community, among private investigators. Yesterday he learned about the
blood bath at the Bahnhofplatz, about a foreigner who was brought in for
questioning. But as soon as Dieter had told me about the murder attempt
on you, I realized what had happened. They, the inheritors, whoever on
that list is still around, have probably always been suspicious that my
death was faked. They’ve always been on the alert–either for my
reappearance in Switzerland, or else for some sign that you were
carrying on my investigations. I know for a fact that they’ve got a lot
of Swiss policemen in their pocket, a bounty on my head. They
practically own half the cops. I assume the bank where you had a
meeting that morning, UBS, was the tripwire. So I had to come out of
hiding to warn you.”
Peter risked his life for me, Ben thought. He felt the sting of tears
coming to his eyes. Then he remembered Jimmy Cavanaugh, the man who
wasn’t there. Hurriedly, he filled Peter in on the mystery.
“Incredible,” Peter said, and he took on a faraway look.
“It’s like they’re trying to gaslight me. You do remember Jimmy
Cavanaugh?”
“Of course. He spent Christmas with us at Bedford a couple of times. I
liked the guy, too.”
“What could he have had to do with the Corporation? Did they turn him,
somehow, make every trace of his existence disappear at some point?”
“No,” Peter said, “you’re missing the point. Howie Rubin must have been
right. There is no Jimmy Cavanaugh and there never was.” He began
speaking more quickly. “In a twisted way, there’s a logic to this.
Jimmy Cavanaugh–let’s call him that, whatever his real name was–was
never turned. He was working for them all along. Here’s a kid who’s
older than the rest of the class, lives off campus, and before you know
it, he’s your asshole buddy. Don’t you see, Benno? That was the plan.
For whatever reason, they must have decided it was important to keep a
close eye on you at that point. It was a matter of taking precautions.”
“You’re saying Cavanaugh was … assigned to me!”
“And probably somebody was assigned to me, too. Our dad was one of the
principals. Did we learn something that might jeopardize the
organization? Were we going to be a threat to them in some way? Did
they need to worry about us? Maybe they needed to be sure. Until you
went off to your ghetto and I went off to Africa–basically put
ourselves out to pasture, as far as they were concerned.”
Ben’s mind reeled, and all this talk of they only made matters worse.
“Doesn’t it make sense for a group of industrialists to bring in an
operative, a killer, whose highly specific qualifications included
knowing you by sight?”
“Hell, Peter, I suppose …”
“You suppose? Benno, if you think about it–”
The sound of shattering glass.
Ben gasped, saw the jagged hole that suddenly appeared in the
windowpane. Peter seemed to bow his head, leaning forward deliberately
onto the table in an oddly comic gesture, as if kowtowing exaggeratedly,
genuflecting, giving a courtly salaam. In that same freeze-frame moment
it was the expulsion of breath, the throaty haaah, that made no sense,
until Ben saw the obscene crimson exit wound in the middle of Peter’s
forehead, the flecks of gray tissue and splinters of white bone
fragments that sprayed over the table, on the plates and silverware.
“Oh, my God!” Ben keened. “Oh, my God. Oh, my God.” He toppled
backward in his chair, tumbling to the floor, his head slamming against
the hard oak floorboards. “No,” he moaned, barely aware of the volley
of silenced gunfire exploding everywhere in the small dining room. “Oh
no. Oh, my God.” He was frozen, paralyzed by terror and shock and
disbelief, so unfathomable was the horror in front of him, until some
primitive signal of self-preservation emerged from deep within his
hindbrain, propelling him to his feet.
Now he looked out of the shattered window, saw nothing but blackness,
and then, illuminated by a muzzle flash preceding another gunshot, there
was a face. The image lasted no longer than a split second, but it was
emblazoned indelibly in his mind. The assassin’s eyes were dark and
deep-set, his face pale and unlined, the skin almost tight.
Ben leaped across the small dining room as, behind him, another
windowpane shattered, another bullet pitted the plaster in the wall not
a foot away.
The assassin was aiming at him now, that was clear. Or was it? Was he
still aiming at Peter, this shot just wildly astray? Had he seen him,
too? Did he see him?
As if in answer to his unspoken question, a bullet splintered the
doorframe just inches from his head as he vaulted through it into the
dark corridor that connected the dining room to the entrance area. From
ahead, in the foyer, came a female shout, presumably the innkeeper
yelling in anger or in fear; suddenly she loomed directly in his path,
arms flailing.
He knocked her aside as he bounded into the foyer. The innkeeper
squawked in protest.
He was barely thinking now, he was moving fast and frantically, dazed
and numb and robotic, not having to think about what had just happened,
not thinking about anything now except survival.
His eyes adjusting to the near-darkness a small lamp in the far corner
of the room, behind the reception counter, cast a tiny circle of light
he saw there was only the front door and another hallway that led to the
guests’ rooms.
A narrow staircase off the hallway, visible from here, led to more rooms
upstairs. There was no window in the room he was now standing in, which
meant it was a safe haven from incoming bullets, at least for a few
seconds.
On the other hand, the lack of a window meant he was unable to see
whether the shooter had run around to the front of the building. Peter’s
killer would have realized he had missed one of his targets, and so he’d
have run either to the front or the back of the inn. Front entrance or
back, unless there were others Ben didn’t know about. That gave Ben a
fifty-fifty chance of making it out through the front door.
Fifty-fifty.
Ben didn’t like the odds.
And what if there were more than one of them?
If there were several, they’d have fanned out to stake out all
entrances, all exits from the building. Either way, one or several
killers out there, escaping through the front or the back was out of the
question.
A scream issued from the dining room: the innkeeper had no doubt just
discovered the sickening carnage.
Welcome to my world, madame.
From the floor above Ben could hear the heavy tread of footsteps. Other
guests awakening.
Other guests: How many were staying here?
He rushed toward the front door, turned the heavy steel safety lock.
Rapid footfalls thundered from the staircase on the other side of the
room, then a hulking figure of a fat man appeared at the foot of the
stairs. He was wearing a blue bathrobe, looking as if it had been
hastily thrown on. The man’s face was fearful. “Was geht hier vor?” he
cried.
“Call the police,” Ben yelled back in English. “Polizei–telephone!” He
pointed at the phone behind the reception desk.
“The police? What–is someone hurt?”
“Telephone!” Ben repeated angrily. “Go! Someone’s been killed!”
Someone’s been killed.
The fat man lurched forward clumsily as if he’d been pushed. He rushed
to the reception desk, picked up the telephone, listened for a brief
moment, then dialed.
The fat man was now speaking in German, loudly and quickly.
Where was the gunman–gunmen?–now? He’d burst inside and look for him
and do to him what he’d done to Peter. There were other guests here,
others who would get in the way… but that wouldn’t stop him, would it?
He remembered the massacre in the Zurich arcade. The fat Swiss hung up
the phone. “She sind unterwegs,” he said. “Police –is coming.”
“How far away are they?”
The man looked at him for a moment, then understood. “Just down the
road,” he said. “Very near. What happened–who was killed?”
“No one you know.”
Again Ben pointed, this time toward the dining room, but the woman
innkeeper burst through the doorway, shrieking, “Er 1st tote! She ha
ben ihn erschossen! Dieser Mann dort draussen–Dein Bruder, er wurde
ermordet!” Somehow she’d concluded that Ben had killed his own brother.
Insanity.
Ben felt his stomach turn over. He’d been in a haze, a deadened stupor,
and suddenly the reality of it, the horror, was sinking in. The guest
shouted something at her. Ben ran toward the hall that he guessed led
to the rear of the house.
The woman was screaming at his back, but Ben kept running. The high
caterwauling of a police siren joined the innkeeper’s shrill hysteria,