“Then I’ll meet you there,” he replied quickly. A decisive man, this Sebastian Sauter, she’d thought approvingly after hanging up.
Now she handed him the plastic bag with his hat. He accepted it with an impish smile.
“It’s my favorite pattern.”
They stepped aside to avoid a stampede of excited children.
“What makes it your favorite cap?” Josefa asked.
“Long years of loyalty.”
She grinned. “And it just happened to be at my place that you strayed from this principle.”
The detective scratched his face. He’d apparently shaved in haste and was now bleeding slightly in one spot. Then he reached into his pocket. “I’ve brought you a little thank-you present.”
Josefa was caught by surprise. She unwrapped the gift, revealing a tiny, cube-shaped box. Should she open it right here, right in front of him? She wasn’t sure. But Sauter made the decision for her. “Let’s go for a coffee?” he suggested.
“We’ll have to buy a ticket for the zoo because the café is inside,” Josefa explained. She really didn’t want to sit in a café instead of taking a walk through the zoo—her tried-and-true method of unraveling her thoughts. But why shouldn’t she let the detective accompany her on her stroll? Perhaps that would prove to be an even more efficient method of sorting through things.
“And when we’re inside,” she said to Sauter, “we must go see the gorillas. They’ve had a birth.”
“You won’t scare me away; it’s my day off.” He headed for the ticket window.
They drank their coffee from paper cups at the café bar surrounded by a pack of wild children. Josefa opened the box a bit nervously. What kind of present would a cop give? An object the size of a strawberry was wrapped in tissue paper. Josefa unwrapped it carefully: a miniature cup and saucer made of wood.
“Rosewood,” Sauter explained. “I made it myself—a memento of your good coffee.”
Then she remembered with embarrassment that she hadn’t even offered him a second cup that night.
“You made it yourself? You’re a craftsman?” Josefa rotated the delicate little cup and saucer in the palm of her hand.
“I carve pipes too, from briar root, bruyère.”
“You’re a versatile man, Herr Sauter. If the burglars only knew.”
“Burglars?”
“Your clientele, remember?”
“Aha,” was all he said.
“I shall give your piece of work a place of honor.” Josefa rewrapped the little cup and saucer.
“How’s your neighbor?”
“I think she’s OK. I don’t see her very often, and she’s out most evenings. She’s a ballet dancer, but you already know that.”
The sky was overcast and the air muggy as they walked out of the café.
“Have you caught the burglars yet?” Josefa inquired, turning toward the ape house.
“Maybe it was only one guy. Or one woman.”
She gave him a searching look. He straightened his cap. “No, we don’t have anything yet. There are burglaries all the time, and only some of them get cleared up.” He glanced at her and then changed the subject quickly. “How’s your work going?”
Josefa regaled him with stories of the rich and famous but left out the events of the golf tournament and her problems with Schulmann. She could tell by the look on his face that he obviously found her job fascinating. Certainly, she took care of some prominent people, and he probably recognized some of the names from the papers or TV. Add the exotic places where she organized those glittering events, and her contacts around the world, and maybe it was impressive. She wondered if he was having trouble reconciling the sloppily dressed woman beside him—T-shirt, jeans, parka, hiking shoes—with the perfume of that beautiful world of luxury? She’d only touched up her face a little, and now some red lipstick stained the paper cup.
The shrieks of the peacocks and other birds filled the air. Josefa wondered why she was telling him all this. “A policeman’s life can’t deliver that much glamour and excitement,” Sauter said when she had finished.
“Too much excitement for me at the moment. That’s why I’m going to see the apes.”
Detective Sauter was just opening the door to the ape house when Josefa astonished herself by saying, “I resigned yesterday.” He turned around quickly and looked her in the face with an expression she found hard to read. His crinkled face was now almost smooth, as if two hands had gently pulled the skin on his temples back. But he didn’t say another word. It would have been hard to hear him anyway over all the noise in the giant hall.
Rows of visitors were crowded in front of the glass wall; kids sitting high atop their fathers’ shoulders. They’d all come to see the newborn gorilla baby. But something was odd. Many of them were turning away from the glass, a solemn look on their faces.
Josefa pushed her way into the crowd in order to have a better look inside the enclosure. The mother gorilla was sitting very near the glass with what appeared to be a sleeping baby in her arms. Sauter tugged on her sleeve and pointed to a transparency on the pane: “Kayra gave birth on Saturday to a stillborn baby. We are leaving it with her until she gives it up on her own.” At that moment the gorilla turned its head and looked Josefa straight in the eye and then lowered her head. There was a look of infinite sadness in the mother ape’s eyes that took Josefa’s breath away.
Her mother is lying in the hospital bed: This is your mother, she hears someone say, but the woman in the bed is a stranger to her. She looks like a ghost, ugly and scary. She is raving, and her crooked lower lip hangs down, saliva drooling from it. Josefa wants to leave; does not want to look at her. That is not my mother. That is not Mama; no, that’s not her, never! Why must Mama take all this medicine? She’s so different from how she was before. If she didn’t take those pills, she would be the way she used to be. My dear, cheerful mother. Why does nobody tell me anything? Why do I always have to show this woman, this stranger, any consideration? It’s been months now. She lies in bed and cries. Because she’s in pain. But I do not want to be here. I want my mama back. She ought to be normal, like other mothers. Why does Mama let them do this to her? Why does she not put up a fight and get out of her sickbed? Why doesn’t she come back home?
Josefa does not want to visit this woman anymore. She does not want to see, or touch, her anymore. And then that terrifying Sunday. Papa takes Josefa to the hospital. He does not tell her why. Josefa screams and lashes out in fury. But Papa pushes her up to the bed where her mother is lying; her eyes are wide open, her face sunken. Mama grabs Josefa’s arm so hard that it hurts. She says in a gasping voice: She belongs to me. These words again and again: She belongs to me. Her fingernails dig into the sweater on Josefa’s arm. Josefa tries to free herself. She hears her father say: She belongs to us, cara, both of us. His voice is very gentle. What’s going on here? Why does nobody tell me anything?
Josefa tears herself loose with all her might and runs out of the ward. She runs down the corridor, past the nurses, down another corridor, and another. Where’s the exit? I want out of here!
Josefa suddenly had the feeling she was suffocating. “It’s far too warm in here. I can hardly breathe.” She turned to Sauter, who was standing behind her; she could tell from his look that he saw something troubling in her expression. But what?
He quickly cleared a path through the mob, escorting her through the door and outside. They walked past the compounds and rocky parks without saying a word. Josefa felt a lump in her throat.
She was only fourteen years old when her mother died. A confused and angry girl left to her own devices. She hadn’t even cried, not at her mother’s burial, not afterward. She had been rock solid, steadfast, reliable, reasonable. Her father had told their relatives, “If it weren’t for Josefa, our family would fall apart.”
The tantrums came later. Her only safety valve. Kept under wraps with great effort, time and again. She kept the lid on her pain with incredible
strength. And for what?
Ultimately everything was turning sour, that she realized very clearly. Her relationships. Her career. All sorts of bad people were making her life difficult. Josefa suddenly felt overwhelmed by it all. Maybe she should just give up. Be weak. Not fight it anymore.
But then what would become of her?
A silent Sebastian Sauter was walking beside her. What was he thinking? Josefa wondered, taking a deep breath. “It was so hot in there I was practically sick to my stomach.”
Sauter cleared his throat. “We should walk some more in the fresh air, maybe you’ll feel better.”
He said nothing for a while and then, “The last time I was here with my son he felt sick too because he’d eaten too many roasted almonds. It was my fault. I let him get away with so much because I don’t see him very often. When we’re at the zoo, he always bombards me with questions: Why do snakes molt? Why are penguins black and white? I ought to have been a zoologist.”
Josefa listened to him chatter on with his stories—smoke signals of hope from a normal world where kids cry because their ice cream cone isn’t as big as last time and because they’ve just missed feeding time at the lion cage.
They were walking toward the exit when Josefa stopped and looked at Sauter. She knew he was able to guess more than he let on.
“I can imagine you’re not accustomed to this change of roles, I mean, when your boy asks all those questions. Usually you’re the one who asks all the questions, right?”
Sauter exchanged glances with her and then looked off into the distance. Or maybe just at the billboard advertising cough drops across the street. “After my divorce I discovered that the most important questions are the ones you ask yourself,” he said.
“And—did you find the answers?”
Sauter studied the cough drops once more. “Some, yes, others take longer. Maybe a lifetime,” he chuckled. “But I think that’s easier to live with than continuing to just look the other way, at least in the long run. I…I still find myself a riddle, in many respects, but a…a…er…friendly riddle.”
Sauter looked self-conscious. Josefa decided to rescue him from this awkward situation by glancing at her watch.
“It’s getting late. I think I’ll take the streetcar.”
“May I go with you to the stop?”
Josefa hesitated and then nodded.
It was five thirty in the morning when Josefa arrived at Loyn’s head office—probably for the last time in her life. She wanted to avoid running into anybody, thus the early hour.
The “talk” she’d had with Walther was now behind her and she didn’t care to answer to anyone else about her decision to leave. Her conversation with the company president had only amounted to wrapping up a few formalities anyway. He hadn’t tried to persuade her to stay, and she resented that. Auer probably spread it around that Klingler had poached her. Let them think what they wanted to think.
She’d already said goodbye to the members of her team. The flood of good wishes, the sad words of farewell, and the gifts—everything had moved her deeply. Most of her coworkers thought her decision was just a matter of time even before the golf course “incident” (the official company euphemism for it). Schulmann was making her life difficult every which way, and neither he nor Bourdin, who was still in hospital, said so much as a word about Josefa’s departure.
Whereas Claire…she had stormed into Josefa’s office towering with rage when she heard. She’d never seen her assistant so beside herself. Frustration was written all over her face.
“I can’t believe it, Josefa, I simply can’t believe it,” she repeated over and over. “We could’ve done it! We’re that strong of a team, you and I and the others. What’s going to happen to our projects now? We’ve worked so damn hard on them! How can you give everything up just like that? We’ve fought for so much. And what’s going to happen to our team? You’ve built this team, Josefa! We’re a lot stronger together than Schulmann and Bourdin. Why are you letting them beat you? This isn’t at all like you! Are you afraid of them? Are you scared of Schulmann?”
Scared of Schulmann? Maybe she was, but not as scared as she was of herself. Something she ought to have confessed to Claire, told her of the anger inside, but of course she hadn’t. How could she have explained it to her? She didn’t exactly know how to explain it to herself. Besides—she was the boss, the strong one, masterful. How could she show any weakness in front of Claire? Things will be OK, she told herself. If you want to have a career, you’ve got to change.
And Claire shouldn’t be blind to that fact either. Josefa had kept her out of Schulmann’s line of fire whenever she could during the past few months. But she couldn’t help notice that Schulmann never aimed directly at Claire; his tactics were to ignore her or treat her with exaggerated politeness. That was surely a particularly sadistic punishment for her. Regardless, her assistant didn’t talk about leaving Loyn anymore, to Josefa’s great relief.
Claire, kind soul that she was, had deposited some empty cardboard boxes in her office, and Josefa was using them to pack up the rest of her things. Bianca had put press clippings from the golf tournament and a pile of photos on her desk—a final act of service. Some older pictures of Beat Thüring from the St. Moritz horse show were included, much to Josefa’s surprise. In those pictures he didn’t look like the playboy inclined to booze and drugs that the media portrayed. In one photo he seemed to be engaged in earnest conversation with some other businessmen. Another photo showed him sitting with Van Duisen, Westek, and Salzinger around a table, all with solemn expressions on their faces. What might they be talking about? she wondered.
She sighed, pushed the photos and clippings aside, and began to clear out her desk. It was then she noticed a pretty earring on top of a note from Marlene Dombrinski: “This was found at the golf tournament. We don’t know whose it is. Am I to take care of this?” Josefa twirled the earring around between her fingers. She couldn’t recall who’d been wearing it, though it was extraordinary: Three rubies shaped like petals were set in gold, with a transparent stone in the middle and a diamond teardrop dangling from it. Lines were engraved on the back of the petals, suggesting tiny snail shells.
She put the piece of jewelry in an envelope and shoved it into a small safe in the filing cabinet. She was about to e-mail Marlene when she got the sudden feeling that she was not alone. She heard a soft rattle, then a noise like somebody sucking air in between their teeth. Somebody was prowling around behind her door. She leapt to the door in a single bound and tore it open.
“Good morning,” Pius said, holding a cup of coffee in one hand and a plate of croissants in the other.
“It’s you!” Josefa exclaimed, both annoyed and relieved. “So early again. You gave me one hell of a scare.”
“Let me put this cup down,” Pius said in his deep bass voice. And then with a look as warm as liquid chocolate, “You might easily have given me a nicer welcome.”
Josefa suppressed a grin.
“Why can’t you sleep until seven the way normal people do?”
“I’m a man of the dark, my dear. Dark caves, darkrooms—”
“You put a lot of work into creating your own myth, Pius,” she interrupted. “Am I supposed to be impressed?”
“Don’t you wish to thank me for the nice surprise? I saw your car and straightway went to the kitchen. The croissants are warm, by the way.”
“Thanks, Pius, that’s sweet of you. Maybe you can be so sweet as to carry these boxes downstairs with me?”
“That’s a woman for you: Give an inch…Are you still in mourning for Thüring?” He spotted the picture on top of the pile.
“Thüring? Actually I never had any dealings with him,” Josefa said, drinking her coffee slowly and with relish. Suddenly Ingrid popped into her mind. What was the connection between that beautiful stranger and Thüring?
Pius bit into a croissant. “A lot of people won’t be unhappy that Thüring drowned. He led a fine life on other
people’s money.”
Josefa looked at her watch. “I’ve got to get moving before the place gets busy. Are you going to help?”
But Pius was still going on about Thüring. “Maybe he simply absconded. You know his body hasn’t been found yet.”
Josefa took the picture out of his hand. “But there were witnesses who claim they saw him drown. Sharks probably feasted on his body—come on, let’s get to work.”
Pius and Josefa were waiting for the elevator, their arms laden with boxes, when the door opened and Hans-Rudolf Walther emerged. He nodded briefly in Josefa’s direction and then gave Pius a look of obvious displeasure.
“I hope you won’t be taken off the payroll for helping a defector,” she whispered to Pius once they were inside the elevator.
Pius put down the boxes and wiped a few crumbs off his lips. “He knows better than that,” he replied with total aplomb.
The photographer’s last remark was still going through Josefa’s head that afternoon on a Lake Zurich steamboat. Whatever did Pius mean, and why was his voice so…so cold? Sali was beside her, feeding pieces of bread to the gulls and chattering to himself in Albanian. She was surprised by how unusually warmly she felt toward the little guy. Strange, but she’d never thought she’d find it fun to spend time with a kid, and a foreigner to boot. She wondered if Stefan ever took his kids on boat rides. She realized she’d been thinking less and less about the man who’d so quickly exited her life. They’d never talked about how Agnes got her phone number or how long she’d known about their affair. Actually they hadn’t had a proper talk at all since that day—Stefan was preoccupied with his son’s accident and his impending move to the US—but it wasn’t even necessary. It was obvious to both of them that there could be no thought of continuing their affair. And there were moments when Josefa felt liberated. No more waiting. No more guilt.
Her cell phone rang, though she barely heard it over the roar of the ship’s engines.
“Where are you?” Paul Klingler asked.
“On a steamer with Sali,” Josefa shouted. “We’re just getting off at the Zürichhorn landing.”
The Zurich Conspiracy Page 11