The Zurich Conspiracy (12 page)

Joe reflected for a moment. “If you don’t mind, I’ll shoot these e-mails to my friend Jack to read, he’s an English colleague of mine. Maybe he’ll come up with something.”

“OK, but he has to be discreet about it.”

“Not to worry. I’ll filter out your address.”

She pressed a leather armband with metal inserts into Joe’s hand, something she’d promised him earlier. It was one of Loyn’s gifts for customers, a limited edition.

“Cool,” he said with a grin. “I used to work with these gadgets in my phlebotomist days with blood donors.”

Josefa gave him a playful shove for an answer. She could take liberties like that with him.

Josefa realized she’d have to be more circumspect with Paul Klingler than she’d been with Joe. She was already running twenty minutes late when she got off at the Rennweg stop. She walked up the street past the elegant shops with her heavy laptop case slung over her shoulder. The weather was sultry, and she felt the heat in spite of her summer dress. The sign in the Hotel Widder lobby indicated that the library was downstairs.

Paul was waiting in a leather armchair in front of the empty fireplace. When he caught sight of her, he stood up, greeting her with outstretched arms. His suit was high quality and made-to-measure—it had to be, given that he was six-foot-six.

“Welcome to the club,” he said ceremoniously.

“Stop, stop,” Josefa parried. “Not so fast. Why this place? Why all the secrecy?”

“I’d call it ‘discretion,’ the heart and soul of our business.”

Josefa noticed that Paul had a different hairstyle, and little blonde strands sparkled prominently in his ash-colored hair. He gestured toward another leather armchair.

“Do have a seat. What would you like to drink?”

Josefa ordered tomato juice and looked around the library. The medieval stonework and the modern styling of the room made for an interesting blend.

“When?” Paul asked after returning from the bar with her tomato juice and a cognac for himself.

“When what?”

“When are you going to start working for me?” He looked her straight in the eye.

“Paul, if I left Loyn, I would
not
want another job somewhere—I’d like to set up my own company.” She waited, wondering how he’d react.

But he was nonchalant. “Good idea, Josefa. I’ll outsource a few projects to your firm. Done deal. Have you already handed in your resignation?”

She choked on her tomato juice. Paul held out a white linen napkin.

“I’m still working on the Lake Geneva Golf Tournament in September because I feel some responsibility for it. I’ve known some of the guests a long time. Maybe I can firm up some good contacts there. Then I’ll decide if I leave and how soon. I have to give two months’ notice, and I’ve got some vacation days and overtime on top of that. All that work’s finally going to pay off, don’t you think?”

Paul was giving her all his attention, leaning his tall frame toward her.

“Surely you’ve got enough contacts already, Josefa. But if you think you still want to do the tournament—fine. Now you’ve got one guest less.”

Josefa didn’t respond.

“Henry Salzinger. Loyn used to invite him all the time.”

Josefa quietly sipped at her tomato juice.

“The so-called independent auditor for Swixan…You remember Färber Brothers? That’s what his company used to be called. He gave those scoundrels at Swixan a clean bill of health. He shut his eyes to all the executives’ shoddy tricks instead of rapping those crooks on the knuckles.” He threw her a challenging look. “He’s had a hunting accident.”

Josefa gave a start. “Another one?”

“Thought that would surprise you,” Paul said. “Salzinger was in the mountains in the Canton of Wallis, if I’m not mistaken. He apparently picked up the rifle the wrong way, and it went off. Shot himself right through the lung. I didn’t know he hunted game as well as undervalued companies.”

Josefa recalled that Salzinger had been drinking quite a bit in St. Moritz and that poor Claire had to put up with his boozy monologues. She recalled Salzinger’s flabby, expressionless face, his giraffe-like shape.

“Paul, you’re pulling my leg. There’s no hunting season in Wallis in the summer. It doesn’t add up.”

“These guys with money don’t follow the rules,” he retorted. “A farmer looking for a lost cow in the mountains found the body when his dog started barking like mad.”

“It might have been suicide,” Josefa ventured, still feeling that this was some crazy fairytale. Paul shrugged.

“Maybe, maybe not. The family prefers to call it ‘an accident’ and says that this trip was just Salzinger’s way of assessing his progress after his knee operation last year.” He straightened his tie. “Feller-Stähli, the lawyer, Thüring, the CEO, and now Salzinger, the auditor. All of them got off scot-free after the Swixan bankruptcy, and now all three are dead as doornails,” he said with a sarcastic undertone.

What about Karl Westek, the CFO, another Loyn guest?
Josefa thought. “Nobody knows whether Thüring is dead or alive. No body’s been found,” she countered.

The men appeared in her mind’s eye: the wiry Westek with the jaws of an attack dog, Salzinger leaning over the table like a weeping willow. Feller-Stähli had been in St. Moritz as well, as had Thüring, with whom she’d exchanged a few words; later she’d seen him sitting with the mysterious Curt Van Duisen.

“So you think it’s not a coincidence?” she persisted.

He fixed her with an unwavering stare. “Oh, of course it could all be a coincidence. But a lot of people will be asking themselves some questions. The media already are—it’s right up their alley. And when the media begin poking around, the police will soon be getting into it too.”

“Paul, why are you telling me all this? I don’t have any interest in these people; they just happened to be on Loyn’s guest list, and anyway, I don’t make up the list.”

“Happened to be on the list? Is it a coincidence that Thüring was able to even show his face at your event? Even though he’d driven Swixan into the ground? Thüring was the most hated man in Zurich. He’d caused a lot of people a lot of grief.” Paul laughed dryly. “He was trying to reestablish himself as a respectable entrepreneur, and who was helping him do it? Loyn. Oh, yes, the brotherhood sticks together, through thick and thin. After all, every one of them has a skeleton or two in the closet.”

Josefa sometimes found it hard to follow what her old friend was saying. His clientele was drawn from prominent business circles, and Paul was helping them do a better job of selling themselves to the public. He was polishing their image. And here he was, sitting in a luxury hotel, drinking what was surely the most expensive cognac in the place, and talking about human misery. But Paul had always been a riddle to her; when other high school students were acting like revolutionaries in the struggle against the establishment, Paul was reading anniversary brochures from Swiss businesses. And after those same revolutionaries were transformed into respectable members of capitalist society, Paul joined the advisory board of an ethical mutual fund and promoted alternative energy.

“Oh, well, Schulmann will be pissed off if you jump ship after so short a time. He’ll have to do the heavy lifting by himself. He’s in for a big surprise, that phony.” Paul suddenly seemed to be having fun.

“You hate him, don’t you?”

Paul’s smile froze. The corners of his mouth twitched nervously.

“No. Why should I hate Schulmann?”

“Not Schulmann. Thüring.”

“Oh, Thüring. No, I don’t hate him. Why should I? He hasn’t done me any harm. Not me.”

Josefa was cold, shivering from lack of sleep. “I think it’s time for me to get home and catch up on my sleep,” she said apologetically.

Paul stood up at once. “I just wanted to recommend that you stay out of it, Josefa. Don’t talk to anybody about these accidents. Think of our motto for this business: ‘We keep our nose out of it.’” He gave her a quick hug.

As Josefa turned toward the exit, she saw a man disappearing around the corner. She could have sworn it was Richard Auer, but maybe she was already hallucinating.

The Grossmünster looked like one of Christo’s art installations. The twin towers of the medieval cathedral were being renovated and had been enveloped in brown plastic tarpaulins, frustrating the tourists who were robbed of Zurich’s most photographed building now partially hidden under a shabby plastic shell.

Helene had other worries. She wanted to check on how many alpine swifts—the colony nested every summer under the towers’ protuberances and edges—were being scared off by the construction work. Josefa followed her over the dressed cobblestones of Münsterplatz, finally stopping before an inconspicuous wooden door at the back of the church. Helene took out a large, old-fashioned key and opened the door. Josefa slipped in behind her. It was dark and cool inside. When the heavy wooden door banged into the lock, Josefa gave an involuntary start. Helene switched on the light and opened another door with a second key.

“It’s like being in a bank vault,” Josefa mused. They crossed the dark nave and climbed up one wooden staircase after another until Josefa was completely out of breath. From the highest platform you could walk onto a tower battlement. Josefa was able to look down, through gaps in the tarpaulins, on the roof tiles of the old town and on roof patios with little gardens and sun screens. She could see a bit of the mud-green Limmat and view the summit of the Üetliberg in the background. It was so hot; the air was shimmering.

“How nice would it be to be an alpine swift!” Josefa declared. “To survey the world on high and afar, to up and fly away whenever it turned cold.”

“A lot of people have had this highly original idea before you,” Helene remarked dryly. Spider webs clung to her red hair—heaven knows where she’d been scrambling about.

“Stefan’s been transferred to New York,” Josefa dispensed with a preamble.

Helene went on inspecting the stone walls. “So, a long-distance affair?”

Josefa sat down on the wooden planks. “Do you recommend it…? Is your Canadian boyfriend still around?”

She realized she was being nothing short of presumptuous. Helene didn’t talk about her feelings much. She once showed Josefa Greg’s picture: He had a broad, bearded face, framed by a fur-lined cap pulled down over his ears, an honest look in his eyes, and powerful teeth. Josefa was somewhat ashamed to catch herself imagining Greg and Helene kissing. It was a bit unpleasant; she didn’t want to think of her friend as a sexual creature.

“Greg? He’s bushwhacking in Canada,” Helene said. “With some stupid tourists.”

“Then he’d better watch out. A well-known Swiss lawyer has just died there, somewhere around Prince George. Name’s Feller-Stähli. He was on a guided tour and got lost.”

Helene had disappeared behind the tarps, and Josefa could hear some rattling and scratching.

“They were off hunting grizzlies. Have you ever heard of that? Or has Greg?”

“What was that?” Helene asked after she reappeared.

“Feller-Stähli, a well-known lawyer, lost his life on a bear hunt somewhere near Prince George. Greg lives there, doesn’t he?”

“Do you know how huge the bush is around Prince George?” Helene shot back. “Bigger than Switzerland. And do you know how many tourists come and stay there every year? And Greg’s supposed to get wind of some Swiss lawyer, of all people?”

“Feller-Stähli consulted with the top people at Swixan, got them to take their millions out before the company went belly-up.”

“Then he got the fate he deserved,” Helene said, helping Josefa to her feet.

Josefa didn’t answer. She could hardly complain about the fact that Helene showed no interest in her world of luxury travel bags and wealthy customers. Helene was wrapped up with other things—like the proper food for orphaned swifts, for instance (ground meat, crushed ants, mealworm pellets). Though these birds were no particular concern of Josefa’s, she couldn’t help but worry about them a little as she felt her way up the dark, narrow wooden staircase.

“What is it with these swifts? Will they be able to nest here again? And what’s the score with Greg? Are you two still an item?”

She could only see the bare outline of Helene’s figure in the dark, and her words mingled with the loud thumping of her boots.

“That’s the trouble with you, Josefa. You ask so many questions, but I’m not sure you really want to hear the answers.”

At that very moment Josefa’s cell phone rang. It was Stefan.

“You got some time?” he asked.

She was taken aback. His weekends were always for family. She glanced at Helene who’d figured it out right away.

“So get moving,” she said. “He’s not going to be here for long.”

A few hours later she was lying beside Stefan, exhausted and satisfied, her eyes shut. She felt his leg on hers, his arm on her breasts.
Is he asleep?
Suddenly her answering machine kicked in—she’d forgotten to turn down the volume, something she always did when expecting visitors. But she hadn’t heard it ring. Had she nodded off?

She didn’t recognize the woman’s voice at first, but Stefan sat up at once.