Covert One 3 - The Paris Option (41 page)

"We

pulled it off, Emily."

The president stood up and walked from around his desk to sit on the sofa beside her, a casual act of fellowship he seldom indulged in. He felt lighter today, as if a crippling load had been lifted from his shoulders. He peered through his glasses, favoring everyone with his warm smile, gratified to see the relief on their faces as well. Still, this was no cause for real celebration. Good people had died in that missile attack against the Algerian villa.

He continued, “It was everyone here, plus the intelligence services. We owe a great deal to those selfless heroes who work in the lap of the enemy without any public recognition.”

“From what Captain Lainson of the Saratoga told me,” Admiral Stevens Brose said, nodding to the DCIthe Director of Central Intelligence, “it was CIA operatives who finally got those bastards and destroyed that damned DNA computer.”

The DCI nodded modestly. “It was primarily Agent Russell. One of my best people. She did her job.”

“Yes,” the president agreed, “there's no doubt the CIA and others, who must remain nameless, saved our baconthis time.” His expression grew solemn as he gazed around at his Joint Chiefs, the NSA, the head of the NRO, the DCI, and his chief of staff. “Now we must prepare for the future. The molecular computer is no longer theoretical, people, and a quantum computer will be next. It's inevitable. Who knows what else science will develop to threaten our defenses, and to help humanity, I might add? We have to start right now, learning how to deal with all of them.”

“As I understand it, Mr. President,” Emily Powell-Hill pointed out, “Dr. Chambord, his computer, and all his research were lost in the attack. My information tells me no one else is close to duplicating his feat. So we have some leeway.”

“Perhaps we do, Emily,” the president acknowledged. “Still, my best sources in the scientific community tell me that once a breakthrough like this has been made, the pace of development by everyone else is accelerated.” He contemplated them, and his voice was forceful as he continued. “In any case, we must build foolproof defenses against a DNA computer and all other potential scientific developments that could become threats to our security.”

There was a general silence in the Oval Office as they solemnly considered the task ahead and their own responsibilities. The quiet was shattered by the sharp ringing of the telephone on the president's desk. Sam Castilla hesitated, staring across the room at the phone that would ring only if the matter were of great importance.

He put his big hands on his knees, stood up, walked over, and picked up the receiver. “Yes?”

It was Fred Klein. “We need to meet, Mr. President.”

“Now?”

“Yessir. Now.”

Paris, France

In the exclusive private hospital for patients undergoing plastic surgery, Randi, Marty, and Peter had gathered in Marty's spacious room. The muted noises of traffic from outside seemed particularly loud as the painful conversation paused, and tears streamed down Marty's cheeks.

Jon was dead. The news ripped at his heart. He had loved Jon as only two friends of such dissimilar talents and interests could love each other, bound by the elusive quality of mutual respect and seasoned by the years.

For Marty, the loss was so large as to be inexpressible. Jon had always been there. He could not imagine living in a world that had no Jon.

Randi sat down beside the bed and took his hand. With her other hand, she wiped the tears from her own cheeks. Across the room, Peter stood against the door, stone-faced, only his slightly reddened skin betraying his grief.

“He was doing his job,” Randi told Marty gently. “A job he wanted to do. You can't ask for more than that.”

“Hehellip;he was a real hero,” Marty stammered. His face quivered as he struggled to find the right words. Emotions were difficult for him to express, a language he did not fully have. “Did I ever tell you how much I admired Bertrand Russell? I'm very careful about my heroes. But Russell was extraordinary. I'll never forget the first time I read his Principles of Mathematics. I think I was ten, and it really startled me. Oh, my. The implications. It opened everything to me! That was when he took math out of the realm of abstract philosophy and gave it a precise framework.”

Peter and Randi exchanged a look. Neither knew what he was talking about.

Marty was nodding to himself, his tears splashing helplessly out onto the bedclothes. “It had so many ideas that were exciting to think about. Of course, Martin Luther King, Jr., William Faulkner, and Mickey Mantle were pretty heroic, too.” His gaze roamed the room as if looking for a safe place to alight. “But Jon was always my biggest hero. Absolutely, positively biggest. Since we were little. But I never told him. He could do everything I couldn't, and I could do everything he couldn't. And he liked that. So did I. How often can anyone find that? Losing him is like losing my legs or my arms, only worse.” He gulped. “I'm going tohellip;miss him so much.”

Randi squeezed his hand. “We all are, Mart. I was so sure he'd get out in time. He was sure. But . . .” Her chest contracted, and she fought back a sob. She bowed her head, her heart aching. She had failed, and Jon was dead. She cried softly.

Peter said gruffly, “He knew what he was doing. We all know the risk. Someone has to do it so the businessmen and housewives and shop girls and bloody playboys and millionaires can sleep in peace in their own beds.”

Randi heard the bitterness in the old MI6 agent's voice. It was his way of expressing his loss. Where he stood he was alone, as in reality he always was, the wounds on his cheek, left arm, and left hand half-healed and unbandaged, livid in his repressed rage at the death of his friend.

“I wanted to help this time, too,” Marty said in that slow, halting voice that resulted from his medication.

“He knew, lad,” Peter told him.

A sad silence filled the room. The traffic noises rose in volume again. Somewhere far off, an ambulance siren screamed.

Finally Peter said in gross understatement, “Things don't always work out the way we want.”

The telephone beside Marty's bed rang, and all three stared at it. Peter picked it up. “Howell here. I told you never tohellip;what? Yes. When? You're sure? All right. Yes, I'm on it.”

He set the receiver into its cradle and turned to his friends, his face a grim mask as if he had seen a vision of horror. “Top secret. Straight from Downing Street. Someone has taken control of all the U.S. military satellites in space and locked the Pentagon and NASA out. Can you think of any way they could've done that without a DNA computer?”

Randi blinked. She grabbed tissues from the box beside Marty's bed and blew her nose. “They got the computer out of the villa? No, they couldn't have. What the hell does it mean?”

“Damned if I know, except that the danger isn't over. We have to start finding them all over again.”

Randi shook her head. “They couldn't have gotten the prototype out. There was nowhere near enough time for that. But . . .” She stared at Peter. “Maybe Chambord somehow survived? That's the only thing that makes sense. And if Chambordhellip;”

Marty sat straight up in the bed, his distraught face quivering with hope. “Jon may be alive, too!”

“Hold on, both of you. That doesn't necessarily follow. The Crescent Shield would've done everything to get Chambord away safely. But they wouldn't have given a ragman's damn about Jon or Ms. Chambord. In fact, you heard automatic fire, Randi. Who else could it have been aimed at? You said in your report that Jon had to have died either in a firefight or when the missile hit. The bloody bastards were cheering. Victorious. Nothing changes that.”

“You're right. It doesn't, dammit.” Randi grimaced. “Still, it opens a possibility we can't just ignore. If he's alive”

Marty threw back his covers and jumped out of bed, swaying and holding to the frame, suddenly weak. “I don't care what either of you says. Jon's alive!” His pronouncement was firm. He had made up his mind, dismissing the news that was too painful to believe. “We must listen to Randi. He could desperately need us. Why, when I think of what he might be suffering, lying wounded and alone somewhere in the hot Algerian deserthellip;or perhaps as we speak those ghastly terrorists are preparing to kill him! We must find him!” His medication was wearing off, and life was looking more possible. A superman armed with a computer and the power of genius.

“Calm down, my boy. You know how you tend to take flight beyond the logical universe.”

Marty drew his portly body up to its full height, which brought his indignant eyes on a level with Peter's breastbone. He announced with great restraint, “My universe is not only logical, but far beyond your insignificant powers of comprehension, you ignorant Brit!”

“Quite possibly,” Peter said dryly. “Still, remember we're working now in my universe. Say Jon is alive. From what Randi's reported, he's a prisoner. Or at the very least wounded, pursued, and in hiding. The question becomes where is he, and can we get in touch with him? Except possibly for short distances and brief contact, our electronic communications were locked out when the satellites were taken over.”

Marty opened his mouth to make some sharp response, then his face screwed up in helpless frustration as he tried to make his still-slowed brain function on the problem as he wanted it to function.

Randi wondered, “If he did manage to escapeespecially if Chambord is with himthe Crescent Shield would've pursued. Mauritania would make sure of that. Probably sent that killer, Abu Auda, after them. From what I've seen, Abu Auda knows what he's doing. So if Jon and any of the others are alive, they're probably still in Algeria.”

“But if he didn't escape,” Peter reasoned, “if none didand from what just happened to the American satellites I'd say the Crescent Shield still has Dr. Chambord in its handsthen Jon's a prisoner. And we have no earthly idea where.”

Impatient and more worried than ever, Fred Klein sat on the scarred wooden bench that the president had transferred from his private office in his Taos ranch to this private office in the upstairs residence suite of the White House. He peered around at the massive bookcases, not really seeing them as he thought about what he needed to discuss. He desperately wanted to light his pipe. It was still in the breast pocket of his baggy wool suit jacket, the stem poking up. He crossed his legs, the top one almost instantly swinging like the arm of a metronome.

When the president entered, he saw the agitation of the chief of Covert-One. “I'm sorry for your loss, Fred. I know how much you valued Dr. Smith.”

“The condolences may be premature, sir.” Klein cleared his throat. “As well as the celebration of our so-called victory in Algeria.”

The president's back stiffened. He walked to the old roll-top desk, his favorite from Taos, and sat. “Tell me.”

“The team of rangers we sent in right after the missile attack never found the bodies of Colonel Smith, Dr. Chambord, or Theacute;regrave;se Chambord.”

“It's probably too soon. In any case, the bodies could've been either badly burned or blown into fragments.”

“Some were, that's true. But we sent in our own DNA experts as soon as I got Agent Russell's report, and the Algerian army and police sent in more people. So far, we have no matches to our three. None. Plus, there were no female parts. If Ms. Chambord survived, where is she? Where's her father? Where's Colonel Smith? If Jon were alive, he would've reported to me. If Chambord and his daughter had survived, they would certainly have been heard from by now.”

“Unless they were prisoners. That's what you're getting at, isn't it?” The president could not remain seated. He arose stiffly and paced across the Navajo rugs. “You think there's a chance some of the terrorists escaped, and that they took our three with them?”

“That's what worries me. Otherwisehellip;”

“Otherwise, you'd be celebrating Smith's and the Chambords' survival. Yes, I see what you mean. But it's all circumstantial. Speculative.”

“I deal in circumstance and speculation, sir. All intelligence services do, if they're going about their jobs properly. It's up to us to see dangers before they occur. Possibly I'm wrong, and their bodies will be found.” He clasped his hands and leaned forward. “But for all three to be unaccounted for is too much to be ignored, Sam.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Keep searching the ruins and testing, but”

The telephone rang, and the president snapped up the receiver. “Yes?” He grimaced, the lines on his forehead knitting. He barked, “Come up to my private office, Chuck. Yes, now.” He hung up and closed his eyes a moment as if trying to wipe away the contents of the call.

Klein waited, his general unease heightened.

Castilla said in a tired voice, “Someone has just readjusted the computer processors aboard all of our military and private satellites so we can't retrieve data. All the satellites. No data. It's a catastrophic systems failure. What's even worse, no one on the ground can get them programmed back to the way they were.”

“We're blind from space?”

Klein bit off a curse. “It sounds like the DNA computer again, dammit. But how? That's the one thing Russell was sure of. The missile struck the villa, and the computer was inside. Smith told her he and Chambord were about to escape, all three of them, and to call in the strike. Even if Smith and Chambord hadn't destroyed it already, it should've gone up with the building.”

“I agree. It should've. It's the logical conclusion. Get into the other room now, Fred. Chuck's going to be here in a moment.”

Just as Klein slipped away, Charles Ouray, the president's chief of staff, hurried into the office. “They're still trying, but NASA says whoever readjusted the computers has locked us out. Completely. We can't break through! It's causing problems everywhere.”

“I'd better hear what they are.”

“For a while, it looked as if the North Koreans were sending off a missile strike, but we had a contact on the ground that said it was just a heavy fog that was masking the heat from a truck that was near the missile silo in question. We lost an agent in South Beirut, Jeffrey Moussad. His 3-D directional finder failed. We believe he's been killed. Also, there was a near-miss in the Pacific with one of our carriers and a submarine. Even Echelon's ears are deaf.” In the Echelon program, the United States and Britain intercepted calls handled by satellites as well as tapping intercontinental undersea telephone cables.