The Sigma Protocol

  Faces all around. At the corner of the rue des Orteaux, a blond woman, in denim and fake fur. At first glance, she looked like a hooker, or a junkie, but there was something about her that struck Ben as off. Again, it was a face he’d seen before. But where?

  Suddenly he flashed back to the Bahnhofstrasse. An expensively dressed blonde, holding shopping bags from an upscale boutique. The flirtatious exchange of glances.

  It was the same woman. A sentry for the Corporation? Across the street from her, a male adolescent in a ripped T-shirt and jeans: he, too, looked familiar, although Ben couldn’t place him. My God! Another one?

  At the opposite end of the street stood a man with ruddy, weathered cheeks and wheat-field eyebrows.

  Another familiar face.

  Three Corporation killers placed strategically around them? Professionals intent on making sure they’d never escape?

  “We’re boxed in,” he said to Anna. “At least one of them’s on either end of the street.” They froze in place, unsure how or where to move next.

  Anna’s eyes searched the street, then she replied. “Listen, Ben. You said Chardin had chosen this district, this block, for good reason. We don’t know what contingency plans he had, what escape routes he’d mapped out in advance, but we know that he must have had something in mind. He was too smart not to have arranged for path redundancy.”

  “Path redundancy?”

  “Follow me.”

  She ran straight toward the very apartment building where the assassin had taken up his seventh-floor perch. Ben saw where she was headed. “That’s insane!” he protested, but he followed nonetheless.

  “No,” Anna replied. “The base of the building is one place he can’t reach.” The alleyway was dark and fetid, the scampering of rats evidence of the quantities of refuse that had been allowed to accumulate there. A locked metal gate blocked off its egress to the rue des Halles.

  “Should we climb?” Ben looked doubtfully at the top of the gate whose sharp-pointed spearlike rods loomed twelve feet above them.

  “You can,” Anna said, and unholstered a Glock. Three carefully aimed blasts, and the chain that locked the gate swung free. “The guy was using a.50 caliber rifle. There was a flood of them after Desert Storm. They were a hot commodity, because with the right ammunition they could put a hole right through an Iraqi tank. If you’ve got one of those monsters, a city like this might as well be made out of cardboard.”

  “Shit. So what do we do?” Ben asked.

  “Don’t get hit,” Anna replied tersely, and she began running, Ben close behind.

  Sixty seconds later they found themselves on the rue de Bagnolet in front of La Flèche d’Or restaurant. Suddenly Ben darted across the street. “Stay with me.”

  A heavy-set man was just getting off a Vespa, one of those small motorized vélocipedes that had achieved nuisance status among French drivers.

  “Monsieur,” Ben said. “J’ai besoin de votre vélo. Pardonnez-moi, s’il vous plaît.”

  The bear-like man gave him an incredulous look.

  Ben pointed his gun at him and grabbed the keys. The owner stepped backward, cowering, as Ben leaped onto the small vehicle and revved the motor. “Get on,” Ben called out to Anna.

  “You’re crazy,” she protested. “We’d be vulnerable to anyone in an automobile, once we get on the Périphérique. These things don’t go any faster than fifty miles an hour. It’s going to be a turkey shoot!”

  “We’re not going on the Périphérique,” Ben said. “Or any other road. Climb on!”

  Bewildered, Anna complied, taking the seat behind Ben on the motorbike.

  Ben drove the Vespa around La Flèche d’Or and then, joltingly, down a concrete embankment that led to old railroad tracks. The restaurant, Anna could now see, was actually built directly over the tracks.

  Now Ben steered onto the rusted tracks. They drove through a tunnel, then back into an open stretch. The Vespa kicked up dust, but the passage of time had flattened the tracks here into the earth, and the ride became smooth and swifter.

  “So what happens when we meet a train?” Anna shouted, grasping onto him tightly as they rolled over the tracks.

  “There hasn’t been a train on these tracks for over half a century.”

  “Aren’t we full of surprises.”

  “The product of a misspent youth,” Ben shouted back. “I once messed around here as a teenager. We’re on a ghost railroad line known as the Petite Ceinture, the little belt. It runs all the way around the city. Phantom tracks. La Flèche d’Or is actually an old railroad station, built in the nineteenth century. Connected twenty stations in a loop around Paris—Neuilly, Porte Maillot, Clichy, Villette, Charonne, plenty more. The automobile killed it off, but nobody ever reclaimed the belt. Now it’s mostly a long stretch of nothing. I was thinking some more about why Chardin decided on this particular neighborhood, and then I remembered the phantom line. A useful piece of the past.”

  They passed through another spacious tunnel, then back into the open air.

  “Where are we now?” Anna asked.

  “Hard to gauge, since you can’t see any of the landmarks from here,” Ben said. “But probably Ford d’Obervillier. Maybe Simplon. Way the hell away. Central Paris isn’t very big, of course. The whole thing is about forty square miles. If we can make our way into the métro and join a few hundred thousand Parisians there, we can begin to make our way to our next appointment.”

  The Flann O’Brien—the bar’s name was displayed in coiled neon as well as painted in curlicued script in the window—was in the first arrondissement, on the rue Bailleul, near the Louvre-Rivoli stop. It was a dark, beery establishment, with lots of deeply grooved old wood and a dark wood floor that had soaked up sloshes of Guinness for years.

  “We’re meeting him at an Irish bar?” Anna asked. Her head swiveled around by something like reflex, as she scanned their surroundings, alert to any sign of threat.

  “Oscar has a sense of humor, what can I say?”

  “And remind me why you’re so sure he can be trusted?”

  Ben turned serious. “We’ve got to deal with probabilities, not possibilities, we’re agreed on that. And so far he’s been on the level. What makes Sigma a menace is the fact that it commands the loyalty of true believers. Oscar’s too damn greedy to be a believer. Our checks have always cleared. I think that counts with Oscar.”

  “The honor of the cynic.”

  Ben shrugged. “I’ve got to go with my gut. I like Oscar, always have. I think he likes me.”

  The din in the Flann O’Brien, even at this hour, was overwhelming, and it took their eyes a while to adjust to the dim lighting.

  Oscar was tucked away at a banquette toward the back, a diminutive gray-haired man behind an enormous tankard of viscous stout. Beside the tankard was a neatly folded newspaper, with a half-completed crossword puzzle. He had an amused expression on his face, as if he were about to wink—Anna soon realized that this was simply his habitual expression—and he greeted the two with a simple wave of the hand.

  “I’ve been waiting for forty minutes,” he said. He grabbed Ben’s hand in an affectionate, wrestling clasp. “Forty billable minutes.” He seemed to be savoring the world as it rolled off his tongue.

  “A bit of a holdup at our previous engagement,” Ben said tersely.

  “I can imagine.” Oscar nodded at Anna. “Madame,” he said. “Please, sit.”

  Ben and Anna slid onto the banquette on either side of the small Frenchman.

  “Madame,” he said, turning his full attention to her. “You are even more beautiful than your photograph.”

  “Sorry?” Anna replied, puzzled.

  “A set of photographs of you was recently wired to my colleagues in la Sûreté. Digital image files. I got a set of them myself. Came in handy.”

  “For his work,” Ben explained.

  “My artisans,” Oscar said. “So very good and so very expensive.” He tapped Ben on his forearm.
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  “I’d expect nothing less.”

  “Of course, Ben, I can’t say your photograph does justice to you either. Those paparazzi, they never find the flattering angle, do they?”

  Ben’s smile faded. “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m very proud of myself for doing the Herald Tribune crossword puzzle. Not every Frenchman could do it, you’ll grant. I’ve almost finished this one. All I need now is a fifteen-letter word for an internationally wanted fugitive from justice.”

  He turned the newspaper over.

  “‘Benjamin Hartman’—would that do it?”

  Ben looked at the front page of the Tribune and felt as if he had been plunged headfirst into ice water. SERIAL KILLER SOUGHT was the headline. Beside it was a low-resolution photograph of him, apparently taken from a surveillance camera. His face was shadowed, the image grainy, but it was unmistakably him.

  “Who knew my friend was such a celebrity?” Oscar said, and turned the paper over again. He laughed loudly, and Ben belatedly joined him, realizing it was the only way one escaped notice in a bar filled with drink-fueled merriment.

  From the next banquette over, he overheard a Frenchman trying to sing “Danny Boy,” with uncertain pitch and an only rough approximation of the vowels. Oh, Danny Boy, ze peeps ze peeps are caaalling.

  “This is a problem,” Ben said, his urgent tone belying the soapy grin on his face. His eyes darted back to the newspapers. “This is an Eiffel Tower–sized problem.”

  “You kill me,” Oscar said, slapping Ben on the back as if he had uttered a hilarious joke. “The only people who say there’s no such thing as bad publicity,” he said, “have never gotten bad publicity.” Then he tugged a package from beneath the cushion of his seat. “Take this,” he said.

  It was a white plastic bag with gaudy lettering, from a tourist gift shop somewhere. I love Paris in the Springtime, it said, with a heart standing in for the word “love.” It had the kind of stiff plastic handles that snapped shut when pressed together.

  “For us?” Anna asked doubtfully.

  “No tourist should be without,” Oscar said. His eyes were playful; they were also intensely serious.

  ’Teez I’ll be here in sunshine or in shaadow.

  Oh, Danny boy, I love you sooo.

  The drunken Frenchman at the next banquette was now joined, in various keys, by his three companions.

  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 connect
ed 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.