Covert One 3 - The Paris Option (51 page)

“Are you saying he wants to go to war against America?”

“He claims we're already at war with the United States in many, many ways.”

“What do you say, General?”

Again Bittrich paused. “There's much I agree with in his ideas, Herr Howell.”

Peter heard a faint hesitation. “I hear a but, sir. What did General Moore want to tell my prime minister?”

Bittrich was silent again. “I believe he suspected that General La Porte was planning to prove his point that we must not depend on America by showing the Americans unable to defend themselves.”

“How?” Peter asked. He listened to the answer with growing alarm.

Downstairs in the same public phone booth she had used earlier, Randi slammed down the receiver. She was angry and worried. Langley had nothing new about General La Porte or Captain Bonnard. As she hurried through the lobby and back upstairs, she hoped the others had done better. When she reached Marty's room, Jon was standing sentry at the only window, watching the street, while Marty was still sitting on his bed, working at his laptop.

“Nada,”

she told them and closed the door behind her. “Langley was no damn help.”

“I got something useful,” Jon said from the window. “General La Porte saved Captain Bonnard's life in Desert Storm. As a result, Bonnard's utterly loyal and exhibits an exaggerated sense of the general's greatness.” Again he gazed at the street. For a moment, he thought he saw a figure moving furtively a block away. “Bonnard will do anything anything the general asks, and then be panting for the next opportunity to please him.” He looked into the distance for the figure. Heor shehad disappeared. He studied the traffic and few pedestrians closer to the private hospital.

“My, my. Such largesse.” Marty looked up from his computer screen. “Okay, the answer is that General La Porte and his family are worth hundreds of millions, if you figure it in U.S. dollars. Altogether, approaching a half-billion dollars.”

Jon exhaled. “A fellow could put together a nice little terrorist assault with that.”

“Oh yes,” Marty agreed. “General La Porte fits our profile perfectly, and the more I think about it, the more I remember how Emile had begun talking on and on about France. That it didn't get the respect it deserved. What a magnificent history it had, and its future could be even greater than the past if the proper people were put in charge. Every once in a while, he'd forget I'm American and say something particularly irritating about us. I remember once when he was talking about what a fine leader General La Porte was, really too big for his current position. He said it was disgusting that the great General La Porte had to work under an American.”

“Yes,” Jon told him. “That would be General Carlos Henze. He's NATO's Supreme Allied Commander.”

“That sounds right. But it didn't matter that it was General Henze. The point was, he's American. See? My anomaly explains a lot. It's obvious now that Emile took the print of Napoleon with him because it's his inspirationFrance will rise again.”

“You found those financial details online?” Randi wondered.

“Easy as cracking an egg,” Marty assured her. “It was a simple matter to determine his bankFrench, of course. Then I tweaked some software programs I'm familiar with. With them souped up, I broke through the firewall and did a fast hit-and-run and escaped with quite a few records.”

“What about the red castle?” Jon asked.

Marty was stricken. “Forgot. La Porte was so fascinating. I'll do it now.”

Peter strode into the hospital room, almost running. His angular face was tight. “Just talked to General Bittrich. The meeting on the De Gaulle was called by La Porte himself to press his case for a completely integrated European military. Eventually, Bittrich thinks, a united Europe. One nationEuropa. Bittrich was damned cautious, but when I told him our General Moore had been murdered, he finally spilled it. What had alarmed Mooreand, it turns out, Bittrich, toowas that La Porte hammered at the electronic and communications failures the American military was having and strongly suggested there'd be more, proving that the American military could not defend even its own country.”

Jon's eyebrows rose. “When they met on the De Gaulle, there was no way General La Porte could've heard about our utility grid and communications problems. Only our people and the top Brit leaders were in the loop.”

“Exactly. The only way La Porte could've known was because he was behind the attacks. At the time, Bittrich dismissed his misgivings as an overreaction and also because he was concerned he was being influenced by the fact that he can't stand La Porte personallya swaggering Frog, he called him.” His gaze searched their faces. “In essence, Bittrich is saying he suspects La Porte is going to launch an attack on you Yanks, when all your defenses are down.”

Jon asked, “When?”

“He suggested,” Peter's voice became hard and bitter, “that 'if such an impossible thought could be in any way true, which, of course, I don't believe for a second,' it'd be what we fearedtonight.”

“Why does he think that?” Randi asked.

“Because there's a crucial vote coming up in a special secret session of the Council of European Nations on Monday about whether to create a pan-European military. La Porte was instrumental in making this clandestine session happen so the issue could be voted on in secret.”

The only sound was the ticking of the clock on Marty's bedside table.

Looking out the window to the street below, Jon noticed two men. It seemed to him he had seen them walk past the hospital twice.

Randi asked again, “But when tonight?”

“Aha!” Marty announced from the bed. “Chteau la Rouge. 'Red Castle.' Is this it?”

Jon strode from the window to check the monitor. “That's the castle in La Porte's painting and photo.” He returned to the window and looked back at the others. “You want to know when? If I were La Porte, here's what I'd do. When it's six o'clock Saturday night in New York, it's three o'clock in the afternoon in California. Sports and on-the-town time on the East Coast, the same on the West, plus crowded beaches if the weather's good. The freeways are congested, too. But here in France, it's midnight. Quiet. Dark. The night hides a lot. To hurt the United States the most, and to conceal what I was doing, I'd launch the strike from France sometime around midnight.”

Peter asked, “Where's this Chteau la Rouge, Marty?”

Marty was reading the screen. “It's old, medieval, made ofhellip;Normandy! It's located in Normandy.”

“Two hours from Paris,” Peter said. “Within range of where we decided the second computer would be.”

Randi looked at the wall clock. “It's nearly nine o'clock. If Jon's righthellip;”

“We'd best hurry,” Peter said quietly.

“I said I'd call army intelligence.” Jon started to turn from the window. He needed to alert Fred instantly, but he glanced down at the street just once more. He swore. “We've got visitors. They're armed. Two are walking in the hospital's front door.”

Randi and Peter grabbed their weapons, and Randi sprinted to the door.

“Oh, my!” Marty said. His eyes grew large and frightened. “This is terrible. I've just lost the connection to the Internet. What's happened?”

Peter popped out the modem's hookup and tried the telephone. “It's dead!”

“They've cut the phone lines!” Marty's face paled.

Randi cracked open the door and listened.

Outside the door to Marty's room, the hallway was quiet. “Come on!” Randi whispered. “I saw another way out when I was looking for the phone booth downstairs.”

Marty found his meds, while Jon snapped up the laptop. With Randi in the lead, they slipped quietly from the room and along the corridor past the closed doors of other hospital rooms. A nurse in a starched white uniform had just knocked at one. She paused, startled, her hand on the doorknob. They rushed past, unspeaking.

From the open stairwell, they heard Dr. Cameron's outraged voice float up in French: “Halte! Who are you? How dare you carry guns into my hospital!”

They increased their speed. Marty's face was bright red as he hurried to keep up. They passed a pair of elevators, and at the end of the hall Randi pushed her way through the fire-exit door just as footsteps pounded up the stairs behind them.

“Oh, oh! Wh-where to?” Marty tried.

Randi shushed him, and the four of them ran down the gray stairwell. At the bottom, Randi started to open the door, but Jon stopped her.

“What's on the other side?” he asked.

“We're below the first floor, so 1 assume it's some kind of basement.”

He nodded. “My turn.”

She shrugged and stepped back. He handed the laptop to Marty and pulled out the curved knife he had taken from the Afghan. He opened the door a few inches, waiting for the hinges to creak. When they did not, he pressed it farther and saw a shadow move. He forced his breathing to calm. He looked back and touched his fingers to his lips. They nodded silently back.

He studied the shadow again, saw where the overhead light must be that had cast it, gauged the movement once more, and eased out.

There was a faint smell of gasoline. They were in a small underground garage packed with cars. The elevators were nearby, and a man with pale skin, dressed in ordinary clothes, was circling away from them, an Uzi in his hands.

Jon released the door, and as it swung back, he sprinted. The man turned around, blue eyes narrowed. It was too soon. Jon had hoped to slip up behind. His finger on the trigger, the man raised his weapon. No time. Jon threw the knife. It was not meant for throwing, not balanced properly, but he had nothing else. As it spun end over end, Jon lunged.

Just as the man compressed the trigger, the knife's handle hit his side, ruining his aim. Three bullets spit into the floor next to Jon's feet. Concrete chips sprayed the air. Jon slammed his shoulder into the gunman's chest, propelling him back into the side of a Volvo. Jon reared back and crashed a fist into his face. Blood spurted from the fellow's nose, but he merely grunted and swung the Uzi toward Jon's head. Jon ducked and dodged back, while behind him silenced gunfire spit.

As Jon looked up from his crouch, the man's chest erupted in blood and tissue. Jon spun around on his heels.

Peter stood off to the side, his 9mm Browning in his hands. “Sorry, Jon. No time for a fistfight. Must get the hell out of here. My rental car's outside. Used it to get Marty out of the Pompidou Hospital, so I doubt anyone's made it. Randi, grab everything in the poor bloke's pockets. Let's find out who the bloody hell he is. Jon, take the man's weapon. Let's go.”

Outside Bousmelet-sur-Seine, France

There are moments that define a man, and General Roland la Porte knew deep within himself that this was one. A massive man of muscle and determination, he leaned on the balustrade of the highest tower in his thirteenth-century castle and gazed out through the night, counting the stars, knowing the firmament was his. His castle was perched on a hill of red granite. Meticulously restored by his great-grandfather in the nineteenth century, the castle was illuminated tonight by the light of a three-quarter moon.

Nearby stood the crumbled, skeletal ruins of a ninth-century Carolingian castle, which had been built on the site of a Prankish fort, which in turn was on the remains of the fortified Roman camp that had preceded it. The history of this land, its structures, and his family were entwined. They were the history of France itself, including its rulers in the early days, and it never failed to fill him with prideand a sense of responsibility.

As a child, he longed for his periodic visits to the castle. On nights like these, he would eagerly close his eyes in sleep, hoping to dream of the bearded Prankish warrior Dagovic, honored in family lore as the first of the unbroken line that eventually became the La Portes. By the age of ten, he was poring over the family's Carolingian, Capetian, and illuminated medieval manuscripts, although he had yet to master Latin and Old French. He would hold the manuscripts reverently on his lap as his grandfather related the inspiring tales that had been handed down. La Porte and France, France and La Portehellip;they had been the same, indistinguishable in his impressionable mind. As an adult, his belief had only strengthened.

“My General?” Darius Bonnard emerged through the tower door onto the high parapet. “Dr. Chambord says he will be ready in an hour. It's time for us to begin.”

“Any news of Jon Smith and his associates?”

“No, sir.” Bonnard's firm chin lifted, but his gaze was troubled. He was bareheaded, his short, clipped blond hair almost invisible in the moonlight. “Not since the clinic.” He thought again of the murder of his man in the underground garage.

“Unfortunate that we lost one,” La Porte said, as if reading his mind. But then, good commanders were all alike in that respect. Their men came second only to the mission itself. He made his voice kind, magnanimous, as he continued, “When this is over, I'll write the family personally to express my gratitude for their sacrifice.”

“It's no sacrifice,” Bonnard assured him. “The goal is noble. It's worth any price.”

On the Highway to Bousmelet-sur-Seine

Once they were safely out of Pans and certain they were not being followed, Peter stopped the car at a large petrol station. In the bright fluorescent lights, Jon, Peter, and Randi ran to phone booths to report their suspicions about La Porte, Chambord, the castle, and the strike to their bosses. They had learned nothing from the pockets of the man whom Peter had shot. He had carried no identification, just cigarettes, money, and a package of M&M's. But on one of his fingers had been a telling detaila ring with the insignia of the French Foreign Legion.

Jon arrived first and lifted the phone to his ear. There was no dial tone. He dropped in coins. No dial tone again. He tapped the tongue of the phone, but still the line gave no response, just as there had been no response from the phone in Marty's room. Puzzled, beginning to worry, he stepped away. Soon Peter and Randi joined him.

“Did you get a line out?” But even as he asked the question, Jon knew the answer from their concerned faces.