The Paris Option

by Robert Ludlum

  The farmer clucked with sympathy and chatted away about the advantages of the region, pleased for Jon’s company in this remote land of soaring peaks, wide open spaces, and few inhabitants. They drove on, but Jon did not relax. His careful gaze kept watch.

  Grenoble, France

  Nestled in the French Alps, Grenoble was a stunning city—old and historic, known for its fine winter sports, particularly in downhill skiing, and its medieval landmarks. The farmer dropped Jon on the left bank of the Isère River at the place Grenette, a bustling square lined with sidewalk cafés. Nearby was the place St-André, the heart of Grenoble. The warm sunshine had brought people out, and they sat at small, outdoor tables in their crisp shirtsleeves, sipping espresso.

  As he studied them, Jon realized again how lousy his own clothes looked. They were dirty and smoke-streaked, and he had no idea whether he had managed to clean his face in the stream. He was already attracting the wrong kind of attention, something he definitely did not want. He still had his wallet, and as soon as he called Fred Klein, he would buy new clothes.

  He turned, orienting himself, and walked toward the place St-André. That was where he found what he needed first—a public phone booth—and dialed Fred Klein.

  Klein’s voice was surprised. “So you are alive?”

  “You sound disappointed.”

  “Don’t get sentimental, Colonel,” Klein said dryly. “We’ll hug later. There are a few things going on that you should know at once.” He described the latest electronic disaster—the blinded satellites. “I’d hoped the molecular computer was destroyed, and all we had was a nasty malfunction.”

  “You didn’t believe that for a second. The damage is too widespread.”

  “Call it a naive hope.”

  “Did Randi Russell get away before the missile hit?”

  “We wouldn’t have known what really happened in Algeria if she hadn’t. She’s back in Paris. Where are you? Bring me up to date.”

  So Randi had made it. Jon slowly let his breath out. He reported the events since the missile strike and what he had learned.

  Klein swore. “So you think the Crescent Shield’s a front, too?”

  “It makes sense. I can’t see Darius Bonnard as an Islamic terrorist, no matter his Algerian connection. But he was in the right place at the right time to have made that surreptitious phone call from NATO. He or Chambord must’ve killed the Crescent Shield pilot at the chalet before we got there, and then they took off with Thérèse. Abu Auda was stunned. Outraged. Worried whether Mauritania was still alive. The way I read it, this was no sudden mutiny of the weak. This was the strong taking over as planned.”

  “You think Émile Chambord is behind everything?”

  “Maybe, or maybe not. It could be Captain Bonnard, and he’s holding Chambord and using the daughter as a lever,” Jon said, worrying about Thérèse. He stared out at the street, watching for Abu Auda and his men. “Have you heard anything about Peter Howell and Marty?”

  “According to my friends at Langley, they’re all in Paris. Marty’s awake.”

  Jon smiled. What a relief to know Marty was back. “Did he say anything useful about Émile Chambord?”

  “Unfortunately, nothing we didn’t already know. I’ll have Randi sent to pick you up.”

  “Tell her I’ll be waiting at the Fort de la Bastille at the top of the cable car lift.”

  Klein was silent again. “You know, Colonel, there could be someone we don’t know about yet behind Chambord and Bonnard. It could even be the daughter.”

  Jon considered the idea. Not Thérèse, no. He did not believe that, but the rest of what Klein had said struck a chord. An idea began to form in his mind. An idea he had to chase down fast.

  “Get me out of here, Fred.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Paris, France

  In naval headquarters on the place de la Concorde, Senior Captain Liberâl Tassini toyed with the fine Mont Blanc pen on his desk as his steady gaze took in Peter Howell. “Odd you should be here asking that, Peter. May I inquire exactly what caused your interest?”

  “Let’s just say MI6 requested I look into the matter. I believe it may have something to do with a small problem involving one of our junior officers.”

  “And what would that small problem be?”

  “Between you and me, Libby, I told them to just go through regular channels, but it appears it involves the son of someone important.” Peter ducked his head, pretending embarrassment. “I’m only a messenger boy. One of the reasons I did a bunk from the service, eh? Temperament and all that. Just do me the favor of a simple answer, and I’ll be off the hook and out of your sight.”

  “Can’t be done, bon ami. Your question touches on a somewhat delicate and complicated situation of our own.”

  “You don’t say. Well, puts my little query in its place, doesn’t it? Sorry, I…”

  Captain Tassini twirled the pen again on his desk. “On the contrary. I would actually like to know exactly how this, ah, junior officer came to be concerned with whether a recent meeting on the De Gaulle was authorized or unauthorized.”

  “Well…” Peter chuckled conspiratorially. “All right, Libby. Seems the lad has put in a chit for expenses incurred for having attended such a meeting as a replacement pilot for one of our generals. His paymaster simply wants to know if the claim’s legitimate.”

  Captain Tassini laughed aloud. “Does he, by heaven? What does the general say?”

  “Touchy, that. Seems he died. Only a few days ago.”

  Tassini’s eyes narrowed. “Really?”

  “Afraid so. Not unusual with generals. Old, you know.”

  “Quite,” Tassini said in English. “All right. At the moment, all I can tell you is that no such meeting was authorized on the De Gaulle, although one may actually have taken place. We’re looking into it, too.”

  “Hmmm.” Peter stood up. “Very well, I’ll simply give the buggers the old ‘can neither confirm nor deny’ answer. The paymaster can reimburse the boy, or not. Up to him. But he’ll get no official response.”

  “Hard on the boy,” Tassini sympathized.

  Peter headed for the door. “What was the De Gaulle doing out there anyway? What does her captain say about the meeting?”

  Tassini leaned back and studied Peter again. At last he said, “He claims there was no meeting. Says he was out there to practice single-ship tactics in hostile waters at night, and that the order came from NATO. Rather a large problem for us, since no one at NATO appears to have issued it.”

  “Ouch. Well, glad it’s not my kettle of fish, old man.” Peter could feel Tassini’s questioning gaze on his back as he left. He doubted that he had fooled his friend, but both of them had preserved face and, even more important, deniability.

  Berlin, Germany

  The Kurfürstendamm—the Ku’damm, as locals called it—was a bustling boulevard at the heart of new Berlin. Lined with crowded stores and high-rent offices, it was famous around the world. People in the know swore that the Ku’damm never slept. In one of its elegant restaurants, Pieke Exner wound her way among the white tablecloths and polished silverware toward her lunch date. It was their second in twelve hours, and she knew the young lieutenant was more than ready, he was eager.

  That was obvious in the leap to his feet and the Prussian click of his heels that would have gotten him a dry reprimand from his boss, General Otto Bittrich. It was also obvious in his loosened tunic, showing the relaxed familiarity she had worked to produce in him all last evening before going home and leaving him if not panting, then breathing hard. These were the signs she had wanted to see. Still, she had more work to do. It was not his tunic she wanted loosened; it was his tongue.

  She smiled and settled down into her chair. With a flourish, he helped her slide to the table. As he sat next to her, she notched her smile up to one of genuine warmth, as if she had been thinking about him ever since they had parted at her door. After he had gallantly ordered an expens
ive bottle of the best wine from the Rheingau, she resumed her chatter where they had left off, about her dreams of travel and love of all good things foreign.

  As it turned out, she quickly saw that she had done her job too well, and the lieutenant was too busy thinking about her to take the bait. Lunch proceeded in that fashion through a schnitzel, a second bottle of the Rheingau, and an excellent strudel to the coffee and brandy. But as much as she plied him with smiles and warm hand holding, he never spoke about his work.

  Running out of patience, she looked long and deeply into his eyes, managing to convey an intriguing range of emotions—shy, nervous, slightly frightened, adoring, brazenly eager, and in sexual heat, all at the same time. It was a gift, and older and wiser men than Lieutenant Joachim Bierhof had fallen for it.

  He responded by quickly paying for the check, and they left. By the time they reached her apartment beyond the Brandenburg Gate and across the Spree River in the bohemian Prenzlauer Berg section of the former East Berlin, he was in no condition to think of anything but her, her glorious apartment, and her bed.

  Once inside, he quickly pulled the shades against the afternoon sun and was soon naked and nuzzling Pieke’s breasts, when she sighed and complained of how cold it was. A very cold May in Germany. How she would love to be with him in sunny Italy or Spain, or better yet…the glorious South of France.

  Too busy with her breasts and pulling off her green thong bikini panties, Joachim muttered, “I was just there, the South of France. God, how I wish you’d been with me.”

  She laughed playfully. “But you had your general.”

  “He was out on that French carrier most of the night. Just him and our pilot. I walked on the quays alone. By myself. Had to eat alone. What a great bottle of wine I found. You would have liked it. God, how I wish…but we’re here now, and…”

  It was at this point that Pieke Exner fell off the bed, badly twisting her knee and back. She was unable to stand up without the lieutenant’s reluctant and rather testy help. As he put her back into bed, she asked prettily to be covered to keep away the chills. She shivered. He turned up the heat and put another blanket over her. She held out her hand sadly.

  She was, of course, devastated, and terribly disappointed as well as tearfully guilty: “You poor man. It must be terrible for you. I’m so sorry. Will…will…you be all right? I mean, you were so…so…”

  Joachim Bierhof was, after all, an officer and a gentleman. He was forced to soothe her fears, declare he would be fine. She was much more to him than that.

  She squeezed his hand and promised to meet him early tomorrow, if she felt up to it, right here in her apartment. “I’ll call you tomorrow!” And promptly fell asleep.

  There was nothing the lieutenant could do but dress and leave quietly, careful not to awaken her.

  The moment the door closed and locked, she jumped out of bed, dressed, and dialed the telephone. She reported, “General Bittrich was in the South of France, just as you suspected. He spent half the night on a French aircraft carrier. Was that all you wanted to know, Peter?”

  “You’re a wonder, child,” Peter Howell pronounced from Paris.

  “You remember that.”

  Peter chuckled. “Hope the price wasn’t too high, Angie, old girl.”

  “Jealous, Peter?”

  “At my age, my dear, I’m remarkably flattered.”

  “At any age. Besides, you’re ageless.”

  Peter laughed. “Not all of me seems to know that all the time. But we must talk further.”

  “A proposition, Mr. Howell?”

  “Angie, you could entice the dead. And thanks again.”

  Angela Chadwick hung up, remade the bed, picked up her handbag, and left the apartment to return to her own place on the other side of the Brandenburg Gate.

  Paris, France

  Marty had a new laptop computer, which Peter had used Marty’s credit card to buy. Left alone and on his meds, Marty was curled around it in his room in the clinic, sitting cross-legged on top of his bed’s patchwork comforter. He had checked the OASIS Web site—Online Asperger’s Syndrome Information and Support—fifteen times in the last two hours with no results.

  Vacillating between despair and determined optimism, depressed in the sticky muck of his meds, Marty did not hear Randi or Peter enter the room until they spoke.

  “Anything, Mart?” Randi asked before the door had closed.

  Peter interrupted, “MI6 has heard nothing. Bloody irritating.” He added a shade bitterly, “If we knew for whom Jon actually worked, we could contact them directly and maybe get some straight intelligence.”

  His gaze solemn, Marty stared at Randi. “What about the CIA, Randi?”

  “No news,” she admitted.

  Marty frowned, and his fingers pounded the keyboard. “I’ll check OASIS again.”

  “How long since you last tried?” Peter asked.

  Two red spots of indignation appeared on Marty’s cheeks. “If you think I’m obsessing, Peter, what about you? All those phone calls you keep making!”

  Peter nodded and showed a brief smile.

  Marty grumbled under his breath as he entered the OASIS Web site. As soon as his screen filled with the opening page, he found himself relaxing a bit. It was like going home. Created for those with Asperger’s Syndrome and their families, OASIS was full of information, plus there was a Web ring. Marty checked in often when his life was normal—well, normal for him. What the rest of the world considered normal he found painfully boring. He could not imagine why anyone would want to live like that. On the other hand, OASIS seemed to get the point. The folks who ran it knew what they were talking about. What a rarity, he mused to himself. He was looking forward to reading the new book The Oasis Guide to Asperger Syndrome by Patricia Romanowski Bashe and Barbara L. Kirby. It was waiting for him on his desk at home.

  He scanned the messages on OASIS, but again there was nothing. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and heaved a big sigh.

  “No word?” Peter asked.

  “Darn it, no.”

  They were silent in their discouragement. When the phone rang, Randi snapped it up. It was Doug Kennedy, her Langley boss. As she listened, her eyes began to flash with excitement. “I know the place. Yes. What great news. Thanks, Doug. Don’t worry. I’ll handle it.” As soon as she hung up, she turned to Marty and Peter. They were staring at her, waiting.

  “Jon’s alive. I know where he is!”

  Grenoble, France

  A cold Alpine wind blasted Jon’s hair and chilled his face as he leaned over the parapet of the sixteenth-century Fort de la Bastille with other tourists, high above Grenoble. Despite the rising wind, they appeared to be enjoying the startling amalgam of medieval and ultramodern buildings far below. Known for its high-tech industries and fine universities, Grenoble spread out in a casual array from the confluence of the Drac and Isère rivers, while the dramatic Alps towered above, their snowy cloaks glinting in the afternoon sunshine.

  Still, it was not the panorama on which Jon’s attention had been fixed since he arrived at the old fort. It was the cable cars rising up from the city below.

  He had been at the parapet several hours, dressed in new jeans, green pullover sweater, a medium-weight bomber jacket, and dark sunglasses. Inside the deep front pockets of his jacket were the Afghan’s curved knife and the helicopter’s flare gun, his only weapons. He was still savoring the good news that Randi was alive and Marty was awake and fine.

  But he was uneasy. She should have been here by now, and he was increasingly aware that Abu Auda and his men could arrive any moment, too. It was inevitable that they would extend their search to Grenoble, the only major city near the Chartreuse villa. Jon knew far too much, and there was always the chance he had not yet made contact with his superiors. They could even have found the M16 rifle and ammunition he had buried under the duff close to the road that led here.

  So now he stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the chilly mountain wind with ot
her sightseers, unobtrusive in the lengthening afternoon shadows, as he leaned his arms on the parapet and studied each of the gondolas that regularly carried passengers up to the fort from the station at quay Stéphane-Jay. Designed to please tourists who wanted to see the sweeping views, the gondolas were see-through.

  This, of course, also pleased Jon, because he could scrutinize each passenger through the gondolas’ transparent shells. It was after five o’clock when he finally spotted not Randi, but one of the Crescent Shield killers. His heartbeat sped.

  He wanted to attract no attention, so he continued his relaxed pose, a visitor enchanted like any other, while he quickly analyzed and placed the face: A clean-shaved Saudi who had been with the group of terrorists that had escaped from the villa. He was riding at the front of his gondola as it slowly rose to the fort. Although he was the only terrorist whom Jon recognized in the gondola, Jon doubted he was alone. More members of the Crescent Shield would be around somewhere.

  Certain of the man’s identity, Jon turned, stuck his hands nonchalantly into his jacket pockets where he could grip his weapons, and sauntered off toward the paths that wound down through the Parc Guy Pape to the city. He did not want to leave, in case Randi showed up. But where there was one Crescent Shield, there would be others, and he had to face the fact that Randi might never come.

  Once he was beyond sight of the parapet, he walked faster. The number of tourists was decreasing. It was growing late, and the biting wind that whistled through the afternoon shadows had probably discouraged them. No longer noticing the chill, he left the fort, turned toward a downhill path, and broke into a steady trot. Which was when he saw five more Crescent Shield killers.

  He fell back around a high hedge. They had been hiking up the route he was about to take down, and in the lead was Abu Auda himself. They were all wearing ordinary Western clothes. Abu Auda had on a beret and looked uncomfortable, a shark trying to walk on land. Jon reversed course and rushed around the rear of the fort to where there was another park area. He slipped behind a tall oak, scanned the area from where he had just come, and then the city and the rivers below.