“Give me a break.”

  “That’s my hot tamale,” Hampton teased, relaxing further.

  “Screw you. Listen, before all this shit fell from the sky, I had a meeting with your friend Phil Ostrow …”

  “Ostrow?” Hampton said, guardedly. “Where?”

  “In Vienna.”

  There was a flare of anger: “What are you trying to pull, Navarro?”

  “Wait a minute. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Something in her voice gave him pause. “Are you shitting me, or was somebody shitting you?”

  “Ostrow’s not attached to Vienna station?” she asked hesitantly.

  “He’s on O-15.”

  “Help me out here.”

  “That means he’s kept officially on the lists, but he’s really on leave. Sow confusion among the bad guys that way. Diabolical, what?”

  “On leave how?”

  “He’s been stateside for a few months now. Depression, if you want to know. He had episodes in the past, but it got real bad. He’s actually been hospitalized at Walter Reed.”

  “And that’s where he is now.” Anna’s scalp became tight; she tried to quell a rising sense of anxiety.

  “That’s where he is now. Sad but true. One of those wards where all the nurses have security clearances.”

  “If I said Ostrow was a short guy, grayish-brownish hair, pale complexion, wire-rim glasses … ?”

  “I’d tell you to get your prescription checked. Ostrow looks like an aging surfer bum—tall, slim, blond hair, the works.”

  Several seconds of silence ensued.

  “Anna, what the hell is going on with you?”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Stunned, she sat back on the bed.

  “What’s wrong?” Ben asked.

  “I really can’t get into it.”

  “If it concerns the business we’re both working on—”

  “It doesn’t. Not this. Those bastards!”

  “What happened?”

  “Please,” she exclaimed. “Let me think!”

  “Fine.” Looking irritated, Ben took his digital phone from the pocket of his jacket.

  She thought: No wonder “Phil Ostrow” had called her late at night—when it was too late to call the American embassy and check out his bona fides. But then who was it she’d met with at CIA station?

  Was it in fact CIA station?

  Who were “Ostrow” and “Yossi”?

  She heard Ben speaking quickly in French. Then he fell silent, listening for a while. “Oscar, you’re a genius,” he finally said.

  A few minutes later, he was talking on his phone again. “Megan Crosby, please.”

  If “Phil Ostrow” was some kind of impostor, he had to be an enormously skilled actor. And what was he doing? “Yossi” could indeed have been Israeli, or of some other Middle Eastern nationality; it was hard to tell.

  “Megan, it’s Ben,” he said.

  Who were they? she wondered.

  She picked up the phone and called Jack Hampton again. “Jack, I need the number of CIA station.”

  “What am I, directory assistance?”

  “It’s in the building across the street from the consular office, right?”

  “CIA station is in the main embassy building, Anna.”

  “No, the annex. A commercial building across the street. Under the cover of the Office of the United States Trade Representative.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. CIA doesn’t have any cover sites outside of the one right in the embassy. That I know of anyway.”

  She hung up, panic suffusing her body. If that hadn’t been a CIA site where she’d met Ostrow, what was it? The setting, the surroundings—every detail had been right. Too right, too convincing?

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” she heard Ben say. “Jesus, you’re fast.”

  So who was trying to manipulate her? And to what end? Obviously someone, or some group, who knew she was in Vienna, knew what she was investigating, and knew which hotel she was staying in.

  If Ostrow was some kind of impostor, then his story about the Mossad had to be false. And she had been the unwitting victim of an elaborate scam. They’d planned to kidnap Hartman—and have her deliver the “package” right into their clutches.

  She felt dazed and lost.

  In her mind she ran through everything, from “Ostrow’s” phone call, to the place she’d met him and “Yossi.” Was it really possible the whole thing had been an elaborate ruse?

  She heard Hartman say: “All right, let me write this down. Great work, kid. Terrific.”

  So the Mossad story, with all its rumors and undocumented whispers, was nothing but a tale spun by liars out of plausible fragments? My God, then how much of what she knew was wrong?

  And who was trying to mislead her—and to what end?

  What was the truth? Good God, where was the truth?

  “Ben,” she said.

  He held up an index finger to signal her to wait, said something quickly into his phone, then flipped it closed.

  But then she quickly changed her mind, decided not to reveal to Ben anything of what she’d just found out. Not yet. Instead, she asked, “Did you learn anything from Sonnenfeld?”

  Hartman told her about what Sonnenfeld had said, Anna interrupting every once in a while to clarify a point or ask for a fuller explanation.

  “So are you saying your father wasn’t a Nazi, after all.”

  “Not according to Sonnenfeld, at least.”

  “Did he have some inkling as to the meaning of Sigma?”

  “Beyond what I said, he was vague about it. And downright evasive when it came to Strasser.”

  “And as to why your brother was killed?”

  “Obviously he was killed because of the threat of exposure. Someone, maybe some group, feared the revelation of those names.”

  “Or of the fact this corporation existed. Clearly someone with a major financial stake. Which tells us that these old guys were—” Suddenly she stopped. “Of course! The laundered money! These old guys were being paid off. Maybe by someone controlling the corporation they’d all helped form.”

  “Either paid off, as in bribed,” Ben added, “or else they were receiving an agreed-upon distribution, a share of the profits.”

  Anna stood. “Eliminate the payees, then there’s no more wire transfers. No more big paydays for a bunch of doddering old men. Which tells us that whoever’s ordering the murders stands to gain financially from them. Has to be. Someone like Strasser, or even your father.” She looked at him. She couldn’t automatically rule it out. Even if he didn’t want to hear it. His father might have been a murderer himself—might have blood on his hands, might have been behind the murders at least.

  But how to explain the intricate deception of Ostrow, the false CIA man? Might he have been somehow connected to the heirs to some vast hidden fortune?

  “Theoretically, I suppose, my father could be one of the bad guys.” Ben said. “But I really don’t believe it.”

  “Why not?” She didn’t know how far to push him on this.

  “Because my father already has more money than he knows what to do with. Because he may be a ruthless businessman, and he may be a liar, but after talking with Sonnenfeld, I’m coming to think that he wasn’t fundamentally an evil man.”

  She doubted Hartman was holding anything back, but surely he was hampered by filial loyalty. Ben seemed to be a loyal person—an admirable quality, but sometimes loyalty could blind you to the truth.

  “What I don’t get is this: these guys are old and failing,” Hartman continued. “So why bother hiring someone to eliminate them? It’s hardly worth the risk.”

  “Unless you’re afraid one of them will talk, reveal the financial arrangement, whatever it is.”

  “But if they haven’t talked for half a century, what’s going to make them start now?”

  “Maybe some sort of pressure by legal authorities, triggered by the surfacing of this list. Faced with the threat of legal action, any one of them might easily have talked. Or maybe the Corporation is moving to a new phase, a transition, and sees itself as peculiarly vulnerable while it’s happening.”

  “I’m hearing a lot of conjecture,” he said. “We need facts.”

  She paused. “Who were you talking to on the phone just now?”

  “A corporate researcher I’ve used before. She found some intriguing background on Vortex Laboratories.”

  Anna was suddenly alert. “Yes?”

  “It’s wholly owned by the European chemicals and technology giant Armakon AG. An Austrian company.”

  “Austrian …” she murmured. “That is interesting.”

  “Those mammoth technology firms are always buying up tiny tech startups, hoping to snag the rights to stuff their own in-house research scientists haven’t invented.” He paused. “And one more thing. My friend in the Caymans was able to trace a few of the wire transfers.”

  Jesus. And her guy at the DOJ had turned up nothing. She tried to conceal her excitement. “Tell me.”

  “The money was sent from a shell company registered in the Channel Islands, a few seconds after it came in from Liechtenstein, from an Anstalt, a bearer-share company. Sort of a blind entity.”

  “If it came from a company, does that mean the names of the true owners are on file somewhere?”

  “That’s the tricky part. Anstalts are usually managed by an agent, often an attorney. They’re essentially dummy corporations that exist only on paper. An agent in Liechtenstein might manage thousands of them.”

  “Was your friend able to get the name of the Anstalt’s agent?”

  “I believe so, yes. Trouble is, barring torture, no agent will release information on any of the Anstalts he manages. They can’t afford to sabotage their reputation for discretion. But my friend’s working on it.”

  She grinned. The guy was growing on her.

  The phone rang.

  She picked it up. “Navarro.”

  “Anna, this is Walter Heisler. I have results for you.”

  “Results?”

  “On the gun that was dropped by the shooter in Hietzing. The prints you asked me to run. It matched a print, a digitized print, on file at Interpol. A Hans Vogler, ex-Stasi. Maybe he doesn’t expect to miss, or doesn’t expect us to be there, because he wears no gloves.”

  Heisler’s information was nothing new, but the fingerprints would be a valuable piece of evidence.

  “Fantastic. Walter, listen, I need to ask you another favor.”

  “You don’t sound surprised,” Heisler said, miffed. “I said he was ex-Stasi, you understand? Former East German secret intelligence service.”

  “Yes, Walter, I do understand, and I thank you. Very impressive.” She was being too brusque again, too businesslike, and she tried to soften her approach. “Thank you so much, Walter. And just one more thing …”

  Wearily: “Yes?”

  “One second.” She covered the phone’s mouthpiece and said to Ben, “You still haven’t reached Hoffman?”

  “Not a word. No answer there—it’s bizarre.”

  She removed her hand from the mouthpiece. “Walter, can you find out for me whatever you can about a private investigator in Vienna named Hans Hoffman?”

  There was silence.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes, Anna, I am here. Why you ask about this Hans Hoffman?”

  “I need some outside help here,” she replied, thinking quickly, “and his name was given to me—”

  “Well, I think you may have to find someone else.”

  “Why is that?”

  “About an hour ago a call came in to the Sicherheitsbüro from an employee of a Berufsdetektiv named Hans Hoffman. The woman, an investigator in Hoffman’s office, came to work and discovered her boss dead. Shot at point-blank range in the forehead. And, curious—his right forefinger was cut off. Can this be the Hoffman you’re talking about?”

  Ben had stared in disbelief when Anna told him what she’d learned. “Christ, it’s as if they’re always just one behind us, whatever we do,” he murmured.

  “Maybe ‘ahead of us’ is the more accurate term.”

  Ben massaged his temples with the fingertips of both hands, and at last he spoke in a quiet voice. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Sigma has obviously been killing its own. Those victims you’re trying to find—they all have something in common with me, a shared enemy. We’ve observed the pattern—frightened old men going into hiding in the twilight of their lives, living under aliases. It’s a virtual certainty that they have some idea what the hell’s going on. That means our only hope is to establish contact with someone on the list who’s still alive, who can talk. Someone with whom I can establish common ground, a conduit of sympathy, enlist his help for reasons of his own self-protection.”

  Anna stood, paced the room. “That’s if there is anyone alive, Ben.”

  He stared at her a long while, saying nothing, the resolve in his eyes wavering. She could tell that he longed to trust her every bit as fervently as she hoped she could trust him. Softly, hesitantly, he replied: “I have a feeling—it’s just a feeling, an educated guess—that there may be at least one still alive.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A Frenchman named Georges Chardin.”

  She nodded slowly. “Georges Chardin … I’ve seen the name on the Sigma list—but he’s actually been dead for four years.”

  “But the fact that his name was in the Sigma files means Allen Dulles had him vetted for some reason.”

  “Back in the fifties, yeah. But remember, most of these people have been dead for a long while. My focus was on the ones who had fallen victim to the recent spate of killings—or who were about to. Chardin isn’t in either category. And he’s not a founder, so he’s not on your incorporation document.” The Sigma list contains more names than just the original incorporators. She looked at Ben hard. “My question is, how did you know to ask about him? Are you holding out on me?”

  Ben shook his head.

  “We don’t have time to play games,” Anna said. “Georges Chardin—I know him as a name on paper. But he’s no one famous, no one I’d ever heard of. So what’s his significance?”

  “The significance is his boss, a legendary French industrialist—a man who was one of the incorporators in the photo. A man named Émil Ménard. In his time, one of the greatest corporate titans. Back in 1945 he was a grand old man; he’s long dead.”

  “Him I know. He was the founder of Trianon, generally considered the first modern corporate conglomerate, correct?”

  “Right. Trianon is one of the biggest industrial empires in France. Émil Ménard built Trianon into a French petrochemical giant that made even Schlumberger look like a five-and-dime.”

  “And so this Georges Chardin worked for the legendary Émil Ménard?”

  “Worked for him? He just about did his breathing for him. Chardin was his trusted lieutenant, aide-de-camp, factotum, whatever you want to call him. He wasn’t just Ménard’s right-hand man, he was practically his right hand. Chardin was hired in 1950 when he was only twenty, and in a few short years the greenhorn changed the way the cost of capital was accounted for, introduced a sophisticated new way of calculating return on investment, restructured the company accordingly. Way ahead of his time. A major figure.”

  “In your world, maybe.”

  “Granted. Point is, in very short order, the old man trusted his young protégé with everything, every detail in running his vast enterprise. After 1950, Émil Ménard didn’t go anywhere without Chardin. They say Chardin had all the firm’s ledgers memorized. He was a walking computer.” Ben produced the yellowed photograph of the Sigma group and placed it in front of Anna, pointing out Émil Ménard’s countenance. “What do you see?”

  “Ménard looks pretty haggard, to tell the truth. Not well at all.”

  “Correct. He was pretty seriously ill at that point. Spent the last decade of his life fighting cancer, though he was an incredibly formidable man right up until the end. But he died with the supreme confidence that his corporation would remain strong, continue to grow, because he had such a brilliant young Directeur General du Département des Finance—basically, his chief financial officer.”

  “So you’re speculating that Ménard would have trusted Georges Chardin with the secret of the Sigma enterprise as well?”

  “I’m virtually certain of it. No doubt Chardin was completely in the background. But he was Ménard’s shadow every step of the way. It’s inconceivable that Chardin wouldn’t have been completely privy to the substance of Sigma, whatever its objectives and methods. And look at it from Sigma’s point of view: in order to stay alive, regardless of its true purpose, Sigma had to keep bringing in new recruits to replace the original founders. So Chardin is bound to have played a significant role, likely as a member of its inner council—Ménard would have made sure of that.”

  “O.K., O.K., you’ve got me convinced,” Anna put in impatiently. “But where does that get us today? We already know Chardin died four years ago. You think he might have left files, papers, or something?”

  “We’re told that Chardin died four years ago, sure. Right around the same time that my brother, Peter, arranged his fake death. What if he did something like what Peter did—arranged to disappear, go into hiding, escape the killers he knew were after him?”

  “Come on, Ben! You’re making all sorts of assumptions, jumping to unwarranted conclusions!”

  Ben replied patiently, “Your list indicated that he perished in a fire, right? The old ‘burned beyond recognition’ ruse? Like my brother? Sorry; won’t get fooled again.” He seemed to recognize the skepticism in her face. “Listen to me! You said it yourself. We have a string of old men who were killed presumably because somebody viewed them as a threat. Sigma, or its heirs or controllers. So let’s think this out: why might a bunch of old guys in the twilight of their lives be considered a serious enough threat to be murdered?” He stood up, began to pace. “You see, the mistake I was making all along was in viewing Sigma as merely a front organization, a false corporation—instead of a genuine one.”