Again Leticia left her car by Lake Davos, where the afternoon sun glinted on the water, twinkling brightly. She took the bus all the way to the southern end of town, around the ring of black-clad soldiers, to Davos Platz, where she disembarked among business suits and heavy coats and walked up Talstrasse. Residents who hadn’t rented out their apartments for exorbitant prices walked little dogs along the snow-scraped sidewalk and barely gave her a glance. For a week each year, Davos became wildly multicultural, and the residents no longer noticed.
It only took ten minutes to reach the hulking form of the Vaillant Arena, which like so many other buildings had been built with sloping roofs to emulate a ski lodge. As she crossed the empty parking lot, she saw along the second-floor balcony two heavily wrapped Chinese men looking down at her. The lot was cut in half by a high chain-link fence set up by construction workers, but one end had been left open for her. By the time she reached the glass front doors, there was another Chinese guard approaching it from inside and unlocking it to let her in. She expected to be patted down, but he made no move to do that, only led her through the wide, dark space to another set of doors that opened into the huge stadium that usually hosted ice hockey but was now in the midst of a lengthy renovation that wouldn’t be completed for a few more years. When the Forum came to town, the workers were all sent on vacation, leaving an empty shell in the middle of town, ideal for a private meeting.
At the rink-side seats, another Chinese man—heavy, with a hairy mole on his chin—stood and shook her hand with a big smile. “Hello,” he said in English, his accent strong, losing the l’s along the way. “My name is Chen.”
“Leticia,” she answered.
“Please,” he said, motioning to the chair beside him, and they both settled down as his guard wandered away.
For a moment, neither spoke, only looked across the dry expanse in front of them, and up at the high rafters. She thought of Li Fan’s warning: Leticia was sitting with the enemy now, one of Northwell’s friends. She and Milo had talked it through, but actually being here, her plan felt weak and haphazard. Finally, she said, “Did the Germans explain what’s happening?”
“They did.”
“And I expect you have questions.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “So to be sure I understand: You are proposing that we, together, take apart Northwell International. How?”
“That will be discussed once we’re all in the same room, but there are options. You, for example, can go after their training school in Beijing and stop their expansion on Sakhalin Island.”
“Yes,” he said, as if that hadn’t occurred to him. “It is a possibility. But we cannot go after their headquarters. Do you have the Americans’ cooperation?”
“We will,” she said. “But even without them each country can go after Northwell’s clients. Tóuzī is under your jurisdiction. Without customers, this ends.”
Chen smiled, perhaps liking the simplicity of her words, perhaps finding them ridiculous. “And I understand there is a carrot.”
“Carrot?”
“A reward for taking part.”
“Well, China gets to build its oil pipeline without having to worry about terrorists.”
He rocked his head, as if that were no reward at all. “I mean the files.”
“Yes,” she said, noting the interest in his voice. For three months Northwell and the Second Bureau had been banging their heads against Library encryption.
“Question,” Chen said, breathing loudly through his nose and squinting across the arena. “How do we know that Milo Weaver will hand this to us? That he won’t pull a trick?”
“That’s easy,” she told him. “He doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want his family to die. None of us, Chen, want to die.”
“Very good,” he said with a smile. “How do I get in touch with you, or Milo himself?”
“You don’t. If you agree, then you meet us on Thursday. We’ll contact you with the address.”
“And that is all? We meet, discuss our options, and then put a plan into action?”
“Exactly,” she said. “Unless you have a better idea.”
He shook his head, that smile returning. “No, no. It is a wonderful plan.”
Crossing the parking lot again, she felt their eyes on her, and she also felt the anxiety of a plan that wasn’t quite as clear-cut as she would have liked. There were too many moving parts, and one of those moving parts—Chen—was under the thumb of their enemy. Li Fan had been right—the Second Bureau had no reason to kill her. Yet. But what about Thursday? Once the principals were together in one room? Would Northwell decide that the simplest move was to send in their soldiers and wipe out everyone? Reckless, sure, but so was funneling millions to Boko Haram, or sending Tourists out to sink Filipino ships.
It wasn’t going to work. She felt this so strongly that, heading back to Küblis, she nearly kept driving north, to Zürich, where she could board a plane to anywhere. Instead, she called Milo and told him what she believed needed to be done to make this work. Otherwise, none of them would make it out of Switzerland alive. He didn’t like it, told her it was crazy, but said he would think about it.
“You better think quick,” she snapped.