office this morning and discovered there’d been a break-in.”
“Awful sorry to hear that.”
“Yes. Particularly since one of his files is missing the folder on an
Anstalt he manages for some unnamed party or parties who reside in
Vienna.”
“Vienna.” His stomach tightened.
“No names, unfortunately. A set of wire instructions, ID codes, and all
that shit. But definitely Vienna-based. The owners were careful to
keep their names secret, even from this guy. Who, by the way, probably
isn’t going to be calling the Liechtenstein cops about a missing file.
Not with all the illegal shite he’s into.”
“Well done, Fergus. So what’s the bad news?”
“You’ve run up quite a bill. The job in Liechtenstein alone cost me
fifty grand. You think those guys come cheap? They’re fucking
thieves.” Even for Fergus, that was a significant charge. But given
the information he’d turned up which no law-enforcement agency could
ever have gotten it was worth it.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got any receipts for me,” Ben replied.
As soon as he disconnected the call, the phone rang. “Yes?”
“Anna Navarro, please!” a man’s voice shouted. “I need to talk to
her!”
“She’s–who is this?”
“Just tell her it’s Sergio.”
“Ah, yes. Yes. just a moment.”
Anna was awake; the ringing had awakened her. “Machado?” she murmured,
her voice raspy from sleep. Ben gave her the phone.
“Sergio,” she said. “I’m sorry, I had the phone turned off, I think…
All right, sure, that’s … What?… What?… Sergio, hello? Are you
there? Hello?”
She pressed the Off button. “How weird,” she said.
“What is it?”
She stared at him, obviously mystified. “He said he’d been trying to
reach me all night. He was calling from his car, in a part of town
called San Telmo. He wants to meet at the Plaza Bar, I think he
said-he’s got a gun for me.”
“Why did he sound so frantic?”
“He said he didn’t want any part of this investigation any longer.”
“They got to him.”
“He really sounded frightened, Ben. He said–he said he’d been
contacted by people, threatened–that these weren’t the usual locals who
watch out for the fugitives.” She looked up, shaken. “And the call
ended in mid-sentence.”
They could smell the fire even before they entered Plaza Dorrego. As
their cab pulled up to the side of the Plaza Dorrego Bar, they saw a
large crowd, ambulances and police cars and fire trucks.
The cabdriver spoke quickly.
“What’s he saying?” Ben asked.
“He says he can’t go any farther, there’s been some kind of accident.
Come on.”
She asked the driver to wait for them, then she and Ben leaped out of
the car and raced into the square. The smoke had mostly dissipated, but
the air smelled of sulfur and carbon and combusted gasoline. Peddlers
had temporarily abandoned their tables in the park at the center of the
plaza, leaving their cheap jewelry and perfumes untended while they
gathered to watch. Residents huddled in the doorways of the ancient
tenements, to stare in fascinated horror.
It was immediately obvious what had happened. A car had been parked
directly in front of the Plaza Dorrego Bar when it exploded, shattering
the window of the bar, and blowing out windows across the street.
Apparently it had burned for quite a while before the fire trucks were
able to put it out. Even the white zebra stripes painted on the road
near the wreck had been blackened.
A white-haired old woman in a brown print blouse was screaming, over an
dover, “Madre de Dios! Madre de Dios!”
Ben felt Anna grab his hand and squeeze it tight as they watched the
emergency medical workers hack sawing at the burnt-out carcass of the
once-white Ford Escort, trying without success to extricate the charred
body.
He felt her shudder when one of the workers managed to wrench back a
chunk of metal, revealing the black incinerated arm, the wrist encircled
by the blackened gold chain, the scorched claw of a hand gripping the
little cell phone.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.
They sat, stunned, in the back of the cab.
Not until they had gone several blocks did either one speak.
“Oh, my God, Ben. Dear God.” Anna leaned back against the seat, eyes
closed.
He put a hand on her shoulder, nothing more than a moment of comfort.
There was nothing he could say to her, nothing that would mean anything.
“When Machado and I had dinner last night,” she said, “he told me that
in all his years of investigations, he was never afraid. That I
shouldn’t be afraid either.”
Ben didn’t know how to reply. He couldn’t shake the horror of seeing
Machado’s incinerated body. The hand clutching the cell phone. Some
say the world will end in fire. Shuddering, he flashed on Chardin’s
faceless countenance, the man’s testimony that the horrors of surviving
could be far greater than those of perishing. Sigma seemed to have a
fondness for incendiary solutions. As gently as he could, he said,
“Anna, maybe I should do this alone.”
“We, Ben,” she said sharply. Ben saw her steely resolve. She was
staring straight ahead, her face tense, her jaw clenched.
It was as if what they’d just witnessed had fueled her determination
instead of deterring her. She was intent on visiting Strasser, no
matter what, and getting to the bottom of the conspiracy that was Sigma.
Maybe it was crazy–maybe they were both crazy–but he knew he wasn’t
going to turn back either. “Do you think either of us can just go back
to our lives after what we’ve learned? Do you think we’d be allowed
to?”
Another long silence elapsed.
“We’ll make a circuit,” she said. “Make sure no one’s staking out the
house, waiting for us. Maybe they assume that since they’ve eliminated
Machado, there’s no more threat.” There seemed to be relief in her
voice, but he couldn’t be sure.
The cab barreled through the crowded streets of Buenos Aires toward the
wealthy barrio of Belgrano. It occurred to Ben what a strange and
terrible irony it was that a good man had just died so that they could
try to save the life of an evil one. He wondered whether the same
notion had occurred to her. Now we’re about to risk our lives to save
the life of a world-historic villain, he reflected.
And the true scope of his villainy? Was there any way of knowing?
The harrowing words returned to him.
Wheels within wheels–that was the way we worked…. It never crossed
anyone’s mind that the West had fallen under the administration of a
hidden consortium. The notion would be inconceivable. Because if true,
it would mean that over half of the planet was effectively a subsidiary
of a single mega corporation–Sigma.
In recent years, one very special project of Sigma’s had come to the
fore. The prospect of its success would revolutionize the nature of
world control. No longer would it be about the allocation of funds, the
directing of resources. It became, instead, a simple matter of who the
“chosen” would be.
Was Strasser himself one of the “chosen”? Or maybe he, too, was dead.
Ben said, “I talked to Fergus, in the Caymans. He’s traced the wire
transfers all the way back to Vienna.”
“Vienna,” she repeated without inflection.
She said nothing further. He wondered what she was thinking, but before
he could ask, the cab pulled to a stop in front of a red-brick villa
with white shutters. A white station wagon was parked in the small
driveway.
Anna said something to the driver in Spanish, then turned to Ben. “I
told him to circle the block. I want to look for parked cars,
loiterers, anything suspicious.”
Ben knew it was time, once again, to defer to her. He’d simply have to
trust that she knew what she was doing. “What’s our approach going to
be?” he asked.
“All we have to do is get in the door. Warn him. Tell him his life’s
in danger. I’ve got my DOJ credentials, which should be enough to make
us legitimate in his eyes.”
“We’ve got to assume that he’s been warned–by the Kamaradenwerk thugs,
by Vera Lenz, by whatever other sort of early-warning systems he has in
place. And then what if his life isn’t in danger? What if he’s the one
behind the killings? Have you considered that?”
After a beat of silence, she conceded, “It’s a real risk.”
A real risk. That was a colossal understatement.
“You don’t have a weapon,” Ben reminded her.
“We only need his attention for a moment. Then if he chooses to listen
further, he can.”
And if he was the one behind the killings? But it was useless to argue.
When they had made a complete circuit, the cab stopped, and they got
out.
Although it was a warm, sunny day, Ben felt a chill, no doubt from fear.
He was sure Anna was frightened, too, but she didn’t show it. He admired