“But I received a call from Signor…

“The guy said white. The name Quitab mean anything to you?”

“Not a thing.” Von Daniken fought to keep the anxiety from his voice.

“Anything else on this Quitab…phone, address, description?”

“His phone number belonged to a SIM card with a French prefix. We’ve got a request into France Telecom to run its numbers. We’re doing the same with all incoming and outgoing calls registered on Gassan’s phone. Nothing on Quitab’s address or his whereabouts so far, but we did get a description of him. Maybe fifty. Dark hair. Trim. Medium height. Sophisticated. Well dressed. One of them, but with blue eyes.”

One of them, meaning an Arab.

Von Daniken looked at the photo of Blitz. Dark hair. Medium height. A look of sophistication.

And, of course, the diamond blue eyes.

Just then, Myer came back with a police officer in tow. Von Daniken asked Palumbo to hold a moment, then addressed the policeman. “Did you read the letter?” he asked.

The officer nodded and explained that it was a note to his parents about daily life. He added that there was no mention of any illegal activities.

Von Daniken took it all in. “And the name? Can you tell me who it was addressed to?”

“Why yes, of course.” The policeman told him the name.

It had to be, thought von Daniken. There was no such thing as coincidence in this game.

“Are you there, Marcus?” asked Palumbo.

“I’m here. Go on.”

“Apparently, this guy Quitab has a setup in your neck of the woods,” said Palumbo. “I called to give you a heads-up.”

“Yes, I know.”

“What do you mean you know?” Palumbo sounded annoyed. “I thought you’d never heard of him.”

“As a matter of fact, I’m at his home right now.”

“You mean you know about this operation?”

“It’s more complicated than that. Quitab is dead.”

“He’s dead? Quitab? How? I mean…great! Jesus Christ, that’s good news. I was worried for a minute. Thought you had a real white-knuckler on your hands. Did you find the explosives, too?”

“Yes, we did.”

“All fifty kilos? Thank God. You guys dodged a major bullet.”

Von Daniken hurried into the garage. He counted the bricks of explosive.

Six bundles of five bricks. Thirty kilos at most. “What do you mean that we dodged a bullet, Phil? Do you have a line on what Quitab was planning?”

“I thought you did…” Reception weakened and Palumbo’s voice disappeared in a thicket of crackles. “…fuckin’ crazy bastard.”

“I’m losing you. Can I call you back on a land line?”

“No go. I’m in transit.”

Hoping for a better signal, von Daniken moved out of the garage and stood in the rain. “What did you mean when you said we dodged a bullet?”

“I said that Gassan told us that that fuckin’ crazy Iranian Quitab was going to Switzerland to take down a plane.”

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32

The time in Israel was three hours ahead of Switzerland. Instead of rain and snow, a blistering sun ruled the sky. The mercury nudged the century mark as the shores of the Eastern Mediterranean sweltered beneath an early spring heat wave.

Ten miles north of Tel Aviv, in the rocky coastal hillside town of Herzliya, an emergency meeting was under way on the second floor of the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations, better known as the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service. Present were the heads of the organization’s most important divisions. Collections, which handled intelligence gathering. Political Action and Liaison, which was responsible for dealing with foreign intelligence services, and Special Operations, or Metsada, which supervised the dark side of the business: targeted assassination, sabotage, and kidnapping, among other activities.

“Since when do they have a facility in Chalus?” demanded the fat, proudly unattractive man pacing back and forth at the head of the room.

“Last I heard, they’d concentrated their enrichment efforts at Natanz and Esfahan.” Dressed in short sleeves, with thinning black hair, an unlined face, and a reptile’s bulging eyes, he might have been forty or seventy.

What was unmistakable, however, was his air of seething resolve. His name was Zvi Hirsch and for the past seven years, he’d been chief of the Mossad.

“We can’t find anything on the maps. No satellite imagery. Nothing,”

said Collections. “They’ve been very clever. They managed to keep its construction secret.”

“Secret, indeed!” said Zvi Hirsch. “How many centrifuges do they need to process that much uranium? We’re talking one hundred kilos in less than two years.”

“In so short a time? At least fifty thousand.”

“And how many companies manufacture the equipment needed to do that kind of job?”

“Less than a hundred,” said Collections. “Exports are strictly controlled and monitored.”

“I can see that,” Hirsch replied dryly.

“Clearly, they received their technology from outside the usual channels,” said Metsada. He was dark and rail thin and spoke in a gentle voice that sounded as if he wouldn’t hurt a fly. “Most probably from manufacturers of dual-use goods.”

“In Hebrew, please.”

“Products made for civilian purposes that can be used by the defense industry. In this case, it would be equipment to assist in the fuel enrichment cycle. High-speed centrifuges sold to dairies to make yogurt cultures that can also be used to separate uranium hexafluoride gas. Heat exchangers designed for steel mills that can be used to cool reactors. Those products aren’t subject to export licenses or end-user certificates. Think of it as a false flag operation.”

“False flag? I thought we’d cornered the market on that game.” Hirsch crossed his arms over his barrel chest. “Okay, so they have the stuff. Can they get it here?”

“They successfully test-fired the Shahab-4 long-range missile sixty days ago,” said Collections.

“How long from launch until it hits us?”

“An hour at the outside.”

“Can we shoot it down?” Hirsch asked.

“Theoretically, we’re as safe as a baby in her mother’s arms.”

Israel relied on a two-tier air defense structure to destroy incoming long-range missiles. The first was the Arrow II ground-to-air missile, and the second, the next-generation Patriot missile system. Each suffered from the same problems. They could only be launched once the incoming missile was within one hundred kilometers of the target—that is to say, within minutes of striking. And neither had ever been tested in combat.

“What about something that gets in under the radar? Do they have any cruise missiles?”

“Rumors, but that’s it.”

“Let’s hope so,” said Hirsch. “What about the Shahab’s accuracy?”

The man from Political Action and Liaison spoke up. “Accuracy is something that Germany and France and the U.S. have to worry about. In our case, it’s beside the point. Any hit within fifty miles of the target is a fatal blow. If they can smuggle fifty thousand centrifuges into the country under our eyes and build a state-of-the-art enrichment facility without anyone hearing about it, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve made advancements in that area as well.”

“And so,” said Hirsch, rubbing his thick, hairless forearms. “Are we supposed to put our hands up and surrender? Is that what our Persian friends desire? Do they expect us to stand still while they arm their rockets with warheads that can destroy our cities?”

A former major general in the Israeli Defense Force, he knew all too well the scenarios involving a nuclear strike on Israeli soil. Israel occupied a land mass three hundred miles long and one hundred fifty miles wide.

However, ninety percent of the population was clustered around Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, cities just thirty miles apart. A nuclear strike on either would not only kill a significant percentage of the population, but would wipe out the country’s industrial infrastructure. The radioactive fallout would render the landscape uninhabitable for years to come. Simply put, there would be nowhere for the population to go, save out of the country. A new diaspora.

None of his section chiefs answered.

“I have a meeting with the prime minister in an hour,” Hirsch went on.

“I’d like to be able to show that we haven’t been caught with our peckers in our hands. I imagine he’ll be interested in one question and one question only. Will they launch on us?”

Collections pursed his lips. “The president of Iran is a believer in the apocalyptic end times as stated in the Koran. He sees it as his personal mission to hasten the return of the twelfth Imam, known as the Mahdi, the rightful descendant of the Prophet Mohammed. It’s written that his return will be preceded by a confrontation between the forces of good and evil that will see a period of prolonged warfare, political upheaval, and bloodshed.

At the end of the period, the Mahdi will lead the world to an era of universal peace. First, though, he has to destroy Israel.”

“Great,” said Hirsch. “Remind me not to come to you for good news next time.”

“There’s more. The president’s drive to gain control of the levers of power has been incredibly successful. He’s dismissed hundreds of the country’s leaders in education, medicine, and diplomacy who don’t share his beliefs, and replaced them with his cronies from the Republican Guard.

Worse yet, he’s got his own man elected as the country’s supreme religious leader. Six months ago, the president’s ambitions might have been held in check by the top clerics. Not anymore. This new guy, Ayatollah Razdi, is certifiable. He’s on the horn to Mohammed on a regular basis. He is definitely not a rational actor.”

“You want to know if he’ll pull the trigger,” Metsada asked. “I think we have the answer already.”

Collections nodded. “The president is taking Iran back to the Age of Mohammed. On numerous occasions, he’s said publicly that the Prophet Himself has spoken to him and informed him that His return is only two years away. He’s got one hand on the Koran and the other on the trigger.”

“He can’t keep the program a secret forever.” Metsada’s voice had acquired a venomous edge.

“When word gets out, he knows we’ll act.”

“Unless he acts first.” Hirsch dropped into his chair with a grunt. “It’s like March of 1936 all over again.”

“What do you mean?”

“When Hitler ordered his troops into the Rhineland to take back the territory annexed to France after the First World War. His soldiers were poorly trained and pathetically armed. Some didn’t even have bullets for their rifles. The commander carried two sets of orders in his pocket. One to open if the French fought back, the other if they didn’t.

“The French let the Boches walk right in, and even treated them like liberators. The commander opened the first set of orders. He was told to occupy the territory and hand out German flags to the citizens. The event was a watershed. Until that day, Hitler had been all bluster and hot air.

After he took back the Rhineland, he began to take himself more seriously. And so did the rest of the world.”

“Excuse me, Zvi,” interrupted Collections. “What did the second set of orders say?”

“The second set?” Zvi Hirsch smiled sadly. “If fired upon, the commander was to immediately retreat and return the soldiers to the barracks. Essentially, it told him to cut and run at the first sign of conflict.

The shame would have been too great for the country to endure. The government would have fallen. One shot and Hitler would have been forced out of office.”

“Are you saying we have to confront him?”

Hirsch turned and stared out the window. “I don’t think it will be that easy this time.”

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33

Jonathan sat with knees drawn to his chest, his back against the wall. A nook in the corner opposite held a vase of fresh flowers. A crude iron crucifix hung above it. The shelter had been built into the hillside by the Swiss Alpine Club and resembled a grotto, its floor and walls fashioned from stone and mortar. From where he sat, he had a clear view of all paths converging to his position. One led from the east, a level track tracing the hillside’s contour. Another climbed from the lake, zigging and zagging in a series of switchbacks. A third track approached from the west. Beyond the hillocks that fell steeply away, through the torrential rain, the whipped gray crescent of Lago Maggiore filled the horizon.

Simone lay on her back on the rough flooring, her clothing drenched, her chest heaving. “Do you see anyone?” she asked, panting. “Anyone at all?

Are they following us?”

“No,” said Jonathan. “There’s nobody out there.”

“You’re certain?”

“Yes.”

“Thank God.” With a grunt, she pushed herself to a sitting position. “This is too much,” she said, cradling her head in her hands. “I’m terrified. That man…Blitz…I’ve never seen a man shot like that. What are we going to do?”

“I’m not sure yet.”

Abruptly, Simone lifted her head, as if seized by an idea. “I’ll tell you what we’re going to do,”

she said. “We’re going to get off this mountain. We’re going to take a bus into Lugano and find a place to dry off. Then we’ll buy you new clothes. A suit. Something professional. Then we’ll cut and dye your hair and put you on a train to Milan. That’s what we’re going to do.”

“I need a passport first,” said Jonathan. “Preferably one without my name or picture inside it.”

Simone waved off her initial plan. “Okay, forget the train. We’ll wait for a while, then go back and get the car. We’ll drive across the border. They

wave everyone through. They won’t stop a banker in a Mercedes. I’ll come with you.”

As she spoke, her eyes bore into him. Christ, thought Jonathan, if I look as scared as she does, we’re in trouble.

“And then what?” he said. “Keep running?” Hauling himself to his feet, he pointed across the mountainside in the direction of Blitz’s villa. “Look back there. The police know all about the stunt I pulled at the railway station. My fingerprints are all over Blitz’s office. I’m the killer, Simone.

I’m the guy who blew Blitz’s brains out. Whatever chance I had of convincing them that what happened yesterday was self-defense is gone.”

“That’s why you need to leave the country.”

“That won’t solve anything.”

“But you’d be alive. You’d be safe.”

“For how long? They won’t stop looking for me just because I crossed the border. They’ll send my picture to every country in Europe.”

Jonathan crossed his arms, trying to imagine how it would play out if he left the country. Time and again, he came to a dead end. He couldn’t see it, partly because his mind wasn’t conditioned to cut and run. He’d spent years battling up impossible slopes in impossible conditions. After a while, he’d gotten to thinking that you could do anything if only you didn’t quit. You didn’t have to be great. You just had to keep going.

When he was young and brash and a little too cocksure, he used to say that he was against retreating on general principle. It was that tenacity that had gotten him through college and medical school in seven years, and had led him to stay in field medicine when, one by one, his colleagues had fallen away.

“They plumb broke and ran,” Emma used to say, after a shot or two of Jack Daniel’s. “Cowards, the lot of ’em. Hearts the size of mice, and their John Henry Thomas not much bigger.”

He heard her voice speaking the words as clearly as if she were sitting next to him. Suddenly, his eyes felt hot, irritated. He wanted to hold her hand. He yearned for her strength.

Simone looked at Jonathan from beneath a tangle of wet hair. “What the hell is going on?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“What was our girl involved in?”

“I don’t know.”

“She never told you? How could she keep something like this a secret?

You must have had an idea. It’s why you keep going on with this…why you keep chasing her ghost. Tell me the truth, Jonathan. Were you in it with her?

A team? I’ve heard of couples doing this type of thing together.”

“What type of thing is that?”

“I don’t know what to call it. Spying. Being an agent. I mean, that’s what this is, isn’t it? The fake driver’s license. The men after the bags. All that money. One hundred thousand francs. It wasn’t a thief who shot Blitz, was it?”

“No,” he said. “It wasn’t.”

The answer seemed to confirm her worst suspicions. Her shoulders slumped, as if weighed down by the sum of her accusations.

Jonathan slid across the floor and sat next to her. “I don’t know what Emma was involved in,” he said. “I wish to God I did.”

Simone held his gaze a moment too long. “I don’t know if I believe you.”

Jonathan looked away, running his hands over his face, struggling for a clue as to what he should do next. “And so,” he said finally. “What are you going to do?”

“I told you. We are going to find our way into Lugano and get you some new clothes. Then we’re going to change how you look. And afterward, we’re—”

“Simone, stop right there. You can’t stay with me. This whole thing is out of control.”

“You expect me to leave?”

“When we get down the mountain, we’re going to split up. You’re going to Davos to see Paul, and you’re going to forget that this ever happened.”

“And you?”

Jonathan made a decision. “I’m going to find out what she was doing.”

“Why? What good can it bring? You’ve got to look after yourself.”

“I am. Don’t you see?”

Nodding, Simone clawed in her bag for a cigarette. She lit it and blew out a cloud of smoke. He noticed that her hands weren’t shaking anymore. “At least let me help you with some clothes,” she said. “Before I go…”

Jonathan put his arm around Simone and hugged her. “That much you can do. Now, let’s see if we can make any sense out of this stuff I took from the office.”

He opened Blitz’s briefcase and began to rummage through the papers he’d grabbed from the desk. Most were bills, miscellaneous housekeeping items. He handed them to Simone, who cast a quick glance at each, then tossed them back into the briefcase. Neither of them found anything to shed light on who Blitz was or who he worked for.

In a side pocket, Jonathan discovered a Palm PDA: a phone, word processor, e-mail, and web browser all in one. He hit the on button. The unit lit up, activated to the phone function. In the upper corner, an asterisk appeared and began to blink, indicating an incoming message. He clicked on the asterisk. The unit demanded a password. He punched in 1-1-1-1, then 7-7-7-7.

Access denied. He swore under his breath.

“What’s that?” asked Simone, sliding closer to him, her eyes focused on the screen.

“Blitz’s PDA. Everything’s password protected. I can’t access the software. Not e-mail, not Word, not the browser. What do you use for a password?”

“It depends. I’ve got a different password for each account. I used to use my mother’s birthday, and then the street address of my home in Alexandria where I grew up. These days, I’ve been sticking with 1-2-3-4. It’s easier that way.”

And Jonathan? He had only one password. Emma’s birthday. 11-12-77.

Suddenly, he remembered the bracelet containing the flash drive he’d found in Emma’s overnight bag. He slipped it off his wrist, pried it open, and plugged the flash drive into the Palm’s USB port. An icon titled “Thor”

appeared on the screen. He double-clicked on it, and a screen appeared, asking for his password. “Damn it all.”

“Is that yours?” Simone inquired, reaching out to touch the flash drive.

“Emma’s. I found it in her bags when I went back to the hotel. It wants a password, too.” He tried Emma’s birthday, then his own. He tried their newest ATM PIN, then the one before that.

He tried their anniversary. All failed.

Plowing through the papers, he located the memo addressed to Eva Kruger on ZIAG stationery concerning Project Thor. “I’m going to call and ask them about it.”

“Who?”

“ZIAG, or whatever the name is of the company Blitz worked for.”

Simone made a halfhearted attempt to pry the Palm out of his hands.

“No, Jonathan, don’t. It will only get you into more trouble.”

“More trouble?” Jonathan stood and walked to the far side of the grotto.

He activated the phone and heard a dial tone in his ear. At least that worked without a password.

Memo in hand, he punched in the number listed at the top of the page.

The phone rang twice before being answered. “Good afternoon, Zug Industriewerk. How may I direct your call?”

The voice was young, female, and eminently professional.

“Eva Kruger, please.”

“Whom may I announce?”

Her husband, actually, Jonathan responded silently. He hadn’t prepared an answer because he hadn’t expected the company to exist. “A friend,” he said after a moment.

“Your name, sir?”

“Schmid,” said Jonathan. It was the closest thing to Smith he could think of.

“One moment.” A neutered beep sounded as the call was transferred. A voice mail message responded. “This is Eva. I’m away from my desk. If you leave your name and number, I’ll return your call promptly. For further assistance, dial the star key to speak with my assistant, Barbara Hug.”

The language was Swiss German spoken fluently and with a Bernese twang. There was no question but that Eva Kruger was a native Swiss. The problem was that it was Emma’s voice.

Emma who stumbled over “grüezi,” and couldn’t pronounce

“chuechikaestli” if her life depended on it. Emma who, besides a decent grasp of what she called her “schoolgirl’s French,” was a self-admitted imbecile when it came to languages other than the Queen’s English.

Jonathan punched the star key. He wanted to speak with Barbara Hug. He wanted to ask if that was her real name, or if she took it only for liaisons involving false eyelashes and skimpy lingerie, not to mention envelopes packed to bursting with cold, hard cash.

But a moment later, Fräulein Hug’s voice mail offered a curt message and he hung up.

Immediately, he redialed the number. When the receptionist answered, he gave the name

“Schmid” again. Now he had an alias, too.

“I’d like to speak with Mrs. Kruger’s superior,” he said, remembering the wedding ring with the engraved anniversary. “It’s an emergency.”

“I’m afraid he’s busy at the moment.”

“Of course he is,” railed Jonathan.

“Excuse me, sir?”

Jonathan had found the envelope containing the passport-sized photos of Emma and a man named Hoffmann. “Give me Mr. Hoffmann.”

“One moment, please.”

A male voice picked up the line. “Mr. Schmid? This is Hannes Hoffmann. Mrs. Kruger is out of the country. What did you wish to speak with her about?”

“About Thor.”

Silence. Clearly, Jonathan didn’t have the password to get past Hoffmann either. Then, surprisingly: “Yes, what about Thor?”

“I think you may have a problem getting it wrapped up as soon as you’d like.”

“Mr. Schmid, I’m afraid we don’t discuss business with strangers.”

“I’m not a stranger. I told you I’m a friend of Eva’s. It’s just that you shouldn’t be relying on Gottfried Blitz, either.” Jonathan waited for another rejoinder about not discussing business with strangers, but all he got was dead air. “You know him, don’t you? I mean his name is on a memo you sent out.”

“Yes.” The response was tentative. “What about Mr. Blitz?”

“He’s dead.”

“What are you talking about?”

“They got him this morning. Snuck into his house and shot him in the head.”

“Who is this?” asked Hoffmann.

“I already told you. My name is Schmid.”

“How do you know about Mr. Blitz?”

“I was there. I saw him.”

“Impossible.” Hoffmann said it dismissively, as if Jonathan was referring to a practical joke that couldn’t be pulled off.

“Send someone to his house if you don’t believe me. The police are already there. Give him a call and you’ll find out.”

“I will. Immediately. Now, tell me who this really is?”

“Check the phone number.”

There was a pause, followed by the sound of a sharp intake of breath.

“Who is this? What did you do to Blitz?”

Jonathan hung up. From now on, he was going to be the one asking the questions.

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34

In accordance with the rules that applied to all homicides, the body of Theodoor A. Lammers, chief executive of Robotica AG, Dutch citizen, suspected agent provocateur for an unknown country, and victim of a professional assassin, was transferred to the University Hospital morgue and given a complete autopsy. The procedure was performed by Dr. Erwin Rohde, chief medical examiner for the canton of Zurich.

Rohde was sixty years old, an elfish man with watery blue eyes and a cap of gray hair. There was no question about the cause of death on this one, he thought, as he stood over the body and examined the wounds to the face and chest. If the shots to the head hadn’t killed the victim, the shot to the chest had. The round black bullet hole was positioned directly above the heart.

Murder was relatively uncommon in Zurich, and in Switzerland on the whole. The country had recorded a total of sixty-seven homicides the previous year. Less than the American city of San Diego, which at just over one million inhabitants had one-seventh the population of Switzerland.

Of those sixty-seven, twenty died at the hands of organized crime, the victims primarily criminals themselves. But he had seen nothing like this in years.

Selecting a scalpel, Rohde made an incision across the top of the forehead and continued along the circumference of the head. After peeling back the skin (half over the face, half to the nape of the neck), he used an electric saw to cut off the top of Lammers’s skull. It was messy work. The gunshots had more or less eviscerated the brain.

Rohde dug out several misshapen pieces of lead and dropped them into the basin to his right. The bullets were dumdums, or hollow points, that mushroomed on impact. He freed another piece of metal and paused. Isn’t that odd? he thought to himself. Instead of a normal healthy pink, the area around the bullet fragment was colored a brackish brown. Normally, such coloring was indicative of necrosis, the unprogrammed killing of cellular matter by an outside source, either an infection, inflammation, or poisoning.

Rohde excised a chunk of the cerebellum and deposited it in a specimen bag. Leaving the closing to his assistant, he set to work examining the chest wound. The bullet had pancaked upon striking the heart, but was otherwise

intact. It was a quick business to remove it. Adjusting the overhead lamps, he bent to study the organ. The heart was colored a rich, healthy maroon.

All except the tissue surrounding the wound. There, the muscle was the same fecal brown he’d observed in the brain.

Rohde excised a nub of tissue and held it to the light. There could be no doubt that what he was observing was an advanced case of necrosis. This specimen, too, he preserved.

Scooping up the plastic bags, he took off his robe and hurried from the operating theater.

Two minutes later, he arrived in the forensics lab. “I need to use the GC-MS,” he said, referring to the gas chromatograph–mass spectrometer Something on the bullet was killing the flesh.

C31-H42-N2-O6.

Erwin Rohde stared at the formula displayed in the mass spectrometer’s readout, waiting for the machine to translate it into a known substance. Ten seconds passed without any words appearing.

The spectrometer, capable of identifying over 64,000 substances, was stumped. A second request to analyze the tissue offered the same result.

Rohde shook his head. It was the first time in twenty years that the machine had failed him.

Writing down the formula, he hurried back to his office. That it was a toxin or poison, he was certain. The question was what kind of toxin. Rohde tried running the molecular signature through his own computer. Again he came up with a blank. Perplexed, he slid his chair back.

There was one man he could count on to provide him the answer.

Consulting his address book, Rohde dialed an overseas number: 44 for England, 20 for London.

The four-digit prefix belonged to New Scotland Yard.

“Wickes,” answered a dry English voice.

Rohde introduced himself, stating that he had attended Wickes’s seminar the past summer titled “New Forensic Technologies.” Wickes was a busy

man who gave short shrift to social niceties.

“What is it, then?”

Rohde offered a summary of Lammers’s postmortem and the mass spectrometer’s failure to identify the compound causing necrosis of the brain tissue and heart muscle.

“Just the composition,” Wickes cut in. “Leave the rest to me.”

Rohde read off the list of components. When Wickes returned to the phone, his tone was a good deal less imperious. “Where did you say you found that tissue?”

“Around gunshot wounds to the head and chest.”

“Interesting,” said Wickes.

“Do you mean you’ve found the substance?”

“Of course I found it. The compound you gave me is that of a batrachotoxin.”

Rohde admitted to having never heard of such a toxin.

“No reason for you to have,” said Wickes. “Not in your neck of the woods, is it? From the Greek batrachos, meaning frog.”

“Frog poison?”

“Genus Dendrobates. Poison dart frogs, to be exact. Little devils size of your thumb. Found in rainforests in Central America and western Colombia. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Costa Rica.

Batrachotoxin is one of the most lethal in the world. One hundred micrograms—about the weight of two grains of salt—is sufficient to kill a one-hundred-fifty-pound man. The poison’s only recorded use, other than by frogs to protect themselves, of course, is by indigenous Indians who coat their darts with the stuff when they go hunting for monkeys and the like.”

“So the bullets were coated? But why?”

Instead of answering the question, Wickes posed one of his own. “Do your men have a line on the killer? Don’t have him in custody, do they?”

“No.”

“Didn’t expect so. I’m certain that he’s a professional.”

Rohde told him that the police did believe that the murder had, in fact, been committed by a trained killer.

Wickes cleared his throat, and when he spoke his voice had assumed a conspiratorial edge.

“Reminds me of something I saw when I was with the Royal Marines.

This was in El Salvador a while back, 1981 or ’82. We were over from Belize, engaging in joint exercises with the Yanks.

Back then, the country was on fire. Everyone jockeying for power.

Communists, fascists, even a few democrats. The government was running death squads in the countryside, killing off all opposition. Nothing more than cold-blooded murder, really. A few of the soldiers were Indians and none too happy about what they were being asked to do. They’re a superstitious bunch.

Believe in ghosts and the spirit world. Shamans. Shape-shifters. You name it. They’d a ritual to protect themselves against the ghosts of the men and women they killed. To stop the victims’ spirits from haunting them, they’d dip their bullets into poison. Kind of kill the soul before it left the body.”

“That’s terrible,” said Rohde.

“You know who trained those squads, don’t you?” asked Wickes.

“What do you mean, ‘trained them’?”

“Taught them their craft. Put them into the field. Made them do what they do.”

“I have no idea,” said Rohde.

“It was the Yanks. The Company. That’s what they called themselves back then. You want to find your killer, that’s where you better start looking.”

“With ‘the Company’? Do you mean the CIA?”

“That’s right. Bunch of bloody bastards.”

Wickes hung up without a goodbye.

Erwin Rohde sat down. He needed a moment to digest what he had just learned. Poisoned bullets. Assassins. Things like this simply didn’t happen in Switzerland.

Almost reluctantly, he picked up the phone and dialed the personal number of Chief Inspector Marcus von Daniken.

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35

“You’ll never shoot it down,” said Brigadier General Claude Chabert, commander of the Swiss Air Force’s 3rd Fighter Wing. “Turboprops are hard enough. They only fly at two hundred kilometers per hour, but this little number has a jet in its tail. Forget it.”

“Can’t you fire a missile?” groused Alphons Marti, bullying his way closer to the center of the table so he could better survey the blueprints of the drone, or “unmanned aerial vehicle,” according to Chabert. “What about a Stinger? Like you say, it’s a jet. It has to have a heat signature.”

Chabert, Marti, and von Daniken were standing alongside a table in von Daniken’s office on Nussbaumstrasse. It was nearly five o’clock in the afternoon. Chabert, a trained electrical engineer and F/A-18 Hornet pilot with six thousand hours of flight time, had been rushed from his base in Payerne to provide an instant education in the destruction of unmanned aerial vehicles. Lean and blond with a shepherd’s wizened blue eyes, and still dressed in his flight suit, he was the picture of an accomplished aviator.

“A heat signature isn’t enough,” said Chabert patiently. “You must keep in mind that it is a small jet. The wingspan measures four meters. The fuselage runs barely two and a half by fifty centimeters. That’s not much of a target when it’s moving at five hundred kilometers an hour.

Conventional radar arrays used by air traffic control are purposefully tuned down to avoid picking up small objects like birds and geese. And this one is stealthy. It has very few straight edges. The exhaust ducts are mounted by the tail fins. If I had to wager, I’d say that silver coating on the body was RAM.”

“What’s RAM?” asked Marti, as if it were something dredged up solely to annoy him.

“Radar absorbent material. The metallic color serves to make it more difficult to see with the human eye.” Chabert finished examining the plans, turning to face von Daniken. “I’m sorry, Marcus, but civilian radar would never see it. You’re out of luck.”

Von Daniken sat down in a chair and ran a hand over his scalp. The last hour had given him a devil’s education in the development and usage of

drones as military weapons. In the 1990s, the Israeli Air Force had pioneered the use of unmanned aerial vehicles to overfly their northern border with Lebanon. Back then, a drone was no more than a radio-controlled toy with a camera strapped to its underside that took snapshots of the enemy. The latest models boasted wingspans of fifteen meters, carried Hellfire air-to-ground missiles under their wings, and were piloted via satellite by operators in secure bunkers thousands of miles away.

“Have any idea about the target?” asked Chabert.

“An aircraft,” said von Daniken. “Most probably here in Switzerland.”

“Any word as to where? Zurich, Geneva, Basel-Mulhouse?”

“None.” Von Daniken cleared his throat. The wear and tear of the last few days was taking its toll. Dogged circles ringed his eyes, and even seated, his posture was slumped. “Tell me, General, what kind of runway does this thing need to take off?”

“Two hundred meters of open road,” said Chabert. “A drone this size can be out of its transport packaging and up in the air in five minutes.”

Von Daniken recalled his meeting at Robotica AG, Lammers’s company, and the prideful description of sensor fusion technology that melded input from a variety of sources. For all he knew, the pilot—or “operator”—could be all the way in Brazil, or anywhere else in the world for that matter. “Any chance of jamming the signal?”

“You’re better off locating the ground station. The drone works on a three-legged principle. The ground station, the satellite, and the drone itself, with signals constantly passing back and forth between them.”

“How big is the ground station?”

“It depends. But if the pilot is flying it out of line of sight—that is, if he’s relying on the drone’s onboard cameras—he’ll require video monitors, radar, a stable power source, and uninterrupted satellite reception.”

“Could it be mobile?” von Daniken asked. “Something, say, he could stick in the back of a van?”

“Definitely not,” declared Chabert. “The operator will have to be in some kind of fixed installation. Otherwise, he won’t have enough power to boost

the signal a long distance. You said they intend on taking down a plane.

This UAV doesn’t have the size to carry air-to-air missiles. Is it your belief that whoever is behind this intends on flying the drone into another aircraft?

If that’s the case, they’ll want to be in visual range of the target. It’s a damned tricky business to fly these things by camera and radar.”

“I can’t say with any certainty,” responded von Daniken. “But it’s probable that plastic explosives will be used.”

“Well,” said Chabert, brightening. “Then at least we know what the nacelle is for. I’d assumed it was for more avionics.”

“What nacelle are you talking about?”

Using a ballpoint pen, Chabert tapped at a teardrop-shaped canister that appeared to hang from the nose of the drone. “The maximum weight allowance is thirty kilos.”

Von Daniken groaned inwardly. Some twenty kilos of Semtex was missing from Blitz’s garage.

“Is that enough to bring down a plane?” asked Marti.

“More than enough,” said Chabert. “The bomb that brought down Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie fit inside a cassette recorder. It needed less than a half kilo of C-4 to tear a hole two meters by four out of the side of a Boeing 747. At ten thousand meters altitude, the plane didn’t stand a chance.

Imagine a drone traveling at five hundred kilometers an hour delivering a charge fifty times as big.”

Marti backed away from the table, his complexion the color of curdled milk.

“But that’s only half your problem,” said Brigadier General Claude Chabert.

Von Daniken narrowed his eyes. “How’s that?”

“With a charge of that size, the drone itself is, in effect, a missile. It wouldn’t necessarily have to wait for a plane to become airborne to kill everyone aboard. It could just as easily destroy the target on the ground.

The detonation would ignite the fuel in the wing tanks. The fireball and the

shrapnel it would provoke would initiate a chain reaction. Any plane parked within twenty meters would cook off like overheated ammunition.”

Grimacing, Chabert ran a hand across the back of his neck. “Gentlemen, you may very well lose the entire airport.”

Chabert had left five minutes earlier. Von Daniken sat on the edge of the conference table, arms crossed over his chest, as Alphons Marti paced the floor. Only the two of them were left in the room.

“We need to alert the proper authorities,” said von Daniken. “I think the call should come from your office.”

The list was long and ran to the Federal Office of Civil Aviation, the Federal Security Service, the police departments of Zurich, Bern, Basel, and Lugano, as well as their brother agencies in France, Germany, and Italy, over whose airspace the drone could intrude. It would be up to them to contact the airlines.

“I agree, but I think it’s too early in the game. I mean, exactly what kind of attack are we talking about?”

“I thought we just went over that.”

“Yes, yes, but what about the specifics? Do we have a date, a time, or even a place? Everything we know so far is based on the ravings of a terrorist who gave up the information under what I can only imagine as the utmost duress.”

Marti’s tone was reasonable, a patient parent upbraiding a rowdy child.

Von Daniken matched it note perfect. “Gassan may have been under duress, but what he said has proven accurate. He wasn’t lying when he said he delivered fifty kilos of Semtex to Gottfried Blitz, a.k.a. Mahmoud Quitab.

We also have a photo showing that Blitz either is, or was, an Iranian military officer. I feel comfortable assuming that Lammers built a drone and delivered it to Blitz. I’d say that, coupled with Gassan’s confession that Blitz’s target was a plane in Switzerland, is more than enough for us to go to the authorities.”

“Granted, but both Lammers and Blitz are dead. Would it be unreasonable to assume that the other members of their group—oh, what do

you call it—their cell, might also be dead? If you ask me, I’d say someone’s doing our work for us.”

Von Daniken thought of the flecks of white paint found on the corner of Blitz’s garage, the twenty kilos of missing plastic explosives, the tire tracks that matched those of the Volkswagen van reported to have been used to transport the explosives. “There are more of them out there.

The operation’s bigger than two men.”

“Maybe there are, Marcus. I won’t dispute that something’s going on. But you’re not giving me much ammunition. Tell the civil aviation chieftains, and then what? Do you expect them to cancel their flights? Are they going to reroute all planes headed our way to Munich and Stuttgart and Milan and ship everyone here by rail and bus? What if we had a threat against a tunnel?

Should we shut down the San Bernardino and the Gotthard? Of course not.”

Von Daniken stared hard at Marti. “We’ll need the close support of the local police,” he said after a moment, pretending that he hadn’t heard a word that Marti had said. “We’ll go house to house in a radius of ten kilometers from the airport. Then we’ll—”

“Didn’t you hear the general?” Marti interrupted in the same maddeningly reasonable tone. “The drone could be launched from anywhere. It could take out a plane in France or Germany, or…or, in Africa, for all we know. Please, Marcus.”

Von Daniken dug a fingernail into his palm. This wasn’t happening, he told himself. Marti was not making light of the threat. “As I was saying, we’ll begin with a house-to-house search. I promise you it will be conducted quietly. We’ll start in Zurich and Geneva.”

“And how many policemen do you expect this will involve?”

“Several hundred.”

“Ah? Several hundred quiet policemen who’ll walk on their tiptoes and not breathe a word of why they had to leave their wives and children in the dead of night to go knocking door-to-door with instructions to look for an armed missile.”

“Not to look for a missile. To speak with residents and inquire if they’ve noticed any suspicious activity. We’ll run the operation under the guise of a search for a missing child.”

“‘Quiet policemen.’ ‘A friendly inquiry.’ By tomorrow morning half the country will know what we’re up to, and by tomorrow evening, I’ll be on the evening news explaining to the other half that we believe that there’s a terrorist cell operating within our borders with the intention of shooting down a passenger airliner, and that there isn’t a damned thing we can do to stop them.”

“Exactly,” said von Daniken. “We do believe that there’s a terrorist cell operating within our borders with precisely that intention.”

He was losing. He could feel the argument slipping from his grasp as if it were sand slipping through his fingers.

Marti shot him a look of damning appraisal. “Do you have any idea of the panic you’ll sow?” he asked. “You may very well shut down the entire air transport grid for central Europe. This isn’t a bomb in someone’s luggage. The economic cost alone…not to mention to our country’s reputation…”

“We’ll need to station Stinger teams on airport roofs and move some antiaircraft batteries around the perimeter of the runways.”

Von Daniken waited for Marti to protest, but the justice minister remained quiet. He sat down and locked his hands behind his head, staring into space. After a moment, he shook his head and von Daniken knew that it was over. He’d lost. Worse, he knew that Marti wasn’t entirely mistaken to preach calm.

“I’m sorry, Marcus,” said Marti. “Before we do any of those things, we need to corroborate this plot. If this Blitz, or Quitab…or whatever his name is…had cohorts, you’ll find them, along with the twenty kilos of missing plastic explosives and the white van. If you want me to shut down our entire country, you must give me concrete evidence of a plot to shoot down an airliner on Swiss soil. I won’t paralyze the country based on a confession extracted by your buddies at the CIA.”

“And Ransom?”

“What about him?” Marti asked offhandedly as he stood and made his way to the door. “He’s a murder suspect. Leave him to the cantonal authorities.”

“I’m waiting to learn if the detective who was injured has come out of a coma. I’m hoping he might be able to shed some light on what Ransom might have wanted with those bags.”

“You needn’t bother. I was told that the detective succumbed to his injuries an hour ago. Now Ransom’s wanted for two murders.”

Von Daniken felt as if he’d been stabbed in the back. “But he’s the key

—”

Marti’s eye twitched and a hint of color fired in his cheeks. The anger had been there all along. It had just been kept well hidden. “No, Chief Inspector, the key to this investigation is finding that van and the men who want to shoot down a jet over Swiss soil. Forget about Ransom. That’s an order.”

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36

The van trawled the streets of the sleeping neighborhood. It was no longer white. Days earlier it had been repainted a flat black, its side panels stenciled with the name of a fictitious catering company. The phone number advertised was active and would be answered professionally. The Swiss license plates had likewise been replaced by German ones, beginning with the letters “ST,” for Stuttgart, a large industrial city close to the border.

The Pilot sat behind the wheel. He was careful to keep his speed under the legal limit. At every stop sign, he brought the van to a full halt. He had checked that all of the vehicle’s running lights were in working order.

Confronted with a yellow traffic signal, he slowed and was content to wait.

Under no circumstance could he risk police attention. Examination of the stainless steel crates in the cargo bay would prove disastrous. If the plan had any weakness, it was this: the necessity to transport the drone on public streets without safeguard.

The van slid through Oerlikon, Glattbrugg, and Opfikon, on the outskirts of Zurich. Soon, it left behind the lanes crowded with apartments and homes, and entered a sparse pine forest. The road climbed steeply through the trees. After a few minutes, the forest fell away and the van crested the foothill, coming upon a broad snow-crusted park. Here the street dead-ended and the Pilot guided the van onto a macadam road that ran the length of the park, approximately one kilometer in length. Black ice layered the asphalt. He could feel the tires losing their grip even at this slow speed. He was not unduly concerned. The location met his demanding specifications.

The road—or runway, as he preferred to think of it—was as straight as a ruler. There were no trees nearby to interfere with the takeoff. In a few days, the ice would be gone, anyway. The forecast called for a front of high pressure moving over the area by Friday, bringing sunshine and a sharp increase in temperature.

Continuing to the end of the road, he swung the van into a private drive.

The garage door was open and the pavement cleared of snow and ice.

Seconds after he pulled into the shelter, the door closed behind him.

He left the garage by a side door and walked outside, eager to stretch his legs after the long drive. As he headed toward the park, a roar built in the

air, a shrill, ear-piercing whistle that assaulted his ears. The noise grew louder. He gazed into the night sky as the belly of an airliner passed overhead, no more than a thousand feet above him. The plane was an Airbus A380, the new double-deck jumbo jet designed to carry up to six hundred passengers. The engines whined magnificently as the plane climbed higher into the sky. It was close enough for him to read the insignia on the tail. A purple orchid with the word “Thai” beneath it. The 21:30

flight to Bangkok.

The Pilot watched the plane disappear into the clouds, then turned and looked behind him.

Sprawled on the plain below was a city within a city. A multitude of lights illuminating long strips of concrete, steel, and glass passenger terminals, and capacious hangars, surrounded by fields of snow.

Zurich Airport.

The view couldn’t have been better.

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37

“Lay your head back,” said Simone, massaging the dye into his clean wet hair. “First, we let it sink in, then we wash it out, then we cut it. Sicilian Black. You won’t recognize yourself.”

“It’s not me I’m worried about.”

Seated on a stool, Jonathan lowered his head into the washbasin and closed his eyes. Simone’s strong fingers worked the dye to all parts of his scalp, massaging the temples, the crown, working down the nape of his neck. The amphetamines had long since worn off. The fuel-injected madness that had led him to storm Blitz’s house and had scripted his fiery exchange with Hannes Hoffmann, the executive at ZIAG, belonged to some foggy, distant past. He felt bone tired, his skin still tingling from the hot shower. Simone’s hands worked the cords at the base of his skull. He exhaled, and for the first time in twenty-four hours, allowed himself to relax.

They had stayed in the hills until early afternoon, when they’d descended to the highway and taken a bus to Lugano, a city of one hundred thousand inhabitants spread along the shores of its eponymous lake, thirty kilometers to the east. While Jonathan hid in a movie theater, Simone had gone store to store, purchasing new outfits for both of them. Afterward, they’d walked to the outskirts of town, looking for a place to spend the night.

The hotel was called the Albergo del Lago. It was a small, family-run establishment situated on the outskirts of Lugano. A terra-cotta palace with twenty rooms all overlooking the lake, and a pizzeria downstairs to justify its two stars. Using Simone’s passport and credit card, they had checked in as Mr. and Mrs. Paul Noiret. In place of suitcases, they carried shopping bags filled with clothing, toiletries, and a dinner of roast chicken and pommes frites purchased from a Provençal delicatessen. To inquiring eyes, they were lovers repairing to their hotel after a day in the city.