Covert One 3 - The Paris Option (27 page)

Peter waited, hoping Marty's eyes would snap open and he would say something insulting. When nothing happened, he turned to look back at Dr. Dubost, who was standing at the end of the bed, entering information into Marty's computer chart. Peter raised his eyebrows questioningly.

“It's a small relapse,” the doctor explained in French. “They're to be expected.”

“They'll diminish with time?”

"Oui.

All the signs are there. Now I'm off, monsieur, to see other patients. Please continue your conversation with Dr. Zellerbach, by all means. Your ebullience is charming, and it can't but help."

Peter scowled. “Ebullience” did not strike him as an accurate description, but then the French were known to be slightly off kilter in their understanding of a lot of things. He said a polite adieu and turned back to Marty. “Alone at last,” he muttered, suddenly feeling tired and very worried.

He had dozed on the jet ride from Madrid, giving him more consecutive hours of sleep than he had on many assignments, but it was the worry itself that nagged him. He had been thinking about the Crescent Shield, that it appeared to be pan-Islamic. There was no shortage of countries in the Third World that hated the United States and, to a lesser extent, Britain, claiming great damage from their driving capitalism, that their brand of globalization ignored local customs and businesses and destroyed the environment, and that their cultural arrogance crushed sensible protest. He was reminded of that old died-in-the-wool Tory, Winston Churchill, who had explained blithelyand accurately that His Majesty's government did not base its practices and policies on the whims of locals. Whether the Crescent Shield were fundamentalists or not religious at all seemed less worrisome to him than the poverty that gave rise to so much terrorism.

The voice that brought him out of his uneasy reverie was not Marty's: “You couldn't wait for me?”

Automatically, Peter grabbed for his gun and turned. And relaxed. It was Randi Russell, marching into the private room, the credentials she had shown the guard at the door still in her hand.

“To where, may I ask,” Peter admonished, “did you disappear?”

Randi put away her ID, and Peter met her in the middle of the room. She related what she had seen and done since they separated in Madrid. The sexy flamenco outfit she described was gone, and now she was dressed in serviceable twill slacks, a white button-down shirt, and a tailored black jacket. Her blond hair was pulled back into a stubby ponytail, and her brown eyes were worried as she told him, “I got to Barajas about ten minutes after the two of you had flown out.”

“You had Jon's wind up a bit. The poor sod was anxious about you.”

At that, she grinned. “Was he now?”

“Save it for Jon, my girl,” Peter declared. “For me, I never doubted. You say Abu Auda was leading them?” He looked grim. “Possibly some Nigerian warlord is helping the Crescent Shield. It gets murkier with every new detail.”

“It sure does,” Randi agreed. “But the most vital piece of information I overheard was that whatever they're planning is going to happen soon. Two days, at the most.”

“Then we'd best get a move on,” Peter told her. “Check in with your station chief yet?”

“Not before I saw Marty. Is he asleep?”

“Relapsed.” Peter sighed wearily. “With any luck, he'll wake again soon. When he does, I shall be here in case he can tell us anything we haven't learned.”

“Is this your chair?” She headed for the armchair he had moved next to Marty's bed. “Mind if I use it?” She sat without waiting for an answer.

“Certainly,” he said. “Be my guest.”

She ignored the sarcasm and picked up Marty's hand. It had a natural warmth that was reassuring. She leaned forward and kissed his pudgy cheek. “He looks good,” she told Peter. Then she said to Marty, “Hi, Marty. It's Randi, and I just want you to know how great you look. As if you're going to wake up any moment and say something wonderfully disagreeable to Peter.”

But Marty was silent, his jaw relaxed, his high forehead uncreased, as if he had never had an unpleasant experience. But that was far from the truth. After the Hades problem had been resolved, and Marty had returned to his solitary life in his bungalow hidden behind high hedges in Washington, he might have left bullets and terrifying escapes behind, but he still had to deal with the normal activities of everyday life. For someone with Asperger's, they could be overwhelming. Which was why Marty had designed his home as a mini fortress.

When Randi had arrived to visit him the first time, he had put her through her paces, demanding she identify herself even though he could see her in his surveillance camera. But then he had unlocked the barred interior cage, hugged her, and stepped back bashfully to welcome her into his cottage, where all the windows were protected by steel bars and thick drapes. “I don't have visitors, you know,” he explained in his high, slow, precise voice. “I don't like them. How about some coffee and a cookie?” His eyes made glittering contact and then skittered away again.

He made instant Yuban decaf, handed her an Oreo cookie, and took her into a computer room where a formidable Cray mainframe and other computer equipment of every possible description filled all wall space and most of the floor, while the few pieces of furniture looked like Salvation Army discards, although Marty was a multimillionaire. She knew from Jon that Marty had tested at the genius level since the age of five. He had two Ph.D.sone in quantum physics and mathematics, of course, and the other in literature.

He had launched into a description of a new computer virus that had caused some $6 billion in damage. “This was a particularly nasty one,” he explained earnestly. “It was self-replicatingwe call them worms and it e-mailed itself to tens of millions of users and jammed e-mail systems around the globe. But the guy who started it left behind his digital fingerprinta thirty-two-digit Globally Unique IDwe call them GUIDsthat identified his computer.” He rubbed his hands gleefully. “See, GUIDs are sometimes embedded in the computer code of files saved in Microsoft Office programs. They're hard to find, but he should've made real sure his was erased. Once I located his GUID, I tracked it to files all over the Internet until I finally pinpointed one that actually contained his name. His whole name can you believe it?in an e-mail to his girlfriend. Dumb. He lives in Cleveland, and the FBI says they have enough evidence to arrest him now.” The smile on Marty's face had been radiant with triumph.

As she remembered all this, Randi leaned over Marty's hospital bed to give him another kiss, this one on the other cheek. She stroked it tenderly, hoping he would stir. “You've got to get better soon, Marty, dear,” she told him at last. “You're my favorite person to eat Oreo cookies with.” Her eyes felt moist. At last she stood up. “Take good care of him, Peter.”

“I will.”

She headed toward the door. “I'm off to check in with my station chief and find out what he can tell me about Mauritania and the DNA computer hunt. Then it's Brussels. In case Jon does call here, remind him I'll look for a message at the Cafeacute; Egmont.”

He smiled. “A message drop, just like the old days when tradecraft really mattered. Damn me, but it feels good.”

“You're a dinosaur, Peter.”

“That I am,” he agreed cheerfully, “that I am.” And more soberly, “Off with you. I'd say there appears to be considerable urgency, and your country's the most likely target.”

Before Randi was out the door, Peter was back in his chair beside the silent Marty, talking and joshing, the quirkiness of their friendship in every light, bantering word.

St. Francesc, Isla de Formentera

Captain Darius Bonnard sat in the fishermen's cafeacute; on the rustic waterfront, eating a plate of langosta a la parrilla and gazing across the flat, spare landscape of the last and smallest of the main Balearic Islands toward the port of La Savina. Two of the islands in the chainMallorca and Ibizawere synonymous with tourism and had once been the main vacation destination of well-to-do Britishers, while this one, La Isla de Formentera, had remained a little-known, underdeveloped, almost perfectly flat Mediterranean paradise. Captain Bonnard's ostensible mission here was to bring back for his general's table a generous supply of the famous local mayonnaise, first created in Mao, the picturesque capital of the fourth island, Menorca.

He had finished his meal of lobster and the same ubiquitous mayonnaise and was sipping a glass of light local white wine, when the real reason for his trip sat down across the table.

Mauritania's small face and blue eyes shone with triumph. “The test was a complete success,” he enthused in French. “The smug Americans never knew what hit them, as they say in their barbaric language. We're exactly on schedule.”

“No problems?”

“There is a problem with the DNA replicator that Chambord tells me needs to be corrected. Unfortunate, but not disastrous.”

Bonnard smiled and raised his glass. “Santeacute;!” he toasted. “Cheers! Excellent news. And you? How goes your end?”

Mauritania frowned, and his gaze bore into Bonnard. “At the moment, my largest concern is you. If exploding the jet that was carrying General Moore was your work, as I think it was, it was a blunder.”

“It was necessary.” Bonnard drained his wineglass. “My general, whose stupid nationalistic convictions enable me to work so well with you, has the unfortunate habit of exaggerating his position in order to impress doubters. This time he alarmed Sir Arnold Moore. We don't need a suspicious British general alerting his government, which in turn is guaranteed to warn the Americans as well. Then both would be up in arms about a nonexistent danger that might easily be tracked back to us.”

“His sudden death will do precisely that.”

“Relax, my revolutionary friend. Had Sir Arnold reached Britain, he would've revealed the meeting on the Charles de Gaulle and what my general suggested. That would've been a serious problem. But now the prime minister knows only that one of his generals was flying to London to speak to him on a delicate matter and has now disappeared. He and his staff will speculate about it. Was it a private matter? A public matter? All of this will give us time, since their vaunted MI6 will have to dig around until it finds out what and why. They'll probably never succeed. But if they do, enough days will have passed that by then”Bonnard shrugged“we won't care, will we?”

Mauritania thought for a time and smiled. “Perhaps you do know what you're doing, Captain. When you first approached me to join you, I wasn't convinced of that.”

“Then why did you agree to the plan?”

“Because you had the money. Because the plan was good, and our purpose the same. So we will smite the enemy together. But I still fear your action against the English general will draw attention.”

“If we didn't have the full attention of Europe and the Americans before, your tests have assured we do now.”

Mauritania admitted grudgingly, “Perhaps. When will you come to us? We may want you soon, particularly if Chambord's back needs more stiffening.”

“When it's safe. When I won't be missed.”

Mauritania stood. “Very well. Two days, no more.”

“I'll be there long before. Count on it.”

Mauritania walked from the cafeacute; to his bicycle, parked near the water. Out on the Mediterranean, white sails were unfurled against the blue sea. Above him, seagulls rode the salty air. A scattering of cafeacute;s, bars, and gift shops dotted the open area, with the Spanish flag whipping smartly overhead. As he pedaled away from the annoyingly Western scene, his cell phone rang. It was Abu Auda.

Mauritania asked, “You were successful in Madrid?”

“We weren't,” Abu Auda told him, his voice angry and frustrated. He did not tolerate failure in anyone, including himself. “We lost many men. They are clever, those three, and the police arrived so quickly that we were unable to finish our mission. I was forced to eliminate four of our own.” He described the confrontation in the Madrid basement.

Mauritania muttered an Arabic oath he knew would shock the puritanical desert warrior, but he did not care.

“It was not entirely a loss,” Abu Auda said, his mind more on his chagrin at having failed than on Mauritania's flouting of their religion. “We slowed and separated them.”

“Where did they go, Abu Auda?”

“There was no way to find out.”

Mauritania's voice rose. “Do you feel safe with them free to plot against us?”

“We were unable to hunt them because of the police,” Abu Auda said, controlling his temper. “I was fortunate to escape at all.”

Mauritania swore again and heard Abu Auda give a disapproving grunt. He hung up and muttered in English that he did not give a tinker's damn about Abu Auda's religious sensibilities, which were mostly humbug anyway and never prevented Abu Auda from being as devious as a snake striking its own tail when it suited him. What mattered was that the mysterious Smith, the old Englishman from the western Iraqi desert, and the shameless CIA woman were still out there.

Paris, France

The frumpy brunette who emerged from the entrance to the Concorde meacute;tro stop onto the rue de Rivoli bore a striking resemblance to the woman who had followed Jon Smith from the Pasteur Institute except that this woman wore a pastel pantsuit common to many tourists and walked with the hurrying steps of most Americans. She crossed the rue Royale into the avenue Gabriel, passed the Htel Grillon, and turned onto the grounds of the American embassy. Once inside, she acted distraught as she described an emergency at home in North Platte, Nebraska. She had to get home, but her passport had been stolen.

She was sympathetically referred to a room on the second floor, and she almost ran up the stairs. Inside the room, a short, heavy man in an impeccable dark blue pin-stripe suit was waiting at a conference table.

“Hello, Aaron,” Randi said as she sat down at the table, facing him.

Aaron Isaacs, CIA station chief in Paris, said, “You've been out of touch almost forty-eight hours. Where's Mauritania?”

“Gone.” Randi told him all that had happened in Toledo and Madrid.