Anstalt, a bearer-share company. Sort of a blind entity.”
“If it came from a company, does that mean the names of the true owners
are on file somewhere?”
“That’s the tricky part. Anstalts are usually managed by an agent,
often an attorney. They’re essentially dummy corporations that exist
only on paper. An agent in Liechtenstein might manage thousands of
them.”
“Was your friend able to get the name of the Anstalt’s agent?”
“I believe so, yes. Trouble is, barring torture, no agent will release
information on any of the Anstalts he manages. They can’t afford to
sabotage their reputation for discretion. But my friend’s working on
it.”
She grinned. The guy was growing on her.
The phone rang.
She picked it up. “Navarro.”
“Anna, this is Walter Heisler. I have results for you.”
“Results?”
“On the gun that was dropped by the shooter in Hietzing. The prints you
asked me to run. It matched a print, a digitized print, on file at
Interpol. A Hans Vogler, ex-Stasi. Maybe he doesn’t expect to miss, or
doesn’t expect us to be there, because he wears no gloves.”
Heisler’s information was nothing new, but the fingerprints would be a
valuable piece of evidence.
“Fantastic. Walter, listen, I need to ask you another favor.”
“You don’t sound surprised,” Heisler said, miffed. “I said he was ex-
Stasi, you understand? Former East German secret intelligence service.”
“Yes, Walter, I do understand, and I thank you. Very impressive.” She
was being too brusque again, too businesslike, and she tried to soften
her approach. “Thank you so much, Walter. And just one more thing …”
Wearily: “Yes?”
“One second.” She covered the phone’s mouthpiece and said to Ben, “You
still haven’t reached Hoffman?”
“Not a word. No answer there–it’s bizarre.”
She removed her hand from the mouthpiece. “Walter, can you find out for
me whatever you can about a private investigator in Vienna named Hans
Hoffman?”
There was silence.
“Hello?”
“Yes, Anna, I am here. Why you ask about this Hans Hoffman?”
“I need some outside help here,” she replied, thinking quickly, “and his
name was given to me–”
“Well, I think you may have to find someone else.”
“Why is that?”
“About an hour ago a call came in to the Stcherheitsburo from an
employee of a Berufsdetektiv named Hans Hoffman. The woman, an
investigator in Hoffman’s office, came to work and discovered her boss
dead. Shot at point-blank range in the forehead. And, curious–his
right forefinger was cut off. Can this be the Hoffman you’re talking
about?”
Ben had stared in disbelief when Anna told him what she’d learned.
“Christ, it’s as if they’re always just one behind us, whatever we do,”
he murmured.
“Maybe ‘ahead of us’ is the more accurate term.”
Ben -massaged his temples with the fingertips of both hands, and at last
he spoke in a quiet voice. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“How do you mean?”
“Sigma has obviously been killing its own. Those victims you’re trying
to find they all have something in common with me, a shared enemy. We’ve
observed the pattern frightened old men going into hiding in the
twilight of their lives, living under aliases. It’s a virtual certainty
that they have some idea what the hell’s going on. That means our only
hope is to establish contact with someone on the list who’s still alive,
who can talk. Someone with whom I can establish common ground, a
conduit of sympathy, enlist his help for reasons of his own
self-protection.”
Anna stood, paced the room. “That’s if there is anyone alive, Ben.”
He stared at her a long while, saying nothing, the resolve in his eyes
wavering. She could tell that he longed to trust her every bit as
fervently as she hoped she could trust him. Softly, hesitantly, he
replied: “I have a feeling it’s just a feeling, an educated guess that
there may be at least one still alive.”
“Who’s that?”
“A Frenchman named Georges Chardin.”
She nodded slowly. “Georges Chardin … I’ve seen the name on the Sigma
list but he’s actually been dead for four years.”
“But the fact that his name was in the Sigma files means Alien Dulles
had him vetted for some reason.”
“Back in the fifties, yeah. But remember, most of these people have
been dead for a long while. My focus was on the ones who had fallen
victim to the recent spate of killings or who were about to. Chardin
isn’t in either category. And he’s not a founder, so he’s not on your
incorporation document.” The Sigma list contains more names than just
the original incorporators. She looked at Ben hard. “My question is,
how did you know to ask about him? Are you holding out on me?”
Ben shook his head.
“We don’t have time to play games,” Anna said. “Georges Chardin I know
him as a name on paper. But he’s no one famous, no one I’d ever heard
of. So what’s his significance?”
“The significance is his boss, a legendary French industrialist a man
who was one of the incorporators in the photo. A man named Emil
Menard. In his time, one of the greatest corporate titans. Back in
1945 he was a grand old man; he’s long dead.”
“Him I know. He was the founder of Trianon, generally considered the
first modern corporate conglomerate, correct?”
“Right. Trianon is one of the biggest industrial empires in France.
Emil Menard built Trianon into a French petrochemical giant that made
even Schlumberger look like a five-and-dime.”
“And so this Georges Chardin worked for the legendary Emil Menard?”
“Worked for him? He just about did his breathing for him. Chardin was
his trusted lieutenant, aide-de-camp, factotum, whatever you want to
call him. He wasn’t just Menard’s right-hand man, he was practically
his right hand. Chardin was hired in 1950 when he was only twenty, and
in a few short years the greenhorn changed the way the cost of capital
was accounted for, introduced a sophisticated new way of calculating
return on investment, restructured the company accordingly. Way ahead
of his time. A major figure.”
“In your world, maybe.”
“Granted. Point is, in very short order, the old man trusted his young
protege with everything, every detail in running his vast enterprise.
After 1950, Emil Menard didn’t go anywhere without Chardin. They say
Chardin had all the firm’s ledgers memorized. He was a walking
computer.” Ben produced the yellowed photograph of the Sigma group and
placed it in front of Anna, pointing out Emil Menard’s countenance.
“What do you see?”
“Menard looks pretty haggard, to tell the truth. Not well at all.”
“Correct. He was pretty seriously ill at that point. Spent the last
decade of his life fighting cancer, though he was an incredibly
formidable man right up until the end. But he died with the supreme
confidence that his corporation would remain strong, continue to grow,
because he had such a brilliant young Directeur General du Departement
des Finance basically his chief financial officer.”
“So you’re speculating that Menard would have trusted Georges Chardin
with the secret of the Sigma enterprise as well?”
“I’m virtually certain of it. No doubt Chardin was completely in the
background. But he was Menard’s shadow every step of the way. It’s
inconceivable that Chardin wouldn’t have been completely privy to the
substance of Sigma, whatever its objectives and methods. And look at it
from Sigma’s point of view: in order to stay alive, regardless of its
true purpose, Sigma had to keep bringing in new recruits to replace the
original founders. So Chardin is bound to have played a significant
role, likely as a member of its inner council Menard would have made
sure of that.”
“O.K.” O.K.” you’ve got me convinced,” Anna put in impatiently. “But
where does that get us today? We already know Chardin died four years
ago. You think he might have left files, papers, or something?”
“We’re told that Chardin died four years ago, sure. Right around the
same time that my brother, Peter, arranged his fake death. What if he
did something like what Peter did arranged to disappear, go into hiding,
escape the killers he knew were after him?”
“Come on, Ben! You’re making all sorts of assumptions, jumping to
unwarranted conclusions!”
Ben replied patiently, “Your list indicated that he perished in a fire,
right? The old ‘burned beyond recognition’ ruse? Like my brother?
Sorry; won’t get fooled again.” He seemed to recognize the skepticism
in her face. “Listen to me! You said it yourself. We have a string of
old men who were killed presumably because somebody viewed them as a
threat. Sigma, or its heirs or controllers. So let’s think this out:
why might a bunch of old guys in the twilight of their lives be
considered a serious enough threat to be murdered?” He stood up, began
to pace. “You see, the mistake I was making all along was in viewing
Sigma as merely a front organization, a false corporation instead of a