Ben sat back. “You have no authority here.”
“Absolutely right. But I don’t need authority.”
What the hell did she mean? “So what do you want from me?”
“I want information. I want to know why you were really visiting
Rossignol. Why you were really visiting Jurgen Lenz. What you’re
really up to, Mr. Hartman.”
“And if I don’t care to share?” He tried to project an image of
confidence.
She cocked her head. “Would you like to find out what’ll happen? Why
don’t you spin the wheel and take a chance?”
Jesus, she was good, Ben thought. He breathed deeply. The room’s walls
seemed to be closing in. He kept his face blank, unreadable.
She continued: “Do you know that there’s a warrant for your arrest in
Zurich?”
Ben shrugged. “That’s a laugh.” He decided that it was time for him to
be aggressive, aggrieved, un defensive as a wrongfully arrested American
would be. “Maybe I know the ways of the Swiss a little better than you
do. For one thing, they’ll swear out a warrant if you spit out your gum
on the sidewalk. For another, there’s no goddamn possibility of
extradition.” He’d established this much from his conversations with
Howie. “The canton of Zurich has a hard enough time getting cooperation
from the Polizei of the other Swiss cantons. And the fact that the
Swiss have made a name for themselves in harboring tax fugitives means
that other countries ignore Swiss extradition requests as a matter of
policy.” These were Howie’s words, and he recited them stolidly, facing
her down. She might as well know that she couldn’t game him. “The
Zurich bulls claim they want me for ‘questioning.” They don’t even
pretend to have a case. So why don’t we cut the crap here?”
She leaned closer. “It’s a matter of public record that your brother
had been trying to build a case against the Swiss banking establishment.
Gaston Rossignol was a preeminent Swiss banker. You visit him, and he
turns up dead. Let’s get back to that. Then suddenly you’re in Vienna
meeting with the son of an infamous Nazi. And your father was in a
concentration camp. It looks an awful lot like some kind of vengeance
trip you’re on.”
So that was it. Maybe it would look like that to someone who didn’t
know the truth. But I can’t tell her the truth!
“That’s preposterous,” Ben snapped. “I don’t even want to dignify your
fantasies about vendettas and violence. You talk about Swiss bankers. I
do deals with these people, Agent Navarro. It’s my job. International
finance doesn’t really lend itself to murderous rampages, O.K.? In my
world, the main injuries you inflict are paper cuts.”
“Then explain what happened on the Bahnhofplatz.”
“I can’t. I’ve been through that with the Swiss bulls over an dover
again.”
“And explain how you tracked down Rossignol.”
Ben shook his head.
“And the others. Come on. I want to know where you got their names and
their whereabouts.”
Ben just looked at her.
“Where were you on Wednesday?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Nova Scotia, by any chance?”
“Come to think of it, I was being arrested in Zurich,” he shot back.
“You can check with your friends at the Zurich police. See, I like to
get arrested in every country I visit. It’s really the best way to
appreciate the local customs.”
She ignored his barb. “Tell me what got you arrested.”
“You know as well as I do.”
Navarro turned to her brooding sidekick, who exhaled a plume of smoke,
then looked back at Ben. “Several times in the last couple of days you
yourself were almost killed. Including today–”
In his dull, dazed anxiety, he was surprised to feel a warm rush of
gratitude. “You saved my life. I guess I should thank you.”
“Damn right you should,” she replied. “Now tell me, why do you think
someone was trying to kill you? Who might have known what you were up
to?”
Nice try, lady. “I have no idea.”
“I’ll bet you have some idea.”
“Sorry. Maybe you can ask your friends over at the CIA what they’re
trying to cover up. Or is your office involved in the cover-up, too?”
“Mr. Hartman, your twin brother was killed in Switzerland, in a
suspicious plane crash. More recently, you’ve had some unexplained
connection to shootings in that country. Death seems to follow you
around like a cheap cologne. What am I supposed to think?”
“Think whatever you like. I didn’t commit any crime.”
“I’m going to ask you this one more time: Where did you get their names
and addresses?”
“Whose?”
“Rossignol and Lenz.”
“I told you, mutual acquaintances.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Believe what you like.”
“What are you hiding? Why don’t you level with me, Mr. Hartman?”
“Sorry. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Agent Navarro folded, then unfolded, her long shapely legs. “Mr.
Hartman,” she said with utmost exasperation. “I’m going to offer you a
deal. You cooperate with me, and I’ll do my best to get the Swiss and
the Austrians to back off.”
Was she sincere? His distrust had become almost a reflex, “Given that
you seem to be the one pushing them to come after me, that strikes me as
a hollow promise. I don’t have to stay here any longer, do I?”
She watched him silently, nibbling at the inside of a cheek. “No.” She
took out a business card and jotted something down on the back of it,
then handed it to him. “If you change your mind, here’s my hotel in
Vienna.”
It was over. Thank God. He inhaled, felt the air reach the very bottom
of his lungs, the anxiety suddenly lift.
“Nice to meet you, Agent Navarro,” Ben said, rising. “And thanks again
for saving my life.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.
The pain was intense and overwhelming; another man would have passed
out. Gathering his powers of mental concentration, Trevor assigned the
pain to another body–a vividly imagined doppelganger, someone who was
convulsed with agony but who was not he. By sheer force of will, he
managed to find his way through the streets of Vienna to a building on
Taborstrasse.
Then he remembered that the car was stolen–his thinking was sluggish,
that was what alarmed him most of all–and he drove five blocks away and
abandoned it, the keys dangling from the ignition. Maybe some idiot
would steal it and get caught in the citywide dragnet that was sure to
follow.
He limped down the street, ignoring the many glances of the passersby.
He knew his suit jacket was drenched with his own blood; he had put the
trench coat on over it, but even that, too, had gotten soaked through.
He had lost a great deal of blood. He felt lightheaded.
He was able to get back to Taborstrasse, to the street-level office
marked with a brass plaque that said dr. the odor schreiber, internist
& GENERAL SURGEON.
The office was dark, and there was no answer when he buzzed. Trevor
didn’t find this surprising, since it was after eight o’clock in the
evening, and Dr. Schreiber kept regular hours. But he kept ringing the
bell anyway. Schreiber lived in the flat behind his small office, and
the bell rang in his living quarters as well, Trevor knew.
After five minutes, the light went on in the office, and then a voice
came through the speaker, loud and annoyed: “}a>.”
“Dr. Schreiber, es is Christoph. Es 1st ein Notfall.”
The front door of the building unlocked electronically. Then the door
off the lobby, marked with the doctor’s name on another brass plaque,
unlocked as well.
Dr. Schreiber was disgruntled. “You have interrupted my dinner,” he
said gravely. “I trust it is important ” He noticed the blood-soaked
trench coat. “All right, all right, follow me.” The physician turned
and walked back toward the examination room.
Dr. Schreiber had a sister who lived in Dresden, in East Germany, for
decades. Until the Wall came down, this simple accident of geography he
had escaped from East Berlin in 1961, while his sister had been forced
to stay behind had been enough to give East German intelligence leverage
over the doctor.
But Stasi did not seek to blackmail him or to turn him into some sort of
spy, as if a physician could ever be useful as a spy. No, Stasi had a
far more mundane use for him: simply to serve as a doctor on call for
its agents in Austria in cases of emergency. Physicians in Austria, as
in many countries in the world, are required by law to report gunshot
wounds to the police. Dr. Schreiber would be more discreet than that
when the occasional wounded Stasi agent appeared at his office, usually
in the middle of the night.
Trevor, who had lived as a Stasi illegal in London for many years before
he was recruited to Sigma, had from time to time been dispatched to
Vienna, under the cover of business travel, and twice he had needed to