Wait and watch.

The Ghost eyed the restaurant from across the street. His point of vantage was a kiosk selling the usual newspapers and magazines. He passed the time browsing through a number of soccer reviews. When he caught the proprietor giving him a nasty look, he bought some chewing gum, a pack of cigarettes (though he didn’t smoke), and a copy of the Corriere della Sera, the Italian daily paper.

Tucking the newspaper under one arm, he strolled to the end of the block.

The long night’s struggle had left him haggard, and he needed all his strength just to cover the short distance. He did it all the same, making sure that no one could spot his frailty.

He was dressed in a trench coat, collar turned up at the neck, a gray wool suit he’d had tailored in Naples, and a pair of hand-cobbled shoes the color of whiskey. Today he was an Italian businessman. Yesterday, he’d been a Swiss hiker. The day before, a German tourist. The only person he wasn’t allowed to be was himself. He didn’t mind. After twenty years in his line of work, the less time spent in one’s own company, the better.

He’d found Ransom at dawn, pulling out of a car dealership’s parking lot where he’d spent the night. The American was clumsy and amateurish in his efforts to spot a tail. He drove too slowly when he should have floored it. He stopped regularly to look over his shoulder. He parked too close to his destination. His actions were futile. Any attempt to hide was undermined by the homing beacon implanted in the religious medallion that hung from his neck.

The Ghost was content to wait and watch. The close-in kill was his domain. He’d built his career on caution and planning, making it a rule never to attempt the casual hit. It was his policy to reconnoiter the site, prepare a trap, and then lie in wait. The Lammers case was a model of planning and execution. Blitz, less so, as there had been so little time to prepare. Ransom’s sudden arrival was testament to the risks inherent in hurried work.

And then, of course, there was the dream.

Ransom would kill him.

The Ghost tried not to be superstitious. Dreams were the province of the Indians who’d worked his family’s coffee plantation. Not that of an educated man. And yet…

Just then, he spotted Ransom emerge from the restaurant.

He watched the American cross the street and disappear into a crowd near the factory gates.

For now, he was happy to keep his distance.

He would know the chance when he saw it.

Until then, he would watch and wait.

And he would pray.

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48

Jonathan waited for the one o’clock rush, then joined a group of twelve or so blue-jacketed workers as they congregated at the factory gates, walking past the lone guard in the Securitas car.

He’d taken off his necktie and turned up the collar of his jacket. Around his neck hung the purloined identification card, the photograph deliberately turned toward his chest.

There were no guards inside the building, just an electronic turnstile that governed passage beyond the foyer. He ran the ID over the electric eye and was in. Men went in one direction.

Women the other. He entered a locker room. A time clock was attached to the closest wall. He waited in line with the others, his eyes drilled to the patch of ground in front of him, lest someone pay him any notice. When it was his turn to punch in, he picked a card at random.

Luckily, it didn’t belong to any of the six or seven men behind him. Next to the washroom was a closet full of freshly pressed work jackets. He selected one that fit, then passed through a set of swinging doors that led onto the factory floor.

The floor had the wide-open, airy feel of an indoor stadium, right down to the exposed aluminum rafters that supported the roof. A small army of workers moved about, some on foot, others on forklifts, and still others driving electric carts. The vast floor was partitioned at uneven intervals by stacks of inventory rising ten meters above the ground. Oddly, the sheer size of the space conspired to muffle the sound, giving the factory an otherworldly atmosphere.

Closest to him, several rows of pressurized stainless-steel tanks awaited inspection. Jonathan circled them and proceeded across the floor, stopping where he saw something of interest to ask what was being manufactured.

The workers were, for the most part, polite, courteous, and professional. He learned, for example, that the pressurized tanks were in fact blenders being made for a large Swiss pharmaceutical company.

Elsewhere on the floor, teams of laborers fussed over autoclaves, heat exchangers, extruders. It seemed a wide gamut for a single firm to

manufacture. As the man in the restaurant had said, Zug Industriewerk was no longer in the arms business at all.

Reaching the far side of the factory, he observed an attached hall where few people entered and exited. He noted that the entry was governed by a biometric eye scan. A sign posted next to the door read, “THOR. Thermal Heating and Operations Research. Authorized Personnel Only.”

Thor. It was the name from Emma’s flash drive. The name on the memo he’d found on Blitz’s desk. Completion is foreseen for late first quarter 200–. Final shipment to client will be made on 10.2. Disassembly of all manufacturing apparatus to be completed by 13.2.

Jonathan knew better than to try to get inside the restricted area. He turned and walked in the other direction. He would have to find the answers to his questions elsewhere. In the main building.

Hanging from the wall was a QC clipboard, and near it, a box containing a half-dozen gleaming valves. He helped himself to both. Following signs posted on interior walls, he guided himself to the main administration building. A polite nod took him past the receptionist and into the elevator beyond.

The floors were marked according to function. First floor: Reception.

Second floor: Accounting.

Third floor: Sales and Marketing. Fourth floor: Direction. He hit “3.”

Once on the third floor, he noted that rooms were numbered sequentially: 3.1, 3.2. Beneath each number was the name or names of the executive who occupied the office. Hannes Hoffmann’s was the last office on the left. A well-coiffed secretary sat in the anteroom.

“For Mr. Hoffmann,” he said, lifting the box as if it were a Christmas gift.

“Whom may I announce?”

Jonathan gave the name of the man whose identification he’d stolen.

“Samples for inspection.”

The receptionist didn’t glance at his ID.

She’s not in on it, Jonathan realized. She’s not part of Thor.

“I’ll buzz him,” the woman said.

“Don’t bother,” said Jonathan. “He’s expecting me.”

No longer thinking about consequences, propelled only by a desire to know—about Emma, about Thor, about everything—he threw open the door and entered Hannes Hoffmann’s office.

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49

Hannes Hoffmann, vice president of engineering according to the nameplate outside his office, sat behind a pale wood desk, a phone to his ear, batting his agenda with a pencil as if it were a snare drum. He was stocky and bland-looking, with thinning blond hair combed straight back from a pudgy, satisfied face, his blue eyes spaced a bit too far apart. It was the face from the photograph in Blitz’s desk. It was a face Jonathan had seen a hundred times before…familiar, yet not familiar at all.

Seeing Jonathan, he stiffened. His eyes homed in like lasers. Is it him?

The question was practically broadcast in neon letters across his forehead.

Jonathan didn’t flinch. Foisting an underling’s smile, he asked where to set the box of valves. Hoffmann looked him up and down a moment longer, then pointed to the edge of his desk and went back to his conversation.

“The shipment has to be at the customs warehouse by ten o’clock tomorrow morning,” he was saying. “The inspectors won’t extend the deadline again. Call me if you run into any problems.”

Hoffmann hung up the phone and shot an annoyed glance at his visitor.

“And you are?”

“We talked yesterday on the phone.”

Hoffmann tensed. “Mr. Schmid?”

“That’s right.” Jonathan set the box on the desk. “Shout,” he said.

“Now’s your chance. Go ahead. Yell for your secretary.”

Hoffmann remained immobile as a rock. He said nothing.

“You can’t, can you?” Jonathan went on. “You can’t risk having the police come running and having me tell them everything I know about the operation you had going with Eva Kruger.”

“You’re right about that,” Hoffmann said evenly. “But it cuts both ways. I can’t shout, and you can do nothing to force me to talk.”

“All I want to know is what she was involved in.”

Hoffmann crossed his arms over his chest. “Sit down, Dr. Ransom. I suggest we dispense with the game playing.”

Jonathan approached the desk with caution. He sat down on the edge of the chair, wincing slightly as the SIG-Sauer tucked into his waistband dug into his spine. “How does this setup run?

A company within a company? A secret in-house project? Is that it?”

Hoffmann shrugged, a gesture of futility. “Stop this guessing.”

“I figure you’re manufacturing something you shouldn’t and giving it to someone who shouldn’t have it. What is it? Guns? Missiles? Rockets? I mean, why else set up shop in a place like this? I saw the area on the factory floor blocked off for Thor. What does ‘thermal heating operations research’

mean, anyway?”

Hoffmann leaned forward, his cordial demeanor gone. “You have no idea what you’ve stumbled into.”

“I’ve got some idea. I know that you got your hooks into Emma last year when we were in Lebanon. I figure you have someone over at Doctors Without Borders, too, who helped move me over here.”

“It goes back further than Lebanon,” said Hoffmann.

“No,” retorted Jonathan. “It all started in Beirut. I was there when she made her decision.” It had to be then, he told himself. That’s why she had the headaches, the depression. She was deciding.

“Did she go to Paris to meet with you?”

“Ah, yes, Paris. I remember. All those calls you made, not reaching her at the hotel. We were supposed to forward them, but there was a glitch in technical services. Regrettable. She told me she had a friend cover for her.

She said you believed her. I guess not.”

Jonathan ignored the barb. “Who do you work for?”

“Suffice it to say we’re a powerful group. Look around you. You have the Mercedes. The cash, too, I presume. You saw Blitz’s home, and something of what we’ve set up here.” Hoffmann folded his hands and placed them on the desk. He looked as benign as an insurance agent trying to sell him a whole-life policy. “I’m afraid that will have to do.”

“Not today, it won’t.”

“Turn around, Dr. Ransom,” said Hoffmann sternly. “Leave this office.

Leave the country. I can make sure the police drop the warrants for your arrest. Whatever you do, don’t look back.

There’s still time for you to get out of this predicament.”

“Does that also mean you’re going to call off that guy who took a shot at me last night?”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“And what about the cops who tried to steal Emma’s bags? Or don’t you know anything about that either?”

“The policemen were contracted out. They got overzealous. I apologize.

However, I’d say that you ended up with the better end of the stick.”

“Then who killed Blitz?”

Hoffmann considered this for a moment. “People with a different agenda than our own.”

“People who don’t think Thor’s such a good idea? What if they don’t see fit to let me walk off into the sunset?”

“I can’t speak for them. If they made an attempt on your life, I imagine it was because they believe you’re working with your wife.”

“You mean they think I’m working with you?”

Hoffmann kneaded his brow. It was apparent he didn’t relish the idea of anyone thinking that Jonathan worked with him. “Either way, I can’t help you there.”

“I appreciate the honesty,” said Jonathan. “Unfortunately, it doesn’t do much to solve my problem.”

Hoffmann slid his chair away from his desk. He put his hands behind his head and leaned back, as if to indicate that the formal part of the meeting was over. They could talk as friends now. “I feel for you, Dr. Ransom. The not knowing is the hardest part. My marriage didn’t last three years. You made it eight. I’d say you did better than most.”

As he spoke, his eyes blinked rapidly again. An ocular stutter. It was an odd tic, and something about it reminded Jonathan of someone he’d known

a long time ago.

“I reiterate my suggestion,” Hoffmann continued. “Leave this office. Get out of the country as quickly as you possibly can. We have no desire to see any harm come to you. In our books, you’re one of the good guys. You’ve been an enormous help to us, whether you knew it or not. Give me your word that you won’t look into our activities and I’ll call off the hounds.”

“And I have your word on that?”

“Yes.”

Hoffmann blinked as he said the words, his eyes fluttering for nearly two seconds. In that instant, Jonathan put a name to the face. It had been five years, maybe more, but he was sure of it.

It goes back further than Lebanon.

“I know you.”

Hoffmann said nothing, but his cheeks were suddenly pierced by sharp points of red.

Jonathan went on. “You’re McKenna. Queen’s Household Division seconded to the U.N. peacekeeping force in Kosovo. A major, right?”

Hoffmann chuckled as if he’d been called out on a prank. He sat forward, the look of bemusement plain on his face, and when he spoke, the Berliner’s strict German was gone, abandoned in favor of a plummy Belgravia slur. “Took you long enough, Jonny. You’re right. It was Kosovo.

New Year’s Eve, if I’m not mistaken. We tossed back a few that night. You, me, and Em. Put on a bit of weight since then, but who hasn’t? Present company excepted, I suppose. You look damn fit, all things considered.”

It was him. It was McKenna. Forty pounds heavier, minus some hair and a whisk-broom mustache, but him all the same. The same blinking eyes.

The maddening habit of calling him “Jonny.”

Jonathan felt a terrible pounding pressing in at his temples. Kosovo. The New Year’s Eve shindig at the British barracks. Major Jock McKenna in his highlands kilt, marching in at the stroke of midnight with his bagpipes playing “Auld Lang Syne.” And then he remembered the last part. The reason why he’d been so slow to recognize McKenna.

“But you’re dead. You were killed in a car accident two days before we left the country.”

Hoffmann shrugged, as if to say another artifice disposed of. “As you can see, I wasn’t.”

“Who the hell are you?” Jonathan asked.

“Whoever I need to be.”

Hoffmann sprang from behind the desk. Jonathan struggled to free his pistol, but he was too slow. Inexpert. An arm flashed, knocking the pistol from his hand. A short double-edged blade protruded from between the middle and ring finger of Hoffmann’s other hand. He slashed at Jonathan.

The blade narrowly missed his neck, slicing through the jacket’s lapels.

Jonathan jumped back, knocking over a chair.

“Your turn,” said Hoffmann as he rounded the desk. “Go ahead. Shout.

You want the police. Fine. Call them. I’m protecting myself against a murderer.”

Jonathan scooped up the chair and thrust it in front of him, fending off the larger man. Hoffmann darted forward, the blade nothing but a blur.

Jonathan raised the chair, deflecting the blow.

He looked toward the desk. The box of stainless steel valves he’d hauled upstairs rested on the corner. Each valve was the size of a drinking glass and weighed nearly a kilo. He stepped forward, forcing Hoffmann back, and snatched a valve. With only one hand to hold the chair, he was vulnerable.

Hoffmann saw this at once. He grasped a chair leg and yanked it to one side. At the same time, he transferred his weight to the opposite foot and attacked. Jonathan was too slow to retreat. A whiz of silver cut the air. This time the blade pierced the jacket and lacerated his chest. At the same moment, Jonathan brought the valve down. The blow glanced across Hoffmann’s brow, opening a gash above his eye. Hoffmann grunted, shook it off, and charged, pressing his bulk against the chair like a lineman driving a blocking sled. Jonathan dropped the valve and clutched the chair with both hands. Hoffmann pressed in closer. He was the heavier man and despite his bland appearance, immensely strong. The blade slashed and Jonathan felt a stinging sensation on the side of his throat.

Just then there was a knock at the door.

“Is everything alright, Mr. Hoffmann?”

“Perfect,” said Hoffmann in a ridiculously enthusiastic voice. He leaned into the chair, his face a brilliant red, perspiration beading his forehead.

Less than a meter separated the men. He raised his hand, preparing to strike.

All at once, Jonathan dropped to a knee and forced the chair to his left.

Caught unawares, Hoffmann’s momentum carried him in the same direction. He fell forward and dropped to a knee. Jonathan circled behind him, grabbing another valve from the box and slamming it against the back of Hoffmann’s head. He began to get up, and Jonathan struck him again.

Hoffmann collapsed to the floor.

“Mr. Hoffmann!” called the secretary, banging on the door now. “Please!

What’s that noise? May I come in?”

Dazed, Jonathan stumbled backward, seeking the desk for balance. He caught his reflection in a framed photograph. He was a mess. The cut on his throat was leaking blood. It had missed the carotid artery by less than an inch. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to the wound.

“One second,” he said, smiling grotesquely to imitate Hoffmann’s jolly voice.

He looked around the office. A window behind the desk opened onto a four-story drop. There were no drainpipes to slide down this time. He hurried to the door, picked up his pistol, and slipped it into his waistband.

“Come in,” he said.

The secretary entered in a rush. Before she could take in the scene, Jonathan closed the door behind her.

“My goodness, what happened?” she asked, the disparate elements slowly adding up.

Jonathan forced her against the door, bracing the woman with his forearm. “If you’re quiet, I won’t hurt you. Do you understand?”

The secretary nodded vigorously. “But…”

“Sshhh,” he said. “You’ll be alright. I promise you. It’s better to relax.”

The woman’s eyes widened in terror.

He pressed his fingers against her carotid artery, cutting off the flow of blood to her brain. She jerked once in his arms, and five seconds later, she passed out. He lowered her to the carpet. He estimated she would regain consciousness in anywhere from two to ten minutes. Hoffmann would be a little longer in coming around.

Jonathan surveyed the office. He could not leave looking as he did. He took off the blue work jacket, then found Hoffmann’s overcoat and put it on, sure to button it to the neck. He walked slowly down the corridor, head bowed, hand keeping his handkerchief to his neck. He took the stairs to the ground floor and exited the main entrance. After a block, his stiff gait turned into a jog, and soon after that, a headlong run.

He found the Mercedes parked in the garage on the Zentralstrasse across from the train station.

He yanked the first aid kit from beneath the front seat and fumbled for some gauze and tape. It did little good. He needed stitches.

One hand applying pressure to his neck, he drove the car slowly out of town, joining the autobahn and pointing the nose in the direction of Bern.

There was only one place he knew to go.

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50

Von Daniken kept his car in the passing lane, the speedometer pushing one-eighty. The highway cut through terraced vineyards high on the slopes of Lake Geneva. The lake’s broad blue canvas filled the windscreen.

Beyond it, wreathed in cloud, rose the snow-covered peaks of the French Haute-Savoie.

As he neared Nyon, on the outskirts of Geneva, his cell phone rang. He thumbed the answer button on the steering wheel.

“Rohde, Zurich medical examiner’s office.”

“Yes, Doctor…” Von Daniken remembered that he’d moved Rohde’s call last night to the delete file.

“It’s about the Lammers postmortem. We discovered something odd.”

Rohde spent several minutes summarizing his findings about the batrachotoxin, or frog poison, coating the bullets.

“My colleague, Dr. Wickes, at New Scotland Yard, is convinced that whoever killed Theo Lammers worked with the Central Intelligence Agency at one time.”

Von Daniken didn’t answer. The CIA. It figured. When it became clear that Blitz wasn’t a German but an Iranian, and a former military officer to boot, he’d suspected the killings to be the work of a professional intelligence organization. He thought of Philip Palumbo. Either the American agent wasn’t in on the operation or he had purposely kept the information from him.

Offering his thanks, von Daniken terminated the call. The highway narrowed as he entered the city. The road dipped and followed the borders of the lake. A great rolling park extended to his left, snowy meadows sloping to the shore. He passed a succession of stately institutional compounds built on these grounds. The United Nations. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The World Health Organization.

The address he was seeking was located in a less stately part of town. He parked on the Rue de Lausanne in front of a Chinese restaurant and a Turkish tailor. It was five past twelve. He was late. The person he was due to meet would have to wait a few more minutes.

He scrolled through his phone’s list of contacts to the letter “P.” A faraway buzzing filled his ear as the signal bounced between transmission towers connecting him to God only knew what corner of the world.

“Hello, Marcus,” answered a hardscrabble American voice.

Von Daniken knew better than to ask where Philip Palumbo was. “I’m afraid this call falls outside the boundaries of our formal relationship,” he began, eschewing any preamble as meaningless bullshit.

“This about the news I gave you yesterday?”

“It is. I need to know if there’s any more information about Quitab—the man we know as Gottfried Blitz—that you’re not telling me.”

“That’s it, my friend. First I heard of him was two days ago, straight from Gassan’s lips.”

“And that goes for the plan, too? No prior indications that there was a cell in Switzerland planning an attack? Nothing about his associates? A man named Lammers, for example?”

“You’re making me nervous, Marcus. What is it you want to know?”

“I need to know if you have a team working on my soil.”

“What kind of team?”

“I don’t know what you call it. Wet work. Liquidation. Sanctions.”

“That’s a helluva question.”

“Yes, it is, and I think I’m owed an answer.”

“I’d say I paid off that debt yesterday.”

“Yesterday was by the books. It’s as much in your interest to stop Gassan and his pals as ours.

It’ll count as your victory, too.”

“Maybe,” Palumbo admitted. “Either way, I need something more to work with.”

Von Daniken sighed, pondering how much information he should divulge. He didn’t really have much choice. Such was the price of working

with a superpower. Or these days, rather, the superpower. He couldn’t ask for Palumbo’s confidence without showing his own.

“We were working on Blitz, too, but from a different angle. This man I asked you about, Theo Lammers, was an associate of his. The two of them met four nights ago. We believe that Lammers gave Blitz a state-of-the-art drone capable of flying five hundred kilometers per hour and carrying a nacelle packed with twenty kilos of plastic explosives. Lammers was killed the night after they met. It was a professional job. We’re guessing that it was the same man who killed Blitz. We have evidence suggesting that the shooter is one of yours.”

“What evidence is that?”

Von Daniken told him about the bullets dipped in frog poison and the practice’s roots with Indians taking part in the Salvadoran squads run by the CIA.

“Sounds like you might be stretching things,” Palumbo responded.

“Superstitious Indians, death squads, poison…you’re talking almost thirty years back. That’s ancient history.”

“I don’t think either of us believe in coincidence.”

“You got me there,” said Palumbo, but he offered no further assistance.

“Phil, I’m asking you straight-out: Is this guy on the Agency payroll or is he freelancing out to someone else?”

“I can’t tell you. You’re talking about something that would be run out of Operations. That’s the sixth floor. Way above my pay grade. I don’t think the deputy director would take kindly to me butting in where I don’t belong.”

“I realize that,” said von Daniken. “But someone’s paying this man.

Someone’s pointing him in the right direction. It seems to me that he knows more about what’s going on than you or me. I, for one, find that frightening.

I thought that you could ask around. Perhaps…unofficially.”

“Unofficially?”

“Whatever you can find…”

“Frog poison, eh? Then we’re even?”

“All square,” said von Daniken with the kind of enthusiasm the Americans thought denoted honesty.

Palumbo chewed on this awhile, leaving von Daniken to listen to the sandpaper scrabble of wireless communications. “Alright then,” he said finally.

“Alright what?”

“I’ll be back at you,” said Palumbo without elaboration.

The line went dead.

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51

Waldhoheweg 30 was a stark five-story building situated in a quiet residential quarter of Bern, not far from the city center. Spindly, denuded birch trees grew from plots on the sidewalk every twenty meters or so, looking like skeletal sentries. Jonathan drove slowly past the building, checking for any signs that it was being watched. At four o’clock the neighborhood was quiet to the point of being deserted. Seeing nothing out of place, he parked three blocks up the street.

Emma’s real because Bea’s real, he reminded himself as he stepped out of the car. During the drive from Zug, he’d rehearsed everything he knew about Bea. Thirty-five years of age, she was an architect by trade, though she’d never gotten a foothold in the profession. At times, she’d been a frustrated artist, a frustrated photographer, and a frustrated glass-blower.

She was a wanderer. A free spirit and a bit of a lost soul, but she was real.

Flesh and blood in loose jeans and a ripped-up motorcycle jacket with an attitude to match.

Over the years, he’d met her only twice, maybe three times. The last time was eighteen months ago, a lunch in London when they were on home leave from the Middle East. Since they’d moved to Switzerland, Emma had made the trip to Bern several times to visit, but he’d never been able to find the time to join her.

Jonathan approached her apartment from the opposite side of the street.

There was still no sign of anyone loitering. He ran an eye over the parked cars. No one sitting behind the wheels, either. He jogged across the road, one hand pressed to the bandage. Residents’ names were listed outside the entry. Strasser. Rutli. Kruger. Zehnder. He stopped and went back one. A bolt of ice rattled inside his stomach. No Beatrice Rose anywhere to be found, but an E.A. Kruger in apartment 4A.

He began to shiver. What was he waiting for, then? He rang the buzzer. A minute passed. He stepped back and gazed up at the building. The movement caused the gash in his neck to tear anew. Just then, a woman approached and used her key to enter the building.

“I’m here to visit Miss Kruger,” he said. “She’s my sister-in-law. Do you mind if I wait in the entry?”

The woman’s eyes fixed with alarm on his neck. Glancing at his reflection in the plate glass, he saw that the gauze was soaked red.

“Are you alright?” she asked, not quite kindly.

“An accident. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“You should see a doctor.”

“I am a doctor,” he said, pasting on a smile, trying to make light of the situation. “I can treat myself once I’m inside. I’m sure you know Eva.

About yay high. Auburn hair. Hazel eyes. Wears glasses.”

The woman shook her head, considering all this. “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know Miss Kruger. I think it would be better if you waited outside.”

“Of course.” Keeping his smile firmly in place, Jonathan turned away and counted to five. When he looked over his shoulder, the foyer was empty. The front door was closing in slow motion. It had an inch to go before it locked. Rushing forward, he rammed his toe into the doorjamb. It was too late. The bolt had struck home.

He turned in a circle, cursing his bad luck. He thought about ringing all the buzzers to see if someone would pass him through, but that was too risky. He’d already been spotted by one resident. He didn’t want to be reported to the police.

He dug his hands into his pockets. His fingers touched Emma’s key chain. Maybe he did have a key…

He produced Eva Kruger’s key chain. Besides the car key, there were three others, each marked by a color-coded rubber ring. He tried one at a time in the door. The black one didn’t fit. Neither did the red. The green key slid home. With a flick of the wrist, he freed the bolt. He was inside a moment later.

A well-lit staircase wound up and around the elevator shaft. There were three apartments on each floor clustered around an art deco landing with a plant, a side table, and a mirror. As was Swiss custom, the resident’s name was engraved below the buzzer. He found Eva Kruger’s flat on the fourth floor. He rang the doorbell, but no one answered.

It goes back further than Lebanon.

Hoffmann was McKenna from Kosovo. And Kosovo was five years prior to Lebanon. It might go back further than Lebanon, but Lebanon was as far back as Jonathan could go. Somehow, he couldn’t get his mind around the bigger implications. Maybe he didn’t want to.

The fact was that he no longer had any choice.

Jonathan slipped the key into the lock and opened the door to Eva Kruger’s apartment.

Across the hall, the woman watched through her peephole as the injured man entered the apartment. Of course she knew Eva Kruger. Not well, mind you. It was impossible to have more than a passing acquaintance with a woman who traveled so frequently. Still, on several occasions, the two had spoken and she’d found her nice enough. She knew better, however, than to trumpet the fact to a stranger. Certainly not to a man who was bleeding all over himself.

It was not the first time this week that unknown people had been looking for Fräulein Kruger.

Two nights earlier, she’d seen a pair of men acting strangely outside the building. She’d entered without speaking to them, and later, she’d heard noises on the landing and looked out her peephole in time to see them entering Eva’s apartment. She still felt bad for not having alerted the police.

And now a man with a neck wound who was practically bleeding on the ground!

She would not make the same mistake twice.

Returning to her living room, she picked up the phone and called the police. “Yes, Officer,” she said. “I’d like to report a…” She wasn’t sure what it was. The man did, after all, have a key. She brushed off her worries.

He was an intruder. “I’d like to report an intruder at Waldhoheweg 30.

Please come right away. He’s inside now.”

They had been there . This time they hadn’t taken care to conceal their presence, Jonathan observed. What he saw before him was evidence of a painstaking and methodical search conducted without fear of discovery.

The living room was large and sparsely furnished, lit by track lights.

Directly in front of him was a black leather couch, its cushions removed, lined up beside it as if it were to be cleaned. Books had been pulled from the shelves and stacked on the floor. Magazines likewise. A Persian carpet had been rolled up and not quite rolled back. There was an Eames chair. A sleek coffee table with too much chrome and polished metal. A tortured sliver of steel that passed as a sculpture.

Someone had lived here…but it wasn’t Emma.

He slid the driver’s license from his pocket and stared at the picture of his wife. The furniture matched the chic glasses, the severe hair, the glaring lipstick. It was Eva Kruger’s furniture.

He forced himself to make a tour. The kitchen was clean to the point of being antiseptic.

Cupboards open. Plates removed, stacked on the counter. Glasses likewise. He opened the refrigerator. Orange juice. White wine.

Champagne. A tin of beluga caviar. An onion. A loaf of packaged black bread. A jar of pickles. It was an apartment in which to entertain during her “lightning safaris.”

In the freezer, there was a bottle of Polish vodka in an ice ring. He checked the brand. Zubrowka.

Made from buffalo grass. Two frosted shot glasses sat on the rack above it.

Opening the bottle, he poured himself a shot. The vodka was colored a pale yellow and had the consistency of syrup. He put it to his lips and knocked his head back. “To Emma,” he said aloud.

“Whoever you really were.”

The liquid slid down like silk on fire.

A fulsome sadness settled on him. The weight pressed on his shoulders and made the ten steps to the study an epic journey. It was another small

room. Immaculate. A metal desk and the Aeron chair that Emma coveted but could never afford. The computer had been removed, but the power cords lay on the floor next to a laser printer. No papers. No notes.

He walked into the bedroom. The sheets had been removed and thrown into the corner. The pillows cut open. The closets held a few outfits. A symphony of black. Armani. Dior. Gucci.

Shoes to match. Five and a halfs. Emma’s size. (Why must he constantly check when he already knew?) And one cocktail dress, also black, cut to elicit gasps from the most jaded guest.

Against his will, he imagined Emma walking into the room wearing it.

His eyes traveled up her long legs, stopping to admire her cleavage, then taking in the auburn hair that fell in waves to her shoulders. Yes, he decided, it would fulfill its purpose. She’d chosen the perfect attire to serve vodka and caviar for two.

Emma Ransom and Eva Kruger. Two people. Two personalities. But which one was real? How was he supposed to tell the difference between truth and fiction? And if he couldn’t, how had Emma?

It dawned on him that he was a part of it, too. Dr. Jonathan Ransom, globe-trotting physician conveniently stationed in all the world’s hot spots.

After all, he’d been moved to Geneva for Emma to be involved in this… in Thor…whatever it was. Why shouldn’t it have happened before?

Jonathan as pawn.

No, not as pawn. As cover.

He sat down on the edge of the bed and picked up the phone. The dial tone purred in his ear. He called the international operator and asked for the number of St. Mary’s Hospital, Penzance, England.

“How far back did it go?” he asked himself. Before Beirut, there was Darfur. And before Darfur, Indonesia, Kosovo, and Liberia, where Emma had greeted him in a battered jeep on the airport tarmac.

Where had Emma drawn the line? Or more importantly, when?

Jonathan took down the hospital’s number and dialed it. A pleasant English voice answered and he asked to be transferred to Records. A

woman came on the line. “Records.”

“I’m calling from Switzerland. My wife recently died and I need to obtain a copy of her birth certificate for the authorities. She was born in your hospital.”

“I’ll be happy to fax a copy once we receive an official inquiry.”

“I’m sure that won’t be a problem, but right now, I just need to confirm that you have the original document. Her name was Emma Rose. Born November 12, 1975.”

“Give me a minute,” said the woman.

Jonathan tucked the phone under his ear. He was holding Eva Kruger’s wedding ring. It came to him that there was no sign of a Mr. Kruger in the apartment. Why did she have the ring? he wondered. Everything else was so meticulous. An entire double life right down to the false eyelashes.

“Sir, this is Nurse Poole. We found a record of Emma Rose.”

“Good. I mean, thank you.” The news interrupted his musings. It was difficult to speak. He was on the verge of either breaking down or beginning to heal. He didn’t know which.

In his mind, he had a picture of him and Emma driving past the hospital in Penzance, a squat red-brick building in the center of town. It was their only visit to her hometown, made a year after their marriage. “And that’s where it all began,” Emma was saying proudly. “I came into the world at seven sharp, crying like a banshee. I haven’t shut up since. It’s where Mum died. Circle of life and all that, I guess.”

The nurse went on. “There is one problem. You’re certain that she was born in 1975?”

“Absolutely.”

“It is rather strange, you see. Was her middle name by chance ‘Everett’?”

“Yes.”

More proof that it was her. She wasn’t Eva Kruger. She was Emma. His Emma.

“I did, in fact, manage to find an Emma Everett Rose in our records,” the nurse said, her voice harder now. “She was also born on November twelfth…but a year earlier. That’s the problem.”

“There must be some kind of typo on the document. It has to be her.”

“I’m afraid not,” stated the nurse. “I don’t know quite how to say this.”

Jonathan moved to the edge of the bed. “Say what?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but Emma Everett Rose, born November twelfth, 1974, in St. Mary’s Hospital, is dead. She was killed in a car accident two weeks after her birth, on November the twenty-sixth.”

OceanofPDF.com

52

“Is this a complete list of his postings?” Marcus von Daniken was seated in a cramped windowless office deep in the corridors of DWB headquarters.

The heat was roaring, and every minute that he sat there he felt another grain of his patience slip away.

The medical organization’s director faced him across the desk. She was a fifty-year-old Somali woman who had immigrated to Switzerland twenty years ago. She had a shaved head and gold hoop earrings, and she made no effort to hide her hostility as she leaned over the shantytown of papers littering her desk and lectured him at the point of a very long, elaborately painted fingernail.

“Why shouldn’t it be a complete list?” the woman asked as she handed him Jonathan Ransom’s file. “Do I look as if I have something to hide?

Ridiculous, I tell you. The whole thing. Jonathan Ransom, a murderer! It is crazy.”

Von Daniken didn’t bother to answer. The Graubünden police had preceded him by a day, and it was obvious that they’d ruffled some feathers.

He’d be better off having a word with them than trying to argue with her.

He accepted Ransom’s file and took his time leafing through the papers.

Beirut, Lebanon. Team leader for an immunization-vaccination program.

Darfur, Sudan.

Director, Refugee Operations. Kosovo, Serbia. Chief medical officer leading an initiative to construct local trauma units. Sulawesi Island, Indonesia; Monrovia, Liberia. It was a list of all the world’s political hellholes.

“Is it normal for your physicians to spend so much time abroad?” he asked, glancing up from the folder. “I see here that Dr. Ransom spent two years in some of these places.”

“That’s what we do.” A disdainful sigh. Eyes to the ceiling. “Jonathan prefers the more challenging assignments. He’s one of our most committed physicians.”

“How do you mean?”

“Often the conditions are arduous. The doctor tends to lose sight of the bigger picture and gets caught up in the suffering. The futility of it can be overwhelming. We have quite a few cases of post-traumatic stress, similar to battle fatigue. But Jonathan never shied from the rougher assignments.

Some of us think that it was because of Emma.”

“Emma? You mean his wife?”

“We took the view that she tended to sympathize a bit too closely with the population. ‘Going native,’ as it were.”