Avril Rocard was a Parisian detective, assigned to the French government as a counterfeit specialist. But her presence here, playing a correspondent for Le Mond, Le Mond, was not at the request of the French government or of the Paris Prefecture of Police. She was here because of Cadoux. For a decade they had been lovers, and she was the one person in France he could trust as he could trust himself. was not at the request of the French government or of the Paris Prefecture of Police. She was here because of Cadoux. For a decade they had been lovers, and she was the one person in France he could trust as he could trust himself.

Walking off, she looked at the list. Most of the identified passengers had been French nationals. There were, however, two Germans, a Swiss, a South African, two Irish and an Australian. No Americans.

Leaving the scene, she went to her car, unlocked the door and got in. Picking up the cellular phone, she dialed a number in Paris and waited while it rang through to Lyon.

"Oui?" Cadoux's voice was clear. Cadoux's voice was clear.

"So far nothing. No Americans at all on the list."

"What's it look like?"

"It looks like hell. What should I do?"

"Has anyone questioned your credentials?"

"No."

"Then stay there until all the victims have been accounted for-"

Avril Rocard clicked off the phone and slowly set the receiver back in its cradle. She was thirty-three years old. By now she should have had a home and a baby. She should have at least had a husband. What the hell was she doing this for?

77.

IT W WAS eight in the morning and Benny Grossman had just come home from work. He'd met Matt and David, his teenage sons, just as they were leaving for school. A quick "Hi, Dad, 'bye, Dad" and they were gone. And now his wife, Estelle, was leaving for her stylist's job at a Queens hair salon. eight in the morning and Benny Grossman had just come home from work. He'd met Matt and David, his teenage sons, just as they were leaving for school. A quick "Hi, Dad, 'bye, Dad" and they were gone. And now his wife, Estelle, was leaving for her stylist's job at a Queens hair salon.

"Holy shit," she heard Benny say from the bedroom. He was in his jockey shorts, a beer in one hand and a sandwich in the other, standing in front of the television. He'd been in the precinct Records & Information Division all night working the phones and computers and enlisting the aid of some very experienced computer hackers to get into private databases, trying to fill McVey's request on the people killed in 1966.

"What's the matter?" Estelle said, coming into the room. "What's the holy shit about?"

"Shhh!" he said.

Estelle turned to see what he was looking at. CNN coverage of a train derailment outside Paris.

"That's terrible," she said, watching as firemen struggled to carry a blood-covered woman up an embankment on a stretcher. "But what's it got you in such an uproar about?"

"McVey's in Paris," he said, his eyes on the set.

"McVey's in Paris," Estelle said flatly. "So are a million other people. I wish we we were in Paris." were in Paris."

Abruptly he turned to her. "Estelle, go to work, huh?"

"You know somethin' I don't?"

"Honey, Estelle. Go to work. Please-"

Estelle Grossman stared at her husband. When he talked like that, it was cop talk that told her it was none of her business.

"Get some sleep."

"Yeah."

Estelle watched him for a minute, shook her head, then left. Sometimes she thought her husband cared for his friends and family too much. If they asked, he'd do anything, no matter how much it knocked him out. But when he got tired, as he was now, his imagination worked as much overtime as he did.

"Commander Noble, this is Benny Grossman, NYPD."

Benny was still in his underwear, his notes spread out over the kitchen table. He'd called Noble because McVey had told him to, if he hadn't called. And he had a real, almost psychic, sense that McVey wasn't going to be calling, not today anyway.

In ten minutes he'd laid out what he'd uncovered: -Alexander Thompson was an advanced computer programmer who had retired to Sheridan, Wyoming, from New York in 1962 for health reasons. While there, he was approached by a writer doing research for a science-fiction movie on computers to be made by a Hollywood studio. The writer's name was Harry Simpson, the studio was American Pictures. Alexander Thompson was given twenty-five thousand dollars and asked to design a program that would instruct a computer to operate a machine that would hold and accurately guide a scalpel during surgery, in effect replacing the surgeon. It was all theory, science fiction, futurism, of course. It just had to be something that would actually work, even on a primitive level. In January 1966, Thompson delivered his program. Three days later he was found shot to death on a country road. Investigators found there was no Harry Simpson in Hollywood, nor was there a company called American Pictures. Nor was there any trace of Alexander Thompson's computer program.

-David Brady designed precision tools for a small firm in Glendale, California. In 1964, controlling interest in the firm was bought by Alama Steel, Ltd. of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Brady was put to work to design a mechanical arm that could be electronically driven, that would have the same range of motion as a human wrist and be capable of holding and controlling a scalpel with extreme precision during surgery. He had completed his working drawings and turned them in for review just forty-eight hours before he was found in the family swimming pool. Drowning was ruled out. Brady had an ice pick in his heart. Two weeks later, Alama Steel went out of business and the company closed down. Brady's drawings were never found. As far as Benny had been able to ascertain, Alama Steel never existed. Paycheck stubs were traced back to a company called Wentworth Products Ltd. of Ontario, Canada. Wentworth Products went out of business the same week Alama Steel did.

-Mary Rizzo York, Ph.D., was a physicist working for Standard Technologies, of Perth Amboy, New Jersey, a firm specializing in low-temperature science and under contract to T.L.T. International, of Manhattan, a company involved in the shipping of frozen meat from Australia and New Zealand to Britain and France. At some time during the summer of 1965, T.L.T. moved to diversify, and Mary York was asked to develop a working program that would allow shipment of liquefied natural gas in refrigerated supertankers. The idea was that cold liquefies gas, and since natural gas could not be sent across oceans by pipeline, it could be liquefied and sent by ship. To do that, Mary York began experiments with extreme cold, working first with liquid nitrogen, a gas that liquefies at minus 196 degrees centigrade or, approximately, minus 385 degrees Fahrenheit. After that she experimented with liquid hydrogen and later with liquefying helium, the last gas to liquefy as the temperature is reduced and becomes liquid at minus 269 degrees centigrade or minus 516 degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, liquid helium could be used to reduce other materials to the same temperature. Mary York was six months pregnant and working late in her lab when she vanished on February 16,1966. Her lab had then been set on fire. Four days later, her strangled body washed ashore under the Steel Pier in Atlantic City. And whatever notes, formulas or plans she'd been working on either burned in the fire or were taken by whoever had killed her. Two months later, T.L.T. International went bankrupt after the company president committed suicide.

"Commander, two more things McVey wanted to know," Benny said. "Microtab Company in Waltham, Massachusetts. It went belly up in May of the same year. The second thing he wanted to know was-"

Ian Noble had recorded Benny Grossman's entire conversation. When they were through, he'd had a transcript made for his private files and took the tape and tape player to Lebrun's heavily guarded room at Westminster Hospital.

Closing the door, he sat down next to the bed and turned on the recorder. For the next fifteen minutes Lebrun, oxygen tubes still in his nose, listened in silence. Finally they heard Benny Grossman's New York accent finish- "The second thing he wanted to know was what we had on a guy named Erwin Scholl who, in 1966, owned a big estate in Westhampton Beach on Long Island.

"Erwin Scholl still still owns his estate there. Also one in Palm Beach and one in Palm Springs. He keeps a low profile but he's a real heavy hitter in the publishing business and is a mucho-bucks major art collector. He also plays golf with Bob Hope, Gerry Ford and once in a while with the president himself. Tell McVey he's got the wrong guy, this Scholl. He's very big. Very. An untouchable. And owns his estate there. Also one in Palm Beach and one in Palm Springs. He keeps a low profile but he's a real heavy hitter in the publishing business and is a mucho-bucks major art collector. He also plays golf with Bob Hope, Gerry Ford and once in a while with the president himself. Tell McVey he's got the wrong guy, this Scholl. He's very big. Very. An untouchable. And that, that, by the way, came from McVey's pal, Fred Hanley, with the FBI in L.A." by the way, came from McVey's pal, Fred Hanley, with the FBI in L.A."

With that Noble shut down the machine. Benny had ended with a note of worry, bordering on deep concern for McVey, and Noble hadn't wanted Lebrun to hear it. As yet he hadn't been told of the train incident. He'd taken the news of his brother's death badly; there was no need for more.

"Ian," Lebrun whispered. "I know about the train. I might have been shot but I am not yet dead. I spoke with Cadoux myself, not twenty minutes ago."

"Playing the tough cop, are you?" Noble smiled. "Well, here's something you don't know. McVey shot the gunman who killed Merriman and tried to kill Osborn and the girl, Vera Monneray. He sent me the dead man's thumbprint. We ran it and came up blank. He was clean, no record. No I.D.

"For obvious reasons I couldn't use the services of Interpol for more extensive help. So I called on Military Intelligence, who kindly provided me with the following-" Noble took out a small notebook and flipped through the pages until he had what he wanted.

"Our shooter's name was Bernhard Oven. Address unknown. They did, however, manage to find an old telephone number: 0372-885-7373. Appropriately, it's the number of a butcher shop."

"Zero three seven two was the area code for East Berlin before unification," Lebrun said.

"Correct. And our friend, Bernhard Oven, was, up until it disbanded, a ranking member of the Stasi."

Lebrun put a hand to the tubes running in and out of his throat and whispered, hoarsely, "What in God's name are the East German secret police doing in France? Especially when they no longer exist."

"I hope and pray McVey will soon be around to tell us," Noble said soberly.

78.

BY N NIGHT, the mangled wreckage of the Paris-Meaux train was even more obscene than by day. Huge worklights illuminated the area as two giant cranes operating from flat cars on the tracks above struggled to remove the twisted, Compressed cars from the side of the embankment.

Late in the afternoon a light mist had begun to fall, and the damp chill woke Osborn from where he slept in the nearby growth of trees. Sitting up, he'd taken his pulse and found it normal. His muscles ached and his right shoulder was badly bruised but otherwise he was in surprisingly good condition. Getting to his feet, he moved through the trees to the edge of the thicket where he could watch the rescue operation and still remain hidden. There was no way to know if McVey had been found, dead or alive, and he dared not go out to inquire for risk of being discovered himself. All he could do was stay concealed and watch, hoping to see or overhear something. It was a terrible, helpless, feeling, but there was nothing else for him to do.

Hunkering down in the sodden leaves, he pulled his jacket around him and for the first time in a long time let his thoughts go to Vera. He let his mind drift back to when they first met in Geneva. And to her smile and the color of her hair and the absolute magic in her eyes when she looked at him. And in that she became everything that love was, or could be.

By nightfall Osborn had heard enough from passing rescue workers and national guardsmen to understand that it had indeed been a bomb that destroyed the train, and he became more certain than ever that he and McVey had been the targets. He. was debating whether or not to go to the National Guard commander and reveal himself in hopes of finding McVey when a fireman working nearby for some reason removed his hat and coat, put them on a temporary police barricade and walked off. It was an invitation he couldn't let pass. Quickly he stepped out and snatched them up.

Putting the jacket on, he pulled the hat low and moved off through the wreckage, confident he looked official enough to keep from being challenged. Near a tent set up as a media command post, he waded past several reporters and a television crew and found a casualty list. Quickly scanning it, he found only one identified American, a teenage boy from Nebraska. That McVey wasn't on it meant he'd either walked away, as Osborn had, or was still buried under the hideous sculpture of tangled steel. Looking up, he saw a tall, slim, attractive woman with a press pass around her neck. She obviously had been staring and now she started toward him. Picking up a fire ax, he slung it over his shoulder and walked back into the work area. He looked back once to see if she was following him, but she wasn't. Setting the ax aside, he moved off into the darkness.

In the distance, he could see the lights of the town of Meaux. Population some forty-odd thousand, he remembered seeing written somewhere. Now and then a plane would take off or land from the small airport nearby. Which was where he would go at first light. He had no idea who McVey had called in London. And with no passport and little money, the best he could do was make his way to the airfield and hope the Cessna would return according to the original plan.

Abruptly, there was a loud shriek and tearing of steel as one of the cranes pulled a passenger car free of the wreckage, lifted it high in the air and swing it back over the top of the embankment and out of sight. A moment later a second crane swung into place, and workers climbed up to secure cables to the next car to be removed. Disheartened, Osborn turned away and went back to the dark of the trees at the top of the hill. Squatting down, he looked off.

How long had he known McVey? Five days, six at most since he first encountered him outside his hotel room in Paris. The memories flooded back. He'd been scared to death, with no idea what the detective was after or why he was even talking to him, but he'd been determined not to show it. Calmly fended off his questions, even lied about the mud on his shoes, all the while praying McVey wouldn't ask him to empty his pockets and then ask him to explain about the succinylcholine and the syringes. How could either one of them have known how quickly the web would spin, sending them both spiraling headlong into a complex, bloody weave of conspiracy and gunfire that had so abruptly ended here in this awful maze of twisted steel and horror. He wanted to believe that the night would pass without incident and that tomorrow morning he would find McVey on the Meaux airport tarmac waving him toward the waiting Cessna that would fly them to safety. But that was a wish, a dream, and he knew it. As time passed, a truer reality set in: in situations of mass destruction, the longer a person went unfound, the less the chances he would be discovered alive. McVey was out there, all right, maybe even within an arm's length of where he stood now, and eventually he would be found. All he could hope was that the end had come quickly and mercifully.

And with that hope came a sense of finality, as if McVey had already been found and pronounced dead. Someone he'd only just begun to know and would have wished to know better. The same way a boy, as he grows, might come to know his father. Suddenly Osborn realized there were tears in his eyes, and he wondered why that thought had come to him now. McVey as his father. It was a whimsical, curious thought that just hung there. And the longer it did, the more a feeling of enormous loss began to overtake him.

It was then, while he was trying to break the spell, he realized he'd been staring off for some time, looking down the hill, away from the rescue activity, his attention focused on something in a cluster of trees near the bottom of the embankment. In daylight, because of the thick foliage and the flat light of an overcast sky, it would have been easily missed. It was only now, in darkness, that the spill from the worklights above created the angular shadow that defined it.

Quickly, Osborn started down the steep of the hill. Slipping and sliding on the gravel, grabbing onto small trees for; support, moving from one to the other, he worked his way toward it.

Reaching bottom, he saw the thing was a piece of railroad car, a section of passenger coach that had somehow been ripped intact from the train. It was sitting backward in the brush, the inner part facing out and directly up the hill. Moving closer, he saw it was a complete compartment and the door to it was jammed closed, creased by a massive dent. Then he saw what it was. The car's lavatory.

"Oh no!" he said out loud. But instead of horror in his voice, there was hilarity.

"Not possible." Moving closer, he started to laugh. "McVey?" he called as he reached it. "McVey, you in there?"

For a moment there was no reply. Then- "-Osborn?" came the muffled, uncertain reply from within.

Fear. Relief. Absurdity. Whatever it was, the pin had been stuck in the balloon and Osborn burst into laughter. Roaring, he leaned against the compartment, banging on it with the flat of his hands, then pounding his thighs with his fists, wiping the tears from his cheeks.

"Osborn! What the hell are you doing? Open the damn door!"

"You all right?" Osborn yelled back.

"Just get me the hell out of here!"

As quickly as the laughter came, it vanished. Still in his fireman's jacket, Osborn rushed back up the hill. Moving purposefully past French troops patrolling with submachine guns, he went to the main salvage area. Under the glare of worklights, he found a short-handled iron crow-bar. Slipping it under his jacket, he walked back the way he had come. At the top of the hill, he stopped and looked around. Certain no one was watching, he stepped over the side and went back down.

Five minutes later there was a loud snap and a creak of steel as the staved-in door popped off its hinges and McVey stepped out into fresh air. His hair and clothes were disheveled, he smelled like hell and had an ugly welt over one eye the size of a baseball. But, other than a silvery five o'clock shadow, he was amazingly sound.

Osborn grinned. "You wouldn't be that guy Livingston?"

McVey started to say something, then, through the darkness, he saw the giant salvage cranes working what was left of the destruction backlit farther up the hill. He didn't move, just stared.

"Jesus Christ-" he said.

Finally his eyes found Osborn. Who they were, why they were here, meant nothing. They were alive while others were not. Reaching out, they embraced strongly, and for the longest moment clung there. It was more than a spontaneous gesture of relief and camaraderie. It was a spiritual sharing of something only those who have stood in death's shadow, and been spared, could understand.

79.

VON H HOLDEN sat alone near the back of the Art Deco bar in the Hotel Meaux sipping a Pernod and soda, listening to stories of the rail disaster from the noisy crowd of media types who'd spent the day covering it. The bar had become an end-of-the-day hangout for veteran reporters, and most were still connected via beeper or walkie-talkie to colleagues who'd remained on the scene. If anything new happened, they-and Von Holden-would know it in a millisecond. sat alone near the back of the Art Deco bar in the Hotel Meaux sipping a Pernod and soda, listening to stories of the rail disaster from the noisy crowd of media types who'd spent the day covering it. The bar had become an end-of-the-day hangout for veteran reporters, and most were still connected via beeper or walkie-talkie to colleagues who'd remained on the scene. If anything new happened, they-and Von Holden-would know it in a millisecond.

Von Holden looked at his watch and then at the clock over the bar. His LeCoultre analog watch had kept precision time with a cesium atomic clock in Berlin for five years. A cesium atomic clock has an accuracy rate of plus or minus one second every three thousand years. Von Holden's watch read 9:17. The clock over the bar was one minute and eight seconds slow. Across the room, a girl with short blond hair and an even shorter skirt sat smoking and drinking wine with two men who appeared to be in their mid-twenties. One was thin and wore heavy rimmed glasses and looked like a graduate student. The other had a sturdier build and wore expensive slacks and a maroon cashmere sweater, accented by a mop of long curly hair. The way he tilted back on the legs of his chair, talking and gesturing with both hands, stopping now to light a fresh cigarette and toss the match in the direction of the ashtray on the table, gave him the casually spoiled look of a wealthy playboy on holiday. The girl's name was Odette. She was twenty-two and the explosives expert who had set the charges along the track. The thin man in the glasses and the playboy were international terrorists. All three worked out of the Paris sector and were there awaiting Von Holden's direction should either Osborn or McVey be discovered alive.

Von Holden felt they were lucky to be there at all. It had taken the Paris sector several hours to locate McVey and Osborn. But shortly after 6:00 A.M., A.M., a EuroCity ticket seller had spotted them at the Gare de l'Est and Von Holden had been alerted that they had tickets for the 6:30 train to Meaux. He had briefly debated trying to kill them in the station, then decided against it. There was too little time to mount a proper attack. And even if there had been, there was no guarantee of success and they would risk an onrush of antiterrorist police. It was better to do it differently. a EuroCity ticket seller had spotted them at the Gare de l'Est and Von Holden had been alerted that they had tickets for the 6:30 train to Meaux. He had briefly debated trying to kill them in the station, then decided against it. There was too little time to mount a proper attack. And even if there had been, there was no guarantee of success and they would risk an onrush of antiterrorist police. It was better to do it differently.

At 6:20, ten minutes before the Paris-Meaux train left the Gare de l'Est, a lone motorcyclist rode out of Paris on Autoroute N3 to a rendezvous with Odette at a railroad grading two miles east of Meaux. He carried with him four packets of C4 plastic explosive.

Working together, they laid the explosive and set the charge just as the train reached the grading, then immediately disappeared into the countryside. Three minutes later, the full weight of the engine compressed the detonators, sending the entire train careening down the embankment at seventy miles an hour.

It might have been argued that they could have as easily moved one of the rails out of alignment, had the same effect, yet made the whole thing look like an accident.

Yes and no.

A train wreck, accidental or deliberate, did not ensure the death of those targeted. A moved rail could easily be overlooked in a preliminary investigation and a follow-up might or might not uncover it. A flagrant act of terrorism, however, could be laid to a hundred different causes. And a-bomb, later thrown into a hospital ward packed with survivors, would only serve to validate the act.

Glancing at his watch once again, Von Holden got up and left the room without so much as a glance at the threesome, then took the elevator to his room. Before leaving Paris, he'd secured enhanced photographs of the front-page newspaper photos of Osborn and McVey. By the time he reached Meaux, he'd studied them carefully and had a much stronger sense of whom he was dealing with.

Paul Osborn, he decided, was relatively harmless if it ever came to the point of dealing with him. They were about the same age and from his thin features, Osborn seamed to be in reasonable shape. But that ended the similarity. There was a look to a man who'd been trained in combat or even self-defense. Osborn had none of it. If anything, he looked "displaced."

McVey was different. That he was aging and maybe a little overweight meant nothing. Von Holden saw instantly what it was that had enabled him to kill Bernhard Oven. There was a sense about him ordinary men didn't have. What he had seen and done in his long career as a policeman was in his eyes, and Von Holden knew instinctively that once he got hold of you, figuratively or physically, he would never let you go. Spetsnaz training had taught him there was only one way to deal with a man like McVey. And that was to kill him the moment you saw him. If you didn't, you would regret it forever.

Entering his room, Von Holden locked the door behind him and sat down at a small table. Opening a briefcase, he took out a compact shortwave radio. Clicking it on, he punched in a code and waited. It would take eight seconds before he had a clear channel.

"Lugo," he signed on, identifying himself.

"Ecstasy," he said. Code name for the operation that had begun with Albert Merriman and was now focused on McVey and Osborn.

"E.B.D."-European Bloc Division-he followed. "Nichts."-Nothing.