The Paris Option - Страница 10

The building must have been spacious, about the size of a warehouse. Dogs sniffed the ruins. Rescue workers and firemen dug grimly, and armed soldiers patrolled. The charred remains of two cars stood at the curb. Beside them, some kind of metal sign had been melted into a distorted fist of steel. Nearby, an ambulance waited, in case another survivor was found or one of the workers injured.

Heart heavy, Smith waited as a soldier with a careful face approached and demanded identification. As he handed it over, he asked, "Any sign of Dr. Chambord?"

"I can't talk about it, sir."

Smith nodded. He had other ways to find out, and now that he had seen the devastation, he knew there was nothing he could learn here. It was lucky anyone had survived. Lucky Marty had. As he left, he thought about the monsters who had done this. Anger built in his chest.

He returned to the rue du Docteur Roux and crossed the street to the old campus. Calming himself, he showed his identification at the kiosk there, where another Pasteur security guard and armed soldier controlled access. After a thorough check, they gave him directions to the office and lab of his old friend and colleague Michael Kerns.

As he headed off past the old building where Louis Pasteur had lived and worked and was now buried, he was struck by how good it was to be back in this cradle of pure science, despite the circumstances. After all, this was where Pasteur had conducted his brilliant nineteenth-century experiments in fermentation that had led not just to pioneering research in bacteriology but to the principle of sterilization, which had forever changed the world's understanding of bacteria and saved untold millions of lives.

After Dr. Pasteur, other researchers here had gone on to produce critical scientific breakthroughs that had led to the control of virulent diseases like diphtheria, influenza, the plague, polio, tetanus, TB, and even yellow fever. It was no wonder the institute boasted more Nobel Prize winners than most nations. With more than a hundred research units and labs, the complex housed some five hundred permanent scientists while another six hundred from all corners of the globe worked temporarily on special projects. Among those was Michael Kerns, Ph.D.

Mike's office was in the Jacques Monod Building, which housed the department of molecular biology. The door was open. When Smith stepped inside, Mike looked up from his desk, where a mass of papers covered with calculations were spread before him.

Kerns took one look at Smith and jumped up. "Jon! Good Lord, man. What are you doing here?" White lab coat flapping, Kerns came around the desk with the athletic grace of the Iowa Hawkeye running back he had once been. A few inches under six feet and sturdy, he pumped Smith's hand vigorously. "Damn, Jon, how long's it been?"

"Five years, at least," Smith reminded him with a smile. "How's the work going?"

"So near and yet so far." Kerns laughed. "As usual, right? What brings you to Paris? More viruses for USAMRIID to hunt down?"

Taking the opening, Smith shook his head. "It's my friend Marty Zellerbach. He was hurt in the bombing."

"The Dr. Zellerbach who they say was working with poor Chambord? I never met him. I'm so sorry, Jon. How is he?"

"In a coma."

"Damn. What's the prognosis?"

"We're hopeful. But he had a nasty cranial injury, and the coma's hanging on. Still he's showing signs he may come out of it." Smith shook his head again, his expression glum. "Is there any news about Chambord? Have they found him yet?"

"They're still looking. The blast really shattered the building. It's going to take days for them to dig through it all. They've found some body parts that they're trying to identify. Very sad."

"Did you know Marty was working with Chambord?"

"Actually, no. Not until I read it in the paper." Kerns returned behind his desk and waved Smith to an aged armchair in the cluttered office. "Just chuck those files onto the floor."

Smith nodded, moved the pile of folders, and sat.

Kerns continued, "I said I never met Zellerbach, right? But it'd be more accurate to say I never even heard he was here. Fie had no official appointment to the staff, and I never saw his name listed as being on loan or visiting. I'd have known about that. It must've been some private arrangement with Chambord." Kerns paused. "I probably shouldn't be telling you this, but I was concerned about Emile. This last year, he was acting strange."

Smith came alert. "Chambord was acting strange? In what way?"

"Well" Kerns pondered, then leaned forward like a conspirator, his hands clasped in from of him, resting on his papers. "He used to be a happy guy, you know what I mean? Convivial, outgoing, one of the boys, if you like, for all his seniority and fame. A hard worker who didn't seem to take his work all that seriously, despite its importance. A very level head. Oh, eccentric enough, like most of us, but in a different way from last year. He had the right attitude his ego was never oversized. In fact, once when a dozen or so of us got together for drinks, he said, 'The universe will go on fine without us. There's always someone else to do the work.' "

"Self-effacing, and in many ways true. And it was after that he changed?"

"Yes. It was almost as if he vanished. In the corridors, at meetings, in the cafs, at bull sessions, staff parties, all that. And it happened just like that." He snapped his fingers. "He seemed to cut us all off, sharp as a slice with a knife. He'd disappeared, as far as most of us were concerned."

"Was this a year ago, about the same time he quit entering his progress data into the computer?"

Kerns was astonished. "I hadn't heard that. Damn, does that mean we have no idea what he accomplished over the last twelve months?"

"That's what it means. You know what he was working on?"

"Of course, everyone knew. A molecular computer. I heard he was making big strides, too. That he might even get there first, in under ten years. It was no secret, so"

"So?"

Kerns leaned back. "So why the secretiveness? That was what was so different about him. Secretive, withdrawn, distracted, avoiding his colleagues. Come to work, go home, return to work, nothing else. Sometimes he was here for days in a row. I heard he even had a good bed put in there. We just wrote it off to a hot line of research."

Smith did not want to appear too interested in Chambord, or his notes, or the DNA computer. He was in Paris for Marty, after all. Nothing more, as far as Kerns or anyone else was concerned. "He wouldn't be the first to be so wrapped up in his work. A scientist who doesn't feel that compelled doesn't belong in research." He paused and asked casually, "So what's your theory?"

Mike chuckled. "In my wildest moments, stolen research. Spies. Industrial espionage, maybe. Some kind of cloak-and-dagger."

"Did something happen to make you think that?"

"Well, there's always the issue of the Nobel Prize. Whoever creates the first molecular computer will be a shoo-in. Of course, that means not just money but prestige the Mount Olympus of prestige. No one at the Pasteur would turn it down. Probably no one in the world. Under those conditions, any of us might get a little nervous and clandestine, protecting our work until we were ready to go public."

"Good point." But stealing was one thing, mass murder, which the bombing had caused, was quite another. "There must've been something else, though, to make you think Chambord was worried about his work being stolen. Something unusual, maybe even suspicious, that triggered the idea."

"Now that you mention it I wondered sometimes about a few of the people I spotted Chambord with once or twice outside the Pasteur. Also about a car that picked him up here some nights."

Smith allowed only a fraction of his interest to show on his face. "What kind of people?"

"Oh, ordinary enough. French, well dressed. They were always in civvies, or I might've said they were military. But I guess if Chambord was making progress on his DNA computer, that'd make sense. The military would want to keep tabs on everything he was doing, if he'd let them."

"Natural enough. What about the car? Do you remember the year and make?"

"Citron, recent. Don't know the exact year. It was big and black. I'd see it when I was working late. I'd be heading for mine, and a few times it'd drive up. The rear door would swing open, Chambord would duck and climb in he was very tall, you know and it'd drive off. It was odd, because he had his own little Renault. I mean, I'd spot the Renault parked in the lot after the big car drove off."

"You never saw who was with him in the Citron?"

"Never. But at the time, I was tired and was thinking about getting home."

"Did the Citron bring him back?"

"I wouldn't know."

Smith thought it over. "Thanks, Mike. I can see you're busy, and I don't want to take any more of your time. I'm just looking into Marty's activities here in Paris, to get an assessment of his health before the bombing. Sorry to get so far off track with Chambord. Marty's got Asperger's Syndrome, and he's usually fine, but since I haven't talked to him in a while, I just want to make sure. What can you tell me about Chambord's family? They might know more about Marty."

"Emile was a widower. Wife died about seven years ago. I wasn't here then, but I heard it hit him hard. He buried himself in work then, too, was aloof for a while, I'm told. He has one child, a grown-up daughter."