Rules of Deception

“Whoever I need to be.”

Hoffma

“Your turn,” said Hoffma

Jonathan scooped up the chair and thrust it in front of him, fending off the larger man. Hoffma

He looked toward the desk. The box of stainless steel valves he’d hauled upstairs rested on the corner. Each valve was the size of a drinking glass and weighed nearly a kilo. He stepped forward, forcing Hoffma

Just then there was a knock at the door.

“Is everything alright, Mr. Hoffma

“Perfect,” said Hoffma

All at once, Jonathan dropped to a knee and forced the chair to his left. Caught unawares, Hoffma

Hoffma

“Mr. Hoffma

Dazed, Jonathan stumbled backward, seeking the desk for balance. He caught his reflection in a framed photograph. He was a mess. The cut on his throat was leaking blood. It had missed the carotid artery by less than an inch. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed it to the wound.

“One second,” he said, smiling grotesquely to imitate Hoffma

He looked around the office. A window behind the desk opened onto a four-story drop. There were no drainpipes to slide down this time. He hurried to the door, picked up his pistol, and slipped it into his waistband.

“Come in,” he said.

The secretary entered in a rush. Before she could take in the scene, Jonathan closed the door behind her.

“My goodness, what happened?” she asked, the disparate elements slowly adding up.

Jonathan forced her against the door, bracing the woman with his forearm. “If you’re quiet, I won’t hurt you. Do you understand?”

The secretary nodded vigorously. “But…”

“Sshhh,” he said. “You’ll be alright. I promise you. It’s better to relax.”

The woman’s eyes widened in terror.

He pressed his fingers against her carotid artery, cutting off the flow of blood to her brain. She jerked once in his arms, and five seconds later, she passed out. He lowered her to the carpet. He estimated she would regain consciousness in anywhere from two to ten minutes. Hoffma

Jonathan surveyed the office. He could not leave looking as he did. He took off the blue work jacket, then found Hoffma

He found the Mercedes parked in the garage on the Zentralstrasse across from the train station. He yanked the first aid kit from beneath the front seat and fumbled for some gauze and tape. It did little good. He needed stitches.

One hand applying pressure to his neck, he drove the car slowly out of town, joining the autobahn and pointing the nose in the direction of Bern.

There was only one place he knew to go.

50

Von Daniken kept his car in the passing lane, the speedometer pushing one-eighty. The highway cut through terraced vineyards high on the slopes of Lake Geneva. The lake’s broad blue canvas filled the windscreen. Beyond it, wreathed in cloud, rose the snow-covered peaks of the French Haute-Savoie.

As he neared Nyon, on the outskirts of Geneva, his cell phone rang. He thumbed the answer button on the steering wheel.

“Rohde, Zurich medical examiner’s office.”

“Yes, Doctor…” Von Daniken remembered that he’d moved Rohde’s call last night to the delete file.

“It’s about the Lammers postmortem. We discovered something odd.” Rohde spent several minutes summarizing his findings about the batrachotoxin, or frog poison, coating the bullets. “My colleague, Dr. Wickes, at New Scotland Yard, is convinced that whoever killed Theo Lammers worked with the Central Intelligence Agency at one time.”

Von Daniken didn’t answer. The CIA. It figured. When it became clear that Blitz wasn’t a German but an Iranian, and a former military officer to boot, he’d suspected the killings to be the work of a professional intelligence organization. He thought of Philip Palumbo. Either the American agent wasn’t in on the operation or he had purposely kept the information from him.

Offering his thanks, von Daniken terminated the call. The highway narrowed as he entered the city. The road dipped and followed the borders of the lake. A great rolling park extended to his left, snowy meadows sloping to the shore. He passed a succession of stately institutional compounds built on these grounds. The United Nations. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The World Health Organization.

The address he was seeking was located in a less stately part of town. He parked on the Rue de Lausa

He scrolled through his phone’s list of contacts to the letter “P.” A faraway buzzing filled his ear as the signal bounced between transmission towers co

“Hello, Marcus,” answered a hardscrabble American voice.

Von Daniken knew better than to ask where Philip Palumbo was. “I’m afraid this call falls outside the boundaries of our formal relationship,” he began, eschewing any preamble as meaningless bullshit.

“This about the news I gave you yesterday?”

“It is. I need to know if there’s any more information about Quitab-the man we know as Gottfried Blitz-that you’re not telling me.”

“That’s it, my friend. First I heard of him was two days ago, straight from Gassan’s lips.”

“And that goes for the plan, too? No prior indications that there was a cell in Switzerland pla