The Sigma Protocol (24 page)

Ben looked at the rows upon rows of vaults, and didn’t know what to do. Was this a test of some sort? Or did Suchet merely assume that Ben would know the number of his vault? Ben glanced at Deschner, who seemed to sense his discomfort but, curiously, said nothing. Then Ben looked again at the key and saw a number embossed on it.
Of course. The obvious place
.

“Thank you,” he said. “I’m all set.”

The two Swiss left, chatting. Ben noticed a surveil-lance camera mounted high in the room, where the ceiling met the wall. Its red light was on.

He located vault 322, a small box at about eye level, and turned the key to open it.

Oh, God
, he thought, heart thrumming,
what could be in here? Peter, what did you hide here that was worth your life?

Inside was what looked like an envelope made of stiff wax paper. He pulled it out—the document inside was dismayingly thin—and opened it.

There was only one item inside, and it was not a piece of paper.

It was a photograph, measuring about five inches by seven.

It took his breath away.

It showed a group of men, a few in Nazi uniforms, some in 1940s suits with overcoats. A number of them were immediately recognizable. Giovanni Vignelli, the great Italian industrialist out of Turin, automotive magnate, his massive plants supplying the Italian military, diesel engines, railroad cars, airplanes. The head of Royal Dutch Petroleum, Sir Han Detwiler, a xenophobic Dutchman. The legendary founder of the first, and greatest, American airline. There were faces that he could not identify but had seen in the history books. A few of the men wore mustaches. Including the handsome, dark-haired young man standing next to an arrogant Nazi official with pale eyes who looked familiar to Ben, though he knew little of German history.

No, please, not him
.

The Nazi, whose face he’d seen before, he could not identify.

The handsome young man was unquestionably his father.

Max Hartman.

A typewritten caption on the white border at the bottom of the photograph read:
ZURICH
, 1945.
SIGMA AG
.

He returned the photograph to the envelope and slipped it into his breast pocket. Felt it burn against his chest.

There could no longer be any doubt that his father had lied to him, had lied all his adult life. His head reeled. Abruptly a voice penetrated Ben’s stupor.

“Mr. Hartman! Mr. Benjamin Hartman. There is a warrant for your arrest! We must take you into custody.”

Oh, Jesus
.

It was the banker, Bernard Suchet, speaking. He must have contacted the local authorities. A swift search of the country’s arrival records would reveal that he had no documented arrival. Schmid’s chill, understated words returned to him:
If I ever find out you’ve returned here, things will not go well for you
.

Suchet was flanked by Matthias Deschner and two security guards, their weapons drawn.

“Mr. Hartman, the
Kantonspolizei
have informed me that you are in this country illegally. Which means that you are perpetrating a fraud,” the banker said. Deschner’s face was a mask of neutrality.

“What are you talking about?” Ben said indignantly. Had they seen him slip the photo into his jacket?

“We are to detain you until the authorities arrive, momentarily.”

Ben stared at him, speechless.

“Your actions put you in violation of the Swiss Federal Criminal Code,” Suchet continued loudly. “You seem to be implicated in other offenses as well. You will not be permitted to leave except in the custody of the police.”

Deschner was silent. In his eyes Ben could see what appeared to be fear. Why was he saying nothing?

“Guards, please escort Mr. Hartman to Secure Room Number 4. Mr. Hartman, you will take nothing with you. You are hereby detained awaiting official arrest.”

The guards approached, weapons still pointed at him.

Ben got to his feet, his hands open at his side, and began walking down the corridor, the two guards falling in beside him. As he passed Deschner, he saw the attorney give the tiniest shrug of his shoulders.

Peter’s words of caution:
They practically
own
half the cops
. Schmid’s words of menace:
the
Einwanderungsbehörde
can hold you in administrative detention for a year before your case reaches a magistrate
.

He couldn’t allow himself to be taken in. What galvanized him wasn’t the chance that he would be killed or locked up, but the fact that in either case his investigations would come to an end. Peter’s efforts would have been in vain. The Corporation would have won.

He couldn’t let that happen. Whatever the price.

Secure Rooms,
die Stahlkammern
, were, Ben knew, where items of intrinsic value—gold, gemstones, bearer bonds—were displayed and assessed whenever an owner requested an official audit of his stored possessions. Though lacking vault-like impregnability, they were indeed secure, with reinforced steel doors and closed-circuit surveillance systems. At the entrance of
Zimmer Vier
, one of the guards waved an electronic reader by a blinking red light; when the door unlocked, he gestured Ben to enter first, and the two guards followed him. Then the door closed with a series of three audible clicks.

Ben looked around him. The room was brightly lit and sparely furnished; it would be difficult to lose, or hide, a single gemstone in this space. The slate-tiled floor was polished to a dark sheen. There was a long table of perfectly clear Plexiglas, and six folding chairs of gray painted metal.

One of the guards—burly and overweight, his red, fleshy face suggesting a steady diet of beef and beer—gestured for Ben to sit down on a chair. Ben paused before complying. The two guards had reholstered their sidearms, but made it abundantly clear that they wouldn’t hesitate to use cruder physical means if he were less than cooperative.

“And so we wait,
ja?
” said the second guard, in
heavily accented English. The man, his light brown hair brush cut, was leaner and, Ben judged, probably much faster than his cohort. Doubtless mentally swifter as well.

Ben turned to him. “How much do they pay you here? I’m a
very
rich man, you know. I can give you a very nice life if I choose. You do me a favor, I’ll do you one.” He made no effort to disguise his naked desperation; they would either respond or they would not.

The leaner guard snorted and shook his head. “You should speak your proposal louder, to be sure that the microphones pick it up.”

They had no reason to believe that Ben would be good for his word, and there were no assurances he could make, while in captivity, to persuade them otherwise. Still, their amused contempt was encouraging: his best chance now was to be underestimated. Ben stood up, groaning, and clutched his midriff.

“Sit
down
,” the guard commanded firmly.

“The claustrophobia…I can’t take the… small, enclosed places!” Ben spoke in a tone that was increasingly frantic, verging on hysteria.

Both guards looked at each other and laughed scornfully—they would not be taken in by such an obvious ploy.

“No, no, I’m serious,” Ben said with growing urgency. “My God! How explicit do I have to be? I have a…a nervous stomach. I have to get to a bathroom immediately or I’ll…have an accident.” He was playing the role of the flighty, flaky American to the hilt. “Stress brings it on much more quickly! I need my pills. Dammit! My Valium! A sedative. I have terrible claustrophobia—I can’t be in enclosed spaces.
Please!
” As he spoke he started to gesticulate wildly, as if having a panic attack.

The lean guard just regarded him with an amused
contemptuous half-smile. “You will have to take it up with the prison infirmary.”

With a manic, stricken expression, Ben stepped closer to him, his gaze flicking toward the holstered gun and then back at the lean man’s face. “Please, you don’t understand!” He waved his hands even more wildly. “I’ll have a panic attack! I need to go to the bathroom! I need a
tranquilizer!
” With lightning speed, he thrust both hands into the guard’s hip holster and retrieved the short-barreled revolver. Then he took two steps back, holding the piece in his hands, his performance abruptly over.

“Keep your hands at shoulder level,” he told the thickly built guard. “Or I fire, and you both die.”

The two guards exchanged glances.

“Now one of you will take me out of this place. Or both of you will die. It’s a good deal. Take it before the offer expires.”

The guards conferred briefly in
Schweitzerdeutsch
. Then the lean one spoke. “It would be extremely stupid of you to use this gun, if you even know how, which I doubt. You will be imprisoned for the rest of your life.”

It was the wrong tone: wary, alarmed, yet without terror. The guard was not at all unnerved. Perhaps Ben’s earlier performance of weakness had been
too
effective. Ben could see that a measure of skepticism remained in their expressions and posture. At once, he knew what he must say. “You think I wouldn’t fire this gun?” Ben spoke in a bored voice, only his eyes blazing. “I killed five at the Bahnhofplatz. Two more won’t weigh on my mind.”

The guards suddenly grew rigid, all condescension having instantly evaporated. “
Das Monster vom Bahnhofplatz
,” the fleshy one said hoarsely to his partner as a look of horror crossed his face. The blood drained from his florid complexion.

“You!” Ben barked at him, seizing the advantage. “Take me out of here.” Within seconds, the thickset guard used his electronic reader to open the door. “And if you want to live, you’ll stay behind,” he told the leaner, evidently cleverer one. The door closed behind him, the three muffled clicks verifying that the bolts had electronically slid into place.

Frog-marching the guard in front of him, Ben traveled swiftly down the beige-carpeted corridor. The feed from the closed-circuit video probably went into archival storage and examination, rather than being viewed in real time, but there was no way to be certain.

“What’s your name?” Ben demanded. “
Wie heissen Sie?
”

“Laemmel,” the guard grunted. “Christoph Laemmel.” He reached the end of the corridor and started to turn left.

“
No
,” Ben hissed. “
Not
that way! We’re not going out the front. Take me out the back way. The service entrance. Where the trash is taken out.”

Laemmel paused in momentary confusion. Ben placed the revolver near one of his beet-red ears, letting him feel the cold metal. Moving more quickly, the guard took him down the back stairs, the ugly, dented steel a dramatic contrast with the polished formality of the bank’s public spaces. The gloom of the stairwell was scarcely diminished by the naked, low-wattage electric bulbs that protruded from the wall at each landing.

The guard’s heavy shoes clattered on the metal stairs.

“Quiet,” Ben said, speaking to him in German. “Make no sound, or I will make a very deafening one, and it will be the last thing you ever hear.”

“You have no chance,” Laemmel said in a low, frightened voice. “No chance at all.”

Finally, they reached the wide double doors that led to the back alleyway. Ben pressed on the cross latch, made sure that the doors opened from within. “This is the end of our little trip together,” he said.

Now Laemmel grunted. “Do you think you are any safer outside of this building?”

Ben stepped into the shadowy alleyway, feeling the cool air against his flushed face. “What the
Polizei
do is not your personal concern,” he said, keeping his gun drawn.

“
Die Polizei?
” Laemmel replied. “I do not speak of
them
.” He spat.

An eel of fear thrashed in Ben’s belly. “What are you talking about?” he demanded urgently. Ben gripped the gun in both his hands and raised it to Laemmel’s eyes. “
Tell me!
” he said with furious concentration. “Tell me what you know!”

There was a sudden exhalation of breath from Laemmel’s throat, and a warm mist of crimson spattered Ben’s face. A bullet had torn through the man’s neck. Had Ben somehow lost his grip, squeezed the trigger without realizing it? A second explosion, inches away from his head, answered the question. There was a shooter in position.

Oh, Christ! Not again!

As the guard crumpled face forward, Ben lunged down the dank alley. He heard a popping noise, as if from a toy gun, then a metallic reverberation, and a pockmark suddenly appeared on the large Dumpster to his left. The shooter had to be firing from his right.

As he felt something hot crease his shoulder, he dove behind the Dumpster: temporary refuge, but any port in a storm. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the movement of something small and dark—a rat, displaced by his arrival.
Move!
The ledge of the cement
wall that separated the bank’s back lot from that of its neighbor was at shoulder height; Ben stuck the gun in the waistband of his trousers and, with both hands, lifted himself up and over. A short pathway now separated him from Usteristrasse. Grasping the revolver, he fired wildly, in three different areas. He wanted the shooter to take cover, believing he was under fire. He needed the time. Every second now was precious.

There was return fire, and he could hear the slugs hitting the concrete retainer, but Ben was safely on the other side.

Now he charged, pumping his feet down the alley to Usteristrasse, fast. Faster. Faster still! “Run like your life depends on it,” his track coach would tell him before competitions. Now it did.

And what if there were more than one shooter? But surely they wouldn’t have had enough warning to put a whole team into position. The thoughts jostled and collided in Ben’s mind.
Focus, dammit
.

A brackish smell cued him to his next move: it was a breeze from the Sihl River, the charmless narrow waterway that branched off from the Limmat at the Platz-promenade. Now he crossed the Gessner Allee, scarcely looking at the traffic, hurtling in front of a taxicab whose bearded driver honked and cursed at him before stepping on the brakes. But he’d made it across. The Sihl, banked with a declivity of blackened cinder blocks, stretched before him. His eyes scanned the water frantically until he fixed on a small motorboat. They were a common sight on the Sihl; this one had a single passenger, a plump, beer-swilling man with sunglasses and a fishing pole, though he was not yet fishing. His life jacket made his already bulky proportions look even bulkier. The river would take him to the Sihlwald, a nature preserve ten kilometers south of Zurich, where
the riverbanks flattened out in the woodlands and became furrowed with brooks. It was a popular destination among the city’s inhabitants.