The Sigma Protocol

  “But you know that should never have happened!” Lenz protested. “It was the work of overzealous security people who exceeded their authority.”

  “Enough!” Max bellowed. “No more! Enough of your goddamned lies!”

  “But the project, Max. My God, man, I don’t think you understand—”

  “No, you don’t understand. You think I care about your dreams of playing God? You think I ever did?”

  “I invited you here as a favor to you, to make amends. What are you trying to tell me?” Lenz’s voice was controlled, but only barely.

  “Amends? But this is only a continuation of the horror. For you, everything and everyone were sacrificed to your dream of living forever.” A labored breath. “You’re about to take my only remaining child from me! After everything else you’ve taken from me.”

  “Then your overtures were merely a ploy. Yes, I’m beginning to see. When you joined us it was always with the intention of betraying us.”

  “It was the only way I could gain entrance to a walled city. The only way I could hope to monitor from within.”

  Lenz spoke as if to himself. “My mistake is always to imagine that others are as philanthropic as I am—as concerned with the greater good. How you disappoint me. And after all we’ve been through together, Max.”

  “Ach! You pretend to be interested in human progress,” Max shouted. “And you call me a foolish old man! You talk of others as subhuman, but you are yourself not human.”

  Lenz briefly turned his gaze toward Max, seated in the dim corner, and at the same instant that Ben coiled to spring forward, he heard the hollow pop, the retort of a small-caliber pistol, and Lenz looked more surprised than stricken as a small but widening red circle appeared on the breast pocket of his white lab coat near his right shoulder. Aiming in Max’s general direction, Lenz squeezed the trigger three times, returning fire wildly.

  Then a second blotch of red appeared on Lenz’s chest. His right arm dangled uselessly at his side as his pistol clanked to the floor.

  Anna lowered the Uzi slightly, watched him.

  Suddenly Lenz lunged at Anna, knocking her to the floor, the Uzi clattering.

  His hand was at her throat, squeezing her larynx in an iron clutch. She tried to rear up, but he slammed her head back against the floor with an audible crack.

  Again he slammed her head against the stone, and then Ben, enraged, leaped on top of Lenz, gripping the plastic cylinder she’d handed him earlier. Ben roared with exertion and fury as he swung his right hand up and jabbed the hypodermic needle directly into Lenz’s neck.

  Lenz howled in pain. Ben had hit the internal jugular vein, he could tell, or had at least come very close to it, and he depressed the plunger.

  Lenz’s expression of horror seemed frozen on his face. His hands flew to his neck, found the syringe, yanked it out, and he saw the label. “Verdammt nochmal! Scheiss Jesus Christus!”

  A bubble of saliva formed at his mouth. Suddenly he fell backward like an upended statue. His mouth opened and shut as if he were trying to scream, but instead he only gasped for air.

  Then he went rigid.

  Lenz’s eyes stared in fury, but the pupils were fixed and dilated.

  “I think he’s dead,” Ben gasped, short of breath.

  “I know he’s dead,” Anna said. “That’s the most potent opioid there is. They keep some pretty powerful stuff in their locked medicine cabinets. Now let’s get out of here!” She glanced at Max Hartman. “All of us.”

  “Go,” Ben’s father whispered from his chair. “Leave me here, but you two must go now, the guards—”

  “No,” Ben said. “You’re coming with us.”

  “Dammit,” Anna said to Ben. “I heard the helicopter taking off, so that’s out. How did you get in, anyway?”

  “A cave—under the property—opens into the basement. But they’ve found it.”

  “Lenz was right, we’re done for, there’s no way out—”

  “But there is a way,” Max said, his voice faint.

  Ben ran over to him, stricken by what he saw.

  Max, dressed in a pale blue hospital johnny, was feebly holding his hands to the base of his throat, where, as Ben now realized, a bullet had lodged. Blood was spreading insistently beneath his trembling fingers. The thin cotton garment was stenciled with the black numeral eighteen.

  “No!” Ben shouted.

  The man had taken a bullet in order to kill Lenz—and protect his only surviving son.

  “Lenz’s private helicopter,” Max whispered. “You reach the bay through the back passage on the far left…” He murmured instructions for a few moments longer. Finally he said, “Tell me you understand.” Max’s eyes were imploring. In a voice barely audible he repeated the words: “Tell me you understand.”

  “Yes,” Ben said, hardly able to speak himself. Tell me you understand—his father meant the instructions to the bay, of course, but Ben couldn’t help thinking that he meant something more, too. Tell me you understand: tell me you understand the difficult decisions I made in life, however mistaken.

  Tell me you understand them. Tell me you understand who I really am.

  As if in resignation, Max pulled his hands from his throat, and blood began to spurt, with the slow, regular pulse of his heartbeat.

  Tell me you understand.

  Yes, Ben had told him, and just then, at least, he did. I understand.

  Within a few moments, his father slumped backward, lifeless.

  Lifeless, and yet the picture of health. Blinking away tears, Ben could see that his father looked decades younger, his hair beginning to grow in glossy and dark, his skin smooth, firm, toned.

  In death, Max Hartman had never looked more alive.

  Chapter Forty-eight

  Ben and Anna raced down the corridor, gunfire audible all around. The bandolier swung against the barrel of her Uzi as she ran, producing a dull rattle. At any moment, they could be set upon, but the guards realized they were heavily armed, would have to approach with caution. Anna knew that no paid sentry, however loyal, would endanger his life needlessly.

  Max’s directions had been clear and accurate.

  Another right turn brought them to a stairwell.

  Ben opened the steel-plated door, and Anna directed a burst of gunfire into the landing area: anyone present would instinctively dive for cover. As they entered, there was a deafening return burst: a guard located on the level below, shooting in the narrow space between the stairs. It was not an angle that afforded any accuracy; the biggest danger was being hit by a ricochet.

  “Run upstairs,” Anna whispered to Ben.

  “But Max said the bay level is downstairs,” Ben protested in a low voice.

  “Do what I say. Start running upstairs. Loudly.”

  He immediately understood, and did so, making sure that his shoes thundered against the stairs as he mounted them.

  Anna flattened herself against the wall, just out of the sight line from the lower landing. Within a few moments, she detected the guard’s movements: hearing Ben’s ascent, he was scrambling to catch up with his quarry.

  The seconds became hours. Anna could picture the guard bounding up to the lower landing: she’d have to work with a mental image, assembled from sounds of the man’s movements. Once she was visible to the guard, she would have no advantage over him other than swiftness. She would keep out of sight until the last possible moment; and then her reflexes would have to be instantaneous.

  Now she leaped into the air and fired where she pictured the guard in her mind, squeezing the trigger even as she was at last able to confirm his position visually.

  The guard had a submachine gun aimed directly at her. Victory or defeat would be measured in milliseconds. Had she waited until she could see him before firing, the advantage would have been his.

  Instead, she watched as his tunic erupted into blood and his weapon fired harmlessly above her, then fell noisily down the stairs.

  “Anna?” Ben
called out.

  “Now!” she replied, and he sprinted down the two flights of stairs, joining her at the bay level, at a gate-latch door, also of gray-painted steel, which pushed out.

  As they entered Bay Number 7, they felt a gust of cold, and there it was—the helicopter glinting in the waning light, a great gleaming metallic creature. It was a large, sleek, black Agusta 109, brand new. Italianmade, with wheels instead of skids.

  “Can you really fly this thing?” Anna asked, after they’d both clambered into it.

  Ben, seated in the cockpit, grunted assent. In truth he had flown a helicopter only once before, a training vehicle, with a licensed pilot at the twin set of controls. He had flown planes many times, but this was entirely different, counterintuitive. He scanned the dim cockpit for the controls.

  For an instant, the complexities of the instrument panel dissolved into a blur. The image of his father’s crumpled body seemed to hover before his eyes. He flashed on a Max Hartman just young enough that he could glimpse how he once must have looked. He could glimpse the youthful financier who found the country around him erupting into a lethal blaze of hatred. Who raced around, entering into loathsome accommodations with a loathsome regime in order to save as many families as he could. A man accustomed to mastery turned into a pawn.

  He could glimpse the man—an émigré, a harrowed man, a man with secrets—whom his mother met and fell in love with. Max Hartman, his father.

  Ben shook his head hard. He had to focus.

  He had to focus or they would both be dead. And everything would be for nothing.

  The bay was open to the elements. Outside the gunfire seemed to be coming closer.

  “Anna, I want you ready with the Uzi in case any of the guards try to shoot us down,” Ben said.

  “They won’t shoot,” Anna said, a wish expressed as a declaration. “They know it’s Lenz’s helicopter.”

  A voice from the back, cultivated and precise: “Quite so. Did you suppose that Lenz had no passengers waiting for him, Ms. Navarro?”

  They weren’t alone.

  “A friend of yours?” Ben asked Anna quietly.

  They both turned around and saw the passenger crouched in the rear compartment, a white-haired but vigorous-looking man wearing large glasses with translucent flesh-toned frames. He was immaculately attired in a King Edward–style Glenn Urquhart suit, a crisp white shirt, and a tightly knotted olive silk tie.

  In his hands was a short-barreled automatic weapon, the one inelegant touch.

  “Alan Bartlett,” Anna breathed.

  “Toss me the gun, Ms. Navarro. My gun is trained on you, and yours is hardly in position. I’d very much regret having to squeeze the trigger, you know. The discharge would surely blow out the windshield and possibly damage the fuselage as well. Which would be unfortunate, since we’ll be needing this vehicle as a means of conveyance.”

  Slowly, Anna let the Uzi slide to the floor, and pushed it toward Bartlett. He did not lean over to retrieve it, but seemed satisfied that it was out of her reach.

  “Thank you, Ms. Navarro,” said Bartlett. “My debt of gratitude toward you only grows. I don’t know that I adequately expressed my thanks for your having located Gaston Rossignol for us, and so swiftly. The wily old bird really was poised to cause us a great deal of trouble.”

  “You bastard,” Anna said in a low voice. “You evil, manipulative son of a bitch.”

  “Forgive me, I realize this is hardly the time or place for a fitness report, Ms. Navarro. But I must say, it’s terribly unfortunate that, having given us such excellent service, you’ve started to undo all the good you’ve achieved. Now, where is Dr. Lenz?”

  Ben answered for her: “Dead.”

  Bartlett was silent for a moment. There was a flicker in his gray, expressionless eyes. “Dead?” His grip tightened on his automatic rifle as he digested the information. “You idiots!” His voice flared abruptly. “You destructive idiots! Vicious children seeking to ruin something whose beauty you could never comprehend. What gave you the right to do that? What made you think this was your decision to make?” He fell silent again, and was visibly shaking with anger when he resumed. “Damn you both to hell!”

  “After you, Bartlett,” Ben snapped.

  “You’re Benjamin Hartman, of course—I’m sorry we meet under these circumstances. But then I have only myself to blame. I should have ordered you killed at the same time as your brother: that shouldn’t have taxed our capabilities. I must have grown sentimental in my old age. Well, my young lovers, I’m afraid the two of you have left me with some difficult decisions to make.”

  Faintly reflected in the windshield of the cockpit was the wide barrel of Bartlett’s assault weapon. Ben kept his eyes on it.

  “First things first,” Bartlett went on, after a pause. “I’m going to have to rely upon your piloting skills. There’s a landing strip outside Vienna. I’ll direct you to it.”

  Ben glanced again at Bartlett’s automatic weapon and toggled up the battery switch.

  There was the clicking sound of the spark plugs firing, then the whine of the starter motor, which gradually deepened. It was fully automatic, Ben realized, which would make it much easier to fly.

  In ten seconds there was ignition, and the engine thundered to life. The rotors began turning.

  “Belt yourself in tight,” Ben murmured to Anna. He pulled up on the collective’s twist grip with his left hand, heard the sound of the rotors slowing.

  Then some kind of horn sounded, and the engine slowed.

  “Damn,” he said.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” Bartlett asked. “Because if you don’t, you’re of no use to me at all. I needn’t spell out what that means.”

  “Just a little rusty,” Ben replied. He grabbed the throttles, the two sticks that came down from the top of the windshield, and pushed both of them forward.

  Now the engine and both the tail and the main rotors roared again. The helicopter lurched forward, then yawed left and right.

  Ben abruptly yanked back on the throttle: the helicopter came to an abrupt jarring halt. Both he and Anna pitched forward against the restraint belts; Bartlett, as Ben had hoped, was hurtled against the metal grid that backed the cockpit.

  Even as he heard the clatter of the assault rifle smashing into the partition, Ben unbelted himself and sprang into action.

  Bartlett, he could see, had been temporarily stunned by the impact; a rivulet of blood descended from his left nostril. Now, with the suddenness of a leopard, Ben hurled himself around his seat and pounced on Bartlett with both hands, slamming the man’s shoulders to the grip-textured steel flooring. Bartlett put up no resistance.

  Had the impact of the partition knocked him unconscious? Was he already dead?

  It was too risky to make any assumptions.

  “I’ve got an extra set of restraints on me,” Anna said. “If you can bring his wrists together…”

  Within moments, she had manacled both his hands and legs, leaving her old employer trundled in the back like a rolled-up carpet.

  “Jesus,” Anna said. “There’s no time. We’ve got to get a move on. The guards—they’re on their way!”

  Ben pushed the two sticks forward, then twisted the collective up while maintaining his grip on the cyclic. The collective controlled the helicopter’s lift; the cyclic controlled its lateral direction. The helicopter’s nose moved to the right, the tail to the left, and then it started rolling out of the bay and onto the snow-covered lawn, coolly illuminated by the moonlight.

  “Shit!” Ben shouted, pushing the collective down to reduce power, trying to stabilize the craft.

  Slowly he pulled the collective up, adding power slowly, and felt the aircraft getting light.

  He pushed the stick forward an inch or two, felt the nose pitch down, then added a bit more power with the collective.

  They were rolling now.

  The helicopter taxied forward across the snow.

  The col
lective was now halfway up.

  Suddenly, at a speed of twenty-five knots, the chopper jumped into the air.

  They’d lifted off.

  He pulled back on the stick to gain more power, and the nose went right. They kept rising.

  Bullets clattered against the cabin.

  Several guards were running, their submachine guns pointed at the helicopter, shouting.

  “I thought you said they wouldn’t shoot at Lenz’s helicopter.”

  “Word must have got out about the good doctor,” Anna said. “Hey, better to travel hopefully, right?” She thrust the barrel of her Uzi out the open side window and fired off a burst. One of the guards fell to the ground.

  Then she fired another, more sustained burst.

  The other guard was down.

  “O.K.,” she said, “I think we’re all right for a little while.”

  Ben brought the collective back past center, and the nose corrected.

  Higher, then higher still.

  They were directly above the Schloss now, and the craft felt more stable. Now he could fly it like an airplane.

  Ben became aware of a sudden movement, and just as he turned, he felt a jabbing, searing pain at the base of his neck and shoulders. What he felt had some resemblance to the sensation of a pinched nerve but a hundred times worse.

  Anna shrieked.

  From the hot moist breath near his face, Ben realized what had happened. Bartlett, his arms and legs shackled, had thrown himself at Ben, attacking him with the only thing left at his disposal—his jaws.

  A guttural vocalization, like the growl of a jungle creature, rose from Bartlett’s throat as he sank his teeth farther into Ben’s exposed neck and shoulders.

  As Ben released the collective in order to grab hold of Bartlett, the helicopter started to yaw perilously to one side.