The Sigma Protocol (26 page)

She quickly read down the columns of information—aliases, real names, names of any living relatives, and the numbers of the corresponding files. Three old men remained alive. Countries of origin: Portugal, Italy, Switzerland.

“No addresses?” she said.

“Just old ones. None current that we’ve been able to procure through the normal means. All of them have relocated in the past year.”

“The past
year?
They could be anywhere in the world.”

“That’s a logical possibility. The probability is that they’re in the same country, likely in the same general locale—at a certain point of life, one becomes subject to a sort of field of gravitation. It’s difficult for old men
to completely uproot themselves. Even when their safety is at risk, there is a level of personal tumult to which they will refuse to subject themselves. All the same, they haven’t exactly left forwarding addresses. Evidently, they’re keeping a low profile.”

“Hiding,” Anna said. “They’re afraid.”

“It would seem they have reason to be.”

“It’s like there’s some geriatric grudge match going on. How could something that started even before the CIA was founded still have such power?”

Bartlett craned his neck, resting his gaze on the velvet-lined display case before he turned back. “Certain things grow more powerful with age. And, of course, it’s a grave mistake to confuse size with influence. Today, the CIA is a vast, solid government institution with endless layers of bureaucracy. At the beginning, personal networks were where true power resided. It was true of Bill Donovan, the founder of the OSS, and even more so of Allen Dulles. Yes, Dulles is known for his role in creating the CIA, but that wasn’t the most impressive of his accomplishments. For him, there was one battle, the battle against the revolutionary left.”

“The ‘gentleman spy,’ they called him, didn’t they?”

“The ‘gentleman’ part made him as dangerous as the ‘spy’ part. He was never more formidable than when he was a private citizen, back in the days when he and his brother Foster ran the international finance division of a certain law firm.”

“The law firm? What did they do, double bill their clients?”

Bartlett gave her a slightly pitying look. “It’s an amateur’s error to underestimate the reach and range of private concerns. Theirs was more than just a white-shoe law firm. It had genuinely international reach. Dulles, traveling around the world, was able to weave a
sort of spider’s web across Europe. He enlisted confederates in all the major cities, finding them among the Allies, the Axis,
and
the neutrals.”

“Confederates?” Anna interrupted. “How do you mean?”

“Highly placed individuals—contacts, friends, ‘assets,’ call them what you will—whom Allen Dulles effectively had on retainer. They served as sources of information and advice, but also as agents of influence. Dulles knew how to appeal to people’s self-interest. After all, he facilitated an extraordinary number of deals involving governments and multinational corporations, and that made him an invaluable man to know. If you were a businessman, he could ensure that a large government contract was steered in your direction. If you were a government official, he might provide you with a crucial morsel of information that would further your career. Money and intelligence—Dulles understood that one could be readily converted to the other, like two currencies, albeit with constantly shifting exchange rates. And, of course, Dulles’s own role as a go-between, an intermediary, depended upon him knowing just a little bit more than everyone else.”

“A go-between?”

“Maybe you’ve heard of the Bank for International Settlement of Basel?”

“Maybe I haven’t.”

“It was essentially a counting house where businessmen on both sides of the war could settle down and parse the distribution of dividends. A very useful institution to have—if you were a businessman. After all, business didn’t cease simply because the cannons began to fire. But the hostilities did interfere with the conduct of corporate partnerships and alliances, giving rise to all sorts of impediments. Dulles figured out ways to circumvent those impediments.”

“That’s not an attractive picture.”

“It’s the reality. Dulles, you see, believed in the ‘network.’ It’s the key to understanding his life’s mission. A network was an array of individuals—a whole, a complex configuration, that could have an influence vastly greater than the sum of its parts. It’s a striking thing to contemplate. As I say, it always comes down to the crooked timber of humanity.”

Anna raised an eyebrow. “It sounds a little frightening.”

A vein pulsed on Bartlett’s temple. “It is a little frightening, and perhaps more than a little. The nature of these networks, after all, is that they are invisible to those who are not part of them—invisible even to some who are. And they also have a tendency to survive the individuals they initially comprise. You could say they take on a life of their own. And they can have powerful effects on the organizations that they invade.” He adjusted his French cuffs again. “I talked of spiders’ webs. There’s a curious parasitic wasp, very tiny, of the genus
Hymenoepimecis
—a clever little creature that stings a spider into temporary paralysis, and lays its eggs in the spider’s abdomen. Soon the spider goes back to work, as if nothing had happened, even as the larvae grow inside him, nourished on its fluids. Then, on the night that the larvae will molt and kill the spider, they chemically induce it to change its behavior. On this night, the spider is induced to spin a cocoon web, useless to the spider but necessary for the larva. As soon as the spider has finished its work, the larvae consume the spider and hang the pupal cocoon in the special web. It’s quite extraordinary, really, the parasite’s fine-grained manipulation of the host’s behavior. But it’s nothing compared to what we humans can devise. That’s the sort of thing I think about, Ms. Navarro. Who’s inside of
us?
What forces might be manipulating the apparatus of
civic governance into building a web that will serve their own purposes? When will the parasite decide to consume the host?”

“O.K., I’ll play along,” Anna said. “Let’s say half a century ago, some dark conspiracy stings us, in effect—implants something that’s going to grow and cause damage. Even if all that’s so, how would we ever know?”

“That is an excellent question, Ms. Navarro,” Bartlett replied. “Webs are hard to see, aren’t they, even when they’re big? Have you ever walked into an old basement or storage area in a dim light, seeing nothing in the gloom? Then you switch on a flashlight, and suddenly you realize that the empty space over your head isn’t exactly empty—it’s filled with layers of cobwebs, a vast canopy of glassy filaments. You direct the beam in another direction, and that canopy disappears—as if it were never there. Had you imagined it? You look straight up. Nothing. Then, directing the beam at just the right off-angle, focusing your eyes on some intermediate point, it all becomes visible once more.” Bartlett’s gaze searched her face for comprehension. “People like me spend our days looking for that one odd angle that brings the old webs into view. Often we look
too
hard, and we imagine things. Sometimes we see what’s really there. You, Ms. Navarro, strike me as someone not prone to imagine things.”

“I’ll accept that at face value,” Anna replied.

“I don’t mean to imply that you lack imagination—only that you keep it under tight control. No matter. The point is simply that there were alliances forged among some individuals with considerable resources. That much is part of public history. And as for what became of this? I only wish we knew. All we have are these names.”

“Three names,” Anna said. “Three old men.”

“I’d direct your particular attention to Gaston Rossignol. He’d been quite a powerful Swiss banker in his heyday. The most prominent person on the list, and the oldest.”

“All right,” she said, looking up. “The Zuricher. I assume you’ve prepared a background file on him.”

Bartlett opened a desk drawer, withdrew a file festooned with classificatory warning stamps, and slid it to her across the desk. “It’s fairly extensive, aside from the obvious lacunae.”

“Good,” Anna said. “I want to see him before they get to him, too.”

“Assuming you can locate him.”

“He’s lived his entire life in Zurich. As you say, there’s a field of gravitation there. Even if he’s moved, he would have left behind friends, family members. Tributaries leading to the source.”

“Or moats, protecting a fortress. A man like Rossignol has powerful friends, highly placed ones, who will do whatever they can to protect him. Friends who are, as the French say,
branché
. Powerful and plugged-in. They have the ability to remove him from the grid of visibility, the bureaucratic files and computer records. Do you have some clever subterfuge in mind?”

“Nothing like that. Subterfuge is what they’ll be on guard against. Rossignol has nothing to fear from me. If his friends and confederates are as well informed as you suggest, they’ll realize that and spread the word.”

“So you’re envisaging a simple ‘I come in peace’?” The words were wry, but he looked intrigued.

Anna shrugged. “Some version of that. I suspect the best route will be the most direct one. But I’ll find out soon enough.” She glanced at her watch. “I’m taking the next flight I can catch to Zurich.”

Mettlenberg, St. Gallen, Switzerland

A little over five hours later, Ben Hartman sat in his rented Range Rover in the staff parking lot of the Regionalspital Sankt Gallen Nord, watching people coming and going: doctors, nurses, hospital workers. The powerful engine idled softly. Fortunately, there weren’t many people, even at a few minutes after five o’clock, the end of the workday for the office workers. Twilight was beginning to fall, and the outside lights were starting to come on.

From Zurich he had called the hospital and asked for Dr. Margarethe Hubli. He was put right through to Pediatrics, where he asked, in English, whether she was in.

Yes, he was told; would you like to make an appointment to see the doctor? The nurse’s English was halting but comprehensible.

“No,” he’d said, “I really just wanted to make sure the doctor was in the hospital. My child is ill, and I want to know whether you had a pediatrician on call in case we need one.” He thanked the nurse and, after finding out how late Dr. Hubli worked, hung up.

Liesl was scheduled to be in the hospital only until four in the afternoon. He’d been waiting here over two hours; already she was more than an hour late in leaving. Ben was certain she had not yet emerged from the hospital. Moreover, he had spotted her Renault parked in the lot. He figured she was the sort of dedicated doctor who worked long hours and paid little attention to schedules.

He might be sitting here for quite some time, he realized.

The document of incorporation that Peter had referred to wasn’t in the vault, so where else might it be? He had said he’d hidden it away safely. Was it possible
that Liesl was telling the truth, that she really didn’t know where it was? In that case was it possible that Peter had concealed it somewhere among his possessions in the cabin without Liesl knowing?

She’d answered too quickly when he’d asked her whether Peter might have hidden something there. She knew something she wasn’t telling.

He had to go to the cabin.

Forty minutes later, Liesl came out of the Emergency entrance.

She was talking to someone, bantering. She gave a wave good-bye and zipped up her leather jacket. Then she half-walked, half-ran to her car, got in, and started it up.

Ben waited until she’d gone some distance down the road before he pulled out of the lot. She wouldn’t recognize the Range Rover and would have no cause for suspicion, apart from her normal cautiousness. Still, it was better not to alarm her.

At a travel bookstore in Zurich he’d bought a map of the canton of St. Gallen and studied the roads in the area. Both Peter and Liesl had mentioned living in a “cabin,” which likely meant that it was situated in a forest or woods. There was one wooded area about eight kilometers from the hospital, roughly north-northwest. The only other one within a two-hour drive was forty kilometers away. That was quite a distance, on back roads, for someone who had to go to work every day—sometimes even had to return to the hospital quickly in emergencies. More likely the cabin was located in the closer woods.

Having committed the roads in the area to memory, he knew that the next turnoff wasn’t for two kilometers. But if she stopped somewhere along the road and turned off, he stood a chance of losing her. All he could do was hope she didn’t.

Soon the road rose steeply, following the hilly topography of this part of Switzerland. It enabled him to look far ahead, and he was able to spot what he determined was her Renault, stopped at a traffic light. At the next intersection was a highway marked 10. If she took a left onto 10, she was heading toward the forest he had scoped out. If she took a right, or went beyond 10, he’d have no idea where she was going.

The Renault turned left.

He accelerated and reached the intersection with 10 just a few minutes after she had. There were enough other cars on the road that he wasn’t too obvious. He felt sure she still had no idea he was tailing her.

The four-lane highway went parallel to a set of railroad tracks, past several immense farms, great fields that went on as far as he could see. Suddenly she turned off, a few kilometers before he expected she would.

Once he turned onto the narrow, winding road, he realized that his was the only car behind her. Not good. It had gotten dark, and the road was barely trafficked, and she would soon realize he was following her. How could she not? If she did, she would either slow down to see who it was behind her or, more likely, try to lose him. If she began driving strangely, he would have no choice but to show himself.

Luckily, the twisty road helped to conceal him, as long as he stayed at least one bend behind her. Now they passed a sparsely wooded area that gradually became denser. From time to time he would see the flash of her headlights, appearing and then disappearing around the bends. This enabled him to follow her at some remove, to let her gain considerable distance on him, just in case she had noticed the Rover.