The Paris Option

  As he sped downward, the detonation made the wire swing violently, and he felt the hook slip. He inhaled and increased his speed dangerously, hoping he had time to reach the bottom before the hook broke free. His rib cage tightened as he realized how much gray smoke was drifting out of some of the tower’s windows.

  At last, just as his feet touched the rampart, the hook burst out and fell, nearly hitting him. With relief, he saw that Peter, Marty, and Thérèse were already running off toward the barbican where the little scout helicopter was parked.

  Shouts erupted not from above, but from along the rampart wall.

  “It’s the Crescent Shield this time!” Randi shouted. “Faster!”

  Jon and Randi tore after their friends. Peter was already behind the controls of the shuddering helicopter, its rotors spinning, and Thérèse and Marty were strapped into passenger seats. Jon and Randi leaped in, too.

  Peter lifted off, banking the chopper violently away from the castle as the first Crescent Shield soldiers came into view, firing as they ran.

  Bullets pierced the walls and pinged off the landing struts. Everyone was breathing hard. They looked at one another silently, unable to speak, as Peter pushed the chopper farther and farther away from La Porte’s red-stone castle. The stars were a glittery display in the smooth night sky, untouched as if nothing unusual had just happened. Jon thought about General La Porte, about the Crescent Shield, about all the havoc and terror of the last few days, and wondered again at how so much evil could be done in the name of good.

  Nearly a mile from the castle, they were just beginning to relax when they heard a volcanic roar. It shook the air around them, and the helicopter shuddered.

  They whipped around in their seats just in time to see the east tower of Château la Rouge disappear in a violent outburst of fire and stone. Smoke billowed. Red and gold flames shot up against the night sky. Debris shimmered as it flew through the air.

  “Good God, Jon,” Peter said. “I’m impressed. What happened?” He turned the helicopter around so it faced back at the castle. He hovered there so they could watch.

  “Yes. Well, I meant to mention that,” Jon said.

  “Mention what?” Randi asked instantly. “What’ve you been holding back?”

  Jon shrugged. “Ammunition. Crates of ammo stored at the back of the armory.”

  Peter’s voice rose. “You exploded a grenade in a room where there were ammo supplies? And you didn’t warn us?”

  “Hey, so you didn’t notice the crates,” Jon said huffily. “Do I have to point everything out to you? Besides, the ammo was pretty far away.”

  “Don’t feel bad, Peter,” Marty said helpfully. “I didn’t see the ammunition either.”

  Thérèse’s face had blanched white. “Neither did I, for which I’m now very grateful.”

  “The whole point of this long, dangerous exercise was to stop the threat of the DNA computer.” Randi was staring at Jon, fighting a smile at the guilty look on his handsome face. “You succeeded, Jon. You blew it up with the grenade.”

  “We succeeded,” Jon agreed, “despite everything.”

  Peter nodded gruffly. Then he smiled. “Are we ready to go home now?”

  For another minute, they continued to study the display as the fire spread through the great old castle in the distance. Then Peter banked the chopper in a long slow circle, preparing to resume their flight southeast toward Paris. Jon and Randi pulled out their cell phones to make full reports to their bosses. Thérèse leaned back in her seat and sighed wearily.

  “See those little bright specks in the sky?” Marty asked no one in particular, peering east. “They look like lightning bugs. Can anyone tell me what they really are?”

  Everyone stared as the points of light grew larger.

  “NATO helicopters,” Jon said at last. “I count twenty of them.”

  “They’re heading for the castle,” Randi decided.

  “Guess your message got through, Jon.” Marty described how Jon had given him a code to alert his superiors to the castle at Château la Rouge. “I sent it just before Jon destroyed the prototype.”

  Suddenly the dark night air seemed full of the aircraft—large, troop-carrying helicopters that dwarfed their little Bell scout. The newcomers were flying in a pack, passing to the north in perfect formation. Moonlight made them glow like otherworldly beasts, and their rotors looked like spinning silver swords.

  The accumulation of so many was breathtaking. The big choppers landed across the moonlit Norman farmland, still in formation. NATO soldiers jumped out, spread out, and moved at a fast trot toward the burning castle, where the flames licked higher and had spread into what appeared to be half the castle. There was a precision and decisiveness about the troops that was reassuring.

  “Pleasant to see NATO in action,” Jon said in vast understatement.

  Marty nodded and sighed. “Peter, we’ve seen enough. Take us back to Paris. I want to go home.”

  “Right you are,” Peter said, and they resumed the journey.

  Epilogue

  A Month Later Fort Collins, Colorado

  It was one of those sunny June days for which Colorado was famous. Blue skies, balmy air, and the aromatic scent of pine drifting on a light breeze. Jon walked into the utilitarian building that housed the secret CDC-USAMRIID laboratories where he and other scientists were laboring to create the world’s “first” DNA computer.

  He nodded and greeted the lab assistants, secretaries, and clerks by name, and they said hello back. This was the first time some had seen him since he left, and they stopped to say it was great that he was able to return. How was his grandmother?

  “Gave us all quite a scare,” he said over and over. “Almost died. She’s on the mend now.”

  When he had arrived two days ago at this rustic Colorado State University campus, all of the events in France, Spain, and Algeria were still fresh, although the stress was beginning to fade. Memory could be a blessing that way. Hold on to the good; let go of the bad. He had spent ten days with Fred Klein, going over everything in detail. Covert-One’s files were growing, and each new piece of information, name, location, and comprehension of those who would harm others on scales large and small was grist for future grinding. At the top of the list was the terrorist leader, the pseudonymous M. Mauritania, who had somehow escaped the devastation at the castle. He had disappeared, as vaporous as the billowing white robes he favored.

  From what Jon could figure out, a few others of the Crescent Shield must have managed to get out with him. There were not as many dead terrorists as Jon, Randi, and Peter had speculated in their various reports. The corpse of Abu Auda, however, had been found with several shots to the back. No one knew who had fired those bullets, of course, since no one alive—renegade Legionnaires or terrorists—was captured in the burning hulk of the castle.

  Even the French general who had been ultimately behind it all, Roland la Porte, was dead. He had taken a bullet to his head that blasted off half his skull. Somehow he’d had time to dress in his uniform, his chest full of medals and ribbons, before he shot himself. The pistol was in his hand, and his impeccably pressed tunic was blood-soaked.

  It was a sad ending in some ways, Jon reflected as he climbed the stairs to the meeting room. So much potential perverted. But that was what it was all about, why Covert-One existed. Fred Klein had sent a watered-down version of Jon’s report over to army intelligence, as a cover for his supposed employment there. That way, if General Carlos Henze or Randi Russell or even Thérèse Chambord went looking, they would find that he had been legitimately hired as a freelancer.

  No one liked to believe life was as fragile as it really was. So the various intelligence agencies had circled their media wagons, and the CIA, the Department of Defense, and the Oval Office had stuck to their stories about wizard hackers and brand-new viruses and the solid strength of the U.S. military and all its communications. With time, the ruckus would die completely. People moved on. Oth
er crises happened. Already it was off the front page and soon it would be firmly, irrevocably old news.

  Jon pushed his way into the conference room and took up a post in the back as his fellow researchers filed in. It was the weekly meeting for them to discuss new experimental avenues that looked promising in their quest for a molecular computer. They were a motley crew, jovial, highly intelligent, and pretty much uncontrollable. Talk about mavericks. The best scientists always had a rogue streak. Otherwise, they would not be intrigued by the unexplored. Someone was brewing coffee. The smell drifted into the room. A couple of the scientists ran out to grab cups.

  By the time everyone had settled in, there were some thirty men and women packed on folding metal chairs. After business was conducted, the team’s lead scientist turned the meeting over to Jon.

  He went to the front of the room. Behind him, windows looked out onto the green Colorado campus. “You’ve all probably been wondering where the hell I’ve been the last few weeks,” Jon began, his face serious. “Well…”

  From the left, Larry Schulenberg called out, “Were you gone, Jon? I had no idea.”

  Amid the general laughter, others took up the cry…“Never noticed.”…“Are you sure, Jon? I wasn’t just daydreaming?”…“Were you? Really?”

  “All right,” Jon said, laughing, too. “I guess I deserved that. Let me rephrase. In case anyone happened to notice, I’ve been away.” His expression turned serious again. “One of the things I’ve been doing is thinking about our work. I may have come up with some ideas. For instance, it occurred to me that we’ve been neglecting the possibility of using light-emitting molecules for our switches. With them, we could do more than have an on-off switch, we could have one with gradations, like a dimmer switch.”

  Larry Schulenberg said, “You’re talking about using molecules not only to compute, but also to detect the computations.”

  “That,” someone else said, excited, “would be a hell of a feat.”

  “You could then pick up the light by conventional means and translate it,” a third speculated. “Maybe the light energy could be absorbed in some kind of coated metal plate that could then emit energy.”

  Jon nodded as they continued to talk animatedly to one another.

  At last he interrupted, “Another problem we’ve been having is with reversing the flow of information as freely as a silicon-based computer can. Maybe one solution would be to use a second interface between our DNA molecules and the switch. You know, we’ve been limiting our ideas to solid-phase constructions—there’s no real reason we have to have the DNA attached to chips. Why not use solution chemistry? We’d have a lot more flexibility.”

  “He’s right!” someone shouted. “Why not go with biomolecular gels? Roslyn, didn’t you do your Ph.D. research on biopolymers? Could we adapt that new gel pack technology?”

  Dr. Roslyn James took over the discussion for a few minutes, drawing on the well-used white board and bringing the group up to speed on the latest advances in biogel research.

  The meeting quickly took on a life of its own. Some were already making notes. Others tossed out opinions and more ideas. One thing led to another, and soon the whole room was talking. Jon stayed with them, and they brainstormed through the morning. Maybe nothing would come of it. After all, there had to be more than one way to create a molecular machine, and Jon did not have enough of the details of Émile Chambord’s masterpiece to be able to give them the answers that would lead to easy reproduction. But what he was able to offer was a good jumping-off point.

  They broke for lunch. Some would continue the discussions during and after eating, while others would head straight for their labs, intent on their own lines of research.

  Jon strolled down the hall, intending to go to the cafeteria. Then it would be right back to the lab for him. He was eager to return to his work. He was thinking about polymers when his cell phone rang.

  Jon answered it.

  “Hello, Colonel. This is Fred Klein.” His voice was cheerful, a far different tone from just a few weeks ago.

  Jon chuckled to himself. “As if I wouldn’t recognize you.”

  Someone grabbed Jon’s arm. He flinched. And caught himself. If the interruption had been a car’s backfire, he knew he would have dived for cover. It was going to take a while to get used to the safety of ordinary life, but he was ready. His mind and body were almost healed, but still…he was weary.

  “Are you going to join us, Jon?” Larry Schulenberg asked, glancing at the cell phone in Jon’s hand.

  “Yeah. In a few minutes. Save me some meat loaf. Got a call to take first.”

  Schulenberg grinned, and the overhead light caught the diamond in his ear and reflected it with a flash of silver-blue that reminded Jon of Chambord’s gel packs.

  “Girlfriend?” Schulenberg inquired politely.

  “Not yet.” Jon promised, “You’ll be the first to know.”

  “Right.” Schulenberg laughed heartily and went into the elevator.

  “Hold on, Fred,” Jon said into the phone. “I’m going outside where we can talk.”

  The noontime sun was hot, the rays through the clear mountain air like lasers as he strolled out the door and down the steps. Being in the mountains reminded him of Peter. The last time they had talked, Peter was back in his lair in the Sierras, hiding out from Whitehall. They had some new project for him, and he was reluctant. Of course, he would not reveal to Jon what it was.

  Jon put on his sunglasses and said into the phone, “You have my full attention.”

  “Talked to Randi lately?” Fred asked conversationally.

  “Of course not. She’s off somewhere on assignment. But Marty e-mailed me this morning. He’s settled in and swears he’ll never leave home again.”

  “We’ve heard that before.”

  Jon smiled. “You’re checking up on me.”

  “Am I? Well, I suppose I am. You had a rough time over there.”

  “We all did. You, too. It’s tough to be the one behind the scenes, waiting, not knowing.” There was a loose thread that worried Jon: “What about Mauritania? Is there any information about him?”

  “As a matter of fact, he was my excuse to phone. You just didn’t let me get to him fast enough. I’ve got good news. He’s been sighted in Iraq. An MI6 asset reported a man who fits his description and then other eyewitnesses came forward who make it a sure fit. We’ll get Mauritania now.”

  Jon’s mind swept back through the events in his chase of Chambord and the molecular computer, to Mauritania’s cold-blooded willingness to trade others’ deaths for his dreams. “Good. Let me know when you find him. Meanwhile, I’m back in harness here. We’ve got a DNA computer to build.”

  Read on for an excerpt from the next exciting novel in the Covert-One series

  Robert Ludlum’s The Altman Code

  by Robert Ludlum and Gayle Lynds Now available From St. Martin’s Paperbacks!

  PROLOGUE

  Friday, September 1st

  Shanghai, China

  On the north bank of the Huangpu River, giant floodlights glared down on the docks, turning night into day. Swarms of stevedores unloaded trucks and positioned long steel containers for the cranes. Amid the squeals and rasps of metal rubbing metal, the towering cranes lifted the containers in swinging cargo nets high against the starry sky and lowered them into the holds of freighters from across the world.

  To the south, both east and west of the river, the lights of the city and the towering Pudong New District glowed, while out on the swirling brown water of the river itself, freighters, junks, tiny sampans, and long trains of unpainted wooden barges jostled for position from shore to shore, like traffic on a busy Parisian boulevard.

  At a wharf near the eastern end of the bustling area, not far from where the Huangpu curved sharply north, the light was far less bright. Here a single freighter was being loaded by one crane and no more than twenty stevedores. The name lettered on the freighter’s transom was The Dow
ager Empress; her home port was Hong Kong. There was no sign of the ubiquitous uniformed dock guards.

  Two large trucks had been backed up to her. Sweating stevedores unloaded steel barrels, rolled them across the wood planks, and set them upright on a cargo net. When the net was full, the crane arm swung over it, and the cable descended. On its end was a steel hook that caught the light and glinted. The stevedores latched the big net to the hook, and the crane swiftly lifted the barrels up, wheeled them around, and lowered them to the freighter, where deckhands guided the cargo down into her open hold.

  The truck drivers, stevedores, crane operator, and deckhands worked steadily on this distant dock, fast and silent, but not fast enough for the large man who stood to the right of the trucks. His sweeping gaze kept watch from land to river. Unusually pale-skinned for a Han Chinese, his hair was even more unusual—light red, shot with white.

  He looked at his watch. His voice was barely audible as he spoke to the foreman of the stevedores: “You will finish in thirty-six minutes.”

  It was no question. The foreman’s head jerked around as if he had been knifed. He stared only a moment and dropped his gaze.

  The man resumed his careful survey of this clandestine event, as if nothing could happen he would not see and be ready for.

  The foreman rushed away, bellowing at his men, the truck drivers, and the crane operator. The pace of work increased. As the foreman continued to drive them to greater speed, the man he feared remained a looming presence.

  At the same time, a slender Chinese, wearing Reeboks and a black Mao jacket over a pair of Western jeans, slid behind the heavy coils of a hawser in the murkiest recesses of the loading area.

  Motionless, almost invisible in the gloom, he studied the barrels a few moments as they were rolled to the cargo net and hoisted aboard The Dowager Empress. He pulled a small, highly sophisticated camera from inside his Mao jacket and photographed everything and everyone until the final barrel had been lowered into the hold and the only remaining truck was about to be driven away.