“Me, too.” Jon leaned forward in his armchair, his face intense. “The whole operation smacks of someone else pulling the strings. We’ve got Captain Bonnard, who was operating around Paris with no apparent connection to the attack on the Pasteur, while the Pasteur was bombed and Dr. Chambord was ‘kidnapped’ by the Basques. The Basques spirit Chambord to Toledo, where they deliver him to the Crescent Shield. Then they turn right around and return to Paris, snatch Theacute;regrave;se, and deliver her to Toledo, too. Meanwhile, Mauritania is sometimes in Paris, sometimes in Toledo, while Dr. Chambord and Captain Bonnard apparently don’t contact one another until the villa in Algiers. Mauritania believes he’s in equal partnership with Bonnard and Chambord until Grenoble. Sohellip;who’s watching over the whole thing, orchestrating, coordinating all the various people and aspects? It has to be someone close to both Frenchmen.”
Peter added, “Someone with money. This is obviously an expensive operation. Who’s paying for it?”
“Not Mauritania,” Randi told them. “Langley says that ever since he left Bin Laden, Mauritania’s resources have been sharply limited. Besides, if Chambord and Bonnard were using the Crescent Shield, they were certainly the initiators of the collaboration, so it’s likely they were picking up the bills, too. I doubt that either an army captain or a pure scientist like Chambord would have that kind of money.”
Marty came to life. “Certainly not Emile.” He shook his round head. “Oh, dear, no. Emile’s far from wealthy. You should see how modestly he lives. Besides, he has trouble keeping a desk drawer organized. I seriously doubt he could systematize that many people and activities.”
“For a while, I thought it might be Captain Bonnard,” Jon said. “After all, he came up through the ranks. That’s both difficult and admirable. Still, he doesn’t appear to be a true organizing leader, a mastermind. Certainly, he’s no Napoleon, who also worked his way up the ranks. According to his file, Bonnard’s current wife is from a prominent French family. There’s wealth there, but not the kind we’re looking for. So unless I’ve missed something, he strikes out on both counts, too.”
As Jon, Randi, and Peter continued to talk, Marty crossed his arms and burrowed back into his pillows. Eyes closed, he allowed his mind to wing back over the past few weeks, flying high through a three-dimensional patchwork of sights, sounds, and odors. From the springboard of memory, he reexperienced the past, recalling with joyful clarity working with Emile, the excitement of one small success after another, the brainstorming sessions, the meals ordered in, the long clays and longer nights, the odors of chemicals and equipment, the way the lab and office had grown on him, had felt more and more like home
And he had it. Abruptly he uncrossed his arms, sat upright, and opened his eyes. He had remembered exactly what the lab and office looked like.
“That’s it!” he announced loudly.
All three stared at him. “What’s it?” Jon asked.
“Napoleon.” Marty spread his arms grandly. “You mentioned Napoleon, Jon. That’s what reminded me. What we’re really looking for is an anomaly, something that doesn’t fit. An oddity that points to what’s missing in the equation. Surely you know that if you keep looking at the same information in the same way you’ll keep coming up with the same answers. Utter waste of time.”
“So what’s missing, Mart?” Jon asked.
“Why,”
Marty said. “That’s what’s missing. Why is Emile doing this? Maybe the answer is Napoleon.” “He’s doing it for Napoleon?” Peter said. “That’s your priceless gem, lad?”
Marty threw a frown at Peter. “You could’ve remembered, too, Peter. I told you about it.” As Peter tried to recall the mystery to which Marty referred, Marty shook his hands excitedly over his head. “The print. It didn’t seem important at first, but now it looms large. It is, in fact, an anomaly.”
“What print?” Jon asked.
“Emile had an excellent print of a painting hanging on his wall at the lab,” Marty explained. “I think the original oil was by Jacques-Louis David, a famous French artist around the turn of the nineteenth century. The title was something like Le Grande Armeacute;e’s Return from Moscow. I can’t remember all the French. Well”he moved the laptop onto the table and bounced to his feet, unable to sit still “this one showed Napoleon in a big blue funk. I mean, who wouldn’t be, after capturing Moscow, but then having to retreat because someone’s burned down most of the city, there’s nothing to eat, and winter’s arrived? Napoleon started out with more than four hundred thousand troops, but by the time he got home to Paris, he had less than ten thousand left. So the painting shows Napoleon with his chin sunk down on his chest.” Marty demonstrated. “He’s riding his big white horse, and the gallant soldiers of his Old Guard are stumbling miserably through the snow behind like total ragamuffins. It’s so sad.”
“And that print was missing from Chambord’s lab?” Jon said. “When?”
“It was gone the night of the bombing. When I arrived to pick up my paper, my first shock was the corpse. Then I noticed that the DNA prototype was gone. And finally I saw that the print was missing, too. At the time, the print’s whereabouts seemed unimportant. Incidental, as you can imagine. Now, however, it seems glaringly strange. We must pay attention.”
Randi puzzled, “Why would the Black FlameBasquessteal a print about a French tragedy some two centuries ago?”
Marty rubbed his hands together excitedly. “Maybe they didn’t.” He paused for effect. “Maybe Emile took it with him!”
“But why?” Randi wondered. “It wasn’t even the original painting.”
Jon said quickly, “I think that Mart’s saying the reason he took the print could tell us what was on Chambord’s mind when he left with the terrorists, and maybe about why he’s doing what he’s doing.”
Peter strode to the window. He peeled back the drape and studied the dark street below. “Never told you about another little problem MI6 dumped on me. We lost a bigwig general a few days agoSir Arnold Moore. Bomb in his Tornado, I’m afraid. The general was flying home to report information to the PM so hush-hush that he would only hint at it.”
“What was the hint?” Jon said quickly.
“He said that what he knew might bear on you Americans’ communications problems. The first attack, that is, that you Yanks told only us about.” Peter let the drape fall back into place. He turned, his face grave. “I backtracked Moore through various contacts, you see. Their intel all toted up to a clandestine meeting of highly placed generals on the new Frenchie carrier, Charles de Gaulle. There was Moore, of course, representing Britain, plus generals from France, Italy, Spain, and Germany. I know the identity of the GermanOtto Bittrich. So here’s the knobby part: Seems the meeting was terribly sub rosa. Not unusual on the face of it. But then, come to find out, it was organized by the top French muckity muck at NATO himself, Jon’s ‘friend’General Roland la Porte, and the order to sail that big, expensive warship apparently originated at NATO, but no one has been able to find the original signed order.”
Jon said, “Roland la Porte is the deputy supreme commander of NATO.”
“That he is,” Peter said, his face both strained and solemn.
“And Captain Bonnard is his aide-de-camp.”
“That, too.”
Jon was silent, turning the new information over in his mind. “I wonder. I thought Captain Bonnard might be using La Porte, but what if it’s the reverse? La Porte himself admitted the French high command, and presumably himself among them, had been keeping close tabs on Chambord’s work. What if La Porte kept much closer tabs than anyone else, and then kept what he knew to himself? He did say he and Chambord were personal friends as well.”
Marty stopped pacing. Slowly Peter nodded.
“Makes a terrible kind of sense,” Randi said.
“Roland la Porte has money,” Marty added. “I remember Emile talking about General La Porte. He admired him as a true patriot who loved France and saw its future. According to Emile, La Porte was mind-bogglingly rich.”
“So rich he could’ve financed this operation?” Jon asked.
Everyone looked at Marty. “Sounded like it to me.”
“I’ll be a duck’s uncle,” Peter said. “The deputy supreme commander himself.”
“Unbelievable,” Randi said. “At NATO, he’d have access to all kinds of other resources, including a big warship like the De Gaulle.”
Jon recalled the regal Frenchman, his pride and suspicion. “Dr. Chambord said La Porte was a ‘true patriot who loved France and saw its future,’ and Napoleon was, and still is, the peak of French greatness. And now it seems that the only thing other than the DNA prototype that Chambord took with him from his lab that night was a print of the beginning of the end for Napoleon. The beginning of the end for French ‘greatness.’ Are you all thinking what I’m thinking?”