The president forced a dutiful smile. “Estelle isn’t exactly a warm and cuddly people person, Fred. Anyone who bucks her daily calendar gets the same treatment. It’s nothing personal.”
“I’m relieved,” Klein said drily. He looked narrowly at his old friend. “I assume from your pained expression that the NSC meeting did not go well?”
Castilla snorted. “That’s almost on par with asking Mrs. Lincoln how she liked the play.”
“That bad?”
The president nodded glumly. “That bad.” He motioned Klein toward one of the two chairs set in front of the big table that served him as a desk. “The senior people inside the CIA, FBI, NSA, and other agencies are too goddamned busy trying to dodge the blame for this TOCSIN fiasco. Nobody knows how far up the ladder the conspiracy reached, so nobody knows how far anybody else can be trusted. Everybody’s circling one another warily, waiting to see who gets it in the neck.”
Klein nodded quietly, not greatly surprised. Even at the best of times, debilitating turf wars were a fact of life within the American intelligence community. Their long-standing feuds and internecine conflicts were largely why Castilla had asked him to organize Covert-One in the first place. Now, with a major scandal embroiling the two biggest overseas and domestic intelligence agencies, tensions would be rising fast. In the circumstances, no one with a career to protect was going to risk sticking his or her neck out.
“Is Colonel Smith on his way to Paris?” Castilla asked at last, breaking the silence.
“He is,” Klein said. “I expect him there by late tonight, our time.”
“And you honestly believe Smith has a chance to find out what we’re really facing here?”
“A chance?” Klein repeated. He hesitated. “I think so.” He frowned. “At least, I hope so.”
“But he is your best?” Castilla asked sharply.
This time Klein did not hesitate. “For this mission? Yes, absolutely. Jon Smith is the right man for the job.”
The president shook his head in exasperation. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?”
“Ridiculous?”
“Here I sit,” Castilla explained, “the commander in chief of the most powerful armed forces in the history of mankind. The people of the United States expect me to use that power to keep them safe. But I can’t. Not this time. Not yet at least.” His broad shoulders slumped. “All the bombers, missiles, tanks, and riflemen in the world don’t matter worth a damn unless I can give them a target. And that’s the one thing I cannot give them.”
Klein stared back at his friend. He had truly never envied the president any of the various perks and privileges of his position. Now he felt only pity for the tired, sad-eyed man in front of him. “Covert-One will do its duty,” he promised. “We’ll find you that target.”
“I hope to God you’re right,” Castilla said quietly. “Because we’re running out of time and options fast.”
Chapter
Thirty-Seven
Monday, October 18
Paris
Jon Smith looked out the windows of the taxi, a black Mercedes, speeding south from Charles de Gaulle International Airport toward the sleeping city. Dawn was still several hours away, and only the hazy glow of lights on both sides of the multi-lane A1 Motorway marked the suburban sprawl around the French capital. The highway itself was almost deserted—allowing the cabdriver, a short, sour-faced Parisian with bloodshot eyes, to push the Mercedes up to the legal limit and then well beyond.
Moving at more than 120 kilometers per hour, they flashed past several darkened neighborhoods where flames danced skyward, licking red and orange against the black night. Dilapidated apartment blocks were on fire there, casting a flickering glow across the neighboring buildings. Near those areas, rolls of barbed wire and hurriedly deployed concrete barriers blocked all entrance and exit ramps off the motorway. Each checkpoint was manned by heavy concentrations of police and soldiers in full combat gear. Armored cars fitted with tear-gas grenade launchers and machine guns, tracked personnel carriers, and even fifty-ton Leclerc main battle tanks were parked at strategic points along the route.
“Les Arabes!” The taxi driver sniffed contemptuously, stubbing his cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray. He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “They are rioting against what happened in La Courneuve. Burning down their own homes and shops—as usual. Bah!”
He paused to light another unfiltered cigarette with both hands, using his knees to steer the heavy German-made sedan. “They are idiots. Nobody much cares what happens inside those rats’ nests. But let them put one foot outside and ppffft.” He drew a line across his throat. “Then the machine guns will begin talking, eh?”
Smith nodded silently. It was no real secret that the overcrowded and crime-ridden housing projects outside Paris had been carefully designed so that they could be swiftly and easily sealed off in the event of serious unrest.
The Mercedes turned off the A1 and onto the boulevard Périphérique, swinging south and east around the crowded city’s maze of alleys, streets, avenues, and boulevards. Still grumbling about the stupidity of a government that taxed him to pay welfare to thugs, thieves, and “les Arabes,” the taxi driver abandoned this ring road at the Porte de Vincennes. The cab plunged west, circled the Place de la Nation, roared along the rue du Fauborg–St. Antoine, screeched around the Place de la Bastille, and then threaded its way deeper into the narrow one-way streets of the Marais District, in the city’s Third Arrondissement.
Once a swamp, this part of Paris was one of the few untouched by the grandiose nineteenth-century demolition and reconstruction projects carried out by Baron Hausmann at the orders of the emperor Napoléon III. Many of its buildings dated back to the Middle Ages. Seedy and run-down in the mid–twentieth century, the Marais had experienced a rebirth. It was now one of the city’s most popular residential, tourist, and shopping areas. Elegant stone mansions, museums, and libraries sat beside trendy bars, antique shops, and fashion-conscious clothing salons.
With a final flourish of his tobacco-stained hands, the driver pulled up outside the front door of the Hôtel des Chevaliers—a small boutique hotel scarcely a block from the ancient tree-lined elegance of the Place des Vosges. “We arrive, m’sieur! And in record time!” he announced. He grinned sourly. “Perhaps we should thank the rioters, eh? Because I think the flics,” he used the French slang word for policemen, “are too busy cracking their heads to hand out traffic tickets to honest men like me!”
“Maybe so,” Smith agreed, secretly relieved to arrive in one piece. He shoved a handful of euros at the cabdriver, grabbed his small carry-on bag and the travel kit he had picked up before boarding his flight at Dulles, and scrambled out onto the pavement. The Mercedes roared away into the night almost the second he closed the passenger door.
Smith stood quietly for a moment, savoring the restored silence and stillness of the damp street. It had rained here not long ago, and the cool night air carried a clean, crisp scent that was refreshing. He stretched limbs that had grown stiff in a cramped airline seat, then breathed deeply a few times to clear the lingering secondhand traces of the cabdriver’s harsh tobacco out of his lungs. Feeling better and more awake, he slung his luggage over his shoulder and turned to the hotel. There was a light on over the door, and the night clerk—alerted by an earlier phone call from the airport to expect him—buzzed him in without trouble.
“Welcome to Paris, Dr. Smith,” the clerk said smoothly, in clear, fluent English. “You will be staying with us long?”
“A few days, perhaps,” Jon said carefully. “Can you accommodate me that long?”
The night clerk, a neatly attired middle-aged man alert despite the early hour, sighed. “In good times, no.” He shrugged his shoulders expressively. “But, alas, this unpleasantness at La Courneuve has caused many cancellations and early departures. So it will be no problem.”
Smith signed the register, automatically checking the names above his for anything suspicio
us. He saw nothing there to worry him. There were only a few other guests, almost all of them from other European countries or from France itself. Most, like him, seemed to be traveling alone. They were either here on urgent business or else scholars delving into the various nearby historical archives and museums, he judged. Couples bent on romance would have been among the first to abandon Paris in the wake of the nanophage attack and the ensuing riots.
The clerk brought out a small square cardboard box and laid it on top of the desk. “Also, this package came by courier for you an hour ago.” He glanced down at the note on top. “It is from the MacLean Medical Group in Toronto, Canada. You were expecting it, I think?”
Smith nodded, smiling inwardly. Trust Fred Klein to be on the ball, he thought gratefully. MacLean was one of the many shell companies Covert-One used for clandestine shipments to its agents around the world.
Upstairs in the privacy of his small but elegantly furnished room, he broke open the seals on the box and ripped through the packing tape. Inside he found a hard plastic case containing a brand-new 9mm SIG-Sauer pistol, a box of ammunition, and three spare magazines. A leather shoulder holster came wrapped separately.
Smith sat down on the comfortable double bed, stripped the pistol down to its constituent parts, carefully cleaned each component, and then put them back together. Satisfied, he snapped in a loaded magazine and slid the SIG-Sauer into the shoulder holster. He went to the window, which looked out onto the tiny courtyard behind the hotel. Above the dark slate rooftops of the ancient buildings on the other side, the eastern sky was touched by the first faint hint of gray. Lights were beginning to flick on behind some of the other windows facing the little cobblestone enclosure. The city was waking up.
He punched in Klein’s number on his cell phone and reported his safe arrival in Paris. “Any new developments?” he asked.
“Nothing here,” the head of Covert-One told him. “But it appears that the CIA team in Paris has traced one of the vehicles it spotted in La Courneuve to an address not far from where you are now.”
Smith heard the uncertainty in Klein’s voice. “It appears?” he said, surprised.
“They’re being very coy,” the other man explained. “The team’s most recent signal to Langley claimed preliminary success but omitted any specific location.”
Smith frowned. “That’s odd.”
“Yes,” Klein said flatly. “It is very odd. And I don’t have a satisfactory explanation for the omission.”
“Isn’t Langley pressing the Paris Station for specifics?”
Klein snorted. “The head of the CIA and his top people are far too busy running emergency audits of the whole Operations Directorate to pay much attention to their officers in the field.”
“So what makes you think this surveillance team is zeroing in on a building in or around the Marais?” Jon asked.
“Because they’ve set their primary RV in the Place des Vosges,” Klein said.
Smith nodded to himself, understanding the other man’s reasoning. The RV—or rendezvous point—for a covert surveillance team operating inside a city was almost always set up within easy walking distance of its intended target. It was usually a fairly public place, one busy enough to camouflage discreet meetings between agents as they exchanged information or relayed new orders. The Place des Vosges, built in 1605, was the oldest square in Paris and was perfect for this purpose. The bustling restaurants, cafés, and shops lining its four sides would provide ideal cover.
“Makes sense,” he agreed. “But knowing that doesn’t do me much good, does it? They could be snooping around any one of several hundred buildings in this neighborhood.”
“It’s a problem,” Klein agreed. “Which is why you’re going to have to make direct contact with the CIA team.”
Smith raised an eyebrow in amazement. “Oh? And just how do you suggest I go about doing that?” he asked. “Parade up and down the Place des Vosges waving a big sign asking for a meeting?”
“Something rather like that, actually,” Klein said drily.
With growing surprise and amusement, Smith listened to the other man explain what he meant. When they were through, Smith disconnected and entered another number.
“Delights of Paris, LLC,” a rich, resonant English voice answered. “No service too small. No bed left unmade. No reasonable request refused.”
“You thinking of a career move, Peter?” Smith asked, grinning.
Peter Howell chuckled. “Not at all. Merely a possible sideline to supplement my meager retirement pay.” He turned serious. “I assume you have news?”
“I do,” Smith confirmed. “Where are you?”
“A charming little pension on the Left Bank,” Peter replied. “Not far from the boulevard Saint-Germain. I arrived here all of five minutes ago, so your timing is impeccable.”
“How are you fixed for equipment?”
“No problems,” the Englishman assured him. “I paid a little call on an old chum on my way in from the airport.”
Smith nodded to himself. Peter Howell seemed to have reliable contacts across most of Europe—old friends and comrades-in-arms who would provide him with weapons, other gear, and assistance without asking awkward questions.
“So, where and when do we meet?” Peter asked quietly. “And with what purpose precisely?”
Smith filled him in—passing along the information relayed by Klein, though he described it as coming to him only from a “friend” with good contacts inside the CIA. By the time he was finished, he could hear the undisguised astonishment in the other man’s voice.
“It’s a funny old world, Jon, isn’t it?” Peter said at last. “And a damned small one, too.”
“It sure is,” Smith agreed, smiling. Then his smile faded as he thought of the terrors that might lie in store for this small, interconnected world if he and the Englishman were only chasing yet another dead end. Somewhere out there, those who had designed the nanophages were surely busy brewing up an even deadlier batch of their new weapons. Unless they could be found and stopped—and soon—a great many more innocent people were going to die, eaten alive by new waves of murderous machines too small to be seen.
Chapter
Thirty-Eight
Paris
An autumn breeze ruffled through the leaves of the chestnut trees planted around the neatly landscaped edges of the Place des Vosges. As the wind freshened, small gusts whipped through the spray of one of the burbling fountains. A fine mist of water droplets swirled sideways—staining the broad pavements and glistening like early morning dew on the lush green grass.
Impishly the breeze danced and curled around the weathered gray and pale rose stone facades of the covered galleries, the arcades, lining the square. In the northwest corner of the Place, cloth napkins pinned down by water goblets fluttered on the highly polished wicker tables of the Brasserie Ma Bourgogne.
Jon Smith sat alone at a table on the edge of the arcade, lounging comfortably in one of the restaurant’s red leather-backed chairs. He looked out over the fenced-in square, paying careful attention to the many people strolling casually along its sidewalks or occupying park benches, idly tossing bread crumbs to the murmuring pigeons.
“Un café noir, m’sieur,” a glum voice said nearby.
Smith looked up.
One of the waiters, a serious, unsmiling, older man wearing the bow tie and black apron that was a hallmark of Ma Bourgogne, slid a single cup of black coffee onto the table.
Smith nodded politely. “Merci.” He slid a few euros across the table.
Grumbling under his breath, the waiter pocketed the money, turned away, and stalked toward another table, this one occupied by two local businessmen making a deal over what looked like an early lunch. Smith could smell the fragrant odor of the plates piled high with saucisson de Beaujolais and pommes frites. His mouth watered. It had been a long time since breakfast at the Hôtel des Chevaliers, and the two cups of strong coffee he had already consumed while wai
ting here were eating away at his stomach lining.
For a moment he debated calling the waiter back, but then he decided against it. According to Klein, this was the CIA surveillance team’s primary rendezvous point. With a bit of luck, he might not have to sit here idle much longer.
Smith went back to watching the people moving through the square and among the surrounding buildings. Even at mid-morning, the Place des Vosges was reasonably crowded, full of students and teachers on break from the nearby schools, young mothers pushing infants in strollers, and squealing tots happily digging in the sandbox set in the shadow of an equestrian statue of Louis XIII. Old men arguing about everything from politics, to sports, to the odds of winning the next national lottery stood around in small groups, slicing the air with wide, vigorous gestures as they made their points.
Before the French Revolution, when it was still called the Place Royal, this beautiful little patch of open ground had been the site of innumerable duels. On every square inch where ordinary Parisians now enjoyed the autumn sun and let their pampered dogs run free, cavaliers and young aristocrats had fought and died—hacking at each other with swords or exchanging pistol shots at close range, all to prove their courage or to defend their honor. Though it was fashionable now to deride these duels as the hallmarks of a savage and bloodthirsty age, Smith wondered whether or not that was especially fair. After all, how might future historians characterize this so-called modern era—a time when some men were determined to slaughter innocents whenever and wherever they could?
A plain, plump, dark-haired young woman in a knee-length black coat and blue jeans passed close by his table. She noticed him watching her and flushed red. She walked hurriedly on with her head down. Jon followed her with his eyes, debating with himself. Was she the contact he had been waiting for?
“This seat? It is taken, m’sieur?” rasped a gravelly voice made hoarse by decades of smoking three or four packs of cigarettes a day.