“How do you mean?”

  “It should have been so obvious! I can give you a hundred instances from my Wall Street days. In 1992, one guy ousted another rival to become the sole CEO of Time Warner, and his first order of business was what? To purge the hostiles from the board of directors. That’s what management does. You get rid of your adversaries!”

  “But the Time Warner guy didn’t kill his opponents, I assume,” she said dryly.

  “On Wall Street we have different techniques for eliminating enemies.” Ben gave a twisted smile. “But he eliminated them all the same. It’s what always happens when there’s an abrupt change in management.”

  “So you’re suggesting there’s been a ‘change in management’ at Sigma.”

  “Exactly. A purge of what you might call dissident trustees.”

  “Rossignol, Mailhot, Prosperi, and the rest—you’re saying they were all dissidents? On the wrong side of the new management?”

  “Something like that. And Georges Chardin was known to be brilliant. No doubt he saw it coming, and so he arranged to disappear.”

  “Maybe yes, maybe no. But it’s still all in the realm of wild speculation.”

  “Not quite,” Ben said softly. He turned to face Anna directly. “Beginning with the time-honored principle ‘Follow the money,’ I hired a French investigator we’ve used before at Hartman Capital Management. A wizard named Oscar Peyaud. We’ve used him for due-diligence work in Paris, and every time he blows us away with the speed and quality of his work. And the size of his bill, but that’s another matter.”

  “Thanks for keeping me in the loop about what you were doing,” Anna said with heavy sarcasm. “So much for being partners.”

  “Listen to me. A man can’t live without some form of financial support. So I got to thinking, what would happen if you could track down the executor to Chardin’s estate—see in what form he left his assets, how he might have retained access to them.” He paused, took out a folded sheet of paper from his jacket pocket. “An hour ago this arrived from Paris, from Oscar Peyaud.”

  The page was blank except for a brief address:

  Rogier Chabot

  1554 rue des Vignoles

  Paris 20

  Anna looked up, at once puzzled and excited. “Chabot?”

  “Georges Chardin’s alias, I would bet. I think we have our man. Now it’s just a matter of our getting to him before Sigma does.”

  An hour later, the phone on Walter Heisler’s desk rang. A cycle of two short rings: an internal line. Heisler was drawing deep on a cigarette—he was working through the third pack of Casablancas of the day—when he picked up, and there was a two-second pause before he spoke: “Heisler.”

  It was the tech from the small room on the fifth floor. “Did you get the bulletin on the American, Navarro?”

  “What bulletin?” Heisler slowly let the warm smoke plume through his nostrils.

  “Just came in.”

  “Then it’s probably been sitting in the message center all morning.” The Sicherheitsbüro message center, operating with what he regarded as third-world inefficiency, was a bane of his existence. “What’s up, then? Or do I need to find out by listening to the news on the radio?” This was how he had taken to formulating the complaint. Once he really did find out the whereabouts of a fugitive from a local radio station, the messengers having misplaced the morning’s faxed bulletin somewhere en route to his desk.

  “She’s a rogue, it seems. We’ve been used. The U.S. government has a warrant out for her. Not my department, but I thought somebody should give you a heads-up.”

  “Christ!” Heisler said, and let his cigarette drop from his mouth into his mug of coffee, heard the quick sizzle of the quenched butt. “Shit! A fucking embarrassment.”

  “Not so embarrassing if you’re the one who brings her in, eh?” the tech said carefully.

  “Checking out of Room 1423,” Anna said to the harried-looking clerk at the front desk. She placed her two electronic key-cards on the black granite counter.

  “One moment, please. If I can just have your signature on the final bill, ja?” The man was weary-looking, and fortyish, with slightly concave cheeks, and dirty-blond hair—dyed?—combed forward, flat against his skull, in a seeming attempt to simulate youth. He wore a crisp uniform jacket of some sort of brown synthetic, with slightly fraying epaulets. Anna had a sudden vision of him as she imagined he became after hours—dressed in black leather, heavily spritzed with musky cologne, haunting nightclubs where the dim light might help him get lucky with a schöne Mädchen.

  “Of course,” Anna said.

  “We hope you enjoyed your stay, Ms. Navarro.” He typed numbers on a keyboard, and then looked up at her, showing a toothy, yellow-tinged smile. “Apologies. It’s going to take a few moments to bring the records up. A problem in the system. Computers, right?” He smiled wider, as if he had said something witty. “Wonderful labor-saving devices. When they work. Let me get the manager.” He picked up a red handset, and said a few words in German.

  “What’s going on,” asked Ben, who was standing behind her.

  “A computer problem, he says,” Anna murmured.

  From behind the counter, a short, big-bellied man emerged in a dark suit and tie. “I’m the manager, and I’m so sorry for the delay,” the man said to her. He exchanged glances with the clerk. “A glitch. It’s going to take a few minutes to retrieve the records. Phone calls, all of that. We’ll get it for you soon, and then you can take a look and make sure it looks right. Wouldn’t want you billed for the phone calls in Room 1422. Sometimes happens with the new system. Miracle of modern technology.”

  Something was wrong, and it wasn’t the computer system.

  The manager was jovial and reassuring and effusive, and yet, despite the lobby’s slight chilliness, Anna noticed the beads of sweat on his forehead. “Come and sit in my office while we get this straightened out. Take a load off your feet, yes? You’re off to the airport, yes? You have transportation arranged? Why don’t you let the hotel car take you—our compliments. The least we can do for the inconvenience.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Anna said, thinking that she recognized the type well from her years of investigations—the type of person whom tension made talkative. The man was under orders to detain them. That much was clear.

  “Not at all. Not at all. You come with me, and have a nice cup of coffee. Nobody makes it like the Viennese, yes?”

  Most likely, he hadn’t been informed why, or whether they were dangerous. He must have been instructed to notify security, but security must not have arrived yet, or he wouldn’t be so anxious. She was checking out of the hotel prematurely. Which meant … well, there was more than one possibility. Perhaps she—he? they?—had only recently been targeted. In which case, preparations would not be fully in place.

  “Listen,” she said. “Why don’t you just figure it out on your own time and send me the bill? No biggie, huh?”

  “It will be just a few minutes,” the manager said, but he was not looking at her. Instead, he was making eye contact with a guard across the lobby.

  Anna looked at her wristwatch ostentatiously. “Your cousins are going to be wondering what happened to us,” she said to Ben. “We’d better get a move on.”

  The manager stepped around the counter, and placed a clammy hand on her arm. “In just a few minutes,” he said. Up close, he smelled unappetizingly of grilled cheese and hair oil.

  “Get your hands off me,” Anna said in a tone of low menace. Ben was startled by the sudden steel in her voice.

  “We can take you wherever you want to go,” the manager protested, in a tone that was more wheedling than threatening.

  From across the lobby, the security guard was reducing the distance between him and them with long, fast strides.

  Anna hoisted her garment bag over her shoulder and headed for the front door. “Follow me,” she said to Ben.

  The two made their way quickly toward the entrance. The lobby guard, she knew, would have to confer with the manager before pursuing them outside of the building.

  On the sidewalk in front of the hotel, she looked around carefully. At the end of the block, she saw a police officer speaking into a walkie-talkie, presumably giving his location. Which meant that he was likely the first on the scene.

  She tossed her bag to Ben, and headed straight over to the policeman.

  “Christ, Anna!” Ben snapped.

  Anna stopped the policeman, and spoke to him in a loud, official-sounding voice. “You speak English?”

  “Yes,” the cop said uncertainly. “English, yes.” He was crew-cut, athletic, and seemed to be in his late twenties.

  “I’m with the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation,” Anna said. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation, do you understand? The FBI. We’re looking for an American fugitive from justice, and I’ve got to ask for your help. The woman’s name is Anna Navarro.” She flashed her OSI badge quickly while holding his gaze; he would see it without really looking at it.

  “You say Anna Navarro,” the policeman said with recognition and relief. “Yes. We’ve been notified. In the hotel, yes?”

  “She’s barricaded herself in her room,” Anna said. “Fourteenth floor. Room 1423. And she’s traveling with someone, right?”

  The policeman shrugged. “Anna Navarro is the name we have,” he said.

  Anna nodded. It was an important piece of information. “I’ve got two agents in place, all right? But as observers. We can’t act on Austrian territory. It’s up to you. I’m going to ask you to take the service entrance, on the side of the building, and make your way to the fourteenth floor. Are you O.K. with that?”

  “Yes, yes,” the policeman said.

  “And spread the word, O.K.?”

  He nodded eagerly. “We’ll get her for you. Austria is, how do you say, a law-and-order place, yes?”

  Anna shot him his warmest smile. “We’re counting on you.”

  A few minutes later, Ben and Anna were in a taxicab en route to the airport.

  “That was pretty ballsy,” Ben said quietly. “Going up to the cop that way.”

  “Not really. Those are my people. I figured they’d just got word, or they would have been better prepared. Which means they had no idea what I look like. All they know is that they’re looking for an American, on behalf of the Americans. No way of knowing whether I’m the one to pursue or the one in pursuit.”

  “When you put it that way …” Ben shook his head. “But why are they after you anyway?”

  “I haven’t exactly figured it out, yet. I do know that somebody’s been spreading the word that I’ve gone rogue. Selling state secrets or whatever. The question is who, and how, and why.”

  “Sounds to me like Sigma is going through channels. Using real police through manipulation.”

  “Does, doesn’t it?”

  “This is not good,” Ben said. “The idea that we’re going to have every cop in Europe on our ass, on top of whatever psycho-killers Sigma has on the payroll—it’s going to put a crimp in the game plan.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” Anna said.

  “We’re dead.”

  “That’s a little harsh.” Anna shrugged. “How about we approach this thing one step at a time?”

  “How?”

  “Ben Hartman and Anna Navarro are going to book a flight from Graz, about a hundred and fifty kilometers south, to Munich.”

  “And what are we going to do in Munich?”

  “We’re not going to Munich. The thing is, I already put a trace on your credit cards. That’s a genie I can’t put back in the bottle. You use any card under your name, and it’s going to sound an immediate alarm in Washington and God knows what branch offices we’ve got.”

  “So we’re screwed.”

  “So we use that. I need you to focus, Ben. Look, your brother prepared travel documents for him and Liesl, in case they needed to take off incognito. As far as we know, the IDs are still good, and the credit card ought to be functional. John and Paula Freedman are going to book tickets from Vienna on the next available flight to Paris. Replacing Liesl’s photo with mine won’t be a problem. A couple of generic-looking Americans, among tens of thousands who come in and out of the airport every day.”

  “Right,” Ben said. “Right. I’m sorry, Anna. I’m not thinking clearly. But there are still risks, aren’t there?”

  “Of course there are. Whatever we do has risks. But if we leave now, the chances are good that they’re not going to have photographs in place, and they’re not looking for Mr. and Mrs. Freedman. The main thing is to stay calm and stay smart. Ready to improvise, if need be.”

  “Sure,” Ben said, but he didn’t sound it.

  She looked at him. He somehow seemed young, younger than he’d been; the cockiness was gone, and he needed, she sensed, some reassurance. “After all you’ve been through, I know you’re not going to lose your head. You haven’t yet. And right now, that’s probably the most important thing.”

  “Getting to Chardin is the most important thing.”

  “We’ll get to him,” Anna said, gritting her teeth in resolve. “We’ll get to him.”

  Zurich

  Matthias Deschner pressed both hands to his face, hoping for a moment of clarity in the darkness. One of the credit cards that Liesl’s boyfriend had, through his offices, established and maintained, had finally been put to use. The call was pro forma: because the account had not been used in quite some time, it fell to a clerk in a credit-security department somewhere to place a call and ascertain that the card had not gone missing.

  Peter had provided for the automatic payment of the annual fee; the name, telephone number, and mailing address involved a corporate entity that Matthias had set up for him; all communications went to Deschner, as its legal representative. Deschner had felt quite uncomfortable with the whole thing—it seemed legally dubious, to say the least—but Liesl implored him for his help, and, well, he had done what he had done. In retrospect, he should have run, run in the opposite direction. Deschner believed himself to be an honorable man, but he had never had illusions of heroism.

  Now a dilemma had arisen for a second time in a matter of days. Damn that Ben Hartman. Damn both the Hartman boys.

  Deschner wanted to keep his word to Peter and Liesl—wanted to even though they both were now dead. But they were dead, and with it his oath. And there were now larger considerations.

  His own survival, for one.

  Bernard Suchet, at the Handelsbank, was too smart to have believed him when he said he’d been completely ignorant of what Peter Hartman was involved in. In truth, it was more a case of not wanting to know, of believing that what he did not know could not hurt him.

  That was no longer true.

  The more he thought about it, the angrier he became.

  Liesl was a lovely girl—he got a lump in his throat when he thought about the necessary past tense—but it had been wrong of her, all the same, to have involved him in her affairs. It was an abuse of familial loyalties, was it not? He imagined himself carrying on a conversation, an argument, really, with his deceased cousin. It was wrong of her, so very wrong. He never wanted any part of her crusade. Had she any idea of the position she put him in?

  Her words returned to him: We need your help. That is all. There is nobody else we can turn to. Deschner remembered the luminous clarity of her blue eyes, like a deep reservoir of alpine water, eyes whose righteousness seemed to expect equal righteousness in everyone else.

  Deschner felt the beginnings of a throbbing headache. The young woman had asked for too much, that was all. Probably of the world, and certainly of him.

  She had made enemies of an organization that murdered people with the simple indifference of a meter maid dispensing parking tickets. Now Liesl was dead, and it seemed quite possible that she would take him with her.

  They would learn that the card had been activated. And then they would learn that Dr. Matthias Deschner had himself been notified of this fact but failed to report it. Soon there would be no more Dr. Matthias Deschner. He thought of his daughter, Alma, who in just two months would be getting married. Alma had talked about how much she was looking forward to walking down the aisle with her father by her side. He swallowed hard and imagined Alma walking down the aisle alone. No, it could not be. It would be not just reckless but actively selfish of him.

  The throbbing behind his eyes was undiminished. He reached into his desk drawer, removed a bottle of Panadol, and dry-swallowed a bitter, chalky tablet.

  He looked at the clock.

  He would report the credit activation call. But not immediately. He would wait for several hours to pass. Then he would call.

  The tardiness could be easily explained, and they would be grateful for his having volunteered the information. Surely they would.

  And just maybe the delay would give the Hartman boy a running start. A few more hours on this earth, anyway. He owed him that much, Deschner decided, but perhaps no more.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Paris

  The twentieth arrondissement of Paris, its easternmost, and seamiest, district, slopes on a butte adjoining the highway that rings Paris and defines its limits, the Périphérique, In the eighteenth century, the land supported a village of winegrowers called Charonne. Over the years, the vineyards gave way to small houses, and the houses, in turn, had largely given way to charmless, unlovely structures of concrete. Today, such street names as the rue des Vignoles seem laughably out of place in the downtrodden urban milieu.