The Paris Option

by Robert Ludlum

  That far Chambord could not go. She refused to see the truth. “For a price,” he snapped. “In exchange for our individuality, our humanity, our minds, our souls.”

  “And from what you tell me, your price tonight could be millions of lives.”

  “You exaggerate, child. What we do will warn the world that America cannot defend even itself, but the casualties will be relatively low. I insisted upon that. And we are at war with the Americans. Every minute, every day, we have to fight, or they will overwhelm us. We are not like them. We will be great again.”

  Thérèse released his hand and again stared out the window at the stars. When she spoke, her voice was clear and sad. “I’ll do everything I can to save you, Papa. But I must also stop you.”

  Chambord remained motionless for another moment, but she did not look at him again. He walked out of the room, locking the door behind him.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  They stopped again, this time at a small petrol station outside the village of Bousmelet-sur-Seine. The attendant nodded in answer to Jon’s question: “Oui, bien, the count is at Château la Rouge. I filled the tank of his limousine earlier today. Everyone’s glad. We don’t see all that much of the great man since he took over NATO. Who could be better, I ask you?”

  Jon smiled, noting that local pride had raised La Porte one more notch in the command structure at NATO.

  “Is he alone?” Jon asked.

  “Alas.” The attendant removed his cap and crossed himself. “The countess passed away these many years.” He glanced around at the night, even though there was no one else here. “There was a young lady at the castle for a while, but no one has seen her for more than a year. Some say that’s good. That the count must set an example. But I say counts have been taking women not their wives up there for centuries, yes? And what of the peasant girls? It was a tanner’s daughter who produced the great Duke William. Besides, I think the count’s lonely, and he’s still young. A great tragedy, yes?” And he roared with laughter.

  Randi smiled and looked sympathetic. “Soldiers are often married to the army. I doubt Captain Bonnard brought his wife with him either.”

  “Ah, that one. He has no time for anyone but the count. Devoted to his lordship, he is. I’m surprised to know he’s married at all.”

  As Jon took out euros to pay, the attendant studied them. “You needed little gas. What do you folks want with the count?”

  “He invited us to drop in and tour the castle if we were ever in the area.”

  “Guess you got lucky. He’s sure not here much. Funny, too. Had another guy asking about an hour ago. A big, black guy. Said he was in the Legion with the count and Captain Bonnard. Probably was. Wore the green beret, except he wore it sort of wrong, you know, more like the English wear berets. Kind of arrogant. Had funny greenish eyes. Never saw eyes like that on a black.”

  “What else was he wearing?” Jon asked.

  “Like you, pants, jacket.” The attendant eyed Randi. “Except his looked new.”

  “Thanks,” Jon said, and he and Randi climbed back into the car. As Peter drove away, Jon asked him and Marty, “You heard?”

  “We did,” Peter said.

  “Is the black man the one you called Abu Auda?” Marty asked.

  “With those eyes, sounds like him,” Randi said. “Which could mean the Crescent Shield also thinks Bonnard and Chambord are here. Maybe they’re looking for Mauritania.”

  “Not to mention possibly getting their hands on the DNA computer if they can,” Peter guessed, “and getting revenge on Chambord and Captain Bonnard.”

  “Having the Crescent Shield here is going to complicate matters,” Jon said, “but they could turn out to be useful, too.”

  “How?” Randi said.

  “Distraction. We don’t know how many of his renegade Legionnaires La Porte has with him, but I bet it’s a substantial number. It’ll be good if they’re worried by someone else.”

  They drove on in silence for another ten minutes through the moonlight, the road a pale pathway in the silent, rural night. There were no other cars on the road now. The lights of farm houses and manor houses sparkled intermittently through the apple orchards and the outbuildings and barns that probably housed equipment to make the cider and Calvados for which the region was famous.

  At last, Randi pointed ahead and upward. “There it is.”

  Marty, who had been mostly silent since they left the highway, suddenly said, “Medieval! A baronial bastion! You do not, I trust, expect me to scramble up those ridiculous walls?” he worried. “I’m no mountain goat.”

  The Château la Rouge was not the fine country estate the name would have implied around Bordeaux or even in most of the Loire Valley. It was a brooding medieval castle boasting battlements and two towers. Moonlight had turned the granite an inky blood-red. Set high on a craggy hill beside what looked like the jagged, gap-toothed ruins of a far older castle, this was the Château la Rouge that Jon had seen in the painting and photograph.

  Peter studied the massive structure with a critical eye. “Send for the siege train. It’s a bloody old one, it is. Late twelfth or early thirteenth century, I should say. Norman-English, from the look of it. The French tended to like their fortresses a bit more elegant and stylish. Possibly as old as Henry the Second, but I doubt it—”

  “Forget the history, Peter,” Randi interrupted. “What makes you think we can climb up those walls without being spotted?”

  “I don’t climb,” Marty announced.

  “Shouldn’t be difficult,” Peter enthused. “Looks as if she’s been updated sometime in the last century or so. The moat’s filled in, the portcullis is gone, and the entryway is wide open. Of course, tonight they’ll have that entrance guarded. They’ve manicured the hill up to the walls, which is an advantage for us. And my guess is we won’t have to worry about boiling oil, crossbows, and all that rigamarole from the battlements.”

  “Boiling oil.” Marty shuddered. “Thanks, Peter. You’ve cheered me enormously.”

  “My pleasure.”

  Peter turned off the headlights, and they cruised to the base of the rocky hill where he paused the car. There in the moonlight they had a clear view of a curved drive that led up to the front and in through the tunnel-like entryway. As Peter had guessed, there was no gate or barrier, and spring flowers grew in well-kept beds on either side. The nineteenth-and twentieth-century La Portes had obviously been unworried about attack. But a pair of armed men in civilian clothes at the open front portal showed that the twenty-first-century La Porte was.

  Peter eyed the two guards. “Soldiers. French. Probably the Legion.”

  “You can’t possibly know that, Peter,” Marty rebuked. “More of your superior man-of-action hyperbole again.”

  “Au contraire, mon petit ami. Every nation’s military has its traditions, methods, and drill, which produce a different appearance and manner. A U.S. soldier shoulders arms on the right shoulder, the British on the left. Soldiers move, stand at attention, march, stop, salute, and generally hold themselves differently, according to the country. Any soldier can tell instantly who has trained the army of a Second-or Third-World nation by simply observing. Those guards are French soldiers, lad, and I’d bet the wine cellar on the Legion.”

  Exasperated, Marty said, “Poppycock! Even your French stinks!”

  Peter laughed and rolled the car onward along the country road that curved out and around.

  Jon spotted a helicopter. “Look! Up there!”

  The chopper was perched on a squat barbican fifty feet up, its rotors protruding over the stone balustrade. “I’ll bet that’s how Chambord and Bonnard got in and out of Grenoble and flew here. Add in the military guards, La Porte’s being here, and the Crescent Shield, and I’d say the DNA computer is here.”

  As Peter continued the car’s circle of the castle, Randi said, “Swell. Now all we have to do is get into it.”

  Jon stared up the slope. “With our equipment
, we’ll be able to climb it. Pull off here, Peter.”

  Peter cut the motor and coasted the car off the road into a grove of old apple trees. The car bumped along until it stopped at a spot where the steep hillside met the wall at a higher point. Jon, Peter, and Randi got out. Peter pointed silently up to where the head and shoulders of a sentry moved along the parapet in the moonlit night.

  They conversed in whispers. Sound carried far in the rural night.

  “Anyone see any others?” Jon asked.

  After studying the wall in both directions, they both shook their heads.

  “Let’s time that one,” Peter said.

  They clicked the timer function on their watches and waited. More than five minutes elapsed before they saw the head of the sentry return and disappear in the other direction. They waited again, and the man passed more quickly this time. Less than two minutes.

  “Okay,” Jon decided. “When he heads off to our right, we’ve got five minutes. That should be enough for at least two of us to make the top.”

  Peter nodded. “Should do.”

  “Unless,” Randi said, “he hears us.”

  “We’ll hope he doesn’t,” Jon said.

  “Look!” Peter whispered, pointing to their left.

  In the distance, hunched dark shapes were moving up the incline, heading to the castle’s entry. The Crescent Shield.

  Using arm and hand signals, Abu Auda urged his men through the old apple orchard and up the incline toward the wide gateway between two low towers. It had taken him most of the day since returning from Liechtenstein to assemble his reinforcements, many from other Islamic cells and even splinter groups. He had called ahead for help when he had discovered where this General La Porte and his lackey, the devious snake Bonnard, had taken the lying Dr. Chambord and his longtime comrade-in-arms, Mauritania.

  Now his people numbered more than fifty rifles. He and his small cadre of veteran warriors herded the new men up toward the entrance. His scouts had counted the guards and sentries and reported only two were stationed at the gate, while fewer than five patrolled the entire rampart wall. What concerned him was his lack of information about how many French soldiers were hidden away inside the castle itself. In the end, he had decided it did not matter. His fifty fighters could defeat twice…three times their number, if need be.

  But that was the lesser of Abu Auda’s worries. If the battle went against them, these French renegades might murder Mauritania before he could be reached. Therefore, Abu Auda decided, it would be necessary to reach Mauritania first. For that, he would take a strong small party, scale the walls where the French sentries were thinnest, and rescue Mauritania as soon as the battle was well engaged by the bulk of his troops.

  “Let’s go,” Jon said as Peter opened his trunk again.

  The three readied their equipment, while Marty remained rooted inside the car. Randi shoved the climbing rig and another H&K MP5K submachine gun into an SAS fanny pack, and Peter loaded a small cube of plastique explosive, some manual fuses, and a pair of grenades into another. He saw Jon watching him. “Handy for locked doors, thick walls, the like. Are we ready?”

  Marty rolled down his window. “Have a pleasant climb. I’ll guard the car.”

  “Out you come, Mart,” Jon said. “You’re our secret weapon.”

  Marty shook his head stubbornly. “I use doorways to enter structures, especially very high structures. In a dire emergency, I might consider a window. Ground floor, of course.”

  Randi said nothing. With her climbing equipment, she scrambled quietly up the steep grade. Jon exchanged a look with Peter and nodded to the other side of the car. Peter padded around to it.

  “No time to play coy, Marty,” Jon said cheerfully. “There’s the wall. You’re going up it one way or another.” He opened the door and reached in to grab Marty.

  Marty recoiled—directly into the bear hug of Peter, who dragged him protesting, but not too loudly, out of the car. Randi was already at the base of the castle, preparing her climbing rigs and the harness she would use to haul Marty to the top. Jon and Peter hustled the still reluctant and complaining Marty up the slope.

  Randi checked to be sure they were coming, saw they were, and nodded acknowledgment. She stepped back, ready to shoot her grappling hook over the wall. But at the base of the castle, Marty stumbled over her gear, knocking her against the wall. The grappling hook clanged in the night. They all froze.

  Above them sounded the unmistakable noise of running boots.

  Peter whispered, “Everyone flatten to the wall!” He drew his SAS high-power Browning 9mm pistol. He screwed on the silencer.

  Above them, a face appeared, trying to see who or what had disturbed the quiet night. But they were close to the wall, in a blind, shadowed area. The sentry leaned farther and farther over until he was half beyond the parapet. He saw them at the same instant Peter, taking careful aim with both hands, fired.

  There was a soft pop from the silenced weapon, and then a faint, sharp grunt. The guard spilled noiselessly over the wall and landed with a thud almost at their feet. His pistol drawn, Jon bent over the fallen man.

  He looked up. “Dead. French insignia on his ring.”

  “I’m going up,” Randi told them, not looking at the dead soldier.

  With careful aim, she shot the mini-grappling hook up. It made a small clang as its titanium points caught in the stone and held. She swarmed up on her automatic ratchet, and seconds later she leaned over and waved the all-clear.

  The harness flew down. Peter and Jon quickly buckled it around a silent Marty, who had stopped protesting, his round face pale and serious as he stared at the body.

  His voice shook a little, but he tried to smile as he said, “I’d really prefer an elevator. Perhaps a cable car?”

  Seconds later, the first shots shattered the night at the entryway.

  “Now!” Jon said. “Up you go!”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Air Force One, Heading West from Washington, D.C.

  The president’s secretary, Mrs. Estelle Pike, poked her head into the airborne conference room, her frizzy hair wilder than usual. She arched an eyebrow and said, “Blue.”

  She lingered a second or two as the president swung around in his chair, away from the startled eyes of Charles Ouray, Emily Powell-Hill, the Joint Chiefs, and the DCI, who were sitting around the long conference table, to pick up the receiver of a blue radio phone that stood beside the ever-menacing red one.

  “Yes?” He listened. “He’s sure? Where is he? What!” Tension filled his voice. “The whole country? All right. Keep me posted.”

  President Castilla rotated back to face the eyes focused on him. They were the front line now, all of them aboard the flying White House. The Secret Service had insisted that going mobile in Air Force One was the prudent course, considering the volatile situation. The public was still in the dark. Everything possible was being done, but unless there was some kind of concrete way to warn and evacuate, the president had made the tough decision that the continuing communications problems be passed off to the media as a dangerous virus that was being corrected, and that the perpetrators would be found and the full force of the law brought down upon them.

  Fully briefed and in constant touch by radio, the vice president and backups for everyone here were safely deep in bunkers in North Carolina, so that if the worst happened, the national government would go on. Spouses and children had also been evacuated to various secret underground sites. Although the president knew that there were no such provisions for the rest of the country, that it would be simply impossible, he agonized anyway. They must find a way to prevent what he feared.

  He spoke calmly to his assembled advisers. “I’m informed the attack could be today or tonight. We have nothing more definite than that.” He frowned and shook his head, sorrowful, frustrated. “And we don’t know what or where.”

  The president saw a question behind all those eyes staring at him: What was his source
of information? To whom had he been talking? And if they did not know, how reliable could this source or sources be? He had no intention of satisfying them: Covert-One and Fred Klein would remain utterly clandestine until he passed them on to his successor with the strong recommendation to maintain both the organization and the secrecy.

  Finally, Emily Powell-Hill, his NSA, asked, “Is that a confirmed fact, Mr. President?”

  “It’s the most informed conclusion we have or are likely to have.” Castilla studied their bleak faces, knowing they were going to hold up. Knowing he was. “But we’re generally now aware where the DNA computer is, and that means there’s a good chance we can still destroy it in time.”

  “Where, sir?” Admiral Stevens Brose asked.

  “Somewhere in France. All communications in or out of the country have just been shut down there.”

  “Damnation!” White House chief of staff Ouray’s voice shook. “All communication? All of France? Incredible!”

  “If they’ve shut communications down,” Powell-Hill said, “then they must be very close to doing it. It sure sounds to me as if it’s got to be today, too.”

  The president’s gaze swept the group. “We’ve had several days to prepare our best defenses. Even with all the cyber attacks, we should be ready. Are we?”

  Admiral Stevens Brose cleared his throat, trying to keep an uncharacteristic note of dread from his voice. The admiral was as brave and resolute under fire as any other professional soldier, and a soldier could handle the uncertainty of when and where. Still, this blind dealing with an unstoppable computer against an unknown target was wearing on him, as it was on everyone else.

  He said, “We’re as ready as we can be, considering all our satellites and other communications are down, and our command codes compromised. We’ve been working around the clock, and ten hours more than that, to bring everything back online and change our codes.” He hesitated. “But I’m not sure it’ll really help. With what the DNA machine can do, even our latest encryptions will likely be broken, and we’ll be out of commission again in minutes, perhaps seconds.” He glanced at his fellow commanders. “Our one advantage is our new covert, experimental antimissile defense system. Since they don’t know we have it, that may be enough.” The admiral glanced at his fellow flag officers. “If the attack is going to be by missile.”