The Sigma Protocol by Robert Ludlum Read Free Book Online Page B

gaze softened. “This doesn’t seem to quicken your pulse, Ms. Navarro.”
    Anna shrugged. “I keep coming back to the fact that these guys are all in the graduating class, if you know what I mean. Old guys tend to pop off, O.K.? These were old guys.”
    “And in nineteenth-century Paris, getting trampled by a carriage was pretty commonplace,” Bartlett said.
    Anna furrowed her brow. “Excuse me?”
    Bartlett leaned back in his chair. “Have you ever heard of the Frenchman Claude Rochat? No? He’s someone I think about quite a bit. A dull, unimaginative, plodding, dogged fellow, who, in the 1860s and 1870s, worked as an accountant in the employ of the Directoire , France’sown bureau of intelligence. In 1867, it came to his attention that two low-level clerks at the Directoire , apparently unacquainted, had both been killed in the course of a fortnight—one the victim of an apparent street robbery, the other trampled to death by a mail coach. It was the sort of thing that happened all the time. Quite unremarkable. But still he wondered, especially after he learned that at the time of death, both of these humble clerks had on their persons costly gold pocket watches—in fact, as he confirmed, the two watches were identical , both with a fine cloisonné landscape on the inside of the watchcase. A small oddity, but it arrested his attention, and, to the exasperation of his superiors, he spent the next four years trying to figure out why, and how, this small oddity had come about. In the end, he uncovered a spy ring of extraordinary intricacy: the Directoire had been penetrated and manipulated by its Prussian counterparts.” He registered her darting glance and smiled: “Yes, those pocket watches in the case are the very ones. Exquisite craftsmanship. I acquired them a couple of decades ago at an auction. I like having them nearby. It helps me to remember.”
    Bartlett closed his eyes for a contemplative moment. “Of course, by the time Rochat completed his investigations, it was too late,” he went on. “Bismarck’s agents, through a cunning diet of misinformation, had already tricked France into declaring war. ‘ À Berlin ’ was the great cry. The result was disastrous for France: the military dominance it had enjoyed since the Battle of Rocroi in 1643 was completely destroyed, in just a couple of months. Can you imagine? The French army, with the Emperor at its head, was led straight into an ingenious ambush near Sedan. And that was the end, needless to say, for Napoleon III. The country lost Alsace-Lorraine, it had to pay staggering reparations, and it had to submit to two years of occupation. An extraordinary blow, itwas—one that shifted the whole course of European history irreversibly. And just a few years earlier, Claude Rochat was tugging at a little thread, not knowing where it would lead, not knowing whether it would lead anywhere. It was just those two lowly clerks and their matching pocket watches.” Bartlett made a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Most of the time, something that looks trivial really is trivial. Most of the time. My job is to worry about such matters. The tiny threads. The boring little discrepancies. The trivial little patterns that just might lead to larger patterns. The most important thing I do is the least glamorous thing imaginable.” An arched eyebrow. “I look for matching pocket watches.”
    Anna was silent for a few moments. The Ghost was living fully up to his reputation: cryptic, hopelessly obscure. “I appreciate the history lesson,” she said slowly, “but my frame of reference has always been the here and now. If you really think these deep-storage files have ongoing relevance, why not simply have the CIA investigate?”
    Bartlett withdrew a crisp silk pocket square from his suit jacket and began to polish his eyeglasses. “Things get rather awkward around here,” he said. “The ICU tends to get involved only in cases where there’s a real