The Sigma Protocol

  Finally, exhausted, they napped for half an hour or so, entwined in each other.

  When he awoke, he saw that she was gone.

  The gray-haired man parked his rented Mercedes and walked several cobblestone blocks down Estomba until he located the house. He was in the heart of a barrio of Buenos Aires called Belgrano, one of the wealthiest residential sections. A young man passed by walking six dogs at once. The gray-haired man, in a well-tailored blue suit, gave him a neighborly smile.

  The house was a Georgian-style mansion built of red bricks. He walked past it, seeming to admire the architecture, then he turned back, having noted the security booth on the sidewalk in front of the house: an off-white windowed sentry box in which stood a uniformed man wearing an orange Day-Glo reflective vest. There seemed to be one of these security booths on every block around here.

  A very quiet, very safe neighborhood, Trevor Griffiths thought. Good. The security guard looked him over. Trevor nodded in a neighborly manner, and approached the booth as if to ask the guard a question.

  Anna carefully packaged Ben’s photograph and brought it to a DHL office, paying to get it to Denneen’s home address in Dupont Circle as quickly as possible. Everything she did now involved some degree of risk, but she hadn’t mentioned DHL on the phone or even to Ben in the room, and she made sure that no one followed her there. She was reasonably certain the photo would arrive safely.

  Now she stood in a doorway of a shop beneath a red Lucky Strike sign, watching the windows of a café at the corner of Junin and Viamonte, just down the street from the Facultad Medecina. The café’s name, Entre Tiempo, was painted on the plate glass in jumbled letters, presumably signifying wacky fun within. Couples strolled by absorbed in each other, gaggles of students wearing backpacks. A slew of passing yellow-and-black taxis.

  This time there would be no surprises.

  She’d reconnoitered this site in advance, arranged to meet Sergio Machado here at six-thirty precisely, arrived a full forty-five minutes beforehand. A public place in broad daylight. She’d asked him to take a seat at a table in the window, if one was available, or as close to the window as possible. And to bring his cell phone. Machado seemed more amused than annoyed by her precautions.

  At twenty-five after six, a silver-haired man in a blue blazer and open-neck button-down blue shirt, fitting the description he’d supplied over the phone, entered the café. A minute or so later he appeared at a table by the window and looked out onto the street. She pulled back into the shop so she couldn’t be seen and continued to watch through the glass door. She’d already explained to the shopkeeper that she was waiting here for her husband.

  At six thirty-five, Machado hailed a waiter.

  A few minutes later the waiter set down a bottle of Coca-Cola.

  If Machado had been complicit in last night’s kidnapping, there would surely be others stationed nearby, but she saw no sign of anyone. No one lingering, pretending to window-shop, dawdling at a newsstand, sitting in a car idling by a curb. She knew what to look for. Machado was alone.

  Were there others in place in the café awaiting her arrival?

  Perhaps. But she was prepared for the possibility.

  At six forty-five, she switched on Ben’s phone and called Machado’s cell.

  It rang once. “Sί?”

  “It’s Anna Navarro.”

  “You get lost somewhere?”

  “God, this city’s so confusing,” she said. “I guess I got the wrong place—would you mind terribly meeting me here, where I am now? I just know I’ll get lost again!” She gave him directions to a café a few blocks away.

  She watched as he got up, left some change, and, without appearing to signal to, or consult with, anyone inside the café, emerged. She knew what he looked like, but presumably he wouldn’t recognize her.

  He crossed the street and walked past her, and she got a better glimpse of him. The silver hair was premature; he was a man in his forties with soft brown eyes and a pleasant look about him. He carried no briefcase or file, just his phone.

  She waited a few seconds, then followed him.

  He located the café easily, and went inside. She joined him a minute or so later.

  “You mind explaining what all this was about?” Machado asked.

  She related what had happened to her and Ben the night before. She watched his face closely; he seemed appalled.

  Machado had the saturnine look of an Italian film star of the 1960s. He was deeply and meticulously tanned. Around his neck was a thin gold chain, and another gold chain encircled his left wrist. A vertical worry line was scored deeply between his close-set fawn’s eyes. He wore no wedding band.

  “The police here, they are totally corrupt, you are absolutely right,” he said. “They hire me to do investigative work for them, as an outside consultant, because they don’t trust their own people!”

  “I’m not surprised.” The fear left over from the abduction had become anger.

  “You know, we have no cop shows here in Argentina like you have in America, because here cops aren’t heroes. They’re scum. I know. I was in Federal Police for twenty-one years. Got my pension and left.”

  A long table nearby, some sort of student study group by the look of them, burst into laughter.

  “Everyone here is afraid of the police,” he went on heatedly. “Police brutality. They charge for protection. They shoot to kill whenever they want. You like their uniforms?”

  “They look like New York City cops.”

  “That’s because their uniforms were copied exactly from the NYPD. And that’s all they copied.” He flashed an endearing smile. “So what can I do for you?”

  “I need to find a man named Josef Strasser.”

  His eyes widened. “Ah, well, you know, this old bastard lives under a false name. I don’t know where he lives, but I can ask some questions. Not so easy. You gonna extradite?”

  “No, actually, I need to have a talk with him.”

  He straightened. “Really?”

  “I may have a way to locate him, but I’ll need your help.” She related Ben’s meeting with Lenz’s widow. “If Vera Lenz or her stepson are in touch with Strasser, and they called to warn him, say—could you find out what number they dialed?”

  “Ah,” he said. “Very nice. Yes of course, but only if you can get Señora Lenz’s telephone number.”

  She handed him a slip of paper with the number on it.

  “The phone companies in Argentina, they record the beginning and end of all telephone conversations, the number called and how long the call. It is the Excalibur system, they call it. My friends in the police, for the right price, they will get for me all calls made from that number.”

  And as if to demonstrate how easy it was, he placed a call, spoke briefly, read off the number on the scrap of paper.

  “No problem,” he said. “We’ll know soon. Come, I buy you a steak.”

  They walked a few blocks to his car, a white Ford Escort whose backseat had for some reason been removed. He took her to an old-style restaurant near the Cementerio de la Recoleta called Estilo Munich, its walls adorned with stuffed boars’ and stags’ heads. The floor was marble but looked like drab linoleum; the ceiling was acoustic tile. Weary waiters shuffled slowly between the tables.

  “I will order for you bife de chorizo,” Machado said. “With chimichurri sauce. Jugoso, it is O.K.?”

  “Rare is how I like it, yes. Any symbolism in the fact that you brought me to a restaurant called Munich?”

  “They serve one of the best steaks in Buenos Aires, and we are a city that knows steaks.” He gave her a complicit glance. “Used to be a lot of restaurants in BA called Munich—very fashionable once. Not so fashionable now.”

  “Not so many Germans.”

  He took a pull of the Carrascal. His cell phone rang; he spoke briefly, put it back. “My girlfriend,” he apologized. “I thought we might have some results on our search, but no.”

  “If Str
asser has managed to live here for so long without anybody finding him, he must have some good false ID.”

  “People like him got excellent false papers. For a long time only Jakob Sonnenfeld was able to trace them. For years, you know, there was a rumor that Martin Bormann was still alive in Argentina, until his skull turned up in Germany. Nineteen seventy-two, in Berlin. They were building a bridge, they dug up the ground, and they found a skull. Identified it as Bormann’s.”

  “Was it?”

  “A couple of years ago they finally did the DNA test. It was Bormann’s skull, yes.”

  “What about the rest of his body?”

  “Never found. I think he was buried here, in Bariloche, and someone brought the skull to Germany. To mislead the pursuers.” His eyes sparkled with amusement. “You know Bormann’s son lives here. He’s a Catholic priest. Really.” Another swig of Carrascal. “It’s true. Always rumors about Bormann. It is like with Josef Mengele. After he was buried everyone thinks he faked his own death. With Lenz the same thing. For years after his death was announced, there were rumors that he’s still alive. Then they found his bones.”

  “Were they DNA-tested, too?”

  “I don’t think.”

  “No one found his skull anywhere.”

  “No skull.”

  “Could he still be alive somewhere?”

  Machado laughed. “He’d be more than one hundred twenty.”

  “Well, only the good die young. He died of a stroke, didn’t he?”

  “This is the public line. But I think Lenz was murdered by Israeli agents. You know, when Eichmann came here, he and his wife took false names, but their three sons—they used the name Eichmann! At school everyone knew the boys as Eichmann. But no one came to find them, you see. No one came to look for them until Sonnenfeld.”

  Their steaks arrived. Amazingly delicious, Anna thought. She was not much of a meat-eater, but this could convert her.

  “Mind if I ask why you want to talk to Strasser?” Machado asked.

  “Sorry. Can’t say.”

  He seemed to accept it with good grace. “Strasser was one of the inventors of Zyklon-B.”

  “The gas used at Auschwitz.”

  “But it was his own idea to use it on human beings. A clever fellow, this Strasser. He came up with the way to kill Jews so much more expeditiously.”

  After dinner they walked a few doors down to a large café called La Biela, on Avenue Quintana, which at after eleven o’clock at night was crowded and loud.

  Over coffee she asked, “Can you get me a weapon?”

  He looked at her slyly. “It can be arranged.”

  “By tomorrow morning?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  His phone rang again.

  This time he jotted down notes on a little square napkin.

  “His phone’s listed under the name Albrecht,” Machado said when he’d hung up. “The right age, too. He used his real birthdates on his application forms. I think you’ve found your man.”

  “So someone did call him from Lenz’s house.”

  “Yes. With the phone number it was a simple thing to get the name and address. I think he must have been out of town for a long time, because no outgoing calls were made from his home for the last five weeks. Two days ago the calls started up again.”

  That would explain why Strasser hadn’t yet been reported killed like all the others, she thought. He was out of town. That’s how he had stayed alive. “Your contact,” she said. “Whoever got this information for you—why does he think you’re interested?”

  “Maybe he believes I’m planning some sort of extortion.”

  “He wouldn’t let Strasser know you’ve been looking?”

  “My police contacts are too stupid to play those sorts of games.”

  “Let’s hope so.” But her worry was not so easily allayed. “What about the sorts of thugs who kidnapped us…”

  He frowned. “The sons and grandsons of the fugitives, they won’t mess with me. I have too many friends in the police. It is dangerous for them. Sometimes when I do this sort of job, I go home and I find Wagner on my answering machine, a veiled threat. Sometimes they walk by me on the street, take flash photographs of me. But that’s all they do. I never worry.” He lit another cigarette. “You have no reason to worry either.”

  No, no reason to worry, she thought.

  Easy for you to say.

  “I’m afraid Mr. Bartlett isn’t able to see any visitors right now, and I don’t see an appointment for you.” The receptionist spoke with icy authority.

  “I’m making an appointment—for right now,” Arliss Dupree said. “Tell him he’ll want to see me. It’s about a matter of mutual concern. Interdepartmental business, O.K.?”

  “I’m very sorry, Mr. Dupree, but…”

  “Save you the trouble, I’ll just mosey on down and knock on his door. You can give him a heads-up, or not. His office is down that way, right?” A grin played across Dupree’s ruddy moon face. “Don’t trouble yourself, girl. We’re going to be fine.”

  The receptionist spoke hurriedly, softly, into the microphone of her headset. After a moment, she stood up. “Mr. Bartlett said he’d be pleased to see you. I’ll show you to him.”

  Dupree looked around the director’s spartan office and for the first time felt a twinge of alarm. It wasn’t the comfortable burrow of the typical career officer—of the lifer who surrounded himself with photos of loved ones and stacks of unfiled paper. It barely showed signs of human habitation at all.

  “And how can I help you today, Mr. Dupree?” Alan Bartlett stood behind a large desk, so uncluttered it might have been a floor model at an office-furniture store. There was something glacial, Dupree thought, about the man’s polite smile, something unreadable about the gray eyes behind the aviator glasses.

  “Lotsa ways, I suppose,” Dupree said, and sat himself down unceremoniously on the blond-wooden chair facing Bartlett’s desk. “Starting with this whole Navarro business.”

  “Most unfortunate, the recent revelations,” Bartlett said. “Reflects poorly on all of us.”

  “As you know, I wasn’t pleased by the TDY you arranged,” he said, referring to the cross-departmental assignment of temporary duties.

  “That much you made clear. Perhaps you knew something about her that you chose to be less than forthcoming about.”

  “Naw, that wasn’t it.” Dupree forced himself to meet Bartlett’s steady gaze. It was like talking to an iceberg. “Frankly, it undermines my authority when a member of my staff gets shifted around like that, without my knowledge or consent. Some of the staffers will always assume it’s some sort of promotion.”

  “I suspect you didn’t come here to discuss your personnel difficulties or management style, Mr. Dupree.”

  “Hell, no,” Dupree said. “Here’s the thing. The rest of us at Justice always give you guys at ICU a wide berth. You get up to your stuff, and most of the time we’re just as happy not to know about it. But this time, you started something that’s leaving jelly stains on my carpet, you see what I’m saying? Putting me in a tight spot. I’m not making any accusations, I’m just saying that it got me thinking.”

  “An unaccustomed activity for you, no doubt. You will find it grows easier with practice.” Bartlett spoke with effortless mandarin disdain.

  “I may not be the sharpest tool in the shed,” Dupree said. “But you’ll find I can still cut.”

  “How reassuring.”

  “It’s just that something about the whole thing smelled bad to me.”

  Bartlett sniffed. “Aqua Velva, would that be? Or Old Spice? Your aftershave arrives before you do.”

  Dupree just shook his head, in a show of good-natured confusion. “So I poked around a little. Learned a little more about you, about where you’ve been. I hadn’t realized before that you owned a huge piece of property on the Eastern Shore. Not your typical federal employee, I guess.”

  “My mother’s father was
one of the founders of Holleran Industries. She was one of the heirs to the estate. That’s not a secret. Nor is it something I choose to draw attention to, I’ll admit. I have little interest in the high life. The life I’ve decided to lead is a rather plain one, and my tastes are, on the whole, modest. Anyway, what of it?”

  “Right, your mother was a Holleran heiress—I found that out, too. Came as a surprise, I got to say. Way I see it, it’s kind of flattering that a multimillionaire would deign to work among us.”

  “All of us must make decisions in our lives.”

  “Yup, I guess that’s true. But then I’m thinking, how much else is there about Alan Bartlett that I don’t know about? Probably a lot, right? Like, what’s with all those trips to Switzerland? Now, Switzerland—I guess because at the OSI we’re always dealing with money-laundering, that place always sets off alarm bells. So it gets me wondering about these trips of yours.”

  A beat. “Excuse me?”

  “Well, you do head over to Switzerland a bunch, am I right?”

  “What gives you that idea?”

  Dupree pulled a sheet of paper from the breast pocket of his jacket. It was slightly crumpled, but he laid it flat on Bartlett’s desk and smoothed it out. On it was a series of dots, in a roughly circular array. “Sorry it’s so crude, I drew it myself.” He pointed to the topmost dot. “Over here, we got Munich. Just under it, Innsbruck. Moving southeast, Milan. Turin. Then, a little more easterly and a little further north, Lyon. Dijon. Freiburg.”