Federal Bureau of Investigation, do you understand? The FBI. We’re
looking for an American fugitive from justice, and I’ve got to ask for
your help. The woman’s name is Anna Navarro.” She flashed her OSI
badge quickly while holding his gaze; he would see it without really
looking at it.
“You say Anna Navarro,” the policeman said with recognition and relief.
“Yes. We’ve been notified. In the hotel, yes?”
“She’s barricaded herself in her room,” Anna said. “Fourteenth floor.
Room 1423. And she’s traveling with someone, right?”
The policeman shrugged. “Anna Navarro is the name we have,” he said.
Anna nodded. It was an important piece of information. “I’ve got two
agents in place, all right? But as observers. We can’t act on Austrian
territory. It’s up to you. I’m going to ask you to take the service
entrance, on the side of the building, and make your way to the
fourteenth floor. Are you O.K. with that?”
“Yes, yes,” the policeman said.
“And spread the word, O.K.?”
He nodded eagerly. “We’ll get her for you. Austria is, how do you say,
a law-and-order place, yes?”
Anna shot him his warmest smile. “We’re counting on you.”
A few minutes later, Ben and Anna were in a taxicab enroute to the
airport.
“That was pretty ballsy,” Ben said quietly. “Going up to the cop that
way.”
“Not really. Those are my people. I figured they’d just got word, or
they would have been better prepared. Which means they had no idea what
I look like. All they know is that they’re looking for an American, on
behalf of the Americans. No way of knowing whether I’m the one to
pursue or the one in pursuit.”
“When you put it that way…” Ben shook his head. “But why are they
after you anyway?”
“I haven’t exactly figured it out, yet. I do know that somebody’s been
spreading the word that I’ve gone rogue. Selling state secrets or
whatever. The question is who, and how, and why.”
“Sounds to me like Sigma is going through channels. Using real police
through manipulation.”
“Does, doesn’t it?”
“This is not good,” Ben said. “The idea that we’re going to have every
cop in Europe on our ass, on top of whatever psycho-killers Sigma has on
the payroll–it’s going to put a crimp in the game plan.”
“That’s one way to put it,” Anna said.
“We’re dead.”
“That’s a little harsh.” Anna shrugged. “How about we approach this
thing one step at a time?”
“How?”
“Ben Hartman and Anna Navarro are going to book a flight from Graz,
about a hundred and fifty kilometers south, to Munich.”
“And what are we going to do in Munich?”
“We’re not going to Munich. The thing is, I already put a trace on your
credit cards. That’s a genie I can’t put back in the bottle. You use
any card under your name, and it’s going to sound an immediate alarm in
Washington and God knows what branch offices we’ve got.”
“So we’re screwed.”
“So we use that. I need you to focus, Ben. Look, your brother prepared
travel documents for him and Liesl, in case they needed to take off
incognito. As far as we know, the IDs are still good, and the credit
card ought to be functional. John and Paula Freedman are going to book
tickets from Vienna on the next available flight to Paris. Replacing
Liesl’s photo with mine won’t be a problem. A couple of generic-looking
Americans, among tens of thousands who come in and out of the airport
every day.”
“Right,” Ben said. “Right. I’m sorry, Anna. I’m not thinking clearly.
But there are still risks, aren’t there?”
“Of course there are. Whatever we do has risks. But if we leave now,
the chances are good that they’re not going to have photographs in
place, and they’re not looking for Mr. and Mrs. Freedman. The main
thing is to stay calm and stay smart. Ready to improvise, if need be.”
“Sure,” Ben said, but he didn’t sound it.
She looked at him. He somehow seemed young, younger than he’d been; the
cockiness was gone, and he needed, she sensed, some reassurance. “After
all you’ve been through, I know you’re not going to lose your head. You
haven’t yet. And right now, that’s probably the most important thing.”
“Getting to Chardin is the most important thing.”
“We’ll get to him,” Anna said, gritting her teeth in resolve. “We’ll
get to him.”
Zurich
Matthias Deschner pressed both hands to his face, hoping for a moment of
clarity in the darkness. One of the credit cards that Liesl’s boyfriend
had, through his offices, established and maintained, had finally been
put to use. The call was pro forma: because the account had not been
used in quite some time, it fell to a clerk in a credit-security
department somewhere to place a call and ascertain that the card had not
gone missing.
Peter had provided for the automatic payment of the annual fee; the
name, telephone number, and mailing address involved a corporate entity
that Matthias had set up for him; all communications went to Deschner,
as its legal representative. Deschner had felt quite uncomfortable with
the whole thing it seemed legally dubious, to say the least but Liesl
implored him for his help, and, well, he had done what he had done. In
retrospect, he should have run, run in the opposite direction. Deschner
believed himself to be an honorable man, but he had never had illusions
of heroism.
Now a dilemma had arisen for a second time in a matter of days. Damn
that Ben Hartman. Damn both the Hartman boys.
Deschner wanted to keep his word to Peter and Liesl wanted to even
though they both were now dead. But they were dead, and with it his
oath. And there were now larger considerations.
His own survival, for one.
Bernard Suchet, at the Handelsbank, was too smart to have believed him
when he said he’d been completely ignorant of what Peter Hartman was
involved in. In truth, it was more a case of not wanting to know, of
believing that what he did not know could not hurt him.
That was no longer true.
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.
Liesl was a lovely girl he got a lump in his throat when he thought
about the necessary past tense but it had been wrong of her, all the
same, to have involved him in her affairs. It was an abuse of familial
loyalties, was it not? He imagined himself carrying on a conversation,
an argument, really, with his deceased cousin. It was wrong of her, so
very wrong. He never wanted any part of her crusade. Had she any idea
of the position she put him in?
Her words returned to him: We need your help. That is all. There is
nobody else we can turn to. Deschner remembered the luminous clarity of
her blue eyes, like a deep reservoir of alpine water, eyes whose
righteousness seemed to expect equal righteousness in everyone else.
Deschner felt the beginnings of a throbbing headache. The young woman
had asked for too much, that was all. Probably of the world, and
certainly of him.
She had made enemies of an organization that murdered people with the
simple indifference of a meter maid dispensing parking tickets. Now
Liesl was dead, and it seemed quite possible that she would take him
with her.
They would learn that the card had been activated. And then they would
learn that Dr. Matthias Deschner had himself been notified of this fact
but failed to report it. Soon there would be no more Dr. Matthias
Deschner. He thought of his daughter, Alma, who in just two months
would be getting married. Alma had talked about how much she was
looking forward to walking down the aisle with her father by her side.
He swallowed hard and imagined Alma walking down the aisle alone. No, it
could not be. It would be not just reckless but actively selfish of
him.
The throbbing behind his eyes was undiminished. He reached into his
desk drawer, removed a bottle of Panadol, and dry-swallowed a bitter,
chalky tablet.
He looked at the clock.
He would report the credit activation call. But not immediately. He
would wait for several hours to pass. Then he would call.
The tardiness could be easily explained, and they would be grateful for
his having volunteered the information. Surely they would.
And just maybe the delay would give the Hartman boy a running start. A
few more hours on this earth, anyway. He owed him that much, Deschner
decided, but perhaps no more.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO.
Paris
The twentieth arrondissement of Paris, its eastern most, and seamiest,
district, slopes on a butte adjoining the highway that rings Paris and
defines its limits, the Peripherique. In the eighteenth century, the
land supported a village of wine growers called Charonne. Over the
years, the vineyards gave way to small houses, and the houses, in turn,