“But I received a call from Signor…

“All done,” said Simone, peeling off the latex gloves. “In fifteen minutes, your hair will be as black as Elizabeth Taylor’s.”

“I didn’t know she was Sicilian.”

Simone slapped his shoulder. “Smart-ass. Now stay where you are and let the color settle.”

She folded a towel and laid it across his eyes to make sure that no dye seeped down. The next thing he knew, she was shaking his shoulder, telling him to wake up. “Time for your rinse.”

The towel came off his eyes. He blinked at the bright overhead lamps. “I fell asleep for a minute.”

“More like twenty.” Simone turned on the faucet, and when the water was warm, she washed out the dye. Using newly purchased scissors, she trimmed his hair until the curls were gone, and it stayed straight when she combed it. “Stand up. Let me have a look.”

Jonathan stood.

“Just a little more work.” Laying her fingers along his jaw, she held his head in place while she styled his hair to her satisfaction. Finally, she put her hands on his shoulders and spun him around so he could see the completed picture in the mirror. “Done,” she said. “Recognize that guy?”

“That’s frightening.”

“Not quite the response I was looking for.”

The man staring back looked ten years younger. He was the diplomat his father had always wanted, ready and willing to steal away mineral rights from a third world country. The Park Avenue surgeon with an advanced degree in phony compliments. He had to fight from mussing the part in his hair. He smiled and his teeth fairly blazed beneath the bright lights. Not a man you’d want to buy a used car from, he thought.

In short, it was perfect.

“Not Liz Taylor,” he said, slipping out of the bathroom. “But I’ll settle for Vince Vaughn.”

“You’re at least Brad Pitt.”

“He’s blond.”

“Who cares? I’ll take him any color he wants.”

Jonathan walked into the bedroom and picked out the bag holding his new clothing. He put it on the bed and set out the navy suit and overcoat.

The television was on. The commentator was speaking Italian, saying that a second policeman attacked the day before in Landquart had died, and that the manhunt for the American doctor wanted in connection with the crime had been extended to the Tessin, where the body of a German businessman had been found early this morning. Jonathan sat down and listened. Twice he heard his name enunciated. Dottore Jonathan Ransom. Thankfully, there was no picture.

The commentator moved on to the weather, but Jonathan was no longer paying attention. He was thinking of the television in the lobby that had been blaring the evening headlines when they’d checked in, and the concierge, whose narrow black eyes didn’t miss a trick. If the manhunt had been extended to the Tessin, the police would have contacted every hotel in the area. Faxes would have been sent with his name and description. They might even know that he was traveling with a woman.

He walked to the balcony, opened the door, and stepped into the rain. Far along the lake, he caught sight of a flashing blue-and-white strobe approaching. A hundred meters behind it was another.

For a moment, he stared at the oncoming lights. They could be going anywhere. The concierge downstairs had no reason to suspect him. The lights flickered in the rain and he knew that they weren’t going “anywhere.”

They were headed to the Albergo del Lago. They were coming for him.

“Simone, we have to go,” he called. “The police are coming.”

Simone poked her head out of the bathroom. “What did you say about police?”

“There was a report on the news…the concierge downstairs, he called the police.”

“Jonathan, slow down, what is it?”

“They know about us, that we’re traveling together. The police will be here in a few minutes.

We’ve got to leave.”

He threw on the clothes that she’d purchased for him that afternoon.

White dress shirt, navy suit, cashmere overcoat, and a pair of lace-ups. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. The suit.

The midnight-black hair cut above the ears and parted with a razor. And Emma? What would she think? He was the enemy. The devil in his deep blue suit. He hated himself on sight.

He returned to the balcony. The lights were definitely coming his way.

No more than a kilometer now. He could hear the siren’s atonal whine getting louder.

“Come on.” He strode across the room, opening the door to the hall.

Behind him, Simone was putting on her shoes. Grabbing her overcoat, she stumbled against him.

“Okay, then,” she said. “I’m ready.”

They avoided the elevator and the main stairs, proceeding instead to the end of the hall where, behind French doors and lace curtains, a balcony overlooked a parking lot at the rear of the hotel.

The French doors were unlocked. Stepping onto the balcony, Jonathan dropped Blitz’s briefcase onto the ground below, then shimmied down a drainpipe.

“I can’t,” called Simone from above.

“It’s only the first floor. I’ll be right under you.”

“What if I fall?”

“You can do it. Come on. We can’t wait!”

“Mais merde.” Simone climbed over the balcony, and without further prodding, took hold of the drainpipe and slid to the ground. It was over in three seconds.

“Was that so bad?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

Taking her hand, Jonathan led her down the main road. Instinct told him that couples were less suspicious than loners. The lights of Italy flickered

far across the lake. Small sailboats and motor launches bobbed at anchor.

Sanctuary, he thought, gazing across the water.

The first police car passed them ten seconds later.

In town, they flagged a taxi and asked the driver to take them to the Via della Nonna in Ascona.

Once there, Jonathan instructed the driver to stop two blocks from Blitz’s home. The rain had momentarily let up and the neighborhood was tranquil.

Soft lights burned behind lace curtains.

The scent of pine drifted off the hillside. A dog barked nearby.

“Let me get the car,” Simone said, extending an outstretched palm.

“Too risky,” he said. “As far as the police know, you don’t exist. Better to keep it that way. Wait down the street. I’ll be by in ten minutes.”

Jonathan walked up the road toward the Mercedes. A band of yellow tape had been placed across the gates leading to the Villa Principessa and another across the front door. A lone police car sat parked in the gravel drive. The calm and security he’d enjoyed in the hotel were gone. His body was tense with worry. He was on the run again. He kept waiting for the moment when his nerves would calm down, when he would adjust to his new status as a fugitive. If anything, he was growing increasingly unsettled.

It was as if he could feel the noose being lowered over his head, the sturdy, coarse rope scratching his neck, the slipknot hard against the back of his skull.

Had Emma felt this way? he wondered as he stared at the villa’s forlorn facade and the neatly tended rose garden. Had she lived with the constant fear of discovery? The worry that at any moment a trapdoor might drop from beneath her?

The Mercedes was parked where he’d left it, thirty meters down the street from Blitz’s home.

Jonathan stepped off the sidewalk and crossed the street. From the corner of his eye, he saw the policeman get out of the cruiser. In his new suit and overcoat, Jonathan stopped and forced himself to acknowledge the officer.

With a smile and a raised hand, he called out a greeting. The policeman stared at him long and hard before answering, then got back into his car.

Jonathan continued with his business. The remote entry sounded with a beep. He slid behind the wheel and the engine rumbled to life. Gliding from the curb, he drove past the police officer and turned right at the next street.

He stopped two blocks farther on to pick up his passenger.

“And?” Simone asked, slipping into the car.

“One cop was parked in front of the house. I waved to him.”

“You what? My God, I think you were born to this.”

“You’re wrong there.”

They drove down the winding road, entering town and taking the fork toward the railway station.

Twice, he noticed dimmed Xenon headlights trailing at a distance. He asked Simone to check if they were being followed. She stared out the back window and said that she didn’t see a soul. He checked again as he neared the station, but the lights were no longer there.

He pulled to a halt in the shadows at the back of the parking lot.

“We’ve got to split up,” he said. “They’re looking for a couple.”

“You’re overreacting. You can’t be sure that they know about me.”

“Simone.” He sighed, and lowered his voice. “I can’t do what I need to if you’re with me.”

She looked into her lap. “What can you hope to gain from our splitting up?” When he didn’t answer, she raised her head and stared at him. “At least take my advice and get out of the country while you can. Find yourself a lawyer. Then come back, if you must.”

He took her hand. “Tell Paul I send my best. I’ll catch up with you both when I get back to Geneva.”

“I’m worried about you.”

“Say a prayer.”

“I don’t know if that will be enough.”

“Then wish me luck.”

“Fool.” Simone shook her head in exasperation, then leaned closer and wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “Take this. It will keep you safe.” From around her neck, she took a medallion hanging from a leather lanyard and pressed it into his hand. “Saint Christopher. The patron saint of travelers.”

“But he’s not a saint anymore.”

“That makes two of us,” said Simone.

Jonathan looked at the medallion, then put it around his neck.

“Goodbye.”

“Adieu.”

He watched her make her way across the parking lot. When she reached the station, he thought he saw her raise a hand to her face and wipe away a tear.

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38

Simone Noiret tugged her purse onto her shoulder and walked into the train station. Strewn from one end of the platform to the other, a dozen people stood waiting for the train. A shrill wind whistled through the rafters, chilling her to the bone. Shoving her hands into her pockets, she made her way to the monitors announcing arrivals and departures.

She’d tried, she told herself. She had done everything humanly possible to warn him. Regardless, she’d failed to sway him from his course. He was a good man. He didn’t merit the consequences of his wife’s behavior.

Simone wondered if her husband would do as much for her. She doubted it.

Paul was not a good man. That was why she had married him.

With a gust, the 8:06 pulled into the station. It was a Regional Express with two engines and twenty-odd cars en route from Locarno to Regensburg on the border of Germany. Brakes squealed as the train ground to a halt.

Passengers alighted. Simone looked up and down the platform as her fellow travelers climbed aboard. Finally, she stepped onto the train. The smoking compartment was half full. She chose, however, to continue through the partition into the non-smoking car. Again, there were plenty of free seats.

She ignored them. Her eyes were on the platform. She saw no sign of Jonathan. Reaching the end of the car, she passed into the causeway, threw open the outside door, and hopped onto the platform.

Alone, she watched the train exit the station.

When the taillights had faded into the darkness, she strode down the platform to the buffet.

Decorated in brasserie style, the restaurant was doing a lively trade, mostly businessmen enjoying a beer or ristretto on their way home from work. She took a table by the window and lit a cigarette.

The waiter arrived and she ordered a whiskey. Uno doppelte, per favore.

The drink came shortly and she drank it in a single gulp. She called her husband and chatted with him about the goings-on at the World Economic Forum, then informed him that she would arrive in Davos sometime after one a.m. “Jonathan’s fine,” she added. “Very upset, naturally, the poor lamb, and keeping it all inside. Just like him. No, he hasn’t scheduled a date for the service.”

Just then, the table rattled and a pale, compact man sat down across from her. Simone looked up sharply. “I’m afraid this table’s reserved,” she said, lowering the phone. “There are plenty of other places free.”

“I enjoy sitting by the window.”

She bit back the comment on the tip of her tongue.

“Paul, I have to go. Train’s here. Bye, love.” Simone dropped the phone into her purse. For the first time, she looked directly at the man seated across the table. He had sad eyes and skin so pale as to be translucent. She couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze for more than a few seconds.

“Yes, the view can be nice,” she responded. “But I prefer it in summer.”

“I’m in Zurich during the summer.”

Simone slipped a piece of paper across the table. “He’s in a black Mercedes,” she said.

“Temporary plates. He’s headed to Goppenstein. The car ferry through the mountain. He told me that he’s trying to make the 10:21 to Kandersteg.”

The Ghost studied the paper for a moment, then tore it in half and dropped it in the ashtray. “And from there?”

“To Zug. You should have no problem following him. He’s wearing a tracking device around his neck.”

“That will make things easier.” The Ghost lit a match and set fire to the scraps of paper.

“What are you going to do?” she asked.

He didn’t answer and she felt foolish and angry for having betrayed her concern.

“He has a briefcase with him,” Simone continued, in a harder voice. “Get it. And make sure you find the flash drive. It’s concealed in a wristband he’s wearing on his right hand. And watch the tailgating,” she added. “I had you the whole way from Blitz’s house.”

“It wasn’t me. I was waiting in the parking lot.”

“You’re sure?”

The black eyes met her own. “I followed your instructions,” he said, his voice quieter.

“Good.” Simone nodded. “Oh, and one more thing…he’s armed.”

The Ghost rose from his chair. “It doesn’t matter.”

Simone slid lower into her chair and lit another cigarette. She stared out the window into the darkness.

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39

Leaving Ascona, Jonathan did not follow the signs north, toward Lugano, Airolo, and the St. Gotthard Tunnel that could guide him under the pass and deliver him safely to his destination in three hours. As he had the night before, he took to the mountains. Using the car’s onboard navigation system, he punched in the name of the town where he was headed. The route appeared on the screen. A voice told him to turn left in five hundred meters and after five hundred meters he turned left. The road narrowed from four lanes to two and drifted away from the water, moving up the Versazca valley and beginning a series of lazy switchbacks into the mountains. Banks of silvery clouds tumbled down the hillsides. It began to rain in earnest, and soon the rain turned to sleet, striking the windshield like a fistful of nails.

Blitz’s briefcase sat on the floor next to him. He thought of the memorandum to Eva Kruger concerning the termination of Project Thor.

The memo was innocuous enough, but for the mention of Thor on Emma’s flash drive. “Who is this?” Hoffmann had demanded, not with anger so much, but with palpable fear.

It was a question Jonathan wanted to ask for himself. It was the subterfuge that gnawed at him worst. The planning. The falsehoods. The deception. How long had it been going on? he wanted to ask Emma. When did it all start? How many times did you lie to me? And, finally, how could I not have known?

He turned on the heater. Warm air swirled inside the car, bringing with it a familiar scent.

Vanilla and sandalwood. Reflexively, he looked to the passenger seat.

Expectation crowded every corner of his being. It was empty, of course, but for a second, he had been certain of Emma’s presence. He had smelled her hair.

“I have a confession to make,” says Emma. “I’ve been reading your mail.”

It is August. A Sunday morning. They have journeyed to Sanaya, a skeletal town on Jordan’s eastern border with Iraq. It is a temporary

assignment. Three days filling in for one of Emma’s colleagues who has been stricken with appendicitis. The work is pleasant, if undemanding.

Colds. Infections. Minor cuts and bruises.

It is early and they lie side by side atop a flurry of tangled sheets. An open window brings a warm, fitful breeze and the chant of the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. Alone and undisturbed, they have rediscovered the habits of courtship, making love each morning, drifting back to sleep afterward, making love again.

Paris is forgotten. There are no headaches. No empty stares.

“Reading my mail?” Jonathan asks. “Find anything exciting?”

“You tell me.”

“A letter from my girlfriend in Finland?”

“You’ve never been to Finland.”

“A copy of Playboy?”

“Nope,” she says, sliding on top of him and sitting up. “You don’t need a girlie mag.”

“I give up,” says Jonathan, running his hands over her hips, her breasts, feeling himself stir.

“What was it?”

“I’ll give you a hint: Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?” Her accent is atrocious. Paris by way of Penzance.

“We just did. At least, I think that qualifies.”

Emma shakes her head in exasperation. “Ah, oui, oui,” she continues.

“Uh, je t’aime. Pepé le pew. Magnifique… ”

“You love Pepé Le Pew? Now I know I married a nutcase.”

“Non, non. Fromage. Duck à l’orange. Pâtisserie.”

“Something French? You read my copy of the Guide Michelin?”

Emma claps her hands, her eyes bright. He is getting warmer. “Um…

Croix-Rouge…Jean Calvin…Fondue,” she goes on, rambling merrily.

The lightbulb goes on inside Jonathan’s head. She’s talking about the letter from Doctors Without Borders. A curt note from his boss asking if he’ll accept a post at headquarters in Geneva. “Oh that.”

“‘Oh that’? Come on,” she says, falling onto the bed by his side. “You weren’t going to tell me?

That’s great news.”

“Is it?”

“Let’s go. We’ve done our bit.”

“Geneva? It’s admin. I’d be stuck behind a desk.”

“It’s a promotion. You’d be in charge of organizing all missions going into Africa and the Middle East.”

“I’m a doctor. I’m supposed to be with patients.”

“It’s not like it’s forever. Besides, it will do you good to have a change of pace.”

“Geneva isn’t a change of pace. It’s a change of profession.”

“You’ll be seeing your work from a different side, that’s all. Think how much you’ll learn.

Besides, you’ll look cute in a suit. Ever so handsome, I daresay.”

“Yeah, that’s me. Next thing I know, you’ll have me joining a country club and playing golf.”

“Aren’t doctors supposed to love golf?”

Jonathan fixes her with his serious gaze. He knows there’s something else.

Emma props herself up on an elbow. “There’s another reason.”

“What’s that?”

“I want to go. I’ve had enough of all this for a while. I want to eat at a restaurant with white tablecloths. I want to drink wine from clean glasses.

Wine glasses. I want to put on makeup and wear a dress. Does that sound so odd?”

“You? A dress? Not possible.” Jonathan throws back the top sheet and climbs out of bed. This is not a discussion he wants to have. Now or ever.

“Sorry, I don’t do admin.”

“Please,” says Emma. “Just consider it.”

Turning, he looks at his wife draped in the white cotton bedding. Her cheeks are raw and sunburned, strafed by constant exposure to sun and wind. Her auburn hair has gone from teased to tangled to just plain tortured. The cut on her chin is taking too long to heal.

Just consider it…

In Geneva, they’d have plenty of mornings like this. Time to lounge. Time not only to talk about starting a family, but to do something about it. And, of course, there’s the climbing. Chamonix, two hours’ drive to the north. The Berner Oberland, two hours to the east. The Dolomites to the south.

“Maybe,” he says, pulling back a curtain and staring across the hard, arid landscape. “But don’t get your hopes up.”

A loose assembly has gathered in front of the mosque for morning prayer.

The men greet each other in the Arab fashion, a kiss to each cheek.

“You getting up?” he asks over his shoulder. “If you want, I can go out and get you some breakfast…”

It is then that he sees the car. A white sedan driving madly across the dirt. A car where no car should be. Plumes of dust spray from its tires as it rocks and rattles on the hardscrabble surface.

Behind the windscreen, two silhouettes.

“Move,” he calls to the crowd, though his voice is only a whisper. Then louder. “Get out of the way! Move! Hurry!”

Helpless, he watches the car plow into the crowd, sending bodies flying.

Screams. Gunshots. The car slams into a wall of the mosque, bricks and mortar toppling onto the hood. For a moment, silence. In his mind, he is counting…

A flash of light.

A garish pulse that sears his retina.

A quarter of a second later, the noise comes. A thunderclap that strikes his eardrums hard enough to make him wince. Not one explosion, but three in succession.

Jonathan hurls himself onto the bed, covering Emma’s body with his own as the shockwave blows out the windows, spraying the room with glass, launching the curtain rod like a Crusader’s spear, and shaking loose a veil of dust and mortar.

“A car bomb,” he says as the noise dies. “It drove into the mosque.”

Dazed, he stands and brushes the debris from his hair. Emma pushes herself off the bed and dances across the broken glass to the dresser, where she throws on her clothes. Jonathan searches for his medical kit, but Emma already has it and is stuffing it with gauze, bandages, and antiseptic wipes taken from their portable supply locker. He comes to her side and begins calling out the medicines he needs. In ninety seconds, his bag is full.

Black smoke curls into the sky. The mosque is gone. The blast has obliterated the structure. Only the base of the building remains, shorn walls resembling broken teeth. Paper and debris rain from above.

Jonathan slows as he approaches the ruined vehicle. He gazes down at a pair of smoking boots.

Nearby, an arm reaches to the heavens, its hand clutching a Koran.

Somewhere else lies the upper half of a human being. Everything is charred black and daubed with blood. Around him survivors are getting to their feet, staggering aimlessly. Others rush toward them, heeding the pitiful calls of the wounded. The smell of burning oil and cauterized flesh is overpowering.

“Over here,” says Emma. Her voice is rock solid. She stands next to a young man lying on his back. The man’s face is a bloody mess, the flesh of his chest flayed and badly burned. But it is his leg that draws Jonathan’s attention. Shattered bone protrudes from his pant leg. A compound fracture of the femur.

“Don’t move,” Jonathan instructs the man in Arabic. “Keep still.” To Emma: “I’m getting a splint. It’s crucial that he stay just as he is or he’ll nick his femoral artery.”

Emma grasps the man’s shoulders and combats his thrashing as Jonathan splints the leg.

Jonathan raises his head and counts a dozen more who need urgent treatment. His decision whom to treat will determine who lives and who dies.

“Okay,” he says, meeting Emma’s eye.

“Okay what?”

“Geneva. Let’s go.”

“Really?”

“Those white tablecloths are looking pretty good right about now.”

Jonathan began the curving descent to Brig. The time was 21:45. The outside temperature a chill -3° Celsius, or 27° Fahrenheit. Negotiating a hairpin turn, he felt the rear tires slip, only to regain their traction a second later. The road was icing up.

Despite the inclement weather, he had made good time. As expected, there had been little traffic on the alpine road. He’d counted six cars passing him from the opposite direction. None of them police. On several occasions, he’d glimpsed the flare of headlights behind him, but the driver had either pulled off the road a while back or hadn’t kept up. The navigation unit clicked down another notch. Thirty-eight kilometers remained to his destination. To his right, he observed a sign with the name

“Lötschberg” and a symbol of a car piggybacking on a flatbed train next to it.

Emma had arranged the promotion. Not Emma herself, of course, but the people she worked for.

Her higher-ups. The implication was clear. They had a person inside DWB.

Who was it, then? Someone in personnel? One of the vice-directors? The director herself?

Between them, he counted one Somali, two Brits, and a Swiss.

Would it have been easier if one were American? Jonathan wondered.

Would he have considered the problem of Emma’s allegiance solved?

Stirring America into the mix would only add to the confusion. Emma was a vocal critic of the “world’s greatest democracy.” She did not believe in nation building and spheres of influence, doctrines going by any name, and realpolitik.

But if she wasn’t working for America, then who? The Brits? The Israelis? What did the French call their espionage unit…the wingnuts who had tried to sink the Rainbow Warrior in Auckland Harbor way back when?

With a fright, he realized that she could be working for anyone. The country didn’t matter. Only the ideals did.

Emma and her duty to interfere.

As the windscreen filled with white and the frozen night closed around him, Jonathan’s mind was fixated on the fireball that had engulfed the mosque. The blinding burst that erupted a millisecond before the explosion assaulted his ears.

Was the car bomb part of it, too? The final straw needed to convince him to go? He begged Emma for the answer. But he’d lost touch with her.

Disillusioned, he heard only silence.

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40

Marcus von Daniken tossed a dossier onto the desk. “Not exactly the manpower I was hoping for,” he said. “But you’ll do.”

He looked at the four men seated around the table. None had slept a wink in the last thirty-six hours. A welter of empty coffee mugs attested to their hypercaffeinated state. The glaring overhead lights didn’t help much either.

To his usual crew of Myer, Krajcek, and Seiler, he’d added Klaus Hardenberg, an investigator from the financial crimes division. After a few minutes of bantering, they’d decided to call themselves a task force, in spite of their limited numbers. It would make it easier to explain the long hours to their wives, even if they were forbidden from discussing the focus of their work.

Von Daniken didn’t bother to flatter them that they were the best men in his department.

“Let’s start with questions,” he said, sliding into a chair. “Anything that’s bothering you, let’s hear it.”

The voices came at him fast and furious. Who did he think killed Lammers? What was the connection between him and Blitz/Quitab? If Quitab was an Iranian officer, shouldn’t they forward his name to all friendly agencies to check for any background information? Had any evidence beyond the terrorist’s confession been found linking Walid Gassan with Blitz/Quitab and Lammers? Did they have any idea of Gassan’s activities during his passage through Switzerland a month earlier? Which airport was the most likely target? And what about the American, Ransom?

Where did he fit in? What should they make of his killing the two police officers in Landquart? Might he have had time to kill Lammers the same day his wife died?

Finally, there was a question posed in various forms by all the men present: Why did Marti have his head stuck so far up his ass?

Von Daniken was unable to answer any of the questions, and his ignorance highlighted the fault that ran through the center of the investigation. Essentially, they knew nothing about the conspirators or the plot.

It came down to one thing: there was too much to do and too little time to do it.

Von Daniken divided the inquiries into four areas. Finance.

Communications. Field investigation. And transportation. He would take finance. His experience as a member of the Holocaust Commission had left him with a raft of acquaintances and contacts, as well as a few friends in the banking establishment.

“We’ll start with the Villa Principessa,” he said. “That’s no squatter’s hovel in Hamburg. It takes real money to set up digs there.”

It would be his job to find out who had leased it, for how long, and where the payments had come from. The key would be to discover where Blitz did his banking. Of all the threads, this one carried the potential for the greatest yield. Once it was discovered where he conducted his daily business, von Daniken could backtrack and trace the origin of funds transferred into the account. As importantly, he could see where monies were channeled afterward. In one direction the money trail would lead to Blitz’s paymasters

—the organization or government underwriting his adventures. In the other, it would lead to his co-conspirators.

Klaus Hardenberg would cover the second line of inquiry, focusing on credit. Von Daniken said he wanted all records for Blitz, Lammers, and Ransom over the past twelve months. Tracking their expenditures would yield invaluable information about their daily activities and provide a road map as to their whereabouts during the past twelve months.

Lammers would be the easiest of the three. Five charge cards had been found in his wallet. In order to avoid deportation, his wife was cooperating with their inquiries.

Blitz was another story. No wallet or identification had been found in his home. However, by a stroke of luck, one page of his December Eurocard statement had slipped beneath the credenza in his home office. The charge card would yield a credit history, along with banking references and some form of national identification number.

The jury was still out on Ransom. Immigration had only just come back with his details. As of this moment, Ransom’s passport number and Social

Security number were being run through Interpol and forwarded to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Crime Information Center.

Kurt Myer was in charge of communications. He’d begun work upon returning from Ascona.

“Swisscom is sending over a list of all calls made from Blitz’s home in the last six months,” he reported. “We’ve already got Lammers’s list for the same period. First, we’ll cross the two and see if they have any friends in common. Then we’ll go back a level and take a look at all calls made to and from their correspondents. We should have the first reports by seven in the morning.”

“Good,” said von Daniken. Five years earlier, he’d been instrumental in passing into law a requirement that telecommunications companies keep a six-month call log for every registered number. “After you run the two lists, isolate all cellular numbers and see if we can find some similar names. If they’re using SIM cards, trace the numbers back to their point of sale.”

“I can guarantee we’ll find some similar names,” said Myer. “It’s just a question of how careful they were. Everybody makes mistakes.”

“Let’s keep our fingers crossed that they’re not registered to foreign telecoms,” said von Daniken.

Krajcek rolled his eyes. “Pray not the Germans.”

No one protected their citizens’ privacy more ferociously than the Federal Republic of Germany.

Finance and communication worked collaboratively. Once von Daniken’s inquiries into the suspects’ finances began to pay off, all related phone numbers would be passed along to Myer.

Each and every hit would be fed into a predictive software program that used the data to map a “web of relationships” neatly illustrating Blitz’s and Lammers’s socioeconomic lives.

OceanofPDF.com

Von Daniken grabbed a cup of espresso in the break area—two sugars, twist of lemon—and downed it in two swallows. It was ten p.m. and he’d been awake for thirty-eight hours. His fatigue, however, had been replaced with a quiet optimism. In the beginning, everything was possible.

He looked at the empty coffee cup. Then again, maybe it was the caffeine boosting his spirits.

He slapped his hand on the desk to get their attention. “Mr. Krajcek will be visiting with our field agents in Geneva, Basel, and Zurich tomorrow, won’t you?”

“First thing.”

For the past three years, the Service for Analysis and Prevention had been running agents inside the country’s most important mosques. Most were volunteers, Muslims angered by the way their religion had been hijacked by fundamentalists. Others were more reluctant and had to be pressed into service by threats of deportation to their home country. The take had yielded critical intelligence about smuggled RPGs, AK-47’s, and a network of hawala—or money transfer—agents used by an Algerian terror cell operating out of France, Switzerland, and northern Italy.

“Concentrate on finding someone who visited with Gassan during his recent transit through Geneva,” von Daniken said. “I want contacts, places visited, where he holed up, and any mentions of his intent.”

All this Krajcek wrote furiously in his notepad.

Von Daniken turned to the next in line. “And now, Mr. Hardenberg…”

Hardenberg tried to smile, but succeeded only in looking like he was passing a kidney stone. He was fat, middle-aged, and pudding-faced with heavy tortoiseshell glasses that shielded shy brown eyes and a head as bald as an ice cube. And he was, bar none, the meanest, most dogged investigator von Daniken had ever come across. His nickname was the

“Rottweiler.”

“You’re going to find the Volkswagen van that Gassan used to take delivery of the plastic explosives in Leipzig. My money says that it’s being used to transport the drone as well. Find the van and we find our men.”

It was a brief instruction masking a gargantuan task. Hardenberg cleared his throat and nodded.

Without another word, he stood and left the room. No one believed for a second that he was going home. Every rental car company, automobile sales lot, and government agency was closed for the night, but Hardenberg would be at his desk until morning figuring the best way to begin his attack when they opened for business tomorrow.

Last, but not least, came Max Seiler. His mandate was twofold. First, using Lammers’s passports as a starting point, he was to note all entry and exit stamps found inside and reconstruct Lammers’s frequent trips. At the same time, they would ask all major airlines to run a passenger flight manifest check for Lammers, Blitz, and Ransom, and all known aliases of the above, during the last year. Seiler’s discoveries might not help find the drone, but they would go a long way toward establishing a case against the paymasters behind the planned attack.

Von Daniken pushed his chair back from the table. “Time to get to work.”

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Goppenstein, altitude fifteen hundred meters, population three thousand, sat nestled in the craw of the Lötsch Valley. The town had no historic or scenic claims. If it was known at all, it was as the southern terminus of a 12.5-kilometer railway tunnel that passed through the Lötschberg and linked the canton of Bern and, as such, northern Switzerland, with the canton of Valais to the south.

Built in 1911, the tunnel was a relic. Only one train at a time could traverse its length. There was no escape or “carcass” tunnel, as was customary in modern construction. Only at either end did it widen enough to accommodate two sets of tracks, and that for just a thousand meters. But it was a crucial relic. Each day the train ferried more than two thousand cars, trucks, and motorcycles through the mountain.

After paying the fare of twenty-six francs, the Ghost guided his automobile into the holding area.

Lane markers had been painted onto the asphalt and numbered one through six. The first two lanes were full, a mix of cars and eighteen-wheel international transports. A man in a fluorescent orange vest motioned for him to pull into lane three.

The train lay beyond the parking lot. Instead of passenger cars, there were flatbeds with a spindly steel awning providing protection against the elements. An endless succession stretched past the station and into the darkness beyond. It reminded him of a snake poking its head out of a cave.

A great, rusty, reticulated snake.

He checked the clock. Nine minutes remained until the train was due to depart.

The Ghost watched in his rearview mirror as Ransom pulled into the lane three cars behind him.

He tapped the steering wheel with his palm. Everything was in order.

He opened the glove compartment, took out his pistol, attached a silencer and muzzle suppressor, then set it on the seat beside him. From around his neck, he freed the vial. He recited the prayer slowly and with passion, hearing the sound of far-off drums beating in the rain forest. One after

another, he anointed the bullets in the poison. Certain that the soul of his victim could not follow him into this world, the Ghost finished loading his gun.

He waited.

A green light flashed. Engines turned over. Brake lights blinked. A procession of vehicles began loading onto the train. The lanes to his right cleared. The car directly ahead jerked forward.

Jonathan drove up a brief grade, then onto the flatbed. He advanced down the narrow platform, passing from one car to the next farther toward the head of the train. A low barrier was erected on either side of the carriage, and above it a railing flagged with signs instructing drivers to employ the emergency brake and stating that it was forbidden to leave the automobile.

Headlights illuminated a confined space, and he had the impression of plunging through a rifle barrel.

He brought the Mercedes to a halt at the head of his carriage, five or six feet behind the car ahead of him. Up and down the train, drivers killed their engines. Minutes passed. Finally the train lurched and began to move, shuddering to life like a sleepy animal. The rhythmic stamping of the ties increased in tempo. The mountains drew closer, hemming in the tracks. He heard the hush of the approaching tunnel. His ears popped from the change in air pressure. The train seemed to rush forward as it entered the pitch darkness.

Jonathan’s eyes were open, but he couldn’t see a thing. He rode this way for a while, and in the dark he saw Emma’s face. She was looking at him over her shoulder. “Follow me,” she said, and her voice echoed inside him.

His chin bounced off his chest and he woke with a start. He looked at the analog clock. The tritium hands showed that he’d dozed for five minutes.

He snapped to attention and flipped on the overhead light.

He removed the documentation about Zug Industriewerk from the briefcase. First, he reread the memo from Hoffmann to Eva Kruger about Thor. “…final shipment to client will be made on 10.2.” Something about the date bothered him. The tenth was in three days. Then it hit him.

Emma had been due to go to Copenhagen for two days for a regional DWB meeting. For the first time, he was forced to evaluate her actions through a warped lens. Had she really planned on going to Denmark? Or did she have something else in mind? Something arranged by Blitz or Hoffmann or some other unknown character from her double life.

He turned his attention to the glossy company brochure. A photograph inside the front cover depicted a prim three-story headquarters building and a sprawling factory attached to it. He flipped past photos of impressive silver machines and colleagues engaged in oppressively earnest conversation.

“Zug Industriewerk was founded in 1911 by Werner Stutz as a manufacturer of precision gun barrels,” read a brief history of the firm. “By the early 1930s, Mr. Stutz had expanded the firm’s product line to include light and heavy armament, as well as the first mass-produced steel aircraft wings.” Good timing, commented Jonathan. Half the world was about to need as many gun barrels as they could get their hands on. It was a success story that had been repeated countless times during the bloody twentieth century. So far, things were on track for a repeat performance in the twenty-first.

He turned to the back of the brochure and perused the accounts.

Revenues: 55 million. Profit: 6 million. Employees: 478. The numbers had a weight to them that the words couldn’t match.

Money was real. It was substantial. Money did not lie.

The more Jonathan read, the angrier he became. There was no doubting that ZIAG was a legitimate firm. So how was it that a woman who did not exist had come to be an employee?

It was then that he heard the tapping on his window. Something hard.

He jumped in his seat and turned toward the noise.

All he needed was a towel. The Ghost hadn’t counted on the darkness being so complete. The flames from a silencer would be visible ten cars back. He dug around in his overnight bag and came up with a black T-shirt.

He tore off a strip of fabric and wrapped it around the silencer. His last act

before leaving the car was to attach the twill bag that would catch his spent shells.

The Ghost opened the door with care, leaving it ajar for his return.

Precious little space separated the car and the safety railing. Keeping low, he slid alongside the chassis. The air inside the tunnel was clammy and frigid. The pocked stone wall rushed past, barely an arm’s length away. He spotted Ransom’s car, three back. The interior lights of the vehicles in between were extinguished, the drivers most probably resting. Ransom’s dome light, however, was illuminated.

He sat reading some papers, lit as if he were on a stage.

Keeping to a crouch, the Ghost moved toward him. He passed one car, then another. He stopped to check his watch. It was nine minutes since the train had entered the tunnel. The clerk at the ticket window had informed him that transit time was fifteen minutes end to end. His eyes focused on Ransom. The interior cabin light posed a problem. He didn’t want anyone to see Ransom’s body before they reached Kandersteg. Cell phones operated in the tunnel. It wasn’t beyond reason that someone might call the police.

He settled back on his haunches.

A minute passed. Then another. Finally, he moved.

Sliding from the rear of the car, he crossed from one flatbed to the next.

The Mercedes was parked at the head of its carriage. There were no railings here, and the Ghost had to be careful not to put a foot over the side. He took another step forward, putting his hand out to touch the Mercedes’ fender.

He drew up to the driver’s door. Thumbing the safety to the off position, he stood and tapped the pistol against the window.

Jonathan Ransom looked directly at him.

The Ghost pulled the trigger.

Jonathan stared out the window. Something was there. A shadow. A form. He looked more closely. His eyes widened. A gun was pointed at his forehead.

Suddenly, a flame erupted, blinding him.

He flinched, turning his head away. There was the sound of crunching sand. Again, the same noise. He looked back as a spit of fire smeared the glass. The window bulged inward. He saw the starlike fractures where bullets had struck the glass but hadn’t passed through.

The glass was bulletproof.

He had no time to react. Just then, the car door opened and an arm pushed through the gap. All Jonathan saw was the pistol aimed at his cheek.

Instinctively, he threw his head back and grabbed the wrist, forcing it up and away from his face before it spat something that tore into the roof. He grasped the wrist with both hands and wrenched it downward. He glanced toward the door and caught a glimpse of a face. Hooded eyes. An expression of cold concentration.

At that moment, the train passed into the wider section of the tunnel. The wall to his right disappeared and he had the impression of gazing into a subterranean cavern. Directly ahead, he saw a flickering light. The station at Kandersteg.

The killer yanked his arm free. Jonathan pulled the door closed and locked it. The shadow melted into the dark. Jonathan started the engine. But where to go? He couldn’t go forward or backward, and he couldn’t sit there waiting to be shot. He rammed a palm into the horn, then turned on the lights and hit the brights. The Xenon beams illuminated the cars in front of him with a diamond blue light. He noted for the first time that the safety railing didn’t extend between the railway cars. A sturdy chain two meters in length spanned the gap.

Just then, the train emerged from the tunnel. The tracks veered left, slotting beside the loading platform. Throwing the car into drive, he turned the wheel and pressed his foot on the accelerator. The Mercedes’ V-12

engine propelled the car forward, snapping the safety chain and carrying him onto the platform. Sleet spattered the windshield. He fumbled for the wipers as he pressed his face nearer the glass. Something squat and dark loomed in front of him. Finally, he found the proper control and the blades cleared the windscreen. A kiosk stood only ten meters ahead. Jonathan jerked the wheel and the car dodged the obstacle with only inches to spare.

He continued down the loading ramp and across the parking lot, coming to a stop at the red light that governed access to the highway. Behind him, the train was pulling to a halt, its iron wheels screeching and moaning. No cars had begun to disembark.

The traffic light turned green.

Jonathan turned onto the highway and drove at the speed limit for ten minutes before taking the nearest exit and guiding the car down a series of narrower roads that led as far from the highway as possible. Content that he hadn’t been followed, he pulled the car to the side of the road and killed the engine. He met his eyes in the rearview mirror. They were the eyes of a fugitive. His breath came in shallow gulps that left him light-headed and just this side of nauseous.

It wasn’t the first time that he’d been shot at. He’d come under gunfire in a general, “duck, you sucker” way. Working in a field hospital in Liberia, he’d found himself in a no-man’s-land caught between two warring factions. He was operating when the firing began. It was an amputation, a machete wound gone gangrenous. Even now, after seven years, he could see himself holding the saw as bullets suddenly began to tear into the whitewashed cement walls.

Outside, there came the usual cries and whimpers. He remembered one man’s voice in particular calling out, “Cachez-vous vite. Ils vont nous tous tuer.” Hide quickly. They’re going to kill us all. But no one in the operating room budged. Not even after a round exploded an IV drip.

Turning, he stared at the driver’s side window. There was no spidering.

No fractures. Just three star-shaped scratches in the glass. He ran his fingers over the surface. Not even an indentation.

Amazing, he thought, wondering how a piece of glass could fend off a bullet fired at point-blank range. He figured that it wasn’t glass at all, but some kind of plastic. Whatever it was, he liked it.

He liked it a helluva lot. He poked his finger into the rent in the ceiling fabric, seeking out the bullet, but found nothing.

He sat back in the seat, burdened by his predicament. Somewhere back there he’d crossed a line.

He wasn’t sure whether it had been when he’d run from the police in Landquart or when he’d decided to track down Gottfried Blitz. It didn’t matter. He was no longer looking in, the grieving spouse seeking closure about his wife’s double life. Her clandestine activities. He was a part of it now, whatever it was.

Braving the rain, he got out of the car and examined the Mercedes for damage. The front fender was scraped and dented on the right underside, but otherwise the car was fine.

A tank, he thought with a burst of misplaced pride.

He hurried back inside and cranked up the heat. He wondered about the man who’d tried to kill him. He was certain that it was the same man who’d killed Blitz. He must have been following Jonathan all day, biding his time, waiting for the right moment. But why had he waited so long?

There had been plenty of moments, both on the mountain and in the city, when Jonathan had been vulnerable. He didn’t have an answer.

One thing was for sure: the killer must have been surprised about the armored car.

That’s right, buddy. A fuckin’ tank!

Jonathan touched his neck, feeling the Saint Christopher that lay against his skin. Patron saint of travelers. He had a desire to kiss the medal. The smile wilted after a few seconds, forced aside by a creeping sense of dread.

He didn’t believe for a second that the killer was going to cut and run.

He was back there somewhere, and he was coming, just like the relentless one-armed man in the old ghost stories.

Jonathan put the car in drive. Making a three-point turn, he headed back along the side roads until he reached the highway. He pointed the car north in the direction of Bern. Other automobiles passed him regularly. His eyes checked the rearview mirror frequently, but he saw nothing that caused him concern.

The mountains fell away, and the horizon glowed a dull orange. City lights.

An armored car, a hundred thousand francs, and a cashmere sweater…

but who were they for?

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