Finally she made a decision.
No bolt of lightning would illuminate the whereabouts of The Pietà of Malta, no magical key would put everything in perspective. But now there was a crucial new piece to the puzzle.
She went back to her computer. She typed an email to both Mark McKinnon in Europe and her boss Mike Gamburian back in Washington, inquiring by name about Laurent Tissot and Stanislaw Jurjeznicz. She wrote:
I don’t know. It might be nothing, but I’d appreciate anything you have on either of these two. Their names have surfaced. Alex. Geneva
She felt clever and compromised at the same time. Like Peter on the subject of Yuan and perhaps on the subject of The Pietà of Malta, she had not exactly told a lie. She had instead declined to tell the complete truth.
She waited for a few minutes. She found a cognac in the hotel’s overpriced minibar, and poured herself a double.
Then the email account flashed again with an incoming message. Something back fast from Gamburian, who must have been at the tail end of a long business day. No hits on the Pole, but there was some preliminary stuff on Tissot. After a stint in the Swiss Army, he was a career shady character, but mostly an arms merchant. Tissot was not an outright crook, but usually in the gray area of the law and the dark gray area of ethics and morality. Gamburian finished,
More details to follow,
I’ll try to boot up an entire file tomorrow a.m. in DC. Cheers, stay safe.
She wrote back and thanked him. But now she was exhausted. Absolutely and positively. She shut down her laptop, made sure the door to her room was bolted, set up her weapon again, and settled into bed, her mind still teeming, trying to factor a dead arms dealer into the mix but not quite able. Not yet, anyway.
After several minutes, she realized not only that she was still awake, but she hadn’t even managed to close her eyes. She was staring at the dark ceiling, watching the play of shadows and light from the curtained window, and conscious of some distant movement in the adjoining hotel room, on the other side of her closet.
She opened up her iPod. She channeled into some light classical music, which did help her relax. Then, as sleep crept up on her, and as she was on the verge of dropping off into its soft embrace, more events and theories interconnected.
And another startling realization was upon her; as she worked scenarios in reverse and tried to distill inner truths from what she had been told, she had another answer.
Somehow, Peter had connected either Tissot, Stanislaw, Lee Yuan, or the pietà itself to Yuri Federov, the man she was in Geneva to find. Possibly he had done this through the computers of the man he had killed. She remembered Peter boasting about how he had broken into their database. Or possibly he had done this through other means. But from there, Peter-the name she continued to think of him as-went to Mark McKinnon, her CIA guy, with whom he had worked before.
Peter needed a way of accessing Federov. But why?
McKinnon, she theorized, had gone to the State Department and Alex’s c.v. had spun off a link to Federov. So McKinnon had contacted her boss, Mike Gamburian, and her phone had rung on a Barcelona beach. Conveniently, she was still in Europe. Hence, very late at night in a Geneva hotel room, she had the answer to a question: How had Peter known that she was assigned to the case before she did?
Well, it was a thesis, at least. It made sense. And then she realized, so did something else. Yuri Federov must have been in a position to know something about the pietà’s disappearance. Otherwise, finding him wouldn’t have been so critical.
It all made a tidy little bundle. And the tidy little bundle was part of a massive mess. Several people were already dead, the perps were still out there, and who knew what the motivation of the theft had been, where the money had gone, and-almost least important now-who knew where the lamentation was?
Well, she would put all this to Peter when she saw him and see what he had to say about it. She even had a bargaining chip: Interpol was on his tail, and he might not even know.
Then she found something new to worry about. Maybe Interpol had nailed him already when he had crossed the border into Switzerland, even though he had probably changed passports. Maybe she was on her own again. And maybe she was now under Interpol surveillance. She might have to work the department-store routine herself.
She blew out a long sigh. A third cognac helped. Her eyelids came together. It was past two thirty in the morning. The bed was finally comfortable. So, for a short while, she slept.
FORTY-NINE
GENEVA, SEPTEMBER 14, 5:32 A.M.
In the hour before dawn, Alex’s eyes flashed open. She lay very still in bed. Somewhere close to her there had been movement in her hotel suite. But where?
The room was very dark. Her eyes tried to adjust. She made no movement in bed but slid her gaze to the night table. The LED on the clock radio told part of the story, but only a small part.
It was half past five in the morning. Very few good things happen at half past five in the morning. She counted her heartbeats. They accelerated. She knew she was not alone in her bedroom.
But how? She knew she had thrown the chain on the door. How could anyone have entered? Whoever was there was still in the room with her. She let her eyes adjust more and she looked for the pistol that she had left near the clock radio.
That told her for sure that she was not alone. The weapon that she had carefully placed there was gone.
Oh Lord, Oh Lord, Oh Lord!
She felt herself start to sweat. Feigning restlessness, feigning sleep, she kept her eyes open just as slits and rolled over. She forcibly had to control her fear because in the darkness two figures loomed right at her bedside. They were both men. They were big. Their arms were at their sides and neither appeared to hold a weapon.
These men were professionals, otherwise they couldn’t have entered so furtively. They were between her and the door. That wasn’t an accident, either. Oh Lord, Oh Lord, Oh Lord! Her heart raced. Her sweat glands were in overdrive, her entire body was overheating. Her heart thundered. The only defense she had left now was to make the first move.
She bolted up in bed and swung her right hand at the closest man. But the two intruders made their moves at the same time. The nearest man threw out a powerful arm to stop her blow. She tried to force her way up from the bed, but even as she kicked, the second man grabbed her legs above the knees, forcing her back down.
His grip was powerful and overwhelming. She realized that both these men had stocking masks over their faces, and she knew that neither was Peter. Where was Peter now when she needed him again?
Then all of the weight of one of the men came onto the bed and onto her legs, pinning her.
She cursed violently in English. She fought back with elbows and two flailing hands, but the first assailant was adept at what he was there to do. He held down her right arm and forced her upper body down onto the mattress. Amidst grunts and curses, she felt something rip. It was her nightgown.
Then she smelled something that reminded her of ether or some medical sedative. Instantly, she knew what would follow.
She kicked and struggled, but her legs remained pinned. She fought with her left hand, striking incessantly at the head of the closest man. But she couldn’t manage an effective angle on him.
She couldn’t do any damage. Within seconds, he pushed a cloth to her face.
The cloth was warm and wet. It had the noxious medicinal scent that she already smelled. Her assailant forced her head back down. She felt as violated as she had ever felt in her life.