“But I received a call from Signor…

“But I received a call from Signor Orsini, the manager of the railway station, earlier this morning saying that he had been visited by an officer who had come to inquire about the bags. I assumed he was working on the same case as you.”

“Exactly what bags are you talking about?” asked von Daniken, pulling up sharply.

“The bags that were sent to Landquart,” Conti explained. “The officer informed Signor Orsini that they belonged to the suspect in the killing of the policeman yesterday.”

“I’m not investigating the killing of the policeman in Landquart. I didn’t send anyone to speak with the station manager.”

Conti shook his head, his cheeks losing their pallor. “But this policeman…he showed his identification. You’re certain you are not working together?”

Von Daniken ignored the question, driving to the heart of the matter.

“What exactly did this man want?”

“The name and address of the man who had originally sent the bags.”

Von Daniken started walking toward the car. His pace quickened as it came to him. “And that man’s name was—”

“Blitz,” said the police chief, almost jogging to keep up. “The man you are looking for, of course. He lives in Ascona. Is something wrong?”

Von Daniken opened the passenger door. “How far is it to his home?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“Get us there in ten.”

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25

Mist tumbled from the hillside, curling around the centuries-old buildings and winding its way through narrow cobblestone alleys. The man known within his profession as the Ghost drove through the quiet resort town of Ascona. Several times he was forced to slow the car to a crawl as the mist thickened to fog and drowned the road.

Fog…it followed him everywhere…

It had been foggy when the squads had come, he reminisced, as he continued into the surrounding hills, passing down country lanes lined with rustic villas and tended gardens. Not a fog like this. But a night fog from the high mountain valley where his family grew coffee, the mist sly and meandering as a deadly snake. He had been made to watch as the soldiers pulled his parents from their bed, dragged them outside, stripped them, and forced them to lie naked in the mud. They took his sisters next, even Teresa who was not yet five. He closed his eyes, but he could not block out their screams, the lament of their spirits fighting until there was no fight left.

When the soldiers had finished, they shot the girls in the stomach. Some went inside and found his father’s prized Scotch whisky. They stood on the terrace, drinking and making jokes as his sisters passed into the next world.

He was a boy, just seven and terrified. The commandante thrust a pistol into his hand and marched him to his parents, who were made to rise to their knees. The commandante took his hand in his own, raised it, and guided his finger to the trigger. Then he whispered in his ear that if the boy wished to live he must shoot his parents. Two shots rang out in quick succession. His father and mother fell sidelong into the mud. It was the boy who had pulled the trigger.

Then, showing neither fear nor hesitation, he turned the gun on himself.

Miraculously, he did not die.

Impressed by this show of unflinching courage, the commandante made a decision. Instead of leaving him with his father and mother, his four sisters, and his dog, as examples to the peasantry about the wisdom of exercising their right to vote, the commandante spirited the boy out of the mountains.

Surgeons removed the bullet that had obliterated his jaw. Dentists repaired

his broken teeth. After the operations, he was taken to a private school where he proved a devoted student.

All this the government paid for. It was an investment in a very special

“project.”

As a student, the boy excelled in all subjects. He learned to speak French, English, and German, as well as his own native tongue. In athletic endeavors, he proved to be fleet of foot and graceful.

He shied away from team sports and concentrated on solitary competitions: swimming, tennis, and track.

Every week, the commandante looked in on him. The two enjoyed tea and pastries at a local café. At first, the boy would complain about his nightmares. Each night in his sleep he would meet his mother and father, who would plead with him for their lives. The images were so haunting, so real, that they followed him into the waking world. The commandante told him not to worry. All soldiers had these nightmares. Over time, a bond developed between them. The boy took to referring to the older man as his father. He grew to have affection for the man. But the nightmares did not go away.

He began to have problems at school.

The first involved his social disposition. Either unable or unwilling, he refused to interact in a normal manner with his fellow students. He was courteous. He was cooperative…to a point. But never did he let down his veneer of arctic aloofness. He had no friends, nor any desire to make any.

He took meals alone. After practice on the athletic fields, he returned to his room where he dutifully completed his homework. On weekends, he would either play tennis with one of several acquaintances (refusing any invitations to join them afterward) or stay in his room and study his languages.

This was all the more strange because the boy was growing into a handsome young man. His features were thin, well-defined, and wholly aristocratic, betraying barely a drop of his mother’s Indian blood. Further, he had about him a charisma as was found in natural leaders. His company was sought after by the more popular boys. Always he refused. The spurned invitations quickly turned into taunts. He was labeled a queer, a bastard, and

a freak. He responded with a savagery uncommon in a boy so young. He discovered that he was good with his fists and that he enjoyed bloodying his opponent. Before long, the word went out. He was a loner and not to be bothered.

The second sin, and in the school’s eyes, by far the graver, was the boy’s unwillingness to participate in worship. The school was of Roman Catholic denomination and demanded that its students attend daily mass. While he would take his place in the pews, he would neither pray nor join in hymns.

When kneeling at the altar, he refused the body and the blood of his Lord Jesus Christ. Once, when the father tried to force the sacrament into his mouth, he bit the priest’s fingers hard enough to draw blood. Even worse, the school’s chieftains observed that he was teaching himself his mother’s ancestors’ language and had taken to uttering prayers to a pagan deity in the forgotten words.

Of all this, the commandante was apprised. Instead of being disheartened with the way his

“project” had turned out, he was pleased. He had uses for individuals whose conscience had been scrubbed clean of artifice. Especially a man who by appearance and education possessed all the qualities of a gentleman. Such a man would be able to move in the highest circles of society. He would be granted access to the most rarefied gatherings.

In short, he was a perfect assassin.

In a minute, “the perfect assassin” was through the town and into the surrounding hills. He turned onto the Via della Nonna and found the Villa Principessa easily enough. He continued on a kilometer and parked his car at the top of a shaded dead-end street. There he followed his ritual. He freed the vial from around his neck and dipped the bullets into the amber liquid, blowing lightly on each. All the while, he offered his prayer.

When he finished, he stepped out of the car and opened the trunk. He donned a fleece pullover, a rain slicker, and a flaming red Ferrari cap.

People saw the cap, never the face. Off came the loafers. In their place, he donned a pair of hiking boots. As a final touch, he threw a rucksack over his

shoulder. The Swiss were crazy for walking. Closing the trunk, he tucked the weapon into his belt and set off down the street.

He had walked a hundred meters when he saw a dark-haired man led by three dachshunds emerge from the front door of Villa Principessa and start toward him up the street. The man was in his mid-fifties. He had blue eyes and wore a navy sweater. It was him.

The Ghost approached with a welcoming smile. “Good morning,” he said amicably. It was not often he had the chance to speak to those he was assigned to kill. He enjoyed the opportunity.

Over the years, he had developed certain beliefs about mortality and fate, and was curious to see if this man had any notion that his time on earth was at an end.

“Morning,” Gottfried Blitz replied.

“May I?” The Ghost bent to pet the dogs, who eagerly licked his hands.

Blitz crouched and scratched the dogs about the head and neck. “My children,” he said. “Grete, Isolde, and Eloise.”

“Three daughters. Do they take good care of their father?”

“Very good care. They keep me in good health.”

“What else is a child’s job?”

Inches separated the men. The Ghost gazed into Blitz’s eyes. He sensed a current of disquiet within the man. Not fear, but caution. He held the man’s gaze long enough to convince him that he was not a threat. He does not see it, mused the Ghost. He is oblivious to his fate.

Giving a casual “salud,” the assassin rose and walked on to the bottom of the street. A glance over his shoulder told him that Blitz had continued in the opposite direction.

The encounter left him shaken. The man might be nervous, but he did not suspect that his life was at its end. His soul had not considered the idea.

The Ghost pressed down a bolt of fear. Nothing terrified him more than the prospect of dying suddenly and without warning.

Turning the corner, he jogged up a short hill. Fifty meters along, a dirt road ran into the street from the right. He headed down the track, counting the houses as he went. Coming to the fourth in line, he hopped the low fence and walked unhurriedly to the villa’s back door. He looked to his left and right, scanning for inquisitive eyes. Satisfied that he couldn’t be seen, he knocked twice loudly. The gun rested in his palm, one bullet chambered, three more to make sure the first did the job. He noted that the house wasn’t wired with an alarm system. Arrogant, but a nice touch all the same. He pressed his fingertips to the door, feeling for any vibrations. The house was quiet. Blitz had not returned from his walk.

Seconds later, the Ghost was inside.

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26

Milli Brandt couldn’t sleep. Tossing in her bed in her home in Josefstadt, a fashionable district of Vienna, she was unable to think of anything but the damning verdict delivered by Mohamed ElBaradei at the emergency meeting six hours earlier. “Ninety-six percent concentration…one hundred kilos…enough for four or five bombs.” The words haunted her like the memory of a bad accident. But the look on ElBaradei’s face was worse.

Anguish and anger and frustration, all covering what she read as surrender.

The future was a foregone conclusion. The world was going to war again.

Suddenly, she sat up. Her breath came fast, and she had to pause as she gulped down the glass of water next to her bed. Quietly, she rose, and with a glance at her husband, padded down the hallway to her study. Inside, she locked the door behind her, then moved to her desk. A sense of resolve stirred within her. She was no longer thinking, but doing. This is duty, she told herself.

It was with a steady hand that she lifted the receiver. Amazingly, she recalled the number she’d been told to memorize all those years ago for use in emergencies only. The phone rang once, twice. Waiting, she realized that her life had changed drastically from what it had been only a minute ago.

She was no longer the deputy director for Technical Cooperation at the International Atomic Energy Agency. As of this moment, she was a patriot, and a little bit of a spy. She had never felt so sure of herself in her life.

“Yes,” a voice answered, brusque, demanding.

“This is Millicent Brandt. I need to speak with Hans about the Royal Lipizzaners.”

“Stay on the line.” She could practically hear the man on the other end of the line consulting his files or logs, or whatever it was that intelligence professionals look at when an agent calls in.

“Agent,” of course, was not the right word. Then again, Millicent Brandt was not her real name.

Born Ludmilla Nilskova in Kiev, she was the third daughter of an outspoken Jewish chemist, a refusenik, who had immigrated to Jerusalem, and then to Austria, some thirty-odd years earlier.

Though brought up speaking German, attending Austrian schools, and holding an Austrian passport, she had never forgotten the country that had secured her family’s release from the Soviet Union. Not long after beginning at the IAEA, she received a phone call from a man claiming to be an old family acquaintance. She recognized the accent, if not the name.

They met at a discreet restaurant near the Belvedere, across the city from her workplace. It was a friendly dinner, the conversation never lingering on any one subject. A little politics, a little culture. Interestingly, the acquaintance (whom she had never, in fact, met) knew all about her passion for riding, her love of Mozart, and even her attendance of a monthly Bible study group.

As the dinner concluded, he asked if she might consider doing him a favor. Immediately, her alarm bells went off. He touched her arm lightly to soothe her worries. She had the wrong idea.

He wanted nothing immediate. Nothing improper. Certainly, nothing that would risk her losing her job. On the contrary, it was vital that she keep her position. All he asked was that she look out for their best interests. A promise to let him know if she learned of anything that might put into question the security of her adopted homeland.

He gave her a phone number and a sentence she was to repeat if ever she felt the necessity to call him. He asked that she memorize both, and insisted on quizzing her until she could repeat the ten-digit phone number and the sentence flawlessly. Finished with this piece of business, he regained his light manner. He hugged her and offered his sincerest thanks.

As she climbed into a taxi for the ride home, Millicent Brandt, née Ludmilla Nilskova, felt an unfamiliar stirring in her breast. Part fear, part apprehension, part thrill. She had joined the ranks of countless others—

executives, officials, bureaucrats, and professionals from every walk of life

—who had sworn an oath to the state of Israel, and had promised to help the country in any way it saw fit.

On the telephone, the sharp voice returned. “Hans will meet you at the Gloriette at Schönbrunn Palace at ten a.m. Bring a copy of the Wiener Tagblatt and make sure the masthead is visible.”

“Yes,” she said. “Of course.” But the phone was already dead.

Milli Brandt hung up. She had done it. She had kept her promise. She was officially a sayyan.

A friend.

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27

Gottfried Blitz shooed the three dachshunds inside the house. Closing the door behind him, he stood stock-still, listening for a cry of alarm. The dogs’

trained noses were more effective than any electronic security system. The house remained quiet. He walked into the living room. The hounds lay camped out on the marble floor, panting after their morning’s exertion.

Stepping to the window, he peeled back the curtain and glanced down the road. The street was empty. There was no sign of the hiker he’d spoken with earlier. Blitz made it a habit to memorize faces, and he knew that the pale, slim man was not a neighbor. His Italian was fluent, but not that of a native. Who then? A tourist eager to explore the surrounding hills? But in this weather? And why hadn’t he been headed toward the paths that began just past the end of the road?

Blitz peered at the darkening sky. It was not yet nine o’clock and the day was already done. Rain began to fall. He listened as the drops grew heavier and began to strike the windowpane.

Shivering, he dropped the lace curtain into place.

Lammers’s death had him spooked. The papers indicated that the killer had been waiting for him at his home. There were suggestions that it had been a professional job, and that Lammers may have been involved with organized crime. Blitz knew better. He also knew that if Lammers had been compromised, it wouldn’t be long until he was, too. At any other time, he would break camp and call it a day. Gottfried Blitz was in grave danger.

But this was not any other time.

The end game had begun. The Pilot was in the country. The final test of the drone had been a resounding success. Operational status had been elevated to red. It was a go. For all intents and purposes, the attack had already been launched.

And now, the mess in Landquart. One man dead, the other injured.

Blitz chewed on his lip. He’d questioned sending the bags by train, but in the end, there had been no other way. It was not just a question of manpower (Division had only seven operatives in the country) but risk. At this stage, it was too dangerous to hand off the bags personally. Using the

Swiss mail system hadn’t troubled him, though he could see now that putting his name to the receipts had been a mistake. It was Finance that had insisted. They didn’t want the money left unclaimed should something go wrong. Operations had signed off on it, too. The money was key, they’d said. It’s the first thing they’ll look for. Crumbs for the trail, went their logic. You had to lead the police by the nose if you wanted them to find anything. And all trails led to him.

To Gottfried Blitz.

Still, he couldn’t get Theo Lammers out of his mind. A professional job.

Someone waiting for him at his home. He shuddered. It could mean only one thing. The network had been penetrated.

In the living room, he turned on the stereo. Wagner, as always. Just loud enough to let his neighbors know that he was at home, and that today was a day like any other.

Friends and neighbors knew Gottfried Blitz as a wealthy German businessman, one of thousands who had fled to southern Switzerland to enjoy the milder clime and the Mediterranean atmosphere. He drove the newest Mercedes sedan. He made annual pilgrimages to Bayreuth for the Ring cycle. Sunday mornings, the good Herr Blitz attended Lutheran services like any other good Christian. As a cover, it was complete.

Blitz walked to the study, sat down at his desk, and removed the pistol he kept in his waistband.

Slipping the gun into the top drawer, he turned on his laptop and went over his checklist. New Bogner sweater for P.J. WEF creds for H.H. 100k cash wire. He whistled softly. Another hundred thousand francs. That one was not going to fly with the boys in Finance. On the other hand, it paled beside what had already been spent. Two hundred million francs to buy control of the company in Zug. Another sixty million to finance the shipments of equipment. The payoffs to P.J. alone amounted to twenty million francs, and that didn’t include the Mercedes and all its special equipment.

He finished typing the request for the monetary transfer and e-mailed it to Finance. Just then, Blitz cocked his head toward the door. The hairs on his forearm were standing on end.

“Hello?” he called. “Someone there?”

There was no reply. The house was too quiet. And where was the barking that accompanied the arrival of a guest?

“Gretel, Isolde,” he called to his dogs.

He sat up, straining for the scrabble of their paws across the marble floor.

Wagner drifted in from the living room. The rumble of timpani like distant thunder. The lament of a Teutonic maiden mourning her vanquished prince.

Where were the dogs?

Something shifted in the air behind him. A presence, dark and cold.

A klaxon sounded deep inside him.

Blitz looked at the drawer holding his gun, then at the computer.

Choose one.

Thirty years of training took over. The mission came first. He positioned his fingers above the keyboard and typed in the “destroy” command, obliterating the laptop’s hard drive.

He felt the air rustle behind him. Something cold and hard pressed against his temple.

And then there was light. A thunderclap of hellish color that lasted an instant, and then was no more.

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28

The Villa Principessa sat at the end of a gravel drive, a renovated eighteenth-century cottage with ivy creeping up pitted walls and geranium-filled window boxes decorating its upstairs bedrooms. A low stone-and-mortar wall surrounded the dormant rose garden that fronted the house. At nine a.m., the rain fell in a steady curtain, as pounding and relentless as a waterfall.

Simone buttoned up her coat and tucked her hair behind her ears. “So we’re just going to confront him? What if he says he didn’t send the bags?

Then what are we going to do?”

“Why would he deny it?” said Jonathan. “Once he knows Emma’s dead, he’ll be happy to get his car back.”

“And his money?”

“And his money.” Jonathan opened the glove compartment and took out the cash-filled envelope.

“I’ve been thinking about this all night…I mean about what Emma was up to.”

Simone’s eyes ordered him to go on.

“Medicine,” said Jonathan. “Emma was always talking about how aid never reached its intended destination. It drove her crazy. You know how it is where we operate. Half the time cargos are impounded by the government or stolen by customs officials who then try to sell it back to us at twice the price. If we get seventy percent of what’s meant for us, that’s considered good. I think it had something to do with that. I mean, look at this house. It had to cost a bundle. My guess is that Blitz is an executive at one of the big pharmaceutical companies. Together they were up to something. Bribing someone. A payoff. Emma always thought she wasn’t doing enough to make a difference.”

“And you expect Blitz to tell you about it?”

“A hundred thousand francs buys a lot of cooperation.”

“Or a lot of silence. It seems to me that you’re overlooking something.

Have you considered that Blitz might have been the one who sent the

policemen?”

“It doesn’t compute. First off, he’d have had to know about Emma’s accident, and that’s impossible. How do you see it? That he sent Emma the bags, then stuck some crooked cops on her to take the bags back as soon as she picked them up? No way. It wasn’t Blitz. It was someone else.”

“Someone who knew about Emma’s accident?”

“Or someone who was waiting for the bags all along.”

Jonathan left the car and passed through the wrought-iron gate. Simone caught up a moment later. “Gottfried Blitz” read the nameplate below the doorbell. Jonathan pushed the button and the bell chimed like the tolling of a campus carillon. No one answered. Digging in his pocket, he found the breath mints he’d taken from Eva Kruger’s overnight bag and popped one into his mouth. “Want one?”

Simone shook her head.

Jonathan pressed his ear to the door. Strains of classical music came from within. He rang the doorbell again. When no one answered, he threw a leg over the railing and craned his neck to look through the front window.

Three dachshunds lay sleeping on the marble floor. He caught a shadow flitting at the periphery of his vision.

“Mr. Blitz,” he called. “I need to speak with you. Open up, please.”

He looked back at the dogs. His vision felt sharper than normal. He observed how still the animals were lying. Unnaturally still, to a doctor’s eye. He studied their torsos. It didn’t appear as if any of them were breathing. One, in particular, lay with its head cocked at a severe angle, its tongue lolling from the corner of its mouth.

Jonathan tried the door, but found it locked.

“What are you doing?” Simone asked. “You can’t just go inside.”

Jonathan banged on the door. “Mr. Blitz! My name’s Ransom. I think you know my wife, Emma. Please open up. It’s about the bags. I’ve got them.

And the money.”

Just then, a door slammed inside the house.

“Keep knocking,” he said, turning and running down the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Simone called.

“Around back. Something’s wrong here.”

“But…wait!”

He ran around the side of the house and came up the rear path through the garden. Somewhere behind him, Simone was calling for him to stop, but her words registered as a distraction. The back door was open. Music played from the stereo. “Ride of the Valkyries.” He stepped inside the house, finding himself in a narrow kitchen. He advanced across the floor, grimacing with every squeak of the parquet. He sensed an imbalance in the atmosphere, but instead of being frightened, he felt alert and exhilarated.

Battle bright.

He left the kitchen and crossed the living room to where the dogs lay near the front door. None lifted a head as he approached. He bent to examine them. The dachshunds were dead, their necks broken. He stood, aware of his sharp breathing and his heart’s pistonlike contractions. Directly ahead, a flight of stairs led to the second floor. He heard something…

something just ahead…and he continued down the hall. He threw open the door to his left. Guest bathroom: empty. The sound grew more distinct. A labored, arrhythmic wheezing.

It was then that he smelled the cordite and his eyes began to water.

He came to the study.

“Oh, God,” he said as he rushed into the room.

A man sat slumped over his desk. His mouth hung open, his chest heaving as he fought for breath. Blitz? He assumed so. There was an entry wound at the temple, a neat hole ringed by gunpowder. Was it a suicide?

Jonathan stepped back, searching for a pistol, but he didn’t see one anywhere. He recalled the shadow flitting at the far corner of the living room. Not suicide.

Murder.

Jonathan glanced toward the door, wondering if the killer might still be in the house, and if he himself might be in danger. He dismissed the thought

and began talking to Blitz, telling him his name and that he was Emma’s husband. He instructed him to hang on, and stated that he was going to do everything he could to keep him alive.

As gently as possible, he lifted Blitz off of the desk and laid him on the floor, taking care to keep his air passage open and unobstructed. He turned Blitz’s head and studied the exit wound. He’d seen too many like it before.

Large caliber. Hollow point. He was not optimistic about Blitz’s chances.

Still, at that moment, the man was alive. Nothing else mattered.

Running into the living room, he snatched the phone and dialed 144 for Emergency Services.

When the operator asked what had happened, he said, “Life-threatening head injury with a large loss of blood.” When he realized that he was speaking English, he repeated the words in Italian.

“Jon, what is it? What happened?” Simone stood at the entry to the living room, concern etched across her forehead. “You have blood on your hands.”

“There’s a bathroom down the hall. Soak some towels in hot water and bring them to me.”

“Towels? What happened? Why—”

“Do it!”

Jonathan returned to the study and knelt down beside Blitz. There was little he could do until the paramedics arrived except make sure that the man’s heart continued beating. Blitz’s pupils were dilated and his respiration was shallow. Jonathan took the man’s wrist, but was unable to find a pulse. He commenced CPR. Three plunges, then two breaths. Simone barreled into the room.

Seeing Blitz, she let out a cry and dropped the towels onto the floor.

“I called EMT,” he said. “They should be here any minute. Put the towels beside his head.”

“But why?” Reluctantly, she picked up the towels and deposited them on the floor next to Jonathan. She stood quickly, teetering as she viewed the blood spreading across the carpet. “He’s dead.”

“Not yet, he’s not. If I can keep his heart beating until the paramedics arrive, he’ll have a chance.”

“He’s been shot in the head. Just leave him.”

Jonathan put his head to Blitz’s chest. There was no heartbeat.

Respiration had ceased. He looked up at Simone and shook his head.

“Who did this?” she asked.

“I thought I saw something…a shadow…I heard a door slam. He must have run away.”

“The police will be here any minute. We have to go.”

Jonathan stood. Suddenly, the light seemed to be exceedingly bright and he had to blink. He took a breath, waiting for the remorse that inevitably accompanied death. But it didn’t come. If anything he felt fresh, almost happy, and much too energetic for someone who hadn’t slept a wink the night before. He ran a hand through his hair. His fingertips bristled at the touch. All his senses were enhanced. Sight. Touch. Sound. His mouth, though, was dry and pasty. He checked his image in the mirror hanging on the wall. His eyes stared back, wild and accusing, the pupils almost fully dilated.

The buzz was coming on stronger now, and he recognized what it was: high-octane, clean-burning amphetamine, with a little something special thrown in to heighten the senses.

He dug the package of mints from his pocket. How many had he consumed in the last hour?

Two? Three?

“Come, Jonathan. Right now.” Simone grabbed his arm and tried to guide him toward the door, but Jonathan shook himself free. “Give me a minute,”

he said, taking stock of the situation. “I’m not leaving until I find out something about this guy.”

“But, Jonathan…”

“Did you hear me?” he snapped. “Do you think we’re supposed to just keep running?” He took a breath, calming himself, fighting the manic voice in his head. “Blitz knew Emma,” he said.

“They were working together. This is our one chance to discover what it was.”

A laptop sat opened on the desk, the screen a blizzard of warring pixels.

He hit a few keys, but the image failed to clear up. He turned his attention to the desk and its contents. He opened the top drawer and came eye to eye with a semiautomatic pistol. He was well enough acquainted with handguns to recognize it as a SIG-Sauer, the sidearm favored by military officers across the Third World. The rest of the drawer held a mess of papers, pens, and pencils. He spilled the contents on the desktop and rummaged through it. Notes with names and telephone numbers.

Assorted bills. Matchbooks.

The filing drawer was locked. He snapped a letter opener in two trying to pry it open, before giving up. He turned his attention to the “in” and “out”

trays on the credenza behind the desk. He flipped through the papers.

“ZIAG” read the header on an office memorandum, and beneath it the company’s full name: Zug Industriewerk AG. It was from a Hannes Hoffmann to Eva Kruger, and cc’d to Gottfried Blitz. Subject: Project Thor.

Eva Kruger.

There it was: his proof in black and white. As if the corpse with a bullet in his brain wasn’t enough.

The memo read, “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.”

“I hear a siren,” pleaded Simone. “Please, Jonathan. Let’s get out of here.”

“In a second.”

Several buff envelopes lay beneath the memo. Inside the first, he found three passport-sized photographs of Emma, similar to the one on the fake driver’s license. A second envelope held more photographs, this time of a wan blond man more or less Jonathan’s age. “Hoffmann” was printed on the back in the same masculine block letters used to address the letter to Emma.

He stared at the photograph. Hannes Hoffmann. Issuer of the memo to Eva Kruger.

“Cover,” Jonathan murmured, remembering a word he’d picked up from one of the spy novels he’d devoured as a teenager. Everything is cover.

Emma who isn’t Emma. Amphetamines made to look like breath mints. To everything and everyone, a disguise. He looked at the body sprawled on the floor. And Blitz? Who was he when he wasn’t Blitz?

Jonathan shuddered as the scale of the deception grew clearer. This was no one-time subterfuge.

Emma was not bribing African health ministers or buying pharmaceuticals on the gray market.

This was something bigger. Something on an entirely different scale. This was the world of “Go”

pills and false identities and perfectly doctored driver’s licenses.

“Jonathan, please!” Simone clutched the chair back, as if to keep herself from running away.

Sirens. At least two of them. He lifted his head, and in that second, he could tell that they were getting closer, not farther away, and that they were approaching at warp speed. Sweeping his arm across the desk, he gathered all the papers and stuffed them into a leather briefcase next to the credenza.

“Go,” he said. “I’m right behind you.”

“Hurry!”

“I’ll be right there,” he said, pushing her out of the room. “Go out the back!”

Simone ran from the room.

Jonathan stood in the doorway. The sirens were just outside. Agitated voices punched through the relentless patter of rain. Instead of leaving, he ran to Blitz’s desk and opened the top drawer.

He stared at the pistol, then picked it up and slipped it into his waistband.

In the hall, he slowed long enough to see the police cars next to the curb, officers with guns drawn rushing the house. A short, determined man in a black overcoat was leading them up the gravel path.

Police? Where was the ambulance he’d phoned?

Questions. Too many questions.

Jonathan ran through the house, catching up to Simone at the back door.

Grabbing her hand, he pulled her through the garden.

“Where are we going?” she asked, struggling to keep up with him. “The car’s the other way.”

“Forget the car. We can come back for it.”

They didn’t stop at the dirt road, but continued up the hillside. Ignoring the wind and the rain and the chest-high brush, Jonathan carved a path to the crest. Simone huffed and wheezed and swore, but somehow she stayed with him. When he finally looked back, they’d gained four hundred feet in altitude and the villa was a half mile away.

“I can’t go on,” said Simone, clamoring for breath. “I need to rest.”

But it was Emma’s voice he heard, and for a moment, he swore he saw her, dressed in red and black, standing on the slope beneath them. He grabbed Simone’s hand. “Come on,” he said.

“There’s only one way.”

And clutching the briefcase to his chest, he turned and headed higher into the mountains.

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Milli Brandt walked briskly down the snowy path, surrounded on both sides by tall, manicured hedges. In better times, she had enjoyed visiting the gardens of Schönbrunn Palace. Stretching more than a mile in each direction, the immaculately groomed grounds spoke of an earlier era when royalty meant unbridled power. For good and evil.

It was shortly after her arrival from Israel that she had first visited the palace gardens. Along with her parents and her sister, she had spent the day walking from one end of the grounds to the other, climbing the hill to the Gloriette, the immense colonnade built in 1775 by the Emperor Joseph and his wife, Maria Theresa. Even then, the two girls had been ambitious. Milli dreamed of being a prominent judge. Tovah had planned a career as a diplomat. Of the two, Tovah was quicker to achieve her goals. By the age of twenty-five, she had moved back to Jerusalem and earned a position as a spokeswoman for the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Married and the mother of a baby girl, she was a regular fixture on the nightly news.

One evening, Tovah and her husband drove to Tel Aviv to enjoy a seafood dinner at one of the fine restaurants that lined the coast. She was in a celebratory mood. Earlier that week, her doctor had informed them that she was pregnant with a second child.

Realizing that it might be their last chance in a long while, they decided to go dancing at Teddy’Z, an outdoor discotheque. Sometime near midnight, a tanned, handsome youth named Nasser Brimm entered the disco and pushed his way to the center of the dance floor. By the time anyone noticed that his formal attire and woolen blazer were out of place for a sultry spring evening, it was too late.

Afterward, the police figured that Tovah had been standing next to the bomber when he had detonated his belt charge of C-4 plastique layered with thousands of nails, nuts, and bolts. Her head, strangely unscathed, was the only part of her body ever found.

The death toll for the attack counted sixteen young men and women. Two others were blinded. A third lost both his arms. A fourth was paralyzed from the neck down. In fact, the final toll was higher. No one had counted the new life growing in Tovah’s womb.

“Miss Brandt.”

Milli spun at the sound of the deep, accented voice. A slim, academic-looking man stood a few feet behind her, smiling. She had not heard him approach. “Mr. Katz?”

“I see you have the paper. I appreciate your following our directions.”

The man linked arms with her, and in the manner of husband and wife, they strolled through the deserted gardens. As they walked, Milli informed him about the emergency meeting held in the Viennese woods the night before and the findings delivered by Mohamed ElBaradei.

“Enriched to ninety-six percent. You’re certain about that?”

Milli said that she was.

“And what chance is there of an error in measurement?”

“It would be the first time. I’m sorry to bring such news. I thought it was my duty.”

“‘Every subject’s duty is the king’s; but every subject’s soul is his own.’

I’m alone on this, but I’m convinced Shakespeare was a Jew.” A timid smile as he stopped and turned to her. “No one likes to betray a trust.”

Milli watched the tall, thin figure disappear among the snowcapped topiaries. A sharp wind stirred, filling her ears with the rush of desolation.

She’d expected him to say that she’d done the right thing. She wanted a speech about how he would take immediate action and that she had saved thousands of lives, but he’d said none of those things.

In parting, he simply requested that she call the number she’d been given should she learn anything of further importance. Not even a thank-you.

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30

“Is it him?”

Von Daniken compared the snapshot of Gottfried Blitz standing next to the drone with the ruined face lying at his feet. “You tell me,” he said, handing the photo to Kurt Myer and turning away before the bile rose any farther in his throat.

“Same sweater. Same eyes. It’s him.” Squatting on his haunches, Myer studied the corpse with an expert’s keen eye. “He was killed while seated in the chair, then moved to the floor. The shot had to be taken at waist level with the muzzle aimed downward to have expelled Blitz’s brains all over the desk and wall.”

Using a fountain pen, he pointed to the rash of gunpowder tattooed into the skin. “Look at the abrasion collar and the stippling. The shooter was a foot away when he pulled the trigger. Blitz didn’t even know he was there.

He was working on his laptop until the moment he was shot.”

But von Daniken was interested in something else Myer had said. “Back up a second, Kurt. What do you mean ‘moved to the floor’? Are you saying the killer shot him, then laid him on the carpet? Did he bring him the towels, too?”

“Someone did. It certainly wasn’t Mr. Blitz.” Myer tested the pile of towels heaped near the body. “Still warm.”

The men shared an uncomfortable glance.

From the street came the sound of another siren approaching. Doors slammed. There was a commotion in the hall. Two paramedics entered the study.

“That was quick,” said von Daniken, referring to the near instantaneous arrival of the medical technicians.

“Did you call?” one of the paramedics asked. “Dispatch said it was an American.”

“An American?” Von Daniken traded looks with Myer. “How long ago did the American call?” he asked the paramedic.

“Twelve minutes ago. Nine-oh-six.”

“It’s him,” said Myer. “Ransom.”

Von Daniken nodded, then glanced at his watch. During the drive from the airfield, he’d called Signor Orsini, the station manager, for a description of the man who’d shown up at his door early that morning impersonating a police officer and asking about who had sent a certain pair of bags to Landquart. Afterward, he’d phoned the Graubünden police for details about the murder of one of its officers the day before, also in Landquart. Orsini’s description perfectly matched that given by a witness to the crime. The police in Landquart even had a name: Dr. Jonathan Ransom. An American.

There was more. Ransom’s wife had perished two days earlier in a climbing mishap in the mountains near Davos.

“If it was Ransom who called,” he said to Myer, “that explains the towels. He’s a doctor.”

Lieutenant Conti, who had been listening in on the exchange, tucked his chin into his neck and lifted his hands in a quintessentially Italian gesture.

“But why would Ransom shoot Blitz and then call the ambulance to save his life?”

Von Daniken exchanged looks with Myer. Neither man wanted to answer the question for the time being.

Von Daniken walked over to the desk and tapped a few keys on the laptop. The screen displayed a hodgepodge of fractured colors. Here was something else that bothered him. Was Blitz working on a broken computer when he’d been shot? Or had he purposefully ruined it to prevent anyone from finding out what was on its hard drive?

One by one, he opened the desk drawers. The top two were empty, except for a few scraps of paper, rubber bands, and pens. The bottom drawer was locked, but appeared to have been tampered with. He glanced up and noticed a few moving boxes placed against the wall. He rushed to see what was inside and was disappointed to find them empty as well.

Just then, the crime scene technicians arrived. All unnecessary personnel were ordered out of the room. Myer slipped past von Daniken in the corridor, whispering that he was going to get the daisy sniffer, which was what he called the explosives and radiation detector.

As the technicians filed into the house, von Daniken went upstairs and made his way to Gottfried Blitz’s bedroom. He wasn’t thinking about the victim so much as the man who might have killed him. He was looking for a clue as to why a cop killer whose wife had died in a mountaineering accident was in such a hurry to visit Blitz.

The search of Blitz’s bedroom turned up nothing. The night table was stacked with German celebrity glossies; the dresser filled with neatly folded clothing; the bathroom stuffed to bursting with cologne, hair products, and a variety of prescription drugs. But nowhere did he find anything that would tie Blitz to the drone, or indicate how he planned to use it.

Von Daniken sat down on the bed and stared out the window. It came to him that there were two groups and that they were somehow battling one another. There was Lammers and Blitz on the one side, and those who wanted them dead on the other. The quality of the killings combined with the discovery of the drone and the RDX marked it as an intelligence operation.

The prospect angered him. If an intelligence agency knew enough about a plot involving RDX and a drone to take decisive measures to stop it, why hadn’t they contacted him with the information?

He turned his mind to Dr. Jonathan Ransom, who apparently had phoned the paramedics.

According to the station manager, Ransom had been hellbent on discovering who had sent the bags to Landquart earlier in the week. The logical assumption was that he didn’t know Blitz.

How, then, had Ransom come to be in possession of the baggage claims?

If, however, von Daniken were to assume that Ransom and Blitz were working together—that they did know each other—the pieces fell into place. Stopped by the police after picking up the bags, Ransom had panicked, killed the arresting officer, then run down his partner in his hurry to flee the scene. Cover compromised, Ransom fled to Ascona to seek instructions from his controller. His ignorance of Blitz’s address could be put off to a cardinal rule of espionage: Compartmentalize information, or in the vernacular, keep it need-to-know. Hence, his need to speak to Orsini.

And the wife? The Englishwoman who had perished in a freak mountaineering accident? Might Ransom have killed her when she’d discovered that he was an agent?

Von Daniken scowled. He was grasping. Spinning fantasies out of thin air. Rising, he made his way to the stairs. He wanted to know what was in the bags that had made Ransom deem them worth killing for. There was little prospect of finding out, at least in the short term. The officer Ransom had struck with the car lay in a coma. His prognosis was not optimistic.

Von Daniken’s phone rang, interrupting his thoughts.

It was Myer, and he sounded worried. “In the garage. Come quickly.”

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The garage was detached from the main house and accessible by a side entry. A late-model Mercedes sedan occupied one space. The other was empty, but a fresh oil stain and a set of muddy tire tracks testified to the fact that a vehicle—either a truck or a van by the width of its axle—had recently been parked there.

Myer skirted the Mercedes and made his way to a storage closet built into the rear wall. He opened the doors and stood back so von Daniken could have a clear view. Stacked on the shelves were bricks wrapped in white plastic and bound in groups of five by duct tape.

“Is it what I think it is?” said von Daniken.

“Thirty kilos of Semtex still in its factory wrapping,” said Myer. “Won’t be hard to find out where this came from.”

Plastic explosives were tagged with a special reactive chemical that identified not only the manufacturer, but the lot number. The practice allowed the explosives to be tracked, and in theory, at least, to defend against illegal sale and trafficking.

“Take one,” said von Daniken.

Myer didn’t hesitate before removing a brick and tossing it to Krajcek, who slipped it into his overcoat. As material evidence, the explosives officially belonged to the Tessin police, but von Daniken didn’t feel like filing a request and waiting a week for the evidence to be catalogued and then released. Plastic explosives were not passports.

“Check the car?” von Daniken asked.

“Just the trunk. It’s clean.”

Von Daniken climbed into the Mercedes and rummaged through its contents. The vehicle was registered to Blitz. His driver’s license was tucked into the flap alongside the door. As he removed it, a piece of blue paper fell into his lap.

An envelope. One of the flimsy old-fashioned ones marked “Air Mail.”

He saw the writing and his heart skipped a beat. It was Arabic written in a

fountain pen’s faded blue ink. The postmark read, “Dubai, U.A.E.

10.12.85.”

Von Daniken opened it. The letter itself was written in Arabic, too. One page, the script neat and precise. A laser printer could hardly do better. He couldn’t read a word of it, but that didn’t matter. The faded photograph tucked inside told him all he needed to know.

Staring into the camera was a strapping young soldier dressed in a green uniform complete with a Sam Browne belt and an officer’s oversized cap.

Flanking him were his mother and father.

Proud grins were the same the world over. Von Daniken had never been to Iran, but he recognized a picture of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei when he saw it, and he knew that the giant, four-story painted portrait of the religious figure that dominated the photograph’s background could only have been taken in Teheran. Even so, his attention kept returning to the military man’s face and his strange blue eyes. A zealot’s eyes, he thought.

Just then, his cell phone rang. He checked the screen. A restricted number. “Von Daniken.”

“Marcus, it’s your American cousin.”

Von Daniken handed the letter to Myer and told him to find someone who spoke Arabic. Then he stepped outside the garage and resumed his conversation. “No more engine problems, I trust.”

“All taken care of.”

“I’m glad.”

“We talked to Walid Gassan.”

“I figured.” Von Daniken wondered where they’d hidden him on the plane. “When did you take him down?”

“Five days ago in Stockholm. One of our informants received word that Gassan had taken delivery of some plastic explosives up in Leipzig. We brought in a jump team to nab him, but he’d gotten rid of the stuff before we could arrest him.”

“Semtex?”

“How’d you know? He got it from that Ukrainian scumbag Shevchenko.”

“You’re certain?”

“Let’s just say that we had a heart-to-heart with him and he decided to come to Jesus.”

Von Daniken didn’t require any further details.

“Gassan was acting as a facilitator,” Palumbo continued. “He handed over the explosives to someone named Mahmoud Quitab. We ran the name through Langley and Interpol but didn’t get anything. Anyway, this Quitab character took delivery in a white Volkswagen work van with Swiss plates.

We don’t have a number.”

Von Daniken had rounded the corner of the garage. As he listened, he noticed that a small chunk of concrete was chipped from the pillar separating the two bays. Visible to the naked eye was a streak of white paint. “A white van? You’re sure of the color?”