The Zurich Conspiracy

by Calonego, Bernadette

  “Yes, that what kids have going for them. My son makes me see the world through a kid’s eyes again. It certainly is good for Sali if he can forget himself when he plays.”

  Josefa wrapped her full skirt around her knees.

  “You know, Sali’s an amazing kid. There’s so much life in him. He can be so thrilled. He’s had such awful experiences, but nevertheless there’s such…such a powerful will in him to be happy. He takes in beautiful things like a sponge. The trust that he has in spite of everything—in me, in other people, in life—it’s…it’s…” Josefa felt tears welling up inside her.

  Sauter would never interrupt her in moments like this. He’d learned to let people talk. That was the policeman in him. He’d simply wait until she spoke again.

  “To see that, you know, it gives a person hope. Hope that it’s not only bad things that last. You have to give good things space to survive.”

  Sauter seemed to sense that she wasn’t only talking about Sali but about herself as well. He cleared his throat. “I’ve often thought about how divorce has affected my son. Always shuffling between parents. But Kevin’s developing astonishingly well. I think I’ve become a better father. That’s what I imagine at least. Children bring out the best in you.”

  Josefa began to pick up the used paper napkins. “Then maybe I can still become a good person if only I’m with Sali long enough.” She went to the kitchen.

  “A reconciled person,” he called out after her.

  “What did you say? A nice person?” Josefa replied. She came back smiling with two bowls of crème bavaroise. “You should have seen the salads Emilie brought. She’s such a creative cook.”

  “Who’s Emilie?”

  “Paul’s new flame. A Frenchwoman. Paul has a terrible accent when he speaks to her. I can hardly stand it sometimes. But he loves her meals. And she’s thin as a rail. Incredible.”

  She did not mention Bruno Zicchun and his remarks. They only touched on the subject of Loyn when it was unavoidable. Josefa was happy to have some space from those events. And she knew Sauter didn’t want to be put into the position of having to comment on a colleague’s investigation. He liked to keep these worlds strictly separate.

  “And then,” she continued, “I ran into that old man again who regularly brings his Siamese cat for a walk in Irchel Park, unleashed. It follows him like a dog. Last summer—I think it was last summer—I helped him with a crossword puzzle. He had to find a long keyword. He could still remember it, imagine that! He even still knew the question perfectly well. The man has some memory, simply unbelievable. And he must be at least eighty.”

  “So what was the question?”

  “It was in verse, something like this—let’s see if I can remember: He moves our personal belongings, strangers’ worlds pass through his hands. He knows their comings and their goings, but never tells us where he stands.”

  Josefa looked at Sauter expectantly.

  “‘Habe’ and ‘Pfade’—do they rhyme?” he asked, licking the finger that he’d greedily stuck into the crème bavaroise.

  “It was a crossword puzzle, not Schiller’s Ode to Joy, Herr Polizist.”

  “And what’s the answer?”

  “I suggested Koffertraeger, and it fit and was long enough. But the old man said today that the first part of the word didn’t work, and he couldn’t finish the puzzle, that made him very antsy. The first letter didn’t fit with the rest. But I’m sure that we had the right word.”

  Josefa got a ballpoint and wrote the letters on a paper napkin.

  “Do you want the last of the caviar?” Sebastian asked.

  “I’d love it.”

  Josefa wiped the inside of the tin clean with a piece of bread. “Every black speck is worth a fortune.”

  “I think, dear heart, you must bury one illusion.”

  “Why? Did you confiscate the caviar from a Russian Mafioso?”

  “I’m talking about the crossword. I think you got it wrong—the word’s Moebeltraeger.”

  She counted out the letters on her fingers. “M-O-E-B-E-L-T-R-A-E-G-E-R—furniture mover, not porter. Well, aren’t you the clever one! Is that what you learn in the Zurich Criminal Investigation Department?” She leaned over him.

  “Yes, and a lot of other things. For example, how to keep a body covered.”

  “But that doesn’t rhyme with anything.”

  He pulled her down to him and murmured in her ear, “But it sounds immensely poetic.”

  Were they wise to him? Sepp Kohler sat in front of his eavesdropping equipment, petrified.

  He moves our personal belongings…

  Was this one of those crazy coincidences, or was there something he hadn’t given careful enough thought to? Frau Rehmer’s words. That melodious, crystal-clear voice—it cut like a laser beam through his secret universe. Rehmer and the police detective.

  What a strange couple. But he’d heard it coming: their cautious approach, the fumbling questions, the yearning in Sauter’s voice, his gentle wooing, Rehmer’s reticence, her relaxed laughter, the long, intense conversations. It had been better than any TV soap opera, better than the gossip in the supermarket tabloids, better than anything his fellow workers could recount about their monotonous lives.

  Strangers’ worlds pass through his hands…

  People are so clueless. They get an expensive alarm system for their houses, two fierce dogs for their garden, a combination for their safe. But they think nothing of it when a furniture mover walks in the door, into their office, into their living room, into their bedroom. To them he’s just a furniture mover for a well-known company. No, that’s not right. To them he’s a shadow, a nothing. He’s always ready to work, he functions, and he’s discreet. And he simply melts away when his duty’s done.

  Just think. They don’t know a thing about the little sentinels he leaves behind. They don’t take any notice of the tiny opening in their carapace where a little insect has burrowed in. He inserts an identifying chip, like a veterinarian does to an innocent dog. Whatever they do, whatever they say and scheme, he’ll bear secret witness.

  He knows their comings and their goings…

  That gracious Frau Rehmer. She saw in him the trusted worker, always on the spot when called for a Loyn event. How happy she was when he helped her move into her new apartment. Her generous remuneration was just as valuable to him as her beaming smile when she thanked him. Oh yes, he’d taken special care when transporting that lamp with a heavy base, an heirloom cherished beyond measure, as she put it. A solid, delicate piece, with a blue shade and a twisted, thick, brass-colored setting. It was an easy task to plant the bug. He’d done it dozens of times, under far more difficult conditions.

  Like under the tables in Loyn’s tent. He’d been relieved, and a little insulted, to read in the papers that Francis Bourdin was suspected of installing the microphones. Bourdin! What an amateur! It was a put-down of the work that he, Kohler, had carried out. As if a guy like Bourdin was capable of acquiring the devices and then installing them properly. You need technical smarts for that—and reliable connections, suppliers from the shady world of the military. Bourdin couldn’t plant a bug. He was one himself.

  That guy would be lurking around everywhere. Even that evening at the tournament when Kohler, his hard-working genie, pretended to the security personnel that he had to check that everything was in order. That was part of the routine; nobody had any reason to be suspicious. One of his spies had fallen off, obsolete stuff, though cheap enough to buy. Things like that would happen time and again. Annoying, but unavoidable. When he crawled back out from under the table, Bourdin was standing in front of him. He must have followed him, that spying scumbag.

  The jig’s up—is what he thought at that moment. It’s all over. Bourdin had him in his clutches, but not the way he feared at first. Because Bourdin saw unsuspected possibilities for the future—and he saw in Sepp Kohler just the man to turn those possibilities into something else, for himself.

/>   Kohler was sworn over to Bourdin for better or for worse. More worse than better, as it turned out. Bourdin was not the man for such secret operations. Just imagine: He left the eavesdropping equipment in his hotel room where anybody could walk in and find it. And worst of all: Bourdin had “confidants” like that reptile, that blindworm Schulmann. What do you expect from a hard-boiled schemer like that?

  Bourdin just didn’t get it. Eavesdropping is a pleasure in itself, not a means to an end. Anybody who uses pirated knowledge as a weapon makes himself vulnerable, delivers himself up.

  …but never tells us where he stands.

  He had to throw Bourdin under the bus, had to tell the cops that the CEO had been sneaking around in the party tent, supposedly to check the table arrangements. That, along with the tapes and the eavesdropping apparatus—and Bourdin was caught in the trap. He wouldn’t even try to explain to the police where he got the bugs from. Wouldn’t have helped him anyhow.

  And yet he—the canny furniture mover—could have solved all the super-manager’s problems. Because while the cops were still in the dark, Bourdin told him that Schulmann was in the know. That was shortly after he’d been let out of hospital. Did Schulmann know about me too? he asked the head of Loyn right away. Bourdin dismissed the thought with a wave of his hand. At least he’d kept his mouth shut at the time. But for how long? You mustn’t tell Bourdin too much.

  And then Schulmann wanted to get rid of some old furniture, ordering him to take it to the incinerator in his truck, at night, after Kohler left work at the company.

  When he got to Schulmann’s house, it was brightly lit. He drove around to the back, just as Schulmann had told him to. The entrance there was wider. He parked the truck behind the hedge. He didn’t fancy any unwanted witnesses. He knew the entrance through the garage to the house—hadn’t he handled Schulmann’s move as well? Charged it up to Loyn of course. In his right hand was a plastic bag with a hammer in it.

  He came across something in the living room he hadn’t reckoned with. He found Schulmann lying beside the sofa in a contorted position. The guy’s got himself totally pissed. That was his first thought. A half-empty bottle of whiskey was on the table, next to a glass. Was anybody still around? He listened carefully—he was a first-rate listener. But he didn’t hear a thing. He came closer. Schulmann was still alive but completely out of it. Maybe drugs were involved?

  He couldn’t find any rhyme or reason to it, but this was no time to deliberate. Because he suddenly had a splendid idea.

  Not the hammer, no blood splattered everywhere. The plastic bag would be quite enough. So neat and quiet.

  The word’s Moebeltraeger. That was the policeman’s voice.

  Was that a warning? Did he suspect something? But now everybody thinks the photographer did it! He would have to thank Pius Tschuor. He played right into his hands. Good spadework, Herr Fotograf.

  So why was he alarmed?

  Had he left any clues? Hadn’t his contact at the former military supply depot kept his trap shut?

  Now he heard Josefa Rehmer’s voice, as if through an amplifier: My therapist would prohibit me from having anything to do with you.

  A muffled Why?

  You’ve so many cavities and passages. Your nasal passages, your ear cavities, your oral cavities, your navel cavity…

  Let me see: your nasal passages…navel cavity…

  Now there was nothing but noises. Sepp Kohler sat there spellbound.

  Then he relaxed. What he heard now were whispers of love.

  They were unsuspecting, naïve, dallying.

  He wasn’t in any danger. He was sure of that. His secret was intact.

  He reached for the beer bottle on the table in front of him and let the cool brew run slowly down his throat. He put the bottle down, contented, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  At that moment he heard a loud scratching noise. Where did that come from?

  The transmission suddenly cut out. An eerie silence set in.

  The translator acknowledges with much gratitude the indispensable help of the following people in making this translation possible. Barbara Perlmutter was instrumental in the early planning and negotiations; Gabriella Page-Fort of AmazonCrossing navigated the manuscript through the publishing process with steady encouragement and unfailing good humor; Jenny Williams and Ingrid Emerick did a superb job with the copyediting, as did Kara Mason with the proofreading; and the translator’s wife and patient first reader, Nina, gave as always the fledgling manuscript an insightful scrubbing. Special tribute is due the book’s author, Bernadette Calonego, for giving the translation a scrupulous examination and providing a host of improvements and corrections. Any remaining infelicities are the responsibility of the translator. Finally, AmazonCrossing deserves a particular accolade for publishing not only this translation but so many others in its enterprising new series.

  Photograph by Rae Ellingham

  Bernadette Calonego was born and raised in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, on Lake Lucerne, a very picturesque area with mountains and lakes. She grew up in a house full of book lovers, where she was encouraged to try her hand at writing. Her first publication was a fairytale, which appeared in a Swiss newspaper when she was eleven years old.

  She has a teacher’s diploma from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, where she focused on German, French, and English literature. Her career has included working as a reporter/editor for Reuters news agency in Zurich, and her time covering financial news for Reuters inspired The Zurich Conspiracy.

  From 1990 to 2000, she was the foreign correspondent for Süddeutsche Zeitung, the largest-circulation daily newspaper in Germany, reporting from Switzerland. Bernadette Calonego’s stories have also been published in magazines such as GEO, Vogue, SZ-Magazin, natur + kosmos, foto magazin, Börse Online, EMMA, abenteuer + reisen, and Häuser, and in newspapers such as Neue Zürcher Zeitung and Weltwoche.

  She now resides and works as a freelance foreign correspondent near Vancouver, Canada, writing regularly for such newspapers as Süddeutsche Zeitung in Munich, Der Standard in Vienna, and Tages-Anzeiger and Finanz und Wirtschaft in Zurich.

  She has published three novels in German, beginning with Nutze deine Feinde (literally “Use Your Enemies,” published here as The Zurich Conspiracy), Unter dunklen Wassern (“Under Dark Waters”), and Oh wie schön ist Kanada! (“Oh, How Beautiful Is Canada!”).

  Read Bernadette Calonego’s blog on her website

  www.bernadettecalonego.com

  Photograph by Nina Chapple

  Gerald Chapple is an award-winning translator of German literature. He received his doctorate at Harvard and went on to teach German and comparative literature at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario. He has been translating contemporary German-language authors for over thirty-five years. His recent prose work includes two books by the Austrian writer Barbara Frischmuth, The Convent School and Chasing after The Wind, completed with cotranslator James B. Lawson; Michael Mitterauer’s probing history of Europe from 600 to 1600, Why Europe? Medieval Origins of Its Special Path; and Anita Albus’s wonderfully idiosyncratic book, On Rare Birds. Bernadette Calonego’s gripping thriller set in Zurich marks his return to longer works of prose fiction and his debut for AmazonCrossing. After choosing early retirement, he lives in Dundas, Ontario, with his wife, Nina, an architectural historian, and two Labradors. When not translating, he can usually be found studying birds, butterflies, and dragonflies; reading; or listening to classical music.

 

 

 
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