45
By ten o’clock that morning,
the task force had scored its first easy victories.
Von Daniken had pinned down the Banca Popolare del Ticino as the institution where Blitz conducted his banking. Copies of all account transactions—deposits, withdrawals, payments, wire transfers to and from—were due within the hour. Additionally, he’d learned that the Villa Principessa had not been rented or leased, as suspected, but had been purchased twenty-four months earlier for three million francs by a shadowy investment trust domiciled in the Netherlands Antilles. All paperwork had been handled by a fiduciary agent in Liechtenstein. Von Daniken had dispatched emissaries to Vaduz, the capital of the tiny mountain principality, to interrogate the executives who had handled the transaction.
Myer had likewise struck gold, establishing a list of twelve phone numbers called by both Blitz and Lammers on a regular basis. Several belonged to manufacturing concerns with whom Robotica did business. Subpoenas were being issued to force the companies to divulge the names of those who were recipients of the calls. The other numbers were mobile designations belonging to foreign telecoms. It would be necessary to work through the embassies in France, Spain, and Holland to obtain subpoenas granting them access to the records.
Krajcek was in Zurich, debriefing several informants and had not yet reported back.
Only Hardenberg was frustrated. As for locating the van, he’d so far managed to narrow the list to 18,654 owners of Volkswagen vans in the country. He was waiting on word from rental car companies and from the cantonal police authorities regarding stolen vans that fit the description.
“What about ISIS?” von Daniken asked, taking a seat on the edge of his desk.
“I’ve put in my request,” said Hardenberg. “White Volkswagen van with Swiss plates. We’ll see what comes back.”
“Try centering the search on Germany first.”
“Already did. I set Leipzig as a primary target, and all cities in a fifty-kilometer radius as a secondary. We should get some hits.”
Cataloguing warrants and maintaining a database on individuals deemed of interest to the government formed only one part of the ISIS system. Another tied into the hundreds of thousands of surveillance cameras located across Europe. Every minute of every day, these cameras snapped photographs of whatever vehicles (and people) happened to cross their lens. The license numbers of every car photographed automatically fed into a system linking the databases of intelligence agencies of over thirty countries. It was a kind of “criminal Internet.” Each database would then run the license numbers against any stolen or otherwise suspected vehicles in that country. All over Europe, warnings were continually dispatched that a car stolen in Spain had been seen in Paris. Or a truck used in a jewel robbery in Nice had been spotted in Rome. It was policing without policemen, and it resulted in thousands of arrests each year.
The downside was that the process was painstakingly slow. With the sheer volume of photographs—millions per day—there was nothing like real-time results.
“Keep at it,” said von Daniken. “Let me know the moment anything turns up. You have my number.”
Hardenberg nodded and set to work.
Satisfied that things were starting off on the right foot, von Daniken took the elevator to the ground floor and left the building. Once in his car, he drove directly to the autobahn, where he joined the A1 in the direction of Geneva. He’d have to hurry if he intended on being at the headquarters of Doctors Without Borders by noon.
46
The Gasthof Rössli
was situated across the street from the factory gates of Zug Industriewerk. It was an old-style
beiz,
or family-owned establishment, with arolla pine walls, a parquet wood floor, and an army of bleached Steinbock antlers mounted on the wall. At noon, the main dining room was warm and stuffy and packed to bursting.
Jonathan walked among the tables, noting the profusion of blue work jackets with the company’s name embroidered in gothic script above the left breast pocket. The same name with the same script was also visible on the identification cards worn around the necks of nearly every other diner. ZIAG. Plainly, the Gasthof Rössli was a favored alternative to the company cafeteria.
At the bar, customers sat nursing steins of beer and eating lunch. There were several stools open, and he settled on one next to a burly, bearded man whose ample belly and vein-tipped nose made no secret of his affection for alcohol. Like most of the others, he sported a white identification card dangling on a blue lanyard around his neck. Jonathan had thirty minutes to get his hands on it.
Sliding onto the stool, he took a look at the menu. He was aware of the man observing him. High in one corner a television broadcast the news mutely. It was difficult to keep from looking up at it. He ordered soup and a beer, and waited for his moment.
Jonathan had arrived in Zug at eleven o’clock after spending the night on the backseat of his car in the parking lot of a Mercedes-Benz dealership outside Bern. It was his first rest in thirty-six hours, and though he’d slept longer than he would have liked, at least he was approaching the day somewhat refreshed.
He’d spent the morning circling the factory, first by car, and later on foot. His visit was not unexpected. Hoffmann had taken his call to heart. Jonathan needed no further proof than the compact car marked
“Securitas”
parked near the headquarters’ entry. Securitas was a well-known security firm. A similar vehicle had taken up position at a discreet location near the factory entrance. The uniformed guards were content to linger in their automobiles and eye the workers entering the plant from a distance. It was all very low-key. Very discreet. Their presence designed not to disturb, just to be noticed.
The problem was that it was
too
low-key, reasoned Jonathan. If a friend of mine had been killed the day before, and my name might figure next on the list, I’d hire the entire security company to sit out in front of my place of business, he thought. There would be nothing low-key about it.
Then it struck him why…
There was no other way.
ZIAG was a legitimate company. It had been in business for over a hundred years. It had revenues of ninety million francs. It employed five hundred people. Hannes Hoffmann, Gottfried Blitz, and Eva Kruger were intruders. They weren’t part of the core organization.
The real company.
They made up the shadow company. The company inside the company. With the collusion of someone high up, they’d burrowed into ZIAG the way a tick burrows under the skin. A parasite nourishing itself on its host’s lifeblood.
Cover.
But why had they chosen ZIAG?
Jonathan’s soup arrived. The bearded man seated alongside him threw him a glance and wished him a perfunctory,
“En guete.”
Jonathan thanked him and concentrated on his soup. He didn’t want to appear to be too anxious. He finished the soup, then caught the man’s eye. “Excuse me,” he said with proper deference. “Do you know if the company is hiring?”
The worker took in Jonathan’s formal attire. “Always looking for somebody, though I don’t know about the director’s office.”
“Funeral,” said Jonathan, offering an excuse for his dark suit and tie. “I’m a machinist by trade. What about you?”
“Electrical engineer.”
The man was better trained than he looked. Electrical engineering was strictly for quant jocks, the poindexters at ease solving differential equations.
“I thought ZIAG was in the guns business.”
“Long time ago. Now it’s custom order stuff. Precision machinery. Extruders. Heat exchangers. Proximity systems.”
“Sounds like guns to me.”
“All strictly civilian.”
“I was wondering if you knew a woman named Eva Kruger?”
“What department is she in?”
“I’m guessing sales or marketing. She’s not an engineer. I know that much. Auburn hair. Green eyes. Very attractive.”
The man shook his head. “Sorry.”
“She worked with Hannes Hoffmann.”
“Him I know. New man down from Germany. Came with the new owners. He’s running his own project on the factory floor. Word is that it’s something cutting-edge. They say he knows what he’s doing. Very sharp, but you don’t see him much. If your friend’s working with him, she’s connected, alright. That’s all I know. Me, I’ve got ten little morons to supervise. They’re more than enough. If this Kruger woman is in sales or marketing, she’d be in the main building. Look for her there.”
A waitress arrived, placing a plate of Wiener schnitzel and
pommes frites
on the bar. The engineer tucked a napkin into his shirt collar, ordered another beer, then attacked his food ravenously.
Jonathan eyed the identification hanging from the man’s collar. He knew how to get the ID, but he wasn’t sure if he had the guts to go for it. He thought of the assassin who’d pressed his gun to the car window the night before. A man like that would have no compunction about doing what needed to be done in this kind of situation.
The engineer cut another piece of veal, speared several fries and a crown of broccoli, and stuffed all of it into his mouth.
“Would you mind holding my spot for a couple of minutes?” Jonathan said to him. The words came out sounding more confident than he’d expected. “I have to check my meter. I’m parked around the corner. Be right back.”
“Of course.” The engineer didn’t bother looking up.
Outside, Jonathan turned up his collar against the snow and hurried down the block to a pharmacy. The blinking green cross displayed outside its doors was a common sight. From his apartment in Geneva, he would pass no less than four pharmacies on his way to the tram stop, a walk of just five city blocks. He stepped inside and walked directly to the counter. Without hesitation, he passed his international physician’s identification over the counter and requested ten five-milligram capsules of triazolam, better known by its trade name of Halcion.
Though aware that he was the subject of a nationwide manhunt, he didn’t rate his risk of discovery as high. First of all, Halcion was a frequently prescribed sedative used to treat insomnolence. A prescription for ten capsules wouldn’t raise any flags. Second, unlike the States, pharmacies in Switzerland were independently owned mom-and-pop establishments. There was neither a nationwide database monitoring prescriptions, nor a computer system linking them by which the authorities could alert pharmacists to be on the lookout for him. Unless the police had faxed or e-mailed his name and description to each and every pharmacy in the country—a possibility he discounted, due to both the short time passed since the incident in Landquart and the inertia inherent to any large governmental organization—he was safe.
The pharmacist handed him the bottle of sleeping pills. Jonathan walked outside, then paused in a doorway long enough to empty half of them into a neatly folded ten-franc note. He palmed the note in his left hand and hurried back to the restaurant.
He was back at the bar in nine minutes.
“One more for you?” he asked the man seated next to him.
The man smiled at his good fortune. “Why not?”
Jonathan ordered up a beer—a stein this time—and a schnapps for himself. “Prosit,” he said when the drinks arrived. The fiery spirits rollicked his stomach. He smacked his lips and drew a pen from his pocket. “You’ve been a real help. Could I bother you for the name of the personnel director?”
“We’re a public company. They call it human resources here.” The engineer gave him the name and Jonathan made a show of clicking the pen, giving it a real flick of the wrist. In the same elaborate hoax, he dropped the pen so that it fell on the other side of the man’s feet. As expected, the engineer stepped off his stool to search for the pen. As soon as his head dropped below the bar, Jonathan passed his left hand over the beer and dumped the contents of five Halcion capsules into the stein. A moment later, the man reappeared, pen in hand. Jonathan raised his glass.
“Danke.”
Another toast.
Ten minutes after that, the stein was dry as the Gobi and the man’s plate as clean as holiday china. The engineer snapped up the last piece of bread from the basket and devoured it in two bites. Jonathan worried that the sheer amount of food in his stomach might delay the onset of the drug.
By now, the engineer was talking nonstop about his business, going on about exports to Africa and the Middle East, all the paperwork it required, permits, licenses. Jonathan slipped a look at his watch. The drug should have kicked in. Alcohol multiplied the effect of Halcion. Five milligrams was enough to knock an elephant on its ass. The man’s pupils were dilated, but his diction showed no signs of impairment. He glanced at the man’s gut. It was big enough to hold a medicine ball. Maybe five capsules weren’t enough.
“So? You do a lot of business with South Africa?” Jonathan said, struggling to keep up his end of the conversation to prevent the engineer from leaving.
“They’re the worssss. You wouldn’t believe the red tape.”
“Really?” The drugs were finally beginning to kick in.
“Jess one of the quirks of the business. Nothin’ to concer yourself with…” The man’s eyelids fell and didn’t open for an uncommonly long moment. Then he shuddered, and his eyes opened wide. “Unless, of course, you stake a thob with usss…” His eyes closed again and his head teetered like a bobblehead doll in the backseat of an old clunker.
“’scuse me. Need to use the bathroom. Then I ’ave to get back to uh floor.” He put both hands on the bar in an effort to steady himself as he stood. One knee buckled. Jonathan caught him as he went down. “Whoa, there, my man. Let me give you a hand.”
As gently as possible, he guided the engineer to the rear of the restaurant and down the stairs to the men’s room. When he bounded back up a minute later, he had a white ZIAG identification card in his pocket. Mr. Walter Keller would be spending his afternoon sleeping inside the far stall of the men’s WC.