but he looked intrigued.
Anna shrugged. “Some version of that. I suspect the best route will be
the most direct one. But I’ll find out soon enough.” She glanced at
her watch. “I’m taking the next flight I can catch to Zurich.”
Mettlenberg, St. Gallen, Switzerland
A little over five hours later, Ben Hartman sat in his rented Range
Rover in the staff parking lot of the Regionalspital Sankt Gallen Nord,
watching people coming and going: doctors, nurses, hospital workers. The
powerful engine idled softly. Fortunately, there weren’t many people,
even at a few minutes after five o’clock, the end of the workday for the
office workers. Twilight was beginning to fall, and the outside lights
were starting to come on.
From Zurich he had called the hospital and asked for Dr. Margarethe
Hubli. He was put right through to Pediatrics, where he asked, in
English, whether she was in.
Yes, he was told; would you like to make an appointment to see the
doctor? The nurse’s English was halting but comprehensible.
“No,” he’d said, “I really just wanted to make sure the doctor was in
the hospital. My child is ill, and I want to know whether you had a
pediatrician on call in case we need one.” He thanked the nurse and,
after finding out how late Dr. Hubli worked, hung up.
Liesl was scheduled to be in the hospital only until four in the
afternoon. He’d been waiting here over two hours; already she was more
than an hour late in leaving. Ben was certain she had not yet emerged
from the hospital. Moreover, he had spotted her Renault parked in the
lot. He figured she was the sort of dedicated doctor who worked long
hours and paid little attention to schedules.
He might be sitting here for quite some time, he realized.
The document of incorporation that Peter had referred to wasn’t in the
vault, so where else might it be? He had said he’d hidden it away
safely. Was it possible that Liesl was telling the truth, that she
really didn’t know where it was? In that case was it possible that
Peter had concealed it somewhere among his possessions in the cabin
without Liesl knowing?
She’d answered too quickly when he’d asked her whether Peter might have
hidden something there. She knew something she wasn’t telling.
He had to go to the cabin.
Forty minutes later, Liesl came out of the Emergency entrance.
She was talking to someone, bantering. She gave a wave good-bye and
zipped up her leather jacket. Then she half-walked, half-ran to her
car, got in, and started it up.
Ben waited until she’d gone some distance down the road before he pulled
out of the lot. She wouldn’t recognize the Range Rover and would have
no cause for suspicion, apart from her normal cautiousness. Still, it
was better not to alarm her.
At a travel bookstore in Zurich he’d bought a map of the canton of St.
Gallen and studied the roads in the area. Both Peter and Liesl had
mentioned living in a “cabin,” which likely meant that it was situated
in a forest or woods. There was one wooded area about eight kilometers
from the hospital, roughly north-northwest. The only other one within a
two-hour drive was forty kilometers away. That was quite a distance, on
back roads, for someone who had to go to work every day some-times even
had to return to the hospital quickly in emergencies. More likely the
cabin was located in the closer woods.
Having committed the roads in the area to memory, he knew that the next
turnoff wasn’t for two kilometers. But if she stopped somewhere along
the road and turned off, he stood a chance of losing her. All he could
do was hope she didn’t.
Soon the road rose steeply, following the hilly topography of this part
of Switzerland. It enabled him to look far ahead, and he was able to
spot what he determined was her Renault, stopped at a traffic light. At
the next intersection was a highway marked 10. If she took a left onto
10, she was heading toward the forest he had scoped out. If she took a
right, or went beyond 10, he’d have no idea where she was going.
The Renault turned left.
He accelerated and reached the intersection just a few minutes
after she had. There were enough other cars on the road that he wasn’t
too obvious. He felt sure she still had no idea he was tailing her.
The four-lane highway went parallel to a set of railroad tracks, past
several immense farms, great fields that went on as far as he could see.
Suddenly she turned off, a few kilometers before he expected she would.
Once he turned onto the narrow, winding road, he realized that his was
the only car behind her. Not good. It had gotten dark, and the road
was barely trafficked, and she would soon realize he was following her.
How could she not? If she did, she would either slow down to see who it
was behind her or, more likely, try to lose him. If she began driving
strangely, he would have no choice but to show himself.
Luckily, the twisty road helped to conceal him, as long as he stayed at
least one bend behind her. Now they passed a sparsely wooded area that
gradually became denser. From time to time he would see the flash of
her headlights, appearing and then disappearing around the bends. This
enabled him to follow her at some remove, to let her gain considerable
distance on him, just in case she had noticed the Rover.
But a few minutes later he could no longer see her headlights.
Where had she gone? Had she pulled off the road? He accelerated, to
see whether she had herself sped up, but after a kilometer he saw no
trace of her.
She had to have turned off into the woods, though he didn’t seem to have
passed by any roads or paths that led into the forest. He stopped, made
a U-turn no cars were coming in either direction and reversed course,
slowing down to look for any turnoffs.
It wasn’t easy; it had gotten quite dark.
Soon he spotted what could barely be called a road. It was a dirt trail
that looked like a footpath, but upon closer examination he saw tire
ruts.
He turned onto it, and saw at once that he would have to drive slowly.
It was just wide enough for the Renault, but there was not quite enough
clearance for the Range Rover. Twigs and branches scraped the sides of
the car. He slowed down even more: the noise might attract her
attention.
The St. Gallen map had told him that the forest he had entered was not
large. It surrounded a small lake a pond, actually and there appeared
to be no other road that led into or out of the woods.
Good.
Assuming the map was accurate.
The path came to a fork, and he stopped, got out of the car, and saw
that one branch of the road dead-ended a hundred feet ahead. The other
branch, deeply rutted, continued. He turned down that path and
navigated with some difficulty, wondering how Liesl’s Renault could make
it if the Range Rover was having such trouble.
It was not long before this path, too, came to an end.
And then he saw the Renault.
He parked his vehicle beside it, and got out. By now it was fully dark,
and he could see nothing. Once the car’s engine was shut off there was
mostly silence. Rustlings now and again that sounded like small
animals. The chirp and twitter of birds.
His eyes became accustomed to the dark, and he could make out another
path, even narrower, canopied with branches. Ducking down under one, he
entered, losing his footing a few times, his hands held out before his
face to shield his eyes from the twigs.
He saw a glow, and came upon a clearing. In it was a small cabin built
of split logs and rough white plaster. There were several glass
windows; it clearly wasn’t as rustic as it appeared. A light shone from
inside. This was the back of the cabin; the entrance had to be on the
other side. Treading softly, he approached the cabin and made his way
around to the front, where he expected the entrance to be.
Suddenly there was a metallic click. He looked up with a jolt.
Liesl was standing before him, pointing a gun.
“Stop right there!” she shouted.
“Wait!” Ben called back. God, she was fearless, coming right out to
confront the interloper. A split-second was all it would take for her
to kill him.
“It’s you!” she spat out with sudden realization. “What the hell are
you doing here?” She lowered the gun.
“I need your help, Liesl,” he said.
In the oblique moonlight her shadowed face seemed contorted with rage.