Eight Days to Live

  She nodded as she took the book. “I’ll do what I can.” She took her laptop and a pad and pencil from the desk and sat down in a chair at the kitchen table. She started to flip through the book. “I usually do a scan first. Just to pull out the main content. Is that all right?”

  Jane nodded. “Whatever. Maybe you can tell us enough to know if we can use any of it.”

  She flipped back to the first page. “Adah Ziller. It is a journal of sorts. But it spans years and is very spotty. It starts when she was a schoolgirl in Syria. It seems to skip several years and continues when she was at the university in England.” She flipped more pages. “It’s pretty disjointed. It’s going to take some time.”

  “How much time?”

  She shrugged. “Six, eight hours minimum.” She saw Jane frown, and said, “Do you want accuracy or guesswork? I don’t do guesswork.”

  “Okay.” She nodded. “I guess I’m impatient. There are reasons.”

  “There are reasons for everything. I’ll get it done as quickly as I can.”

  “I know you will,” Caleb said. “We can’t wait for it. As it is, we won’t be in Zurich before nearly five. We’ll come back and pick it up.” He turned to Jane. “If you’ll trust the book out of your hands?”

  Jane hesitated.

  “You can trust her,” Caleb said. “I guarantee it. No matter what’s in that book, she’ll forget it as soon as she makes the translation.”

  “That’s not what I was worrying about. I don’t even know if this translation is any more than Adah Ziller’s bedroom antics.” She looked at Lina. “But the woman who wrote this was murdered. There may be people who are interested in it as much as we are.”

  “We weren’t followed, Jane,” Caleb said. “I made sure of it.”

  “I’m glad you’re sure. But I’m not sure of anything,” Jane said. “Except that she has to be warned.”

  Lina smiled faintly. “Thank you. Some of my clients haven’t been that considerate. But I can take care of myself. After I left Afghanistan, I made very sure of that.” She leaned forward and opened the ledger. “Now get out of here and let me work. I want to get through with this so that I can get back to my garden before dark. I need to finish putting in my tomatoes.”

  “I could help when we come back to pick up the translation,” Jock offered.

  She shook her head. “I like to do things on my own. I don’t need anyone. Go away.”

  “Whatever you say,” Jock said as he turned toward the door. “I’ll ask you again when I come back.”

  She didn’t answer. She was already making notes on her pad.

  “I’ll call you when we start back from Zurich,” Caleb said.

  She nodded absently.

  They weren’t even there for her, Jane thought, as she left the cottage. The woman’s concentration was so intense that she had closed out everything but that handwriting on the page.

  “She’ll get it done,” Caleb said as he opened the car door for her. “Lina is brilliant. She’ll get every phrase right.”

  “I’m not doubting her ability. You wouldn’t deal with anyone who couldn’t do the job.” She looked around the hillside, then down to the valley. Majestic mountains plunged into the crystal blue lake, and only a few farmhouses dotted the landscape. “It’s just that it’s so isolated here. She’s very vulnerable.”

  “And you’re worried about us coming back and finding her with no head.” The words were blunt and brutal.

  She flinched. “I’m worried about anyone I come in contact with.”

  “Well, she’s not as vulnerable as you might think. She has an AK-47 in the pantry of that cozy kitchen, and she knows how to use it. She’s trained in martial arts, and she’s not bad with a knife. You’ll notice her cottage is on a hill, approachable only from one direction, and she can see anyone coming. If she hadn’t been expecting me, she wouldn’t have been in that garden when we drove up.”

  “She’s still isolated.”

  “She likes it like that,” Jock said suddenly. “No one too close.”

  Caleb glanced back at him as he started the car. “You appear to understand her. Gardener to gardener?”

  Jock didn’t answer as he gazed back at the cottage. “How did she get that AK-47? You can’t buy them on every street corner.”

  “I gave it to her. That’s what she asked me to give her instead of cash for the first job she did for me. The AK-47, a Glock, and lessons on how to use both of them. I didn’t teach her martial arts or how to use a knife. She must have made a deal with someone else for that.”

  “And how long ago was that first job she did for you?” Jane asked.

  “Nine years. She’d just been smuggled out of Afghanistan and was trying to start a new life.”

  “With an AK-47?” Jane asked dryly.

  “She thought it might be necessary. She was probably right. Considering her background, I wasn’t going to try to talk her out of it.” Caleb lifted his shoulders. “Not that I would have made the attempt anyway. It was her business.”

  “What was her background?” Jock asked. “Afghanistan?”

  “She belonged to a very traditional Afghan family. She was permitted to go to a very good private school when she was a child, and she showed signs of brilliance. But her father took her out of school when she was twelve, and he began to hunt for a husband for her. With those looks, she was a prize. He arranged a marriage for her to a wealthy businessman when she was thirteen. He was old enough to be her grandfather and a sadistic bastard. He wanted a son from her, and she couldn’t conceive. He’d fly into tantrums and beat her unmercifully. She had to be taken to the hospital twice.” His lips twisted. “But even then her own family wouldn’t interfere. She belonged to her husband, and he could do anything he wished to her. She ran away when she was eighteen, but her husband found her and claimed she had been unfaithful. He wanted her stoned.”

  “Good God. I thought the Afghans were becoming more moderate,” Jane said.

  “As long as it’s not behind closed doors. It could very well have happened. But this time her brother stepped up to the plate and arranged for an ex-CIA friend to smuggle Lina out of the country. That’s as far as he’d go because he feared family disapproval.”

  “So she was totally alone,” Jock said.

  “John Garrett, the man who smuggled her out of Afghanistan, gave her enough money to go back to school and got her false ID papers to keep her safe.”

  “Why did she need false ID?”

  “Her husband died of a heart attack shortly after she left Kabul. His family blamed his death on her and swore to avenge him.”

  “She hadn’t been through enough?” Jane shook her head. “I think I would have wanted to have an AK-47, too. But I wouldn’t have let those bastards drive me into hiding in the mountains.”

  “She’s not hiding. She stopped doing that after she finished her schooling.”

  “And learned how to fire an AK-47?” Jock added.

  “When she left Afghanistan, she had very little formal education but an enormous determination to survive. Now she speaks and writes twelve languages fluently, including Japanese and Arabic. Translating was a career that she could do on her own terms if she became good enough. She’s accurate, nonjudgmental, and completely confidential.”

  “Perfect for you,” Jane said.

  “Perfect for a lot of people in this wicked world.” He slanted her a glance. “Including you at present.”

  She nodded. “You said she wasn’t hiding any longer?”

  “When she came here, she bought the property under her own name. If anyone was searching for her, she wanted to make sure that they knew she wasn’t afraid and was ready for them.”

  “And has anyone come searching for her yet?”

  “I don’t know. It wasn’t my business. If you want to know, you’ll have to ask her.”

  “It’s not my business either.” But she was still curious. Her brief encounter with Lina Alsouk had been as in
triguing as it had been frustrating. “If she does her job, that should be all that’s important to me.”

  “She’s wounded,” Jock said. “You sensed it when you first saw her. That’s why you weren’t certain you should leave the translation with her. You didn’t want her to be hurt any more than she was already. You have trouble ignoring the wounded.”

  “You make me sound like a do-gooder. If she’s wounded, then she’s walking wounded, and she’s using an AK-47 as a crutch.”

  “It will still bother you.” He smiled. “Your instinct is to heal wounds. You can’t help it.”

  “I just don’t want anyone else to be hurt or killed because of me.” She turned to Caleb. “You said we’d be at the bank in Zurich by five?”

  “Yes, by the skin of our teeth. We have to stop at a drugstore first. And we just have to hope that Henrik Barnard isn’t taking a day off.”

  “Who is Henrik Barnard?”

  “Your own private banker.”

  “What?”

  “Well, Adah Ziller’s banker. It was the name on the same card that had her bank-account number.”

  “Then why did you call him my banker?”

  “Because the only way we’re going to get into that safety-deposit box is if you’re Adah Ziller.”

  She stared at him in astonishment. “Are you crazy? Adah Ziller was black.”

  “Actually, to be precise, a beautiful coffee-with-cream brown. A good bronzer makeup on your face and hands should take care of that. We’ll have to tuck your hair under a hat.”

  “And where are we supposed to get that?”

  “The drugstore. You can get practically anything at a drugstore these days.”

  “I’d never get away with it,” she said flatly. “Drugstore? This is all too crude. Banks have cameras. Swiss banks are the most sophisticated in the world.”

  “You’re right. And the most private. That’s why we have an excellent chance.” He glanced at her. “You don’t have to worry about being under intense scrutiny. No one is going to get close to you but Henrik Barnard. We only need the dark makeup to make sure that nothing is too obvious.”

  “Obvious? It’s obvious that I’m not black. And I probably weigh ten pounds more than Adah Ziller. She was built like a runway model.”

  “Trust me. It will all come together,” Caleb said.

  “If she doesn’t get arrested,” Jock said. “There will be guards all over that bank.”

  Caleb looked directly into her eyes. “Trust me.”

  It was crazy. A bank full of officers and clerks and guards ready to step in and protect the sanctity of the Swiss banking system. Yet Caleb wasn’t crazy, and he thought they could get away with it. They needed to know what was in that safety-deposit box.

  Why the hell not try? she thought recklessly. “You’d better not be mistaken, Caleb.”

  “I won’t let you be hurt.” His glance shifted back to the road. “I promise.”

  She looked back at Jock. “You’re not arguing with me.”

  “It wouldn’t do any good,” Jock said quietly. “I’ll just have to go along with him and see if he hurts you.” He smiled. “And then I’ll kill him.”

  Caleb burst out laughing. “A good plan.”

  “Jock, you don’t go in that bank with us,” Jane said firmly. “I won’t have it.”

  “I won’t argue about that either,” Jock said. “Someone has to be free to get you out of trouble if this idiocy blows up in your faces. I’ll be the getaway man again.”

  “You said if,” Caleb said. “Not when. Interesting.”

  “Is it?” Jock leaned back in the seat. “Take it apart, analyze it. It will give you something to do on the drive to Zurich.”

  “THAT BRONZER IS PRETTY GOOD.” Caleb was gazing at her critically. “But you need more on your hands.”

  She took the pad and poured more bronzer on it. “I can’t get it dark enough. I just look like I have a deep tan.”

  “So did Adah Ziller. You’re dark enough.” He handed her the black straw hat and gold hoop earrings. “Hurry. It’s quarter to five.”

  “Pressure.” She tucked every strand of her red-brown hair beneath the wide-brimmed hat and put on the two-inch hoops. She did look exotic, she thought critically, as she looked at the mirror on the dashboard, but nothing like Adah Ziller. “It’s not going to work.”

  “It will work.” He got out of the driver’s seat and came around to open her passenger door. “All we have to do is make it easy for them. Some of the other bank employees may possibly have seen Adah Ziller, but it’s not likely. This is a private bank.”

  “What does that mean? What’s the difference?” Jock asked as he got out of the back and changed to the driver’s seat.

  “Private banks are often by invitation only, and that invitation is extended principally to individuals with extremely high assets. Or by recommendation by another current customer in good standing. Since on the surface Adah doesn’t appear to have that kind of money, I’d bet that her recommendation must have come from one of her past liaisons. One of the privileges is that she’d be assigned a bank officer to take care of her assets.”

  “Henrik Barnard,” Jane said.

  He nodded. “And the chances are that there would have been some personal contact between them or that he would have at least seen a photo of her.”

  “Then you’re screwed,” Jock said flatly.

  “No,” Caleb said. “Not if I go in first and prepare the way. Adah Ziller is probably not particularly high-profile on the bank’s charts. Unlike what the movies would lead you to believe, there’s no high-tech retina scan or fingerprint analysis. We only have to jump over the barrier of the bank officer. Here’s the way it’s going to work. Barnard will escort you to the vault and get your safety-deposit box. The box is actually a box within another box. You have a key and so does the bank officer. You both have to use your keys to open the outer box. Then he’ll take the inner box and you to an adjoining room and leave you there to go through the contents in privacy. You call him when you’re done, and he takes the box back to the vault.”

  “What if they already know that she’s been murdered?” Jane asked as a sudden thought occurred to her. “What if it’s in today’s newspaper or something?”

  “It’s a possibility, but that happened in Paris. It’s not local news here in Switzerland. We have a good chance of her death not being noticed here so soon. If it is, it won’t be front-page news. I’ll know before I call you to come into the bank. I’ll tell him I’m your attorney, Jason Smythe, and wish to accompany you to the vault.” He opened the glass door. “Wait here, Jane. It shouldn’t take long.” He disappeared into the bank.

  “It can’t work,” Jock told Jane. “It’s not too late to change your mind.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “You really believe he can pull it off.” Jock shook his head. “It’s not possible. He can’t just march in there and convince that bank officer that black is white.”

  “Actually, he’s going to convince him that white is black,” she said ruefully. “I hope.”

  “We’ll see.” He glanced up and down the busy city street. “I don’t like this. I feel . . . uneasy.”

  So did Jane, but how else could she feel under the circumstances? she thought. Jock was right, this entire scenario was bizarre in the extreme. “It should be over soon.” It couldn’t be over too soon for her.

  “Adah.” Caleb had opened the gold-lettered glass entrance door and was smiling at her. “I’ve already told Mr. Barnard how sorry we are not to have called and made advance arrangements.” He turned to a small, plump, gray-haired man in a navy blue pinstriped suit. “I promise we won’t keep you too long.”

  “Nonsense.” Barnard was beaming at Jane. “As I told Mr. Smythe, I’m at your disposal twenty-four hours a day. All you’d have to do is call me, and I’d have come back and opened the bank for you, Miss Ziller. Come in. Come in.”

  “That’s very kind.
” She moved into the bank and was at once enveloped in the aura of hushed murmurs, charcoal-colored granite countertops, rich mahogany executive desks. “I don’t want to be a bother. My attorney just told me that he had to have those docu—”

  “That’s none of my concern,” Barnard said. “My only business is to make things as easy for you as possible. Step this way, and we’ll get the matter taken care of immediately.” He smiled as he led her toward the back of the bank. “And may I say how wonderful you’re looking today? I understand you were a trifle ill when that photo I have of you was taken. But now you appear very fit.”

  “Thank you.” She supposed that translated to the more than twenty pounds she had over Adah Ziller. “I’m feeling much better.” She glanced at Caleb. “Aren’t I, Mr. Smythe?”

  “Blooming,” he murmured. “Though you couldn’t look anything but beautiful. That comes from within.” He stepped aside to permit her to precede him into the vault. “I’ve always known that you have an extraordinary soul. It shines through.”

  “This way.” Barnard was waiting at the wall of boxes and gazing down at the numbers on the sheet in his hands. “You have your key?”

  “Yes.” She reached into her bag and grasped the gold key. “I’m ready when you are, Mr. Barnard.”

  JOCK GLANCED AT his watch—5:20 P.M.

  Jane and Caleb had been in the bank for over fifteen minutes.

  Not a long time, but he still was experiencing the frisson of uneasiness that had plagued him before Jane had gone into the bank.

  He glanced down the street again. Just a typical urban rush hour, with all its attendant noise and bustle.

  Not typical. His every instinct was telling them that there was something wrong, something that had nothing to do with Caleb’s weird shenanigans in that bank.

  5:22 P.M.

  Come on, Jane. Let’s get the hell out of here.

  THE LARGE SAFETY - DEPOSIT BOX was empty except for a fourteen-by-ten black container that was no more than four inches in depth.

  “That’s it?” Jane glanced down at it. “That’s not a jewelry box. It looks too heavy-duty. Maybe you’re right, and it’s blackmail letters or something.”

  “Or something.” He lifted the black container onto the table. “It has some weight to it.”