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OceanofPDF.com

To my daughters, Noelle and Katja, who give me joy

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PROLOGUE

The cold breeze swept across the plain, carrying the butterfly on its drafts. The remarkable insect flitted about, climbing, diving, arcing high and low. It was a beautiful specimen, its wings colored a vivid yellow with a latticework of black, and unlike any in the region. It had an unusual name, too: Papilio panoptes.

The butterfly flew over the custodial road, over the electrified security fence, and over the rolls of barbed wire. Beyond the fence lay a field of wildflowers, stunning in their variety and color.

There were no structures anywhere to be seen: no houses, no barns, no buildings of any type.

Only the mounds of freshly impacted soil, barely distinguishable beneath the flower canopy, gave evidence of the recently completed work.

Despite its long voyage, the butterfly ignored the flowers. It did not seek their richly scented pollen or feast on their sweet nectar. Instead, it chose to fly higher, seeming to gain its sustenance from the air itself.

And there it stayed, a shimmering yellow flag against the pale winter sky.

It did not land on a lavender bush to rest. It did not drink from any of the rushing streams that descended from the harsh, majestic mountains and ran across the fertile grasslands. In fact, never once did it venture outside the fence’s precisely established one-square-kilometer perimeter. Content to hover over the colorful fields, it flew back and forth, day after day, night after night, never eating, never drinking, never resting.

After seven days, a fierce wind, the nashi, visited from the north. The wind roared down the mountain passes and hurtled across the plains, gathering velocity and force and pummeling everything in its path. The butterfly could not fight the relentless drafts. Its circuits inside the perimeter had left it worn and vulnerable. A swirling gust picked it up, spun it round, and dashed it to the ground, shattering its fragile body.

A guard patrolling the custodial road caught the flash of yellow lying in the dirt and stopped his jeep. He approached cautiously, kneeling in the ankle-deep grass. It was not like any butterfly he had seen before. First of

all, it was larger. Its wings were rigid, with jagged bits of a paper-thin metal protruding from the silken skin. The fuzzy thorax was split in two and connected by a green wire. Mystified, he picked it up and examined it. Like all those who worked at the facility, he was first and foremost an engineer, and only reluctantly a soldier. What he saw left him shaken.

Inside the thorax was an aluminum-cased battery no bigger than a grain of rice, and attached to it, a microwave transmitter. Using his thumbnail, he sheared away the antennae’s skin to reveal a cluster of fiber-optic cables, thin as human hair.

No, he argued to himself. It could not be. Not so soon.

Suddenly, he was running back to the jeep. Words tore through his mind.

Explanations. Theories.

None made sense. An exposed stone caught his foot and he crashed to the ground. Clambering to his feet, he hurried toward the jeep. Every minute was vital.

His hand shook as he radioed his superiors.

“They have found us.”

OceanofPDF.com

1

Jonathan Ransom knocked the ice from his goggles and stared up at the sky. If this gets any worse, he thought to himself, we’re going to be in trouble. The snow was falling harder. A snarling wind snapped ice and grit against his cheek. The craggy, familiar peaks that ringed the high alpine valley had disappeared behind an armada of threatening clouds.

He lifted one ski, then the next, leaning forward as he climbed the slope.

Nylon sealskins attached to the underside of his skis gripped the snow.

Touring bindings granted him a walking stride. He was a tall man, thirty-seven years old, slim at the waist and broad-shouldered. A snug woolen cap hid a thatch of prematurely graying hair. Glacier goggles shielded wine black eyes.

Only a determined mouth and cheeks rough with a two-day stubble were visible. He wore his old ski patrolman’s jacket. He never climbed without it.

Below him, his wife, Emma, clad in a red parka and black pants, labored up the mountainside.

Her pace was erratic. She climbed three steps, then rested. Two steps, then rested. They’d only just passed the halfway point and already she looked done in.

Jonathan turned his skis perpendicular to the hill and rammed his poles into the snow. “Stay put,” he shouted through cupped hands. He waited for an acknowledgment, but his wife hadn’t heard him over the howling wind.

Head lowered, she continued her unsteady ascent.

Jonathan sidestepped his way down the slope. It was steep and narrow, bordered on one side by a sheer rock face and on the other by a plunging ravine. Far below, perched on a sweeping hillside, the village of Arosa in the eastern Swiss canton of Graubünden was intermittently visible, winking from beneath the strata of fast-moving clouds.

“Was it always this hard?” Emma asked when he reached her side.

“Last time you beat me to the top.”

“Last time was eight years ago. I’m getting old.”

“Yeah, thirty-two. A regular dinosaur. Just wait till you’re my age, then it’s really all downhill.”

He dug into his daypack for a bottle of water and handed it to her. “How are you feeling?”

“Half dead,” she said, hunching over her poles. “Time to call the Sherpas.”

“Wrong country. Here they have gnomes. They’re smarter, but not half as strong. We’re on our own.”

“Sure about that?”

Jonathan nodded. “You’re just overheating. Take your cap off for a minute and drink as much as you can.”

“Yes, Doctor. Right away.” Emma removed her woolen cap and drank thirstily from the bottle.

In his mind, Jonathan had a picture of her on the same mountain eight years earlier. It was their first climb together. He, the newly minted surgeon fresh from his first posting in Africa with Doctors Without Borders; she, the willful English nurse he’d brought back as his bride. Before they started out, he’d asked her if she’d climbed much before. “A little,” she’d answered.

“Nothing too serious.” In short order, she’d clobbered him to the top, showing off the skills of an expert alpinist.

“That’s better,” said Emma, running a hand through her untamed auburn hair.

“You sure?”

Emma smiled, but her hazel eyes were rimmed with fatigue. “I’m sorry,”

she said.

“For what?”

“For not being as fit as I should be. For slowing us down. For not coming with you these last few years.”

“Don’t be silly. I’m just glad you’re here.”

Emma lifted her face and kissed him. “Me, too.”

“Look,” he said more seriously. “It’s getting ugly out here. I’m thinking maybe we ought to turn back.”

Emma tossed the bottle to him. “No way, buster. I beat you up this hill once. Watch me do it again.”

“You willing to put money on that?”

“Something better.”

“Oh yeah?” Jonathan took a drink, thinking that it was good to hear her talking trash again. How long had it been? Six months? A year even, since the headaches had begun and Emma had taken to disappearing into dark rooms for hours at a time. He wasn’t sure of the date. Only that it was before Paris, and Paris had been back in July.

Pulling back his sleeve, he ran through the functions on his Suunto wristwatch. Altitude: 9,200 feet. Temperature: -10° Celsius. Barometer: 900

millibars and falling. He stared at the numbers, not quite believing his eyes.

The pressure was dropping through the floor.

“What is it?” Emma asked.

Jonathan stuffed the water bottle into his rucksack. “The storm’s going to get worse before it gets better. We need to make tracks. You sure you don’t want to go back?”

Emma shook her head. No pride this time. Just resolve.

“Alright then,” he said. “You lead. I’ll be on your tail. Give me a second to adjust my bindings.”

Kneeling, Jonathan watched as a track of snow tumbled over the tips of his skis. In seconds, the skis were covered. The tips began to quiver and he forgot all about the bindings.

Warily, he rose. Above his shoulder, the Furga Nordwand, a wall of rock and ice, shot a thousand feet to a craggy limestone summit. Prevailing winds had piled loose snow against the base of the wall, forming a high, broad embankment that appeared choked and unstable.

“Loaded,” in the mountaineer’s parlance.

Jonathan’s throat went dry. He was an experienced mountaineer. He’d climbed in the Alps, the Rockies, and even for a season, the Himalayas.

He’d had his share of scrapes. He’d come through when others hadn’t. He knew when to be worried.

“Do you feel it?” he asked. “It’s getting ready to rip.”

“Did you hear something?”

“No. Not yet. But…”

Somewhere out there…somewhere above them…the sound of distant thunder rolled across the peaks. The mountain shuddered. He thought of the snow on the Furga. Days of unremitting cold had frozen it into a mammoth slab weighing thousands of tons. It wasn’t thunder he heard, but the noise of the slab cracking and breaking free from the older, crustier snow beneath it.

Jonathan stared up at the mountain. He’d been caught in an avalanche once before. For eleven minutes he’d lain beneath the surface, entombed in darkness, unable to move a hand, even a finger, too cold to feel that his leg had been yanked out of its socket and twisted backward so his knee was inches from his ear. In the end, he’d survived because a friend had seen the cross on his patrolman’s jacket a moment before he’d been swept under.

Ten seconds passed. The rumbling died. The wind slackened and an eerie quiet reigned. Without a word, he unwound the rope coiled round his midsection and fastened an end around Emma’s waist. Retreat was no longer an option. They needed to get out of the path of the coming avalanche. Using hand signals, he motioned that they would be taking a path directly up the face and that she was to follow closely. “Okay?” he signaled.

“Okay,” came the reply.

Pointing his skis up the hill, Jonathan set out. The face rose steeply, following the flank of the mountain. He kept a demanding pace. Every few steps he glanced over his shoulder to find Emma where she should be, no more than five paces behind. The wind picked up and shifted to the east.

Snow attacked in horizontal slats, clawing at the folds of their clothing. He lost all feeling in his toes. His fingers grew numb and wooden. Visibility dwindled from twenty feet to ten, and then he couldn’t see beyond the tip of

his nose. Only the burn in his thighs told him that he was moving uphill and away from the ravine.

He crested the ridge an hour later. Exhausted, he anchored his skis and helped pull Emma up the final few feet. Lifting her skis over the edge, she collapsed in his arms. Her gasps came in spasmodic gulps. He held her close until she found her breath and was able to stand on her own.

Here, in the saddle of two peaks, the wind pummeled them with the fury of a jet engine. The sky, however, had partially cleared, and Jonathan was granted a fleeting view down the valley that led to the village of Frauenkirch, and beyond it, Davos.

He skied to the far side of the ridge and looked over the cornice. Twenty feet below, a chute of snow plummeted like an elevator shaft between outcroppings of rock. “This is Roman’s. If we can get down here, we’ll be okay.”

Roman’s was part of the local lore, named for a guide killed by an avalanche while skiing down it. Emma’s eyes opened wide. She looked at Jonathan and shook her head. “Too steep.”

“We’ve done harder.”

“No, Jonathan…look at the drop. Isn’t there another way?”

“Not today.”

“But…”

“Em, we get off this ridge or we freeze to death.”

She moved closer to the lip, craning her neck to get a good look at what lay below. She pushed back, her chin resting on her chest. “What the hell?”

she said, not half meaning it. “We’re here. Let’s do it.”

“Just a little drop, a quick turn, and it’s all cake. Like I said, we’ve done harder.”

Emma nodded, more certainly now. And for a moment she gave the illusion that nothing was out of order, that they weren’t flirting with frostbite, and that she’d been looking forward to testing herself against this near-suicidal chute all along.

“Okay then.” Jonathan removed his skis and peeled off the skins.

Gripping one ski like an ax, he cut a three-foot-square slab of snow and dropped it over the edge. The slab struck the incline and tumbled down the mountain. Here and there, trails of snow dribbled lazily, but the slope held firm.

“Follow me down,” he said. “I’ll mark the trail.”

Emma came alongside him, the tips of her skis dangling over the cornice.

“Get back,” he said, hurrying to put on his skis. She had the look. He didn’t even need to see her to know it. He could sense it. “Let me go first.”

“Can’t let you do all the heavy lifting.”

“Don’t even think about it!”

“Last one down, remember?”

“Hey…no!”

Emma pushed off, hung for a moment, then dropped to the slope, skis striking the ice with a sizzle. She landed awkwardly and traversed the chute at lightning speed, her downhill ski slightly askew, pressed hard against the snow. Her hands were too high; her body too far over her skis.

Her entire figure looked ungoverned, out of control. Jonathan’s eyes shot to the rocks bordering the chute. Turn! a voice shouted inside him.

Ten feet separated her from the rocks. Five. The next instant, she executed a perfect jump turn and reversed her direction.

Jonathan relaxed.

Emma raced across the chute and made another flawless turn. Her hands dropped to her side. Her knees flexed to absorb any hidden bumps. All signs of fatigue had vanished.

He raised a fist in triumph. She had done it. In thirty minutes, they would be seated in a booth at the Staffelalp restaurant in Frauenkirch, two steaming cafés Lutz in front of them, laughing about the day and pretending that they’d never been in any danger. Not really. Later, they would go to the hotel, fall into bed, and…

Emma fell making the third turn.

Either she caught an edge or she turned a half second too late and nicked her skis against the rocks. Jonathan’s stomach clenched. Horrified, he watched as she carved a scar down the center of the chute. Her hands clawed at the snow, but the incline was too steep. Too icy. Faster she went.

And faster still. Striking a bump, her body was flung into the air like a rag doll. She landed with one leg twisted beneath her. There was an explosion of snow. Her skis shot into the air as if launched from a cannon. She began to starfish, arms and legs akimbo, cartwheeling head over heel.

“Emma!” he cried out, launching himself down the chute. He skied with abandon, arms flung wide for balance, his body taut, attacking the hill. A veil of mist crossed the slope, and for a moment, he was lost in white, visibility nil, with no idea which way was up or down. He straightened his skis and shot through the cloud.

Emma lay far down the slope. She had come to rest on her stomach, head below her feet, face dug into the snow. He stopped ten feet away from her.

Stepping clear of his skis, he took high, bowlegged strides through the powder, his eyes hunting for a flicker of movement. “Emma,” he said firmly. “Can you hear me?”

Slinging off his daypack, he fell to his knees and cleared the snow from her mouth and nose.

Placing a hand on her back, he felt her chest rise and fall. Her pulse was strong and steady. Inside his pack was a nylon mesh bag holding a spare cap, mittens, goggles, and a Capilene shirt. He folded the shirt and placed it under her cheek.

Just then, Emma stirred. “Oh, shit,” she murmured.

“Stay still,” he commanded in his emergency room voice. He ran a hand along her pants, starting at the thigh and working down. Suddenly, her face contorted in agony. “No…stop!” she cried.

Jonathan pulled his hands away. A few inches above the knee, something pressed sharply against the fabric of her pants. He stared at the grotesque bulge. There was only one thing that looked like that.

“It’s broken, isn’t it?” Emma’s eyes were wide, blinking rapidly. “I can’t wiggle my toes. It feels like a bunch of loose wires down there. It hurts, Jonathan. I mean the real thing.”

“Keep calm, and let me take a look.”

Using his Swiss Army knife, he cut a slit in her ski pants and gingerly separated the fabric.

Splintered bone protruded from her thermal underwear. The material around it was wet with blood. She’d suffered a compound fracture of the femur.

“How bad is it, really?” Emma asked.

“Bad enough,” he said, as if it were only a hairline fracture. He shook out five Advil and helped her take a sip of water. Then, using adhesive tape from the first aid kit, he secured the tear in her ski pants. “We need to get you on your back and facing downhill. Okay?”

Emma nodded.

“First, I’m going to splint your leg. I don’t want that bone moving anywhere. For now, just stay still.”

“Christ, Jonathan, does it look like I’m going to walk anywhere?”

Jonathan walked up the slope to retrieve her skis and ski poles. Placing one pole on either side of the leg, he cut a length of climbing rope, tied off one end, and wrapped it round and round the thigh and calf. Kneeling by her side, he handed her his leather wallet. “Here.”

Emma clamped it between her teeth.

Jonathan slowly tightened the rope until the poles embraced the broken limb. Emma sucked in a breath. He tied off the other end of the rope, then turned her on her back and rotated her body so her head lay above her feet.

After that, he spent a minute fashioning a hill behind her back so she could sit up. “Better?” he asked.

Emma grimaced as a tear sped down her cheek.

He touched her shoulder. “Alright, let’s get some help up here.” He took the two-way radio from his jacket. “Davos Rescue,” he said, turning out of the wind. “I need to report an emergency.

Skier injured on the south side of the Furga at the base of Roman’s.

Over.”

Silence greeted his call.

“Davos Rescue,” he repeated. “I have an emergency requiring immediate assistance. Come back.”

A blizzard of white noise answered. He tried again. Again, there was no response.

“It’s the weather,” said Emma. “Go to another channel.”

Jonathan flipped to the next channel. Years ago, he’d worked as an instructor and ski patrolman in the Alps, and he’d programmed the radio with the frequencies of every emergency rescue service in the area—Davos, Arosa, and Lenzerheide—as well as the Kantonspolizei, the Swiss Alpine Club, and Rega, the helicopter rescue outfit known to skiers and climbers as the meat wagon.

“Arosa Rescue. Skier injured on the south side of the Furga. Immediate assistance required.”

Again, there was no response. He brought the radio closer. The power light flickered weakly. He banged the radio against his leg. The light blinked and went dark. “It’s dead.”

“Dead? The radio? How’s that? I saw you try it last night.”

“It was fine then.” Jonathan clicked the instrument on and off several times, but it refused to come to life.

“Is it the batteries?”

“I don’t see how. I put in a fresh set yesterday.” Removing his mittens, he examined the inside of the set. “Not the batteries,” he said. “The wiring.

The power unit’s not attached to the transmitter.”

“Attach it.”

“I can’t. Not here. I’m not sure I could even if I had the tools.” He tossed the two-way radio into his bag.

“What about the phone?” Emma asked.

“What about it? It’s a big-time dead zone up here.”

“Try it,” she commanded.

The signal icon on Jonathan’s cell phone showed a parabolic antenna cut through with a solid line. He dialed the number for Rega anyway. The call failed. “Nothing. It’s a black hole.”

Emma stared at him a moment and he could see that she was working hard to keep it together.

“But we’ve got to talk to someone.”

“There’s no one to talk to.”

“Try the radio again.”

“What for? I told you, it’s broken.”

“Just do it!”

Jonathan kneeled beside her. “Look, everything’s going to be okay,” he said in as calm a voice as he could muster. “I’m going to ski down and bring back help. As long as you have your avalanche transmitter, I won’t have any problem finding you.”

“You can’t leave me here. You’ll never find your way back, even with the beacon. You can’t see twenty feet in any direction. I’ll freeze. We can’t… I can’t…” Her words trailed off. She dropped her head onto the snow and turned her face so he wouldn’t see that she was crying. “I almost had it, you know…that last turn…I just was a little late…”

“Listen to me. You’re going to be fine.”

Emma looked up at him. “Am I?”

Jonathan brushed the tears from her cheek. “I promise,” he said.

Reaching into his rucksack, he found a thermos and poured his wife a cup of hot tea. While she drank, he gathered her skis and placed them in the snow behind her, forming an X so he could spot them from a distance. He removed his patrolman’s parka and laid it over her chest. He took off his cap and placed it over Emma’s, pulling it down so that it covered her neck.

Finally, he fished the space blanket from the rucksack and gingerly slid it beneath her back and around her chest. The word “HELP” was spelled across it in large fluorescent orange letters, meant to aid in cases of air evacuation. But there would be no helicopter flying in today.

“Pour yourself some tea every fifteen minutes,” he said, taking her hand.

“Keep eating and above all, don’t fall asleep.”

Emma nodded, her hand gripping his like a vise.

“Remember the tea,” he went on. “Every fifteen—”

“Shut up and get out of here,” she said. She gave his hand a last squeeze and released it. “Leave before you scare me to death.”

“I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”

Emma held his eyes. “And, Jonathan…don’t look so unsure of yourself.

You’ve never broken a promise yet.”

OceanofPDF.com

2

Three hundred kilometers to the west of Davos, at Bern-Belp airport outside the nation’s capital, snow had been falling since morning. Menacing Arctic CAT snowplows rumbled up and down the runways, making mountains out of the gathered snow, ugly parodies of the Alps, and depositing them at the head of the taxiway.

At the west end of runway one-four, a cluster of men stood huddled together, eyes trained to the sky. They were policemen waiting for a plane to land. They had come to make an arrest.

One man stood slightly apart from the others. Marcus von Daniken was fifty, a short, hawkish man with black hair shorn to a grenadier’s stubble and a grim, downturned mouth. For the past six years, he’d headed up the Service for Analysis and Prevention, better known as SAP. It was SAP’s job to safeguard the country’s domestic security against extremists, terrorists, and spies.

The same role was performed in the United States by the FBI and in the United Kingdom by MI5. At that moment, von Daniken was shivering. He hoped the plane would land soon.

“How are conditions holding?” he asked the man next to him, a major from the Border Guard.

“Another ten minutes and they’re closing down the field. Visibility’s for shit.”

“What’s the plane’s status?”

“One engine down,” the major said. “The other’s overheating. The aircraft just turned onto final approach.”

Von Daniken searched the sky. Low above the runway a set of yellow landing lights blinked in and out of the mist. Moments later, the plane dropped out of the clouds and into view. The aircraft was a Gulfstream IV

flying out of Stockholm, Sweden. Its tail number, N415GB, was known to the intelligence agencies of every Western nation. The same aircraft had transported Abu Omar, the radical Muslim cleric spirited off the streets of Milan, in February 2003, from Italy to Germany, and finally to Egypt, to undergo interrogation at the hands of his countrymen.

It had also carried a German citizen of Lebanese descent, one Khaled El-Masri, arrested in Macedonia, to the “Salt Pit” prison at Bagram Air Force Base, outside Kabul, Afghanistan, where it was eventually discovered that he was not, in fact, the same Khaled El-Masri who was sought in connection with terrorist activities.

One success. One failure. It was the going rate these days, thought von Daniken. The important thing was that you stayed at the table and kept playing.

The aircraft hit the tarmac hard. Ice and water sprayed from its tires. The engine roared as its bafflers moved into place.

“Smug bastards,” said a thin, nearly gaunt man with longish red hair and a professor’s round spectacles. “I can’t wait to see their faces. It’s about time that we taught them a lesson.” His name was Alphons Marti, and he was Switzerland’s minister of justice.

Marti had represented Switzerland as a marathoner in the Seoul Olympics in 1988. He’d come into the stadium dead last, legs rubbery from the heat, bobbing and weaving like a drunk on a three-day bender. The emergency medical personnel had tried to stop him, but somehow he’d pushed them away. One step past the finish line, he collapsed and was immediately transported to the hospital. To this day, there were those who viewed him as a hero. Others had a different view, and whispered about an amateur masquerading as a professional.

“No mistakes now,” Marti continued, gripping von Daniken’s arm. “Our reputation is on the line.

Switzerland does not permit this kind of thing. We are a neutral country.

It’s time that we take a stand and prove it. Don’t you agree?”

Von Daniken was old enough and wise enough not to answer. He brought the radio to his mouth.

“No one hit their lights until I give the order,” he said.

One hundred feet away, hidden behind a checkered barrier, a minor fleet of police vehicles waited for the signal to move in. Von Daniken glanced to his left. Another barricade concealed an armored personnel carrier holding ten heavily armed border guards. He had argued against a show of force,

but Marti would have none of it. The justice minister had waited a long time for this day.

“Pilot has requested to deplane,” said the major from the Border Guard.

“The tower is directing him to the customs ramp.”

Von Daniken and Marti climbed into an unmarked sedan and drove to the designated parking spot. The others followed in a second vehicle. The Gulfstream veered off the runway and approached the customs ramp. Von Daniken waited until the plane had come to a complete halt.

“All units. Go.”

Blue and white strobes lit the slate sky. The police cruisers sped from their hiding places and surrounded the plane. The personnel carrier lumbered into position, a soldier bringing the .50-caliber turret gun to bear.

Commandos in assault gear spilled out of the vehicles and formed a semicircle around the plane, submachine guns raised to their chests and aimed at the doorway.

All this circus because of a simple telefax, thought von Daniken, as he climbed out of the sedan and checked his pistol to ensure that there was no bullet in the chamber and that the safety was in the on position.

Three hours earlier, Onyx, Switzerland’s proprietary satellite eavesdropping system, had intercepted a telefax sent from the Syrian embassy in Stockholm to its counterpart in Damascus giving the passenger manifest of a certain aircraft bound for the Middle East. Four persons were aboard: the pilot, the copilot, and two passengers. One an agent of the United States government, the other a terrorist wanted by the law enforcement authorities of twelve Western nations. The news was passed up the chain of command within minutes of receipt. One copy was e-mailed to von Daniken, another to Marti.

And there it stopped. One more piece of intelligence to be digested and graded “No Further Action.” Until, that is, the flight in question radioed Swiss air traffic control reporting an engine malfunction and requesting emergency clearance to land.

The jet’s forward door swung outward and a stairwell unbuckled from the fuselage. Marti hurried up the steps, with von Daniken behind him. The pilot appeared in the doorway. The Justizminister produced a warrant and

offered it for examination. “We have information indicating that you are transporting a prisoner in contravention of the Geneva Convention on Human Rights.”

The pilot barely glanced at the legal document. “You’re mistaken,” he said. “We haven’t got a soul on board besides my copilot and Mr.

Palumbo.”

“No mistake,” said Marti, shouldering past the pilot and entering the aircraft. “Swiss soil will not be used for the practice of extraordinary rendition. Chief Inspector von Daniken, search the plane.”

Von Daniken walked down the aisle of the aircraft. A lone passenger was seated in one of the broad leather seats. A white male, about forty years old, head shaved, with a bull’s shoulders and cold gray eyes. At first glance, he looked like an experienced man, someone who could handle himself. From his window, he had a clear view of the storm troopers surrounding the plane. He didn’t appear unduly concerned.

“Good afternoon,” said von Daniken, in good but accented English. “You are Mr. Palumbo?”

“And you are?”

Von Daniken introduced himself and offered his identification. “We have reason to suspect you are transporting a prisoner named Walid Gassan aboard this flight. Am I correct?”

“No, sir, you are not.” Palumbo crossed his legs and von Daniken noted that he was wearing boots with a sturdy toecap.

“You don’t mind, then, if we search the aircraft?”

“This is Swiss soil. You can do what you please.”

Von Daniken directed the passenger to stay in his seat until the search was completed, then he continued to the rear of the plane. Plates and glasses were stacked in the galley sink. He counted four settings. Pilot. Copilot.

Palumbo. Someone was missing. He checked the lavatory, then opened the aft hatch and inspected the baggage hold.

“No one,” he radioed to Marti. “The passenger compartment and cargo area are clear.”

“What do you mean ‘clear’?” demanded Marti. “That can’t be.”

“Unless they have him stuffed inside a suitcase, he’s not aboard the plane.”

“Keep looking.”

Von Daniken made a second circuit through the cargo area, testing for hollow compartments.

Finding nothing, he closed the aft door and returned to the passenger compartment.

“You’ve checked the entire plane?” asked Marti, standing with his arms crossed next to the captain.

“Top to bottom. There are no other passengers aboard besides Mr.

Palumbo.”

“Impossible.” Marti shot an accusing glance at von Daniken. “We have proof that the prisoner is on board.”

“And what proof is that?” asked Palumbo.

“Don’t play games with me,” said Marti. “We know who you are, who you work for.”

“You do, do you? Then I guess I can go ahead and tell you.”

“Tell us what?” demanded Marti.

“The guy you’re looking for…we let him off thirty minutes back over those big mountains of yours. He said he’d always wanted to see the Alps.”

Marti’s eyes widened. “You didn’t?”

“Might have been what jammed up the engine. Either that or a goose.”

Palumbo looked out his window, shaking his head in amusement.

Von Daniken pulled Marti aside. “It appears that our information was incorrect, Herr Justizminister. There’s no prisoner aboard.”

Marti stared back, white with anger. A current passed through him, rattling his shoulders. With a nod to the passenger, he left the aircraft.

A lone commando remained at the door. Von Daniken waved him off. He waited until the soldier had disappeared down the stairs before returning his

attention to Palumbo. “I’m sure our mechanics will be able to repair your engine with the shortest possible delay. In case the weather continues and the airport remains closed, you’ll find the Hotel Rossli just down the road to be quite comfortable. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience.”

“Apology accepted,” said Palumbo.

“Oh, and by the way,” said von Daniken. “I happened to find this on the floor.” Leaning closer, he dropped something small and hard into the CIA officer’s hand. “I trust you’ll pass along any information that concerns us.”

Palumbo waited until von Daniken had left the aircraft before opening his hand.

In his palm was a man’s torn and bloody thumbnail.

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3

“She’s gone.”

Jonathan stood on the crest of a foothill two hundred meters from the foot of Roman’s. The wind howled in fits and spurts, blanketing him in whiteout one minute and tapering off the next.

Holding a pair of binoculars to his eyes, he was able to spot the crossed skis, the letters “HE” screaming from the survival blanket, and farther to the left, the orange safety shovel. But he did not see Emma.

Jonathan left the three members of the Davos Rescue Squad and skinned up the final hill. Four hours had passed since he’d left to ski down the mountain for help. Snow buried the crisscrossed skis to the top of the bindings, but only a finger’s width dusted her rucksack. He opened it and saw that the sandwiches and energy bars were gone. Her thermos was empty. He dropped the bag at his feet. The imprint where Emma had lain remained faintly visible. She hadn’t been gone long.

Jonathan activated the avalanche beacon strapped to his chest and turned in a circle searching all points of the compass. The beacon contained a homing device with an effective range of one hundred meters, some three hundred thirty feet. The instrument emitted a long beep—a test function—

then was silent. The whomp whomp of snow settling, distant as Indian war drums, drifted across the mountainside.

“Do you have a signal?” asked Sepp Steiner, chief of the rescue team, when he reached his side.

Steiner was a short, spare man with hollow cheeks and gun slits for eyes.

“Nothing.”

It was then that he saw it: a crimson petal lying in the snow. Jonathan bent down to touch the drop of blood. There was another a few inches away, and another farther on. “This way,” he said, waving an arm for the others to join him.

“Don’t go any farther,” cautioned Steiner. “There’s a crevasse just ahead a few meters.”

“A crevasse?”

“A deep one. It cuts to the bottom of the glacier.”

Jonathan squinted, trying to make out the fissure, but saw nothing beyond an impenetrable white wall. “Get me roped up.” He removed his skis, then pulled on a seating harness and attached the rope to his waist.

“Be careful,” said Steiner, after taking off his skis and securing Jonathan to his own harness.

“We don’t want to lose you, too.”

Jonathan swung round to face the smaller man. “She isn’t lost yet.”

At first, the drops were difficult to find, hardly more than pinpricks. Then they grew larger, more closely spaced, until the blood ran in a steady line as if someone had punctured a can of grenadine and poured it into the snow.

Except this syrup was colored the oxygen-rich red of arterial blood.

When had Emma passed this way? Jonathan wondered. Five minutes ago. Ten? Bending lower, he discerned where she’d placed her good foot and where she’d dragged the other. Ahead, there was a depression in the snow, and in its center, a gaping hole.

Dropping to his belly, he crawled forward and shined his flashlight into the opening. A gallery of ice and stone beckoned, ten meters across, bottomless. Rolling to one side, he checked the homing beacon. The digital readout flickered and the number 98 appeared. Jonathan’s stomach buckled.

Ninety-eight meters translated to over three hundred feet.

“Do you have a signal?” asked Steiner. “Is she in there?”

“Yes,” said Jonathan, but he refused to elaborate. “I’m going down. On belay.”

“Belay on,” confirmed Steiner.

Jonathan enlarged the hole with his ax. A chunk of snow fell away and the crevasse yawned beneath him. Dangling his boots into the hole, he shimmied backward until the snow collapsed under his chest. He plunged into darkness, slamming into an ice wall before the rope grew taut and caught him. “I’m in.”

Kicking off the wall, he allowed the rope to pay out between his fingers and dropped farther into the chasm. The flashlight revealed a pristine and

savage landscape, an ice queen’s eternal palace.

It was an illusion. The crevasses existed in a state of flux, widening, narrowing, slaves to the constantly churning forces of the underlying rock strata.

Ten meters down, he spotted a patch of black and white on a ledge a stone’s throw away. It was Emma’s cap. Like a pendulum, he swung back and forth, springing off the ice wall to build his momentum. The third time, he tilted his body perilously close to horizontal, stretched his arm, and grabbed it.

Cap in hand, he steadied himself and directed the flashlight toward the ledge. The snow there was disturbed and violent with blood. Not a trail this time, but a stain as large as a grapefruit. He could no longer lie to himself about what had happened. Emma had tried to walk down the mountain. Her movement had caused the splintered bone to nick the femoral artery. The artery was the principal passageway for blood pumped by the heart to the lower extremities: legs, feet, and toes. As a surgeon, he knew the consequences. Without a tourniquet, she would exsanguinate in minutes. In layman’s terms, she’d bleed to death.

He checked the beacon. The readout showed eighty-nine meters. Just under three hundred feet.

The directional indicator pointed down. He shined the beam toward the floor of the crevasse.

Oblivion.

“Lower,” he said.

“I can give you another twenty-five meters. That’s all we’ve got.”

Jonathan glanced up. The gap he’d come through appeared as bright as a tear in the night sky. He waited for the second line to be tied to the first.

Steiner gave him a tug and Jonathan recommenced his descent. He paid the line out slowly, stopping every ten feet to swing the light around him, check for obstacles, and search for Emma. The numbers on the beacon grew smaller. Light from the world above disappeared. The ice walls glowed a ghostly blue…70…68…64…Suddenly, the rope grew taut.

“That’s it,” said Steiner.

Jonathan guided the light slowly back and forth, painting the ice below with a pale beam. He caught a flash of red. His patrolman’s jacket? He moved the beam a few inches to the left and saw a glint of copper. Emma’s hair? His heart jumped. “I need more rope. Another length.”

“We have no more.”

“Get some,” he ordered.

“There’s no time. A small avalanche just ripped out the slope behind us.

The entire mountain could come down at any moment.”

Jonathan directed his gaze along the beam of light. The patch of red came into focus. He moved the light an inch to the right. It was the cross on his patrolman’s jacket. The glint of copper was his wife’s hair.

Emma. Her name caught in his throat.

He could see her now, at least her outline. She lay prone on her stomach, one arm extended above her head, as if calling for help. But there was something wrong…the ice around her was not white at all, but dark. She was lying in a slick of her own blood.

“She’s here,” he said stubbornly. “We can reach her.”

“She fell one hundred meters,” argued Steiner. “She could not have survived. You must come out. I won’t risk the lives of four men.”

“Emma!” Jonathan shouted. “It’s me. It’s Jonathan. If you’re okay, move your hand.”

His wife’s form remained still, as his voice echoed inside the chasm.

“Quiet,” said Steiner, his anger tight as a fist. “You’ll kill us all.”

The rope gave a jerk. Jonathan bounced against the wall and rose a few feet. Steiner was hauling him out. Enraged, he dug his toe spikes into the ice, then drew his knife and pressed the blade against the rope, inches from his face. He had crampons. He had an ice ax. He would climb down the wall to her.

He kept his eyes on the body. Already it looked smaller, somehow foreign. He detected no sign of movement. It didn’t matter if Steiner was

right about the fall, whether it was too far or if there had been any obstructions to slow her descent. There was simply too much blood.

He pulled the knife away from the rope and freed his crampons from the ice. The lifeline jerked again, and he was lifted another meter out of the crevasse. He shone the light at the patch of red he’d seen, but it was no longer visible. He had lost sight of his wife.

“Emma!” he yelled as tears streamed down his cheek.

Only his voice called back, echoing over and over again.

OceanofPDF.com

4

The Land Rover hurtled down the Seestrasse on its way out of Zurich. A lone man sat behind the wheel. Heavy stubble covered his cheeks. Dark circles cupped his eyes. He had been on the move for twenty-four hours. He needed a meal, a shower, and a bed. All that would come. First, he had a job to complete.

Opening the glove compartment, he withdrew a silenced pistol and set it on the seat beside him.

He looked out the window at the lake. Whitecaps flashed in the dark. Far away, the running lights of a large boat bobbed dangerously. It was not a good night to be on the water.

At the next signal, he turned and guided the car up a winding road.

Falling snow choked the headlights, but he did not slow. He knew the route.

He had driven it once already, earlier in the evening. He had studied maps of the area, committing avenues of access and escape to memory.

A burst of acceleration delivered him to a plateau. Large, well-tended homes lined either side of the street. This eastern side of the Lake of Zurich was known as the Gold Coast, for its dawn-to-dusk sun exposure as well as for its luxurious residences. He cut his speed as soon as he spotted the target’s home. Modeled on a French country estate, it was set back from the street on a rise with snow-crusted orchards bordering either side.

Twenty meters farther along, he brought the car to a halt in the shadow of a towering pine. He doused the lights and sat listening to the engine tick down and the wind beat at his windows.

From his jacket, he removed a sterling silver case. Four bullets lay inside it. Slender shells with an X carved into the bronze-colored nose. Tapered fingers set them in a row on the center console. Next, he freed the ceramic vial hanging round his neck and unscrewed the cap. He began to chant softly, words from an ancient and forgotten language. By his own tally, he had killed over three hundred men, women, and children. The words formed a prayer to protect his soul against spirits from the next world.

Twenty years as an assassin had left him a superstitious man.

One by one, he dipped the bullets into the vial, coating them with a viscous, bitter-scented liquid.

It was his ritual. First the prayer, then the liquid. As a professional, he knew there was no such thing as too many precautions. In this world or the next. He blew a single breath on each, then fed them into the clip. When he’d finished, he took up the pistol, slid the clip into the butt, and chambered a round. He checked that the safety was on, then removed a sturdy twill bag from his opposite pocket and attached it to a point above the ejection chamber.

He stepped out of the car. Caged eyes darted up and down the street. He saw no one. Tonight the weather was his ally. At nine-thirty, the neighborhood was still.

Buttoning his overcoat, he set off briskly up the road. He was a trim man, no more than average height, with narrow shoulders and lank black hair that fell to his collar. His cheeks were sunken, his nose slender and aristocratic, his complexion so pale as to be cadaverous. From afar, he appeared not to walk so much as to glide above the pavement. It was this combination of his deathly pallor and his ethereal presence that lent him his work name. The Ghost.

Passing the target’s home, he was afforded an unobstructed view through a bay window adjacent to the front door. A woman and three children sat side by side on a couch entranced by their evening’s television. He slowed long enough to see that the youngest was a boy, dark and pale like himself, arms wrapped around his mother. His heart beat faster. Memories fluttered behind his eyes like a trapped bird beating against a window.

He looked away.

Verifying that no traffic was approaching from either direction, he hopped the single-strand wire fence fronting the meadow and took up position behind a woodpile stacked neatly against the side of the home.

There, crouching in the snow, he waited.

At other times, he’d been part of a team, though never its leader. He knew that there should be a rotating two-man squad covering the target at the restaurant; a car to follow him home; and an extraction team waiting to

whisk the shooter to the nearest airport or train station and out of the country. All were standard operating procedure.

But he preferred it this way. Alone in the darkness. An agent of death.

From a side pocket he removed a metallic box, activated its toggle switch, then slipped it back again. The box emitted a jamming signal that rendered the garage door opener inactive. The target would be forced to step out of his car to manually open the garage, or perhaps, to enter by a side door and open it from the inside.

In the distance, he made out the velvet growl of a powerful engine. He slipped the silenced pistol from his jacket and focused on the road at the point where the target’s car—a late model Audi A8—would crest the hill.

Headlights appeared and grew bolder. His thumb nudged the safety downward.

All at once, the car was in view. As it passed under a streetlamp he confirmed the make and license. The car slowed, pulling into the driveway and stopping short of the garage. The driver’s door opened. The target stepped out. He was a tall man, solidly built, with ginger hair and well-nourished cheeks. An engineer of some stripe. A family man. A man of rigid discipline.

By now, the Ghost was making his approach. He covered the distance to the target in three effortless strides. The man looked at him, confused. Why wasn’t the garage door working? Who was this stranger appearing as if out of thin air? The Ghost saw all this in the man’s eyes as he raised his arm and pulled the trigger. Three shots struck the man squarely in the face. The shells flew into the twill bag. The target collapsed to the driveway.

The Ghost leaned over the body. Nuzzling the silencer against the man’s chest, he shot him through the heart. The body jumped. It was then that he noticed something peculiar on the man’s lapel. A pin of some kind. He bent to take a closer look.

A butterfly.

OceanofPDF.com

5

Marcus von Daniken returned to his home a few minutes after eleven o’clock. Beneath his arm, he carried two long-stem roses wrapped in florist’s paper. He walked through dark hallways to the kitchen where a single light burned above the table. He set the flowers down, then tossed his gun and his wallet onto the counter. Stifling a yawn, he opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer. There was a ham sandwich on the center island, a plate of potato salad, and a lemon tart. All were neatly wrapped in cellophane. A note from his housekeeper reminded him to put the leftovers back in the refrigerator. Throwing his jacket over the back of a chair, he rolled up his sleeves and washed his hands in the sink. He ate the sandwich, then dutifully returned the potato salad and lemon tart to the fridge, untouched.