by Daniel Silva
“He left a note.” Gabriel held up the coral charm. “And this.”
“May I see that?”
Gabriel handed the necklace to Cordoni, who turned it over in his hand and smiled.
“You know what that is?”
“Yes, I think I do. It’s harmless.”
“What is it?”
“A long time ago, we Cordonis used to be Corsicans. My great-grandfather came to Italy and started the Venetian branch of the family, but I still have distant relatives living in a valley on the southern end of the island.”
“What does that have to do with the pendant?”
“It’s a talisman, a Corsican good-luck charm. Corsican men wear them. They believe it wards off the evil eye—the occhju, as Corsicans refer to it.” Cordoni handed it back to Gabriel. “Like I said, it’s harmless. Someone was just giving Miss Rolfe a gift.”
“I wish it was that simple.” Gabriel slipped the talisman into his pocket next to the Beretta, then looked at Cordoni. “Where’s the man who was standing outside this door?”
THE Englishman spotted the water taxi bobbing in the Rio di San Polo beneath the shelter of a footbridge. Rossetti’s man sat behind the wheel wearing a hooded anorak. The Englishman boarded the taxi and ducked into the cabin.
Rossetti’s man opened the throttle. The boat grumbled and shuddered, then got under way. A moment later, they were cruising along the Grand Canal at speed. The Englishman rubbed a clear spot in the condensation and looked out at the passing scenery for a few moments. Then he drew the curtains.
He pulled off the black quilted jacket, then removed the burgundy blazer and rolled it into a ball. Ten minutes later, he opened the cabin window and cast the blazer upon the black water of the lagoon.
He stretched out on the bench seat, thinking of the story he would concoct for Anton Orsati. He reached up to his throat for his talisman. He felt naked without it. In the morning, when he was back on Corsica, he would visit the old signadora and she would give him a new one.
40
ZURICH
GERHARDT PETERSON’S OFFICE was in darkness except for the small halogen lamp that cast a disk of light over his desk. He had stayed late because he had been expecting a telephone call. He was not sure who would place the call—perhaps the Venice municipal police; perhaps the carabiniere—but he had been quite certain it would come. Sorry to bother you so late, Herr Peterson, but I’m afraid there’s been a terrible tragedy in Venice tonight concerning the violinist Anna Rolfe….
Peterson looked up from his files. Across the room, a television flickered silently. The late national newscast was nearly over. The important stories from Bern and Zurich had been covered, and the program had deteriorated into the mindless features and lighter fare that Peterson usually ignored. Tonight, though, he turned up the volume. As expected, there was a story about Anna Rolfe’s triumphant return to the stage that evening in Venice.
When it was over, Peterson switched off the television and locked his files away in his personal safe. Perhaps Anton Orsati’s assassin had been unable to carry out his assignment because Anna Rolfe was too heavily protected. Perhaps he’d gotten cold feet. Or perhaps they were dead and the bodies simply hadn’t been discovered yet. His instincts told him that this was not the case; that something had gone wrong in Venice. In the morning, he would contact Orsati through the usual channels and find out what had happened.
He slipped some papers into his briefcase, extinguished the desk lamp, and went out. Peterson’s seniority permitted him to park his Mercedes in the cobblestone courtyard instead of the distant staff lot adjacent to the rail yard. He had instructed the security staff to keep a special watch on his car. He had not told them why.
He drove south along the Sihl River. The streets were nearly deserted: here a lone taxi; here a trio of guest workers waiting for a streetcar to take them back to their crowded flats in Aussersihl or the Industrie-Quartier. It was the responsibility of Peterson’s staff to make certain they didn’t make trouble there. No plots against the despot back home. No protests against the Swiss government. Just do your job, collect your check, and keep your mouth shut. Peterson considered the guest workers a necessary evil. The economy couldn’t survive without them, but it sometimes seemed the Swiss were outnumbered in Zurich by the damned Portuguese and Pakistanis.
He glanced again into his rearview mirror. It seemed he was not being tailed, though he could not be certain. He knew how to follow a man, but his training in the detection and evasion of surveillance had been rudimentary.
He drove through the streets of Wiedikon for twenty minutes, then over to the Zürichsee to the garage of his apartment house. After passing through the metal security gate, he waited just on the other side to make certain no one came after him on foot. Down the twisting passage he drove to his reserved parking space. His flat number, 6C, was stenciled onto the wall. He pulled into the space and shut down the lights, then the motor. And there he sat for a long moment, hands choking the wheel, heart beating a little too quickly for a man of his age. A very large drink was in order.
He walked slowly across the garage, suddenly bone-weary. He passed through a doorway and entered the vestibule where a lift would carry him up to his flat. Standing before the closed stainless-steel doors, head craning to watch the progress of the glowing floor numbers, was a woman.
She pressed the call button several times and cursed loudly. Then, taking note of Peterson’s presence, she turned and smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, but I’ve been waiting for the damned lift for five minutes. I think there must be something wrong with the fucking thing.”
Perfect Züridütsch, thought Peterson. She was no foreigner. Peterson quickly assessed her with his practiced eye. She was dark-haired and pale-skinned, a combination that he had always found terribly attractive. She wore a pair of blue jeans that accentuated her long legs. Beneath her leather jacket was a black blouse, unbuttoned just enough to reveal the lace of her brassiere. Attractive, fine-boned, but not the kind of beauty that would turn heads on the Bahnhofstrasse. Young but not inappropriately so. Early thirties. Thirty-five at the outside.
She seemed to sense Peterson’s careful appraisal, because she held his gaze with a pair of mischievous gray eyes. It had been six months since his last affair, and it was time for another. His last mistress had been the wife of a distant colleague, a man from the fraud division. Peterson had managed it well. It had been rewarding and pleasant for a time, and when it was time for it to end, it dissolved without rancor or remorse.
He managed a smile in spite of his fatigue. “I’m sure it’ll be along in a moment.”
“I don’t think so. I think we’re going to be trapped here all night.”
The suggestiveness of her remark could not be missed. Peterson decided to play along to see how far it would go. “Do you live in this building?”
“Boyfriend.”
“Surely your boyfriend will send help eventually, don’t you think?”
“He’s in Geneva tonight. I’m just staying at his flat.”
He wondered who her boyfriend was and which flat she was staying in. He allowed himself to picture a brief and all-too-hurried sexual encounter. Then his fatigue crept up on him and chased away all thoughts of conquest. This time it was Peterson who pressed the call button and Peterson who muttered a curse.
“It’s never going to come.” She pulled a pack of cigarettes from her coat pocket. Removing one, she placed it between her lips and flicked her lighter. When no flame appeared, she flicked it several more times, then said, “Shit. I guess this isn’t my night.”
“Here, let me.” Peterson’s lighter expelled a tongue of blue and yellow flame. He held it in place and allowed the woman to take it as she saw fit. As she inserted the end of her cigarette into the fire, her fingers lightly caressed the back of his hand. It was a deliberately intimate gesture, one that sent a charge of current up the length of his arm.
So powerful was the effect of h
er touch that Peterson failed to notice that she had raised her cigarette lighter very close to his face. Then she squeezed the hammer, and a cloud of sweet-smelling chemical filled his lungs. His head snapped back and he stared at the woman, eyes wide, barely comprehending. She tossed her cigarette to the floor and pulled a gun from her handbag.
The gun wasn’t necessary, because the chemical had its intended effect. Peterson’s legs turned to water, the room started to spin, and he could feel the floor rushing up to embrace him. He feared he was going to strike his head, but before his legs buckled completely, a man appeared in the vestibule and Peterson folded into his arms.
Peterson had a glimpse of his savior’s face as he was dragged from the vestibule and hurled into the back of a paneled van. It was rabbinical and studious and strangely gentle. Peterson tried to thank him, but when he opened his mouth to speak he blacked out.
41
MALLES VENOSTA, ITALY
GERHARDT PETERSON FELT as though he were rising from the depths of an Alpine lake. Upward he came, through layers of consciousness, pockets of warm water and cold, until his face broke the surface and he filled his lungs with air.
He found himself not in the Alpine lake of his dreams but in a cold cellar with a terra-cotta floor and rough whitewashed stucco walls. Above his head was a small window, set in an alcove at ground level, and through it streamed a weak sienna light. For a moment he struggled to orient himself in time and space. Then he remembered the dark-haired woman at the elevator; the ruse with the cigarette; her hand touching his as she sprayed a sedative into his face. He felt suddenly embarrassed. How could he have been so weak? So vulnerable? What signals had he given off that made them come after him with a woman?
The throbbing pain in Peterson’s head was uncharted territory, something between trauma and a torrential hangover. His mouth seemed filled with sand, and he was violently thirsty. He was stripped to his briefs, bound by packing tape at the ankles and wrists, his bare back propped against the wall. The fragile appearance of his own body shocked him. His pale hairless legs stretched before him, toes pointed inward, like the legs of a dying man. A layer of flab hung over the waistband of his briefs. He was painfully cold.
They had permitted him to retain his watch, but the crystal was smashed and it no longer kept time. He studied the light leaking through his window and decided it was the light of sunset. He worked out the time, though even this simple problem caused his head to pound. They had taken him shortly before midnight. He guessed it was now five or six in the afternoon of the following day. Eighteen hours. Had he been unconscious for eighteen hours? That would explain his thirst and the unbearable stiffness in his back and joints.
He wondered where they had taken him. The quality of light and air was no longer Swiss. For a moment he feared they had spirited him to Israel. No, he’d be in a proper cell in Israel, not a cellar. He was still close to Switzerland. France, maybe. Perhaps Italy. The Jews liked the south of Europe. They blended in well.
There was another scent that took him a few moments to place: incense and sandalwood, a woman’s fragrance. And then he remembered: outside the elevator in Zurich; the hand of the woman who had sedated him. But why was her scent on him? He looked down at the skin covering his rib cage and saw four red lines: scratches. His underwear was stained, and there was a cracking stickiness at his crotch. What had they done to him? Eighteen hours, powerful drugs…
Peterson fell sideways and his cheek struck the cold terra-cotta floor. He retched. Nothing came up, but his nausea was intense. He was sickened by his own weakness. He felt suddenly like a rich man who gets into trouble in a poor neighborhood. All his money, all his culture and superiority—his Swissness—meant nothing now. He was beyond the protective walls of his Alpine Redoubt. He was in the hands of people who played the game by very different rules.
He heard footsteps on the staircase. A man entered, small and dark, with a quickness that suggested hidden strength. He seemed annoyed that Peterson had regained consciousness. In his hand was a silver pail. He lifted it with both hands and showered Peterson with ice-cold water.
The pain was intense, and Peterson screamed in spite of himself. The little man knelt beside him and rammed a hypodermic needle into Peterson’s thigh, so deep it seemed to strike bone, and once more Peterson slid benevolently below the surface of his lake.
WHEN Gerhardt Peterson was a boy, he had heard a story about some Jews who had come to his family’s village during the war. Now, in his drug-induced coma, he dreamed of the Jews again. According to the story, a family of Jews, two adults and three children, had crossed into Switzerland from unoccupied France. A farmer took pity on them and gave them shelter in a tiny outbuilding on his property. An officer from the cantonal police learned there were Jews hiding in the village but agreed to keep their presence a secret. But someone in the village contacted the federal police, who descended on the farm the next day and took the Jews into custody. It was the policy of the government to expel illegal immigrants back into the country from which they had made their unlawful border crossing. These Jews had crossed into Switzerland from the unoccupied south of France, but they were taken to the border of occupied France and driven into the waiting arms of a German patrol. The Jews were arrested, placed on a train to Auschwitz, and gassed.
At first, Gerhardt Peterson had refused to believe the story. In school he had been taught that Switzerland, a neutral country during the war, had opened its borders to refugees and to wounded soldiers—that it been Europe’s Sister of Mercy, a motherly bosom in the heart of a continent in turmoil. He went to his father and asked him whether the story about the Jews was true. At first his father refused to discuss it. But when young Gerhardt persisted, his father relented. Yes, he said, the story was true.
“Why does no one talk about it?”
“Why should we talk about it? It’s in the past. Nothing can be done to change it.”
“But they were killed. They died because of someone in this village.”
“They were here illegally. They came without permission. And besides, Gerhardt, we didn’t kill them. It was the Nazis who murdered them. Not us!”
“But, Papa—”
“Enough, Gerhardt! You asked me if it was true, and I gave you an answer. You are never to discuss it again.”
“Why, Papa?”
His father did not answer him. But even then Gerhardt Peterson knew the answer. He was not to discuss the matter further because in Switzerland, one doesn’t discuss unpleasant matters from the past.
PETERSON awoke to another pail of icy water. He opened his eyes and was immediately blinded by a searing white light. Squinting, he saw two figures standing over him, the little troll-like man with the bucket, and the kinder-looking soul who had carried him to the van in Zurich after he had been drugged by the woman.
“Wake up!”
The troll threw more freezing water onto Peterson. His neck jerked violently, and he cracked his head against the wall. He lay on the floor, drenched, shivering.
The troll tromped up the stairs. The meeker one squatted on his haunches and looked at him sadly. Peterson, slipping back into unconsciousness, confused reality with his dreams. To Peterson the little man was the Jew from his village whose family had been expelled to France.
“I’m sorry,” groaned Peterson, his jaw trembling with cold.
“Yes, I know,” said the man. “I know you’re sorry.”
Peterson began to cough, a retching cough that filled his mouth with phlegm and fluid.
“You’re going to see the big man now, Gerhardt. This will only hurt a little, but it will clear your head.” Another injection; this time in the arm, delivered with clinical precision. “You mustn’t have a foggy head when you talk to the big man, Gerhardt. Are you feeling better? Are the cobwebs beginning to clear?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“That’s good. You mustn’t have cobwebs in your head when you talk to the big man. He wants to know e
verything that you know. He needs you sharp as a tack.”
“I’m thirsty.”
“I don’t doubt it. You’ve been a very busy boy the past few days. A very naughty boy too. I’m sure the big man will give you something to drink if you cooperate with him. If you don’t”—he shrugged his shoulder and stuck out his lower lip—“then it’s back down here, and this time my friend will use more than a little bit of water.”
“I’m cold.”
“I can imagine.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yes, I know you’re sorry. If you apologize to the big man and tell him everything you know, then he’ll get you something to drink and some warm clothes.”
“I want to talk to him.”
“Who do you want to talk to?”
“I want to talk to the big man.”
“Should we go upstairs and find him?”
“I’m sorry. I want to talk to the big man.”
“Let’s go, Gerhardt. Come, take my hand. Let me help you.”
42
MALLES VENOSTA, ITALY
GABRIEL WORE NEATLY PRESSED khaki trousers and a soft beige sweater that fit him smartly through the waist and shoulders. Everything about his appearance said comfort and satisfaction, the precise image he wished to convey. Eli Lavon shepherded Peterson into the room and pushed him into a hard, straight-backed chair. Peterson sat like a man before a firing squad, his gaze fixed on the wall.
Lavon showed himself out. Gabriel remained seated, eyes down. He was never one to celebrate victories. He knew better than most that in the business of intelligence, victories are often transitory. Occasionally, with time, they didn’t seem like victories at all. Still, he took a moment to relish the fine circular quality of the affair. Not long ago, Gabriel had been the one in custody and Peterson had been asking the questions—Peterson of the fitted gray suit and polished Swiss arrogance. Now he sat before Gabriel shivering in his underwear.
