airy and full of light.
The white Carrara marble walls were bare except for a line of large
blowups of photographs depicting the wide range of humanitarian causes
supported by the Lenz Foundation.
There was a picture of several generations of a refugee family–a
toothless, hunched old woman, a weathered and beaten-down husband and
wife, their ragged children. This was entitled simply kosovo.
Meaning what? What did the Lenz Foundation have to do with refugees?
There was a portrait of a peculiarly wizened girl with a beaked nose,
parchment skin, prominent eyes, long hair that was obviously a wig. She
was smiling with crowded, irregular teeth, at once a young girl and an
old woman. This photograph was labeled hutchinson-gilford proGERIA
SYNDROME.
There was the famous stark and shocking photograph of emaciated
concentration-camp inmates looking curiously at the camera from their
bunk beds. the holocaust.
A strange array of causes. What connected them?
Anna sensed a presence and looked up. A matronly woman had appeared in
the lobby, a pair of reading glasses hanging from a chain around her
neck. “Ms. Navarro,” she said. “You’re quite fortunate. Dr. Lenz
has managed to free up a few minutes to see you.”
At a security station on the floor above, a technician hunched over a
control panel. Manipulating a joystick, he swiveled and zoomed in one
of the wall-mounted cameras. The visitor’s light brown face now filled
the flat screen plasma display. The press of a button froze the image.
By means of a thirty-seven point physiognomic metric, the face could be
digitally compared with a set of image files in the system’s extensive
database. Somehow the technician suspected that it would not take long
to come up with a match.
He was right. A quiet electronic chirp alerted him that the image
matched a file from the watch list. As a column of information scrolled
down the monitor, he picked up the phone and called Lenz, dialing a
number that rang directly on his desk.
Jorgen Lenz was just as Ben had described him: whippet-thin, silver
haired, elegant, and charming. He wore a perfectly cut suit of dark
gray flannel, a neatly pressed white shirt, a foulard tie. He sat in a
Chippendale-style chair facing her, his hands folded in his lap.
“Well, you’ve got me,” he said as he handed her credentials back to her.
“Excuse me?”
“You’ve piqued my curiosity. I’m told a woman is here to see me from
the American government in connection with a ‘personal matter”–how
could I possibly resist such a lure?”
She wondered how much he knew about her. She could see already that he
was as smooth and hard as polished stone.
“Thank you for seeing me,” Anna returned courtesy with courtesy. “I’ve
been on special assignment, investigating a series of murders around the
world–”
“Murders?” he said. “What in heaven’s name can I tell you about
murders?”
She knew she had one chance, and she’d have to hit him hard. Any
weakness, any hesitation, any uncertainty, and the game was over. She
would stick to one issue of narrow concern: the Sigma homicides.
“The murder victims were all involved in a corporation known as Sigma,
of which Gerhard Lenz was a founder. We’ve established a direct
connection between the deaths and a subsidiary of the chemical giant
Armakon, on whose board you sit…”
Lenz seemed to relax. He laughed deeply, mellifluously. “Ms. Navarro,
in all my years of crusading against the evil that my father did, I’ve
been accused of many terrible things–disloyalty to family, disloyalty
to my country, opportunism, insincerity, you name it–but no one has
ever accused me of murder!”
Anna had known what to expect. He would be poised, nonconfrontational,
evasive. So she had tried to anticipate his every response, and she was
ready with a reply. “Dr. Lenz,” she said, “I hope you’re not denying
that you’re on the board of Armakon.”
“It’s purely honorary.”
She hesitated, then said, “I don’t want to waste your time. As you
know, Armakon is the secret owner of a biotech start-up in Philadelphia
called Vortex.”
She watched his face. His eyes were neutral, guarded. “I’m sure
Armakon owns many inconsequential start-ups around the world. So?”
“Vortex,” she went on, “is the inventor and manufacturer of a synthetic
substance that’s used in basic research, for molecular tagging. It’s
also a deadly poison that, once injected into a person’s bloodstream,
induces immediate death by heart failure, and is then undetectable in
the blood.”
He replied in a flat voice, “How interesting.”
“Tharparticular toxin was found in the ocular fluid of several of these
murder victims.”
“Do you have a point?”
“I do,” she said quietly, eyes locked on his. She was momentarily
startled by what she saw there: absolute searing contempt. “I have
evidence linking you directly to those murders.”
For a moment there was only the ticking of a clock. Somberly, Lenz
clasped his hands. He looked like a Lutheran minister. “Agent Navarro,
all these terrible charges you hurl at me. These terrible things you
say I’ve done. I took time out of an extremely busy day time I can
scarcely afford to squander because I thought we could help each other
in some way. Perhaps a friend of mine was in trouble. Perhaps someone
needed my help, or vice versa. Instead, you come here on what I believe
is called a ‘fishing expedition.” ” He rose from his chair. “I’m
afraid you’ll have to leave.”
Heart hammering, she thought: Not so fast, you bastard. “I’m not done
yet,” she said with a firmness that she could see surprised him.
“Agent Navarro, I really don’t have to talk to you. Correct me if I’m
wrong, but anyone who visits me as an agent of American law enforcement
is here as a guest of my country. If you wish to interrogate me because
of who my father was, you must ask permission of the Austrian
government, yes? Have you done that?”
“No,” she admitted, flushing. “But let me be clear ”
“No, madame,” he said, raising his voice. “Let me be clear. You
haven’t done that because you are no longer in the employ of your
country. In fact, you are yourself a fugitive from justice. Let us
both put our cards on the table. Your investigations have taken you
outside the boundaries of lawful conduct. My secretary conveys the
insistent requests of an American agent to see me. At my behest, she
makes a few phone calls to verify your identity.” His eyes didn’t leave
her face. “She discovers that you are a wanted woman. But then you
must have expected we would take such precautions. And yet you came to
see me all the same. Which piqued my curiosity further.”
“Anything to alleviate the dull tedium of your days,” Anna said.
“Put yourself in my position, Ms. Navarro. A rogue U.S. agent takes a
very peculiar interest in me this isn’t something that happens every
day. Naturally I wonder: Have you come across someone or something that
is a threat to me? Have you broken ranks and come to tell me about some
hostile intrigue within American intelligence? I know our
investigations of Operation Paper Clip have earned me enemies in some
American circles. Have you come to warn me of some imminent menace? The
imagination whirls. The mind boggles. So how could I resist meeting
with you? You knew I could not.”
“We’re getting off the subject,” Anna broke in. “None of this ”
Lenz talked over her. “So you’ll appreciate how sorely disappointed I
was when I learned that you’re here only to hurl absurd, unfounded, and
easily discredited accusations. From all indications, you’re not only
off the reservation, as your countrymen like to say you’re out of your
mind.” He pointed to his desk. “I need only pick up this phone and
call a friend of mine in the Justice Ministry and you would be remanded
to the tender mercies of the U.S. authorities.”
You want a fight, she thought, you got it. He was not going to
intimidate her. Not with what she knew about him.
“You’re perfectly right,” she said calmly. “You could pick up that
phone and do that. But I wonder whether it would best serve your
interests.”
Lenz had turned his back on her and was heading toward the exit. “Miss
Navarro, your silly games really don’t interest me. Now would you
please leave my office this moment, or shall I be forced to ”
“Just before I came here I stopped at the local DHL office, where a
document was waiting for me. It contained the results of a search I
requested. I had submitted a set of your fingerprints and asked the lab
to identify them. It took a long time. Our Latent Fingerprints Section
had to dig deep to find a match. But they did.” She took a breath.
“Dr. Lenz, I know who you are. I don’t understand it. I really can’t