The Paris Option

by Robert Ludlum

  Jon’s eyebrows rose. “When they met on the De Gaulle, there was no way General La Porte could’ve heard about our utility grid and communications problems. Only our people and the top Brit leaders were in the loop.”

  “Exactly. The only way La Porte could’ve known was because he was behind the attacks. At the time, Bittrich dismissed his misgivings as an overreaction and also because he was concerned he was being influenced by the fact that he can’t stand La Porte personally—a swaggering Frog, he called him.” His gaze searched their faces. “In essence, Bittrich is saying he suspects La Porte is going to launch an attack on you Yanks, when all your defenses are down.”

  Jon asked, “When?”

  “He suggested,” Peter’s voice became hard and bitter, “that ‘if such an impossible thought could be in any way true, which, of course, I don’t believe for a second,’ it’d be what we feared—tonight.”

  “Why does he think that?” Randi asked.

  “Because there’s a crucial vote coming up in a special secret session of the Council of European Nations on Monday about whether to create a pan-European military. La Porte was instrumental in making this clandestine session happen so the issue could be voted on in secret.”

  The only sound was the ticking of the clock on Marty’s bedside table.

  Looking out the window to the street below, Jon noticed two men. It seemed to him he had seen them walk past the hospital twice.

  Randi asked again, “But when tonight?”

  “Aha!” Marty announced from the bed. “Château la Rouge. ‘Red Castle.’ Is this it?”

  Jon strode from the window to check the monitor. “That’s the castle in La Porte’s painting and photo.” He returned to the window and looked back at the others. “You want to know when? If I were La Porte, here’s what I’d do. When it’s six o’clock Saturday night in New York, it’s three o’clock in the afternoon in California. Sports and on-the-town time on the East Coast, the same on the West, plus crowded beaches if the weather’s good. The freeways are congested, too. But here in France, it’s midnight. Quiet. Dark. The night hides a lot. To hurt the United States the most, and to conceal what I was doing, I’d launch the strike from France sometime around midnight.”

  Peter asked, “Where’s this Château la Rouge, Marty?”

  Marty was reading the screen. “It’s old, medieval, made of…Normandy! It’s located in Normandy.”

  “Two hours from Paris,” Peter said. “Within range of where we decided the second computer would be.”

  Randi looked at the wall clock. “It’s nearly nine o’clock. If Jon’s right…”

  “We’d best hurry,” Peter said quietly.

  “I said I’d call army intelligence.” Jon started to turn from the window. He needed to alert Fred instantly, but he glanced down at the street just once more. He swore. “We’ve got visitors. They’re armed. Two are walking in the hospital’s front door.”

  Randi and Peter grabbed their weapons, and Randi sprinted to the door.

  “Oh, my!” Marty said. His eyes grew large and frightened. “This is terrible. I’ve just lost the connection to the Internet. What’s happened?”

  Peter popped out the modem’s hookup and tried the telephone. “It’s dead!”

  “They’ve cut the phone lines!” Marty’s face paled.

  Randi cracked open the door and listened.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Outside the door to Marty’s room, the hallway was quiet. “Come on!” Randi whispered. “I saw another way out when I was looking for the phone booth downstairs.”

  Marty found his meds, while Jon snapped up the laptop. With Randi in the lead, they slipped quietly from the room and along the corridor past the closed doors of other hospital rooms. A nurse in a starched white uniform had just knocked at one. She paused, startled, her hand on the doorknob. They rushed past, unspeaking.

  From the open stairwell, they heard Dr. Cameron’s outraged voice float up in French: “Halte! Who are you? How dare you carry guns into my hospital!”

  They increased their speed. Marty’s face was bright red as he hurried to keep up. They passed a pair of elevators, and at the end of the hall Randi pushed her way through the fire-exit door just as footsteps pounded up the stairs behind them.

  “Oh, oh! Wh-where to?” Marty tried.

  Randi shushed him, and the four of them ran down the gray stairwell. At the bottom, Randi started to open the door, but Jon stopped her.

  “What’s on the other side?” he asked.

  “We’re below the first floor, so I assume it’s some kind of basement.”

  He nodded. “My turn.”

  She shrugged and stepped back. He handed the laptop to Marty and pulled out the curved knife he had taken from the Afghan. He opened the door a few inches, waiting for the hinges to creak. When they did not, he pressed it farther and saw a shadow move. He forced his breathing to calm. He looked back and touched his fingers to his lips. They nodded silently back.

  He studied the shadow again, saw where the overhead light must be that had cast it, gauged the movement once more, and eased out.

  There was a faint smell of gasoline. They were in a small underground garage packed with cars. The elevators were nearby, and a man with pale skin, dressed in ordinary clothes, was circling away from them, an Uzi in his hands.

  Jon released the door, and as it swung back, he sprinted. The man turned around, blue eyes narrowed. It was too soon. Jon had hoped to slip up behind. His finger on the trigger, the man raised his weapon. No time. Jon threw the knife. It was not meant for throwing, not balanced properly, but he had nothing else. As it spun end over end, Jon lunged.

  Just as the man compressed the trigger, the knife’s handle hit his side, ruining his aim. Three bullets spit into the floor next to Jon’s feet. Concrete chips sprayed the air. Jon slammed his shoulder into the gunman’s chest, propelling him back into the side of a Volvo. Jon reared back and crashed a fist into his face. Blood spurted from the fellow’s nose, but he merely grunted and swung the Uzi toward Jon’s head. Jon ducked and dodged back, while behind him silenced gunfire spit.

  As Jon looked up from his crouch, the man’s chest erupted in blood and tissue. Jon spun around on his heels.

  Peter stood off to the side, his 9mm Browning in his hands. “Sorry, Jon. No time for a fistfight. Must get the hell out of here. My rental car’s outside. Used it to get Marty out of the Pompidou Hospital, so I doubt anyone’s made it. Randi, grab everything in the poor bloke’s pockets. Let’s find out who the bloody hell he is. Jon, take the man’s weapon. Let’s go.”

  Outside Bousmelet-sur-Seine, France

  There are moments that define a man, and General Roland la Porte knew deep within himself that this was one. A massive man of muscle and determination, he leaned on the balustrade of the highest tower in his thirteenth-century castle and gazed out through the night, counting the stars, knowing the firmament was his. His castle was perched on a hill of red granite. Meticulously restored by his great-grandfather in the nineteenth century, the castle was illuminated tonight by the light of a three-quarter moon.

  Nearby stood the crumbled, skeletal ruins of a ninth-century Carolingian castle, which had been built on the site of a Frankish fort, which in turn was on the remains of the fortified Roman camp that had preceded it. The history of this land, its structures, and his family were entwined. They were the history of France itself, including its rulers in the early days, and it never failed to fill him with pride—and a sense of responsibility.

  As a child, he longed for his periodic visits to the castle. On nights like these, he would eagerly close his eyes in sleep, hoping to dream of the bearded Frankish warrior Dagovic, honored in family lore as the first of the unbroken line that eventually became the La Portes. By the age of ten, he was poring over the family’s Carolingian, Capetian, and illuminated medieval manuscripts, although he had yet to master Latin and Old French. He would hold the manuscripts reverently on his lap as
his grandfather related the inspiring tales that had been handed down. La Porte and France, France and La Porte…they had been the same, indistinguishable in his impressionable mind. As an adult, his belief had only strengthened.

  “My General?” Darius Bonnard emerged through the tower door onto the high parapet. “Dr. Chambord says he will be ready in an hour. It’s time for us to begin.”

  “Any news of Jon Smith and his associates?”

  “No, sir.” Bonnard’s firm chin lifted, but his gaze was troubled. He was bareheaded, his short, clipped blond hair almost invisible in the moonlight. “Not since the clinic.” He thought again of the murder of his man in the underground garage.

  “Unfortunate that we lost one,” La Porte said, as if reading his mind. But then, good commanders were all alike in that respect. Their men came second only to the mission itself. He made his voice kind, magnanimous, as he continued, “When this is over, I’ll write the family personally to express my gratitude for their sacrifice.”

  “It’s no sacrifice,” Bonnard assured him. “The goal is noble. It’s worth any price.”

  On the Highway to Bousmelet-sur-Seine

  Once they were safely out of Paris and certain they were not being followed, Peter stopped the car at a large petrol station. In the bright fluorescent lights, Jon, Peter, and Randi ran to phone booths to report their suspicions about La Porte, Chambord, the castle, and the strike to their bosses. They had learned nothing from the pockets of the man whom Peter had shot. He had carried no identification, just cigarettes, money, and a package of M&M’s. But on one of his fingers had been a telling detail—a ring with the insignia of the French Foreign Legion.

  Jon arrived first and lifted the phone to his ear. There was no dial tone. He dropped in coins. No dial tone again. He tapped the tongue of the phone, but still the line gave no response, just as there had been no response from the phone in Marty’s room. Puzzled, beginning to worry, he stepped away. Soon Peter and Randi joined him.

  “Did you get a line out?” But even as he asked the question, Jon knew the answer from their concerned faces.

  Randi shook her blond head. “My line was dead.”

  “Mine, too,” Peter said. “Silent as a graveyard at four a.m. Don’t like this one bit.”

  “Let’s get daring.” Randi took out her cell phone, turned it on, and entered a phone number. As she lifted it to listen, her face seemed to crumble. She shook her head angrily. “Nothing. What’s going on?”

  “Best if we could report in,” Peter said. “A bit of help from our various agencies would be pleasant.”

  “Personally,” Randi said, “I wouldn’t object if someone high up sent an army battalion or three to meet us at La Porte’s castle.”

  “Know what you mean.” Jon trotted toward the station’s shop. Through the plate-glass window he could see a clerk inside. Jon entered. Hanging from a wall was a television set. It was not turned on, but a radio was playing. As he approached the clerk, who was working behind the counter, the music stopped, and an announcer identified the local station.

  Jon told the youth in French that he had tried to use the telephone outside. “It’s not working.”

  The young man shrugged, unsurprised. “I know it. Lots of people have been complaining. They stop here from all over, and they don’t have phone reception either. TV’s off, too. I can get local stations on it and the radio, but nothing else. Cable’s not working. Awful boring, you know.”

  “How long have you had the problem?”

  “Oh, since about nine o’clock. Almost an hour now.”

  Jon’s face showed no change in expression. Nine o’clock was when Marty’s phone line in Paris had died. “Hope you get it fixed soon.”

  “Don’t know how. Without the phones working, there’s no way to report it.”

  Jon hurried back through to the car, where Randi had just finished pumping gas. Peter was opening the trunk, and Marty was standing beside him, looking a little giddy as he stared all around. He was staying off his meds, with the hope that they would find the molecular prototype and he would be in creative shape to stop whatever Chambord was setting in motion.

  Jon told them what he had discovered.

  “Émile!” Marty said instantly. “That despicable rat! Oh, dear. I didn’t want to mention it, but I was very worried. This means it’s finally happened. He’s shut down all communications, wireless and regular.”

  “But won’t that backfire on him?” Randi asked. “If we can’t get online, how can he?”

  “He has the DNA computer,” Marty said simply. “He can talk to the satellites. Open a quick window to use them if he needs to.”

  “Must get a move on,” Peter said. “Come here. Choose your poison.”

  Marty looked down into the trunk and jumped back with surprise. “Peter! It’s an arsenal.”

  They gathered around. Inside was a polyglot cache of rifles, pistols, ammunition, and other supplies.

  “Hell, Peter,” Jon said. “You’ve got a whole armaments depot in here.”

  “‘Be prepared’ is my motto.” Peter removed a pistol. “Old warhorse, you see. We learn a few things.”

  Jon already had the Uzi, so he chose a pistol, too.

  Marty shook his head vehemently. “No.”

  Randi ignored him for now. “Do you have anything like a CIA climbing rig and air gun, Peter? That castle wall looked high.”

  “The very thing.” Peter showed her a twin of the rig she had gotten from Barcelona CIA. “Borrowed it some time back, forgot to return it, tsk-tsk.”

  They climbed quickly back into the car, and Peter peeled it away, heading toward the highway again that would take them west toward the castle, where they fervently hoped they would find General La Porte and the DNA computer.

  In the backseat, Marty was wringing his hands. “I assume this means we’re on our own.”

  “We can’t count on any help,” Jon agreed.

  “I’m very nervous about this, Jon,” Marty said.

  “Good that you are,” Peter told him. “Keeps one alert. Buck up though. It could be worse. You could be sitting right smack in the middle of whatever unfortunate piece of terra firma those maniacs have targeted.”

  Outside Bousmelet-sur-Seine

  Émile Chambord hesitated at the heavy, iron-studded door to the room where his daughter was confined. No matter how much he had tried to explain his views to Thérèse, she had refused to listen. This pained Chambord. He not only loved Thérèse, he respected her, admired her work and her struggle to excel at her art, without thought of financial reward. She had steadfastly resisted all invitations to go to Hollywood. She was a stage actress with a vision of truth that had nothing to do with popular success. He recalled an American editor saying, “A good writer is a rich writer, and a rich writer is a good writer.” Substitute “actor” or “scientist” and one saw the shallow ethos of America, under which, until now, the world was doomed to live.

  He sighed, took a deep breath, and unlocked the door. He stepped inside quietly, not bothering to lock it again.

  Wrapped in a blanket, Thérèse was sitting at the narrow window across the small room in one of the high-backed baronial chairs that La Porte favored. Because the general prized historical authenticity, the castle offered few amenities beyond thick rugs on the stone floors and tapestries hanging from the stone walls. A fire was alight in the big fireplace, but its warmth did little to offset the cold that seemed to radiate from every surface in the cavelike chamber. The air smelled dank and musty.

  Thérèse did not even glance at him. She gazed steadily out the window at the stars. He joined her there, but he looked down. The ground was awash in the moon’s snowy glow, showing the dark grass on the filled-in moat and, beyond that, the rolling Norman farms and woodlands that spread out and around. A shadowy orchard of old, gnarled apple trees hugged the castle.

  He said, “It’s nearly time, Thérèse. Almost midnight.”

  At last she looked up at
him. “So midnight is when you do it. I’d hoped you’d come to your senses. That you were here to tell me you’ve refused to help those unconscionable men.”

  Chambord lost his temper. “Why can’t you see that what we’re doing will save us? We’re offering a new dawn for Europe. The Americans are crushing us with their crass, cultural desert. They pollute our language, our ideas, our society. With them in charge, the world has no vision and little justice. They have only two values: How much can a man consume for the highest possible price, and how much can he produce for the least possible pay?” His upper lip curled in loathing.

  Thérèse continued to stare at him as if he were an insect under one of his own microscopes. “Whatever their faults, they’re not mass murderers.”

  “But they are! What about the effect of their policies in Africa, Asia, and Latin America?”

  She paused, considering. Then she shook her head and laughed bitterly. “You don’t care about any of that. You’re not operating on altruism. You just want their power. You’re just like General La Porte and Captain Bonnard.”

  “I want France to rise. Europe has the right to rule its own destiny!” He turned away so she would not see his pain. She was his daughter…how could she not understand?

  Thérèse was silent. At last she took his hand, and her voice softened. “I want one world, too, but where people are simply people, and no one has power over anyone else. ‘France’? ‘Europe’? ‘The United States’?” She shook her head sorrowfully. “The concepts are anachronisms. A united world, that’s what I want. A place where no one hates or murders anyone in the name of God, country, culture, race, sexual orientation, or anything else. Our differences are to be celebrated. They’re strengths, not weaknesses.”

  “You think the Americans want one world, Thérèse?”

  “Do you and your general?”

  “You will have a better chance of it with France and Europe than with them.”

  “Do you remember after World War Two how the Americans helped us rebuild? They helped us all, the Germans and the Japanese, too. They’ve helped people all around the globe.”