Ben drew a folded, grimy square of paper from his breast pocket and handed it to her. “Sorry, it’s a bit soiled. I’ve been keeping it in my shoe. To keep it out of the hands of people like you.”

  She perused it, frowning. “Max Hartman. Your father?”

  “Alas.”

  “Did he tell you about this corporation?”

  “No way. My brother came across it.”

  “But wasn’t your father a Holocaust survivor—?”

  “And now we come to the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

  “Wasn’t there some physical mark—a tattoo or something?”

  “A tattoo? At Auschwitz, yes. At Dachau, no.”

  She didn’t seem to be listening. “My God,” she said. “The string of mysterious homicides—every single name is here.” She seemed to be speaking to herself, not to him. “Rossignol … Prosperi … Ramago … they’re all here. No, they’re not all on my list. Some overlap, but …” She looked up. “What did you hope to learn from Rossignol?”

  What was she getting at? “I thought he might know why my brother was killed, and who did it.”

  “But he was himself killed before you got to him.”

  “So it seems.”

  “Did you look into this Sigma company, try to locate it, trace its history?”

  Ben nodded. “But I turned up nothing. Then again, maybe it never existed, if you know what I mean.” Seeing her frown, he went on. “A notional entity, like a shell company.”

  “What kind of shell company?”

  Ben shook his head. “I don’t know. Something involving American military intelligence, maybe.” He told her of Lenz’s worries.

  “I don’t think I buy it.”

  “Why not?”

  “I work for the government, don’t forget. The bureaucracy leaks like a sieve. They’d never be able to coordinate a series of murders without the world finding out.”

  “Then what do you figure the link is? Apart from the obvious, I mean.”

  “I’m not sure how much I can tell you.”

  “Look,” Ben said fiercely, “if we’re going to share information—if we’re going to help each other—you can’t hold back. You have to trust me.”

  She nodded, then seemed to come to a decision. “For one thing, they aren’t, or weren’t, janitors, believe me, none of them. They all had great, visible wealth, or most of them, anyway. The only one who lived modestly, at least that I saw, still had tons of money in the bank.” She told him about her investigation in general terms.

  “You said one of them worked for Charles Highsmith, right? So it’s as if you’ve got your titans here, and then the guys who work for them, their trusted lieutenants and whatnot. And back in 1945 or so, Allen Dulles is running clearances on them, because they’re all playing together, and Dulles doesn’t like to be surprised by his playmates.”

  “Which still leaves the larger question unanswered. What’s the game? Why was Sigma formed in the first place? For what?”

  “Maybe the explanation is simple,” Ben said. “Bunch of moguls got together in 1944, ’45, to siphon off a huge amount of money from the Third Reich. They divided up the spoils and got even richer. The way guys like that think, they probably told themselves they were reclaiming what was properly theirs.”

  She seemed perplexed. “O.K., but here’s what doesn’t fit. You’ve got people who, right up until their deaths just days ago, were receiving regular, large payments. Wire transfers into their bank accounts, in amounts ranging from a quarter-million to a half-million bucks.”

  “Wired from where?”

  “Laundered. We don’t know where the money originated; we only know the very last links in the chains—places like the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos.”

  “Haven countries,” Ben said.

  “Exactly. Beyond that, it’s impossible to get any information.”

  “Not necessarily,” Ben said. “Depends on who you know. And whether you’re willing to bend the law a little. Grease some palms.”

  “We don’t bend the law.” Agent Navarro said this with an almost haughty pride.

  “That’s why you don’t know shit about where the money came from.”

  She looked startled, as if he’d slapped her face. Then she laughed. “What do you know about laundering money?”

  “I don’t do it myself, if that’s what you’re thinking, but my company does have an offshore division that manages funds—to avoid taxes, government regulations, all that good stuff. Also, I’ve had clients who are very good at hiding their assets from people like you. I know people who can get information out of offshore banks. They specialize in it. Charge a fortune. They can dig up financial information anywhere in the world, all through their personal contacts, knowing who to pay off.”

  After a few seconds, she said, “How would you feel about working with me on this? Informally, of course.”

  Surprised, Ben asked, “What does that mean, exactly?”

  “Share information. We have an overlap of motivations. You want to know who killed your brother and why. I want to, know who’s been killing the old men.”

  Is she on the level? he wondered. Was this some kind of trick? What did she really want?

  “You think the murderers are one and the same? My brother and these men on that list of yours?”

  “I’m convinced of it now. All part of the same pattern, the same mosaic.”

  “What’s in it for me?” He looked at her boldly but softened it with a grin.

  “Nothing official, let me tell you that right up front. Maybe a little protection. Put it this way—they’ve already tried to kill you more than once. How long is your luck going to hold?”

  “And if I stick close to you, I’m safe?”

  “Safer, maybe. You got a better idea? You did come to my hotel, after all. Anyway, the cops took your gun, right?”

  True. “I’m sure you understand my reluctance—after all, until very recently you wanted me in prison.”

  “Look, feel free to go back to your hotel. Have a good night’s sleep.”

  “Point taken. You’re making a generous offer. Maybe one I’d be foolish to turn down. I—I don’t know.”

  “Well, sleep on it.”

  “Speaking of sleep—”

  Her eyes searched the room. “I—”

  “I’ll call down to the front desk and get myself a room.”

  “I doubt you’ll get one. There’s some conference here, and they’re booked to capacity. I got one of the last rooms available. Why don’t you sleep on the couch?”

  He gave her a quick look. Did the uptight Special Agent Navarro just invite him to spend the night in her room? No. He was deluding himself. Her body language, the unspoken signals, made it clear: she’d invited him here to hide out, not to slip into her bed.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “Just one thing: the couch is a little small, maybe a bit too short.”

  “I’ve slept on worse, believe me.”

  She got up, went to a closet, and found a blanket, handed it to him. “I can ask room service to bring up a toothbrush. In the morning we’re going to have to retrieve your clothes, your luggage, from your hotel.”

  “I don’t plan to go back.”

  “Definitely not a good idea. I’ll make arrangements.” She seemed to realize that she was standing a little too close, and she took a step backward, the gesture awkward. “Well, I’m going to turn in,” she said.

  He thought of something suddenly, an idea that had been teasing at the back of his mind since leaving Lenz’s villa. “The old Nazi hunter Jakob Sonnenfeld lives in this town, doesn’t he?”

  She turned toward him. “That sounds right.”

  “I read somewhere recently he may be ancient but he’s as sharp as ever. Plus, he’s supposed to have extensive files. I wonder …”

  “You think he’ll see you?”

  “I think it’s worth a try.”

  “Well, be careful if you do go. Take some security precautions. Don’t let anyone follow you there. For his sake.”

  “Hey, I’ll take any advice on that you want to give me.”

  While she got ready for bed, he called Bedford on his digital phone.

  Mrs. Walsh answered. She sounded agitated. “No, Benjamin, I haven’t heard a word. Not a word! He seems to have vanished without a trace. I’ve—well, I’ve brought the police in on this. I’m at my wits’ end!”

  Ben felt a dull headache starting: the tension, which for a while had abated, had returned. Rattled, he mumbled a few empty words of reassurance, disconnected the call, took off his jacket, and hung it on the back of the desk chair. Then, still dressed in his slacks and shirt, he settled onto the sofa and pulled the blanket over him.

  What did this mean, his father’s disappearing without leaving a word? He had voluntarily gotten into a limousine; it wasn’t a kidnapping. Presumably he knew where he was going.

  Which was where?

  He struggled to get comfortable on the couch, but Navarro was right, it was just an inch or two too short for comfort. He saw her sitting up in bed reading a file by the light of the bed lamp. Her soft brown eyes were caught by the pool of light.

  “Was that about your father?” she asked. “I’m sorry, I know I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping, but—”

  “It’s O.K. Yeah, my father vanished a few days ago. Got in a limousine to the airport and was never heard from again.”

  She put down the file, sat up straight. “That’s a possible kidnapping. Which makes it federal business.”

  He swallowed, his mouth dry. Could he really have been abducted?

  “Tell me what you know,” she said.

  The phone jangled some hours later, awakening them both.

  Anna picked it up. “Yes?”

  “Anna Navarro?”

  “Yes, who’s this?”

  “Anna, I’m Phil Ostrow, from the American embassy here. I hope I’m not calling you too late.” A flat Midwestern American accent with Chicagoan vowels.

  “I had to get up to answer the phone anyway,” she said dryly. “What can I do for you?” What State Department hack called at midnight?

  “I—well, Jack Hampton suggested I call.” He paused significantly.

  Hampton was an operations manager for the CIA, and someone who had done Anna more than one assist on a previous assignment. A good man, as straightforward as you could be in an oblique business. She recalled Bartlett’s words about the “crooked timber of humanity.” But Hampton wasn’t built that way.

  “I have some information about the case you’re working.”

  “What’s your—Who are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

  “I’d rather not get into all that over the phone. I’m a colleague of Jack’s.”

  She knew what that meant: CIA. Hence the Hampton connection. “What’s your information, or would you rather not get into that either?”

  “Let’s just say it’s important. Can you come by the office tomorrow morning, first thing? Seven too early for you?” What could it be that was so urgent? she wondered.

  “You guys do start early, don’t you? Yeah, I guess I can.”

  “All right—tomorrow morning, then. You been to the office before?”

  “Embassy?”

  “Across the street from the consular section.”

  He gave her directions. She hung up, puzzled. From across the room Ben said, “Everything O.K.?”

  “Yeah,” she said unconvincingly. “Everything’s fine.”

  “We can’t stay here, you know.”

  “Correct. Tomorrow we should both move.”

  “You seem worried, Agent Navarro.”

  “I’m always worried,” she said. “I live my life worried. And call me Anna.”

  “I never used to worry much,” he said. “Good night, Anna.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  It was the sound of a blow-dryer that awakened Ben; after a few groggy moments, he realized that he was in a hotel room in Vienna, and that his back ached from a night on the couch.

  He craned his neck forward, heard the satisfying crack of vertebrae, felt some welcome relief from the stiffness.

  The bathroom door opened and light flooded half the room. Anna Navarro was dressed in a tweedy brown suit, a little dowdy but not unbecoming, and her face was made up.

  “I’ll be back in an hour or so,” she said crisply. “Go back to sleep.”

  Directly across the street from the consular section of the U.S. embassy, just as Ostrow had described, was a drab modern office building. The placard in the lobby listed a number of U.S. and Austrian business offices, and on the eleventh floor, sure enough, the Office of the United States Trade Representative—the cover for the Vienna office of the CIA. Such feelers from agencies she was investigating were far from unusual; they’d sometimes resulted in her best leads.

  Anna entered an unremarkable reception area, where a young woman sat at a government-issue desk, beneath the Great Seal of the United States, answering the phone and typing at a computer keyboard. She didn’t look up. Anna introduced herself, and the receptionist pressed a button and announced her.

  In less than a minute a man with the pallor of a bureaucratic lifer bustled out. His cheeks were acne-scarred and sunken, his hair graying auburn. His eyes were small and gray behind large wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Miss Navarro?” he said, thrusting out a hand. “I’m Phil Ostrow.”

  The receptionist buzzed them through the door from which he had appeared, and Ostrow guided her to a small conference room where a slender, darkly handsome man was sitting at a fake-wood-grain Formica-topped table. He had bristling, brush cut black hair salted with gray, brown eyes, long black lashes. Late thirties, maybe, Middle Eastern. Ostrow and Anna sat on either side of him.

  “Yossi, this is Anna Navarro. Anna, Yossi.”

  Yossi’s face was tanned, the lines around his eyes deeply etched, whether from squinting in the sun or from a life of great stress. His chin was square and cleft. There was something almost pretty about his face, though it was masculinized by his weathered skin and a day-old growth of beard.

  “Good to meet you, Yossi,” she said.

  She nodded warily, unsmiling; he did the same. He did not offer his hand.

  “Yossi’s a case officer—you don’t mind my telling her that much, do you, Yossi?” said Ostrow. “He works under deep commercial cover here in Vienna. A good setup. He emigrated to the States from Israel when he was in his late teens. Now everyone assumes he’s an Israeli—which means every time he gets into trouble, someone else gets the blame.” Ostrow chuckled.

  “Ostrow, enough—no more,” Yossi said. He spoke in a gruff baritone, his English accented with guttural Hebrew R’s. “Now, we should understand each other: a number of men all around the world have been found dead in the last few weeks. You are investigating these deaths. You know these are murders, but you do not know who is behind them.”

  Anna gazed at him dully.

  “You interrogated Benjamin Hartman at the Sicherheitsbüro. And you’ve been in close contact with him since. Yes?”

  “Where are you going with this?”

  Ostrow spoke. “We’re making an official interagency request that you remand Hartman to our custody.”

  “What the hell … ?”

  “You’re over your head here, Officer.” Ostrow returned her gaze levelly.

  “I’m not following you.”

  “Hartman’s a security risk. A two-woman man, O.K.?”

  Anna recognized the agency slang—it referred to double agents, American assets who had been recruited by hostile parties. “I don’t understand. Are you saying that Hartman’s one of yours?” That was madness. Or was it? It would explain how he was able to travel through European countries without alerting passport control, among other things that had puzzled her. And wouldn’t his cover as an international financier lend itself to all sorts of agency work? The named scion of a well-known financial outfit—no concocted legend could ever be as versatile and as persuasive.

  Yossi and Ostrow exchanged glances. “Not one of ours, exactly.”

  “No? Then whose?”

  “Our theory is that he’s been on retainer from someone in our outfit who’s been freelancing, let’s say. We could be talking false-flag recruitment.”

  “You bring me here and talk to me about theories?”

  “We need him back on American soil. Please, Agent Navarro. You really don’t know who you’re dealing with here.”

  “I’m dealing with someone who’s confused about a number of things. And who’s still in shock from the death of his twin brother—killed, he believes.”

  “We know all about it. Hasn’t it occurred to you that he may have killed him, too?”

  “You’re joking.” The imputation was incredible, and terrible; could it be true?

  “What do you really know about Benjamin Hartman?” Ostrow demanded testily. “I’ll ask another question. What do you know about how your list of targets started to make the rounds? Information doesn’t want to be free, Agent Navarro. Information wants to command top dollar, and someone like Benjamin Hartman has the wherewithal to pay it.”

  Grease some palms: Hartman’s words.

  “But why? What’s his agenda?”

  “We’re never going to find out so long as he’s cavorting around Europe, are we?” Ostrow paused. “Yossi hears things from his former compatriots. Mossad has caseworkers in this town, too. There’s a possible connection with your victims.”

  “A splinter group?” she asked. “Or are you talking about the Kidon?” She meant the assassination unit of Mossad.

  “No. It is nothing official. It is private business.”

  “Involving Mossad agents?”

  “And some freelancers they hire.”

  “But these murders aren’t Mossad signature killings.”

  “Please,” Yossi said, his face creasing with distaste. “Don’t be naive. You think my brethren all the time are leaving their business cards? When they want to be credited, sure. Come on!”

  “So then they don’t want to be credited.”

  “Of course not. Is too sensitive. Potentially can be explosive in the current climate. Israel doesn’t want to be connected.”