Dark Chant In A Crimson Key

meet with you on four occasions, if he didn't need something from this office, from you. What did you give John Sinclair that he needed to fleece Cornucopia, Mr. Pomeroy?' I paused when I saw the change of expression on his face, and I felt a tiny surge of exhilaration. And suddenly, I thought I knew the answer. 'A number. You gave him a number. You may not be authorized to award grants or transfer funds, but you do assign certain numbers. Is that it, Mr. Pomeroy?'

In only a matter of seconds, Hyatt Pomeroy had gone from looking defensive but self-assured to downright glum. 'Mr. Neuberger is well aware of the encryption process used by the organization his grandfather founded and which he now directs, Dr. Frederickson. He also has all the pertinent data, as does Interpol.'

'Well, it apparently slipped Mr. Neuberger's mind to give me the information I'm looking for now, and I didn't know enough to ask. But he obviously wants me to have it, or he wouldn't have sent me over here to prepare a report. So let me ask you again: What did Sinclair get from you that he needed to pull off the scam?'

Pomeroy heaved a long, heartfelt sigh, then abruptly wrote something down on a slip of paper, which he shoved across the desk toward me. 'A file number,' he said tersely.

'Ah, now we're getting someplace,' I said, glancing at the seven-digit number he had written down before putting the paper into my pocket.

'Not really, Dr. Frederickson,' he replied in the same brusque tone. 'While it's true that he required a file number, he also required a good deal more that he didn't-couldn't-get from this office. Don't assume that just because I find it humiliating to have to rehash all this bloody business for the hundredth time it means you've wrung from me some earth-shattering discovery. The file number forms the base for the final encryption code, but twelve more numbers-digits-are required to construct the electronic key he needed to get at the money. It's all very complex, and it can only be accomplished with computers operated by people with proper authorization codes. What he did should have been impossible.'

'Your boss agrees with you. But the fact remains that Sinclair used the file number you gave him to manufacture his very own encrypted electronic key, upped the ante to ten million dollars, bypassed all the built-in security procedures, transferred the ten million to an account he had created, withdrew the money, and walked away.'

Pomeroy nodded curtly. 'Apparently.'

'Definitely. You have any idea at all of how he might have done it?'

'None whatsoever.'

'You have any notions at all about this bloody business that you'd care to share with me?'

'None whatsoever.'

It was looking like the business part of my trip to Switzerland was going to take even less time than I'd thought.

The first thing I noticed when I walked back into my hotel suite was a distinct and unpleasant medicinal smell. I assumed the odor was from some kind of disinfectant, but everything had seemed in perfect order when I'd checked in, and I couldn't understand why the maid would be cleaning a clean bathroom so late in the day. I opened all the windows before going down to the hotel dining room to eat. When I returned, the odor was gone. I closed the windows, turned on the air conditioner, and went to bed. I fell asleep almost immediately and dreamed of making love to Harper by a roaring fire in a chalet somewhere high in the Alps.

Chapter Four

My anxiety at the possibility of being stonewalled by Interpol turned out to be completely unfounded. Before leaving New York I had called Interpol's headquarters in Geneva, identified myself and my purpose, and asked for an appointment. It was not quite three o'clock on Wednesday, my second day in Switzerland, and I couldn't think of another thing I had to do, except actually prepare my report, which I could easily dictate to one of Cornucopia's secretaries for mailing to Neuberger. I was sitting in the silence of my chauffeured limousine, gazing out at the chocolate-box landscape, as we sped back to Zurich from Geneva. As I went over my notes and sipped at a Scotch, I decided that being driven around in a stretch Mercedes wasn't such a bad experience after all, and I made a note to myself to give Carlo a generous tip.

I had feared resentment on the authorities' part over my gratuitous appearance on the scene, but that had not been the case at all. Carlo had delivered me to the entrance of the great, cathedral-like building that was Interpol headquarters promptly at eleven o'clock, and I'd been met at the door by one Pierre Moliere, their public relations officer. I'd been made to feel like an honored guest and had even been asked to sign a few autographs before being ushered into a spacious conference room for a briefing-complete with maps and charts-that had lasted nearly two hours. Without any prompting on my part, I'd been informed of everything I could possibly have thought to ask about John Sinclair and the theft of the ten million dollars-and more.

Interpol was especially aggrieved over the brutal murder of Inspector Bo Wahlstrom, who it seemed had become something of a legend in their ranks for his dogged pursuit of John Sinclair over the years. Indeed, Wahlstrom was given a good deal of credit for refurbishing Interpol's image and reputation, which had suffered mightily over charges of collaboration with the Nazis during the Second World War.

Interpol has only an investigative franchise, not enforcement powers, but Bo Wahlstrom had apparently been an investigator par excellence. Beginning sometime in the late seventies, Wahlstrom-then a low-ranking officer-had begun receiving some remarkably precise and damning information about John Sinclair and his various criminal activities. It seemed that a key to Sinclair's success, the reason why his hand in matters was so often able to escape detection until it was too late, was the fact that so many of his individual and corporate victims, with the notable exception of Cornucopia, were corrupt, or engaging in criminal activities, themselves. As a consequence, Bo Wahlstrom, although always a step or two behind Sinclair himself, had managed, along the way, to advance his career considerably simply by sweeping up after Sinclair-acting on information of criminal activities engaged in by the individual or organization brought to light during the course of one of Sinclair's operations. As often as not, Sinclair's victims-if they were still alive-would wake up the morning after Sinclair had taken their money to find the police, acting upon information supplied by Wahlstrom, waiting at their door with a warrant for their arrest. According to Moliere, nobody in Interpol was quite sure where Wahlstrom had gotten his information, but it was assumed he'd had an informant highly placed in Sinclair's organization. For the past few years, Bo Wahlstrom's sole responsibility had been to pursue John Sinclair.

Then Bo Wahlstrom had apparently closed the distance between himself and his longtime quarry, and that burst of speed had proved fatal, ending in his brutal murder by torture. According to Moliere, in the days just before his death Wahlstrom had been particularly excited about something, and it was now generally assumed that the Swede had stumbled across some particularly telling piece of information that had led him to his death at the hands of the man whose real face was a mystery. What that information might have been also remained a mystery. The case file, presumably containing whatever it was Wahlstrom had uncovered, had been in the possession of a young Greek Interpol officer by the name of Nicholas Furie, whom Wahlstrom had taken on as an administrative assistant six months before. The young officer had been at a mountain outpost near the Italian border where Sinclair had reportedly tried to cross and been turned back but not captured by the Swiss Army. Furie had been murdered in his bed-his eyes burned away and his heart cut out-the morning of the day I'd arrived, and the case file was missing.

So that was it, I thought. The secret of what it was Wahlstrom had discovered that had finally enabled him to catch up with John Sinclair had probably died with him and Nicholas Furie. But now, according to Interpol, Sinclair was trapped inside Switzerland, and the net was gradually tightening around him. Right.

As far as I was concerned, things seemed to be proceeding apace. There was no mystery about what Sinclair had done, only the mechanics of how he had managed to construct an electronic key on his own and then execute the command for Cornucopia to cough up ten million dollars into his account. Now every available resource was being used to pursue him. That was what I had come to hear, and that was what I would report. My own opinion was that John 'Chant' Sinclair was no closer to being caught this time than in the past and that he had probably already slipped across the border. But that wasn't my concern.

Harper wasn't due in until Saturday afternoon, but as far as I was concerned, my job was finished, except for