into your pockets. Hurry up; it’s a bit nippy out here.” Scot managed a grin for a fraction of a second before his teeth began chattering violently again.
Claudia went right to work. Neither of the men had a wallet or very much else on them. She put everything she found in her pockets and then rushed back to Scot.
Her car was on the other side of the old town. How would she get him back to it? Any minute now the police would be swarming all over. Then she saw it. About two blocks up the St. Karli-Quai from where they were was a sign for the Tourist Hotel. Claudia got Scot on his feet and urged him forward. She hoped the exercise wouldn’t do him any further harm.
When they reached the hotel, a group of people were standing in front. They had heard the gunshots and come outside to investigate. They had no idea from which direction they were fired. There was a line of three taxicabs, and Claudia rushed with Scot up to the driver of the first one.
“Please, sir,” she said in German, “I need to get my brother to a hospital. We heard something that sounded like gunshots, and he lost his balance and fell into the river. I think he has hypothermia.”
Before the cabdriver could answer, the manager of the hotel, who was standing in the doorway, said to the cabdriver, “Heinrick, wait!” and he disappeared inside. Claudia had no idea what was going on. All eyes, including the cabdriver’s, were turned to where the manager had stood just a moment before. As quickly as he vanished, he reappeared with a thick wool blanket, which he wrapped around Scot. “Now you go!”
Claudia thanked him and climbed into the back of the cab with Scot as the driver peeled away from the curb. She spoke softly with Scot for a few moments and then addressed the driver. “My brother says it’s not as bad as I thought. He says I’m overreacting. My car is parked at the Matthauskirche parking. Please turn right here and take Diebold-Schilling Strasse along the Musegg Wall to Brambergstrasse.”
“But he is soaked through. Are you sure?” asked the driver.
“He was only in the water for a few moments before I helped him out. I think the most important thing is to get him home to a warm bath and some nudelsuppe. Our mother is a nurse. I’ll call her and have her come over straightaway to look at him.”
“I can take you to the hospital. It’s no problem.”
Harvath managed a feeble, but believable, “Nein, danke,” from the backseat.
“As you wish,” replied the driver, who turned right at the Geissmattbrucke bridge and headed along the Musegg Wall toward the Old Town section of Lucerne, where Claudia and Scot had parked her car.
“Please turn up the heat,” Claudia asked the driver.
Scot smiled to himself as two police cars sped past. Could it possibly get any hotter?
70
Claudia got them out of town and onto the auto route for Bern as fast as she could. The heater was turned up as high as it would go. Scot stripped out of his wet clothes and remained huddled in the wool blanket until Claudia found a roadside cafe, where she bought containers of piping hot soup and coffee. Scot drank down everything she gave him and, when he was finally feeling up to it, reached into the backseat and pulled some clothes from his suitcase. Although Claudia should have been watching the road, every once in a while she sneaked a guilty peek at him getting dressed.
The color began to return to Scot’s face, and his shivering lessened.
“How are you feeling?” Claudia asked.
Even though he was fully dressed in new clothes with heavy wool socks, Harvath wrapped the blanket back tightly around his body. “Very pissed off.”
“Good. The way you were shivering, I thought we had made the wrong decision.”
“No, we made the right one. If we’d gone to the hospital, there could have been police, questions, and who knows what. Miner probably would have found us, and that would have been the end of the story.”
“I guess so, but if we had been wrong about the severity of your condition, that could have been the end of the story as well.”
“I know my limits. You don’t ever need to worry about me.”
“Thanks, Scot. I’ll remind myself of that next time I see you looking like a flipped turtle.”
There was a touch of hurt in her voice.
“Thank you,” said Scot.
“For what?”
“For saving my life.”
“You mean when I drew the fire of Miner’s men and pulled you from the river? That? That was nothing. Sorry I didn’t have a towel ready when you got out.”
Scot thought about what a gift she had for pissing him off while at the same time making him want to laugh out loud. They made quite a pair.
“How do you know the men were Miner’s?” asked Scot as he brought his mind back.
“They weren’t wearing any American brand-name clothes, and the man you shot in the throat was mumbling in German as he was dying. I just assumed Miner had sent them.”
“Seems like it.”
“You were also right about something.”
“What was that?”
“They were in radio contact. They each had an earpiece and a sleeve mike. The radio was a German brand.”
“Was there anything in their pockets?”
“No wallets, which doesn’t surprise me. These men would not be carrying ID around with them. That’s not the way it’s done.”
“I agree. Anything else?”
“Cash, cigarettes, and each had one of these,” said Claudia, who pulled out what looked like two playing cards from her pocket and handed them to Scot. He was getting warm now, and with his free hand he turned down the VW’s heater.
Harvath examined the cards. They had a magnetic strip on the back and a red dragon on the front, under which were the words Mt. Pilatus and some other lines written in German.
“What are these?” said Harvath.
“They are kind of like lift tickets for Mount Pilatus.”
“What is it?”
“Pilatus is a mountain not too far from Lucerne. Normally, on clear days, you can see it from the city. According to legend, the body of the Roman governor Pontius Pilate is buried in the lake near the top, and supposedly this was the only place his soul could rest. Every year on Good Friday, he is said to rise from the water to wash the blood from his hands. The mountain is named after him.”
“That’s just charming. What about this dragon on here? What’s that all about?”
“That is the logo for Mount Pilatus. It comes from something different. Starting in the fourteen hundreds, the people of Lucerne began to think they saw dragons around the mountain, and the image stuck.”
“Tell me more about the mountain.”
“There are two hotels on the top. One is called the Bellevue, and it is completely round like the Schilthorn in the Jungfrau region. The other is a more traditional hotel called the Hotel Pilatus Kulm.”
“What’s the attraction up there?” asked Scot.
“The views mostly. Although some people come for hiking, rock climbing, and paragliding as well.”
“So it’s kind of like the Jungfraujoch?”
“I guess that would be a fair comparison, but the Jungfraujoch is actually carved into the glacier and the mountain, while the hotels at Pilatus are basically built on top of it.”
“But, why would these two guys be carrying lift tickets for Pilatus?”
“Maybe they were hikers,” said Claudia.
“C’mon, Claudia, think. They don’t carry wallets with them, but they do carry these lift tickets? Why would they
