran up the fire stairs, not pausing to check for wounds until they reached a fire exit that opened onto a wide, flat roof.

  “Who’s hurt?” Jon puffed. “Randi?”

  “It looks like all of us, especially you.” She pointed.

  There were long, bloody furrows on Jon’s left arm and shoulder under his ripped shirt and a narrower slash on his left cheek where he had gone headfirst through the shattered window with its jagged wedges of glass. Randi and Peter had lesser cuts, a few bruises, and a couple of bloody creases from the gunfire.

  While Jon ripped the left sleeve off his shirt and Randi used it to bind the deeper gashes on his arm, Peter was scrutinizing the street below where it intersected with Calle Dominguin.

  Randi studied the long, broad roof behind them as she bandaged. “We could hold off an attack from where we are, but there’s no point. Our situation would only get worse, especially once more police arrive.”

  Peter spoke from the parapet, still looking down: “It’s going to be a dicey thing, one way or the other. Looks like the buggers are circling the block to head us off, and there appears to be enough of them to cover all exits.”

  Randi cocked her head, listening. “We’d better do something quick. They’re starting up after us.”

  Randi finished wrapping Jon’s wounds, and Peter ran from the parapet to join them. Randi pulled open the roof door. Three masked terrorists armed with an Uzi, an AK-74, and what looked like an old Luger pistol were halfway up the stairs. In the lead was a burly ruffian with a black beard so great that it sprouted out from beneath his black balaclava.

  Without hesitation, Randi sq
ueezed off a short burst of her MP5K, sending the fellow falling back onto the two behind him. One of them, in baggy jeans and a T-shirt as black as his balaclava, leaped over his fallen comrade, firing up as he climbed. Randi cut him down, too, while the third tripped over his own feet as he frantically escaped.

  Peter broke into a run. “The next roof!”

  They sprinted across the building, jumped the short space to the next one, and ran on. A series of shots sounded far behind from the third terrorist, who had braved coming out onto the roof and was now blazing away with the old Luger with little chance to hit them at this distance even if they had been standing still.

  “Damn!” Randi skidded to a stop, staring ahead.

  Three roofs away, on a building on the street that paralleled Calle Dominguin, four figures had emerged. Their silhouettes, rifles cradled in their arms, stood out against the stars.

  “Listen!” Jon said.

  Behind them on Calle Dominguin, heavy vehicles had arrived. Now there was the clatter of booted feet jumping down to the pavement, of officers bawling orders in Spanish. The antiterrorist units were on site. Seconds later, that soft sighing whistle seemed to come from nowhere and hang suspended in the night air. Before the signal had faded, the four silhouettes on the distant roof spun around, ran back to the door, and were gone.

  Peter looked behind. The terrorist with the Luger had retreated, too. “The bloody thugs are bunking,” he said, relieved. “Now all we have to do is get past the police. Which, I’m afraid, will not be easy, especially if they really are the antiterrorist Guardia Civil units.”

  “We’ll go separately,” Jon decided. “A change of clothes would be helpful.”

  Peter eyed Randi. “Especially the lady’s black tights and all.”

  Randi turned her cool gaze on him. “The lady will take care of herself, thank you. Let’s agree where we’ll go next. For me, it’s Paris, Marty, and my CIA station chief.”

  “I’m for Paris, too,” Peter said.

  “Where will you go, Jon?” Randi asked innocently. “To report to your army intelligence bosses?”