The Sigma Protocol (54 page)

Ben sank lower in his seat, as the full weight of his predicament bore upon him.

Oscar punched him in the arm; it looked jocular, but it stung. “Don’t slink down in your seat,” he whispered. “Don’t look furtive, don’t avoid eye contact, and don’t try to look inconspicuous. That’s about as effective as a movie star putting on sunglasses to shop at Fred Segal,
tu comprends?
”

“
Oui
,” Ben said weakly.

“Now,” Oscar said, “what’s that charming American expression you have? ‘Get the fuck out of here.’”

After acquiring a few items at some small side-street stalls, they returned to the métro, where they were just another couple of moony-eyed tourists to the casual spectator.

“We’ve got to make plans—plans for what the hell to do next,” Ben said.

“Next? I don’t see what choice we have,” Anna said. “Strasser’s the one surviving link we know about—a member of Sigma’s board of incorporators who’s still alive. We’ve got to reach him somehow.”

“Who says he’s still alive?”

“We can’t afford to assume otherwise.”

“You realize they’re going to be watching every airport, every terminal, every gate.”

“It’s occurred to me, yes,” Anna replied. “You’re beginning to think like a professional. A real fast learner.”

“I believe they call this the immersion method.”

On a long underground journey to one of the
banlieues
, the downtrodden areas that ringed Paris proper, the two conversed in low voices, making plans like love-birds, or fugitives.

They got out at the stop at La Courneuve, an old-fashioned working-class neighborhood. It was only a few miles away, but a different world—a place of two-story houses and unpretentious shops that sold things to use, not to display. In the windows of the bistros and convenience stores, posters for Red Star, the second-division soccer team, were prominent. La Courneuve, due north of Paris, wasn’t far from Charles De Gaulle airport, but that was not where they’d be heading.

Ben pointed to a bright red Audi across the street. “How about that one?”

Anna shrugged. “I think we can find something less noticeable.” A few minutes later, they came across a blue Renault. The car had a light coating of grime, and
on the floor inside there were yellow wrappers from fast-food meals, and a few cardboard coffee cups.

“I’ll put my money on the owner being home for the night,” Ben said. Anna set to work with her rocker pick, and a minute later had the car door unlocked. Disassembling the ignition cylinder on the steering column took a little more time, but soon the motor roared to life and the two took off down the street, driving at the legal speed limit.

Ten minutes later, they were on the A1 highway, en route to the Lille-Lesquin airport in Nord–Pas de Calais. The trip would take hours, and involve risks, but they were calculated ones: auto theft was commonplace in La Courneuve, and the predictable police response would be to make perfunctory inquiries among the locals known to be involved in the activity. The matter would almost certainly not be referred to the
Police Nationale
, which patrolled the major thoroughfares.

They drove in silence for half an hour, lost in their own thoughts.

Finally, Anna spoke. “The whole thing Chardin talked about—it’s just impossible to absorb. Somebody tells you that everything you know about modern history is wrong, upside down. How can that be?” Her eyes remained fixed on the road in front of her, and she sounded as utterly drained as Ben felt.

“I don’t know, Anna. Things stopped making sense for me that day at the Bahnhofplatz.” Ben tried to stave off a profound sense of enervation. The rush of their successful escape had long since given way to a larger sense of dread, of terror.

“A few days ago, I was essentially conducting a homicide investigation, not examining the foundations of the modern age. Would you believe?”

Ben did not directly reply: what reply could there be?
“The homicides,” he said. He felt a vague unease. “You said it started with Mailhot in Nova Scotia, the man who worked for Charles Highsmith, one of the Sigma founders. And then there was Marcel Prosperi, who was himself one of the principals. Rossignol, likewise.”

“Three points determine a plane,” Anna said. “Highschool geometry.”

Something clicked in Ben’s mind. “Rossignol was alive when you flew off to see him, but dead by the time you arrived, right?”

“Right, but—”

“What’s the name of the man who gave you the assignment?”

She hesitated. “Alan Bartlett.”

“And when you’d located Rossignol, in Zurich, you told him, right?”

“First thing,” Anna said.

Ben’s mouth became dry. “Yes. Of course you did. That’s why he brought you in, in the first place.”

“What are you talking about?” She craned her neck and looked at him.

“Don’t you see? You were the cat’s-paw, Anna.
He was using you
.”

“Using me
how?
”

The sequence of events cascaded in Ben’s mind. “
Think
, dammit! It’s just the way you might prepare a bloodhound. Alan Bartlett first gives you the scent. He knows the way you work. He knew the next thing you’d demand…”

“He knew I’d ask him for the list,” Anna said, her voice hollow. “Is this possible? That damned show of reluctance on his part—a piece of theater for my benefit, knowing it would only steel my resolve? The same with the goddamn car in Halifax: maybe he knew a scare like that would make me that much keener.”

“And so you get a list of names. Names of people
connected with Sigma. But not just any names: these are people who are
in hiding
. People whom Sigma
cannot find
—not without alerting them. Nobody connected with Sigma could possibly reach these people.
Otherwise they would have been dead already
.”

“Because…” Anna began slowly. “Because all of the victims were
angeli rebelli
. The apostates, the dissidents. People who could no longer be trusted.”

“And Chardin told us that Sigma was approaching a delicate transitional phase—a time of maximum vulnerability. It
needed
these people eliminated. But
you
could find somebody like Rossignol precisely because
you were who you said you were
. You really
were
trying to save his life. And your bona fides could be verified in meticulous detail. Yet you had been unknowingly
programmed!
”

“Which is why Bartlett gave me the assignment in the first place,” Anna said, her voice growing steadily louder, a realization dawning. “So that I would locate the remaining
angeli rebelli
.” She banged a hand on the dashboard.

“Whom Bartlett would then arrange to have killed.
Because Bartlett is working for Sigma
.” He hated himself for the pain that his words had to be causing her, but everything was now coming into sharp focus.

“And in effect so was I. God
damn
it to hell!
So was I
.”

“
Unwittingly
,” Ben emphasized. “As a
pawn
. And when you were becoming too hard to control, he tried to pull you off the case. They’d already found Rossignol, they didn’t need you anymore.”

“
Christ!
” Anna said.

“Of course, it’s no more than a theory,” Ben said, though he felt certain he was speaking the truth.

“A theory, yes. But it makes too much damned
sense
.”

Ben didn’t reply. The demand that reality make sense seemed now an outlandish luxury. Chardin’s words filled
his mind, their meaning as hideous as the face of the man who spoke them.
Wheels within wheels—that was the way we worked… organs of Sigma, which remained invisible… Every detail had been outlined by us… long before…it never crossed anyone’s mind that the West had fallen under the administration of a hidden consortium. The notion would be inconceivable. Because if true, it would mean that over half the planet was effectively a subsidiary of a single megacorporation. Sigma
.

Another ten minutes of silence elapsed before Ben said flatly, “We’ve got to work out an itinerary.”

Anna studied the article in the
Herald Tribune
again.

“‘The suspect is believed to have used the names Robert Simon and John Freedman in his travels.’ So those IDs are blown.”

How? Ben recalled Liesl’s explanation of how the credit accounts were kept current, how Peter had made the arrangements through her impeccably trustworthy second cousin. “Deschner,” Ben said tightly. “They must have gotten to him.” After a moment, he added, “I wonder why they didn’t release my real name. They’ve supplied aliases, but not the name ‘Benjamin Hartman.’”

“No, it’s the smart thing to do. Look, they knew you weren’t traveling under your real name. Bringing your true identity into it might have muddied the waters. You’d get your Deerfield English teacher opining that the Benny she knew would never do such a thing. Plus the Swiss have gunshot residue analysis that puts you in the clear—but it’s all filed under Benjamin Hartman. If you’re running a dragnet, it makes sense to keep it simple.”

Near the town of Croisilles, they saw a sign for a motel and pulled into a modern low-slung concrete building, a style Ben thought of as International Ugly.

“Just one night,” Ben said, and counted out several hundred francs.

“Passport?” the stone-faced clerk asked.

“They’re in our bags,” Ben said apologetically. “I’ll bring them down to you later.”

“Just one night?”

“If that,” Ben said, giving Anna a theatrically lascivious look. “We’ve been touring France on our honeymoon.”

Anna stepped over and put her head on Ben’s shoulder. “This is such a beautiful country,” she told the clerk. “And so sophisticated. I can’t get over it.”

“Your honeymoon,” the clerk repeated, and, for the first time, smiled.

“If you don’t mind, we’re in a hurry,” Ben said. “We’ve been driving for hours. We need a rest.” He winked.

The clerk handed him a key attached to a heavy rubberized weight. “Just at the end of the hall. Room 125. You need anything, just call.”

The room was sparsely furnished; the floor was covered with dull, mottled green carpeting and the brashly cherry-scented air freshener did not conceal the faint, unmistakable smell of mildew.

Once the door closed behind them, they emptied the plastic bag Oscar had given them on the bed, along with their other recent purchases. Anna picked up an EU passport. The photograph was of her, although digitally altered in various ways. Anna said her newly assigned name aloud a few times, trying to get accustomed to the unfamiliar sounds.

“I still don’t see how this is going to work,” Ben said.

“Like your Oscar said, they categorize you before they really look at you. It’s called profiling. If you don’t belong to the suspect genus, you get a free pass.” Anna
took out a tube of lipstick and, looking into a mirror, applied it carefully. She wiped it off a few times before she was confident that she had done it correctly.

By then, Ben was already in the bathroom, his hair slick with syrupy, foamy hair dye, which gave off a tarry, ammoniac smell. The instructions said to wait twenty minutes before rinsing. It also cautioned against dyeing eyebrows, at the risk of blindness. Ben decided to take that risk. With a cotton swab, he applied the thick fluid to his brows, pressing a wad of tissue paper against his eyes to prevent it from dripping down.

The twenty minutes felt like two hours. Finally, he stepped into the shower, blasted himself with water, and opened his eyes only when he was certain the peroxide had all been washed down the drain.

He stepped out of the shower and looked at himself in the mirror. He was a plausible blond.

“Say hello to David Paine,” he said to Anna.

She shook her head. “The hair’s too long.” She held up the multi-cut electric clippers, chrome-clad except for the clear rubberized grip. “That’s what this baby is for.”

In another ten minutes, his curls were flushed away, and he was ready to put on the neatly creased U.S. Army fatigues that Oscar Peyaud had provided him. Blond, crew cut, he looked like an officer, consistent with the insignia, patches, and overseas service bars on his green uniform coat. U.S. Army officers wore identifying badges when traveling by air, he knew. It wasn’t an inconspicuous way to travel; but being conspicuous in the right way could amount to a life-saving distraction.

“Better make tracks,” Anna said. “The faster we can get out of this country, the safer we’ll be. Time’s on
their
side, not ours.”

Carrying their belongings with them, the two walked to the end of the hall and stepped out into the parking lot.

They tossed Anna’s garment bag in the backseat of the blue Renault, along with the white plastic sack that Oscar had given them. It contained the spent bottle of hair dye, and a few other pieces of garbage they didn’t want to leave behind. At this point, the smallest detail could give them away.

“As I said, we’re down to our last card, our last play,” Anna said, as they made their way back on the highway heading north. “Strasser was a founder. We’ve got to find him.”

“
If
he’s still alive.”

“Was there any indication either way in Sonnenfeld’s file?”

“I reread it this morning,” Ben said. “No, to be honest. And Sonnenfeld thought it was entirely possible that Strasser died, maybe even
years
ago.”

“Or maybe not.”

“Maybe not. You’re an incurable optimist. But what makes you think we’re not going to get arrested in Buenos Aires?”

“Hell, like you’ve said, there were notorious Nazis living there openly for decades. The local police are going to be the least of our troubles.”

“What about Interpol?”

“That’s what I was thinking—they might be able to help us locate Strasser.”

“Are you crazy? Talk about going into the lion’s den. They’re going to have your name on some watch list, aren’t they?”

“You obviously don’t know anything about the way the Interpol office is run down there. Nobody checks IDs. You are who you claim you are. Not the most
sophisticated operation, let’s just say. You got a better idea?”