The Zurich Conspiracy (10 page)

“I wouldn’t take it all too seriously,” he said finally. “Some nut case is raving on the Internet because that’s where he feels secure.”

“Not take it seriously?” Josefa felt her stomach tighten. “He’s talking about claws that could tear me apart, about enemies I have to watch out for—and I’m supposed to just laugh it off?”

“Yes, I think so. I think the language alone shows that this guy’s just fooling around. Don’t do him the favor of driving yourself crazy over it. Besides, I’ll show you later how you can easily block the sender so that his e-mails don’t get through anymore.”

He took Josefa onto his lap, and she caressed his tired face. “You know I’ve really gotten paranoid about this. I wonder, for instance, if that burglary was meant for me. Why should anybody break into Esther’s place? Maybe he got the floors mixed up. I’m suspicious of everybody. Even on vacation I was always watching out. Like with that Ingrid.”

Stefan smiled. “I know that side of you only too well…But seriously, Josefa, don’t be too quick to panic. And I wouldn’t worry about Schulmann; he will probably be so rotten to his colleagues at Loyn that he’ll soon be intolerable. Maybe the top brass would like to upset you a bit too. Did you ever think of that? Maybe you’re so good that Bourdin feels threatened and wants to create some space between the two of you.”

He kissed her hands, finger by finger. “Who actually got Schulmann to come aboard?”

“You’re the third person to ask me that,” Josefa replied.

He looked at her. “The third?”

“Helene and Paul asked me exactly the same question.”

“Paul Klingler? How come he’s asking? How did you meet up with him?”

“He phoned me this afternoon…He wants to lure me away.”

Stefan frowned. “Lure you? For what?”

Josefa got up and went to the kitchen to turn on the espresso machine.

“He wants me to work for him. But he hasn’t made me a firm offer yet.”

“And do you want to take him up on it?” Stefan knew Paul from business school in St. Gall and obviously didn’t like him. But he kept Josefa in the dark as to why. She suspected a typical alpha-dog aversion between the two. They were both powerful, competent men, after all.

“He already knew Schulmann had been hired. He probably thinks I’m desperately looking for a new job.”

“You should take your time and test your marketability,” Stefan said, rather absentmindedly.

“If Paul Klingler wants me I must really be worth my weight in gold.” Josefa grinned, but Stefan did not return the smile.

“Come on, tell me about New York,” she said, handing him an espresso.

Stefan reached for the sugar and slowly poured it into his coffee.

“What’s the matter?” Josefa asked, aware that something unpleasant was coming.

“The company wants to send me over there for a rather long time,” he said hesitantly.

“For how long?”

Stefan continued to stir his espresso, his eyes avoiding Josefa. “My predecessor was there for eight years.”

“Eight years old,” the young woman said, after introducing herself as Elif Yilmaz. “He looks like he’s still in kindergarten.”

Josefa had no idea how to respond. She didn’t know any eight-year-olds personally or any kids in kindergarten.

The teacher shook her head.

“These kids aren’t getting a balanced diet or medical care. You can tell by looking at them.”

She and Josefa were sitting in an empty classroom. On the walls were drawings of trees with colorful glass beads hanging from their branches; the sun shone through cut-out windows. The Frohmatt school was in a district of Zurich where a huge number of foreigners lived because housing was cheap. There were only two native Swiss children in Frau Yilmaz’s class; her own parents were Turkish, but she’d been raised in Switzerland.

After talking with her on the phone Josefa expected her to be a much more matronly, strong-minded lady. Instead she was surprised to see such a gorgeous young woman in such a dilapidated old school building. The teacher was even willing to meet her in the middle of summer vacation. The fact that Josefa was here in the first place was rather surprising. She had no desire to be in a classroom talking with a teacher about a child she had nothing to do with; but in spite of it Josefa had promised to look in on the family from Kosovo even before Stefan came over. She had resolved to make it clear once and for all that she was not authorized to negotiate their problems with the school psychologist or whoever. But in the end the little boy she called “Sali,” because that’s how he greeted everybody, brought her around. Those dark, wide-open eyes got to her, and she just couldn’t muster up the firmness of voice that his obstinate father would ultimately have understood to say that she would turn down his request to meet with his son’s teacher.

“You obviously have the family’s trust,” Elif Yilmaz said. “That’s important, and it can help Sali.”

Josefa was taken aback. “His name’s Sali? That’s his real name?”

“Yes, Sali Emini.”

The teacher stood up, took a stack of drawings out of a drawer, and picked one out.

“This is one of his drawings.”

In the upper corner were some hills, leaves whirled through the air, and bizarre tree trunks grew out of huge pots.

“Nice autumn scene, isn’t it?”

Something strange in her voice made Josefa take a second look. Suddenly she realized that the tree trunks were tank guns pointing to the sky. What she had thought were branches were actually lines depicting explosions. The leaves flying around were human body parts—hands and feet. And what she had assumed was a large chestnut on the ground, turned out to be a disembodied head.

“Oh my God!” Josefa whispered.

“God’s not in that picture, he’s on holiday somewhere,” Frau Yilmaz muttered. “But the school psychologist, she might be able to help. With some therapy. Since the boy can hardly speak German, maybe music or art therapy. But I need the parents’ permission.”

“Have you spoken to them?”

The teacher put the sketches away. She had a small tattoo on her finger that looked like an ornate ring. “His father refuses to talk to me because I’m Turkish. Maybe he had a fight with a Turk once, what do I know. Isn’t it crazy?” The young woman traced a finger along her perfectly plucked eyebrows. “People run away from war and take their conflicts with them, bring them here.”

Josefa reflected for a minute or two. “What can I do?”

“Fill out the form, tell the family it’s from the school doctor, and have his father sign it.”

She didn’t wait for an answer but offered Josefa her hand with a friendly smile. “Great that you’re looking after this. These kids need all the help they can get. Sali’s a dear boy, you know, not as aggressive as many of the kids from Kosovo, but that’s what worries me. He doesn’t get his fear out.”

As Josefa left the school building, the roar of the nearby highway was overwhelming. The air must be very dirty here, she thought. Summer smog. Josefa had only one day of vacation left and still didn’t know what to do about Schulmann.

Some boys and girls were playing soccer in the schoolyard, and a man by the fence was watching them. He looked familiar. Passing him on her way to the car, she got a closer look. He was about forty and well dressed. When she looked again in the rearview mirror he’d disappeared. It struck her that she knew where she’d seen him before: he’d been standing at the corner of her apartment building when she’d driven out of the back courtyard earlier that afternoon.

Josefa almost survived her first week back at work unscathed. Werner Schulmann had been in New York all week on business, not due back until today. Arriving at work on Friday morning she found Claire mysteriously absent and a note on her desk:
Henry Salzinger in fatal accident. Please send condolences to family and delete deceased from guest list.

Salzinger. She looked him up in her database: “Henry Salzinger, Caligula Investments.”
What a curious moniker
, Josefa mused. Caligula was one of the cruelest of the Roman emperors, and he finally succumbed to insanity. At least that was all she could remember from the play she’d seen at the Schauspielhaus. Suddenly the phone rang, interrupting her train of thought.

“A gentleman by the name of Paul Klingler,” Bianca announced. “Do you wish to speak to him?”

“Put him through.”

“Did you hear about Salzinger?” Paul asked, getting straight to the point.

“Yes, but only two minutes ago,” she replied.
How did he find these things out so fast!

“Things are getting pretty suspicious, don’t you think?”

“What’s so suspicious do you mean?”

“Josefa!” Paul cried, hardly able to conceal his impatience. “Three people who had something—what am I saying—
a lot
to do with Swixan going broke are now dead. Three dead men in the space of a few weeks. Doesn’t that seem a trifle odd to you?”

“Paul, I don’t have time for this.”

“We must get together as soon as possible. I’ll e-mail you. Ciao.” And he was gone.
Why does he scare me with these calls?
an irritated Josefa thought to herself.
As if I don’t have enough worries already
.

Making her way to the conference room shortly before nine, Josefa still didn’t know Claire Fendi’s whereabouts. Her assistant was normally in the office by seven, like clockwork.

Werner Schulmann was standing with Richard Auer, the head of sales, at one end of the room. They seemed to be having a wonderful conversation, both flashing their toothy grins.

Josefa joined the half-dozen others already sitting at the table, mainly people from marketing and media relations, without greeting Schulmann.

“Sorry I’m late,” Claire whispered, taking a seat beside Josefa. “I had to change a tire.”

Josefa poured her a mineral water. “We’ll talk later,” she whispered back.

She felt the others watching her; all eager to see how she’d react to the new man, no doubt. Pius entered and collapsed into a chair in the corner, a safe distance from the conference table. Then Bourdin stormed into the room and marched directly over to her.

“Terrific to have you back! How was your vacation?” he asked, a little too exuberantly.

Josefa was so taken aback by the greeting that she only managed an awkward, “Great, thanks for asking.” Out of the corner of her eye she saw Auer and Schulmann taking their seats.

“Frau Rehmer, you already know Werner Schulmann, don’t you?” Bourdin said in a wheezy voice. He clearly had a cold.

“Yes, we’ve already met,” she said coolly.

“Good,” Bourdin replied, and, to her surprise, left it at that. “Start the meeting, I can’t talk much today.”

Josefa was on safe ground here, and it was easy for her to work Schulmann into her formal words of welcome, glancing at him with a politely disinterested look. She then ran through the next client event: a golf tournament on Lake Geneva in five weeks, at the beginning of September. Almost two hundred and fifty guests were invited, and some of them would have the opportunity to compete on the fairway against Colin Hartwell, one of the world’s best golfers. She went over the program, the selection of VIPs, the extent of the targeted advertising, Hartwell’s public appearances, the cultural events that were to take place in the evenings, and the dinner at the Grand Hotel. Closing with the words, “The Lake Geneva Golf Tournament is the most popular event for our guests. We have a fantastic advertising presence and the media coverage has been growing year by year.”

Bourdin had propped up his head with his left hand and was toying distractedly with his fountain pen. Then he straightened up and said, “Herr Schulmann, you’re next.”

Josefa’s muscles tensed up. Schulmann began his welcoming remarks in a clipped, factual tone of voice as he adjusted his gold-rimmed glasses.

“…I should like to express my special appreciation and thanks to my colleague Josefa Rehmer for her solid preliminary work.”

At the word “preliminary” Josefa pricked up her ears. This was the preamble to a declaration of war.

Schulmann went on to say that the Lake Geneva tournament had been a great success until now, but it would be dangerous to rest on our laurels. The planning for this event—he could see from the reports from previous years—had been more or less the same for a long time.