The Sigma Protocol (20 page)

“I imagine those kinds of security precautions became second nature to you and Peter,” he said. “Peter told me it was you who devised his fake death. That was brilliant.”

“If it was so brilliant,” she said mordantly, “they’d never have found him again.”

“No. I blame myself for that. I should never have come to Switzerland, brought them out of the woodwork.”

“But how could you have
known?
You didn’t think Peter was
alive
!” She turned to face him.

Her skin was pale, almost translucent, her hair chestnut with golden highlights. She was slender, with perfect smallish breasts under a simple white blouse. She was extravagantly beautiful.

No wonder Peter had been willing to give up everything else in his life to spend it with her. Ben felt a powerful attraction, but he knew he would never act on it.

“You don’t go by your real name,” he said.

“Of course not. All of my friends here know me by another name. It’s legally changed. Margarethe Hubli was the name of a great-aunt, actually. All they knew about Peter was that he was a boyfriend, a Canadian writer I was supporting. They knew him under a different name, too…”

Her words trailed off, and she fell silent, once again staring out the window. “He kept up some of his contacts, though, the ones he trusted. He called them his ‘early warning system.’ And then a few days ago, when he got a call telling him about the bloodbath at the Bahnhofstrasse…He understood what had happened. I begged him not to do anything. But no, he insisted on it! He said he had no choice.” Her face had twisted into
an expression of contempt, her voice a wail. Ben’s heart was squeezed.

She went on in a small, choked voice, “He had to protect you. Persuade you to get out of the country. He had to save your life even if it meant putting his own in danger. Oh, God, I warned him not to go. I begged,
pleaded
with him.”

Ben took her hand. “I’m so sorry.” What could he say, really? That he was anguished beyond words that Peter had to die instead of himself? That he wished it was the other way around? That he had loved Peter for far longer than she had?

She said softly, “I can’t even claim his body, can I?”

“No. Neither of us can.”

She swallowed. “Peter loved you so much, you know.”

It was painful to hear. He winced. “We fought a lot. I guess it’s like that law of physics, about how every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

“You two didn’t just look alike, you
were
alike.”

“Not really.”

“Only a twin would say that.”

“You don’t know me. Temperamentally, emotionally, we were totally different.”

“Maybe in the way that two snowflakes are different. They’re still snowflakes.”

Ben smiled appreciatively. “I’m not sure I’d call the two of us snowflakes. We were always too much trouble.”

Something in that set her off again. Now she was weeping, her agony heartbreaking. “Oh, God, why did they have to kill him? For
what
? To what
end
? He would never talk, he was no fool!”

Ben waited patiently until she found some composure. “Peter told me he found a document, a list of names. Twenty-three names of high-ranking statesmen
and industrialists. ‘Companies you’ve heard of,’ he said. He said it was an incorporation document, setting up some organization in Switzerland.”

“Yes.”

“You saw the document.”

“I did.”

“It seemed genuine to you?”

“From what I could tell, yes. All the markings, even the typewriting, looked like papers I’ve seen from the 1940s.”

“Where is it now?”

She pursed her lips. “Just before we left Zurich for good, he opened a bank account. He said it was mostly for the vault the bank would rent him. He wanted to keep papers in it. I don’t know for sure, but I’d guess he must have put it there.”

“Is it possible he hid it at home, in your cabin?”

“No,” she said quickly, “there is nothing hidden in our cabin.”

Ben made a mental note of her reaction. “Did he leave a key to this vault?”

“No.”

“If the account was in his name, wouldn’t these, these bad guys have ways of learning about its existence?”

“That is why he didn’t open it in his name. It’s in the name of an attorney.”

“Do you remember who?”

“Of course. My cousin, Dr. Matthias Deschner. Actually, he’s my second cousin. A distant relative, distant enough that no one would connect him with us—with me. But he’s a good man, a trustworthy man. His office is in Zurich, on St. Annagasse.”

“You trust him.”

“Totally. I trusted him with our lives, after all. He never betrayed us; he never would.”

“If people today, people with influence and power and far-reaching contacts, are so desperate to get this document, it must be extremely important.” Ben’s mind abruptly filled with a horrific image of Peter’s crumpled body gouting blood. His chest was so tight he couldn’t breathe. He thought:
Peter was in the way, and they killed him
.

“They must be afraid their names will get out,” she said.

“But which of them can be alive after all these years?”

“There are also the inheritors. Powerful men can have powerful successors.”

“And some who aren’t so powerful. There must be a weak link somewhere.” Ben broke off. “It’s
madness
, all of this. The idea that anyone would care about a corporation set up half a century ago—it just sounds
insane!
”

Liesl laughed, bitterly, without mirth. “It’s all relative, isn’t it, this question of what makes sense and what does not? How much of your own well-ordered life makes sense any longer?”

A week ago, he was spending his days in the “development” department of Hartman Capital Management, cultivating old clients and new prospects, flashing on his charm like high beams. It was no longer a world he could inhabit; so much of what he’d grown up knowing was a lie, part of a larger deception he could scarcely hope to penetrate.
Cavanaugh was assigned to you
, Peter had said. The Corporation—this Sigma group, whatever it was—seemed to have operatives everywhere. Was that why his mother had been so insistent that he return to the family firm after Peter’s death? Had she believed that he would be safer there, protected from dangers, from threats, from
truths
he could only begin to fathom?

“Did Peter ever learn anything more about this Sigma Corporation? About whether it had an ongoing existence?”

She pushed her hair back nervously, her bracelets jingling. “We learned very little that was concrete. So much remained conjecture. What we believe—
believed
—is that there are shadowy corporations and private fortunes that are devoted to erasing their origins. They’re ruthless, these firms, as are the men funded by these companies. They’re not troubled by such details as morality. Once they learned, somehow, that Peter had a paper that could reveal their involvement in Sigma, or that of their fathers—maybe expose these complicated corporate arrangements that were made during the war—once they learned this, they didn’t hesitate to kill him. They will not hesitate to kill you, or me. Or anyone else who threatens to expose them or stop them, or who simply
knows
too much about their existence. But Peter also came to believe that these individuals had gathered together for larger purposes. To… orchestrate matters in the world at large.”

“But when Peter and I spoke, he merely speculated that some of the old board members were protecting their own fortunes.”

“If he had had time, he would have told you more of his theories.”

“Did he ever talk about our father?”

She grimaced. “Only that he was a hypocrite and a world-class liar, that he was no Holocaust survivor. That he was actually a member of the SS.” She added sardonically: “Apart from that, of course, Peter loved him.”

He wondered whether the irony didn’t conceal a kernel of truth. “Listen, Liesl, I need you to tell me how to get in touch with your cousin, the lawyer. Deschner—”

“Matthias Deschner. But for what?”

“You know why. To get the document.”

“I said, for
what?
” She sounded bitter. “So you can be killed too?”

“No, Liesl. I don’t plan to be killed.”

“Then you must have some idea of why you must have this document that I can’t possibly think of.”

“Maybe so. I want to expose the killers.”

He braced himself for an angry barrage, but was surprised when she answered quietly, serenely: “You wish to avenge his death.”

“Yes.”

Tears sprang to her eyes. Her mouth was contorted, twisted downward, as if to hold back another spell of weeping. “Yes,” she said. “If you’ll do it—if you’re careful—as careful as you were in coming here—nothing would make me happier. Expose them, Ben. Make them pay.” She pinched her nose between thumb and forefinger. “Now I must go home. I must say good-bye.”

She seemed outwardly serene, but Ben could still detect the underlying fear. She was a strong and remarkable woman, a rock.
I’ll do it for me and for you, too
, he thought.

“Good-bye, Liesl,” Ben said, kissing her on the cheek.

“Good-bye, Ben,” Liesl said as he got out of the car. She looked at him for a long time. “Yes, make them pay.”

Asunción, Paraguay

The taxi from the airport was a rattling old Volkswagen Beetle, not as charming as it had first appeared. It seemed to have no muffler. They passed graceful Spanish colonial mansions before entering the traffic-choked downtown, tree-lined streets crowded with pedestrians, antique yellow trolley cars. There were more Mercedes-Benzes than she’d ever seen outside of Germany, many of them, she knew, stolen. Asunción seemed frozen in the 1940s. Time had passed it by.

Her hotel downtown was a small, shabby place on Colón. Her guidebook had awarded it three stars. Evidently, the guidebook’s author had been paid off. The reception clerk warmed to her considerably when she began speaking to him in fluent Spanish.

Her room had high ceilings and peeling walls, and, since its windows opened on to the street, was incredibly loud. At least she had a private bathroom. But if you wanted to keep a low profile, you didn’t stay where the gringos stayed.

She drank an
agua con gas
from the “honor bar,” a minuscule refrigerator that barely cooled its contents, then called the number she’d been given for the
Comisaria Centrico
, the main police station.

This was no official contact. Captain Luis Bolgorio was a homicide investigator for the Paraguayan
policía
who had sought the American government’s help by telephone on a few murder cases. Anna had obtained his name, outside channels, from a friend in the FBI. Bolgorio owed the U.S. government a few favors; that was the extent of his loyalty.

“You are in luck, Miss Navarro,” Captain Bolgorio said when they spoke again. “The widow has agreed to see you, even though she’s in mourning.”

“Wonderful.” They spoke in Spanish, the language of business; the everyday language here was Guaraní. “Thanks for your assistance.”

“She’s a wealthy and important lady. I hope you’ll treat her with the greatest respect.”

“Of course. The body…?”

“This isn’t my department, but I’ll arrange for you to pay a visit to the police morgue.”

“Excellent.”

“The house is on the Avenida Mariscal López. Can you find your way there in a taxi, or do you need me to pick you up?”

“I can get a taxi.”

“Very well. I’ll have the records with me that you asked for. When shall we meet?”

She arranged with the concierge for a cab, then spent the next hour reading through the file on the “victim”—though she had difficulty thinking of such a criminal as a victim.

She knew that the manila file folder Alan Bartlett had provided her was probably all the information she was going to get. Captain Bolgorio was helping only because the occasional technological assistance he got from the U.S. government’s NCAV bolstered his own success here, made him look good. One hundred percent quid pro quo. Bolgorio had arranged to have Pros-peri’s body held in the morgue.

According to Bartlett, Paraguay was notoriously uncooperative
on extradition cases and had been a popular refuge for war criminals and other international fugitives for decades. Its odious and corrupt dictator, “President for life” General Alfredo Stroessner, had seen to it. There had been some hope for improvement after Stroessner was toppled in 1989. But no. Paraguay remained unreceptive to extradition requests.

So it was an ideal place of residence for an aging villain like Marcel Prosperi. A Corsican by birth, Marcel Prosperi essentially ran Marseilles during and after World War II, controlling the heroin, prostitution, and weapons dealings there. Shortly after the war ended, as the ICU file detailed, he escaped to Italy, then Spain, and later Paraguay. Here, Prosperi set up the South American distribution network for heroin out of Marseilles—the so-called “French connection” responsible for putting snow-white Marseilles heroin on the streets of the United States, in collaboration with the American Mafia drug-kingpin Santo Trafficante, Jr., who controlled much of the heroin traffic into the U.S. Prosperi’s accomplices, Anna knew, included some of Paraguay’s highest officials. All of this meant that he was a very dangerous man, even after death.

In Paraguay, Prosperi maintained a respectable front business—the ownership of a chain of automobile dealerships. For the last several years, however, he had been bedridden. Two days ago, he had died.

As she dressed for her meeting with the widow Prosperi, Anna mulled over the details of the Prosperi and Mailhot cases. Whatever she found out from the widow, or from the autopsy, she was willing to bet that Marcel Prosperi didn’t die of natural causes, either.

But whoever was murdering these men was resourceful, well connected, clever.

The fact that each of the victims had been in Alan Bartlett’s Sigma files was significant, but what did it
reveal? Were there others who had access to the names attached to those files—whether in the Justice Department, in the CIA, or in foreign countries? Had the list somehow been leaked?