56
The headlights were murder.
There was an accident on the opposite side of the autobahn. A stream of cars was backed up to the horizon. Squinting, Jonathan veered his eyes to the shoulder in an effort to lessen the glare. Somewhere deep inside his skull a drum beat mercilessly. Get out, it told him. You’re in over your head. You’re an amateur up against professionals.
The Rhine was one hundred kilometers to the north. Germany lay beyond. There were any number of paths across the border. France was almost as close. He could pass through Geneva, then cross over at Annecy. In three hours he could be having fondue in Chamonix. He knew the town well. He drew up a mental list of pensions and sport hotels where he could hole up for a few days. But the thought of refuge held no allure. Refuge was temporary. He needed a way out.
He pulled off the autobahn at Egerkingen, where the highway split. North to Basel. East to Zurich. There was a Mövenpick restaurant, a motel, and a shopping gallery catering to tourists. He parked and entered the restaurant. He ordered quickly.
“Schnipo und ein cola, bitte.”
Wiener schnitzel,
pommes frites
, and a Coke. Every Swiss schoolboy’s favorite.
Waiting, he was assaulted by images of the apartment in Bern.
Eva Kruger’s apartment.
He thought of the care taken to furnish it according to her persona; the time and effort involved to construct such an elaborate artifice. Once past the deception, it was the discipline that awed him. Never once had he suspected that she was an agent of some kind. An operative in the employ of a nation’s intelligence apparatus. Foolishly, he’d imagined that she was having an affair. He pondered the training required to deceive a spouse for eight years.
Digging into his pocket, he fingered the wedding ring. After a moment, he took it out and examined it. Something about it bothered him. He guessed that it was because it didn’t fit. It broke cover, therefore it had to mean something. A message. A reminder to herself. Eva Kruger wasn’t married, so why the ring?
The food arrived. Ten minutes ago, he was famished. Suddenly, his appetite had left him. He sipped at his drink, then pushed the plate away.
The ring.
He studied the numbers engraved inside: 2-8-01. February 8, 2001. Where had he been? The Sudan. It was during the dry season when the flies were unmanageable. But the date held no special significance for him, and as far as he knew, it hadn’t meant anything to Emma either.
And then it hit him.
It wasn’t Emma’s wedding ring. It was Eva Kruger’s. He’d been reading the date incorrectly. Americans list the date as month-day-year. But Eva Kruger was Swiss. She would engrave her anniversary in the European format. Day-month-year.
2-8-01.
As he stared at the numbers, an uncomfortable cold burrowed into his stomach.
On August 2, 2001, he and Emma Everett Rose had wed in a simple private ceremony in Cortina, Italy. No relatives. She’d insisted. Not from his family and not from hers. No one from work, either. “This is our day, Jonathan,” she’d said. “The day I give my true self to you.”
In his outer pocket, he carried the Palm PDA he’d found at Blitz’s. Emma’s flash drive was still plugged into it. With deliberate calm, he powered up the handheld computer. The icon bearing the name “Thor” popped into view. He clicked on it, and a request for a password filled the screen. He entered the numbers from the ring.
The screen blinked and the word “Accepted” appeared.
He was in.
The screen glowed blue. A single tab appeared at the top center marked “Intelink.” The word flashed from bright to brighter like a neon sign advertising a vacancy. He clicked on it. For a moment, nothing happened. His stomach dipped. Another dead end. Then the screen went white and line after line of text scrolled across the display. The text was written in a kind of shorthand, each entry preceded by a date, time, and code name that identified the sender.
The most recent entry read:
8-2; 15:16 CET. Cormorant.
Today’s date. Sent at 3:16 in the afternoon from someone calling themselves “Cormorant.”
Rook penetrated Thor. Attempt at termination failed. Rook injured and fleeing. Request meet to brief on details.
The posting before it was time-stamped three hours earlier at 12:10 CET; sent from Hawk.
Subject: availability new Mercedes armored sedan. Spoke with Daimler-Benz HQ. No new vehicles available through end March. One used: Color: black. Leather: grey. 100k km. Price: E275,000. Await yr. confirmation.
A web log, thought Jonathan as his eyes scanned the display. A live site where operatives logged on to offer details about their mission. Real-time spying.
He scoured the screen for a web address, but none was listed. He accessed the file directory, then checked the browser software. The default address was at
http://international.resources.net.
The name meant nothing to him.
He returned to Intelink’s main page. More entries:
7-2; 13:11 CET. Falcon.
A message sent the day before from Falcon.
Confirm Robin compromised. Cease all communication. Await instructions HQ.
7-2; 10:55 CET. Cormorant. Rook contacted self. Referenced Thor. Rook in possession of Robin’s PDA. Stated Robin killed. Confirm.
7-2; 09:55 CET. Falcon. Transfer approved.
7-2; 08:45 CET. Robin. Request transfer Sfr. 100,000 to account at BPT. Replacement lost funds.
Jonathan reviewed the text. “Cormorant” was Hoffmann. “Hawk” was unknown. “Falcon,” the individual who approved funding and who confirmed to his agents that Robin was dead, looked to be in charge. “Robin” being Gottfried Blitz. And Emma? Where was she?
He scrolled back through the numerous posts, searching for a specific time, a date. He saw it. Tuesday. The day after Emma’s accident.
5-2; 07:45 CET. Falcon. Nightingale lost in climbing mishap. Rook alive.
There it was. Emma was “Nightingale.” Jonathan was “Rook,” as in chess piece. The castle. Or was it “Rook” as in con, to deceive? That made more sense, he thought angrily. And then he realized that he was wrong on both accounts. If all the agents had been given avian code names, then so had he.
Rook. The British cousin of the crow, but a larger, more aggressive bird altogether.
Devouring line after line of text, he retraced the events of the past few days as viewed from the other side. Here was Blitz stating that the car was in place in Landquart and that the baggage claims had been sent to Emma’s hotel. Then came Emma’s reply that the mail had been delayed due to an avalanche on the train tracks and that she would pick up the bags the next day. The postings were sent at six-thirty in the evening the night before their climb.
Jonathan looked up. The busy restaurant was swirling around him. The lights were too bright. The voices too loud.
Emma had been in contact with her network all along.
Just then, a new line appeared on the display. The letters blinked to make sure they caught the reader’s attention.
A live posting.
8-2; 21:56 CET. Falcon. PJ landed 20:16 ZRH. En route to hotel. Meeting confirmed 9-2; 14:00 Belvedere. Bring shipment advice. Trade for Gold.
Tomorrow, February 9, at two p.m. He knew of the Belvedere Hotel in Davos. A five-star palace for the rich and famous. But who was P.J.? And what was the “Gold” he planned to trade for the shipment advice?
And then, almost instantaneously, a response from Cormorant.
Confirmation copied.
Hoffmann was headed to Davos.
The letters blinked for five seconds, then assumed their normal amplification.
For the first time, Jonathan noted a tab at the bottom of the page marked “Reference.” Clicking on the word, he was rewarded with a list of hyperlinks. More code. The date, followed by a name he’d come to know well. ZIAG. Zug Industriewerk.
He opened the first link.
It was a bill of lading detailing the contents of a shipment from ZIAG to Xanthus Medical Instruments in Athens. Two hundred advanced global positioning handheld navigation systems. Technical specifications as noted. Price: twenty-thousand Swiss francs per unit. To ship Friday, February 9, from Zurich to Athens aboard Swissair at seven in the evening.
Was this the shipment advice mentioned in Falcon’s earlier instruction to Cormorant?
He clicked on the other hyperlinks. More of the same. Detailed invoices. Not GPS navigation systems but insulin pumps, vacuum tubes, carbon extruders. Shipped December 10, Zurich to Cairo via Nice. Shipped November 20, Zurich to Dubai. Shipped October 21, Geneva to Amman via Rome. The final destination always in the Middle East.
The shipments dated back several months. The first had been made on October 12, a little more than six weeks after he and Emma returned from the Middle East.
As Jonathan reread the list of goods, he realized that he’d been right when he’d told Hoffmann his suspicions.
You’re making things you shouldn’t and sending them to people who shouldn’t have them.
But who was P.J.? And what was he doing coming to the World Economic Forum in Davos?
Jonathan finished his meal and paid the bill in cash. Leaving the restaurant, he stopped in an adjoining kiosk and looked over the selection of newspapers. Nearly every one featured a headline related to the World Economic Forum. He purchased two Swiss newspapers, as well as the
Herald Tribune
and the
Financial Times
. Folding them under one arm, he crossed the parking lot to the Mercedes.
Turning into his aisle, he found himself staring into the beams of a slow-moving car. It took him a moment to make out the sirens on top. He kept his pace steady, walking directly toward the police car. The cruiser advanced at a crawl. A two-man patrol. A handheld spotlight illuminated one license plate, then the next. He reached his car and got inside. A moment later, the cabin was flooded with light. He waited, breath tight in his chest. The illumination made it easy to see the newspaper on the seat beside him. A photograph on the front page of the
Neue Zürcher Zeitung
showed a Middle Eastern man delivering a fiery oration. The caption identified him as Parvez Jinn, Iranian Minister of Technology, and stated that he was due to give an address to the WEF in Davos Friday evening in which he would detail his country’s nuclear aspirations.
Parvez Jinn. The initials were not lost on Jonathan. He’d found P.J.
And then the cabin was dark again. The spotlight moved on to the next vehicle. He wondered if this had been a routine check or if he had been the target?
He started the engine and pulled out of the space.
He was going back to the mountains.
He was going to Davos.
57
Tobias Tingeli
lived in an imposing Victorian mansion high on the Zürichberg near the Dolder Grand Hotel. The four-story stone structure had been his father’s and, before that, his father’s father’s, all the way back to 1870 when the first Tobias Tingeli made his fortune bankrolling Kaiser Wilhelm I in his war against Napoleon III.
Relations between Germany and the private bank had remained close over the years. During the Second World War, the Tingeli Bank had been a haven not only for the National Socialists, who transacted a majority of their gold sales through its offices, but also for the Americans, the British, and the Russians, whose spy services all found it to be equally accommodating. Since then, the bank had been content to concentrate on a private clientele, but rumors of questionable activity never quite faded away.
“Marcus, come in,” boomed Tobias Tingeli. “I was surprised to hear from you.”
Von Daniken smiled. Very surprised, no doubt, he thought to himself. “Hello, Tobi. Things are well? I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“Not at all. Don’t just stand there freezing. Let me take your jacket.”
Tobias Tingeli IV, “Tobi” to his friends, was the new breed of banker. He was a young man, ten years von Daniken’s junior. Answering the door in faded jeans, a black turtleneck, his abundant black hair combed into a fashionable mess, he looked more like an artist than a businessman.
Von Daniken handed over his coat. When he’d visited ten years ago, there had been a legion of uniformed maids and butlers on hand to fetch coats and serve cocktails. He wondered if Tingeli had forgone the luxury, or if he’d dismissed them in advance of his visit. The two men had what would be called a history. A very secret one: and Tobi Tingeli’s effervescent manner did little to the fact that he didn’t like having von Daniken in his house.
“Follow me, Marcus. You remember your way around, don’t you?” Tingeli led the way into his living room, where a floor-to-ceiling window seemed to devour the Lake of Zurich. “Drink?” he asked, pulling the stopper off a cut-glass decanter.
Von Daniken refused. “As I mentioned, it’s a matter of some urgency,” he began. “I’ll have to ask that everything we discuss tonight remains for your ears only. I know that I can count on you to be discreet.”
Tingeli nodded gravely. The two sat facing one another in matching leather chairs. Von Daniken explained the rudiments of his investigation into Lammers and Blitz—their murders, the plastic explosives found in Blitz’s garage, and their ties to the terrorist Walid Gassan. He was careful not to mention the threat against air travel. “We tracked their finances to a company set up by your subsidiary in Liechtenstein. An entity called Excelsior Trust.”
“Do you have any idea how many laws I’d be breaking if I divulge my clients’ information?”
“If you’d like, I can have Alphons Marti issue a warrant.”
A wave dismissed the suggestion. “Forget about the rules. I’m willing to bet that the names on the trust belong to lawyers. They’re the ones who know everything. Go after them.”
“Give me their names and I will. As I recall, a trust must have a certain number of directors. Their names will be on the paperwork.”
Tingeli flashed his blinding smile. “I’d like to cooperate, but if word gets around that we’re working with the government, it will be the end of our business.”
Von Daniken surveyed the room’s decor. The furniture was minimalist and spare. All attention was meant to be focused on the walls. A giant oil hung to his right, some abstract psychological nightmare worth ten or twenty million francs no doubt. It was cheap in comparison to the Paul Klee facing it. Last year, a Klee had fetched the highest price ever at an auction. Some 130 million dollars. Tingeli could stand to lose one or two clients and he’d still be among the richest men in Europe.
“I’m afraid that I’m not asking for your help. I’m ordering it. First thing in the morning, I want to see all the paperwork you have on the trust holding those Curaçao companies. Lawyers’ names, directors, everything.”
“The government has no right to order me to do anything.”
“Who mentioned the government?”
“Come now, Marcus, no one cares about all that old business anymore. The war’s been over seventy years. People barely remember Hitler, let alone the Nazis. Besides, we paid our debt. A billion dollars buys a lot of understanding.”
As part of his work on the Holocaust Commission, von Daniken had been detailed to look into the degree of collaboration between Swiss banks and the Economic and Administrative Main Office of the SS, the agency charged with handling the Third Reich’s financial dealings. If the Swiss banks had been remiss in their conduct toward survivors after the war, the vast majority could claim in good conscience that they had only been following long-established rules to guarantee the privacy and safety of their clients’ deposits. The same rules that denied their deceased clients’ heirs access to their money had also denied access to less scrupulous forces, namely a constant parade of German officers sent to Zurich, Basel, and Geneva with orders to pry imprisoned, and soon to be dead, Jews’ money out of the bankers’ greedy little fingers.
One bank, though, had not been as stringent in the enforcement of these rules as the others. Not only had the Tingeli Bank cooperated with the Germans and transferred millions of francs from their rightful (Jewish) owners to the Third Reich, it had actually set up an office in-house for officers of the SS to systematically loot these accounts.
Von Daniken had discovered all of this and more in his research, including a photograph of Tobi Tingeli’s grandfather, Tobias II, in the company of Hermann Goering, Joseph Goebbels, and Reichsführer Adolf Hitler. In the photograph, Tingeli was wearing an SS officer’s black uniform with the rank of Standartenführer, or colonel.
News of the discovery was vehemently hushed up. In exchange for the Commission’s silence, the Tingeli Bank had donated one hundred million dollars to the survivors’ fund. Case closed.
“You’re right,” said von Daniken. “The war is old hat. I’m talking about something more recent.” He slid an envelope from his pocket and handed it to the banker. Tobi Tingeli opened it. Several photographs were inside. Not photos of old Nazis from a bygone era. But something equally shocking.
“Where did you get this?” Tingeli’s face drained of color.
“My mandate is to cover extremists. I’d say the activity in those pictures qualifies. Not political extremism, but some rather embarrassing behavior all the same. You see, I don’t like you, Tobi. I don’t like your father, either. For far too long you’ve been allowed to buy yourself a clean conscience. I’ve been keeping an eye on you. I always knew that you were a strange one. I just didn’t know how strange.”
There were only two pictures, but two were enough. The first showed Tobi Tingeli standing at a bar in a dark room, dressed in his grandfather’s SS tunic, the death’s-head cap cocked rakishly on his head. He wore nothing else. No pants. No socks. No shoes. He stood with an erection in one hand and a quirt in the other, whipping the hairy white ass of a man bent over beside him.
The second picture was, if possible, more bizarre. In it, Tingeli was on his knees, dressed head to toe in a black latex suit with slits cut out for the eyes, nose, and mouth. Hands cuffed behind his back, his head was buried in a woman’s crotch. True, his face wasn’t visible, but the large gold signet ring engraved with his family crest that he wore on his right hand was. The cops in the undercover unit had gotten laughs out of it for months.
“Not exactly something to inspire the shareholders, are they? I’d imagine the scandal sheets would love to get their hands on them. If I wanted, I could feather my retirement nest very nicely. What do you think they’d pay? A hundred thousand? Two?”
Tingeli tossed the photographs onto a coffee table. “Bastard.”
“Count on it.”
Tingeli stood. “You’ll have the names in the morning. But I want those pictures.”
“Deal.” Von Daniken walked himself to the front door. “Just remember that I can always get more.”