Rules of Deception (10 page)

He felt a sudden, irrational streak of hatred for it, not just because it was evidence of Emma’s deception, but because it represented the life he’d never wanted. Too many of the surgical residents at Sloan-Kettering had dreamed aloud about their Park Avenue practices and houses in the Hamptons. They could have their baubles and bangles. God knew they’d worked hard enough to get them. It was just that to him, medicine was not a means to an end. Medicine was the end itself. He refused to be defined in any way by his possessions. By cars like this. It was actions that mattered. Dr. Jonathan Ransom took care of others.

He backed out of the parking space and drove to the exit. On the main road, traffic sped past in both directions. Pedestrians took advantage and crossed in front of the Mercedes. A man drew up and stopped in the glare of Jonathan’s headlights. Shielding his eyes, he looked through the windscreen at Jonathan. It was a policeman. Jonathan was sure of it. He dropped his hands from the wheel and waited for the man to draw his pistol and shout, “Out of the car! You’re under arrest.”

But a moment later, the man was gone, another head weaving in and out of the sea of homebound commuters.

Traffic cleared. Jonathan eased the car onto the street, turning left, away from the station. Four blocks down the road, he pulled over and rolled down the window. “Get in.”

Simone climbed into the car. Pulling her coat around her, she took in the car’s interior. “This is Emma’s?” she asked.

“Guess so.” Jonathan joined the autobahn, heading east. A roadside sign read, “Chur 25 Km.”

A shadow crossed Simone’s face. “Where are you going?”

“Back to the hotel. We have to find out who sent those bags.”

18

“Hotter.”

A guard turned the nozzle regulating the butane burners. Blue flames flared from beneath the enormous copper vat. The temperature gauge showed one hundred forty degrees. The needle inside it began to rise.

It was called the Pot, and it dated to the early seventeenth century. Five feet high and again as wide, it had been a fixture of the public laundry works in Aleppo when Syria had been a province of the Ottoman Empire. The needle touched one hundred fifty degrees. Immersed to his shoulders in the rapidly heating water, Gassan began to kick frantically. He could not allow his feet to touch bottom for fear of being scalded.

The needle passed one hundred sixty degrees.

It had been a long night. Gassan had showed impressive pluck. He had suffered and still not divulged a word about to whom he’d delivered the fifty kilos of plastic explosives. Colonel Mike no longer looked so cleaned and pressed. His mustache drooped with the sweat of his exertions. The evil of the place had sunk into his pores.

“Hotter.”

Bubbles formed at the edge of the cauldron. Gassan began to call out. No prayers for him. No pleas to Allah. Just a stream of obscenities cursing the West, cursing the president, cursing the FBI and the CIA. He was no zealot. He was that other thing. The terrorist defined by his actions. The rebel with no cause but to destroy.

Philip Palumbo sat on a chair in the corner. He had grown tired of the pitiable cries long ago. He’d run out of sympathy for dirtbags like Gassan around the time that he’d worked the bombings in Bali. Twenty bodies. Men, women, and children enjoying a seaside jaunt to the tropics. All dead. A hundred more wounded. Lives ended. Lives ruined. And for what? Just the usual tripe about getting at the West. The way Palumbo saw things, we all had a contract with society to treat our fellow man fairly and to obey the laws. Break that contract, go outside the boundaries of fair play, then all bets were off.

Gassan wanted to kill innocent people. Palumbo intended to stop him. Turn up the heat and let’s get the party started.

“Let’s go back to the beginning,” said Colonel Mike with infuriating calm. “On January tenth, you met Dimitri Shevchenko in Leipzig. You transferred the plastic explosives into a white Volkswagen van. Where did you go after that? You had to give the explosives to someone. I don’t imagine you fancied keeping them any longer than necessary. You’re a smart boy. Lots of experience. Tell me what happened next. I’ll even help you. You delivered the explosives to the end user. I want his name. Talk to me and we’ll stop these unpleasantries. To tell you the truth, I don’t sleep well after this kind of thing.”

The questions hadn’t varied in ten hours.

Outside, dogs could be heard baying at the full moon. A large transport rumbled past, shaking the walls.

Gassan began to speak, then pursed his lips and drove his chin into his chest. A guttural scream formed in his throat and erupted into the room.

“Hotter,” said Colonel Mike.

The flames grew. The needle touched one hundred eighty degrees.

“What are their plans? Give me the target. I want a place, a date, a time.” Colonel Mike was relentless. A man was either made to do this kind of thing or not. Colonel Mike had been born to torture like a jockey to riding.

One hundred ninety.

“The first thing that falls off is your dick. It bursts like an overcooked sausage. Then your stomach will swell inside you and your lungs will begin to boil. Look at your arms. The flesh is peeling off. The sad thing is that this can go on for a long time.”

Gassan’s eyes bulged as he continued to hurl imprecations at the unfairness of his predicament.

“What was your contact’s name? How will they use the explosives?”

Two hundred degrees.

“Alright,” screamed Gassan. “I will tell you. Get me out! Please!”

“Tell me what?”

“Everything. Everything I know. His name. Now, get me out!”

Colonel Mike raised a hand to the guard controlling the gauge. He stepped closer to the vat so that the heat drew sweat on his forehead. “Who is the end user?”

Gassan gave a name Palumbo had never heard before. “I delivered it to him personally. He paid me twenty thousand dollars.”

“Where did you deliver the explosives?”

“Geneva. A garage at the airport. The fourth floor.”

The dam had broken. Gassan began to talk, spewing information like water from a ruptured main. Names. Aliases. Hideouts. Passwords. He couldn’t speak fast enough.

Palumbo got it all on tape. He stepped out of the room to review the information. Five minutes later, he returned. “A few of the names check out, but we’ve got a lot more to get through.”

“And so?” asked Colonel Mike. “Any other questions for our distinguished guest?”

“Oh yeah,” said Palumbo. “Mr. Gassan’s been in business a long time. We’re just getting started.”

Colonel Mike nodded at the guard.

“Hotter.”

19

Jonathan reached Arosa
in ninety minutes. Driving to the top of Poststrasse, he parked across from the Kulm Hotel, three hundred meters up the road from the Bellevue. Simone sat slouched in the passenger seat, smoking.

“There’s no reason for you to stay,” he said. “It’s better if we split up. I can take it from here.”

“I want to,” she answered, peering out the window.

“Go home. You’ve done your duty. You held my hand when I needed it. I can’t be responsible for you.”

It was obvious the suggestion irritated her. “No one’s asking you to be,” she snapped. “I’ve made it this far looking after myself, thank you very much.”

“What are you going to say to Paul?”

“I’m going to tell him that I helped a friend.”

“That’ll sound nice when you call him from jail. All you’re doing is getting yourself deeper into trouble.”

Simone shifted in her seat, swinging her gaze at him. Her cheek was purple where the policeman had struck her. The bruise contrasted violently with her usual immaculate appearance. “And what are you doing? Tell me that, Jon.”

Jonathan had told himself that he was going to take things one step at a time. Technically, he knew that he was on the run, but it wasn’t the police—either the honest variety or the other kind—that scared him. It was the truth. “I’m not sure yet,” he said after a moment.

Simone sat up straighter. “How many brothers do you have?”

The question caught him off guard. “Two. And a sister. Why?”

“If this was happening to one of them, would you go home?”

“No,” he said. “I wouldn’t.”

“I don’t have any brothers or sisters,” Simone continued. “I’m married to a man who treats his work as his mistress. I have my children at school and I have Emma. I’m every bit as confused as you about what she was up to. If I can help you in any way find out, I want to try. I understand your concern for me and I appreciate it. Tomorrow, I’ll go to Davos to see Paul. I’m sure that by then we’ll have this straightened out. But if we have to confront the police, I am going to be with you.”

Jonathan saw that there was no getting around her. He couldn’t deny that her presence would be of help when he was standing in front of a police captain. She was a teacher affiliated with a prestigious school in Geneva; her husband, a respected economist.

He reached over and plucked the cigarette out of her mouth. “Okay, you win. But if you stay, you have to stop smoking these things. You’re going to make me puke.”

Simone immediately took another cigarette from her purse and screwed it into the corner of her mouth. “
Allez.
I’ll wait for you here.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “Be careful.”

Head bowed,
Jonathan hurried down the road. Wind kicked up snow and flung it at his cheeks so violently that it was necessary to shield his eyes just to see ten feet ahead. He followed a fork that led off the Poststrasse, then veered onto a footpath that cut through the Arlenwald, the forest that carpeted the lower flank of the mountain. The wind was calmer here, and he began to walk faster.

Beyond the spray of the streetlights, the path grew dark, bordered by tall pines and ramrod-stiff birches. To his right, the hillside fell steeply. After a few minutes, he came upon the rear of the hotel and made his way down the slope through knee-deep snow. He stopped at the edge of the woods, pinpointing his room. Fourth floor. Front corner. A hundred-year-old pine shot from the slope near the building, its upper branches extending tantalizingly close to balconies on the third and fourth floors.

It was then that he felt the hairs on the nape of his neck prickle. He turned sharply, certain that someone was watching him. He scanned the hillside behind him. An owl perched high in a tree hooted. The throaty, low-pitched call made him shiver. He looked a second longer, but didn’t see anyone.

Five strides took him to the sturdy pine. Selecting a branch, he pulled himself into the tree, then climbed higher. Ten meters up, he crawled out onto a limb. The balcony was barely an arm’s length away, the pitch of the slope so severe that if he fell, he would land in the snow three meters below. He hung from the branch and swung his legs until he caught the retaining wall. Shifting his balance, he hopped onto the balcony.

Lights burned from behind closed curtains. The balcony door was open a crack. He stepped forward, rolling on the balls of his feet. At that moment, the curtains parted. The balcony door swung inward. He had a fleeting image of a man in a suit holding open the door and speaking to a woman. Retreating, Jonathan threw himself over the balcony. Dangling by his fingertips—what climbers called a bat hang—he inched past the divider separating the balconies. The railing was icy and intensely cold. He glanced down. It was sixty feet to the driveway, and if he missed that, another sixty to the street below. His fingers numbed out. He tried to convince himself that this was no different than hanging off a nubbin on a granite face. But he didn’t go free-climbing granite faces in the dead of winter. Inch by inch, he crossed the outside of the balcony. With a grunt, he pulled himself over the railing.

Gathering his breath, he tried the door. It was unlocked, just as he’d left it that morning. Inside, the lights were extinguished. He stepped into the room, pausing a moment to allow his eyes to adjust to the darkness. The maid’s efforts were plain to see. The bed was made. The pleasing scent of wood polish lingered in the air. Still, he couldn’t ignore the feeling that something wasn’t as it should be.

He approached the bed. Emma’s nightshirt was beneath the pillow. Her paperbacks stacked neatly on the night table. He picked up the one on top.
Prior Bad Acts.
The title was appropriate enough, but he was relatively certain that she hadn’t started that book yet. He found the book Emma had been reading at the bottom of the stack.

He walked into the hall and opened the closet. Drawer by drawer, he checked Emma’s things. He was supposed to be looking for clues to her activities. But what kind of clues? If he didn’t know what she’d been doing, how could he know what to search for?

He closed the closet and checked above it, where he stored their suitcases. Standing on his tiptoes, he pulled down the larger of the two. It was Emma’s suitcase, a Samsonite hardshell similar to those favored by stewardesses. He put it on the ground, then froze.

He never put Emma’s suitcase on top. That’s where he put his own, which was smaller and flimsier.

Somebody had been in the room.

For a minute, he didn’t move. Head cocked, he listened. Each beat of his heart hammered a nail into his chest. But apart from his rattled nerves, he didn’t hear a thing. Finally, he picked up the suitcase, carried it to the bed, and opened it.

Another surprise. The cover’s interior lining had been peeled back along its perimeter, just like the transparent plastic sheets used to hold snapshots in a photo album. It hadn’t been cut or damaged in any way. Looking more closely, he discovered a track in place to secure it, no different than a ziplock bag. By the moon’s half-light, he discerned a rectangular indentation the size and shape of a wallet or a deck of cards. It was a compartment for concealing papers or documents, something to escape a customs inspector’s scrutiny.

He closed the suitcase and returned it to its place. Emma’s carry-on bag was sitting below the desk. No black leather calfskin this time, just an all-weather rucksack stained from years of use. He opened the outside compartment and was relieved to find her wallet where she kept it. Her identification was intact; money too, in the amount of eighty-seven francs. Her credit cards were untouched. He opened the coin purse. A few francs. A bobby pin. Tic tacs. He closed the bag, then ran his hand along its bottom. His fingers snagged on a bracelet. He recognized it as one that Emma wore from time to time. It was light blue and fashioned from pressed rubber similar to the Livestrong bracelets popularized by Lance Armstrong, the seven-time winner of the Tour de France.

Three-quarters of the bracelet was thin, but at the point where it rested beneath the wrist, it was noticeably thicker. He ran a finger over the protrusion. There was something hard and rectangular inside it. He played with the bracelet for a moment, before realizing that he could pull it apart. The bracelet split to reveal a USB flash drive. It was a device used to move files from one computer to another. He’d never seen it before. Emma was a demon with her BlackBerry, but she rarely took her laptop out of the office. He reconnected the bracelet and slipped it over his wrist.

Just then, he heard footsteps advancing down the hallway. He put down the rucksack and searched the desk. Maps. Postcards. His compass. Pens. The footsteps came nearer, echoing loudly.

“Right this way, Officer. It’s the room at the end of the hall.”

Jonathan recognized the hotel manager’s voice. The key entered the lock. He opened the center drawer and saw a brown, leather-bound book. Grabbing Emma’s rucksack with one hand, he threw the book inside it and bolted for the terrace.

The door opened. Light spilled into the room from the hotel corridor.

“The policeman was dead?” the hotel manager was saying.

Without a backward glance, Jonathan flew from the room and jumped off the balcony onto the hillside.

“They’ve been there,”
gasped Jonathan as he flung himself into the Mercedes. “Someone searched the—”

He looked over to the passenger seat. Simone wasn’t in the car. He checked the floor for her purse and found that it was gone, too. She’s left, he thought. She came to her senses and got the hell out of here while she still could. Jonathan leaned on the dashboard, gathering his breath. His eyes moved to the ignition. The keys were nowhere in sight. With a fright, he spun and checked the backseat. Neither Emma’s bag nor the box containing the sweater was there. Simone had left and taken everything with her.

He fell back, confused, tired. He looked at the fat book on his lap. Opening it, he began to skim the names, addresses, and phone numbers. It’s a start, he thought.

Just then, the passenger door opened and Simone slid into the car.

“Where were you?” he asked.

Simone shrunk back. “I walked to the top of the hill and back. If you must know, I wanted to smoke a cigarette.”

“Where are Emma’s things?”

“I put them in the trunk in case one of us wants to lie down.”

Jonathan nodded, calming himself. “I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that they’ve been there. I mean in our hotel room. They took the place apart. Top to bottom. But they were good. Very neat. I’ll grant them that. They almost got it right. And then I would never have known.”

Simone stared at him, his fright mirrored in her eyes. “What are you going on about? Who was there? The police?”

“No. At least, not the real police.” He explained about the strange manner in which someone had searched behind the lining of the suitcase and the odd depression the size of a deck of cards.

“Only her suitcase?” Simone asked. “What were they looking for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think, Jon. What could have been inside it?”

Jonathan brushed off the question. He had no idea. “Give me the keys. They might be coming.”

Simone handed him the car keys. “Slow down. No one’s coming. Look.”

Jonathan stared out the rear window. The street was deserted. The storm had confined the town to quarters. He leaned back and closed his eyes. “Okay,” he murmured. “We’re okay.”

“Of course we’re okay,” said Simone.

“I heard voices in the hallway. I think the hotel manager was with the police. They were talking about the policeman in Landquart. They know it’s me.”

“You’re safe for now. That’s what matters.” Simone gestured toward the book in his lap. “What’s that?”

“Emma’s address book. We need to find who she knew in Ascona. If one of her friends sent her those bags, their name will be in here.”

“May I?”

Jonathan handed her the leather-bound volume. It was as thick as a Bible and twice as heavy. Emma had liked to say that it contained her life, and nothing less. Simone placed it on her lap and opened it solemnly, as if it were a religious text. Emma’s name was inscribed on the flyleaf. A succession of addresses had been scratched out below it. The most recent was Rampe de Cologny, Geneva. Before that there was Rue St. Jean in Beirut. U.N. Camp for Refugees, Darfur, Sudan. The list went on, a road map of his once and future life.

“How many names does she have in here anyway?” Simone asked.

“Everyone she ever met. Emma never forgot anyone.”

Together, they pored over every page. A to Z. They were looking for an address in the Tessin. Ascona. Locarno. Lugano. Any phone number with the 091 area code. They found names in every corner of the globe. Tasmania, Patagonia, Lapland, Greenland, Singapore, and Siberia. But nowhere did they find mention of Ascona.

Thirty minutes later, Simone set the address book on the center console.

Emma didn’t have a single friend who lived in the southernmost canton of Switzerland. Ascona did not exist.

Rooting in his pockets, he came out with the customer half of Emma’s baggage receipts. “We still have these,” he said. “The porter said that the name of the sender was recorded at the departure station.”

“I don’t think the Swiss are so easy to give out information as that. You’ll have to show identification.”

“You’re probably right.” Jonathan handed Simone the receipts, then started the engine.

“Where are we going?”

“Where do you think?” he asked, head turned over his shoulder as he backed the car onto the road.

Simone shifted in her seat, pushing her hair behind one ear. “But Emma had no friends there. We have no idea even where to begin to look. What can we hope to accomplish?”

Jonathan pointed the nose of the car downhill and touched the gas. “I know how to find out who sent Emma those bags.”