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The Story
A fiery explosion in the dark of night shatters one of the
laboratory buildings in Paris’s esteemed Pasteur Institute.
Among the dead is Emile Chambord, one of the leaders in the
global race to create a molecular or DNA computer. Unfortunately,
Dr. Chambord kept the details of his work secret, and his
notes were apparently destroyed in either the bomb blast or
the raging fire that followed. Under the cover of visiting
his friend Marty Zellerbach, who was severely injured when
the Pasteur lab was destroyed, Covert-One agent Jon Smith
flies to Paris to search for the connection between the Pasteur
explosion and the forces now wielding the computer. Following
a trail that leads across two continents, Smith uncovers a
web of deception that threatens to wreak havoc and forever
reshape the world.
Prologue
Paris, France
Monday, May 5
The first warm winds of spring gusted along Paris’s
narrow back streets and broad boulevards, calling winter-weary
residents out into the night. They thronged the sidewalks,
strolling, linking arms, filling the chairs around outdoor
café tables, everywhere smiling and chatting. Even
the tourists stopped complaining— this was the enchanting
Paris promised in their travel guides.
Occupied with their glasses of vin ordinaire under the stars,
the spring celebrators on the bustling rue de Vaugirard did
not notice the large black Renault van with darkened windows
that left the busy street for the boulevard de Pasteur. The
van circled around the block, down the rue du Docteur Roux,
and at last entered the quiet rue des Volontaires, where the
only action was of a young couple kissing in a recessed doorway.
The black van rolled to a stop outside L’Institut Pasteur,
cut its engine, and turned off its headlights. It remained
there, silent, until the young couple, oblivious in their
bliss, disappeared inside a building across the street.
The van’s doors clicked open, and four figures emerged
clothed completely in black, their faces hidden behind balaclavas.
Carrying compact Uzi submachine guns and wearing backpacks,
they slipped through the night, almost invisible. A figure
materialized from the shadows of the Pasteur Institute and
guided them onto the grounds, while the street behind them
remained quiet, deserted.
Out on the rue de Vaugirard, a saxophonist had begun to play,
his music throaty and mellow. The night breeze carried the
music, the laughter, and the scent of spring flowers in through
the open windows of the multitude of buildings at the Pasteur.
The famed research center was home to more than twenty-five
hundred scientists, technicians, students, and administrators,
and many still labored into the night.
The intruders had not expected so much activity. On high
alert, they avoided the paths, listening, watching the windows
and grounds, staying close to trees and structures as the
sounds of the springtime gaiety from the rue de Vaugirard
increased.
But in his laboratory, all outside activity was lost on Dr.
Émile Chambord, who sat working alone at his computer
keyboard on the otherwise unoccupied second floor of his building.
His lab was large, as befitted one of the institute’s
most distinguished researchers. It boasted several prize pieces
of equipment, including a robotic gene-chip reader and a scanning-tunneling
microscope, which measured and moved individual atoms. But
more personal and far more critical to him tonight were the
files near his left elbow and, on his other side, a spiral-bound
notebook, which was open to the page on which he was meticulously
recording data.
His fingers paused impatiently on the keyboard, which was
connected to an odd-looking apparatus that appeared to have
more in common with an octopus than with IBM or Compaq. Its
nerve center was contained in a temperature-controlled glass
tray, and through its sides, one could see silver-blue gel
packs immersed like translucent eggs in a jelly, foam-like
substance. Ultra-thin tubing connected the gel packs to one
another, while atop them sat a lid. Where it interfaced with
the gel packs was a coated metallic plate. Brooding above
it all stood an iMac-sized machine with a complicated control
panel on which lights blinked like impulsive little eyes.
From this machine, more tubing sprouted, feeding into the
pack array, while wires and cables connected both the tray
and the machine to the keyboard, a monitor, a printer, and
assorted other electronic devices.
Dr. Chambord keyboarded in commands, watched the monitor,
read the dials on the iMac-sized machine, and continually
checked the temperature of the gel packs in the tray. He recorded
data in his notebook as he worked, until he suddenly sat back
and studied the entire array. Finally, he gave an abrupt nod
and typed a paragraph of what appeared to be gibberish—letters,
numbers, and symbols—and activated a timer.
His foot tapped nervously, and his fingers drummed the lab
bench. But in precisely twelve seconds, the printer came to
life and spat out a sheet of paper. Controlling his excitement,
he stopped the timer and made a note. At last he allowed himself
to snatch up the printout.
As he read, he smiled. “Mais, oui.”
Dr. Chambord took a deep breath and typed small clusters
of commands. Sequences appeared on his screen so fast that
his fingers could not keep up. He muttered inaudibly as he
worked. Moments later, he tensed, leaned closer to the monitor,
and whispered in French, “ . . .one more . . . one .
. . more . . . there!”
He laughed aloud, triumphant, and turned to look at the clock
on the wall. It read 9.55 P.M. He recorded the time and stood
up.
His pale face glowing, he stuffed his files and notebook
into a battered briefcase and took his coat from the old-fashioned
Empire wardrobe near the door. As he put on his hat, he glanced
again at the clock and returned to his contraption. Still
standing, he keyboarded another short series of commands,
watched the screen for a time, and finally shut everything
down. He walked briskly to the door, opened it onto the corridor,
and observed that it was dim and deserted. For a moment, he
had a sense of foreboding.
Then he shook it off. Non, he reminded himself: This was
a moment to be savored, a great achievement. Smiling broadly,
he stepped into the shadowy hall. Before he could close the
door, the four black-clothed figures from the van surrounded
him.
###
Thirty minutes later, the wiry leader of the intruders stood
watch as his three companions finished loading the black van
on the rue des Volontaires. As soon as the side door closed,
he appraised the quiet street once more and hopped into the
passenger seat. He nodded to the driver, and the van glided
away toward the crowded rue de Vaugirard, where it disappeared
in traffic.
The lighthearted revelry on the sidewalks and in the cafés
and tabacs continued. More street musicians arrived, and the
vin ordinaire flowed like the Seine. Then, without warning,
the building that housed Dr. Chambord’s laboratory on
the legendary Pasteur campus exploded in a rolling sheet of
fire. The earth shook as flames seemed to burst from every
window and combust up toward the black night sky in a red-and-yellow
eruption of terrible heat visible for miles around. As bricks,
sparks, glass, and ash rained down, the throngs on the surrounding
streets screamed in terror and ran for shelter.
Chapter One
Diego Garcia Island, Indian Ocean
At 0654 hours at the vital U.S. Army, Air Force, and Naval
installation on Diego Garcia, the officer commanding the shift
at the control tower was gazing out the windows as the morning
sun illuminated the warm blue waters of Emerald Bay on the
lagoon side of the U-shaped atoll and wishing he were off
duty. His eyes blinked slowly, and his mind wandered.
The U.S. Navy Support Facility, the host command for this
strategically located, operationally invaluable base, kept
all of them busy with its support of sea, air, and surface
flight operations. The payback was the island itself, a remote
place of sweeping beauty, where the easy rhythms of routine
duty lulled ambition.
He was seriously contemplating a long swim the instant he
was off duty when, one minute later, at 0655 hours, the control
tower lost contact with the base’s entire airborne fleet
of B-1B, B-52, AWACS, P-3 Orion, and U-2 aircraft, on a variety
of missions that included hot-button reconnaissance and anti-submarine
and surveillance support.
The tropical lagoon vanished from his mind. He bawled orders,
pushed a technician from one of the consoles, and started
diagnostics. Everyone’s attention was riveted on the
dials, readouts, and screens as they battled to regain contact.
Nothing helped. At 0658, in a controlled panic, he alerted
the base’s commanding officer.
At 0659, the commanding officer informed the Pentagon.
Then, oddly, inexplicably, at 0700, five minutes after they
had mysteriously disappeared, all communications with the
aircraft returned at the precise same second.
###
Fort Collins, Colorado
Tuesday, May 6
As the sun rose over the vast prairie to the east, the rustic
Foothills Campus of Colorado State University glowed with
golden light. Here in a state-of-the-art laboratory in a nondescript
building, scientist Jonathan (“Jon”) Smith, M.D.,
peered into a binocular microscope and gently moved a finely
drawn glass needle into position. He placed an imperceptible
drop of fluid onto a flat disc so small that it was no larger
than the head of a pin. Under the high-resolution microscope,
the plate bore a striking—and seemingly impossible—resemblance
to a circuit board.
Smith made an adjustment, bringing the image more clearly
into focus. “Good,” he muttered and smiled. “There’s
hope.”
An expert in virology and molecular biology, Smith was also
an army medical officer—in fact, a lieutenant colonel—temporarily
stationed here amid the towering pines and rolling foothills
of Colorado at this Centers for Disease Control (CDC) facility.
On unofficial loan from the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute
for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), his assignment was to
continue basic research into evolving viruses.
Except that viruses had nothing to do with the delicate work
he was watching through the microscope this dawn. USAMRIID
was the army’s foremost military medical research facility,
while the CDC was its highly touted civilian counterpart.
Usually they were vigorous rivals. But not here, not now,
and the work being done in this laboratory had only a peripheral
connection to medicine.
Lt. Col. Jon Smith was part of a little-known CDC-USAMRIID
research team in a world-wide race to create the world’s
first molecular—or DNA—computer, therefore forging
an unprecedented bond between life science and computational
science. The concept intrigued the scientist in Smith and
challenged his expertise in the field of microbiology. In
fact, what had brought him into his lab at this ungodly early
hour was what he hoped would turn out to be a breakthrough
in the molecular circuits based on special organic polymers
that he and the other researchers had been working night and
day to create.
If successful, their brand-new DNA circuits could be reconfigured
many times, taking the joint team one step closer to rendering
silicon, the key ingredient in the wiring of current computer
circuit boards, obsolete. Which was just as well. The computer
industry was near the limits of silicon technology anyway,
while biological compounds offered a logical—although
difficult—next step. When DNA computers could be made
workable, they would be vastly more powerful than the general
public could conceive, which was where the army’s, and
USAMRIID’s, interests came in.
Smith was fascinated by the research, and as soon as he had
heard rumors of the secret joint CDC-USAMRIID project, he
had arranged to be invited aboard, eagerly throwing himself
into this technological competition where the future might
be only an atom away.
“Hey, Jon.” Larry Schulenberg, another of the
project’s top cell biologists, rolled into the empty
laboratory in his wheel chair. “Did you hear about the
Pasteur?”
Smith looked up from his microscope. “Hell, I didn’t
even hear you open the door.” Then he noticed Larry’s
somber face. “The Pasteur,” he repeated. “Why?
What’s happened?” Like USAMRIID and the CDC, the
Pasteur Institute was a world-class research complex.
In his fifties, Schulenberg was a tan, energetic man with
a shaved head, one small diamond earring, and shoulders that
were thickly muscled from years of using crutches. His voice
was grim. “Some kind of explosion. It’s bad. People
were killed.” He peeled a sheet from the stack of printouts
on his lap.
Jon grabbed the paper. “My God. How did it happen?
A lab accident?”
“The French police don’t think so. Maybe a bomb.
They’re checking out former employees.” Larry
wheeled his chair around and headed back to the door. “Figured
you’d want to know. Jim Thrane at Porton Down emailed
me, so I downloaded the story. I’ve got to go see who
else is here. Everyone will want to know.”
“Thanks.” As the door closed, Smith read quickly.
Then, his stomach sinking, he reread. . .
Labs at Pasteur Institute Destroyed
Paris—A massive explosion killed at least 12 people
and shattered a three-story building housing offices and laboratories
at the venerable Pasteur Institute at 10:52 p.m. here last
night. Four survivors in critical condition were found. The
search continues in the rubble for other victims.
Fire investigators say they have found evidence of explosives.
No person or group has claimed responsi-bility. The probe
is continuing, including checking into recently released employees.
The identified survivors include Martin Zellerbach, Ph.D.,
a computer scientist from the United States, who suffered
head injuries. . . .
Smith’s heart seemed to stop. Martin Zellerbach, Ph.D.,
a computer scientist from the United States, who suffered
head injuries. Marty? His old friend’s face flashed
into Jon’s mind as he gripped the printout. The crooked
smile, the intense green eyes that could twinkle one moment
and skitter off, lost in thought or perhaps outer space, the
next. A small, rotund man who walked awkwardly, as if he had
never really learned how to move his legs, Marty had Asperger’s
Syndrome, a rare disorder at the less severe end of the autism
spectrum. His symptoms included consuming obsessions, high
intelligence, crippling lack of social and communications
skills, and an outstanding talent in one particular area—
mathematics and electronics. He was, in fact, a computer genius.
A worried ache settled in Smith’s throat. Head injuries.
How badly was Marty hurt? The news story did not say. Smith
pulled out his cell phone, which had special scrambler capabilities,
and dialed Washington.
He and Marty had grown up together in Iowa, where he had
protected Marty from the taunts of fellow students and even
a few teachers who had a hard time believing anyone so smart
was not being intentionally rude and a troublemaker. But Marty’s
Asperger’s was undiagnosed until he was older, when
at last he was given the medication that helped him function
with both feet firmly attached to the planet. Still, Marty
hated taking meds and had designed his life so he could avoid
them as often as possible. Which meant he did not leave his
cozy Washington, D.C., bungalow for years at a time. There
he was safe with the cutting-edge computers and the software
he was always designing, and his mind and creativity could
soar, unfettered. Businessmen, academicians, and scientists
from around the globe went there to consult him, but never
in person, only electronically.
So what was the shy computer wizard doing in Paris?
The last time Marty consented to leave was eighteen months
ago, and it was far from gentle persuasion that convinced
him. It was a hail of bullets and the beginning of the near
catastrophe of the Hades virus that had caused the death of
Smith’s fiancée, Sophia Russell.
The phone at Smith’s ear began to ring in distant Washington,
D.C., and at the same time he heard what sounded like a cell
phone ringing just outside his laboratory door. He had an
eerie sense. . . .
“Hello?” It was the voice of Nathaniel Frederick
(“Fred”) Klein.
Smith turned abruptly and stared at his door. “Come
in, Fred.”
The chief of the extremely secret Covert-One intelligence
and counterintelligence troubleshooting organization stepped
into the laboratory, quiet as a ghost, still holding his cell
phone. “I should’ve guessed you would’ve
heard and call me.” He turned off his phone.
“About Mart? Yes, I just read about the Pasteur. What
do you know, and what are you doing here?”
Without answering, Klein marched past the gleaming test tubes
and equipment that occupied the line of lab benches, which
soon would be occupied by other CDC-USAMRIID researchers and
assistants. He stopped at Smith’s bench, lifted his
left hip, and sat on the edge of the stone top, arms crossed,
face grim. Around six feet tall, he was dressed as usual in
one of his rumpled suits, this one brown. His skin was pale;
it rarely saw the sun for any length of time. The great outdoors
was not where Fred Klein operated. With his receding hairline,
wire-rimmed glasses, and high, intelligent forehead, he could
be anything from book publisher to counterfeiter.
He contemplated Smith, and his voice was compassionate as
he said, “Your friend’s alive, but he’s
in a coma. I won’t lie to you, Colonel. The doctors
are worried.”
For Smith, the dark pain of Sophia’s death could still
weigh heavily on him, and Marty’s injury was bringing
it all back. But Sophia was gone, and what mattered now was
Marty.
“What the hell was he doing at the Pasteur?”
Klein took his pipe from his pocket and brought out his tobacco
pouch. “Yes, we wondered about that, too.”
Smith started to speak again . . . then hesitated. Invisible
to the public and to any part of the government except the
White House, Covert-One worked totally outside the official
military-intelligence bureaucracy and far from the scrutiny
of congress. Its shadowy chief never appeared unless something
earth-shaking had happened or might happen. Covert-One had
no formal organization or bureaucracy, no real headquarters,
and no official operatives. Instead, it was loosely composed
of professional experts in many fields, all with clandestine
experience, most with military backgrounds, and all essentially
unencumbered—without family, home ties, or obligations,
either temporary or permanent.
When called upon, Smith was one of those elite operatives,
and now he knew why Klein was here in Fort Collins.
“It’s not Marty you’ve come about,”
he decided. “It’s the Pasteur. Something’s
going on. What?”
”Let’s take a walk outside.” Klein pushed
his glasses up onto his forehead and tamped tobacco into his
pipe.
“You can’t light that here,” Smith told
him. “DNA can be contaminated by airborne particles.”
Klein sighed. “Just one more reason to go outdoors.”
Fred Klein—and Covert-One—trusted no one and
nothing, took nothing for granted. Even a laboratory that
officially did not exist could be bugged, which, Smith knew,
was the real reason Klein wanted to leave. He followed the
intelligence master out into the hall and locked his door.
Side-by-side, they made their way downstairs, past dark labs
and offices that showed only occasional light. The building
was silent except for the breathy hum of the giant ventilation
system.
Outside, the dawn sunlight slanted low against the fir trees,
illuminating them on the east with shimmering light while
on the west they remained tarry black, in shadows. High above
the campus to the west towered the Rocky Mountains, their
rough peaks glowing. The valleys that creased the slopes were
purple with night’s lingering darkness. The aromatic
scent of pine filled the air.
Klein walked a dozen steps from the building and stopped
to fire up his pipe. He puffed and tamped until clouds of
smoke half hid his face. He waved some of the smoke away.
“Let’s walk.” As they headed toward the
road, Klein said, “Talk to me about your work here.
How’s it going? Are you close to creating a molecular
computer?”
“I wish. The research is going well, but it’s
slow. Complex.”
Governments around the world wanted to be the first to have
a working DNA computer, because it would be able to break
any code or encryption in a matter of seconds. A terrifying
prospect, especially where defense was concerned. All of America’s
missiles, secret systems at NSA, the NRO’s spy satellites,
the entire ability of the navy to operate, all defense plans
. . . anything and everything that relied on electronics would
be at the mercy of the first molecular computer. Even the
largest silicon supercomputer would not be able to stop it.
“How soon before the planet sees an operational one?”
Klein wanted to know.
“Several years,” Smith said without hesitation,
“maybe more.”
“Who’s the closest?”
“Practical and operational? No one I’ve heard
of.”
Klein smoked, tamped down his burning tobacco again. “If
I said someone had already done it, who’d you guess?”
Precursor prototypes had been built, coming closer to practicality
each year, but an actual, complete success? That was at least
five years away. Unless . . . Takeda? Chambord?
Then Smith knew. Since Klein was here, the clue was the Pasteur.
“Émile Chambord. Are you saying Chambord is years
ahead of the rest of us? Even ahead of Takeda in Tokyo?”
“Chambord probably died in the explosion.” Klein
puffed on his pipe, his expression worried. “His lab
was completely destroyed. Nothing left but shattered bricks,
singed wood, and broken glass. They’ve checked his home,
his daughter. Looked everywhere. His car was in the Pasteur
parking lot, but they can’t find him. There’s
talk.”
“Talk? There’s always talk.”
“This is different. It comes from top French military
circles, from colleagues, from his superiors.”
“If Chambord were that near, there’d be more
than talk. Someone knew.”
“Not necessarily. The military checked in with him
regularly, but he claimed he was no farther along than anyone
else. As for the Pasteur itself, a senior researcher of Chambord’s
stature and tenure doesn’t have to report to anyone.”
Smith nodded. This anachronism was true at the renowned institute.
“What about his notes? Records? Reports?”
“Nothing from the last year. Zero.”
“No records?” Smith’s voice rose. “There
have to be. They’re probably in the Pasteur’s
databank. Don’t tell me the entire computer system was
destroyed.”
“No, the mainframe’s fine. It’s located
in a bomb-proof room, but he entered no data in it for more
than a year.”
Smith scowled. “He was keeping long-hand records?”
“If he kept any at all.”
“He had to keep records. You can’t do basic research
without complete data. Lab notes, progress sheets. Your records
have to be scrupulous, or your work can’t be verified
or reproduced. Every blind alley, every mistake, every backtrack
has to be chronicled. Damn it, if he wasn’t saving his
data in the computer, he had to be keeping it longhand. That’s
certain.”
“Maybe it is, Jon, but so far neither the Pasteur nor
the French authorities have found any records at all, and
believe me, they’ve been looking. Hard.”
Smith thought. Longhand? Why? It could be that Chambord had
gotten protective once he realized he was close to success.
“You figure he knew or suspected he was being watched
by someone inside the institute?”
“The French, and everyone else, don’t know what
to think,” Klein said.
“He was working alone?”
“He had a low-level lab assistant who’s on vacation.
The French police are searching for him.” Klein stared
toward the east where the sun was higher now, a giant disc
above the prairie. “And we think Dr. Zellerbach was
working with him, too.”
“You think?”
“Whatever Dr. Zellerbach was doing appears to have
been completely unofficial, almost secret. He’s listed
only as a ‘general observer’ with Pasteur security.
After the bombing, the police immediately went to his hotel
room but found nothing useful. He lived out of one suitcase,
and he made no friends either there or at the Pasteur. The
police were surprised by how few people actually recalled
him.”
Smith nodded. “That’s Marty.” His reclusive
old friend would have insisted on remaining as anonymous as
possible. At the same time, a molecular computer that was
near fruition was one of the few projects that might have
seduced him from his determined isolation in Washington. “When
he regains consciousness, he’ll tell you what Chambord’s
progress was.”
“If he wakes up. Even then, it could be too late.”
Jon felt a sudden anger. “He will come out of the coma.”
“All right, Colonel. But when?” Klein took the
pipe from his mouth and glared. “We’ve just had
a nasty wake-up call that you need to know about. At 8:55
Washington time last night, Diego Garcia Island lost all communications
with its aircraft. Every effort to revive them, or trace the
source of the shutdown, failed. Then precisely five minutes
later, communications were restored. There were no system
malfunctions, no weather problems, no human error. Conclusion
was it had to be the work of a computer hacker, but no footprints
were found, and every expert short of heaven says no existing
computer could’ve pulled it off without leaving a trace.”
“Was there damage?”
“To the systems, no. To our worry quotient, one hell
of a lot.”
“How does the timing compare to when the Pasteur was
bombed?
Klein smiled grimly. “A couple of hours later.”
“Could be a test of Chambord’s prototype, if
he had one. If someone stole it.”
“No kidding. The way it stands, Chambord’s lab
is gone. He’s dead or missing. And his work is destroyed
. . . or missing.”
Jon nodded. “You’re thinking the bomb was planted
to hide his murder and the theft of his records and prototype.”
“An operational DNA computer in the wrong hands is
not a pretty picture.”
“I was already planning to go to Paris, because of
Marty.”
“I thought so. It’s a good cover. Besides, you’ll
have a better chance of recognizing a molecular computer than
anyone else in Covert-One.” Klein raised his anxious
gaze to stare out across the enormous prairie sky as if he
could see ICBMs raining down. “You’ve got to find
out whether Chambord’s notes, reports, and data were
destroyed, or whether they were stolen. Whether there really
is a functional prototype out there somewhere. We’ll
work the usual way. I’ll be your only contact. Night
or day. Whatever you need from any part of the government
or military on both sides of the pond, ask. But you must keep
a lid on it, understand? We don’t want any panic. Worse,
we don’t want an eager Second or Third World country
cutting a unilateral deal with the bombers.”
“Right.” Half the nonadvanced nations had little
love for the United States. Neither did the various terrorists
who increasingly targeted America and Americans. “When
do I leave?”
“Now,” Klein said. “I’ll have other
Covert-One experts on it, of course. They’ll be following
other leads, but you’ll be the main thrust. The CIA
and FBI have sent people out, too. And as for Zellerbach,
remember I’m as concerned as you. We all hope he regains
consciousness quickly. But there may be damn little time,
and many, many other lives are at stake.
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