Alexandra’s rented room on the bucolic, rural edge of Serneus was airy and gave her and Milo a clear view down to the valley. The view was starting to fade as night emerged, and that was when Leticia called from her car and spoke to Milo. After he hung up, he sank into a deep silence that irritated his sister. She knew, after all these years, that Milo’s silence didn’t always mean deep thought; it often meant confusion. So she forced him to tell her exactly what Leticia had said.
Just as Northwell’s annual meeting on Friday was where the consortium was most vulnerable, Leticia had argued, their own meeting, on Thursday, was where they were most vulnerable. And the meeting place, a seasonally closed restaurant on the side of a ski slope, chosen for its solitude, was also the perfect spot for a mass killing.
“She didn’t give Chen the address, did she?”
“Of course not. But the Sixth Bureau knows it. And she thinks Chen has a line into them.”
“What makes her think that?”
“Experience.” When she frowned at him, he said, “He’s too confident.”
“So what does she want to do?”
“Change of location.”
“That’s easy enough.”
“But that’s not it,” he said. “If we can’t get the Americans on board, she wants to do something crazy to convince the others to join us.”
“Sounds like Leticia Jones.”
In the morning when Oskar pulled up in one of the BND’s black four-wheel drive SUVs, guarded by two blond beasts, they told him about the change of location, and he shrugged. “Sure,” he said. “I can tell everyone.”
“But not Chen.”
“Of course not,” he said, then checked his watch. “Vice President Wang speaks immediately after Angela Merkel, at two o’clock. I will tell Li Fan personally, and she can decide who to share it with.”
He reached into his jacket and pulled out a heavy manila envelope, opened it, and spread five laminated cards on the coffee table. Milo picked up one, and Alexandra followed suit. The card she held had Leticia’s photo and identified her as a stringer for Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. Milo handed over the one he was holding, identifying Alexandra as an employee of Der Spiegel.
“It’s the only way to get inside the security ring,” Oskar told them.
“Thank you,” Milo said.
Alexandra placed hers back on the table. “I already have one.”
Oskar smiled. “Vivian Wall?” He shook his head. “Three hours ago the British put out a warrant for Ms. Wall. I believe Mr. Booth’s wife had a hand in that.”
That was news. She looked down at the cards—Milo, Poitevin, and Dalmatian were also taken care of, each under assumed names. She sighed. “These are German publications. My German isn’t very good.”
Oskar sniffed. “You’re in Switzerland. Their German is not very good either.” Then he winked, looking remarkably confident given the haphazard schemes they were putting together. To Milo, he said, “And the Americans?”
“I’ll call them this evening. They’ve had enough time to think, so I should get an immediate answer.”
“Good.”
“What about Katarina Heinold?” Alexandra asked.
“She lands tomorrow morning,” Oskar said. “I will pick her up personally.”
“Good,” she said.
Oskar’s expression changed, and the confidence bled out of it a little. He cleared his throat and took another envelope out of his jacket pocket. As he opened it and took out two small photos, he said, “In terms of potential issues, of which there are many, let me add another. Ingrid Parker was sighted in Klosters.”
He handed over the photos. They were both distant surveillance shots of a woman, but in different locations. In the first, she was sitting with a young man in a Berlin square Alexandra recognized from Kreuzberg. In the second, she was getting into a car on a pretty little street that could only be in Switzerland. They weren’t good pictures, the woman’s face in shadow, but the height and short-cropped hair looked familiar from a thousand news stories. Milo passed them to Alexandra, who frowned.
“How long has she been here?” Milo asked.
“We don’t know. The Berlin shot is two weeks old, the Klosters shot two days. We don’t know what they’re planning, but we’ve shared the pictures with our allies, and the Swiss know to watch out.”
Alexandra didn’t like this. A Massive Brigade action in the middle of the Forum wasn’t just dangerous; it could undermine everything they were trying to do.
Alexandra passed back the photos. “Do the Swiss know what we’re doing?”
“Why would we tell them?” he asked.
“Well, if we can’t arrest these people, maybe the Swiss would be interested in doing it for us.”
Oskar grinned broadly, almost laughing. “You really think that the Swiss will want to put handcuffs on billionaires who have come to their country to be part of the biggest networking event in the world? They make a hundred million dollars over the space of one week. No matter my opinion of them, the Swiss are not stupid.” He shook his head. “The only thing we could expect is for them to arrest us for troubling their guests.”