The Sigma Protocol (46 page)

He bellowed, a high-pitched scream of disbelief and terror and excruciating, incomprehensible pain. “Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Oh, my God!”

Trevor picked up the dismembered finger and held it aloft. At the severed end, blood still wept.

Anna put in a call to David Denneen.

“Is that you, Anna?” he said tersely, his customary warmth crimped by uncustomary wariness. “The shit’s flying.”

“Talk to me, David. Tell me what the hell’s going on.”

“Crazy stuff. They’re saying you’re…” His voice trailed off.

“What?”

“Crazy stuff. You on a sterile line?”

“Of course.”

There was a pause. “Listen, Anna. The department’s been ordered to place a P-47 on you, Anna—full-out mail, wire, phone intercepts.”

“Jesus Christ!” Anna said. “I don’t believe it.”

“It gets worse. Since this morning, you’ve been a 12–44: apprehend on sight. Bring in by any means necessary. Jesus, I don’t know what you’ve been up to, but you’re being called a national security risk. They’re saying you’ve been accepting money from hostiles for years. I shouldn’t even be talking to you.”

“What?”

“Word is the FBI’s discovered all sorts of cash and jewelry in your apartment. Expensive clothes. Offshore bank accounts.”

“Lies!” Anna exploded. “All goddamn lies.”

There was a long pause. “I knew they had to be,
Anna. But I’m glad to hear you say it, all the same. Someone’s messing with you in a very serious way. Why?”

“Why?” Anna closed her eyes briefly. “So I don’t get in a position to discover why. That’s my guess.” She rang off hurriedly.

What the hell was going on? Had “Yossi” or Phil Ostrow put poison in Bartlett’s ear? She’d never called them; maybe Bartlett was angry that they’d found out about her investigation in the first place, even though she wasn’t the responsible party. Or maybe Bartlett was angry that she hadn’t gone along with their request to bring Hartman in.

She suddenly realized that neither agency official had mentioned Hans Vogler, the ex-Stasi assassin. Did that mean “Yossi” knew nothing about it? If so, did that mean that the Mossad freelancers had nothing to do with hiring Vogler? She retrieved Phil Ostrow’s card and dialed the number. It went to automated voice mail; and she decided against leaving a message.

Maybe Jack Hampton would know something about it. She phoned him at home, in Chevy Chase. “Jack,” she began. “It’s—”

“Jesus Christ, tell me you’re not calling me,” Hampton said in a rush. “Tell me you’re not jeopardizing the security clearance of your friends by a misjudged phone call.”

“Is there an intercept on your end?”

“My end?” Hampton paused. “No. Never. I make sure of it myself.”

“Then you’re not in danger. I’m on a secure line on this end. I don’t see any way by which a connection could be traced.”

“Let’s say you’re right, Anna,” he said dubiously. “You’re still presenting me with a moral conundrum. Word has it you’re some primo villainness—the way
I’ve heard you described, it’s like you’re a combination of Ma Barker and Mata Hari. With the wardrobe of Imelda Marcos.”

“It’s bullshit. You know that.”

“Maybe I do, Anna, and maybe I don’t. The kind of sums I’ve heard bandied about would be awfully tempting. Buy yourself a nice spit of land in Virgin Gorda. All that pink sand, blue sky. Go snorkeling every day…”

“Goddamn it, Jack!”

“A word of advice. Don’t take any woolen kopeks and don’t whack any more Swiss bankers.”

“Is that what they’re saying about me?”

“One of the things. One of the many things. Let’s just say it’s the biggest pile-on I’ve heard of since Wen Ho Lee. It’s a bit overdone, to tell you the truth. I keep asking myself, Who’s got that kind of money to throw around? Russia’s so strapped for cash that most of its nuclear scientists have left to drive taxicabs in New York. And what kind of hard currency does China have—the place is Zambia with nukes. I mean, let’s get real.” Hampton’s voice seemed to soften. “So what are you calling me for? Want our current missile codes to sell to the Red Chinese? Just let me jot down your fax number.”

“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?”

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.”