In a modern eight-story building on Schaffhausserstrasse, not far from the University of Zurich, three men sat in a room filled with high-powered computers and high-resolution video monitors. It was a studio rented from a multimedia production company that did duplication, restoration, and editing of video for surveillance firms and corporations.
One of the group, a white-haired, scrawny man in shirtsleeves who looked a great deal older than his forty-six years, took a videocassette from a D-2 composite digital-format videotape recorder and placed it in one of the video slots in a Quantel Sapphire video-imaging computer. He had just finished making a digital copy of the surveillance tape he’d been given. Now, using this British-made video-imaging computer that had originally been developed for the Home Office, Britain’s MI-5, he was going to magnify the image.
The white-haired man, who worked in silence, had been one of the top video-enhancement specialists in the Home Office until he was lured away by a private London security firm at double his old salary. These two gentlemen in the room with him had hired him, through the security firm, to do a quick job in Zurich. He had no idea who they were. All he knew was that they were paying him a generous bonus. They had flown him from London to Zurich business class.
Now the two mysterious men sat off by themselves, talking. They could have been international businessmen from any country in the world, although in fact they were speaking Dutch, which the video expert understood reasonably well.
On the other side of the room, the white-haired technician stared at the computer screen. At the bottom it said CAM 2, along with the date and the time, which flashed by in fractions of a second. He called out to his clients: “All right, now tell me what you’d like done. You want the bloke electronically compared against a photo you’ve got?”
“No,” replied the first Dutchman. “We know who it is. We want to see what he’s reading.”
“I should have figured,” the technician groaned. “Good God, that piece of paper he’s holding is in shadow.”
“How’s the quality of the tape?” the second man asked.
“Not bad,” the tech said. “Two frames a second, which is standard. A lot of these banks use the most god-awful equipment, but fortunately this bank used a high-performance, high-res camera. I mean, I can’t say the camera was positioned terribly well, but that’s not uncommon either.”
The second businessman asked, “So you can zoom in on whatever he’s holding?”
“Sure. The software on this Quantel compensates for all the usual problems you get from digital enlargement—the blockiness and all that. That’s not the problem. The damned thing’s in shadow.”
“Well, you’re supposed to be the best,” the first man said sourly. “You’re certainly the most expensive.”
“I know, I know,” the tech said. “All true. Well, I can bring up the contrast.” He clicked on a pull-down menu that listed “Crisp,” “Zoom,” “Colouring,” and “Contrast.” By clicking on the “+” key he lightened the shadow until the paper the man in the bank vault was looking at was almost readable, then enhanced the resolution by clicking another number. He tinkered with the contrast some more, then clicked “crisp” to sharpen the image further.
“Good,” he said at last.
“Can you see what he’s reading?” the second man asked.
“Actually, it’s a photograph.”
“A photograph?”
“Right. An old one. A group shot. Lots of conservatively dressed men. Looks like a bunch of businessmen. A couple of German officers, too. Yes, a group shot. Mountains in the background—”
“Can you make out their faces?”
“If you give me … just … ah, here we are.” He zoomed in on the photograph until it took up the entire screen. “‘Zurich, 1945,’ it says here. The ‘Sig’ something … ?”
The second man glanced at the first. “Good heavens.” He approached the computer monitor.
The tech said, “Sigma AG?”
The second man muttered to the first, “He’s on to it.”
“As I thought,” the first said.
“All right,” said the second man to the technician. “I want you to print out a copy of that. I also want the best head shot of this fellow you can get.”
“Make fifty copies,” put in the first man, rising from his chair.
The second man crossed the room to talk to his colleague. “Put out the word,” he said quietly. “Our precautions have been inadequate. The American has become a serious threat.”
Anna Navarro hunched forward in her chair. Alan Bartlett’s office was as immaculate as ever, the man’s expression every bit as opaque.
“I’ve tracked Robert Mailhot’s money transfers from the Nova Scotia National Bank back to an account in the Caymans, and there, I’m afraid, I’ve hit a dead end,” Anna said. “The one source we’ve got there confirms that the account shows recent activity involving one of Prosperi’s funds, too. But there, as I say, the money trail goes cold. It’s one thing to learn where the money ends up. It’s another to learn who put the money there in the first place. Should we start working through regular channels?”
“Out of the question,” Bartlett said, a little peevish. “It would compromise the security of the entire operation. That means anyone with an interest in stopping the investigation can do so easily. It also means endangering the lives of others, people who may still be targets.”
“I understand,” Anna said. “But I don’t want a repeat of Asuncion, either. That’s the price you pay for going through back-channels. Whoever’s behind this, this—for want of a better word, this conspiracy—obviously had enough influence to stop us.”
“Granted. But once we raise this thing to an A-II level, a sanctioned investigation, it’s like taking out an ad in The New York Times, telling the subjects of our inquiries what we’re up to. We can’t assume there aren’t people in the intelligence community working both sides on this matter.”
“An A-II is still highly privileged. I don’t agree—”
“No, you wouldn’t,” he said freezingly. “Perhaps I was wrong—perhaps you really are a loyal bureaucrat at heart.”
She ignored his barb. “I’ve been involved in many international investigations, including homicide investigations, that have been kept quiet. Particularly when we think someone in the government might be implicated. In El Salvador, when government officials had Americans killed to cover up—”
“As you know, I’m intimately acquainted with your previous exploits, Agent Navarro,” Bartlett said impatiently. “You’re speaking of one foreign government. I’m speaking of half a dozen or more. There’s a difference.”
“You say there’s been a victim in Oslo now?”
“That’s our latest intelligence, yes.”
“Then we have the Attorney General’s office make a high-level, confidential appeal to the Office of the Norwegian State Prosecutor, requesting absolute secrecy.”
“No. The risks of a direct appeal to the Norwegian authorities are far too great.”
“Then I want the list. Not the list of corpses. I want the names of people with Sigma clearance files. Your ‘hot list.’”
“That’s impossible.”
“I see—I only get ‘em when they’re dead. Well, in that case, I want off this job.”
He hesitated. “Don’t play games, Ms. Navarro. You’ve been assigned.” Bartlett’s carefully cultivated air of solicitude and noblesse had evaporated. Now Anna caught a glimpse of the steel that had placed Bartlett at the helm of one of the government’s most powerful investigative units. “It’s really not up to you.”
“I can get sick, suddenly become unable to perform my job. Be unable to travel.”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“No, not if you gave me the hot list.”
“I told you. It’s impossible. This operation must abide by certain rules. If those rules sometimes amount to constraints, you must accept them as the parameters of your inquiry.”
“Look,” she said, “thirteen of the old men on your Sigma list are now dead under ‘questionable circumstances,’ let’s just say. Three remain alive, right?”
“To the best of our knowledge.”
“Then let me put it to you this way. Once one of these guys dies, is killed, whatever—we can’t pay the body a visit without some kind of
official government cooperation, on whatever level. Right? But if we get to one of them before he’s killed … Listen, I realize I’m supposed to be investigating dead people, not live ones. But if we consider them potential witnesses, put them under twenty-four-hour surveillance—discreetly, of course … .”
Bartlett stared at her, conflicting imperatives evidently playing across his face. Now he walked to a floor safe taller than he was, opened it, and pulled out a folder. He handed her a sheet of paper stamped SECRET, NOFORN, and NOCONTRACT. Those classifications stipulated that, in addition to high-level secrecy constraints, it was under no circumstances releasable to foreign nationals or contract employees. “The list,” he said quietly.
She quickly read down the columns of information—aliases, real names, names of any living relatives, and the numbers of the corresponding files. Three old men remained alive. Countries of origin: Portugal, Italy, Switzerland.
“No addresses?” she said.
“Just old ones. None current that we’ve been able to procure through the normal means. All of them have relocated in the past year.”
“The past year? They could be anywhere in the world.”
“That’s a logical possibility. The probability is that they’re in the same country, likely in the same general locale—at a certain point of life, one becomes subject to a sort of field of gravitation. It’s difficult for old men to completely uproot themselves. Even when their safety is at risk, there is a level of personal tumult to which they will refuse to subject themselves. All the same, they haven’t exactly left forwarding addresses. Evidently, they’re keeping a low profile.”
“Hiding,” Anna said. “They’re afraid.”
“It would seem they have reason to be.”
“It’s like there’s some geriatric grudge match going on. How could something that started even before the CIA was founded still have such power?”
Bartlett craned his neck, resting his gaze on the velvet-lined display case before he turned back. “Certain things grow more powerful with age. And, of course, it’s a grave mistake to confuse size with influence. Today, the CIA is a vast, solid government institution with endless layers of bureaucracy. At the beginning, personal networks were where true power resided. It was true of Bill Donovan, the founder of the OSS, and
even more so of Allen Dulles. Yes, Dulles is known for his role in creating the CIA, but that wasn’t the most impressive of his accomplishments. For him, there was one battle, the battle against the revolutionary left.”
“The ‘gentleman spy,’ they called him, didn’t they?”
“The ‘gentleman’ part made him as dangerous as the ‘spy’ part. He was never more formidable than when he was a private citizen, back in the days when he and his brother Foster ran the international finance division of a certain law firm.”
“The law firm? What did they do, double bill their clients?”
Bartlett gave her a slightly pitying look. “It’s an amateur’s error to underestimate the reach and range of private concerns. Theirs was more than just a white-shoe law firm. It had genuinely international reach. Dulles, traveling around the world, was able to weave a sort of spider’s web across Europe. He enlisted confederates in all the major cities, finding them among the Allies, the Axis, and the neutrals.”
“Confederates?” Anna interrupted. “How do you mean?”
“Highly placed individuals—contacts, friends, ‘assets,’ call them what you will—whom Allen Dulles effectively had on retainer. They served as sources of information and advice, but also as agents of influence. Dulles knew how to appeal to people’s self-interest. After all, he facilitated an extraordinary number of deals involving governments and multinational corporations, and that made him an invaluable man to know. If you were a businessman, he could ensure that a large government contract was steered in your direction. If you were a government official, he might provide you with a crucial morsel of information that would further your career. Money and intelligence—Dulles understood that one could be readily converted to the other, like two currencies, albeit with constantly shifting exchange rates. And, of course, Dulles’s own role as a go-between, an intermediary, depended upon him knowing just a little bit more than everyone else.”
“A go-between?”
“Maybe you’ve heard of the Bank for International Settlement of Basel?”
“Maybe I haven’t.”
“It was essentially a counting house where businessmen on both sides of the war could settle down and parse the distribution of dividends. A very useful institution to have—if you were a businessman. After all, business didn’t cease simply because the cannons began to fire. But the
hostilities did interfere with the conduct of corporate partnerships and alliances, giving rise to all sorts of impediments. Dulles figured out ways to circumvent those impediments.”
“That’s not an attractive picture.”
“It’s the reality. Dulles, you see, believed in the ‘network.’ It’s the key to understanding his life’s mission. A network was an array of individuals—a whole, a complex configuration, that could have an influence vastly greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a striking thing to contemplate. As I say, it always comes down to the crooked timber of humanity.”
Anna raised an eyebrow. “It sounds a little frightening.”
A vein pulsed on Bartlett’s temple. “It is a little frightening, and perhaps more than a little. The nature of these networks, after all, is that they are invisible to those who are not part of them—invisible even to some who are. And they also have a tendency to survive the individuals they initially comprise. You could say they take on a life of their own. And they can have powerful effects on the organizations that they invade.” He adjusted his French cuffs again. “I talked of spider’s webs. There’s a curious parasitic wasp, very tiny, of the genus Hymenoepimecis —a clever little creature that stings a spider into temporary paralysis, and lays its eggs in the spider’s abdomen. Soon the spider goes back to work, as if nothing had happened, even as the larvae grow inside him, nourished on its fluids. Then, on the night that the larvae will molt and kill the spider, they chemically induce it to change its behavior. On this night, the spider is induced to spin a cocoon web, useless to the spider but necessary for the larva. As soon as the spider has finished its work, the larvae consume the spider and hang the pupal cocoon in the special web. It’s quite extraordinary, really, the parasite’s fine-grained manipulation of the host’s behavior. But it’s nothing compared to what we humans can devise. That’s the sort of thing I think about, Ms. Navarro. Who’s inside of us? What forces might be manipulating the apparatus of civic governance into building a web that will serve their own purposes? When will the parasite decide to consume the host?”
“O.K., I’ll play along,” Anna said. “Let’s say half a century ago, some dark conspiracy stings us, in effect—implants something that’s going to grow and cause damage. Even if all that’s so, how would we ever know?”
“That is an excellent question, Ms. Navarro,” Bartlett replied. “Webs are hard to see, aren’t they, even when they’re big. Have you ever walked into an old basement or storage area in a dim light, seeing nothing in
the gloom? Then you switch on a flashlight, and suddenly you realize that the empty space over your head isn’t exactly empty—it’s filled with layers of cobwebs, a vast canopy of glassy filaments. You direct the beam in another direction, and that canopy disappears—as if it were never there. Had you imagined it? You look straight up. Nothing. Then, directing the beam at just the right off-angle, focusing your eyes on some intermediate point, it all becomes visible once more.” Bartlett’s gaze searched her face for comprehension. “People like me spend our days looking for that one odd angle that brings the old webs into view. Often we look too hard, and we imagine things. Sometimes we see what’s really there. You, Ms. Navarro, strike me as someone not prone to imagine things.”
“I’ll accept that at face value,” Anna replied.
“I don’t mean to imply that you lack imagination—only that you keep it under tight control. No matter. The point is simply that there were alliances forged among some individuals with considerable resources. That much is part of public history. And as for what became of this? I only wish we knew. All we have are these names.”
“Three names,” Anna said. “Three old men.”
“I’d direct your particular attention to Gaston Rossignol. He’d been quite a powerful Swiss banker in his heyday. The most prominent person on the list, and the oldest.”
“All right,” she said, looking up. “The Zuricher. I assume you’ve prepared a background file on him.”
Bartlett opened a desk drawer, withdrew a file festooned with classificatory warning stamps, and slid it to her across the desk. “It’s fairly extensive, aside from the obvious lacunae.”
“Good,” Anna said. “I want to see him before they get to him, too.”
“Assuming you can locate him.”
“He’s lived his entire life in Zurich. As you say, there’s a field of gravitation there. Even if he’s moved, he would have left behind friends, family members. Tributaries leading to the source.”
“Or moats, protecting a fortress. A man like Rossignol has powerful friends, highly placed ones, who will do whatever they can to protect him. Friends who are, as the French say, branché. Powerful and pluggedin. They have the ability to remove him from the grid of visibility, the bureaucratic files and computer records. Do you have some clever subterfuge in mind?”
“Nothing like that. Subterfuge is what they’ll be on guard against. Rossignol has nothing to fear from me. If his friends and confederates are as well informed as you suggest, they’ll realize that and spread the word.”
“So you’re envisaging a simple ‘I come in peace’?” The words were wry, but he looked intrigued.
Anna shrugged. “Some version of that. I suspect the best route will be the most direct one. But I’ll find out soon enough.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m taking the next flight I can catch to Zurich.”
A little over five hours later, Ben Hartman sat in his rented Range Rover in the staff parking lot of the Regionalspital Sankt Gallen Nord, watching people coming and going: doctors, nurses, hospital workers. The powerful engine idled softly. Fortunately, there weren’t many people, even at a few minutes after five o’clock, the end of the workday for the office workers. Twilight was beginning to fall, and the outside lights were starting to come on.
From Zurich he had called the hospital and asked for Dr. Margarethe Hubli. He was put right through to Pediatrics, where he asked, in English, whether she was in.
Yes, he was told; would you like to make an appointment to see the doctor? The nurse’s English was halting but comprehensible.
“No,” he’d said, “I really just wanted to make sure the doctor was in the hospital. My child is ill, and I want to know whether you had a pediatrician on call in case we need one.” He thanked the nurse and, after finding out how late Dr. Hubli worked, hung up.
Liesl was scheduled to be in the hospital only until four in the afternoon. He’d been waiting here over two hours; already she was more than an hour late in leaving. Ben was certain she had not yet emerged from the hospital. Moreover, he had spotted her Renault parked in the lot. He figured she was the sort of dedicated doctor who worked long hours and paid little attention to schedules.
He might be sitting here for quite some time, he realized.
The document of incorporation that Peter had referred to wasn’t in the vault, so where else might it be? He had said he’d hidden it away
safely. Was it possible that Liesl was telling the truth, that she really didn’t know where it was? In that case was it possible that Peter had concealed it somewhere among his possessions in the cabin without Liesl knowing?
She’d answered too quickly when he’d asked her whether Peter might have hidden something there. She knew something she wasn’t telling.
He had to go to the cabin.
Forty minutes later, Liesl came out of the Emergency entrance.
She was talking to someone, bantering. She gave a wave good-bye and zipped up her leather jacket. Then she half-walked, half-ran to her car, got in, and started it up.
Ben waited until she’d gone some distance down the road before he pulled out of the lot. She wouldn’t recognize the Range Rover and would have no cause for suspicion, apart from her normal cautiousness. Still, it was better not to alarm her.
At a travel bookstore in Zurich he’d bought a map of the canton of St. Gallen and studied the roads in the area. Both Peter and Liesl had mentioned living in a “cabin,” which likely meant that it was situated in a forest or woods. There was one wooded area about eight kilometers from the hospital, roughly north-northwest. The only other one within a two-hour drive was forty kilometers away. That was quite a distance, on back roads, for someone who had to go to work every day—sometimes even had to return to the hospital quickly in emergencies. More likely the cabin was located in the closer woods.
Having committed the roads in the area to memory, he knew that the next turnoff wasn’t for two kilometers. But if she stopped somewhere along the road and turned off, he stood a chance of losing her. All he could do was hope she didn’t.
Soon the road rose steeply, following the hilly topography of this part of Switzerland. It enabled him to look far ahead, and he was able to spot what he determined was her Renault, stopped at a traffic light. At the next intersection was a highway marked 10. If she took a left onto 10, she was heading toward the forest he had scoped out. If she took a right, or went beyond 10, he’d have no idea where she was going.
The Renault turned left.
He accelerated and reached the intersection with 10 just a few minutes after she had. There were enough other cars on the road that he wasn’t too obvious. He felt sure she still had no idea he was tailing her.
The four-lane highway went parallel to a set of railroad tracks, past several immense farms, great fields that went on as far as he could see. Suddenly she turned off, a few kilometers before he expected she would.
Once he turned onto the narrow, winding road, he realized that his was the only car behind her. Not good. It had gotten dark, and the road was barely trafficked, and she would soon realize he was following her. How could she not? If she did, she would either slow down to see who it was behind her or, more likely, try to lose him. If she began driving strangely, he would have no choice but to show himself.
Luckily, the twisty road helped to conceal him, as long as he stayed at least one bend behind her. Now they passed a sparsely wooded area that gradually became denser. From time to time he would see the flash of her headlights, appearing and then disappearing around the bends. This enabled him to follow her at some remove, to let her gain considerable distance on him, just in case she had noticed the Rover.
But a few minutes later he could no longer see her headlights.
Where had she gone? Had she pulled off the road? He accelerated, to see whether she had herself sped up, but after a kilometer he saw no trace of her.
She had to have turned off into the woods, though he didn’t seem to have passed by any roads or paths that led into the forest. He stopped, made a U-turn—no cars were coming in either direction—and reversed course, slowing down to look for any turnoffs.
It wasn’t easy; it had gotten quite dark.
Soon he spotted what could barely be called a road. It was a dirt trail that looked like a footpath, but upon closer examination he saw tire ruts.
He turned onto it, and saw at once that he would have to drive slowly. It was just wide enough for the Renault, but there was not quite enough clearance for the Range Rover. Twigs and branches scraped the sides of the car. He slowed down even more: the noise might attract her attention.
The St. Gallen map had told him that the forest he had entered was not large. It surrounded a small lake—a pond, actually—and there appeared to be no other road that led into or out of the woods.
Good.
Assuming the map was accurate.
The path came to a fork, and he stopped, got out of the car, and saw that one branch of the road dead-ended a hundred feet ahead. The other
branch, deeply rutted, continued. He turned down that path and navigated with some difficulty, wondering how Liesl’s Renault could make it if the Range Rover was having such trouble.
It was not long before this path, too, came to an end.
And then he saw the Renault.
He parked his vehicle beside it, and got out. By now it was fully dark, and he could see nothing. Once the car’s engine was shut off there was mostly silence. Rustlings now and again that sounded like small animals. The chirp and twitter of birds.
His eyes became accustomed to the dark, and he could make out another path, even narrower, canopied with branches. Ducking down under one, he entered, losing his footing a few times, his hands held out before his face to shield his eyes from the twigs.
He saw a glow, and came upon a clearing. In it was a small cabin built of split logs and rough white plaster. There were several glass windows; it clearly wasn’t as rustic as it appeared. A light shone from inside. This was the back of the cabin; the entrance had to be on the other side. Treading softly, he approached the cabin and made his way around to the front, where he expected the entrance to be.
Suddenly there was a metallic click. He looked up with a jolt.
Liesl was standing before him, pointing a gun.
“Stop right there!” she shouted.
“Wait!” Ben called back. God, she was fearless, coming right out to confront the interloper. A split-second was all it would take for her to kill him.
“It’s you!” she spat out with sudden realization. “What the hell are you doing here?” She lowered the gun.
“I need your help, Liesl,” he said.
In the oblique moonlight her shadowed face seemed contorted with rage. “You must have followed me from the hospital! How dare you!”
“You’ve got to help me find something, Liesl, please.” He had to make her listen.
She whipped her head from side to side, frantic. “You have—compromised my security! Goddamn you to hell!”
“Liesl, I wasn’t followed.”
“How can you possibly know? Did you rent this car?”
“In Zurich.”
“Of course. Idiot! If they were watching you in Zurich, they’ll know you rented the car!”
“But no one followed me here.”
“What do you know?” she snapped. “You’re an amateur!”
“So are you.”
“Yes, but I am an amateur who has lived with the threat of death for four years. Now please, get out. Go!”
“No, Liesl,” he said with quiet finality. “We need to talk.”