“And you just happened to be up at the Ice Palace yesterday at the same time I was, and just happened to stick a gun in my back, and just happened to have two men with you who tried to kill me?”
“I had nothing to do with the men who were shooting at us in the Ice Palace.”
“‘Us’? What do you mean?”
“You do understand English, don’t you?”
“Enough to get by,” he replied smugly.
“I mean,” said Claudia, who ignored Scot’s sarcasm, “they were shooting at us. You and me. I have no idea who they were.”
“And you probably have no idea about who was then shooting at me in Wengen only an hour later?”
“I know one thing: it wasn’t the men from the Ice Palace.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because those two were still at the Jungfraujoch an hour later.”
“How do you know?” Scot asked as he continued to look her over. She was gorgeous, but he couldn’t shake his first impression of her. Funny how a gun jammed in your back could do that.
“I know because I was there too. I was trying to find you while avoiding them. It wasn’t easy. I don’t know how you managed to slip away. You must be quite clever.”
“I have my days, but yesterday sure wasn’t one of them. Someone else managed to find me, and they turned Wengen into a shooting gallery. I was lucky to get away with only this.” Harvath pointed to his left arm and noticed that a small amount of blood had seeped through the bandage. He started to unravel it, but Jackie quickly sat down next to him and took over.
“Do you have any idea who it was that tried to shoot at you in Wengen?”
“They weren’t trying to shoot at me; they actually were shooting at me; and besides, I said I would ask the questions here. What were you doing at the Ice Palace in the first place, and why did you pull a gun on me?”
“You know what, guys? I have got a ton of stuff to get done,” said Jackie. “I think I am going to leave you two alone.” Catching the look in Scot’s eye, she added, “Don’t worry. You’ll be perfectly safe with Claudia. She’s extremely tough. She climbs mountains in her spare time for fun. Did you know that?” Beckoning to Claudia, she said, “Why don’t you finish changing this dressing for me. There’s only been a little bleeding, but the stitches are all still intact. It looks like he’ll mend. Another toughie. You two’ll get along fine.”
Getting up, Jackie patted the place on the bed where she’d been sitting next to Scot. Claudia stood up and set the guns from her lap onto the chair and made her way to the bed. She took a roll of clean gauze from Jackie and began wrapping Scot’s arm. Jackie closed the door behind her.
“As I said, I work for the Federal Attorney’s Office in Bern, which is called the Bundesanwaltschaft. I was following a suspect in an ongoing investigation who had been using a post office box in Interlaken-”
“Wait a second, are you or are you not ‘Aunt Jane’?”
“I am not.”
“Then what the hell were you doing at the Ice Palace?”
“I think I can make the situation somewhat clearer if you’ll allow me.”
“Be my guest.”
“Once a week, my suspect travels to the post office to check for mail. He is a creature of habit, typical Swiss, very methodical and always comes on the same day at normally the same time, so I have a certain window in which I know I can check the box to see if he has received anything that might help me in tying him to my case.”
“Tying him to your case? Is he a suspect or not?”
“I haven’t been able to gather enough evidence yet, but I know he is somehow involved. I have what you Americans refer to, I believe, as a hunch.”
“Yes, hunch is the correct word. But that’s legal in Switzerland? Reading someone’s mail? Please, not so tight on the bandage.”
“I know what I am doing, Agent Harvath.”
“How do you know who I am?”
“Which question should I answer first?” she said, giving Scot a little slack in his dressing before taping the gauze in place.
“Lady’s choice.”
“Pardon me?”
“It means you choose, lady.”
“I see. Like my suspect, I am also somewhat methodical and of course am Swiss, so I’ll take your questions in order. As far as the legality of investigating the suspect’s mail, it depends upon the severity of the charge and the investigator. And as for knowing who you are, Jackie told me everything.”
“Everything?”
“She cares about you a great deal and is very worried about you. Don’t be upset with her. She did the right thing in calling me. I was just as shocked to see you lying in that bed as you were to see me. I thought you had brought those two men to the Ice Palace to kill me.”
“You? Why would I do that?”
“Why does anyone commit murder? I’m sure the motivations are no different in Switzerland than they are in America. All I know is that after I picked up what I think I can correctly assume was your letter from the post box, I noticed I was being followed. I engaged in an evasive tactic-”
“Crossing to the bakery.”
“Yes, and then I secluded myself in a doorway and waited. As it turns out, I was more patient than you were.”
“In the Ice Palace, you called me by the name I had used in the post office and by my real name. How did you figure those out? Wait…the Sampras one is the easiest. You went back to the post office and asked if anyone had seen someone matching my description?”
“You are quite charming, Agent Harvath. The woman at the poste restante window remembered you perfectly. She also had your alias written down on a piece of paper to check for your envelope, which still hasn’t come, by the way.”
“I’ll have to tell her not to hold her breath.”
“I already did. She was quite disappointed she wouldn’t be seeing you again. Now, as far as getting your real name, that was a little more difficult. I had seen you on the street, but was able to get a better look at your face from the post office surveillance tape. The female clerk told me you were American, so I went back to my office and started doing some searches on the computer, starting with our watch list.
“Two names had recently been added-a German and an American. The description of the American sounded like it could fit you. I E-mailed a request to the authoring agency and not long after received a picture of you. The hair is quite different, of course, but that only made it more obvious.”
“Authoring agency? What do you mean by you E-mailed them a request?”
“They are the people who put your name on our watch list. Sometimes it’s an Interpol request; sometimes it’s a local or federal Swiss agency; sometimes it’s another country…There is often a wide array of agencies who add to a watch list for a wide variety of reasons.”
“I know about watch lists, thank you very much. What I want to know is who put me on yours? It was an American agency of course.”
“Yes. It was your State Department. The man who called me mentioned-”
“Called you? Who called you?”
“After I requested the picture, I received a phone call. A man identified himself as being from a particular division of the State Department and said that he was responding to my E-mail request for your photo. He asked me a lot of questions and was frankly not very polite.”
“What did you tell him?”
“Basically, I told him nothing. I said we had a lot of ongoing investigations involving tourist crimes, and I wondered if you might somehow be involved. I wanted your picture so I could compare it against some recent witness descriptions we had received in several resort areas.”
“And you didn’t tell them you had seen me, or thought you had seen me?”
“No. I told them exactly what I just told you. Of course he reminded me several times about informing them
