The Sigma Protocol

  Mrs. Mailhot sat in an uncomfortable-looking ladder-back chair all the way across the room. “I wasn’t here when my husband died,” she said sadly. “I was visiting my sister like I do every Tuesday night. I just feel so terrible he died without me here.”

  Anna nodded sympathetically. “Maybe we can talk a little about the way he passed…”

  “He died from heart failure,” she said. “The doctor told me that.”

  “And he may have,” Anna said. “But sometimes a person can be killed in such a way that it doesn’t look like murder.”

  “Why would anyone want to kill Robert?”

  Arsenault gave Anna a quick, almost undetectable glance. There was something about the woman’s intonation: it wasn’t a rhetorical question. She sounded as if she really wanted to know. The approach they took now would be crucial. The two had been married since 1951—half a century together. She surely had some inkling of whatever it was, if anything, that her husband might have been involved in.

  “You two retired here a few years ago, is that right?”

  “Yes,” the old woman said. “What does this have to do with his death?”

  “You lived on your husband’s pension?”

  Mrs. Mailhot raised her chin defiantly. “Robert took care of the money. He told me never to worry about those things.”

  “But did he ever tell you where the money was coming from?”

  “I told you, Robert took care of everything.”

  “Did your husband tell you that he had one point five million dollars in the bank?”

  “We can show you the bank records if you’d like,” Arsenault put in.

  The old widow’s eyes betrayed nothing. “I told you, I know very little about our finances.”

  “He never talked to you about receiving money from anyone?” Arsenault asked.

  “Mr. Highsmith was a generous man,” she said slowly. “He never forgot the little people. The people who had helped him.”

  “These were payments from Charles Highsmith?”

  Arsenault prompted. Charles Highsmith was a famous, some would say notorious, media baron. With holdings even more extensive than his competitor Conrad Black’s, he owned newspapers, radio stations, and cable companies across North America. Three years ago, Highsmith had died, evidently having fallen overboard from his yacht, although the precise circumstances of the incident remained a matter of some controversy.

  The widow nodded. “My husband was in his employ for most of his life.”

  “But Charles Highsmith died three years ago,” Arsenault said.

  “He must have left instructions for his estate. My husband didn’t explain such things to me. Mr. High-smith made sure we always had enough. That’s the kind of man he was.”

  “And what did your husband do to inspire such loyalty?” Anna asked.

  “There’s no secret about that,” the widow replied.

  “Until he retired fifteen years ago, he worked for him as a bodyguard,” Arsenault said. “And factotum. Someone who did special errands.”

  “He was a man Mr. Highsmith could trust implicitly,” the old woman said, as if echoing an overheard accolade.

  “You moved here from Toronto right after Charles Highsmith’s death,” Anna said, glancing at her file.

  “My husband… had certain ideas.”

  “About Highsmith’s death?”

  The old woman spoke with obvious reluctance. “Like many people, he wondered about it. About whether it was an accident. Of course, Robert was retired by that point, but he still consulted on security. Sometimes he blamed himself for what happened. I think that’s why he was a little…funny about it. He convinced himself that if it wasn’t an accident, then maybe Highsmith’s enemies would come after him one day. It sounds crazy. But you understand, he was my husband. I never questioned his decisions.”

  “That’s why you moved here,” Anna said, half to herself. After decades in major cities like London and Toronto, her husband had rusticated himself—had, in fact, gone into hiding. He moved to the place his ancestors and hers had once made a home, a place where they knew all the neighbors, a place that seemed safe, where they could keep a low profile.

  Mrs. Mailhot was silent. “I never really believed it. My husband had his suspicions, that was all. As he aged, he became more anxious. Some men are like that.”

  “You thought it was an eccentricity of his.”

  “We all have our eccentricities.”

  “And what do you think now?” Anna said gently.

  “Now I don’t know what to think.” The old woman’s eyes grew moist.

  “Do you know where he kept his financial records?”

  “There are checkbooks and all that sort of thing in a box upstairs.” She shrugged. “You can look if you want.”

  “Thank you,” Anna said. “We need to go through with you the last week or so of your husband’s life,” Anna said. “In detail. His habits, where he went, any place he traveled. Any calls he might have placed or received. Any letters he got. Any restaurants you went to. Any repairmen or workers who might have come to the house—plumbers, telephone repairmen, carpet cleaners, meter readers. Anything you can think of.”

  They interviewed her for the next two hours, stopping only to use the toilet. Even when it was clear the widow was becoming weary, they forged ahead, determined to push her as hard as she’d let them. Anna knew that if they were to stop and ask to come back in the morning, she might change her mind in the meantime about speaking to them. She might speak to a friend, a lawyer. She might tell them to go to hell.

  But two hours later they knew little more than when they began. The widow gave them permission to inspect the house, but they found no signs of forced entry at the front door or any of the windows. Likely the killer—if indeed the old man had been murdered—got into the house by means of subterfuge, or was an acquaintance.

  Anna found an old Electrolux vacuum cleaner in a closet and removed the bag. It was full, which meant it probably hadn’t been changed since Mailhot died. Good. She’d have the crime-scene people do a fresh-bag vacuum when they arrived. Maybe there would be some trace evidence after all.

  Maybe they’d even turn up footprints, tire tracks. She would order elimination prints from the widow and anyone else who visited regularly, and have all the usual surfaces printed.

  When they returned to the front parlor, Anna waited for the widow to sit and then chose a chair near her. “Mrs. Mailhot,” she began delicately, “did your husband ever tell you why he thought Charles Highsmith might have been the victim of foul play?”

  The widow looked at her a long time, as if deciding what to reveal. “Les grands hommes ont leurs ennemis,” she said at last, ominously. “Great men have great enemies.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  Mrs. Mailhot did not meet her gaze. “It’s just something my husband used to say,” she replied.

  Switzerland

  Ben took the first exit he came to.

  The road went straight for a while, cutting through flat farmland, and then, after crossing over a set of train tracks, it began to twist through hilly terrain. Every twenty minutes or so, he’d pull over to consult his road map.

  He was approaching Chur on the A3 highway, south of Bad Ragaz, when he began to focus on the dark blue Saab behind him. He didn’t have the road to himself and he didn’t expect to. Perhaps the Saab was carrying another lot of ski-happy vacationers. But there was something about the car, something about the way its pace seemed to synchronize with his. Ben pulled over to the side of the road, and the Saab drove right past him. There—he had been imagining things.

  Now he resumed his drive. He was being paranoid, and after what he’d been through, who could blame him? He thought once more about Jimmy Cavanaugh, and then abruptly reeled his thoughts in: it filled him with vertigo, like staring into an abyss—a mystery piled upon a mystery. For his own sanity, he could not allow himself to dwell on it. There would be time to sor
t things out later. Right now, he needed motion.

  Ten minutes later, images of carnage in the Shopville started to crowd his mind once more, and he reached for the radio dial to distract himself. Speed would help, too, he figured, and he stepped on the accelerator hard, felt the gears mesh smoothly and the car push faster up the sloping highway. He glanced at his rearview mirror and saw a blue Saab—the same blue Saab, he was certain. And as he accelerated, the Saab accelerated, too.

  A knot formed in his stomach. At higher speeds, drivers intuitively leave greater distances between themselves and the next car, but the Saab had maintained precisely the same distance behind him as before. If it had wanted to pass him, it would have turned into the passing lane, which meant that its passengers had something else in mind. Ben peered in the rearview again, tried see through the other car’s windshield, but it was hard to make out anything more than shadows. He could see only that there were two people in the front. What the hell were they up to? Now Ben fixed his attention on this road ahead of him. He wasn’t going to let on that he was even aware of them.

  But he had to lose them.

  There would be plenty of opportunities in the tangle of roads around Chur; God knows he’d gotten lost there himself the last time he’d visited. Now he made a last-minute hairpin turn, veered onto the exit to the narrower Highway Number 3 going south toward St. Moritz. A few minutes later, the familiar blue Saab returned, perfectly centered in his rearview mirror. Driving too fast, Ben hurtled past Malix and Churwalden, making sharp ascents and sudden descents that made his stomach plunge. He turned onto poorly paved byways, taking them at speeds they weren’t meant for, and the combination of the rough surfaces and the Opel’s overstrained suspension system caused the car to shudder and jolt. Once, he could hear the car’s chassis scrape loudly against a bulge in the pavement, and he saw sparks in the rearview mirror.

  Had he shaken his pursuers? The Saab would disappear for long intervals, but never long enough. Time and again, it reappeared, as if linked to him by a strong invisible coil. Ben sped through a series of tunnels cut into gorge faces, past limestone cliffs and old stone bridges spanning deep ravines. He was driving recklessly, his mounting terror overcoming anything like caution; he had to count on his pursuer’s prudence and sense of self-preservation. That was his only chance.

  As he headed toward the narrow mouth of a tunnel, the Saab suddenly shot ahead of him and into the tunnel. Ben was puzzled: Had it been following another car all along? Only when Ben tried to emerge from the short tunnel did he see, in the yellowish mercury lights, what was happening.

  Fifty feet ahead, the Saab was now parked laterally across the narrow road, blocking the egress.

  Its driver, in a dark overcoat and hat, was holding up a hand, signaling him to halt. It was a barricade, a roadblock.

  Then Ben became aware that another car was following from the rear. A gray Renault sedan. A car he’d caught glimpses of before without focusing on. One of them, whoever they were.

  Think, dammit! They were trying to wedge him in, trap him inside the tunnel. Oh, Christ! He couldn’t allow that to happen! Ordinary caution told him to slam on the brakes before hitting the barrier ahead, but these weren’t ordinary circumstances. Instead, following some mad impulse, Ben barreled ahead, flooring the gas pedal, his Opel sedan ramming into the left side of the stationary two-door Saab. The Saab was a sports car, built for speed, he knew, but it was probably eight hundred pounds lighter, too. He saw the driver jump out of the way just before the collision propelled the Saab to one side. The sudden deceleration caused Ben to lurch forward against his straining seat belt and shoulder strap, the taut fabric cutting into his flesh like bands of steel, but the impact had cleared just enough room for him to scrape through, with a horrifying scrape of metal against metal. The car he was driving—its front end partly crumpled, viciously banged up—no longer resembled the gleaming model he’d rented, but the wheels still turned, and he roared ahead down the road, not daring to look back.

  From behind him, he heard an explosion of gunfire. Oh, dear Christ! It wasn’t over. It would never be over!

  Galvanized by a fresh surge of adrenaline, Ben found his every sense gaining laser-like focus. The old gray Renault, the one that had come up from behind him in the tunnel, had somehow made its way through the wreckage, too. In his rearview, Ben could see a weapon thrust through the passenger’s side window, aiming at him. It was a submachine gun, and, seconds later, it began firing off a nonstop fusillade of automatic fire.

  Move!

  Ben sped down an old stone bridge spanning a gorge so narrow there was barely room for traffic in either direction. Suddenly there came a hollow pop, an explosion of glass a few feet away. His rearview mirror had been shot out; bullets spiderwebbed the rear windshield. They knew exactly what they were doing, and soon he would be dead.

  There was a muted explosion, like a dull popping noise, and the car suddenly lurched to the left: one of his tires had blown out.

  They were firing at his tires. Trying to disable him. Ben remembered the security expert who’d lectured the senior executives at Hartman Capital Management about kidnapping risks in third-world countries, drilling them on a list of recommended countermeasures. They seemed laughably inadequate to the reality, then as now. Don’t get out of the car was one of the pointers, he remembered. It wasn’t clear he was going to have much of a choice.

  Just then, he heard the unmistakable wail of a police siren. Through a jagged hole in the opaque rear wind-shield, he saw that a third vehicle was coming up fast from behind the gray sedan, this one a civilian unmarked car with a flashing blue light on its roof. That was all he could see: it was too far away to make out the model. Confusion filled Ben’s mind again, but abruptly the gunfire ceased.

  He watched as the gray sedan made a sudden 180-degree turn over the shoulder of the road, zooming back on the narrow embankment and taking off past the police car. The Renault, his pursuers inside, had gotten away!

  Ben brought his car to a halt just after the stone bridge, lolling his head back in his shock and exhaustion, waiting for the Polizei to arrive. A minute went by, and then another. He craned his neck back to the lethal stretch of road.

  But the police car was gone now, too. The crumpled Saab had been abandoned.

  He was alone, the only sound the ticking of his car’s engines, and the hammering of his own heart. He pulled his Nokia from his pocket, remembered his conversation with Schmid, and made a decision. They can lock you up for twenty-four hours without any cause, Howie had told him. Schmid had made it clear that he was looking for an excuse to do just that. He would put off calling the Polizei. He couldn’t think straight anymore.

  As the adrenaline ebbed, panic gave way to a sense of profound depletion. He badly needed to rest. He needed to refuel, to take stock.

  He drove his ruined Opel, the engine straining, the shredded tires making for a bone-jarring ride, a few miles up a hilly road to the nearest town, although really it was a village, a Dorf. Its narrow streets were lined with ancient stone buildings, progressing from tiny dilapidated structures to larger, half-timbered houses. A few lights were on, but most of the windows were dark. The street was unevenly paved, and the car’s undercarriage, now low to the ground, regularly bumped and scraped against the cobblestone.

  The narrow road became a main street soon enough, lined now with great gabled stone houses and rows of slate-shingled buildings. Now he came to a large cobblestoned square, marked RATHAUSPLATZ, dominated by an ancient Gothic cathedral. At the center of the square was a stone fountain. He appeared to be in a seventeenth-century village built upon much older ruins, its buildings a peculiar hodgepodge of architectural styles.

  Across the town square from the cathedral was a seventeenth-century manor house with crow-stepped gables, marked with a small wooden sign identifying it as the Altes Gebäude, the Old Building, though it looked newer than most of the other buildings in town. Lights blazed from its small-mullio
ned windows. It was a tavern, a place to get food and drink, to sit and rest and think. He parked his wreck alongside an old farm truck, where it would be largely concealed from view, and went in, his trembling, twitching legs barely supporting his weight.

  Inside, the place was warm and cozy, lit by a flickering fire in an immense stone hearth. It smelled of wood smoke and fried onions and roasted meats, wonderful and inviting. It looked like a traditional Swiss Stübli, an old-style restaurant. One round wooden table was obviously the Stammtisch, the place reserved for the regulars who came in every day to drink beer and play cards for hours. Five or six men, mostly farmers or laborers, regarded him with hostile suspicion, then went back to their cards. Sprinkled throughout the room were others having dinner or drinking.

  Ben realized only now how famished he was. He looked around for a waiter or waitress, saw none, and sat down at an empty table. When a waiter arrived, a small round man of early middle age, Ben ordered something typically Swiss, heavy and reliable: Rösti, roasted potatoes, with Geschnetzeltes, or bits of veal in cream sauce, with a Vierterl, a quarter-liter carafe of local red wine. When the waiter returned ten minutes later, balancing several plates on his arm, Ben asked in English: “Where’s a good place to spend the night?”

  The waiter frowned and set down the dinner plates in silence. He moved aside the glass ashtray and the red Altes Gebäude matchbook, poured the deep red wine into a stemmed glass. “The Langasthof,” he said, in a heavy Romansch accent. “It’s the only place for twenty kilometers around.”

  While the waiter gave him directions, Ben tucked into his Rösti. They were brown and crisp, onion-tangy, delicious. He continued wolfing down his dinner, glancing through the partly fogged window at the small parking area outside. Another car was parked alongside his, obstructing his view. A green Audi.

  Something twanged at the back of his mind.

  Wasn’t a green Audi behind him for a good stretch of A3 out of Zurich? He remembered having seen one, worrying whether he was being followed, dismissing it as a figment of an overactive imagination.