by Fritz Galt
His unhappy secretary, Suzy Kraft didn’t bother to hold the palm of her hand over the phone. “Phone call on Line Two.”
Good. That would be Mick.
He weighed the two objects in his hands and opted for the mug.
“You file these cables,” he said, handing Suzy the folder. Cable traffic from the past several days could wait, but he would be good for nothing without his morning brew. “I’ll take the call in my office.”
He watched Suzy toss back an errant strand of her red hair and look away. Her chin wobbled somewhat from an appealing mixture of chubbiness and maturity. Perhaps she was comparing the drudgery of her work with her secret life dating a mystery man over the past two days.
Hitching a wide set of suspenders over his shoulders, Everett entered his office and sank into his chair.
He enjoyed the cowhide executive chair. It made all the difference between loving and hating work. A little piece of the American West each day made his tour in Europe that much more tolerable.
He studied the name and extension flashing on the LCD panel of his office phone. Damn, it wasn’t Mick. It was the visa office.
He scratched an itch just behind his bald spot. He couldn’t imagine why Cindy would be calling. She wasn’t on any of his committees. Their spouses didn’t socialize with each other. His section hadn’t sent in visa referrals lately.
He picked up the phone. “Hi, Cindy. What can I do for you?”
“I just got a strange phone call. It was pretty disturbing, actually. I thought I’d inform you first.”
“Go ahead.”
“It was a call from a mortuary in Montreux. The mortician has the remains of an American citizen named Alec Pierce and wants to know how we want them disposed. If I’m not mistaken, that could be Mick’s younger brother.”
“It is.”
“I wasn’t informed of his death. Has Mick been notified?”
“He should be heading to New Mexico right now for the funeral.”
“Not without a body,” she said.
Hmm. Where was Mick? “Just out of curiosity, did the mortician ask if the embassy already knew about Alec’s death?”
“In fact, he did. And I told him that we hadn’t heard. He seemed to find that surprising.”
Everett nodded to himself. “He’s checking us out.”
“Creepy guy.”
“Thanks for calling me. I’m the one to handle this,” he said. “I’ll take the mortuary’s phone number.”
“That’s another strange thing. The number he gave me didn’t match the readout on my telephone.”
“I’ll take both numbers.”
He hung up the phone and stared at the two numbers he had written on his official Denver Broncos clipboard. He hadn’t heard from Mick since last night’s phone call. Half-expecting to hear more from him as things developed, he hadn’t acted on the case.
He glanced at the wall calendar. It was another Monday morning. Three months before football season.
Budgetary cutbacks would usurp another week. He had wasted most of the past week extending tours of duty, trimming language classes, dropping coverage of family expenses, eliminating weekend per diem and performing other cost-cutting actions hostile to the workforce.
Something was strange about the second phone number. He stared at the unusual prefix. It wasn’t 21, a Montreux phone number. Instead it read 22. That was Geneva.
He tried to take stock of an alarming trend. According to Mick in his call last night, Alec Pierce was gone and possibly dead. And Mick hadn’t turned up to collect the body.
Everett pulled a note from his wallet. In his messy handwriting, he had scrawled Mick’s phone number at a hotel in Montreux.
Dialing the number, he took his first sip of coffee that morning. It wasn’t Starbucks.
A woman answered in French.
“I need to speak with Mick Pierce, who is a guest at your hotel,” he began.
“Un moment, monsieur.”
He glanced around his desk. His eyes fell on a request by Suzy Kraft to take home leave that autumn. He knew why. To watch her son play football for Virginia Tech. He scribbled the words: “Not approved” and signed it.
“Monsieur, their door is wide open, but the couple is gone. And, they are not in the restaurant.”
“Is the room in order?”
“Pardon?”
“Is there any mess in the room?”
“Well, the bed. It is a mess.”
“Any signs of a struggle? Any damage?”
“Non, monsieur. Only the door, she is wide open and they are gone.” The woman’s voice had turned frosty. “Fortunately we imprinted his credit card, so we already charged them for the last two nights. They did not even return their key.”
“I’m sorry.”
“But they left behind everything else. I will store it.”
“What did they leave behind?” he asked, lurching forward to write down her response.
“Their clothes. Their books. A letter. Even his portefeuille, his wallet.”
“Can you send them to the American embassy?”
“These are not my things.” Her voice dropped several more degrees.
“Fine. I’ll send someone there to pick them up. Merci.” He hung up.
Okay, so Natalie had also vanished. Maybe the budget battle could wait a few hours while he rounded up the three missing officers.
He punched in the extension of the Economics Counselor, Darcy Quierrar.
“Hi, Everett.”
He was surprised when others knew he was calling before he even opened his mouth.
“Er, hi, Darcy. Have you heard from Natalie today?”
“Not a peep. And I wish I had,” she said. “We’ve been wanting to tell her the good news from our team in Geneva. As you probably already know, the U.S. has been accepted as a member state at CERN. It’s a diplomatic coup, thanks mostly to her work.”
“Do you know her schedule?”
“No. She’s on vacation, for God’s sake. Try the RSO.”
“Good idea.”
Several sips of coffee later, he punched in the extension of Paul Schroeder, the Regional Security Officer.
“Hi, Everett.”
“Uh, good morning, Paul. Did Mick Pierce file a vacation itinerary with you?”
“Indeed he did.”
“Can you give me his current whereabouts?”
“Let me check. Got it here. Says he and Natalie should be on their way to Gstaad. Taking the Panorama Express from Montreux this morning. Staying at the Sporthotel Rütti. Do you want their phone number?”
“Sure.” He wrote down the hotel’s number.
“Are you getting ready for the president?” Paul asked.
“What president?”
“Where have you been? The president’s coming to Geneva on Tuesday, a week from tomorrow, to sign the agreement at CERN.”
“The President of the United States?”
“The one and only. He’ll arrive here in nine days. We’re talking Secret Service, protocol, press corps, luggage, visas, bug-free hotels, grenade-proof limos and his goddamned Pekinese hound. We’ll need every angle covered. Every hole filled. There’s an advance team arriving this Friday, and we need that security report from CERN you promised.”
“Right.”
He set down the phone and tried to clear a space for his thoughts. The president was coming to Switzerland? Why hadn’t he heard? Maybe he should get off the budgetary cuts and his missing agents and concentrate on reading the daily classified cables.
What security report was Paul talking about? Oh, yes. From CERN. That was Alec’s bailiwick.
But chances were, there would be no report without Alec.
Over a year ago, the Diplomatic Security Bureau of the State Department had asked Alec Pierce to produce some sort of feasibility and security study on the Pentagon and Department of Energy running classified experiments at CERN.
Everett had been kept out of the
loop. And whenever that happened, he steered clear.
So, getting his hands on the report meant he was back to finding Alec. And to do so, he needed Mick.
He dialed the sport hotel in Gstaad.
No, Mick and Natalie hadn’t checked in yet, and there was no cancellation. “They will show up, though,” the proprietor said.
“How do you know?”
“This is hiking season. Few hotels are open, so there is nowhere else to stay.”
“I see,” Everett said, and hung up.
Okay, so the president was descending on Geneva the next week, and there was no security report. Furthermore, the embassy was missing three key players on the squad.
He glanced down at his hurriedly scribbled notes. Within fifteen minutes, he had explored every conceivable avenue to find them except one: the puzzling number with the 22 prefix.
He punched the intercom button. “Suzy, send someone down to Montreux to the Hostellerie du Lac to pick up Mick and Natalie’s belongings. Oh, and get prepared. It seems that President Damon will be visiting Geneva next week.”
“Where have you been? It was in the cables—”
He eased his finger off the intercom button. The nice thing about an intercom was that he didn’t have to hear the response.
Natalie tried to keep pace with the energetic, quirky aerobics instructor who marched her down the lakefront toward class.
It was an exhausting, carefree pace, but she finally fell into Barbara’s rhythm. She almost became a different person in the process. The master spy at work, constructing a new persona.
They paused for several seconds to watch a lithe young woman in a thong bikini. She strapped on water-skis while sitting on a wooden dock. When finished, she waved to a motorboat that purred softly in the still water.
The line snapped out of the water, and Natalie winced. The girl let out a yelp as her baby-smooth derriere slid off the dock.
As they resumed their spirited walk toward the outskirts of town, they passed more gardens and tiny beaches where small ripples neatly corralled the previous night’s debris.
A city truck blocked the pedestrian route, and men in blue coats cleared away leaves and broken branches. Natalie stepped lightly around the hand-tied brooms.
Then she noticed two Italian gallants conversing in the middle of the promenade. She averted her gaze.
Meanwhile, Barbara twirled her tongue around an errant strand of hair.
Okay, Natalie had to glance back at the men with their slim hips. The guys turned to look and nearly lost their balance. They certainly weren’t looking at her.
Or were they?
Barbara swayed a hip into her, and Natalie bumped her back.
Was she becoming a flirt? There was much more to playacting than she had imagined. It might be easier to disappear from the eyes of the world than from her conception of herself.
Nevertheless, if she was to play a role, she’d better get into the part.
In a spacious villa high in the Swiss Alps, a fax machine beeped then began to buzz.
A tall, slender man rushed into the room and leaned over the machine to study the LCD panel. It gave no indication of the origin of the incoming fax.
Gradually, the printed words began to crawl out of the machine.
It has come to my attention that in nine days the American president will make an appearance at CERN. If all goes well, it will be his last appearance anywhere. Regards, Proteus
He tore off the paper and stared at it in disbelief.
“Bloody hell.”
Chapter 8
Natalie strapped on a metallic blue leotard that she had borrowed from Barbara.
“You’re my size,” Barbara said, passing by in the locker room.
“Yeah. But different shape.”
Barbara bent back and inspected Natalie’s entire physique.
“You have good muscle structure.”
“Because there’s so much to support.”
Barbara gave her a wag of the finger. “We don’t talk that way.”
Natalie recalled a sign that hung in her office at the embassy. The sign read that she mainly stayed in shape by chasing down rumors, jumping to conclusions, running around in circles and bending over backwards to please her boss.
For the past year, that had been the bulk of her exercise regimen. On rare occasions, she would don her one pair of running shorts and jog around the nearby shaded Rosengarten, as much for the view of Bern and the Aare River as for the exercise. Aerobics classes required a much higher level of commitment.
She glanced around the studio filled with young women tying their hair back and stretching their limbs.
Mick had joined a health club. Was it just to check out the chicks?
Jeez. She hadn’t even rented tapes from the American Club’s extensive selection of exercise videos.
She had often said that her body maintained itself just fine by itself. In fact, she hadn’t gained weight since her marriage. And her skin didn’t look like cottage cheese yet. But these women had something she lacked. They had the well-toned arms and legs of ballerinas and healthy complexions to match.
It was time to hide in a corner. She found a position along the rear wall of the dance studio. From there, she also had an excellent view into a hallway where high school students passed between summer school classes.
Barbara rewound a workout tape, cocked an ear to make sure it was the right music, then clapped her hands in rhythm and marched to the front of the class. She wore a leopard-spotted Spandex leotard that only a superbly conditioned aerobics instructor would consider wearing. Natalie tugged the elastic down around her bottom. She was gaining a new respect for Barbara.
Whale sounds filled the air. That was appropriate enough. That slowly intermingled with a synthesized drumbeat. This grew into a Gregorian chant that eventually developed into an enthusiastic, if shrill, rap line, “Allons-y, baby.”
The class swayed like bamboo, bent like pretzels and shuffled and hopped from side to side. Natalie had to admire her instructor’s energy. Not only that, but Barbara, facing her students, performed the routine in reverse direction.
Leaning over, Barbara slapped the small of her back like a horse trainer slapping a healthy steed. “Feel the stretch right here,” she called out.
Natalie barely kept up. It was clear that the students had already learned the basic routine from an earlier class. But Barbara kept them pumped up with tiny excited squeaks and clapping.
Then Natalie realized that the squeaks and clapping came from the soundtrack. Nevertheless, she let the rolling and jumping of the uninhibited group invigorate her, while she struggled to control her breathing.
Then a movement caught her eye. From her position at the back of the room, she spotted a figure rummaging through the lockers. In the dim light of the locker room, the man dressed in a sweat suit was picking up articles of clothing and plunging his hands into the pockets.
He reached down to a wooden bench and grabbed her jeans.
“Those are my clothes,” she shouted.
Several women turned to look.
A man’s presence in their locker room set off angry shouts.
He stepped out and glanced around the dance studio, the bright light reflecting off his bald head. Then he reached down to untie his waistband.
The shouts turned to cries of shock.
He groped around inside his pants and the shrieks turned to “eew!”
Then he whipped out a pistol.
He pointed the muzzle around the room, causing a wide swath of women to clear in front of him. They burst out of the studio and scattered high school students in the hallway.
Natalie followed the group out the door.
They cut a path through waves of youngsters. At first the kids sprang back in astonishment, then, sensing danger, they stepped into their classrooms for cover.
She and several women shoved the panic bar on the outside door and burst onto the busy Avenue de Florimo
nt in midday traffic.
Yanking up his oversized sweats, the gunman pursued them into the noonday sun.
The handful of women with Natalie turned off the street and rushed down uneven steps, a parade of solids and stripes and bobbing hair and long bare legs. They flew past shops to the level of the lake.
The man was just behind them.
What was he after?
The women didn’t wait to find out. In a panic, they split into two groups, one running into town and the other heading along the lakefront toward the Château de Chillon.
She followed the two women sprinting toward the castle.
The man veered and followed her group.
She wouldn’t be able to keep her pace up for long. The other women were young and in far better shape. Besides, her walking shoes had no bounce left in them.
But the gun was probably intended for her.
With a spurt of energy, she caught up with the others. Just after a fisherman cast his line into the azure water, she passed the two women.
Ahead of her, a wall of carved granite stones rose from the lake. They formed a set of pointed turrets.
It was the Château de Chillon.
Tour buses parked alongside the path. A queue of tourists pressed up to a ticket booth.
She glanced over her shoulder. The man had fallen behind. She pushed her two companions toward a souvenir booth and against a stack of lithographs, chocolate bars, cardboard castles, embroidered linens and cuckoo clocks. Colorful and glistening, their bodies stood out in the crowd.
She couldn’t expose everyone to danger.
Her only choice was to hide in the castle itself. She ran for the entrance and vaulted over the turnstile. Then she crouched behind a low wall and scampered across the moat into the castle.
The old man taking tickets shouted something, but made no move to follow her.
Once inside the castle, she tried to draw the heavy wooden door shut. But centuries of moist air on metal were working against her, and the rusty hinges were fused in place.
The man in the ticket booth was still bawling her out.
Where could she go from there?
She was standing in the center of a gloomy courtyard. Daylight vented vertically down three stories and eight centuries of Bernese architecture. An open door to the left led downward into further gloom.