The Lions of Lucerne

by Brad Thor

“Yes, and then I secluded myself in a doorway and waited. As it turns out, I was more patient than you were.”

  “In the Ice Palace, you called me by the name I had used in the post office and by my real name. How did you figure those out? Wait…the Sampras one is the easiest. You went back to the post office and asked if anyone had seen someone matching my description?”

  “You are quite charming, Agent Harvath. The woman at the poste restante window remembered you perfectly. She also had your alias written down on a piece of paper to check for your envelope, which still hasn’t come, by the way.”

  “I’ll have to tell her not to hold her breath.”

  “I already did. She was quite disappointed she wouldn’t be seeing you again. Now, as far as getting your real name, that was a little more difficult. I had seen you on the street, but was able to get a better look at your face from the post office surveillance tape. The female clerk told me you were American, so I went back to my office and started doing some searches on the computer, starting with our watch list.

  “Two names had recently been added—a German and an American. The description of the American sounded like it could fit you. I E-mailed a request to the authoring agency and not long after received a picture of you. The hair is quite different, of course, but that only made it more obvious.”

  “Authoring agency? What do you mean by you E-mailed them a request?”

  “They are the people who put your name on our watch list. Sometimes it’s an Interpol request; sometimes it’s a local or federal Swiss agency; sometimes it’s another country…There is often a wide array of agencies who add to a watch list for a wide variety of reasons.”

  “I know about watch lists, thank you very much. What I want to know is who put me on yours? It was an American agency of course.”

  “Yes. It was your State Department. The man who called me mentioned—”

  “Called you? Who called you?”

  “After I requested the picture, I received a phone call. A man identified himself as being from a particular division of the State Department and said that he was responding to my E-mail request for your photo. He asked me a lot of questions and was frankly not very polite.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “Basically, I told him nothing. I said we had a lot of ongoing investigations involving tourist crimes, and I wondered if you might somehow be involved. I wanted your picture so I could compare it against some recent witness descriptions we had received in several resort areas.”

  “And you didn’t tell them you had seen me, or thought you had seen me?”

  “No. I told them exactly what I just told you. Of course he reminded me several times about informing them immediately if I even thought I had seen you, and not to try and intercept you.”

  “But you had seen me. Why didn’t you say something?”

  “I didn’t say anything because if the U.S. State Department wanted you that bad and you were somehow associated with the case I was investigating, then I wanted you as well. I have been waiting for a break in this case. I’m certainly not going to sit back and turn it over to the Americans. No offense.”

  “None taken, but I think you did turn it over.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Was the German added to your watch list at the same time?”

  “It was listed in the same update, which meant they had both been added in the same time period, yes.”

  “Do you remember the name of the German?”

  “I think it was something like Brunner, but I don’t remember exactly. At the time it wasn’t important. I’m normally pretty good with names, but I was so focused on you and what your involvement was and is—”

  “Could it have been Brauner?”

  “It could have been. Yes, it was. Hans. Hans Brauner. I knew I would remember it.”

  Harvath put his head in his hands and massaged his temples. “Can you be absolutely certain you were not followed here today?”

  “Followed, why?”

  “Just answer me, please,” said Scot.

  “After I finally evaded the two men from the Jungfraujoch, I was extremely cautious, even paranoid. I am positive no one followed me here. Why?”

  “I think I finally know how the shooters in Wengen picked up my trail.”

  “Picked up your trail? Who are they?”

  “They’re an American hit team that tried twice to kill me in Washington several days ago.”

  “How did they track you here? Have you been using your real name to travel?”

  “What am I, new? Please, Ms. Mueller, I don’t know how the Swiss do things, but trust me, we Americans are a lot more thorough than that.”

  “So are we Swiss, Agent Harvath, but the only way someone who doesn’t want to be found gets found is if they make some sort of mistake.”

  “Or if someone tips off the people looking for you, which is what I’m afraid you did quite unknowingly.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, when you sent that E-mail asking for my picture, it started a whole chain of events. When I left the U.S., I was traveling as Hans Brauner, so the people who were after me had enough pull to get both my real name and my false one put on your watch list in case I turned up. Just asking for the picture was enough to make someone suspect that you knew more than you were telling. My guess is that as soon as they had figured out I was Brauner and had come to Switzerland, they sent a hit team over here. They got both the names on the watch list, and then it was just a waiting game.

  “When you sent your E-mail, it got people thinking, and they decided to tail you. Either they didn’t see me follow you from the post office, or they hadn’t begun to tail you until you went to the Jungfraujoch the next day.”

  “But what about your letter? After I resealed it, I put it back in the post office box. Maybe I am not being followed at all. Maybe your letter drew the shooters. That was your intent, wasn’t it? Someone was supposed to read that letter and be sufficiently interested to show up, right? Why were you setting up a meeting at the Ice Palace in the first place, and what do you know about ‘Aunt Jane’?”

  “At this point, not enough. I do know, though, that our paths have crossed for a reason, and I intend to figure out why. We need to talk more—you and me—but not here.”

  “Then where?”

  “Someplace else. Anywhere else. Having you here has made me realize how much danger I’ve already put Jackie in. She’s too much of a good friend. We need to find someplace safe where we can sort this all out.”

  “I think I have just the place.”

  62

  “Just the place” turned out to be the nearby elegant yet vacant summer residence of Claudia’s boss, Urs Schnell, which they unceremoniously gained entrance to when Claudia kicked in one of the small windows in back.

  “Okay,” said Scot, taking a pen and pad from the ornate desk in the far corner of the living room and walking back to Claudia at the fireplace, “let’s get started. Why don’t we begin with your investigation. What’s it all about, who were you following, et cetera…”

  “That would be fine, except that is classified information and I am bound by my oath to—”

  “What? Are you saying you don’t trust me?”

  “I hardly know you—”

  “Hold it. A little over twenty-four hours ago you had a gun jammed into my spine; yet here I am alone and defenseless with you.”

  Claudia gave him a look that said, You, defenseless?

  “Okay, I’m not defenseless, but I am here and you did have a gun on me yesterday. I mean, why else would I come to a deserted love nest with you and lock myself inside for the evening?”

  Again Claudia shot him a look.

  “Okay, you’re not that bad looking, but I am not going to let that get in the way of some other mildly important things—like saving my life and the president’s.”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry,” said Claudia, becoming more businesslike. “We need to work t
ogether. Our two cases seem to merge based upon who sends and receives letters via the post box in Interlaken.”

  As Claudia shared the details of her case with Scot, he took copious notes that would be tossed into the fire once they both had looked them over and digested the information.

  Hours passed, and they ate from the bags of food they had purchased on the way to the house. When the bottle of mineral water was finished, they moved to a bottle of wine. It was a nice white, a Côtes de Russin from just outside Geneva. Claudia bent her own rule about drinking while she was working.

  Scot liked the wine and laughed when Claudia explained that the reason he couldn’t find any Swiss wines back home was that Switzerland didn’t export wines, it imported drinkers. That reminded him of something, but he couldn’t remember what. His mind was still not firing on every cylinder. He let it go, figuring if it was important, it would come back. He drank his wine slowly and looked down at the pages of notes spread out on the floor before them.

  “So, let’s go over what we know. Senator Snyder, according to the documents I received from André Martin, wrote a letter to someone he called Aunt Jane, signed it with the name Edwin, and mailed it to the post office box in Interlaken. The box is owned or at least used by this man Gerhard Miner, whom you have been trying to link to your investigation of the weapons theft from a depot outside of Basel. How am I doing?”

  “So far so good,” she said.

  “Because of Miner’s involvement with this group, Der…”

  “Nebel. It means ‘fog’ in German.”

  “Right, fog. So Miner, many years ago, after cross-training with U.S. Special Operations Forces, returns to Switzerland and establishes this unit which is designed to test the security of Swiss military installations. He’s so successful with breaching security at the bases that he quickly earns a lot of enemies and his unit is shut down for fear of embarrassing the military establishment and he is moved higher in your intelligence sector.”

  “Yes.”

  Scot paused, tapping the pen against his chin. “I can see why you suspected him. He certainly has the credentials. What about the weapons? What can you tell me about those?”

  “It depends. Which weapons in particular do you want to know about?”

  He looked at the notes he’d taken. “A lot of what you’ve described is standard military hardware. Because the Swiss never had in their possession a jamming device, that item isn’t part of the theft you’re investigating. The kidnappers I’m looking for could have purchased it on the black market or directly from the North Koreans. What stands out on your list are the glare guns. Tell me about those.”

  “They were Russian issue. Dostov was the name of the company that created them. There were two in the Basel depot. They were brand-new, and the army hadn’t even had a chance to fully test them yet. The manufacturer had only produced a limited number and was loaning them to different governments in hopes that they could create large-scale orders for the device. These were prototypes in a sense, so even if an individual wanted to buy them, they weren’t available for sale.”

  “What were you planning to use them for?”

  “At this stage, I don’t think we planned on using them for anything. My government had acquired them strictly to test their effectiveness.”

  “Effectiveness against what?”

  “Switzerland is a relatively peaceful country, despite your experiences in the Jungfrau,” Claudia said with a smile. “As such, we have been looking into a series of nonlethal weapons. Over the next two years we will be hosting several high-profile economic and diplomatic summits. After the WTO and World Bank disturbances the U.S.A. experienced, we decided we needed to be better prepared to handle civil unrest.”

  “But why the Russians? Why buy equipment from them when we have a very strong alliance with your country and are developing similar technology?”

  “From what I understand, your testing of nonlethal laser weapons has not been very successful. The Russians seem to have it more finely tuned. Also, I have no idea if this is a technology that the Americans are sharing. Besides, we were only going to test it. We had not yet decided if we were going to buy it.”

  “So, this shipment of weapons arrives at the Basel depot, and before your people get a chance to use it, it’s stolen. How did the thieves know it was coming and where it would be?”

  “We suspect there was a leak.”

  “Could Miner have had access to this information?”

  “Yes, and knowing this, I had both a motive and the means. Motive was easy—money. I tried to check his alibi, but he claims he was working on a classified assignment at the time of the theft.”

  “What about his superiors? This guy has to answer to someone.”

  “He’s very clever. Whatever he was up to, he had his tracks well covered.”

  “It looks that way.”

  “What is it about the glare guns that interests you so much?”

  “You know, for the longest time I have been wondering how one of the finest protective details in the world could be ambushed and killed with only one man getting a shot off.”

  “You are referring to your president’s team?”

  “Yes. It didn’t make sense to me until I began thinking about the glare guns. If Miner is connected to the president’s kidnapping and he brought the glare guns with him, I can see how the Secret Service agents were taken out. Blinded and disoriented, they wouldn’t have been able to safely evacuate the president or take any shots. But…”

  “But what?”

  “How did one of the agents get a shot off and manage with that one shot to kill a bad guy?”

  “Maybe he wasn’t as affected as the other agents.”

  “Or maybe that’s just what somebody wanted us to think.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “It never sat well with me that the kidnappers would leave one of their own behind. I also never liked it that this guy was found holding a gun that directly tied him to where he was from. For such a carefully planned assault, it seems very careless, and therefore very suspicious.”

  “If the one body was left at the scene on purpose, what does that say?”

  “It says that somebody really wanted us to believe that a Middle Eastern group was behind the kidnapping.”

  “And what about the demands of the FRC?” said Claudia.

  What about them? Scot thought. Today was Sunday, a week since the avalanche. He had been on the run since Wednesday. Just four days, but it felt like a lifetime. America might have already caved in by now, or a whole new set of demands could have been made. All he knew he got from looking at an occasional newspaper—the vice president was refusing to deal, and the president had not yet been returned.

  “That’s a big question mark. Everything points away from a Mideastern organization, except the demands,” said Harvath.

  “Maybe who committed the kidnapping and who paid for it are two separate groups.”

  “That’s the direction I am taking, and it’s the only thing that could explain the Fatah’s involvement. So, if you find one of the groups, you should be able to find the other.”

  “What else do we have?”

  “Well, we have the two shooters in the Ice Palace speaking Serbian and my source’s confirmation of a Swiss assassination team working in Yugoslavia in recent years.”

  “And they called themselves the Lions, right?”

  “Yes. Does that mean anything to you?”

  “Kind of, but it’s really just a feeling.”

  “Coming to Switzerland was just a feeling for me, but with every gun that gets jabbed in my back or bullet that whizzes past my head, I’m learning to trust my feelings even more, so, please, share.”

  “Well, when you first mentioned the Lions, it made me think of words like ‘proud’ and ‘arrogant.’ Those words remind me of Gerhard Miner—”

  “The lunch you had with him.”

  “Yes, which seems silly, but ther
e was another picture that came to mind when you talked about the assassination team being Swiss and being named the Lions. There is a very famous monument in Lucerne of a dying lion. It was carved out of a rock ledge as a tribute to the men of the Swiss Guard who died defending King Louis and Marie Antoinette during the revolution.”

  “You think there might be some sort of symbolic connection?”

  “Why not? Switzerland has always been proud of its neutrality, but also very proud of the ferocity and courage of its mercenaries. Ferocity and courageousness, just like a lion.”

  “This monument is in Lucerne?”

  “Yes.”

  “And where does—”

  “Miner live?”

  “Yes.”

  “He has an apartment in Bern, but his main home is in Lucerne.”

  “The Lions of Lucerne. You might not have been reaching very far at all.”

  63

  The next morning, Scot used the color kit Claudia had bought with their groceries and dyed his hair once again. He wanted to return to his sandy brown, but he needed two applications to cover up the white blond and subsequently ended up with a much darker shade than he’d hoped for. At least it didn’t all fall out, which had been a definite possibility with all of the chemicals it had been subjected to in the last couple of days. With his hair short, yet conservatively colored, hopefully no one would bother to give him a second look.

  After straightening up the house and boarding up the broken window as best they could, Scot and Claudia left to pursue the only other lead they had, a package mailed from a small village north of Lucerne called Hochdorf.

  “Do you think he’ll tell us anything?” asked Scot.

  “We won’t know until we try, will we?” Claudia responded.

  “And you’re sure he’s somehow connected?”

  “Of course, I’m sure. When Miner had refused to meet and answer my questions, I began following him. That’s how I learned about the post office box in Interlaken. I also found he had one in Lucerne. After he and I had lunch, I thought there was little chance I would be able to get anything on him. He went on vacation, but I kept watching both of his post boxes hoping to get lucky. A few days ago, a package arrived for him in Lucerne.”