The Sigma Protocol (2 page)

Very
familiar.

Ben did a double-take, peered more closely. Was that—could that really be—his old college buddy Jimmy Cavanaugh? A quizzical smile spread over Ben’s face.

Jimmy Cavanaugh, whom he’d known since his sophomore year at Princeton. Jimmy, who’d glamorously lived off-campus, smoked unfiltered cigarettes that would have choked an ordinary mortal, and could drink
anybody
under the table, even Ben, who had something of a reputation in that regard. Jimmy had come from a small town in western upstate New York called Homer, which supplied him with a storehouse of tales. One night, after he taught Ben the finer points of downing Tequila shots with beer chasers, Jimmy had him gasping for breath with his stories about the town sport of “cow tipping.” Jimmy was rangy, sly, and worldly, had an immense repertory of pranks, a quick wit, and the gift of gab. Most of all, he just seemed more
alive
than most of the kids Ben knew: the clammy-palmed preprofessionals trading tips about the entrance exams for law school or B-school, the pretentious French majors with their clove cigarettes and black scarves, the
sullen burn-out cases for whom rebellion was found in a bottle of green hair dye. Jimmy seemed to stand apart from all that, and Ben, envying him his simple ease with himself, was pleased, even flattered by the friendship. As so often happens, they’d lost touch after college; Jimmy had gone off to do something at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, and Ben had stayed in New York. Neither of them was big on college nostalgia, and then distance and time had done their usual job. Still, Ben reflected, Jimmy Cavanaugh was probably one of the few people he actually felt like talking to just now.

Jimmy Cavanaugh—it was
definitely
Jimmy—was now near enough that Ben could see that he was wearing an expensive-looking suit, under a tan trench coat, and smoking a cigarette. His build had changed: he was broader-shouldered now. But it was Cavanaugh for sure.

“Jesus,” Ben said aloud. He started down the Bahnhofstrasse toward Jimmy, then remembered his Volants, which he didn’t want to leave unattended, doormen or no doormen. He picked the skis up, hefted them over one shoulder, and walked toward Cavanaugh. The red hair had faded and receded a bit, the once-freckled face was a little lined, he was wearing a two-thousand-dollar Armani suit, and what the hell was he doing in Zurich of all places? Suddenly they made eye contact.

Jimmy broke out in a wide grin, and he strode toward Ben, an arm outstretched, the other in the pocket of his trench coat.

“Hartman, you old dog,” Jimmy crowed from a few yards away. “Hey, pal, great to see you!”

“My God, it really
is
you!” Ben exclaimed. At the same time, Ben was puzzled to see a metal tube protruding from his old friend’s trench coat, a
silencer
, he now realized, the muzzle pointing directly up at him from waist level.

It had to be some bizarre prank, good old Jimmy was always doing that kind of thing. Yet just as Ben jokingly threw his hands up in the air and dodged an imaginary bullet, he saw Jimmy Cavanaugh shift his right hand ever so slightly, the unmistakable motions of someone squeezing a trigger.

What happened next took a fraction of a second, yet time seemed to telescope, slowing almost to a halt. Reflexively, abruptly, Ben swung his skis down from his right shoulder in a sharp arc, trying to scuttle the weapon but in the process slamming his old friend hard in the neck.

An instant later—or was it the same instant?—he heard the explosion, felt a sharp spray on the back of his neck as a very real bullet shattered a glass store-front just a few feet away.

This couldn’t be happening!

Caught by surprise, Jimmy lost his balance and bellowed in pain. As he stumbled to the ground, he flung out a hand to grab the skis.
One hand
. The left. Ben felt as if he’d swallowed ice. The instinct to brace yourself when you stumble is strong: you reach out with both hands, and you drop your suitcase, your pen, your newspaper. There were few things you wouldn’t drop—few things you’d still clutch as you fell.

The gun was real
.

Ben heard the skis clatter to the sidewalk, saw a thin streak of blood on the side of Jimmy’s face, saw Jimmy scrambling to regain his orientation. Then Ben lurched forward and, in a great burst of speed, took off down the street.

The gun was real. And Jimmy had fired it at him.

Ben’s path was obstructed by crowds of shoppers and businessmen hurrying to lunch appointments, and as he wove through the crowd he collided with several
people, who shouted protests. Still he vaulted ahead, running as he’d never run before, zigzagging, hoping that the irregular pattern would make him an elusive target.

What the hell was going on? This was madness, absolute madness!

He made the mistake of glancing behind him as he ran, inadvertently slowing his pace, his face now a flashing beacon to a once-friend who for some unfathomable reason seemed bent on killing him. Suddenly, barely two feet away, a young woman’s forehead exploded in a mist of red.

Ben gasped in terror.

Jesus Christ!

No, it couldn’t be happening, this wasn’t reality, this was some bizarre nightmare—

He saw a small scattering of stone fragments, as a bullet pitted the marble facade of the narrow office building he was racing past. Cavanaugh was on his feet and running, now just fifty feet or so away from Ben, and though he had to fire in mid-stride, Cavanaugh’s aim was still unnervingly good.

He’s trying to kill me, no, he’s
going
to kill me—

Ben feinted suddenly to the right, then jerked to the left, leaping forward as he did. Now he ran flat out. On the Princeton track team, he was an eight-hundred-meter man, and, fifteen years later, he knew his only chance for survival was to find a surge of speed inside him. His sneakers weren’t made for running, but they’d have to do. He needed a destination, a clear goal, an endpoint: that was always the key.
Think, dammit!
Something clicked in his head: he was a block away from the largest underground shopping arcade in Europe, a garish, subterranean temple of consumption known as Shopville, beneath and adjacent to the main train station, the Hauptbahnhof. In his mind’s eye, he saw the
entrance, the bank of escalators at the Bahnhofplatz; it was always quicker to enter there and walk underneath the square than to fight through the crowds that typically thronged the streets above. He could seek refuge underground in the arcade. Only a madman would dare chase him down there. Ben sprinted now, keeping his knees high, his feet ghosting along with great soft strides, falling back into the discipline of the speed laps he used to devour, conscious only of the breeze at his face. Had he lost Cavanaugh? He didn’t hear his footsteps anymore, but he couldn’t afford to make any assumptions. Single-mindedly, desperately, he
ran
.

The blond woman with the Festiner’s bag folded up her tiny cellular phone and placed it in a pocket of her azure Chanel suit, her pale glossy lips compressed in a small moue of annoyance. At first everything had gone like—well, like clockwork. It had taken her a few seconds to decide that the man standing in front of St. Gotthard was a probable match. He was clearly in his mid-thirties, with an angular face and strong jaw, curly brown hair flecked with gray, and hazel-green eyes. A pleasant-looking fellow, she supposed, handsome, even; but not so distinctive that she had been able to ensure a definite identification from this distance. That was of no consequence. The shooter they’d chosen could make the identification; they’d made sure of that.

Now, however, matters seemed less than perfectly controlled. The target was an amateur; there was little chance he would survive an encounter with a professional. Still, amateurs made her uneasy. They made mistakes, but erratic, unpredictable ones, their very naïveté defying rational prediction, as the subject’s evasive actions had demonstrated. His wild, protracted escape attempt would merely postpone the inevitable. And yet it was all going to take time—the one thing that was in
short supply. Sigma One would not be pleased. She glanced at her small, bejeweled wristwatch, retrieved the phone, and made one more call.

Winded, his starved muscles screaming for oxygen, Ben Hartman paused at the escalators to the arcade, knowing he had to make a split-second decision. 1.
UNTERGESCHOSS SHOPVILLE
read the blue overhead sign. The down escalator was crowded with shoppers laden with bags and strollers; he’d have to use the up escalator, which had relatively few riders. Ben charged down it, elbowing aside a young couple who were holding hands and blocking his path. He saw the startled looks his actions had provoked, looks that mingled dismay and derision.

Now he raced through the underground arcade’s central atrium, his feet scudding along the black rubberized floor, and he allowed himself a glimmer of hope before he realized the error he’d made. From all around him arose screams, frenzied shouting. Cavanaugh had followed him here, into this enclosed, contained space. In the mirrored facade of a jewelry store, he caught a glimpse of muzzle fire, a burst of yellow-white. Instantly, a bullet tore through the burnished mahogany panels of a travel bookstore, exposing the cheap fiberboard beneath. Everywhere was pandemonium. An old man in a baggy suit a few feet away clutched his throat and toppled like a bowling pin, blood drenching his shirtfront.

Ben dove behind the information station, an oblong concrete-and-glass structure perhaps five feet wide, on which was mounted a list of stores, elegant white lettering on black, a shoppers’ guide in three languages. A hollow explosion of glass told him that the information box had been hit. Half a second later, there was a sharp crack, and a piece of concrete fell heavily from the structure, landing near his feet.

Inches
away!

Another man, tall and stout in a camel-hair topcoat and a jaunty gray cap, staggered a few feet past him before collapsing to the floor, dead. He’d been shot in the chest.

Amid the chaos, Ben found it impossible to distinguish Cavanaugh’s footsteps, but, gauging his position from the reflected muzzle flash, he knew no more than a minute remained before he would be overtaken. Remaining in position behind the concrete island, he stood, to his full six feet, and peered around wildly, looking for new refuge.

Meanwhile, the screams crescendoed. Ahead, the arcade was crowded with people, shrieking, crying out hysterically, crouching and cowering, many of them trying to hide their heads beneath folded arms.

Twenty feet away there were escalators marked 2.
UNTERGESCHOSS
. If he could close the distance without being shot, he could get to the level below. His luck might change there. It couldn’t get any worse, he thought—then he changed his mind as he saw a widening pool of blood flowing from the man in the camel-hair coat a few feet away. Dammit, he had to
think!
There was no way he could close the distance in time. Unless…

He reached for the dead man’s arm and dragged him over. Seconds remained. He yanked off the dead man’s tawny coat and grabbed the gray cap, conscious of baleful eyes upon him from shoppers cowering near the Western Union. This was no time for delicacy. Now he shrugged into the roomy overcoat, pulled the cap down hard on his head. If he was to remain alive, he would have to resist the urge to dart toward the second-level escalators like a jackrabbit: he had gone hunting enough to know that anything that moved too abruptly was likely to be shot by an itchy-fingered gunman. Instead, he clambered slowly to his feet, hunched, staggering, weaving
like an old man who had lost blood. He was now visible and supremely vulnerable: the ruse had to last just long enough to get him to the escalator. Maybe ten seconds. So long as Cavanaugh thought he was a wounded bystander, he wouldn’t waste another bullet on him.

Ben’s heart was hammering in his chest, his every instinct screaming at him to break into a sprint.
Not yet
. Hunched over, shoulders rounded, he staggered on with an unsteady gait, his strides as long as he could make them without exciting suspicion. Five seconds. Four seconds. Three seconds.

At the escalator, which had emptied out, abandoned by the terrified pedestrians, the man in the bloodied camel-hair overcoat seemed to crumple face forward, before the movement of the stairs took him out of view.

Now!

Inaction had been as strenuous as exertion, and, every nerve in his body twitching, Ben had broken his fall with his hands. As quietly as he could, he raced down the remaining stairs.

He heard a bellow of frustration from upstairs: Cavanaugh would now be after him. Every second had to count.

Ben put on another burst of speed, but the second below-ground level of the arcade was a virtual maze. There was no straight route of egress to the other side of the Bahnhofplatz, just a succession of byways, the wider walkways punctuated with kiosks of wood and glass that sold cellular phones, cigars, watches, posters. To a dilatory shopper, they were islands of interest—to him, an obstacle course.

Still, they reduced the number of sight lines. They lessened the chance of the long-distance kill. And so they bought him time. Perhaps enough time for Ben to secure the one thing he had on his mind: a shield.

He ran past a blur of boutiques: Foto Video Ganz,
Restseller Buchhandlung, Presensende Stickler, Microspot. Kinderboutique, with its window crammed with furry stuffed animals, the display framed by green-and-gold-painted wood with an incised ivy pattern. There was the chrome and plastic of a Swisscom outlet… All of them festively plying their goods and services, all utterly worthless to him. Then, straight ahead, to his right, next to a Credit Suisse/Volksbank branch office, he spotted a luggage store. He looked through the window, heaped high with soft-sided leather suitcases—no good. The item he was after was inside: a large, brushed-steel briefcase. No doubt the gleaming steel cladding was as much cosmetic as functional, but it would serve. It would have to. As Ben darted in the store, grabbed the article, and ran out, he noticed that the proprietor, pale and sweating, was jabbering hysterically in
Schweitzerdeutsch
on the telephone. No one bothered to run after Ben; word of the insanity had already spread.