David Dun - Unacceptable Risk

Baptiste nodded.

"Now get out of my sight."

The soldiers escorted Baptiste down two flights of stairs and past agonized graffiti on bare concrete walls into the bone-dry, gritty hell of the lower level. It smelled of blood and excrement even before they reached the small, miser able cells. Alfawd was a spindly little man with his shirt off; he was covered in caked-on blood. Unfortunately for him, he had been convicted of corrupting Turkish officials in high places. Some of them would be tried and thrown in jail forever, while the luckier ones would skate. The Turks were angry at the instruments of their own corruption, and one of these instruments was chained naked to a chair and muttering about the afterlife.

In the presence of two Turkish "investigators" and an Arabic translator, Baptiste was allowed to ask anything he wanted. The electrodes were still connected to the man's burned testicles.

"You know a man who calls himself Gaudet, Girard, Jean Valjean, and a host of other names, and who probably has French citizenship under some other name, and who is ru mored to live in Quatram, and who was rumored to have lived in French Polynesia? You know this man?" Baptiste spoke in French and the translator restated it in Arabic.

Then the translator came back with the answer: "I have met with others and a man like that. I don't know if it is the same man."

"He has some science that works magic on people's brains. You know about that?"

"I have heard."

"What did you hear?"

"Not much. That he has a clever plan called Cordyceps. I have told this all before. I don't know much."

One of the guards flipped a switch. The man bounced off the chair, arching his back and screaming in Turkish, saliva foaming at the mouth. He urinated a trickle onto the seat. As a conductor it exacerbated his misery until the guard stopped the flow of electricity.

Baptiste flinched but only slightly. Alfawd choked and moaned incoherently.

"You need to tell it again, but with more details. Last time you left things out," the Turkish interrogator said. "We will need to wait a couple minutes. He will be confused now and incoherent." They all sat as if they were waiting for a bus. For the Turk it was all in a day's work.

"Tell us now about Gaudet."

"This man you are calling Gaudet had a beard, wore a hat and sunglasses even though it was indoors. There was no way at all to tell what he looked like."

Alfawd stopped for the translator and then the translator proceeded. "His body seemed normal, maybe five feet ten, but he was always sitting in my presence. He did not move. You could not tell his age, he was in the shadows, he spoke very quietly, and you had to strain to hear."

"What is Cordyceps?"

"Some sort of disease or fungus. It kills bugs by eating th em inside out. It is what he is going to do to the United States."

"How?"

"I don't know. That was for later. But the stock markets of the world would collapse. Prices would drop. He could not kill the United States forever, but for a while they would be hurt. Crippled."

"How were you and Gaudet to make your money?"

"Precise details, I don't know, but we all know that you can make money if you can predict ahead of time what the world financial markets will do. The exact execution of it, we were not yet told."

"When is this to happen?"

"I don't know. We were to hear next week. I invested."

"How much?"

"Three million. The minimum. Others invested more."

"What exactly did you invest in?"

"It is like… what do the Americans call it… I cannot explain it. I am a little guy. I go with Habib and he under stands. You put the money somehow in things that do good when America does like the beetle."

"Habib got you into this? You invest in what Habib in vests in?"

"Yes. That is right."

"Who is Habib?"

The man rambled about a rich Saudi family that didn't in terest Baptiste.

"Who else invested?"

"Other Saudis mostly, people with big money, one Lebanese man, a couple of Turkish men, and an American."

"American?"

"Yes. He was of Iranian descent but born in America with many connections in the Middle East. He seemed very involved and the plan had something to do with computers, and of that I am certain. And then it had to do with this brain science. This American had lost a lot of money in the stock market and was hungry to make it back."

"Why were you meeting? Why get everybody together?"

"Some of the others, the Saudis and the American, they knew more than I. They were not believing so much about the science. They wanted proof. And so Gaudet, Girard, whatever his name is… told them he'd give them proof. There was a man who worked for governments. He is like a man hunter, maybe a terrorist hunter, and some of these in vestors, they are afraid of him. So they say to use this sci ence of the brain to kill him. And Gaudet tried this but did not succeed. So then he says he will use it on a company in stead. A pharmacy company. Make the executives start killing each other. He promises this."

"Just to prove to these investors that the technology would work?"

"Yes. And I believe it will."

The questions continued for a half hour, but Baptiste learned nothing more of substance, just rumors of Gaudet's exploits, many of which he had already heard, none of which were confirmable, and none of which really mattered. Alfawd, as might be expected, knew nothing of the details of the brain science. Baptiste was about to leave when he thought of another question.

"Did they talk about any other investment opportunities?"

"No. But the American told me privately that there was."

"Why did he do that?"

"He needed loans and I was going to lend him some money. He was desperate to convince me, but still he would not tell me details."

"What about these other investment opportunities?"

"He said it was in medicine. He said Gaudet was trying to get hold of something that would be like making gold. It wasn't this brain technology, not exactly. Maybe related, though. It had a name. Chaperone. A very valuable item."

Barely able to contain his excitement, Baptiste ques tioned him further, but Alfawd revealed nothing more, even when electrocuted until his heart stopped.

Baptiste left in a hurry. No reason to test the hospitality of the Turks. The same words kept moving through his mind, unbidden: Markets. Investment opportunities. And last but not least: Retirement.

Baptiste walked from his office down Gambetta, turned up Rue de Tourelles, until he was satisfied that he had no ob vious tail; then he hopped a cab to the Saint Jean-Baptiste de Belleville Cathedral, where he took a stroll through the main sanctuary and then various hallways, then out a side door to a nearby restaurant. He made his way inside the eating es tablishment to a familiar public phone with good privacy ex cept for people passing to the rest room, and these did not remain long enough to overhear a conversation.

"Are the Americans getting any closer?" he asked Figgy without preliminaries.

"Of course. They have Bowden. What I don't know yet is whether Sam has gotten with him in narrowing down the various samples he sent to Northern Lights."

"Will Sam share this with you?"

"I think he will, and I don't think he'd lie to me. But I'm pretty much at an impasse with Sam until he talks with Benoit Moreau. I told you this."

"That won't work. I want Chaperone in my hands before anyone talks with Benoit," Baptiste emphasized.

"What happened with Alfawd?"

"Nothing. He knew that Gaudet wanted Chaperone and that Gaudet figured he could make money with it."

"The Americans aren't going to trust me after this Alfawd business. Sam will be furious," Figgy speculated.

"Make it sound like an innocent mistake. We were closer to Turkey, so you decided to send us. He was in South America."