Assassin's Game (26 page)

“If you were not always so miserable I would come more often.”

For the first time her eyes engaged him directly. “A letter arrived last week from your mentor in Hamburg.”

“Dr. Bohrlund?”

“Yes. He said the man who took that position you turned down at the university—he has not worked out. They are searching for a replacement, and Bohrlund thinks the post could be yours if—”

“Enough! I will not hear this again!”

“And I will not listen to weak excuses of what you now do!” she said defiantly. “You had such promise, Ibrahim! In Europe you could have taught science and done worthy research. You could have made the world something better. Instead you’ve sold yourself to this madness.”

“I have sold nothing. What I do, I do in the name of peace.” Hamedi looked across the room and saw the shoulder of one of the guards. The man would have no trouble hearing their raised voices. He said in a quieter tone, “You are my mother, but you are not worldly. I don’t expect you to understand my work or what will come from its success. But someday you will accept my decisions.”

After a prolonged silence, she said, “So why have you come here then? To torment me?”

Hamedi eased himself into his father’s familiar old chair. “I am going to Switzerland soon on business. Is there something you would like? That soap I used to bring or some chocolate?”

She snorted. “Don’t bother yourself.”

Hamedi heaved a sigh and surveyed the small room. His boyhood was all around him, and he felt a peculiar discomfort in having brought the guards here—it was as if they were violating the one place in Iran where he had ever felt safe. He said, “There is something else I could do for you. I could…” Hamedi hesitated mightily, “I could get you a better place to live.”

His mother’s eyes narrowed severely. “A
better
place to live? You mean a place that is away from my friends? Something new and clean, with no marks on the wall or stains on the curtains? One without memories? Or perhaps you only want your old mother in a safer neighborhood, one without so many undesirables.”

“I am not without influence, Mother. I could get you a house with a garden in Hashtgerd. It’s a nice place—many of the high-ranking military officers and Majlis live there.”

She stared at him incredulously. “The Majlis you say?”

Hamedi paused, waiting for her predicted disgust to pass. The big shoulder was still there. “Or … I still have the apartment in Hamburg. Perhaps you could go there, even for a short stay. I could arrange a flight for you to—”

“Enough!” she shouted. “This is where your father died, and this is where I will die, God willing.”

Hamedi was suddenly sorry he had come. He should not have expected different, but it was a pain he had not felt in a year. He rose from his father’s old chair and raised his voice. “Very well! I came to offer my help, but I will take no more of your misery. I’m sorry you consider me such a disappointment, but I will never regret the course I have chosen. Remember that, old woman!”

He strode to the door.

“Ibrahim—” she called.

Hamedi hesitated, almost turned. But then he strode ahead and his two shadows fell in place behind. Seconds later his convoy was under way, churning down the dust-laden street. He supposed her face was there in the window—as always, the cleanest window on Khorrami Street.

Hamedi did not look back.

*   *   *

The matter of entering Switzerland from Germany was something to think through. Slaton knew that with the adoption of the Schengen Area, Switzerland no longer staffed border control points on roads leading into the country. Equally, rail and bus service were not regularly monitored. But this was not an absolute—customs officers had full authority to stop anyone entering the country, and they randomly patrolled trains to ask for identification and search baggage. Carrying no identity papers whatsoever, Slaton was not keen to travel in a vehicle of any sort. On the other hand, he was facing a firm deadline—an appointment to kill a man in four days’ time. The latter forced his hand, and he decided that with the precautions of good tradecraft, it would be best to take the train straight through.

Two and a half hours after leaving Munich, the Intercity Express breached the Swiss border near the town of Bregenz, Austria, and crossed the Rhine to afford a sweeping view of Lake Constance. An announcement was made over the public address system regarding the border crossing, but Slaton saw no customs officers, and neither he nor any of the other passengers bothered to reference the folding cards in the seat pockets that served as official notice, in three languages, of the duties, laws, and responsibilities assumed by those entering Switzerland.

The annuity salesman, still at his opportunistic best, had begun chatting up a thickset man across the aisle. Slaton saw the old peddler pull out his wallet, ostensibly to produce a business card, but also managing to put on display an inset photograph of his lovely wife and two daughters. It occurred to Slaton that he had never in his life kept such a picture in his wallet, even in his recent “domestic period” as Christine called it. Would it ever happen? Would a day come when he could walk through the world without the specter of entangling his wife, and now their child, in his violent past? In the last year he had covered much new ground. He had paid a water bill and opened a credit account, albeit under the alias of Edmund Deadmarsh. For the first time in years he kept a legitimate home address, if one discounted the dusty storage facility in Tel Aviv where a few inherited household items had been moldering for years. Yet now he was slipping back, returning to the abyss.

As the train continued westward, the great slabs that were the Alps dominated the horizon, their crests already aswirl in winter clouds and new snow. Slaton shut his eyes, needing to rest, but also in case any promotion-minded customs officer suddenly appeared in the aisle. Yet if his body was still, his thoughts were less so. He was heading for Geneva and an assassination, searching for a course that would solve all his problems. Yet like any gamble, the coin could equally land against him. If that happened, if he lost control, he might lose Christine forever. At the moment there was only one option—Slaton had to keep moving forward. Keep searching for a way out.

With a change of trains, he could be in Geneva by early afternoon. He would not, however, go that far today. The man he was to kill might soon be in Geneva—but the money was in Zurich.

*   *   *

At 3:15 that same afternoon, as the
kidon
was spanning Switzerland, Arne Sanderson pulled up to the building labeled Magnussen Air Charters in Oxelösund. He parked his car, and through a drizzle-obscured windshield saw an airplane at the dock with the registration number Rolf had given him: S325P.

A slightly built woman was tending to something in the cockpit. Sanderson got out of his car, shrugged his collar higher, and walked over to announce himself. “Excuse me—may I have a word?”

The woman, who was standing precariously on one of the floats, leaned outside.

“I’m Detective Inspector Sanderson, Stockholm police.” He flashed his old Interpol credentials and she glanced at them.

“It’s about damned time!” she said.

“Sorry?”

“I called the local boys this morning. Told them I’d had some trouble.”

The woman stepped onto the dock and offered a hand. “Janna Magnussen.”

“Yes, good to meet you,” Sanderson replied. “What kind of trouble did you report?”

“A hijacking, of course.”

Sanderson blinked, caught off-guard. “You mean an air hijacking? As in when someone forcibly takes control of your airplane?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe we should start at the beginning.”

Janna Magnussen’s eyes twinkled. “Yes, that might be for the best.” She looked up at the inclement sky, and said, “Why don’t you come inside, Inspector.”

THIRTY-ONE

In the office they stood split by a navigation table where a map of Sweden was pressed under a scarred sheet of Plexiglas. Sanderson saw that various points around the country, mostly remote lakes and coves, had been circled with markers and then connected by lines to Magnussen Air Charter’s Oxelösund hub.

“He hired me out for a charter,” she said. “I took him out Monday morning and dropped him on an island. Picked him up at the same place yesterday morning.”

“What did he look like?”

Her description left no doubt in Sanderson’s mind—they were talking about Deadmarsh.

“Where exactly did you drop him?”

Magnussen referenced the map and pointed to the cove on Bulleron Island. She described her delivery and the next day’s pickup, then circling over Stockholm while Deadmarsh threw mobile phones out the window. She told him about the gun and a forced flight to the German coastline. Her story rang true to Sanderson, and at the end he was left with two questions.

“Do you know who he met on that island?”

“He told me it was his wife. She had a sailboat.”

Again, this made perfect sense. Sanderson asked, “And where did you drop him off yesterday?”

Magnussen pulled a different chart from a cabinet and unfurled it on the table. Sanderson saw that it covered the Baltic and northern Europe.

She tapped her finger on a spot high on the German coastline. “Right here. It was nearly dusk last night.”

“When did you arrive back here?” he asked.

“About ten o’clock last night.”

“And you waited until this morning before making a report to the authorities?”

“I was rather shaken last night.”

Sanderson said nothing.

“Even when I called this morning I don’t think the constable believed what I was telling him. You have to admit, it sounds rather fantastic. He asked if I’d been drinking—which I have been known to do.”

“You shouldn’t have waited,” Sanderson said. “To not immediately report something like this is a crime in itself.”

“It’s also a crime to impersonate a police officer.”

For the second time in a matter of minutes, she had him off-balance.

Magnussen gave a wry smile. “Your credentials expired years ago, Inspector. I have very good eyesight.”

“And I have very little patience for games. This man is dangerous. Did he offer you money? Is that why you’ve given him a head start?”

“Possibly. But I could also say I felt threatened. He shot my airplane—I can show you the damage.”

“Anything else?”

She cocked her head to one side. “In all honesty—I rather liked him.”

Sanderson leaned forward on the table, feeling suddenly weak.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Yes, I … I’m fine.”

She looked at him doubtfully, then said, “So now you know my story. But what are
you
doing here?”

“I’m a policeman.”

“Not according to your paperwork.”

“All right, I’ll grant you that. I’m here unofficially. Until recently I was heading up the search for this man. I was put off the case for a medical issue, but I don’t like leaving things unfinished.”

“I know who he is,” Magnussen said. “I’ve been watching the news reports—all that uproar in Stockholm.”

Sanderson nodded.

“So where do we go from here?” she asked. “Will you call back to headquarters and tell them everything I’ve said? Or would that put you in an awkward position?”

He said nothing.

Magnussen took a rag and began erasing a line on her map. “We’re both in a fix, aren’t we, Inspector?”

“Perhaps we could adopt a broader view,” said a circumspect Sanderson. “You were abducted by this man. He threatened you at gunpoint, so you felt intimidated for a time. But eventually you called the police. I don’t see that you’ve done much wrong.”

“Even if he were going to send me money? That’s what you suggested.”

“Did I? I’d already forgotten about that. My memory isn’t what it used to be.”

“Would you vouch for all this?” she asked.

“I might. Under the right circumstances.”

“Which are?”

Sanderson told her.

Janna Magnussen gave him a wide grin “You know, Inspector—I think I’m beginning to like you as well.”

*   *   *

For two hundred years Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse has been the recognized financial center of Switzerland. It is where banking icons Credit Suisse and UBS have long made their homes, housed in buildings that are as solid and enduring as the Alps, yet muted with just enough architectural vagueness to give clients—they are never called customers—the impression that while their money is unerringly present, it is not necessarily accounted for. The balance of the street’s tenants are a more candid bunch. Gucci, Coach, and Cartier are all here, and their sales staffs clearly well fed. Bahnhofstrasse is clean, safe, and polished. There is not a crack in the sidewalk to catch a Christian Louboutin heel, and the shells dropped by squirrels onto the heads of tolerant passersby are soon swept clear. It is a place with a great many attributes. What it does not have is public phones.

For a two euro tip, Slaton made his call from the bar of a waking basement nightclub. He dialed a number he had memorized years ago, and it was answered efficiently, almost certainly by the same woman he’d spoken with the last time he’d called.

“Krueger Wealth Management.”

“Yes,” Slaton said, “I’d like to make an appointment with Herr Krueger.”

“Are you an existing client, sir?”

“I am. The name is Natan Mendelsohn. Please inform Herr Krueger that I will join him for dinner this evening at Il Dolce. Seven o’clock.”

A hesitation. “Sir, Herr Krueger is already committed this evening to meet a long-standing client who—”

“Just give him the name, the time, and the place. He will see me. And tell him to please bring the package he’s been holding.”

Slaton did not wait for a reply.

*   *   *

Arne Sanderson did not like airplanes. He particularly did not like small airplanes. Small airplanes that took off and landed on the sea, in his mind, were a clear defilement of physical laws.

All the same, here he was.

They had taken off three hours earlier, Sanderson watching the Swedish coastline slip in and out of view amid the clouds until it disappeared completely. Since then Magnussen had been flying on instruments in heavy weather. In a way Sanderson was happy, because the gray shroud around them gave no perception of height or speed or movement—they were simply floating in a bubble of moisture with no sense of up or down.