Rules of Deception Page 3

  “Do you have a signal?” asked Sepp Steiner, chief of the rescue team, when he reached his side. Steiner was a short, spare man with hollow cheeks and gun slits for eyes.

  “Nothing.”

  It was then that he saw it: a crimson petal lying in the snow. Jonathan bent down to touch the drop of blood. There was another a few inches away, and another farther on. “This way,” he said, waving an arm for the others to join him.

  “Don’t go any farther,” cautioned Steiner. “There’s a crevasse just ahead a few meters.”

  “A crevasse?”

  “A deep one. It cuts to the bottom of the glacier.”

  Jonathan squinted, trying to make out the fissure, but saw nothing beyond an impenetrable white wall. “Get me roped up.” He removed his skis, then pulled on a seating harness and attached the rope to his waist.

  “Be careful,” said Steiner, after taking off his skis and securing Jonathan to his own harness. “We don’t want to lose you, too.”

  Jonathan swung round to face the smaller man. “She isn’t lost yet.”

  At first, the drops were difficult to find, hardly more than pinpricks. Then they grew larger, more closely spaced, until the blood ran in a steady line as if someone had punctured a can of grenadine and poured it into the snow. Except this syrup was colored the oxygen-rich red of arterial blood.

  When had Emma passed this way? Jonathan wondered. Five minutes ago. Ten? Bending lower, he discerned where she’d placed her good foot and where she’d dragged the other. Ahead, there was a depression in the snow, and in its center, a gaping hole.

  Dropping to his belly, he crawled forward and shined his flashlight into the opening. A gallery of ice and stone beckoned, ten meters across, bottomless. Rolling to one side, he checked the homing beacon. The digital readout flickered and the number 98 appeared. Jonathan’s stomach buckled. Ninety-eight meters translated to over three hundred feet.

  “Do you have a signal?” asked Steiner. “Is she in there?”

  “Yes,” said Jonathan, but he refused to elaborate. “I’m going down. On belay.”

  “Belay on,” confirmed Steiner.

  Jonathan enlarged the hole with his ax. A chunk of snow fell away and the crevasse yawned beneath him. Dangling his boots into the hole, he shimmied backward until the snow collapsed under his chest. He plunged into darkness, slamming into an ice wall before the rope grew taut and caught him. “I’m in.”

  Kicking off the wall, he allowed the rope to pay out between his fingers and dropped farther into the chasm. The flashlight revealed a pristine and savage landscape, an ice queen’s eternal palace. It was an illusion. The crevasses existed in a state of flux, widening, narrowing, slaves to the constantly churning forces of the underlying rock strata.

  Ten meters down, he spotted a patch of black and white on a ledge a stone’s throw away. It was Emma’s cap. Like a pendulum, he swung back and forth, springing off the ice wall to build his momentum. The third time, he tilted his body perilously close to horizontal, stretched his arm, and grabbed it.

  Cap in hand, he steadied himself and directed the flashlight toward the ledge. The snow there was disturbed and violent with blood. Not a trail this time, but a stain as large as a grapefruit. He could no longer lie to himself about what had happened. Emma had tried to walk down the mountain. Her movement had caused the splintered bone to nick the femoral artery. The artery was the principal passageway for blood pumped by the heart to the lower extremities: legs, feet, and toes. As a surgeon, he knew the consequences. Without a tourniquet, she would exsanguinate in minutes. In layman’s terms, she’d bleed to death.

  He checked the beacon. The readout showed eighty-nine meters. Just under three hundred feet. The directional indicator pointed down. He shined the beam toward the floor of the crevasse. Oblivion.

  “Lower,” he said.

  “I can give you another twenty-five meters. That’s all we’ve got.”

  Jonathan glanced up. The gap he’d come through appeared as bright as a tear in the night sky. He waited for the second line to be tied to the first. Steiner gave him a tug and Jonathan recommenced his descent. He paid the line out slowly, stopping every ten feet to swing the light around him, check for obstacles, and search for Emma. The numbers on the beacon grew smaller. Light from the world above disappeared. The ice walls glowed a ghostly blue…70…68…64…Suddenly, the rope grew taut.

  “That’s it,” said Steiner.

  Jonathan guided the light slowly back and forth, painting the ice below with a pale beam. He caught a flash of red. His patrolman’s jacket? He moved the beam a few inches to the left and saw a glint of copper. Emma’s hair? His heart jumped. “I need more rope. Another length.”

  “We have no more.”

  “Get some,” he ordered.

  “There’s no time. A small avalanche just ripped out the slope behind us. The entire mountain could come down at any moment.”

  Jonathan directed his gaze along the beam of light. The patch of red came into focus. He moved the light an inch to the right. It was the cross on his patrolman’s jacket. The glint of copper was his wife’s hair.

  Emma. Her name caught in his throat.

  He could see her now, at least her outline. She lay prone on her stomach, one arm extended above her head, as if calling for help. But there was something wrong…the ice around her was not white at all, but dark. She was lying in a slick of her own blood.

  “She’s here,” he said stubbornly. “We can reach her.”

  “She fell one hundred meters,” argued Steiner. “She could not have survived. You must come out. I won’t risk the lives of four men.”

  “Emma!” Jonathan shouted. “It’s me. It’s Jonathan. If you’re okay, move your hand.”

  His wife’s form remained still, as his voice echoed inside the chasm.

  “Quiet,” said Steiner, his anger tight as a fist. “You’ll kill us all.”

  The rope gave a jerk. Jonathan bounced against the wall and rose a few feet. Steiner was hauling him out. Enraged, he dug his toe spikes into the ice, then drew his knife and pressed the blade against the rope, inches from his face. He had crampons. He had an ice ax. He would climb down the wall to her.

  He kept his eyes on the body. Already it looked smaller, somehow foreign. He detected no sign of movement. It didn’t matter if Steiner was right about the fall, whether it was too far or if there had been any obstructions to slow her descent. There was simply too much blood.

  He pulled the knife away from the rope and freed his crampons from the ice. The lifeline jerked again, and he was lifted another meter out of the crevasse. He shone the light at the patch of red he’d seen, but it was no longer visible. He had lost sight of his wife.

  “Emma!” he yelled as tears streamed down his cheek.

  Only his voice called back, echoing over and over again.

  4

  The Land Rover hurtled down the Seestrasse on its way out of Zurich. A lone man sat behind the wheel. Heavy stubble covered his cheeks. Dark circles cupped his eyes. He had been on the move for twenty-four hours. He needed a meal, a shower, and a bed. All that would come. First, he had a job to complete.

  Opening the glove compartment, he withdrew a silenced pistol and set it on the seat beside him. He looked out the window at the lake. Whitecaps flashed in the dark. Far away, the running lights of a large boat bobbed dangerously. It was not a good night to be on the water.

  At the next signal, he turned and guided the car up a winding road. Falling snow choked the headlights, but he did not slow. He knew the route. He had driven it once already, earlier in the evening. He had studied maps of the area, committing avenues of access and escape to memory.

  A burst of acceleration delivered him to a plateau. Large, well-tended homes lined either side of the street. This eastern side of the Lake of Zurich was known as the Gold Coast, for its dawn-to-dusk sun exposure as well as for its luxurious residences. He cut his speed as soon as he spotted the target’s home. Modeled on a French country estate, it was set back from the street on a rise with snow-crusted orchards bordering either side.

  Twenty meters farther along, he brought the car to a halt in the shadow of a towering pine. He doused the lights and sat listening to the engine tick down and the wind beat at his windows. From his jacket, he removed a sterling silver case. Four bullets lay inside it. Slender shells with an X carved into the bronze-colored nose. Tapered fingers set them in a row on the center console. Next, he freed the ceramic vial hanging round his neck and unscrewed the cap. He began to chant softly, words from an ancient and forgotten language. By his own tally, he had killed over three hundred men, women, and children. The words formed a prayer to protect his soul against spirits from the next world. Twenty years as an assassin had left him a superstitious man.

  One by one, he dipped the bullets into the vial, coating them with a viscous, bitter-scented liquid. It was his ritual. First the prayer, then the liquid. As a professional, he knew there was no such thing as too many precautions. In this world or the next. He blew a single breath on each, then fed them into the clip. When he’d finished, he took up the pistol, slid the clip into the butt, and chambered a round. He checked that the safety was on, then removed a sturdy twill bag from his opposite pocket and attached it to a point above the ejection chamber.

  He stepped out of the car. Caged eyes darted up and down the street. He saw no one. Tonight the weather was his ally. At nine-thirty, the neighborhood was still.

  Buttoning his overcoat, he set off briskly up the road. He was a trim man, no more than average height, with narrow shoulders and lank black hair that fell to his collar. His cheeks were sunken, his nose slender and aristocratic, his complexion so pale as to be cadaverous. From afar, he appeared not to walk so
much as to glide above the pavement. It was this combination of his deathly pallor and his ethereal presence that lent him his work name. The Ghost.

  Passing the target’s home, he was afforded an unobstructed view through a bay window adjacent to the front door. A woman and three children sat side by side on a couch entranced by their evening’s television. He slowed long enough to see that the youngest was a boy, dark and pale like himself, arms wrapped around his mother. His heart beat faster. Memories fluttered behind his eyes like a trapped bird beating against a window.

  He looked away.

  Verifying that no traffic was approaching from either direction, he hopped the single-strand wire fence fronting the meadow and took up position behind a woodpile stacked neatly against the side of the home. There, crouching in the snow, he waited.

  At other times, he’d been part of a team, though never its leader. He knew that there should be a rotating two-man squad covering the target at the restaurant; a car to follow him home; and an extraction team waiting to whisk the shooter to the nearest airport or train station and out of the country. All were standard operating procedure.

  But he preferred it this way. Alone in the darkness. An agent of death.

  From a side pocket he removed a metallic box, activated its toggle switch, then slipped it back again. The box emitted a jamming signal that rendered the garage door opener inactive. The target would be forced to step out of his car to manually open the garage, or perhaps, to enter by a side door and open it from the inside.

  In the distance, he made out the velvet growl of a powerful engine. He slipped the silenced pistol from his jacket and focused on the road at the point where the target’s car—a late model Audi A8—would crest the hill. Headlights appeared and grew bolder. His thumb nudged the safety downward.

  All at once, the car was in view. As it passed under a streetlamp he confirmed the make and license. The car slowed, pulling into the driveway and stopping short of the garage. The driver’s door opened. The target stepped out. He was a tall man, solidly built, with ginger hair and well-nourished cheeks. An engineer of some stripe. A family man. A man of rigid discipline.

  By now, the Ghost was making his approach. He covered the distance to the target in three effortless strides. The man looked at him, confused. Why wasn’t the garage door working? Who was this stranger appearing as if out of thin air? The Ghost saw all this in the man’s eyes as he raised his arm and pulled the trigger. Three shots struck the man squarely in the face. The shells flew into the twill bag. The target collapsed to the driveway.

  The Ghost leaned over the body. Nuzzling the silencer against the man’s chest, he shot him through the heart. The body jumped. It was then that he noticed something peculiar on the man’s lapel. A pin of some kind. He bent to take a closer look.

  A butterfly.

  5

  Marcus von Daniken returned to his home a few minutes after eleven o’clock. Beneath his arm, he carried two long-stem roses wrapped in florist’s paper. He walked through dark hallways to the kitchen where a single light burned above the table. He set the flowers down, then tossed his gun and his wallet onto the counter. Stifling a yawn, he opened the refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer. There was a ham sandwich on the center island, a plate of potato salad, and a lemon tart. All were neatly wrapped in cellophane. A note from his housekeeper reminded him to put the leftovers back in the refrigerator. Throwing his jacket over the back of a chair, he rolled up his sleeves and washed his hands in the sink. He ate the sandwich, then dutifully returned the potato salad and lemon tart to the fridge, untouched.

  Von Daniken lived alone in a hulking chalet in the foothills outside of Bern. The house was too big for a bachelor. It had been his father’s and his grandfather’s, and so on, all the way back to the nineteenth century. He didn’t like living by himself, but he liked the idea of moving less. Over the years, he’d made friends with the echoing corridors, the brooding silences, and the unlit rooms.

  Turning back to the table, he unwrapped the florist’s paper and removed the roses that lay inside. With care, he trimmed the stems and placed them in a blown glass vase, one of a pair purchased on his honeymoon at the famous factory in Murano. He’d been married once. He’d had a daughter and another on the way. The house wasn’t too big then. Still, when he’d first wed, his wife had pleaded with him to sell it. She was an attorney from Geneva, spirited and impetuous, brilliant in her field. She saw the house as a relic, as rigid and hidebound as the society that had built it. He disagreed. They never had a chance to settle the argument.

  Von Daniken flipped on the living room light. A photograph of his wife and daughter sat above the fireplace. Two blondes, Marie-France and Stéphanie, taken from him fifteen years ago in an airline disaster. He replaced the day-old roses with fresh ones, then sat down in an old recliner and drank the rest of his beer. He picked up the remote and flicked on the television. Thankfully, there was no mention of the failed arrest that afternoon on the late news. He changed channels, stopping to watch a French literary program. He didn’t care much for literature, French or otherwise, but he loved the moderator, a gorgeous middle-aged brunette. He killed the sound and stared at her. Perfect. Now he had company.

  Television was safer than real life. Over the years, he’d had plenty of first dates, fewer second ones, and only two relationships that had lasted longer than six months. Both women had been attractive, intelligent, and not unaccomplished in bed. Neither, however, had compared to his wife. Once he realized this, the relationships withered. Phone calls went unreturned. Dates grew infrequent. More often, they were canceled at the last minute because of a case. It didn’t take long for either of the women to get the message. Strangely, the parting had been bitter, and more painful than he liked to admit.

  His cell phone rang. “Yes?”

  “Widmer. Zurich Kantonspolizei. We have a situation. A murder in Erlenbach. The Gold Coast. A professional job.”

  Von Daniken swung out of the recliner and turned off the television. “Why me? Sounds like it belongs to the Criminal Police.”

  But already he was moving. He walked into the kitchen and poured the cold beer into the sink. He attached his holster to his belt, put on his jacket, and picked up his wallet.

  “The victim turned up on ISIS,” Widmer explained. “The file was flagged ‘Secret’ with a note saying he’d been the subject of an inquiry twenty years back.”

  “ISIS” stood for the Information System for Internal Security, the Federal Police database that contained files on over fifty thousand individuals suspected of being terrorists, extremists, or members of a foreign intelligence agency, both friendly and not.

  “Who’s the lucky fellow?” von Daniken asked, scooping up his car keys.

  “Name of Lammers. Dutch. Permit C holder. Lived here fifteen years.” Widmer paused, and his voice grew taut. “There’s something else. Something you might want to see yourself.”

  “Give me ninety minutes.”

  Von Daniken needed only eighty-five minutes to make the hundred-ten-kilometer journey. Stepping out of his car, he walked cautiously across the icy sidewalk and ducked beneath the fluttering police tape. An officer from the Kantonspolizei caught a glimpse of von Daniken’s face and drew himself to attention. “Good evening, sir.”

  Von Daniken patted him on the shoulder. “I’m looking for Captain Widmer.”

  “Up there,” said the officer, pointing toward the garage.

  Von Daniken made his way up the driveway toward a battery of mobile lights that had been erected around the perimeter of the crime scene. The array of thousand-watt bulbs lit the victim as if he were sun-bathing on Plage Tahiti in Saint-Tropez. He looked at the body, then looked away. “Some piece of work,” he muttered.

  A bald, broad-shouldered man kneeling next to the body glanced up. “Three to the head, one to the chest,” said Walter Widmer, head of the Zurich Kantonspolizei capital crimes division. “Small caliber. Dumdums by the mess it made. Whoever did this wasn’t taking any chances.”

  “Still think it was a hit?”