by Jim Hougan
When the train turned inland and began its climb into the mountains, the suburbs—Thalwil, Horgen, and Wädenswil—gave way to a series of pleasant little towns, each of which was snowier than its predecessor.
Biberbrugg.
Bennau.
Einsiedeln.
Leaving the station, Dunphy picked up a tourist brochure and, following the map on its cover, began walking uphill along the diminutive main street, past ski shops and restaurants, heading in the direction of the Benedictine Abbey consecrated to Our Lady of Einsiedeln. The word, he saw, meant hermits a—which made her (in postmodern terms, at least) Our Lady of the Homeless. In any case, the black Madonna.
The town itself was a ski resort or, if not quite a resort, a place where some people came to ski—though not, it seemed, all that many. Dunphy passed two or three small hotels on his way to the abbey, but there were only a few cars on the street and not that many passersby. The impression he got was of a quietly prosperous village whose only claim to fame was the peculiar statue in its midst.
About six blocks from the train station, this impression gave way to astonishment, as he emerged from the high street into a square of vast proportions. In the center of the square, maybe fifty yards away, was a fountain, its waters frozen. Beyond the fountain, hunkering atop a broad expanse of steps, was the abbey itself. Flanked by a string of souvenir shops selling trinkets and postcards, the building was as graceful as it was massive. Seeing it for the first time, Dunphy was astounded by its size and, also, by the building’s simplicity and lack of ornamentation. At once beautiful and immensely plain, it made Dunphy think of a Mona Lisa carved in stone.
Mounting the steps one by one, he turned at the top to look out over the square, the town, and the surrounding mountains. A soft breeze filled his lungs with the wet scent of melting snow—and hay, and manure. Glancing at the brochure, he saw that the abbey had been a working farm for more than five hundred years. The monks were said to be famous for the horses and cattle that they bred.
Turning, he entered the church through a towering doorway and stood, blinking, in the voluminous gloom. Larger than some cathedrals, the church was a hive of flickering candles, redolent of beeswax and the lingering fragrance of incense. As his eyes adjusted to the building’s eternal twilight, he realized that he was standing in an architectural oxymoron, the spectacular interior of the church revoking the simplicity of the walls that contained it. Simply put, the interior of the church was a bedlam of flowers and ornament, tapestries, paintings, frescoes, and gold. Cherubim peeked from every crevice. Candelabra blazed. Angels leaped and spread their wings across pillars and walls. It was as if a medieval Disney had been given free rein and a palette of three colors: ebony, ivory, and gold.
This isn’t the church I went to as a child, Dunphy mused. This is something else . . . but what?
Moving deeper into the building, which seemed to brighten as his eyes adjusted and it drew him in, he found himself standing at the entrance to the Lady Chapel. This was a freestanding inner sanctum fashioned entirely of black marble, with alabaster saints standing on the roof and bas-reliefs etched in gold. About the size of a large gazebo, the chapel was banked with armloads of flowers, so that the air was pregnant with the scent of wet ferns and roses. Nearby, a strange assortment of people—pilgrims from every country, he supposed—knelt on the unforgiving floor, praying with an intensity that Dunphy could not imagine.
The focal point of their adoration was a statue, about four feet tall, of what seemed to be—what had to be—the Virgin Mary. Dressed in robes of gold wrought with images of fruit and grain, she wore a crown while cradling a child in her left arm.
And the thing about it was: she was black—and so was the child. Not brown, but black. Black as pitch. Black as anthracite. Black as space.
The improbability of the image was so startling that it took Dunphy’s breath away and forced the sacrilegious question: What the fuck . . . is this doing . . . in Switzerland? And, immediately, the answer came back: What’s it doing . . . anywhere?
Taking a few steps back from the shrine, Dunphy pulled out the tourist brochure from the pocket of his coat and, standing behind the prayerful, began to read:
For seven years, a Hohenzollern count (Meinrad) lived as a hermit in the Dark Forest above the site where the abbey church now stands. In the winter of 861, Meinrad was beaten to death by robbers, who were then followed to Zürich by Meinrad’s only friends—magical ravens whom the hermit had befriended during his long years of solitude. In Zürich, the ravens attacked the old monk’s murderers, causing such a stir that the brigands were quickly brought to justice.
The abbey and church were built on the site above Meinrad’s cave in 934. In the centuries that followed, the abbey suffered a series of fires until it was rebuilt in its present form in the eighteenth century.
In 1799, agents of Napoleon were sent to Einsiedeln to capture the black Madonna, but the abbey’s monks learned of the foray in advance and smuggled Our Lady over the mountains to Austria. There, she was painted white in an effort to conceal her identity. After three years in exile, the statue was restored to its original color and returned to Einsiedeln.
Today, Saint Meinrad’s skull is preserved in a golden casket beneath the feet of the Madonna. Each year, the skull is taken out and blessed at a special mass.
“Sie ist verblüfft, nicht ist sie?”
The question came at Dunphy in an awed whisper, so close that it knocked him back on his heels, an involuntary little jump that he couldn’t conceal. Thinking he’d been followed, he turned toward the voice, expecting the worst. But it wasn’t Blondie, and it wasn’t the Jock. It was a pale American in a black trench coat. Vandyke beard.
“Excuse me?” Dunphy asked.
It was the man’s turn to look surprised. “Oh!” he said. “You’re American! I was just saying . . .” His voice returned to a whisper. “I was just saying, she’s really something, isn’t she?”
Dunphy nodded. “Yeah, she is.”
The man looked embarrassed. “I thought you were German,” he confided. “I can usually tell.”
Dunphy frowned in a thoughtful way and cocked his head to the side, as if to say, It happens.
“I go by the shoes,” the man added, nodding toward the floor. “The shoes are the giveaway, every time.”
Dunphy cocked his head the same way as before, as if to say, No shit, when, over the man’s shoulder, he saw a very unlikely tour group shuffling toward them. It consisted of eight or nine pallid-faced men in their late thirties, wearing identical black trench coats.
“My fan club,” the man next to him explained.
For a moment, Dunphy thought they were there for him. But, no, it really was a tour group, albeit one that seemed to consist entirely of middle-aged vampires. Then Dunphy noticed, with a frisson of anxiety, that at least two of the men in the group were wearing string ties and bolos—accoutrements that somehow made him nervous.
Suddenly, one of the tourists turned on his heel and, with his back to the shrine, addressed the group in an accent straight out of Deliverance. a “The question ah asked earlier—about Meinrad’s life befo’ he came heah? Who knows the ansuh?” No one moved, which made the man smile in a self-satisfied way. “It’s a stumpah, ah’ll admit, but the ansuh is: Paracelsus!” He looked from face to face, nodding at their amazement. “That’s raht. Ole Paracelsus—probably the greatest alchemist of all time—bawn right up there on Etzel peak, same place Meinrad was livin’. Now, you tell me! How ’bout them blue apples?”
With little nods, and chuckles, and looks of bemused astonishment, the men in the group exchanged glances with one another. To Dunphy, it was apparent that they shared a secret, or imagined that they did.
“Well, I gotta get back,” Dunphy said. “Nice talkin’ to you.” And with a little salute, he backed away from the shrine, turned, and left.
Outside, snowflakes curled through the air in such small numbers that it seemed to Dunph
y he could count them. Jamming his hands into the pockets of his topcoat, he descended the steps to the plaza, walking double-time. He was thinking about the man in the trench coat and the people he was with, wondering who they were and if they were whom he thought they were—when his suspicion was confirmed. At the edge of the square, a black minivan sat in the cold, its engine running, wisps of smoke curling from its tailpipes. On its side, a peculiar crest—a crown with a halo, flanked by angels, and the words:
MONARCH ASSURANCE
ZUG
He met Clementine (or Veroushka, as she now preferred to be called), in the parking lot at the commuter rail station in Zug. She was driving a rented VW Golf and told him excitedly that she’d already checked into the Ochsen Hotel—which was “fab”—and had been “on a jaunt” around the town.
“There are more corporations registered in Zug than there are people!” she gushed. “Did you know that?”
“Uh-uh,” Dunphy replied, looking over his shoulder. “And where’s the hotel?”
“It’s just down Baarstrasse—which means Bear Street—that’s what we’re on. And the waterfront’s only a hop, skip, and a jump.”
Dunphy adjusted the side mirror to see if she’d been followed, but he couldn’t tell. Baarstrasse was a busy street, and there were lots of cars behind them. “Why would we want to go to the waterfront?”
“Because it’s beautiful,” she said, “and because I’m hungry. And that’s where the nicest restaurants are.”
Might as well, Dunphy thought. We’re going to be busy in the morning.
The town surprised him. It was tastefully modern and obviously high-tech, an attractive collection of modern office buildings that stood shoulder to shoulder with more traditional structures—including some that were very old. This might have been an architectural disaster, but it was not because what was new was built to human scale. There were no skyscrapers that Dunphy could see, and lots of trees.
And in the center of it all, only five minutes from the train station, was the medieval quarter, a warren of cobblestone lanes whose antique city walls housed an array of exquisite little shops selling jewelry and art, ancient maps and fine wine. Leaving their car in the courtyard of the Ochsen Hotel, Dunphy let Clem lead him across the street and into the Old Town.
Entering through a passage in the wall outside the Rathaus, they wandered along a gaslit lane until they reached a small park at the edge of the Zuger See. The twilight was fading now, and a full moon was rising over the Alps. Putting his arm around Clem’s waist, he pulled her close to him. “What are you thinking about?” he whispered.
“Food,” she said.
They settled on a bistro with mullioned windows and lace curtains, overlooking the water. As early as it was, they had the restaurant almost to themselves. Seated at a wooden table with their backs to a softly hissing fireplace, they ordered lake fish and longeole with a plate of rosti and a chilled bottle of Château Carbonnieux. Then they got down to business.
“We have to get up early,” Dunphy said. “It’s critical.”
“What time?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Five-thirty or six. The thing is, I’ve only got from seven to one—and that’s cutting it close. Seven to noon would be safer.”
She took a sip of wine, smacked her lips, and smiled. “Foxy,” she said.
“Just like Clem.”
She smiled. “You should call me Veroushka.”
“Clem . . .”
“Anyway—what is this place you’re going to?”
“It’s called Monarch Assurance—on Alpenstrasse.”
“So it’s an insurance company.”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Dunphy shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he replied. “Some kind of special archive.”
“For who?”
“The Company,” Dunphy said.
“You mean . . .”
“The company I used to work for.”
“And they keep this archive over here? In bloody Zug?”
Dunphy nodded.
“But why?” she asked. “Why would anyone keep anything over here?”
“I don’t know,” Dunphy answered. “But it’s the most sensitive information they have.”
“Then I should think they’d want to keep it close to home.”
“Right. That’s exactly what you’d think. But you’d be wrong.”
Clem frowned. “How do you know about this place?” she asked.
Dunphy poured himself a second glass of wine, swirled it in the firelight, and told her what he’d done as a reference analyst on the FOIA desk.
“No wonder they’re angry with you,” she exclaimed.
“Yeah,” Dunphy muttered, “no wonder . . .”
“So how are we going to get out of this? Because if that Frenchman doesn’t kill you for stealing his money—”
“It wasn’t his money.”
“—the CIA will.” She looked at him expectantly, but he didn’t say anything. “Well?”
“Well, what a?”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Which?” he asked. “The Frenchman or the Agency?”
She just looked at him.
“Because they’re two different problems,” he said, “though I don’t think we’ll have to worry about Blément—unless you were followed. And I don’t know why you would have been followed. They don’t know you. Anyway, I didn’t see anybody, so . . . that leaves the Agency. And I don’t know what to say about the Agency, because I don’t even know what the question is.”
“Then it’s hopeless,” Clem opined.
Dunphy shook his head. “No, it’s not hopeless. Because even if I don’t know what the question is, I know where the answers are. They’re in that archive, just up the street. And you’re going to help me get at them, because otherwise . . .”
“What?”
He looked at her for a long moment. Then he leaned forward in a confidential way and whispered, “Yikes.”
They awoke the next morning at five-thirty, and breakfasted on toast and coffee in a café on the Alpenstrasse, a couple of blocks from the Monarch Assurance Company. The idea was for Dunphy to talk his way into the Special Registry while Clementine made reservations for a flight to Tenerife that same afternoon.
“Go to the airport,” Dunphy said. “Buy the tickets and then come back for me.”
Clem nodded. “At one.”
“You have to be waiting at one—right here, with the car running. Or I’m fucked. Because timing’s everything. There’s a six-hour difference between Washington and Zug—and that’s the window. Max’s pass will get me in the building, but getting into the archive . . . they’re gonna want to check with Langley. And not just Langley, they’re gonna want to talk to a guy named Matta.”
“And he’ll say it’s okay?” Clem asked.
“No. He’ll tell ’em to kill me. But that’s where the time difference comes in. They won’t call him in the middle of the night because there’s no real emergency. Or no obvious one, anyway. And it’s not like I’m going anywhere. I mean, not as far as they’re concerned. So they’ll wait until it’s morning in the States, and then they’ll call. I figure my pull date’s about one o’clock in the afternoon. After that, it all goes bad.”
Clementine thought about it for a moment. Finally, she asked, “What if they don’t mind waking him up?”
Dunphy hesitated, and then he shrugged. “Well, Veroushka, if I’m not sitting in the car with you by five after one? Just take the money and run.”
Leaving Clem with her coffee, Dunphy walked up Alpenstrasse in search of Monarch Assurance. He didn’t bother looking at the numbers. He could see the building ahead, about three blocks away. It was an ultramodern, blue-glass cube, six stories high and completely opaque. It had CIA written all over it—only, as it turned out, he’d come too far. The cube was the headquarters of a commodities trading firm. Monarch was back the other way.
/> Retracing his steps, he would have walked past the building a second time if he hadn’t overheard American voices. Turning, he found himself outside 15 Alpenstrasse. Nearby, a dull brass plaque clung to the wall of a cross-timbered old pile with leaded-glass windows.
MONARCH ASSURANCE, AG
The building needed renovation, but it was busy nonetheless, with people streaming into work even at this early hour. Most of them, Dunphy saw, were men, and almost all of them were wearing dark topcoats over dark suits—a circumstance that made him want to keep his coat on. Who knew what they’d make of his houndstooth sports jacket?
Taking a deep breath, Dunphy joined the stream, passing through a towering doorway whose antique wooden doors were thrown open to the winter.
Inside, a bank of male receptionists sat behind a polished mahogany counter, fielding phone calls and visitors. Dunphy did his best to ignore them, joining a queue of office workers waiting to pass through a high-tech turnstile. Thronged and buzzing, the place reminded Dunphy of a hive.
Observing the people in front of him, Dunphy saw how each of them inserted his building pass in a slot on the left side of the turnstile, while at the same time pressing his right thumb on an illuminated glass panel to the right. Barely a second went by before the turnstile went chnnnk! a—as if it were a time clock being punched—and the worker passed through to a hallway on the other side.
When Dunphy’s turn came, he was beginning to hyperventilate. Inserting his building pass in the slot, he pressed his right thumb to the glass and waited . . . counting the seconds as they passed. Three. Four. Five. A low murmur, more impatient than threatening, washed up against his back.
“I don’t get it,” he said, muttering to no one in particular. “It’s always worked before.” He could see one of the receptionists getting to his feet, eyes on Dunphy. The man looked worried.