by Fritz Galt
He twisted his lips at the exquisite irony of it all. With all that he, Natalie and Alec had survived, ultimately it was a simple thing that tripped them up.
If he and Natalie had remained in New Mexico, bought a house and tried to raise a family, their marriage might have failed even sooner. And if Alec hadn’t ventured into the most dire situations abroad, where all his senses were heightened, maybe he would have skidded off an Interstate highway on a rainy night and been killed years before.
Perhaps they had all been living on borrowed time and a tedious assignment combined with an ill-fated sailing adventure had finally sent them over the edge.
In the foyer, the gendarme tossed the telephone down. Rubbing his hands together, presumably for warmth, he approached their table.
“Let’s go to the morgue.”
Chapter 3
Rain drummed against the roof of the police car. Behind the wheel, the gendarme fought to maintain the car’s grip on the hilly cobblestone street.
Mick and Natalie sat hunched in the back seat.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” Natalie said.
Mick had to agree. The charming streets seemed more like the set of a surreal movie.
Lights from the Casino smeared against the car’s wet windows. Then there was the Grand Hotel with its wide wings. Finally, they passed the modern Centre de Congrès, which eventually disappeared behind orchards and a misty shroud of rain.
“This has to be a mistake,” she said.
“What if it isn’t? You’ve got to be prepared.”
“I am prepared. Just not for this.”
He reached over and touched her hand. It felt like trying to ease a child into news of his parent’s death.
The car skidded to a halt under the portico of l’Hôpital de Montreux. He groped in the dark for a door handle, but there was none. After all, it was a police car.
The gendarme opened Natalie’s door. They stepped out and approached the hospital.
The gritty friction of their shoes on the pavement became squeaks on a clean hospital floor. The place was quiet. Altogether too quiet for him.
At the reception desk, the gendarme introduced them to a young doctor, who was still dressed in scrubs.
The doctor extended his hand, and Mick shook it. It might well be the last hand to have held his brother alive.
Wordlessly, the doctor turned, and the three of them followed him. Mick couldn’t help resenting the man’s muscular shoulders and blond curls, so superfluous in the scheme of things.
They entered a section of the hospital that was generally off-limits to visitors. There, pungent ammonia cleared Mick’s senses. He scanned the tile walls and the sealed doors and windows. Everyone wore lime green, from their paper caps down to their shoe bags.
So this was his brother’s hospital. Where he had been taken, where he still lay.
An elevator dropped the four of them off at the lowest level. There, he was met by a hot blast from a boiler room. Steam seeped from the laundry room down the hall.
The doctor leaned against a door marked “Morgue,” and Mick felt Natalie’s fingers tighten in his.
They stepped into the room.
The air was frosty. A wall of drawers faced them, each wide enough to hold a body.
The gendarme removed his hat, and the doctor turned to face them. His diction was as crisp as the refrigerated air.
“The victim recovered consciousness briefly while at hospital, then expired at 18:25. Cause of death was cardiac arrest.”
The doctor turned to a small wooden desk where a man in black, horn-rimmed glasses assiduously filled out forms. Without looking up, the stooped man handed him a folded sheet of paper.
“His last words were to contact you and your wife at Hostellerie du Lac,” the doctor said. “We have a transcript of his final words.” He handed Mick the computer printout.
So efficient. So Swiss.
Mick would read it later. He folded it carefully and slipped it into the rear pocket of his jeans.
“His personal effects?” the doctor ordered.
The old man withdrew a clear plastic bag from his desk.
Natalie gasped.
Mick instantly saw why. The paraphernalia was indeed Alec’s. Stuffed inside, among other familiar objects, was Alec’s patent leather wallet etched with a Mayan corn god from his recent vacation to Tulum, Mexico.
Mick pulled the wallet out of the bag and flipped through the credit cards. They were all Alec’s.
Strangely, there was no photo ID, such as a drivers’ license or CERN security card.
“Did you remove anything?” he asked the gendarme.
“Nothing,” the man said.
The doctor finally introduced the older man. “This is Dr. Laudier, the coroner. He will show you the body.”
Dr. Laudier removed his glasses and nodded in deference to the doctor. Then his small, studious eyes lifted up to Mick and Natalie in brief and unexpected curiosity.
“Are you his brother?”
“Half-brother,” Mick said. “Same father.”
Mick’s identity acknowledged, the coroner switched off his computer and stuffed papers into a desk drawer.
Tugging rubber gloves over his veined hands, the coroner shuffled to the far end of the room. There, he bent to the second-lowest drawer and grasped the handle.
Natalie’s fingernails dug into Mick’s palm. A small metallic click jolted him into instant awareness.
A long body bag rolled into view. He tried to suppress an unexpected morbid curiosity. The gloved hand pulled the zipper, which became snagged on something inside. The elderly coroner tugged with both hands to pry it free.
At last the bag lay open. Dr. Laudier adjusted his glasses, reached inside, tilted the head upward and rested it on the gray plastic cover.
Mick stared at the face with its prominent nose damaged by the zipper.
“Alec Pierce,” Dr. Laudier read from the label attached to the drawer.
Natalie stepped past Mick, only to clasp a hand over her mouth.
“Can you identify this man?” Dr. Laudier asked.
Mick bent down and wrinkled his nose. The formaldehyde reeked.
“What’s this?” he asked, pointing to a purple bruise that ran the entire length of the face.
The young doctor stepped forward. “That would be a contusion. A massive blow to the head. Probably coupled with aspirated water from the boat wreck.”
“You should still be able to identify him.” Dr. Laudier said in a subdued, but firm, voice.
In one respect, the coroner was right. The bruise didn’t obscure the general features. And yet he was wrong. Mick couldn’t identify him.
It wasn’t Alec.
Okay, so where was the scoundrel? Was his brother in another drawer? At the bottom of the lake? Sipping mint juleps on a remote tropical island?
The missing photo IDs and mislabeled corpse had Alec written all over it. Was he ever truly in danger? Did he simply need Mick to play along with the charade?
If Alec was pulling a stunt, how could he have put Mick and Natalie through all the horror and anxiety?
Through the jumbled clutter of possible explanations, he could hear his brother’s faint cry for help. And that’s what mattered most. If there existed even a glimmer of hope at finding Alec alive, he had to pursue it.
He pulled Natalie away from the sight.
“Of course, that’s my brother,” he said, fighting back a surge of exasperation. “That’s Alec Pierce.”
Before Dr. Laudier reinserted the head and yanked the zipper shut, Mick glanced into the body bag and took a mental snapshot of the rest of the cadaver.
The young man wore a soggy flannel shirt and blue jeans, hardly the standard wear of a yachtsman. His bronze skin was stretched tight over delicate bones. The smooth complexion told of an office worker or professional more than a tradesman or sailor. His cheeks were sunken, his dark hair neatly trimmed. Even though his jaw appear
ed crushed from one side, Mick could see an even row of healthy teeth.
Someday, somewhere, a fine family would mourn his death.
“Did you find him on or near the boat?” he asked.
“Nearby, monsieur,” the gendarme said with a sigh. “Just on the Swiss side of the border.”
“Are there other victims or survivors?”
“None that we have discovered.”
“Sign here, please,” the coroner said.
Mick scanned several forms that acknowledged Alec’s identity and permitted him to take Alec’s possessions.
He looked at Natalie. Up to that point, she had acted singularly disinterested, but raised an eyebrow as he signed the papers.
“May I drive you back to the city?” the gendarme offered. He put his hat on his head and once again rubbed his thin hands together.
“No,” Natalie said firmly, the first word she had uttered since entering the hospital.
She looked like she would rather walk home through the rain than see the policeman again.
The gendarme tipped his hat and left.
Dr. Laudier began explaining the hospital’s relationship with a local mortuary. Mick struggled to pay attention.
Yes, the body should be removed to the mortuary the next day. Yes, it should be embalmed. Yes, Mick would arrange to fly it home.
Home to where?
When the discussion ended, Natalie said brightly, “So, where’s the food in this place?”
It took a moment for the startled young doctor to recover. “You’ll find a cafeteria one floor above.”
“Great,” she said, and swung a curved hip into the exit door.
“Excuse us,” Mick said to the doctor and coroner, and rushed after her.
Stepping into the hallway, he found himself suddenly thrust into a circular telephone booth.
Natalie rotated the door shut and shoved him onto the metal stool.
“Okay, explain away,” she said.
“Believe me, I have no idea what’s going on.”
He lifted the plastic bag that the coroner had given them, and pulled out Alec’s wallet.
“His driver’s license and other photo IDs are missing. He set this up.”
“He set us up, that rat.” She gave him a final shove and took her hands off his collar. “What am I going to do with you boys? Just tell me this: is he dead or alive?”
“I have a hunch that he’s very much alive.”
“A hunch? So you don’t really know.”
“What’s worse for you, not knowing or the fact that he might be dead?”
“I just want him back.”
“Why? To get back at him?”
“At this point I have totally had it with him.”
“Here’s some news for you. So have I.”
“Oh, spare me the false indignation,” she said. “You guys are both in on this.”
“Hardly. If anything, it’s you two, working on that CERN project.”
“You played along. I saw you sign the coroner’s report.”
“All I know is what you know. And I have to admit that this was some surprise. Even for Alec. He’s really outdone himself this time.”
“He’s undone himself, as far as I’m concerned.” She slumped against the glass door. “Look, I can’t even pretend to understand what’s going on here. Just keep me out of it, okay? And do me another favor. When you find him, tell him to try disappearing for good next time.”
“That sounds reasonable.”
“I don’t need to know what kind of op the Agency is running this time. I’m not cut out for it, I’m not trained for it and it goes against my principles. I wouldn’t even give a rat’s ass about spooks if I weren’t married to one. In fact, I wouldn’t mind seeing them all burn in hell.”
He got the point.
“Now, please step out of this phone booth,” she said, trembling slightly. “I have a phone call to make.”
Chapter 4
After a fine dining experience at the hospital’s cafeteria, they returned to their room at the Hostellerie. Mick could sense that his wife was drained by the evening’s macabre entertainment. She showed no more interest in delving into his brother’s plight. That would be up to him.
“I’m jumping into the shower,” she said, and began to undress.
It was a perfect opportunity for him to slip out of the room and make a few phone calls.
As soon as water began to burst out of the showerhead, he stepped out of the room. On the stairway landing, he pressed the wall switch to turn on the light. Then he followed the stairs down to the foyer where the hotel had made a phone available for guests.
He tried his brother’s apartment in Geneva’s Carouge district. No answer.
So he placed a call to the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) complex where Alec had an office. There was only a recording.
He had no recourse but to call his boss in Bern. Station Chief Everett Hoyle wouldn’t appreciate the interruption to his evening at home.
The phone picked up, and Mick heard a yawn.
“It’s me. Mick.”
He could imagine the burly, balding family man with his intense, arched eyebrows. “Yeah, what’s up?”
Mick launched into the whole saga of his brother’s disappearance.
Everett listened mutely until Mick had finished. “I’m not aware of anything going down. While you’re down there, I want you to look into it. Do you have anything to go on?”
“Just a piece of paper,” Mick said. He reached in the rear pocket of his jeans and unfolded the computer printout. “It’s the coroner’s transcript of the man’s dying words.”
“Don’t read it over the phone.”
Mick refolded the page and returned it to his pocket. “I’ll bring it to the office tomorrow.”
“Why not go to Geneva and check things out first?”
“Why not fly home with the corpse? Jesus, I feel like I’m on stage and Alec hasn’t told me how to act.”
“Then improvise,” Everett said. “Take some control of your life.”
“Right.”
The stairway timer had turned the light off and the restaurant was dark. Mick felt for the phone and returned the receiver to its cradle. In the musty stillness, all he heard was the steady drip of rain.
He groped his way up the creaking stairs back to the room.
Natalie stood by the lace curtains in a minuscule sitting room. She clasped her bathrobe collar around her throat and didn’t turn from her view of the private terrace.
They seemed to have arrived at a temporary truce.
He glanced around the tiny room. The antique furniture, worn Persian carpet and faded floral wallpaper told of a bygone era. A yellowed lithograph of the nearby Château de Chillon comprised the room’s sole decoration.
On their bedside table, a sleek plastic clock radio, an invasion from a different century, blinked a row of zeros.
And in the mirror, a blunt-nosed, six-foot son-of-a-bitch stared back at him. What do you do with a robust forty-two-year-old, muscular half-breed stuffed into a Scottish plaid sweater?
Since his days at the Naval Academy at Annapolis, he had evolved from a cavalier buck in love with his own face to a lost man examining an unfamiliar mask. But one thing hadn’t changed. His eyes were still alert and interested, even as he studied the haunted face with inward sagging cheeks and expressionless lips.
The way he figured it, he was at the midpoint of his life and well over the hump in his career. His midlife crisis was long overdue. Perhaps running away with his wife to the Swiss Riviera was as wild as his faithful heart would allow.
It hadn’t been a bad life to that point. If anything, it had seemed charmed. Charmed, as Marco Polo had been charmed centuries earlier by the cultures and discoveries he encountered in his travels.
It hadn’t been a bad marriage, either. Surprisingly resilient, in fact. Natalie had rescued him from death and despair on numerous occasions. What his guardian angel h
ad gotten out of the deal, he didn’t know.
His whole life had trained him to anticipate what might come along, especially the unexpected.
His pedigree as the son of an OSS code-breaking legend and a rugged Pueblo Indian mother of the Tiwa tribe had prepared him mentally and physically for the varied tasks associated with his profession. However, brushes with death had taken their toll in tangible ways.
Silver strands had begun to appear in his thick black mane. And that night, his wide forehead showed deep furrows.
Then there was Alec. How should he feel about him?
Should Mick agonize over Alec’s fate? Or should he feel betrayed by his brother’s subterfuge? Should he put up his guard, or just forget about the whole thing?
He yanked his sweater over his head and draped it over a nearby chair. The folded transcript of the man’s last words crinkled in his hip pocket. He pulled it out and was turning toward the dim wall lamp when he heard Natalie approaching on the threadbare carpet.
“I think that can wait,” she said.
Fair enough; Alec could wait. He opened the drawer of the bedside table and tossed the transcript inside along with the bag of Alec’s personal effects.
He slammed the drawer shut and began to straighten up.
“Don’t bother.” Her voice was husky in a way he hadn’t heard for years.
She leaned into him and he sat back on the bed. She continued forward until his shoulders were pressed against the lumpy mattress. Her taut torso stretched out over him. Of its own accord, the robe fell open and the collar brushed against his face.
In the half-light, he glimpsed her eager eyes and naked breasts.
“I’m sorry I’m not much help in these matters,” she said.
“It isn’t your fault.”
“In fact, I’ve been kind of a pain in the ass.”
“Don’t worry.” She was made that way.
She seemed to read his thoughts and emitted a laugh. “Let me make it up to you.”
He smiled. “If you insist.”
Fragrant waves of damp hair tickled his face as she got to work. One by one, his shirt buttons popped open under expert fingers.