The C-17 cargo jet that had left Buckley Air Force Base near Denver on Monday for a previously scheduled pole route to Munich carried a single passenger whose name appeared nowhere on its personnel roster or manifest. The big jet made an unscheduled stop in Paris in the dark at 0600 hours Tuesday, ostensibly to pick up a package that was needed in Munich. A U.S. Air Force staff car met the cargo jet, and a man in the uniform of a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel carried a sealed metal box, which was empty, on board. He stayed there. But when the aircraft flew off some fifteen minutes later, the nonexistent passenger was no longer aboard.
Not long afterward, the same staff car stopped a second time, now at the side entrance to a detached building at Charles de Gaulle International Airport just north of Paris. The vehicle's back door opened, and a tall man, also wearing the uniform of a U.S. Army lieutenant colonel, emerged. It was Jon Smith. Trim, athletic, somewhere in his early forties, he looked military through and through. He had a high-planed face, and his dark hair, a little longer than usual, was worn neatly smooth under his army cap. As he stood up, his navy blue eyes surveyed all around.
There was nothing particularly unusual about him as he finally walked to the building in the quiet hours before dawn, just another army officer, carrying an overnight bag and an IBM Thinkpad in a heavy-duty aluminum case. A half hour later, Smith emerged again, out of uniform. This time he was wearing the casual clothes he favored a tweed jacket, blue cotton shirt, tan cotton trousers, and a trench coat. He also wore a hidden canvas holster under his sports jacket, and in it was his 9mm Sig Sauer.
He walked briskly across the tarmac and moved with other passengers through de Gaulle customs, where, because of his U.S. Army identification, he was waved through without a search. A private limousine was waiting, back door open. Smith climbed in, refusing to let his limo driver handle either his suitcase or his laptop.
The city of Paris was known for its joie de vivre in all things, including driving. For instance, a horn was for communication: A long blast meant disgust get out of my way. A tap was a friendly warning. Several taps were a jaunty greeting, especially if they were rhythmic. And speed, deftness, and a devil-may-care attitude were necessary, particularly among the world atlas of drivers who manned the city's numerous taxi and limo fleets. Smith's driver was an American with a heavy foot, which was just fine with Smith. He wanted to get to the hospital to see Marty.
As the limo hurtled south on the
After filtering for that, he had gotten the sense that none was close to success. All commented on the sad death of Emile Chambord but without mentioning his project. It seemed to Smith that they were as uninformed as he had been.
The driver turned the limo off onto the avenue de la
The galleria was so cavernous more than two football fields in length that palm trees swayed in the internal breeze. The hospital was nearly brand-new, having opened just a couple of years ago amid official fanfare that it was the hospital of the future. As Smith headed toward an information desk, he noted department-store-style escalators that led up to patients' rooms on the floors above, bright arrows pointing to the operating theaters, and, infusing the air, a light scent reminiscent of Johnson's Lemon Wax.
Speaking perfect French, he asked for directions to the intensive care unit where Marty was being treated, and he took the escalator up. There was a subdued bustle as shifts changed and nurses, technicians, clerical help, and orderlies came and left. It was all done smoothly, quietly, and only the most experienced eye would have noticed the exchanges that signaled the handing off of responsibilities.
One of the theories that made this model hospital different was that services were clustered in groups, so that the specialist went to the patient, rather than the reverse. Entering patients arrived at any one of twenty-two different reception points, where they were met by personal hostesses, who guided them to their private rooms. There a computer was positioned at the foot of each bed, case notes existed in cyberspace, and, if surgery were necessary, robots often conducted parts of it. The enormous hospital even boasted swimming pools, health clubs, and cafs.
Beyond the desk that fronted the ICU, two gendarmes stood outside the door into the unit itself. Smith identified himself formally in French to the nurse as the American medical representative of Dr. Martin Zellerbach's family. 'I'll need to talk to Dr. Zellerbach's lead physician.'
'You wish to see Dr. Dubost, then. He's arrived for rounds and has already seen your friend this morning. I'll page him.'
'Merci. Will you take me to Dr. Zellerbach? I'll wait there.'
'Bien sr. S'il vous plat?' She offered him a distracted smile and, after one gendarme had examined his army medical identification, took him inside the heavy swinging doors.
Instantly, the hospital noises and the vigorous ambience vanished, and he was moving in a hushed world of soft footsteps, whispering doctors and nurses, and the muted lights, bells, and winking LEDs of machines that seemed to breathe loudly in the silence. In an ICU, machines owned the universe, and patients belonged to them.
Smith anxiously approached Marty, who was in the third cubicle on the left, lying motionless inside the raised side rails of a narrow, machine-operated bed, as helpless among the tubes and wires and monitors as a toddler held by each hand between towering adults. Smith looked down, his chest tight. Frozen in a coma, Marty's round face was waxen, but his breathing was even.
Smith touched the computer screen at the end of the bed and read Marty's chart. Marty was still in a coma. His other injuries were minor, mostly scrapes and bruises. It was the coma that was worrisome, with its potential for brain damage, sudden death, and even worse a permanent suspended state neither dead nor alive. But there were a few good signs, too, according to the cyberchart. All his autonomic responses were working he was breathing unaided, occasionally coughed, yawned, blinked, and showed roving eye movements which indicated that the lower brain stem, the vital part that controlled these activities, was still functioning.
'Dr. Smith?' A small man with gray hair and an olive complexion walked toward him. 'I understand you've come from the United States.' He introduced himself, and Smith saw the embroidery on the front of his long white physician's coat Edouard Dubost. He was Marty's doctor.
'Thank you for seeing me so quickly,' Smith told him. 'Tell me about Dr. Zellerbach's condition.'
Dr. Dubost nodded. 'I have good news. Our friend here seems to be doing better.'
Immediately Smith felt a smile grow across his face. 'What's happened? I didn't see anything on his chart from this morning.'
'Yes, yes. But you see, I wasn't finished. I had to go around the corner for a moment. Now we'll talk, and I'll type at the same time.' The doctor leaned over the computer. 'We're fortunate with Dr. Zellerbach. He's still in a coma, as you can see, but this morning he spoke a few words and moved his arm. He was responding to stimulation.'
Smith inhaled with relief. 'So it's less severe than you originally thought. It's possible he'll awake and be fine.'
He nodded as he typed. 'Yes, yes.'
Smith said, 'It's been more than twenty-four hours since the explosion. Of course, anything past that makes it more worrisome that he'll regain complete consciousness.'
'Very true. It's natural to be concerned. I am, too.'
'You'll put in an order to have the nurses work with him? Ask him questions? Try to get him to move
