She listened for a few moments and then said, “I can make a call.”

  “Only if it’s not too great an inconvenience,” said the man. “I would certainly never disturb you if it weren’t extremely important.”

  “Not at all. None of us wants this. Certainly not at this time.”

  She listened as he spoke some more, then said, “Well, we all trust you to do the right thing.”

  Another pause, and she added, “I’ll see you very soon,” and then hung up.

  Zurich

  An icy wind blew down the Limmatquai, the quay on the banks of the Limmat River. The Limmat cuts through the heart of Zurich before it flows into the Zurichsee, splitting the city into two distinct halves, one the Zurich of high finance and high-priced shopping, the other the Altstadt , the quaint medieval Old Town. The river twinkled in the soft early-morning sunlight. It wasn’t even six in the morning, but already people were striding to work, armed with briefcases and umbrellas. The sky was cloudy and overcast, though rain didn’t appear imminent. But the Zurichers knew better.

  Ben advanced tensely along the promenade, past the thirteenth-century Zunfthausen, the old guildhalls, with their leaded-glass windows, that now housed elegant restaurants. At Marktgasse he turned left, heading into the warren of narrow cobbled streets that was the Old Town. After a few minutes he found Trittligasse, a street lined with medieval stone buildings, some of which had been converted into dwellings.

  Number 73 was an ancient stone townhouse that was now an apartment building. A small brass frame mounted beside the front door held only six names, white letters embossed in black plastic rectangles.

  One of them was M. DESCHNER.

  He kept walking without slowing down, careful to evince no particular interest. Perhaps it was baseless paranoia, but if there was any chance that spotters for the Corporation were keeping a lookout for him, he did not want to jeopardize Liesl’s cousin by simply arriving at the door. The appearance of a strange visitor by itself might arouse curiosity. However remote the possibility that watchers were in place, rudimentary precautions would have to be taken.

  An hour later, a deliveryman in the distinctive orange and black uniform of Blümchengallerie rang the bell of Number 73 Trittligasse. The Blümchengallerie was Zurich’s most upscale florist chain, and its colorfully clad deliverymen were not an uncommon sight in the city’s wealthiest neighborhoods. The man held a sizable bouquet of white roses. The roses did, in fact, come from the Blümchengallerie; the uniform from the charity bazaar of a Catholic parish across town.

  After a few minutes, the man rang again. This time a voice crackled out of the speaker: “Yes?”

  “It’s Peter Hartman.”

  A long pause. “Again, please?”

  “Peter Hartman.”

  An even longer silence. “Come to the third floor, Peter.”

  With a buzz, the front door lock released, and he found himself in a dark foyer. Depositing the flowers on a marble side table, he climbed the worn stone stairs, which rose steeply through the gloom.

  Liesl had given him Matthias Deschner’s home and office addresses and phone numbers. Instead of calling the lawyer at his place of work, however, Ben had decided instead to appear unannounced at his home, early enough so that the attorney presumably wouldn’t have left for the office. The Swiss, he knew, are supremely regular in their business hours, which usually begin between nine and ten. Deschner would surely be no different.

  Liesl had said she trusted him—“totally,” she said—but he could not assume anything anymore. Therefore he had insisted that Liesl not call ahead to introduce him. Ben preferred to surprise the attorney, catch him off guard, observe his genuine, unrehearsed first reaction to meeting a man he believed to be Peter Hartman—or would Deschner already know of Peter’s murder?

  The door opened. Matthias Deschner stood before him in a green plaid bathrobe. He was small, with a pale craggy face, thick wire-rimmed glasses, reddish hair that frizzed out at the temples. Age fifty, Ben supposed.

  His eyes were wide with surprise. “Good God,” he exclaimed. “Why are you dressed this way? But don’t stand there—come in, come in.” He closed the door behind Ben and said, “May I offer you coffee?”

  “Thank you.”

  “What are you doing here?” Deschner whispered. “Is Liesl—?”

  “I’m not Peter. I’m his brother, Ben.”

  “You—what? His brother? Oh, my God!” he gasped. Deschner pivoted around and stared at Ben with sudden dread. “They found him, didn’t they?”

  “Peter was killed a few days ago.”

  “Oh, Lord,” he breathed. “Oh, Lord. They found him! He was always so afraid it would happen someday.” Deschner stopped suddenly, a look of terror striking his face. “Liesl—”

  “Liesl’s unharmed.”

  “Thank God.” He turned to Ben. “I mean, what am I saying—”

  “That’s all right. I understand. She’s your blood relative.”

  Deschner stood before a small breakfast table and poured Ben a china cup of coffee. “How did this happen?” he asked gravely. “Tell me, for God’s sake!”

  “Surely the bank where you had a meeting the morning of the Bahnhofstrasse incident was the tripwire,” Deschner said. The two of them faced each other intently across the table. Ben had peeled off the baggy orange and black uniform to reveal his ordinary street clothes. “The Union Bank of Switzerland is a merger of several older banks. Maybe there was an old, sensitive account that was flagged, being watched. Perhaps by one of the parties you met with. An assistant, a clerk. An informer who’d been given a watch list.”

  “Placed there by this corporation Liesl and Peter were talking about, or one of its offshoots?”

  “Quite possibly. All of the giant firms have long-standing, cozy relationships with the important Swiss banks. The complete list of founders will give us the names of suspects.”

  “Did Peter show you the list?”

  “No. At first he didn’t even tell me why he wanted to open an account. All I knew was that the account was monetarily insignificant. What he was really interested in was the vault that came with it. To keep some documents, he said. Do you mind if I smoke?”

  “It’s your house.”

  “Well, you know, you Americans are such fascists about smoking, if you’ll pardon the expression.”

  Ben smiled. “Not everyone.”

  Deschner pulled a cigarette from the pack of Rothmans next to his breakfast plate, lit it with a cheap plastic lighter. “Peter insisted that the account not be in his name. He was afraid—correctly, as it turned out—that his enemies might have contacts in the banks. He wanted to open it under a false name, but that’s no longer possible. The banks have tightened up here. A lot of pressure from the outside, mostly America. Back in the seventies our banks started demanding a passport when you opened an account. You used to be able to open an account by mail. No more.”

  “So did he have to open it under his real name?”

  “No. In my name. I’m the account holder, but Peter was what they call the ‘beneficial owner.’” He exhaled a plume of smoke. “We had to go in together to open the account, but Peter’s name appeared on one form only, known only to the account adviser. The Establishment of the Beneficial Owner’s Identity, it’s called. This form is kept locked away in the files.” In another room a telephone rang.

  “Which bank?”

  “I chose the Handelsbank Schweiz AG because it’s small and discreet. I’ve had clients who’ve happily done business with the Handelsbank, clients whose money is, shall we say, not entirely clean.”

  “So does this mean you can get into Peter’s vault for me?”

  “I’m afraid not. You’ll have to accompany me. As the specified beneficiary and heir of the beneficial owner.”

  “If it’s at all possible,” Ben said, “I’d like to go to the bank straightaway.” He remembered Schmid’s icy warnings that he was not to return—warnings that if he violated that agreement, he would be persona non grata, subject to immediate arrest.

  The phone kept ringing. Deschner crushed out his cigarette in a saucer. “Very well. If you don’t mind, I’d like to answer that phone. Then I must make a call or two, reschedule my nine-thirty appointment.”

  He went into an adjoining room, his study, and returned a few minutes later. “All right then, no problem. I was able to reschedule.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Certainly. The account adviser—that’s the banker, a senior vice president of the bank, Bernard Suchet—has all the relevant papers. He has a photocopy of Peter’s passport on file. They believe he has been dead for four years. So far as anyone knows, the recent … tragedy has not been reported. Your own identity will be easy to establish.”

  “My arrival in this country came through somewhat irregular means,” Ben said, choosing his words carefully. “My legal presence here cannot be verified through the normal passport, customs, and immigration systems. What happens if they alert the authorities?”

  “Let’s not think of all that can go wrong. Now, if I may finish dressing, we’re in business. Then let us go at once.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Anna whirled around to Captain Bolgorio. “What? The body was cremated? We had an agreement, dammit … !”

  The Paraguayan detective shrugged, hands spread, eyes wide with apparent concern. “Agent Navarro, please, let us discuss these things later, not in front of the bereaved—”

  Ignoring him, Anna turned back to the widow. “Were you told there would be an autopsy?” she demanded.

  “Don’t raise your voice to me,” Consuela Prosperi snapped. “I’m not a criminal.”

  Anna looked at Bolgorio, livid. “Did you know her husband’s body was going to be cremated?” Of course he knew, the bastard.

  “Agent Navarro, I told you, this is not my department.”

  “But did you know this or not?”

  “I have heard things. But I am a low man on the totem pole, please understand.”

  “Are we finished here?” Consuela Prosperi asked.

  “Not yet,” Anna said. “Were you pressured into a cremation?” she demanded of the widow.

  The widow said to Bolgorio. “Captain, please remove her from my house.”

  “My apologies, madame,” Bolgorio said. “Agent Navarro, we must go now.”

  “We’re not finished here,” Anna said calmly. “You were pressured, weren’t you?” She addressed Senora Prosperi. “What were you told—that your assets would be frozen, locked up, made inaccessible to you, unless you went along with this? Something like that?”

  “Remove her from my house, Captain!” the widow commanded, raising her voice.

  “Please, Agent Navarro—”

  “Señora,” Anna said, “let me tell you something. I happen to know that a significant portion of your assets is invested in hedge funds and other investment partnerships and equities in the U.S. and abroad. The U.S. government has the power to seize those assets if it suspects you of being part of an international criminal conspiracy.” She stood and walked toward the door. “I’m getting on the phone to Washington right now, and that’s precisely what I’m going to order.”

  From behind her, she heard the widow cry out, “She can’t do this, can she? You assured me my money was safe if I—”

  “Keep quiet!” the homicide detective barked suddenly. Startled, Anna turned back, and saw Bolgorio standing face to face with the widow. His obsequiousness had vanished. “I’ll handle this.”

  He strode toward Anna and grabbed her arm.

  Outside the front gates of the Prosperi estate, Anna demanded, “What are you covering up?”

  “You’d be wise to leave things alone here,” Bolgorio said. There was malevolence in his voice now, a gleaming assuredness she hadn’t seen before. “You’re a visitor here. You are not in your own country.”

  “How was it done? Were morgue orders ‘lost’ or ‘misfiled’? Did someone pay you off, is that how it happened?”

  “What do you know of the way things work in Paraguay?” Bolgorio said, moving uncomfortably close to her. She could feel his hot breath, the spray of spittle. “There are many things you don’t understand.”

  “You knew the body had been destroyed. From the moment I called you, I had a feeling. You knew there was no body waiting for me in the morgue. Just tell me this: were you ordered, or were you paid? Where did the request come from—from outside the government, or from above?”

  Bolgorio, unfazed, said nothing.

  “Who ordered the body destroyed?”

  “I like you, Agent Navarro. You’re an attractive woman. I do not want anything to happen to you.”

  He intended to frighten her, and unfortunately it was working. But she gave him only a blank look. “That’s not a very subtle threat.”

  “This is not a threat. I truly don’t want anything to happen to you. You need to listen to me, and then leave the country at once. There are people high up in our government who protect the Prosperis and others like them. Money changes hands, a great deal of it. You’ll accomplish nothing by putting your own life in peril.”

  Oh, she thought, you don’t know who you’re dealing with. Threatening me that way is like waving a red flag at a bull.

  “Did you order the cremation personally?”

  “It happened, that’s all I know. I told you, I’m not a powerful man.”

  “Then someone must know that Prosperi’s death wasn’t natural. Why else would they destroy the evidence?”

  “You are asking me questions I don’t know the answer to,” he said calmly. “Please, Agent Navarro. Please take care of your own safety. There are people here who prefer to keep things quiet.”

  “Do you think they—these ‘people who prefer to keep things quiet’—had Prosperi killed and didn’t want that revealed?”

  Bolgorio looked away, as if in contemplation. “I’ll deny I ever told you this. I called the nursing agency before you got here. When I knew you were investigating Prosperi’s death. That seemed to me the obvious place to ask questions.”

  “And?”

  “The substitute nurse—the one who was with Prosperi the night he died—she has vanished.”

  She felt her stomach plummet. I knew it was too easy, she thought.

  “How did this nurse come to the agency?”

  “She came with excellent credentials, they said. Her references checked out. She said she lived within walking distance of here, and if they had any assignments nearby … She did three different assignments, all in this area, and all very well. Suddenly, the regular night nurse assigned to Prosperi fell ill, and the substitute was available, and …”

  “They have no way to reach her?”

  “As I said, she disappeared.”

  “But her paychecks, her bank account—”

  “She was paid in cash. Not unusual in this country. Her home address was false. When we looked closely, everything about her was false. It was as if she had been created just for this occasion, like some stage set. And when the job had been accomplished, the set was struck.”

  “Sounds like a professional backstopping job. I want to talk to the nursing agency.”

  “You’ll learn nothing. And I will not help you do that. I’ve already told you too much. Please, leave at once. There are so many ways for an overly inquisitive foreigner to be killed here. Especially when very powerful people do not want things uncovered. Please—go.”

  She knew he was completely serious. This wasn’t just a threat. She was more stubborn than anyone she knew, and she hated giving up. But sometimes you just have to move on, she told herself. Sometimes the most important thing is just to stay alive.

  Zurich

  By the time Ben Hartman and Matthias Deschner were walking down the Löwenstrasse, it had begun to drizzle. The sky was steel gray. The linden trees that lined the street rustled in the wind. A steeple clock struck the hour of nine o’clock in a melodious chime. Trams passed by down the middle of the street—the 6, the 13, the 11—each stopping with a squeal. FedEx trucks seemed to be everywhere: Zurich was a world banking capital, Ben knew, and banking was a time-sensitive business. Bankers hurried to work beneath umbrellas. A couple of Japanese girls, tourists, giggled. Unpainted wooden benches sat unoccupied beneath the lindens.

  It drizzled, it stopped, it drizzled again. They came to a busy crosswalk where Lagerstrasse crossed the Löwenstrasse. A building that housed the Société de Banque Suisse stood empty, undergoing construction or renovation.

  A pair of stylishly unshaven Italian men in identical black leather jackets passed by, both smoking. Then a matron wafting Shalimar.

  On the next block Deschner, who was wearing an ill-fitting black raincoat over an ugly checked jacket, stopped at a white stone building, resembling a townhouse, on the front of which was mounted a small brass plaque. Engraved on it in graceful script were the words HANDELSBANK SCHWEIZ AG.

  Deschner pulled open the heavy glass door.

  Directly across the street, someone with the slender build of an adolescent was sitting at a café, under a red Coca-Cola parasol. He was wearing khaki cargo pants, a blue nylon backpack, and an MC Solaar T-shirt, and he was drinking an Orangina from the bottle. With languid movements, he flipped through a copy of a music magazine while speaking on a cell phone. From time to time he glanced at the entrance to the bank across the street.

  A set of glass doors slid open electronically. They stood for a moment between thick doors, and then with a low buzz, the next set slid open.

  The lobby of the Handelsbank was a large marble-floored chamber, completely empty except for a sleek black desk at the far end. A woman sat behind it, wearing a tiny wireless telephone headset, speaking quietly. She looked up as they entered.

  “Guten morgen,” she said. “Kann ich Ihnen helfen?”

  “Ja, guten morgen. Wir haben eine Verabredung mit Dr. Suchet.”