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.