The Paris Option - Страница 63

As he was helplessly carried along in the big Sikorsky, he quit working on the ropes for a while, resting. The wound on his arm ached and burned. Still, it was superficial, more an annoyance than a danger, but it should be taken care of before infection set in. On the other hand, a much more pressing goal was simply surviving. Which brought his thoughts back again to Randi. He knew her only too well, and he was worried. Had she made it out of range before the missile hit? She would have waited for him and the Chambords as long as possible. When they had not appeared, her first instinct would have been to try to rescue them.

God in heaven, he hoped she had not. Even if she had finally realized she had to run for it, she might not have escaped in time. His mouth went dry as he recalled how close he and Thérèse had come to dying.

Near the window of the dark villa armed guards all around Jon and Thérèse disarmed.

Emile Chambord tells Mauritania, "The American has called in some kind of missile strike. We must leave. Tell your men to fire their weapons, make it sound like a fight. Then shout. Celebrate loudly as if you've killed Smith and my daughter. Hurry!"

They fire bursts. Scream their slogans. Race from the villa, herding Jon and Thérèse toward the helipad. They reach the barracks, and the world detonates behind them. They are flung into the air. Thrown to the ground. Deafened by an explosive roar that hammers with the rush of a shock wave and tears at their clothes, their hair, their limbs. Tree branches and palm fronds fly. A massive wood door cartwheels overhead and slams down onto one of Abu Auda's men, crushing him to death.

When the ground stops heaving, Jon staggers up, bleeding from a head wound. His left forearm burns with pain. He searches frantically for a weapon.

But Abu Auda trains his British-made assault rifle on Jon. "Don't try, Colonel."

The survivors crawl to their feet. Amazingly, most are still alive. Thérèse is bleeding from her right leg. Chambord hurries to her. "Thérèse! You're hurt."

She pushes him away. "I don't know who you are anymore. You must be mad!" She turns her back and helps Jon.

Chambord watches as she rips off the sleeve of her white suit. "What I do is for the future of France, child," he explains earnestly. "You'll understand soon."

"There's nothing to understand." She binds the wound on Jon's arm and then the one on her leg. The blood on Jon's forehead is a minor scratch.

Mauritania interrupts, "She'll have to understand later, Doctor." He gazes around with the canny expression of a feral animal. He seems to sniff the air as if he can read intelligence on it. "They may strike again. We must leave immediately."

One of the terrorists gives a loud bellow of dismay. Everyone converges, staring at the Huey helicopter. Its rotors have been broken by debris hurled in the blast. The chopper is grounded.

Chambord decides, "There's room for five of us in the scout helicopter. You, of course, M. Mauritania, and your pilot. Plus Captain Bonnard, Thérèse, and I" Mauritania begins to protest. He wants more of his own people. But Chambord shakes his head firmly. "No. I need Bonnard, and I won't leave my daughter behind. If I'm to build another prototype, I need to go where I can work. A new DNA computer is our most pressing priority. I regret there's room for no one else, but there it is."

Mauritania has to agree. He turns to his towering lieutenant, who has heard everything and is glowering with disapproval. "You'll remain behind to lead the others, Abu Auda. Make arrangements to be picked up. I'll have to take our Saudi pilot, Mohammed. He's our best. You'll rejoin us soon."

"What of the American, Smith? May I kill him now? It was he who"

"No. If he's arranged for this missile strike, he must be even more important than I realized. You'll keep him safe, Abu Auda."

Thérèse Chambord protests vehemently, but they force her aboard. The compact helicopter rises, skirts the disaster site, and heads north toward Europe. Abu Auda orders Jon's hands bound, and the group moves at a brisk clip to the distant highway, where they are met by two covered pickup trucks. A long, jolting ride through the wind-swept inland desert finally ends at the noisy docks of Tunis. There they board a motorboat like the converted PT boat on which Jon stowed the day before. The ragtag group is exhausted, but their sense of urgency remains clear.

On the boat, they blindfold him. He sees none of the long trip across the Mediterranean. He falls asleep again despite the slamming of the boat against the waves, but as soon as the boat lands, he is instantly awake, craning his head to listen. They hustle him out on deck, still blindfolded, where he hears many voices speaking Italian and guesses they must be in Italy. They board the Sikorsky helicopter to fly to an unnamed location that could be anywhere from Serbia to France

Now as Jon sat blindfolded in the helicopter, waiting for them to either run out of gas or land, he wrestled with his tormenting thoughts: Was Randi alive? Where were Peter and Marty? From what Thérèse knew, she and her father had been the only prisoners in the villa until Jon arrived. Jon hoped they had not been captured, that Peter had somehow saved Marty, and that they were safe. His only comfort was that the molecular computer had been pulverized in the missile blast.

Now he must stop Emile Chambord before he built another. It had been a shock to learn Chambord had been working with the terrorists all along, apparently the instigator of an elaborate and very successful charade to fool not just national governments but also his daughter. In a perversion of a great scientific achievement, he was scheming to build another molecular computer so he could use it to destroy Israel. Why? Because his mother had been Algerian? Part of Islam? Jon remembered Fred Klein's report: His mother raised him as a Muslim, but he showed little interest in religion as an adult. There had seemed no reason to consider that bit of information salient, since Chambord had never shown religious tendencies.

As Jon thought about it all, he remembered Chambord's stint teaching in Cairo just before he returned to the Pasteur, and that Chambord's wife had died not long ago. A reacquaintance with Islam, plus the life-changing loss of a beloved spouse. Belief shifts in later years had happened to others, and they would happen again. Forgotten faith could reach out and reclaim, especially as one aged and faced personal tragedy.

Then there was Captain Darius Bonnard, who had a similar background: Married to an Algerian woman when he had been in the Foreign Legion. When commissioned, his leaves spent in Algiers with, maybe, a first wife he had never divorced. A double life? It certainly seemed more than possible now. And, too, there was his job within whispering distance of the top echelons of NATO and the French military. He was one of the invisibles — the quiet, efficient aide to a general. Although he had far more access than most, he was seldom in the limelight, unlike his general.

Chambord's and Bonnard's lives made a new kind of sense when looked at with the hindsight of Chambord's shattering revelation: "I'm not with them — they're with me!"

The scientist's prototype was destroyed, but not his knowledge. Unless someone stopped him, he would build another. But that would take time. Smith held on to that morsel of hope. Time to find Chambord and to stop him. But first he had to escape. Behind him, he resumed trying to loosen the ropes that bound him.

Paris, France

Marty was awake, gratefully out of his hospital gown, and dressed in clothes Peter had brought back after making contact with MI6 a pair of shapeless dark brown cord pants, a black cashmere turtleneck despite the warmth of the hospital room, athletic shoes with racing stripes along the sides, and his ubiquitous tan windbreaker. He looked himself up and down and pronounced himself appropriately attired for anything short of a formal dinner with the prime minister.

Randi had returned to the room, too, and the three friends wrestled with the issue foremost in their mind show to find Jon. Without any formal agreement, they had simply decided that Jon was alive. Eyes sparkling, Marty volunteered to go off his meds and devote himself to solving the problem.

Randi agreed. "Good idea."

"Sure you're up for it?" Peter questioned.

"Don't be a dolt, Peter." Marty looked offended. "Does a mastodon have tusks? Does an algebraic equation require an equals sign? Gee."

"Guess so," Peter decided.

The room phone rang. Randi picked it up. It was her boss at Langley, Doug Kennedy, on the secure scrambled surface phone line. He was not encouraging. She listened, asked some pointed questions, and as soon as she hung up, she reported what he had learned: The ground assets in Algeria said there was little unusual activity of any kind, not even smugglers, except perhaps in Tunis, where a known smuggler's high-speed boat had left some five hours after the strike for an unspecified destination with a dozen or so men on board. One of the men, however, was reported to be a European or American. There had been no women among them, which pretty much ruled out Emile Chambord, who was certainly traveling with Thérèse. He would not have left her, or at least Randi and Marty did not think he would. Peter was not so sure.

Marty made a face. "No one like Emile abandons a child, you ridiculous man."

"She's pushing forty," Peter noted dryly. "She's no child."

"To Emile she is," Marty corrected him.