wanting to raise false hopes. And then the medical evidence arrived,
and it was irrefutable.
Now, however, Ben began to focus on the real question: Not was it Peter,
but how had he died? A plane crash could be an efficient way to conceal
evidence of murder.
And then again, maybe it had been a genuine accident.
After all, who could have wanted Peter dead? Murdering someone and then
crashing a plane–wasn’t that a ludicrously elaborate coverup?
But this afternoon had redefined what was within the realm of
plausibility. Because if Cavanaugh, whoever he was, had tried to kill
him, for whatever unfathomable reason, wasn’t it likely he–or others
connected with Cavanaugh–had also killed Peter four years ago?
Howie had mentioned databases accessed by a colleague of his who did
corporate espionage work. It struck Ben that Frederic McCall an the
aged client he was supposed to meet at St. Moritz, might be helpful in
this regard. McCall an in addition to being a serious Wall Street
player, had served in more than one administration in Washington; he’d
have no shortage of contacts and connections. Ben took out his multi
standard Nokia phone and called the Hotel Carlton in St. Moritz. The
Carlton was a quietly elegant place, opulent without being ostentatious,
with a remarkable glassed-in pool overlooking the lake.
His call was put right through to Frederic McCall an room.
“You’re not standing us up, I hope,” old Frederic said jovially. “Louise
will be devastated.” Louise was his allegedly beautiful granddaughter.
“Not at all. Things got a little hectic here, and I missed the last
flight to Chur.” Strictly speaking this was true.
“Well, we had them set a place for you at dinner, figuring you’d show up
eventually. When can we expect you?”
“I’m going to rent a car and drive up tonight.”
“Drive? But that’ll take you hours!”
“It’s a pleasant drive,” he said. And a long drive was precisely what
he needed to clear his head right now.
“Surely you can charter a flight if you have to.”
“Can’t,” he said without elaborating. The fact was, he wanted to avoid
the airport, where others–if there were others–might be expecting him.
“I’ll see you at breakfast, Freddie.”
The taxicab took Ben to an Avis on Gartenhofstrasse, where he rented an
Opel Omega, got directions, and set off without incident on the A3
highway, heading southeast out of Zurich. It took a while to get the
feel of the road, the great speed at which Swiss drivers raced along
their main highways, the aggressive way they signaled that they wanted
to pass by pulling up right behind you and flashing their high beams.
Once or twice he had a flash of paranoia–a green Audi seemed to be
following him but then disappeared. After a while he began to feel as
if he’d left all that madness behind in Zurich. Soon he’d be at the
Carlton in St. Moritz, and that was inviolable.
He thought about Peter, as he’d done so often in the last four years,
and he felt the old guilt, felt his stomach tighten, then flip over.
Guilt that he’d let his brother die alone, because in the last few years
of Peter’s life he’d barely even talked to him.
But he knew Peter wasn’t alone at the end. He’d been living with a
Swiss woman, a medical student he’d fallen in love with. Peter had told
him about it on the phone a couple of months before he was killed.
Ben had seen Peter exactly twice since college. Twice.
As kids, before Max had sent them off to different prep schools, they’d
been inseparable. They fought constantly, they wrestled each other
until one could claim, You’re good, but I’m better. They hated each
other and loved each other, and they were never apart.
But after college Peter had joined the Peace Corps and gone to Kenya. He
had no interest in Hartman Capital Management either. Nor would he take
anything out of his trust fund. What the hell do I need it for in
Africa? he’d said.
The fact was that Peter wasn’t just doing something meaningful with his
life. He was escaping Dad. Max and he had never gotten along.
“Christ!” Ben had exploded at him once. “You want to avoid Dad, you
can live in Manhattan and simply not call him. Have lunch with Mom once
a week or something. You don’t need to live in some god damned mud hut,
for God’s sake!”
But no. Peter had returned to the States twice: once when their mother
had her mastectomy, and once after Ben had called to tell him that Mom’s
cancer had spread and she didn’t have long to live.
By that time Peter had moved to Switzerland. He’d met a Swiss woman in
Kenya. “She’s beautiful, she’s brilliant, and she still hasn’t seen
through me,” Peter had told him over the phone. “File that one under
‘strange but true.” ” That was a favorite boyhood expression of
Peter’s.
The girl was returning to medical school and he was going with her to
Zurich. Which was what had first got the two of them talking. You’re
tagging along with some chick you met? Ben had said scornfully. He was
jealous–jealous that Peter had fallen in love, and jealous, on some
crazy brotherly level, that he’d been replaced at the center of Peter’s
life.
No, Peter had said, it wasn’t just that. He’d read an article in an
international edition of Time magazine about an old woman, a Holocaust
survivor, living in France, desperately poor, who’d tried without
success to get one of the big Swiss banks to give back the modest sum
her father had left for her before he’d perished in the camps.
The bank had demanded her father’s death certificate.
She’d told them that the Nazis hadn’t issued death certificates for the
six million Jews they’d murdered.
Peter was going to get the old woman what was due her. Dammit, he said,
if a Hartman can’t wrest this lady’s money from the greedy paws of some
Swiss banker, who can?
No one was as stubborn as Peter. No one except Old Max, maybe.
Ben had little doubt Peter had won the battle.
He began to feel weary. The highway had become monotonous, lulling. His
driving had fallen naturally into the rhythm of the road, and other cars
no longer seemed to be trying to pass him quite so often. His eyelids
began to droop.
There came a blaring car horn, and he was dazzled by headlights. With a
jolt he realized that he’d momentarily fallen asleep behind the wheel.
He reacted quickly, spinning the car to the right, swerving out of the
oncoming lane of traffic, just barely missing a collision.
He pulled over to the side of the road, his heart pounding. He let out
a long, relieved sigh. It was the jet lag, his body still on New York
time, the length of the day, the madness at the Bahnhofplatz finally
catching up with him.
It was time to get off the highway. St. Moritz was maybe a couple of
hours away, but he didn’t dare risk driving any longer. He had to find
a place to spend the night.
Two cars passed by, though Ben did not see them.
One was a green Audi, battered and rusty, almost ten years old. Its
driver and sole occupant, a tall man of around fifty with long gray hair
pulled back in a ponytail, turned to inspect Ben’s car, parked on the
side of the road.
When the Audi had traveled about a hundred meters beyond Ben’s car, it,
too, pulled over to the shoulder.
Then a second car passed Ben’s Opel: a gray sedan with two men inside.
“Glaubst Du, er hat uns entdeckt?” the driver asked the passenger in
Swiss-German. You think he’s spotted us?
“It’s possible,” the passenger replied. “Why else would he have
stopped?”
“He could be lost. He is looking at a map.”
“That could be a ruse. I’m going to pull over.”
The driver noticed the green Audi at the side of the road. “Are we
expecting company?” he asked.
CHAPTER SIX.
Halifax, Nova Scotia
The next morning Anna and Sergeant Arsenault drove up to the house
belonging to Robert Mailhot’s widow and rang the bell.
The widow opened the front door a suspicious few inches and stared out
at them from the dark of her front hall. She was a small woman of
seventy-nine with snow-white hair in a neat bouffant, a large, round
head, an open face but wary brown eyes. Her wide flat nose was red,
evidence either of weeping or booze.
“Yes?” She was, unsurprisingly, hostile.
“Mrs. Mailhot, I’m Ron Arsenault from the RCMP, and this is Anna
Navarro from the United States Department of Justice.” Arsenault spoke
with a surprising tenderness. “We wanted to ask you some questions.
Could we come in?”
“Why?”
“We have some questions, that’s all.”
The widow’s small brown eyes shone fiercely. “I’m not talking to any