The Sigma Protocol by Robert Ludlum

Author:Robert Ludlum
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
Tags: Ludlum, Serial murders, Mystery & Detective, Fiction - Espionage, Government investigators, Political, Robert - Prose & Criticism, Fiction, Switzerland, Americans, Thriller, Thrillers, Suspense, General, Intrigue, Espionage
ISBN: 9780312943585
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2009-03-31T17:54:54.394000+00:00

The Sigma Protocol

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT.

It was the sound of a blow-dryer that awakened Ben; after a few groggy moments, he realized that he was in a hotel room in Vienna, and that his back ached from a night on the couch.

He craned his neck forward, heard the satisfying crack of vertebrae, felt some welcome relief from the stiffness.

The bathroom door opened and light flooded half the room. Anna Navarro was dressed in a tweedy brown suit, a little dowdy but not unbecoming, and her face was made up.

“I’ll be back in an hour or so,” she said crisply. “Go back to sleep.”

Directly across the street from the consular section of the U.S. embassy, just as Ostrow had described, was a drab modern office building. The placard in the lobby listed a number of U.S. and Austrian business offices, and on the eleventh floor, sure enough, the Office of the United States Trade Representative–the cover for the Vienna office of the CIA, Such feelers from agencies she was investigating were far from unusual; they’d sometimes resulted in her best leads.

Anna entered an unremarkable reception area, where a young woman sat at a government-issue desk, beneath the Great Seal of the United States, answering the phone and typing at a computer keyboard. She didn’t look up. Anna introduced herself, and the receptionist pressed a button and announced her.

In less than a minute a man with the pallor of a bureaucratic lifer bustled out. His cheeks were acne-scarred and sunken, his hair graying auburn. His eyes were small and gray behind large wire-rimmed glasses.

“Miss Navarro?” he said, thrusting out a hand. “I’m Phil Ostrow.”

The receptionist buzzed them through the door from which he had appeared, and Ostrow guided her to a small conference room where a slender, darkly handsome man was sitting at a fake-wood-grain Formica topped table. He had bristling, brush cut black hair salted with gray, brown eyes, long black lashes. Late thirties, maybe, Middle Eastern. Ostrow and Anna sat on either side of him.

“Yossi, this is Anna Navarro. Anna, Yossi.”

Yossi’s face was tanned, the lines around his eyes deeply etched, whether from squinting in the sun or from a life of great stress. His chin was square and cleft. There was something almost pretty about his face, though it was masculinized by his weathered skin and a day-old growth of beard.

“Good to meet you, Yossi,” she said.

She nodded warily, unsmiling; he did the same. He did not offer his hand.

“Yossi’s a case officer you don’t mind my telling her that much, do you, Yossi?” said Ostrow. “He works under deep commercial cover here in Vienna. A good setup. He emigrated to the States from Israel when he was in his late teens. Now everyone assumes he’s an Israeli which means every time he gets into trouble, someone else gets the blame.” Ostrow chuckled.

“Ostrow, enough no more,” Yossi said. He spoke in a gruff baritone, his English accented with guttural Hebrew R’s. “Now, we should understand each other: a number of men all around the world have been found dead in the last few weeks.

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