“The lab is rubble, and there was nothing on the Pasteur’s mainframe.”
“There wouldn’t be. He was worried it could be accessed too easily, perhaps even hacked into by spies. So he kept his data in a notebook, locked into his lab safe. The whole project was in the notes in his safe!”
Bonnard groaned. “That means we can never reproduce his work.”
Jean-Luc said cautiously, “Maybe we can.”
“What?” The captain frowned. “What are you telling me, Jean-Luc?”
“That perhaps we can reproduce his work. We can build a DNA computer without him.” Jean-Luc hesitated as he fought back a shudder of fear. “I think that’s why those armed men came to Arcachon, looking for me.”
Bonnard stared. “You have a copy of his notes?”
“No, I have my own notes. They’re not as full as his, I admit. I didn’t understand everything he did, and he’d forbidden either me or the strange American helping him to make notes. But I secretly copied down nearly everything from memory up to the end of last week. That’s when I left for vacation. I’m sure my record isn’t as complete or as detailed as his, but I think it’d be enough for another expert in the field to follow and maybe even improve on.”
“Your notes?” Bonnard appeared excited. “You took them with you on vacation? You have them now?”
“Yessir.” Jean-Luc patted the briefcase at his feet. “I never let them out of my sight.”
“Then we’d better move, and fast. They could be tracking you from the village and be only minutes away.” He strode to the window and looked down on the nighttime street. “Come here, Jean-Luc. Does anyone look like them? Anyone suspicious? We need to be certain, so we’ll know whether to use the inn’s front or back door.”
Jean-Luc approached Captain Bonnard at the open window. He studied the activity below, illuminated in the glow of street lamps. Three men were entering a waterfront bar, and two were leaving. A half dozen others rolled barrels from a warehouse, one barrel after another in a parade, and hoisted them into the open bed of a truck. A homeless man sat with his feet in the street, his head nodding forward as if he were dozing off.
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 Franccedil;aise 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, onboard. 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 favoreda 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 disgustget 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 Peacute;ripheacute;rique 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.