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“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 together. 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 pla
“At this stage, I don’t think we pla
“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 co
“But what?”
“How did one of the agents get a shot off and manage with that one shot to kill a bad guy?”