Christopher Reich - Rules of Deception

Still, he couldn’t get Theo Lammers out of his mind. A professional job. Someone waiting for him at his home. He shuddered. It could mean only one thing. The network had been penetrated.

In the living room, he turned on the stereo. Wagner, as always. Just loud enough to let his neighbors know that he was at home, and that today was a day like any other.

Friends and neighbors knew Gottfried Blitz as a wealthy German businessman, one of thousands who had fled to southern Switzerland to enjoy the milder clime and the Mediterranean atmosphere. He drove the newest Mercedes sedan. He made annual pilgrimages to Bayreuth for the Ring cycle. Sunday mornings, the good Herr Blitz attended Lutheran services like any other good Christian. As a cover, it was complete.

Blitz walked to the study, sat down at his desk, and removed the pistol he kept in his waistband. Slipping the gun into the top drawer, he turned on his laptop and went over his checklist. New Bogner sweater for P.J. WEF creds for H.H. 100k cash wire. He whistled softly. Another hundred thousand francs. That one was not going to fly with the boys in Finance. On the other hand, it paled beside what had already been spent. Two hundred million francs to buy control of the company in Zug. Another sixty million to finance the shipments of equipment. The payoffs to P.J. alone amounted to twenty million francs, and that didn’t include the Mercedes and all its special equipment.

He finished typing the request for the monetary transfer and e-mailed it to Finance. Just then, Blitz cocked his head toward the door. The hairs on his forearm were standing on end.

“Hello?” he called. “Someone there?”

There was no reply. The house was too quiet. And where was the barking that accompanied the arrival of a guest?

“Gretel, Isolde,” he called to his dogs.

He sat up, straining for the scrabble of their paws across the marble floor. Wagner drifted in from the living room. The rumble of timpani like distant thunder. The lament of a Teutonic maiden mourning her vanquished prince.

Where were the dogs?

Something shifted in the air behind him. A presence, dark and cold.

A klaxon sounded deep inside him.

Blitz looked at the drawer holding his gun, then at the computer.

Choose one.

Thirty years of training took over. The mission came first. He positioned his fingers above the keyboard and typed in the “destroy” command, obliterating the laptop’s hard drive.

He felt the air rustle behind him. Something cold and hard pressed against his temple.

And then there was light. A thunderclap of hellish color that lasted an instant, and then was no more.

The Villa Principessa sat at the end of a gravel drive, a renovated eighteenth-century cottage with ivy creeping up pitted walls and geranium-filled window boxes decorating its upstairs bedrooms. A low stone-and-mortar wall surrounded the dormant rose garden that fronted the house. At nine a.m., the rain fell in a steady curtain, as pounding and relentless as a waterfall.

Simone buttoned up her coat and tucked her hair behind her ears. “So we’re just going to confront him? What if he says he didn’t send the bags? Then what are we going to do?”

“Why would he deny it?” said Jonathan. “Once he knows Emma’s dead, he’ll be happy to get his car back.”

“And his money?”

“And his money.” Jonathan opened the glove compartment and took out the cash-filled envelope. “I’ve been thinking about this all night…I mean about what Emma was up to.”

Simone’s eyes ordered him to go on.

“Medicine,” said Jonathan. “Emma was always talking about how aid never reached its intended destination. It drove her crazy. You know how it is where we operate. Half the time cargos are impounded by the government or stolen by customs officials who then try to sell it back to us at twice the price. If we get seventy percent of what’s meant for us, that’s considered good. I think it had something to do with that. I mean, look at this house. It had to cost a bundle. My guess is that Blitz is an executive at one of the big pharmaceutical companies. Together they were up to something. Bribing someone. A payoff. Emma always thought she wasn’t doing enough to make a difference.”

“And you expect Blitz to tell you about it?”

“A hundred thousand francs buys a lot of cooperation.”

“Or a lot of silence. It seems to me that you’re overlooking something. Have you considered that Blitz might have been the one who sent the policemen?”

“It doesn’t compute. First off, he’d have had to know about Emma’s accident, and that’s impossible. How do you see it? That he sent Emma the bags, then stuck some crooked cops on her to take the bags back as soon as she picked them up? No way. It wasn’t Blitz. It was someone else.”

“Someone who knew about Emma’s accident?”

“Or someone who was waiting for the bags all along.”

Jonathan left the car and passed through the wrought-iron gate. Simone caught up a moment later. “Gottfried Blitz” read the nameplate below the doorbell. Jonathan pushed the button and the bell chimed like the tolling of a campus carillon. No one answered. Digging in his pocket, he found the breath mints he’d taken from Eva Kruger’s overnight bag and popped one into his mouth. “Want one?”

Simone shook her head.

Jonathan pressed his ear to the door. Strains of classical music came from within. He rang the doorbell again. When no one answered, he threw a leg over the railing and craned his neck to look through the front window. Three dachshunds lay sleeping on the marble floor. He caught a shadow flitting at the periphery of his vision.

“Mr. Blitz,” he called. “I need to speak with you. Open up, please.”

He looked back at the dogs. His vision felt sharper than normal. He observed how still the animals were lying. Unnaturally still, to a doctor’s eye. He studied their torsos. It didn’t appear as if any of them were breathing. One, in particular, lay with its head cocked at a severe angle, its tongue lolling from the corner of its mouth.

Jonathan tried the door, but found it locked.

“What are you doing?” Simone asked. “You can’t just go inside.”

Jonathan banged on the door. “Mr. Blitz! My name’s Ransom. I think you know my wife, Emma. Please open up. It’s about the bags. I’ve got them. And the money.”

Just then, a door slammed inside the house.

“Keep knocking,” he said, turning and running down the stairs.

“Where are you going?” Simone called.

“Around back. Something’s wrong here.”

“But…wait!”

He ran around the side of the house and came up the rear path through the garden. Somewhere behind him, Simone was calling for him to stop, but her words registered as a distraction. The back door was open. Music played from the stereo. “Ride of the Valkyries.” He stepped inside the house, finding himself in a narrow kitchen. He advanced across the floor, grimacing with every squeak of the parquet. He sensed an imbalance in the atmosphere, but instead of being frightened, he felt alert and exhilarated. Battle bright.

He left the kitchen and crossed the living room to where the dogs lay near the front door. None lifted a head as he approached. He bent to examine them. The dachshunds were dead, their necks broken. He stood, aware of his sharp breathing and his heart’s pistonlike contractions. Directly ahead, a flight of stairs led to the second floor. He heard something…something just ahead…and he continued down the hall. He threw open the door to his left. Guest bathroom: empty. The sound grew more distinct. A labored, arrhythmic wheezing.