Daniel Silva - The Rembrandt Affair

Like the alcove, the office was in complete darkness. Mikhail had no need of light. He knew that Martin's computer was located precisely thirteen feet away, at roughly two o'clock. Martin had shut it down before leaving the office earlier that evening. All Mikhail had to do was insert his Sony flash drive into one of the USB ports and hold down the F8 key while pressing the power button. With a few keystrokes, the contents of Martin's hard drive were soon flowing through cyberspace at the speed of light. A dialogue box appeared on the screen: TIME REMAINING FOR UPLOAD: 1:14:32 ...Nothing to do now but wait. He inserted the earpiece of his miniature secure radio and stared at the screen.

"Are they getting it?" Mikhail asked.

"They're getting it," Gabriel replied.

"Don't forget about me here."

"We won't."

Gabriel clipped out. Mikhail sat alone in the darkness, watching the countdown clock on the screen of Martin's computer.

TIME REMAINING FOR UPLOAD: 1:13:47 ...

THE COMPUTER receiving the feed from Villa Elma was located in the glass-enclosed conference room of the London ops center known as the fishbowl. On its screen was a message identical to the one on Martin's. Shamron was the only one in the room who did not think it was cause for celebration. Experience would not permit it. Nor would the status boards. He had one operative locked in Martin's office, seven operatives sitting in a luxury Geneva hotel, and a Mercedes sedan parked at a gas station in one of the world's most secure neighborhoods. And then, of course, there was the small matter of a famous British reporter who was watching a movie about global warming at the side of a Saudi prince. What could go wrong? Shamron thought, his lighter rotating nervously in his fingertips. What could possibly go wrong?

It had been a humbling few months for the tiny Swiss Confederation, as evidenced by the ghostlike silence hanging over Zurich's Bahnhofstrasse that same damp December evening. Having been brought to the brink of insolvency, Switzerland's largest banks had been forced to suffer the indignity of a government bailout. Sensing weakness, foreign tax collectors were now clamoring for Swiss financial institutions to lift the veil of secrecy that had shielded their clients for centuries. The gnomes of Zurich, among the wiliest of God's creatures, had instinctively taken shelter and were waiting patiently for the inclement weather to pass. They did so secure in the knowledge that America's bankers could no longer hold steadfast to their claims of moral superiority. Say what you like about Swiss greed, they assured themselves, but never once had it plunged the entire planet into recession. That would forever be a singularly American achievement.

But economies, like ecosystems, are dynamic, and a threat to one species does not necessarily mean a threat to all. In fact, it can often mean opportunity, as was the case for the enterprise housed in the leaden office building located at the Kasernenstrasse, on the banks of the Sihl Canal. But that was the beauty of corporate security. Trouble tended to be oblivious to the business cycle.

Strangely enough, Ulrich Muller's Kellergruppe did not actually operate from the cellar of Zentrum headquarters. Quite the opposite, it occupied a suite of spacious offices on the top floor, a testament to the significant contribution made by the unit to Zentrum's healthy bottom line. Several senior staff members were on duty that evening, keeping careful watch over a pair of sensitive operations. One was a blackmail job in Berlin; the other, an "account termination" in Mexico City. The Mexico case was particularly critical since it involved a crusading government prosecutor who was poking his nose into matters that didn't concern him. The wet work itself was being handled by a local subcontractor, a professional hit man often used by Mexican drug lords. That was the Kellergruppe's preferred method of operation. Whenever possible, it utilized the services of skilled professionals and career criminals who had no idea whom they were working for. This reduced exposure for the firm and limited potential damage in those rare cases when an operation did not go as planned.

Despite the extreme sensitivity of the Berlin and Mexico City operations, Ulrich Muller was not present at Zentrum headquarters that evening. Instead, for reasons not yet known to him, he was parked in a deserted lot several miles south of the city center along the western shore of the Zurichsee. The location had been chosen by a man named Karl Huber, a former underling of Muller's at the Dienst fur Analyse und Pravention, the Swiss domestic intelligence service. Huber said he had something important he needed to tell Muller. Something that couldn't be discussed over the phone or in an enclosed room. Huber had sounded worried, but Huber usually did.

Muller glanced at his wristwatch, then looked up again to watch a car approaching from the south. Huber, he thought, right on schedule. The car turned into the lot, headlamps doused, and parked a few inches behind Muller's bumper. Muller frowned. As always, Huber's tradecraft was impeccable. A moment later, the DAP man was slumped in Muller's passenger seat, a laptop computer on his lap, looking as though someone had just died.

"What's the problem, Karl?"

"This."

Huber powered on the laptop and clicked on an icon. A few seconds later, Muller heard the voice of Zentrum's owner having an extremely private conversation with his wife. It was obvious from the quality of the audio that the conversation was being conducted face-to-face and was being picked up by a microphone several feet away. Muller listened only for a moment, then, with a sharp wave of his hand, instructed his former underling to shut it down.

"Where did you get this?"

Huber glanced at the ceiling but said nothing.

"Onyx?"

Huber nodded.

"What's the source?"

"Landesmann's mobile phone."

"Why is the internal security service of Switzerland eavesdropping on the private conversations of Martin Landesmann?"

"We're not. But obviously someone else is. And they've managed to get to more than just his mobile."

"What else?"

"His laptop."

Muller went pale. "What are you seeing?"

"Everything, Ulrich. And I mean every thing."

"Onyx?"

Huber nodded. "Onyx."

THE TWO MEN were not referring to the translucent form of quartz, but the signals intelligence service of the Swiss government. A scaled-down version of the National Security Agency's Echelon program, Onyx had the capability to intercept global communications and cellular traffic, as well as activity on the World Wide Web. Shortly after its completion in 2005, Onyx discovered one of the world's most explosive secrets when a ground station high in the Swiss Alps intercepted a fax between the Egyptian foreign minister and his ambassador in London. The fax would eventually help lead to the revelation of the CIA's secret black site prisons for suspected al-Qaeda terrorists. Despite the circumstances, Ulrich Muller couldn't help but marvel at the irony of the situation. Onyx had been conceived and built in order to steal the secrets of Switzerland's adversaries. Now it appeared the system had inadvertently stumbled upon the secrets of the country's most prominent businessman.

"How did Onyx find it?" Muller asked.

"The computers found it. The computers find everything."

"When?"

"Shortly after Martin's hard drive went up on the satellites, the Onyx filtering system hit on several keywords. The material was automatically flagged and delivered to an analyst at Zimmerwald for further investigation. After a few hours of poking around, the analyst discovered that Martin's phone was hot as well. My office was just notified, but Onyx has been monitoring the feed for several days. And the material is being shipped to the DAP for further investigation."