The Paris Option - Страница 11

"You have her address?"

Kerns turned to his computer and soon provided it. He cocked his head at Smith. "Her name's Thérèse Chambord. I gather she's a successful actress, stage mostly, but a few French flicks. A stunner, from what I've heard."

"Thanks, Mike. I'll tell you how things go with Marty."

"You do that. And we've got to have a drink together at least, before you go home. With luck, Marty, too."

"Good idea. I'd like that." He stood up and left.

Once outside, Smith gazed across the big campus toward the smoke, blowing thin against the clouds. He shook his head and turned away, heading back to the street, his mind on Marty. Using his cell phone, he called the Pompidou Hospital and talked to the ICU head nurse, who reported that Marty remained stable, fortunately still showing an occasional sign that he might wake up. It was not a lot, but Smith held close the hope that his longtime friend would pull through.

"How are you feeling?" she asked.

"Me?" He remembered the blow to his head when he fell. Now it all seemed a long time ago and, compared to the devastation at the Pasteur, unimportant. "I'm doing fine. Thanks for asking."

As he hung up, he reemerged onto the rue du Docteur Roux and considered what he had learned from Mike Kerns: For the past year, Emile Chambord had acted like a man in a hurry, like someone with a secret. And he had been seen with well-dressed men who could have been military types out of uniform.

Smith was mulling that when he had a feeling he was being watched. Call it what you will training, experience, a sixth sense, a subliminal impression of an image, paranoia, or even parapsychology. But there was that tingle on the back of his neck, the slight shrinking of the skin.

They were out there, the eyes observing him. It had begun the instant he had stepped out onto the sidewalk.

Chapter Six

Captain Darius Bonnard could almost smell the camels, the dates rotting in the sun, the goat-fat stink of couscous, and even the rank but miraculous odor of stagnant water. He had changed out of his captain's uniform and was now wearing a civilian suit, lightweight but still too heavy for the apartment where he had just arrived. He was already sweating under his blue pin-striped shirt.

He gazed around. The place looked like the inside of every bedouin tent in which he had sat miserable and cross-legged from the Sahara to all the godforsaken desert outposts of the former empire where he had served in his time. Moroccan rugs covered every window and lay two deep in a cushion on the floor. Algerian, Moroccan, and Berber hangings and artifacts decorated the walls, and the leather and wood furniture was low and hard.

With a sigh, the captain lowered himself to a chair inches off the floor, grateful that at least he was not expected to sit cross-legged on the floor. For a moment of déjà vu, he half-expected hot sand to gust from under the tent's walls and burn around his ankles.

But Bonnard was not in the Sahara, nor in a tent, and he had more pressing matters on his mind than an illusion of camel dung and blowing sand. His expression was fierce as he warned in French, "Sending that man to kill Martin Zellerbach in the hospital was a stupid move, M. Mauritania. Idiocy! How did you think he'd pull it off and escape successfully? They'd have caught him and flayed the truth out of him. And with Zellerbach's doctor friend there, too. Merde! Now the Sret has doubled their alert, and it'll be ten times more difficult to eliminate Zellerbach."

As Captain Bonnard ranted, the second man in the room, whom the captain had called M. Mauritania, the only name by which he was known in the international underworld of spies and criminals, remained expressionless. He was a stocky figure, with a round face and soft, well-manicured hands below the cuffs of a white shirt impeccably shot from the sleeves of a pearl-gray English suit direct from some custom tailor on Savile Row. His small features and bright blue eyes contemplated Bonnard and his outrage with the long-suffering patience of someone forced to listen to the incessant barking of a dog.

When the captain finally finished his tirade, Mauritania, who wore a French beret, tucked a lock of brown hair behind his ear and answered in French, in a voice as hard as his hands were soft. "You underestimate us, Captain. We're not fools. We sent no one to assassinate Dr. Zellerbach at the hospital or anywhere else. It would've been stupid to do at any time, and more than stupid to do now, when it's quite possible he'll never regain consciousness anyway."

Bonnard was taken aback. "But we decided there was no way we could take the chance of letting him live. He might know too much."

"You decided. We decided to wait. That's our choice to make, not yours," Mauritania said in a tone that ended the matter. "In any case, you and I have more important matters to consider."

"Such as, if you didn't send that assassin, who did? And why?"

Mauritania inclined his small, neat head. "I wasn't thinking of that. But, yes, it's a concern, and we'll discover all we can in the matter. Meanwhile, we've studied the notes of the research assistant, which you gave us. We find they coincide precisely, if sketchily, with Chambord's own data and reports. Nothing appears to have been forgotten or lost. Now that we have them, there should be no trouble from that direction. They've already been destroyed."

"Which will keep our activities nicely secret, as I told you," Bonnard said, a touch of colonial condescension in his certainty. He heard it and did not care. "But I'm not at all sure about allowing Zellerbach to live. I'd suggest"

"And I," Mauritania cut him off, "suggest you leave Zellerbach to us. You must pay attention to greater dangers, such as the police investigation into the 'suicide' of Chambord's assistant. Under the circumstances, more than the police will be asking questions. How is the official probe into the suicide proceeding?"

The Mauritania had pulled Bonnard back, and for a moment the captain fought his disgust. But on the other hand, the reason he was doing business with the underworld leader was that he needed someone tough and savvy, as relentless as himself. So what else should he expect? Besides, he saw the logic of the question.

He forced himself to sound more accommodating. "I've heard nothing. But after the assistant ran away when he spotted your men, he stopped for petrol. The people at the station reported the assistant had heard about Emile Chambord's death and was distraught, actually in tears. Devastating grief. That should give the motivation. He couldn't go on without his mentor."

"You know nothing more? Not even from your French army headquarters?"

"Not a word."

Mauritania considered. "That doesn't worry you?"

"No news is good news." Bonnard gave a cold smile at the clich.

Mauritania's nose wrinkled with disgust. "That's a Western proverb as dangerous as it's stupid. Silence in a matter such as this is far from golden. A suicide is difficult to fake well enough to fool police detectives with any brains or experience, to say nothing of the Deuxième Bureau. I suggest you or your people find out what the police and secret service actually know about the assistant's death, and find out quickly."

"I'll look into it," Bonnard agreed grudgingly. He adjusted his weight, preparing to stand.

But Mauritania raised his small hand, and, with a sigh, Bonnard sank back down onto the low, hard chair.

"One more thing, Captain Bonnard. This friend of Zellerbach's What do you know about him?"

Bonnard would soon be missed from work and wanted to leave. He controlled his impatience and said, "The man's name is Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Smith. He's an old friend of Zellerbach's, a medical doctor, and was sent here by Zellerbach's family. At least that's what Smith told the hospital, and from what I've been able to learn from my other sources, it's accurate. Zellerbach and Smith grew up together in some place called Iowa." He had trouble pronouncing it.

"But from what you've also told me about the assassination attempt on Zellerbach at the hospital, this Dr. Smith acted more like a man with combat or police experience. You say he came to the hospital armed?"

"He did, and I agree his actions were far from medical."

"Possibly an agent? Placed in the hospital by someone who's unconvinced by our charade?"

"If Smith is, he's not CIA or MI6. I'm familiar with all their people in Europe and on the European desks at Langley and London SIS. He's definitely American, so unlikely Mossad or a Russian. And he's not one of ours. That I'd definitely know. My sources within American intelligence say he's simply an army research scientist assigned to a U.S. military medical research facility."

"Absolutely American?"

"The clothes, the manner, the speech, the attitude. Plus the confirmation by my contacts. My reputation on it."

"Perhaps he could be a Company man whom you don't know? Langley lies about such things. Their business is to lie. They've grown rather good at it."

"My contacts don't lie. Plus, he's in none of our files at military intelligence."

"Could he be an agent from an organization you don't know, or don't have sources to?"

"Impossible. What do you take us for? If the Second Bureau doesn't know any such organization, it doesn't exist."

"Very well." Mauritania nodded. "Still, we'd better continue to watch him, your people and mine." He rose in a single fluid motion.