The Paris Option - Страница 5

Jean-Luc scrutinized each person. "No, sir, I don't see them."

Captain Bonnard made a sound of satisfaction in his throat. "Bon. We must move swiftly, before the thugs can find you. Grab your briefcase. My Jeep is around the corner. Let's go."

"Merci!" Jean-Luc hurried back to his briefcase, grabbed it, and rushed onward to the door.

But as soon as the young man had faced away, Bonnard grabbed a thick pillow from the cot with one hand while, with the other, he reached for the holster at the small of his back and slid out a 7.65mm Le Franaise Militaire pistol with a specially crafted silencer. It was an old weapon, the manufacture of the line ending in the late 1950s. The serial number, which had been stamped into the right rear chamber area of the barrel, was now filed off. There was no safety device, so anyone who carried the Militaire had to be very careful. Bonnard liked the feeling of that small danger, and so for him, such a gun was merely a challenge.

As he followed Massenet, he called out softly, "Jean-Luc!"

His youthful face full of eagerness and relief, Jean-Luc turned. Instantly he saw the weapon and the pillow. Surprised, still not quite understanding, he reached out a protesting hand. "Captain?"

"Sorry, son. But I need those notes." Before the research assistant could speak again, could even move, Captain Darius Bonnard clamped the pillow around the back of his head, pushed the silenced muzzle against his temple, and pulled the trigger. There was a popping sound. Blood, tissue, and pieces of skull exploded into the pillow. The bullet burned itself through and lodged in the plaster wall.

Still using the pillow to protect the room from blood, Captain Bonnard supported the corpse to the bed. He laid the body out, the pillow beneath the head, and removed the silencer from the gun. He dropped the silencer into his pocket and pressed the gun into Jean-Luc's left hand. As soon as he arranged the pillow just so, he put his hand over Jean-Luc's and squeezed the trigger once more. The noise was thunderous, shocking in the tiny room, even to Captain Bonnard, who was expecting it.

This was a rough waterfront area, but still the sound of a gunshot would attract attention. He had little time. First he checked the pillow. The second shot had been perfect, going through so closely to the first hole that it looked like one large perforation. And now there would be powder burns on Jean-Luc's hand to satisfy the medical examiner that he, distraught over the loss of his beloved Dr. Chambord, had committed suicide.

Moving quickly, the captain found a notepad with indentations that indicated writing on the previous sheet. From the wastebasket he seized the single crumpled paper and pushed it and the notepad into his uniform pocket without taking the time to decipher either. He checked under the bed and under every other piece of old furniture. There was no closet. He dug the first bullet out of the wall and moved a battered bureau six inches to the left to hide the hole.

As he snatched up Jean-Luc's briefcase, the rise-and-fall scream of a police siren began in the distance. His heart palpitating with the rush of adrenaline, he analyzed the sound. Oui, it was heading here. With his usual control, he forced his careful gaze to survey the room once more. At last, satisfied that he had missed nothing, he opened the door. As Captain Bonnard vanished into the gloom of the upstairs hall, the police car screeched to a stop in front of the rooming house.

Chapter Three

Paris, France

Tuesday, May 6

The C-17 cargo jet that had left Buckley Air Force Base near Denver on Monday for a previously scheduled pole route to Munich carried a single passenger whose name appeared nowhere on its personnel roster or manifest. The big jet made an unscheduled stop in Paris in the dark at 0600 hours Tuesday, ostensibly to pick up a package that was needed in Munich. A U.S. Air Force staff car met the cargo jet, and a man in the uniform of a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel carried a sealed metal box, which was empty, on board. He stayed there. But when the aircraft flew off some fifteen minutes later, the nonexistent passenger was no longer aboard.

Not long afterward, the same staff car stopped a second time, now at the side entrance to a detached building at Charles de Gaulle International Airport just north of Paris. The vehicle's back door opened, and a tall man, also wearing the uniform of a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, emerged. It was Jon Smith. Trim, athletic, somewhere in his early forties, he looked military through and through. He had a high-planed face, and his dark hair, a little longer than usual, was worn neatly smooth under his army cap. As he stood up, his navy blue eyes surveyed all around.

There was nothing particularly unusual about him as he finally walked to the building in the quiet hours before dawn, just another army officer, carrying an overnight bag and an IBM Thinkpad in a heavy-duty aluminum case. A half hour later, Smith emerged again, out of uniform. This time he was wearing the casual clothes he favored a tweed jacket, blue cotton shirt, tan cotton trousers, and a trench coat. He also wore a hidden canvas holster under his sports jacket, and in it was his 9mm Sig Sauer.

He walked briskly across the tarmac and moved with other passengers through de Gaulle customs, where, because of his U.S. Army identification, he was waved through without a search. A private limousine was waiting, back door open. Smith climbed in, refusing to let his limo driver handle either his suitcase or his laptop.

The city of Paris was known for its joie de vivre in all things, including driving. For instance, a horn was for communication: A long blast meant disgust get out of my way. A tap was a friendly warning. Several taps were a jaunty greeting, especially if they were rhythmic. And speed, deftness, and a devil-may-care attitude were necessary, particularly among the world atlas of drivers who manned the city's numerous taxi and limo fleets. Smith's driver was an American with a heavy foot, which was just fine with Smith. He wanted to get to the hospital to see Marty.

As the limo hurtled south on the Boulevard Périphérique around the crowded city, Smith was tense. In Colorado he had successfully handed off his research into molecular circuits. He regretted having had to do it, but it was necessary. On the long flight to France, he had called ahead to check again on Marty's condition. There had been no improvement, but at least there had been no decline either. He had also made other phone calls, this time to colleagues in Tokyo, Berlin, Sydney, Brussels, and London, tactfully sounding them out about their progress in developing molecular computers. But all were cagey, hoping to be first.

After filtering for that, he had gotten the sense that none was close to success. All commented on the sad death of Emile Chambord but without mentioning his project. It seemed to Smith that they were as uninformed as he had been.

The driver turned the limo off onto the avenue de la Porte de Sèvres and soon arrived at the eight-hundred-bed European Hospital Georges Pompidou. A glistening monument to modern architecture with curved walls and a glassy facade, it rose like a giant layered Luden's cough drop, directly across the street from the Parc André Citroën. Carrying his luggage. Smith paid the driver and entered the hospital's glass-topped, marble-lined galleria. He took off his sunglasses, slid them into his pocket, and gazed around.

The galleria was so cavernous more than two football fields in length that palm trees swayed in the internal breeze. The hospital was nearly brand-new, having opened just a couple of years ago amid official fanfare that it was the hospital of the future. As Smith headed toward an information desk, he noted department-store-style escalators that led up to patients' rooms on the floors above, bright arrows pointing to the operating theaters, and, infusing the air, a light scent reminiscent of Johnson's Lemon Wax.

Speaking perfect French, he asked for directions to the intensive care unit where Marty was being treated, and he took the escalator up. There was a subdued bustle as shifts changed and nurses, technicians, clerical help, and orderlies came and left. It was all done smoothly, quietly, and only the most experienced eye would have noticed the exchanges that signaled the handing off of responsibilities.

One of the theories that made this model hospital different was that services were clustered in groups, so that the specialist went to the patient, rather than the reverse. Entering patients arrived at any one of twenty-two different reception points, where they were met by personal hostesses, who guided them to their private rooms. There a computer was positioned at the foot of each bed, case notes existed in cyberspace, and, if surgery were necessary, robots often conducted parts of it. The enormous hospital even boasted swimming pools, health clubs, and cafs.

Beyond the desk that fronted the ICU, two gendarmes stood outside the door into the unit itself. Smith identified himself formally in French to the nurse as the American medical representative of Dr. Martin Zellerbach's family. "I'll need to talk to Dr. Zellerbach's lead physician."

"You wish to see Dr. Dubost, then. He's arrived for rounds and has already seen your friend this morning. I'll page him."

"Merci. Will you take me to Dr. Zellerbach? I'll wait there."

"Bien sr. S'il vous plat?" She offered him a distracted smile and, after one gendarme had examined his army medical identification, took him inside the heavy swinging doors.