The Sigma Protocol

  “So his blood pressure is elevated.”

  “Somewhat, but we expected that.”

  “Have you counted the number of pitted blood cells?”

  “I believe that’s being done in the lab right now.”

  “Good. I think this one is a good candidate. I suggest we accelerate the tests.”

  A good candidate, Patient Eighteen thought. So it would happen after all. He turned to the conferring doctors behind and smiled widely at them, feigning gratitude.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Vienna

  The private investigator was almost half an hour late. Ben sat in the spacious lobby of his hotel just off the Kärntner Strasse, his mélange untouched, waiting for the detective whose name he had plucked from the yellow pages.

  He knew there were far better ways to find the name of a PI than the Vienna telephone book—such as calling one of his several business contacts here and asking for a recommendation. But his instincts told him to avoid anyone he knew right now if he could possibly help it.

  He’d gotten on the first train, showed up unannounced at a small hotel, and been lucky enough to get a room, registering under the name Robert Simon, one of his brother’s aliases. He was asked for his passport, and held his breath as it was inspected, but it obviously looked in order, plausibly battered and stamped, as if from a few years’ use.

  The first thing he’d done was to look through the Vienna phone book for an investigator who seemed, from his advertisement anyway, reputable. Several were located in the first district, the heart of the city where Ben’s hotel was; one in particular advertised his services in locating long-lost relatives. Ben had hired him over the phone, asking him to run a background check on an Austrian citizen.

  Now he was beginning to wonder whether the PI was going to show at all.

  Then a portly man of about forty plopped himself into the chair across the low table from Ben. “You are Mr. Simon?” He set down a battered leather portfolio on the table.

  “That’s me.”

  “Hans Hoffman,” the PI said. “You have the money?”

  “Nice to meet you too,” Ben said sardonically. He took out his wallet, counted out four hundred dollars, and slid it across the table.

  Hoffman stared at it for a moment.

  “Something wrong?” Ben asked. “You prefer Austrian shillings? Sorry, I haven’t gone to a bank yet.”

  “There was an additional expense involved,” the detective said.

  “Oh really?”

  “A courtesy payment to an old buddy of mine in the HNA, the Heeres Nachrichtenamt—Austrian military intelligence.”

  “Translation, a bribe,” Ben said.

  Hoffman shrugged.

  “I don’t imagine this buddy of yours gave you a receipt?”

  Hoffman sighed. “This is how we do things here. You can’t get the sort of information you’re looking for without exploring various channels. This friend will have to use his military intelligence ID card to get information. It will be another two hundred dollars. The number—it was unlisted, by the way—and address I can get you now.”

  Ben counted it out; it was the end of his cash.

  The detective counted the bills. “I don’t know why you wanted this person’s number and address, but you must be involved in some interesting business.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Your man is a very important figure in Vienna.” He signaled for the waitress; when she came, he ordered a mélange and a Maximilian torte.

  From his briefcase he removed a laptop computer, snapped it open, and turned it on. “The very latest in biometrics,” he said proudly. “Fingertip sensor. Uses my fingerprint as a password. Without it, the computer’s locked. No one does these things like the Germans.”

  The detective tapped at the keys for a few seconds, then turned it around to face Ben. The screen was blank except for the name and address of Jürgen Lenz.

  “You know him?” Hoffman said, turning the laptop back toward himself. “He is an acquaintance of yours?”

  “Not exactly. Tell me about him.”

  “Ah, well, Dr. Lenz is one of the wealthiest men in Vienna, a leading philanthropist and patron of the arts. His family foundation builds medical clinics for the poor. He’s also on the board of the Vienna Philharmonic.”

  The waitress set down a coffee and pastry in front of Hoffman. The detective lunged for them before the waitress had even turned to leave.

  “What kind of doctor is Dr. Lenz?”

  “A medical doctor, but he gave up his practice years ago.”

  “How old?”

  “In his fifties, I would say.”

  “Medicine must be something of a family tradition.”

  Hoffman laughed. “You’re remembering his father, Gerhard Lenz. An interesting case. Our country is perhaps not the most progressive, in some ways. My compatriots would prefer to forget any such unpleasantness. It’s the Austrian way: as the saying goes, we’ve convinced ourselves that Beethoven was an Austrian, and Hitler was a German. But Jürgen is cut from a different cloth. This is a son who seeks to make up for the crimes of the father.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, very much. Jürgen Lenz is resented in some circles for being so outspoken about these crimes. Even denouncing his own father. He is known to feel deep shame about what his father did.” He looked at his torte impatiently. “But unlike many children of the famous Nazis, he does something about it. The Lenz Foundation is Austria’s leading supporter of Holocaust studies, historical scholarship, libraries in Israel…they fund anything that seeks to fight hate crimes, racism, that sort of thing.” He returned to his pastry, wolfing it down as if fearing it would be snatched away.

  Lenz’s son was a leading anti-Nazi? Perhaps they had more in common than he had supposed. “All right,” Ben said, gesturing to the waitress for the check with the universal air-scrawl. “Thank you.”

  “Anything else I can do for you?” the detective asked, brushing crumbs off the lapels of his jacket.

  Trevor Griffiths left his hotel, the Imperial, on the Kärntner Ring a few blocks from the Opera. Not only was the Imperial the finest hotel in Vienna, Trevor reflected, but it was famous as the headquarters of the Nazis during the war, the location from which they governed the city. He liked the hotel anyway.

  It was a short stroll down Mariahilfer Strasse to a small bar on Neubaugasse. The garish red neon sign flashed the bar’s name: broadway club. He sat in a booth at the back of the ill-lit basement room and waited. In his bespoke gray worsted double-breasted suit, he looked somewhat out of place here, like a businessman, a high-level executive perhaps, or a prosperous attorney.

  The bar was choked with foul cigarette smoke. Trevor could not tolerate it, hated the way his hair and clothes would stink afterward. He glanced at his watch, an Audemars Piguet, top of the line, one of the few indulgences he allowed himself. Expensive suits and watches and good rough sex. What else was there, really, if you had no interest in food, art, or music?

  He was impatient. The Austrian contact was late, and Trevor could not abide tardiness.

  Finally, after almost half an hour, the Austrian showed up, a square, hulking troglodyte named Otto. Otto slid into the booth and placed a worn red felt bag in front of Trevor.

  “You’re English, yes?”

  Trevor nodded, zipped open the bag. It contained two large metal pieces, a 9 mm Makarov, the barrel threaded for a silencer, and the long, perforated sound-suppressor itself. “Ammo?” Trevor asked.

  “Is in there,” Otto said. “Nine by eighteen. Lots.”

  The Makarov was a good choice. Unlike the 9 mm Parabellum, it was subsonic. “What’s the make?” Trevor asked. “Hungarian? Chinese?”

  “Russian. But it’s good one.”

  “How much?”

  “Three thousand shillings.”

  Trevor grimaced. He didn’t mind spending money, but he resented highway robbery. He switched to German, so Otto
, whose English was poor, would miss nothing. “Der Markt ist mit Makarovs überschwemmt.” The market’s flooded with Makarovs.

  Otto became suddenly alert.

  “These things are a dime a dozen,” Trevor continued in German. “Everyone makes them, they’re all over the place. I’ll give you a thousand shillings, and you should count yourself lucky to get that.”

  Respect entered Otto’s expression. “You’re German?” he asked, amazed. Actually, if Otto were a perceptive listener, he’d have placed Trevor’s German as coming from the Dresden region.

  Trevor had not spoken German in quite a while; he’d had no opportunity to do so. But it came back easily.

  It was, after all, his native tongue.

  Anna had dinner alone at a Mövenpick restaurant a few blocks from her hotel. There was nothing on the menu that interested her, and she decided she was no connoisseur of Swiss cuisine.

  Normally, she found dining alone in a foreign city depressing, but tonight she was too absorbed in her thoughts to feel lonely. She was seated by the window, in a long row of lone diners, most of them reading newspapers or books.

  At the American consulate, she used a secure fax line to transmit everything she had on Hartman, including his credit cards, to the ICU and had asked that the ID unit contact each of the credit-card companies and activate an instant trace, so that they would be informed within minutes whenever he used one of the cards.

  She had also asked them to dig up whatever they could on Hartman himself, and someone had called her back on the encrypted cell phone less than an hour later.

  They had struck gold.

  According to Hartman’s office, he was on vacation in Switzerland, but hadn’t checked in with the office in several days. They didn’t have his travel itinerary; he hadn’t provided one. They had no way to contact him.

  But then the ID tech had learned something interesting: Hartman’s only sibling, a twin brother, had died in a plane crash in Switzerland four years earlier. Apparently he’d been on some Swiss-gold crusade before his death. She didn’t know what to make of that except that it raised all sorts of questions.

  And Benjamin Hartman, the tech told her, was loaded. The company he worked for, Hartman Capital Management, managed investment funds and had been founded by Hartman’s father.

  Who was a well-known philanthropist and a Holocaust survivor.

  Possibilities suggested themselves. Poor little rich boy, son of a survivor, gets it in his head that the Swiss bankers haven’t been doing right by the Holocaust victims. Now his twin takes up the same crusade, trying for some sort of misguided revenge on a Swiss banking bigwig. A rich boy’s half-cocked vendetta.

  Or maybe he was in it deeper—working for whatever this Sigma outfit had morphed into. For some unexplained reason.

  Then the question was, where did he get the names and addresses of all these old men in hiding?

  And how was his brother’s death connected—if at all?

  At a little after nine o’clock in the evening she returned to the hotel and was handed a message slip by the night manager. Thomas Schmid, the homicide detective, had called.

  She called him back immediately from the room. He was still in his office.

  “We have some of the autopsy results back,” he said. “On that poison you asked the toxicology people to screen for?”

  “Yes?”

  “They found that neurotoxin in the ocular fluid, a positive match. Rossignol was indeed poisoned.”

  Anna sat down in the chair beside the phone. Progress. She felt the pleasant tingle she always had when there was a breakthrough. “Did they find an injection mark on the body?”

  “Not as yet, but they say it’s very difficult to find tiny marks like that. They say they will keep looking.”

  “When was he killed?”

  “Apparently this morning, shortly before we got there.”

  “That means Hartman may still be in Zurich. Are you on top of that?”

  A pause, then Schmid said coldly, “I am on top of that.”

  “Any news on the bank records?”

  “The banks will cooperate, but they take their time. They also have their procedures.”

  “Of course.”

  “We should have Rossignol’s bank records by tomorrow—”

  On her end of the line a beep interrupted Schmid. “One second, I think I’ve got another call coming in.” She pressed the “flash” button. The hotel operator told her it was a call from her office in Washington.

  “Miss Navarro, this is Robert Polozzi in ID.”

  “Thanks for calling. Turn up anything?”

  “MasterCard security just called. Hartman used his card a few minutes ago. He made a charge at a restaurant in Vienna.”

  Kent, England

  At his country estate in Westerham, Kent, Sir Edward Downey, the retired Prime Minister of England, was in the middle of a game of chess in the rose garden with his grandson when the telephone rang.

  “Not again,” eight-year-old Christopher groaned.

  “Hold your horses, young man,” Sir Edward snapped good-naturedly.

  “Sir Edward, it’s Mr. Holland,” the voice said.

  “Mr. Holland, is everything all right?” Sir Edward asked, suddenly concerned. “Our meeting is still going ahead as scheduled?”

  “Oh, without a doubt. But a minor matter has come up and I wondered whether you might be able to help.”

  As he listened, Sir Edward gave his grandson a menacing scowl, at which Christopher giggled, as he always did. “Well, Mr. Holland, let me make a few calls and see what I can do.”

  Vienna

  Jürgen Lenz’s house was in an exclusive, densely wooded district in the southwest part of Vienna called Hietzing: an enclave of some of Vienna’s wealthiest residents. Lenz’s house, or, more properly, his villa, was large, modern, an intriguing and handsome mix of Tyrolean architecture and Frank Lloyd Wright.

  The element of surprise, Ben thought. I need it when I confront Lenz. In part, it was a question of survival. He didn’t want Peter’s murderers to discover he was in Vienna, and, despite the seed of doubt that Hoffman had planted, the likeliest assumption was that Lenz was one of them.

  Of course, he couldn’t just show up on Lenz’s doorstep and hope to gain admittance. The approach had to be more sophisticated. Ben ran through a mental list of the most prominent and influential people he knew personally who would vouch for him, even lie for him.

  He remembered the head of a major American charity who had come to see him several times to ask for money. Each time the Hartman family, and the firm, had given generously.

  Payback time, Ben thought.

  The charity head, Winston Rockwell, was seriously ill with hepatitis, laid up in the hospital, last Ben had heard, and impossible to reach. This was terribly unfortunate for Rockwell—but convenient for Ben.

  He called Lenz’s home, asked for Jürgen Lenz, told the woman who answered the phone—Mrs. Lenz?—that he was a friend of Winston Rockwell’s and was interested in the Lenz Foundation. Code language for: I have money to give you. Even rich foundations don’t turn away contributions.

  Mrs. Lenz replied in fluent English that her husband should be home by five, and would Mr. Robert Simon like to come by for a drink? Jürgen would be delighted to meet any friend of Winston Rockwell’s.

  The woman who opened the door was an elegant, fineboned woman in her early fifties, wearing a gray sweater-dress, a pearl choker, and matching pearl earrings.

  “Please come in,” she said. “Mr. Simon, is it? I’m Ilse Lenz. How nice to meet you!”

  “Nice to meet you, too,” Ben said. “Thanks for seeing me, particularly on such short notice.”

  “Oh, don’t be silly, we’re thrilled to meet anyone Winston recommends. You’re from—where, did you say?”

  “Los Angeles,” he replied.

  “We were there years ago for some beastly technology conference. Jürgen should be right down—ah, here h
e is!”

  A whippet-thin, athletic-looking man was bounding down the stairs. “Hallo, there!” Jürgen Lenz called out. In his blue blazer, gray flannel slacks, and rep tie he could have been an American chief executive, maybe an Ivy League college president. His smooth face glowed with health; his smile was sunny.

  This was not at all what Ben had expected. Liesl’s gun, holstered to his shoulder inside his sport coat and loaded with ammunition—he’d stopped at a sporting-goods shop on the Kärntner Strasse—suddenly felt bulky.

  Lenz shook Ben’s hand firmly. “Any friend of Winston Rockwell’s is a friend of mine!” Then his voice became soft, tender. “How’s he doing these days?”

  “Not well,” Ben said. “He’s been in the George Washington University Medical Center for weeks now, and the doctors are telling him he’s not likely to go home for at least two weeks more.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that,” Lenz said, putting his arm around his wife’s slender waist. “What a nice fellow he is. Well, let’s not stand here. A drink, shall we? What’s the American expression—somewhere it’s got to be six o’clock, hmm?”

  Trevor parked his stolen Peugeot across the street from Lenz’s house in Hietzing, switched off the engine, and sat back to wait. When the target emerged from the house, he would get out of the car, cross the street, and come close to him. He did not plan to miss.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  There was no time.

  Certainly no time to go through channels, Anna realized.

  Hartman had just made a charge at a hotel in the first district of Vienna. It was for a small amount, the equivalent of about fifteen dollars. Did that mean he had only stopped at the hotel for a drink, a coffee, a late lunch? If so, he’d be long gone. But if he was staying there, she had him.

  She could go through the FBI legat in Vienna, but by the time the office had made contact with the local police through the Austrian Justice Ministry, Benjamin Hartman could well have gone on to another city.

  So she had rushed to Zurich-Kloten Airport, bought a ticket on the next Austrian Airlines flight to Vienna, and then located a pay phone.