Christopher Reich - Rules of Betrayal

Von Daniken rolled down the window and turned his head toward the van with Swiss Telecom markings parked next to him. “Five minutes,” he called.

The driver flicked the ash from his cigarillo to the ground, then started the van and drove up the road.

Von Daniken shifted in his seat. As was his habit before a takedown, he was suffering from a case of nerves. The fact was, he was no field man. He’d made his name investigating financial crimes before moving laterally to counterterrorism and espionage. Despite his dislike of guns and violence and all things martial, he’d found that he had a propensity for the work. It turned out that he was a sneaky bastard who could outthink and outmaneuver even the best-trained agents. But thinking was one thing and acting another. At this moment, von Daniken would have much preferred to be seated at his desk, sipping his second espresso of the afternoon and listening to his department chiefs deliver their daily reports.

The red dot veered right at the fork of Lindenstrasse and Dorfstrasse. Dorfstrasse was a two-lane road winding through forest and foothills for exactly 3.8 kilometers before reaching the nearest intersection.

“Mobile One, what’s the status of your roadblock?”

“Roadblock up,” said Mobile One.

“Mobile Four,” radioed von Daniken to the driver of the Swiss Telecom van. “Any traffic?” Mobile Four was charged with blocking traffic coming from the far end of Dorfstrasse and placing a repair crew in the middle of the road. The goal was to force Revy to stop without making him suspicious.

“No one in sight.”

“Close down the road.”

The red dot glided around a turn, with the first of the blue dots a short distance behind. Craning his neck out the window, von Daniken caught the silky howl of Revy’s Porsche.

“Get on his tail,” he said. “I don’t want him thinking he has any place to run if he gets nervous.”

Von Daniken’s vantage point offered a view of the road as it curved and climbed through the forest. He caught a patch of silver among the trees and knew it was Revy.

“Mobile Four, are your men in place?”

“Road closed. No one in sight.”

Von Daniken tightened his fingers around the steering wheel. Now it was up to Revy to follow the script.

The Porsche rounded the nearest bend and von Daniken was granted an unobstructed view of his prey. He was happy to observe Mobile One directly on his tail. Von Daniken started the engine and edged toward the road. Revy whipped past, followed by Mobile One. Von Daniken was astounded by how fast Revy was driving. Then again, he reminded himself, Revy knew the road perfectly. Von Daniken gunned the engine and shot into the road.

“Thirty seconds,” he radioed.

“Thirty seconds,” confirmed Mobile Four.

Von Daniken watched the Panamera pass the first of a series of orange cones running down the center of the road. He waited for the Porsche’s brake lights to flare, the car to slow. If anything, the Porsche seemed to accelerate, its tail sliding to the left as it negotiated the sharp curve. Verglas, thought von Daniken. Black ice. A thin sheet of impossibly slick ice invisible to the eye. A second later, Revy had disappeared round the bend.

Von Daniken hurried to catch up. He knew what lay a few hundred meters ahead. A three-man crew dressed as laborers in grimy pants and orange safety vests gathered in the center of the road. A fourth man directed traffic. The Telecom van blocked the oncoming lane. In a country obsessed by the condition of its roads, it was a sight every Swiss could count on seeing once a day.

He came around the bend, but Revy was already out of sight, and he saw only the rear of Mobile One’s sedan. You’re driving too fast, von Daniken admonished Revy from afar, as if the doctor were purposefully disobeying his instructions in an effort to defeat his planning. Slow down. That’s an order!

Von Daniken rounded the next curve in time to witness the accident. There were some things one could not plan for, or for that matter even foresee. And in that never-ending instant, as he watched the disaster unfold and saw his carefully wrought plan quite literally go up in flames, he knew that later, when they would meet at headquarters in Bern, some smart-ass would say that he should have known that the area was a wilderness preserve and that all kinds of animals were roaming the woods.

But for that moment, all he could do was watch.

The stag was the biggest he’d seen since he was a child in the mountains near Zinal. The deer bounded off the hillside and into the center of the road not ten meters in front of Revy’s 200,000-franc sports sedan. Seeing the oncoming car, the animal froze, its head raised proudly, its magnificent rack (eighteen points at least) silhouetted against the waning afternoon sun. It was a testament to Revy’s reflexes that he did not hit the buck. The Porsche veered crazily to the left, and von Daniken was certain he did not see the faintest glimmer of its brake lights as it careened off the hillside and seemingly took flight before slamming nose first into the trunk of a century-old pine and plummeting twenty meters to the stream below.

Revy didn’t stand a chance, even with airbags and a safety belt. The Porsche landed flat on its back, buckling the roof. Von Daniken was out of his car in time to hear the shattered windshield tinkle onto the rocks, watch the splintered treetop spear the wreck, and spy the first flames lick from the gas tank. The explosion came a second later, enveloping the automobile. He prayed that the fall had broken Revy’s neck.

Von Daniken looked on for ten seconds as the flames danced in and out of the passenger compartment. He lamented Revy’s death. Maybe he even felt sorry for him. By now his men had gathered beside him. They stood like mourners gazing into the ravine, their pale, impassive faces shadowed by the specter of death. In a few minutes a police car would arrive, then a fire truck, and afterward an ambulance. Someone would call a reporter from the local newspaper. The crash was spectacular enough to merit a half-page article with color photographs in Blick, the country’s daily tabloid. Von Daniken could not allow that to happen.

“Keep the roads blocked,” he said to his colleague. “Get a cleanup crew over here on the double. This never happened.”

The final briefing of Dr. Jonathan Ransom, newly minted operative, by Frank Connor, director of Division, took place in a sterile conference room on the fifth floor of the Executive Business Center at Zurich Flughafen. The time was six o’clock in the evening. A floor-to-ceiling window offered a view toward the piers of Terminals A and B and, five hundred meters away, like an island rising out of the tarmac, Terminal E. Planes from a dozen nations sat parked at gates, awaiting departure. Most were from Far Eastern lands and being made ready for night flights to the Orient: Thai Airways, Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines. Barely visible at the farthest corner of Terminal E was a Boeing 787 with the green, black, and red tail markings of Emirates. Emirates Flight 221, service from Zurich to Dubai, was scheduled for 8:30 departure, with a full complement of 248 passengers and crew.

“Here’s my boy,” said Connor as he entered the room and spied Jonathan standing by the window. “Christ, I hardly recognize you. What did they do to your hair? Is it blond? Glasses, too, and a suit. You clean up nice.”

Jonathan smiled tightly. The only thing Connor had missed was the blue contact lenses. “Hello, Frank. How’re the legs?”

“Hurt like the dickens. You’re a doctor. Can’t you do something about it?” Connor laughed to show that he was in good spirits, and the two men shook hands, Connor keeping Jonathan in his grip a long time and looking him up and down. “Danni taking good care of you?”