Rules of Deception

16

“Have you seen these?” demanded Justice Minister Alphons Marti, as von Daniken entered his office. “NZZ. Tribune de Genève. Tages-Anzeiger.” He snatched up the phone messages and balled them in his fist. “Every newspaper in the country wants to know what happened at the airport yesterday.”

Von Daniken removed his overcoat and folded it over his arm. “What have you told them?”

Marti threw the wadded-up ball into the garbage. “‘No comment.’ What do you think I told them?”

The office on the fourth floor of the Bundeshaus was nothing less than palatial. High ceilings decorated with gold leaf and a trompe l’oeil painting of Christ ascending to heaven, Oriental rugs adorning a polished wooden floor, and a mahogany desk as big as the altar at St. Peter’s. A battered wooden crucifix hanging on the wall testified that Marti was really just a simple man.

“And so,” Marti began, “when did they take off?”

“The plane left as soon as their engine was repaired,” said von Daniken. “Sometime after seven this morning. The pilot listed their destination as Athens.”

“Another shovelful of shit the Americans expect us to swallow with a smile. I’ve made stopping rendition on European soil a cornerstone of this office’s policy. Sooner or later, someone will talk to the press and I’ll have egg all over my face.” Marti shook his head ruefully. “The prisoner was on the plane. I’m convinced of it. Onyx doesn’t lie.”

Utilizing three hundred phased-array antennas positioned high on a mountainside above the town of Leuk in the Rhône valley, Onyx was capable of intercepting all civilian and military communications passing between an equal number of pre-targeted satellites in geosynchronous orbit over the earth. Algorithm-based software parsed the transmissions for key words indicating information of immediate value. Some of those key words were “Federal Bureau of Investigation,” “Intelligence,” and “prisoner.” At 0455 yesterday morning, Onyx had struck pay dirt.

“I reviewed the intercept last night,” Marti went on. “Names. Itinerary. It’s all there.” He pushed a buff folder across the table. Von Daniken picked it up and examined the contents. Inside was a photocopy of a telefax sent from the Syrian consulate in Stockholm to the Syrian Directorate of Intelligence in Damascus titled, “Passenger Manifest: Prisoner Transport #767.” The list gave the pilot and copilot’s names, as well as two that were more familiar. Philip Palumbo and Walid Gassan.

“Check the time stamp, Marcus. The manifest was transmitted after the plane took off. Gassan was onboard. I don’t buy for a second that Palumbo pushed him off. You know what I think. I think someone tipped off Mr. Palumbo that we intended to search the aircraft. I’d like you to start an investigation into the matter.”

“Only a few of us had copies of the intercept. You, me, our deputies, and, naturally, the technicians at Leuk.”

“Exactly.”

“We searched the aircraft top to bottom,” said von Daniken as he laid the folder back on the desk. “There was no sign of the prisoner.”

“You mean you searched it.” The hyperthyroid blue eyes peered at him.

“I believe you were present.”

“So we can rule ourselves out,” said Marti, a smile showing his bad teeth. “It’ll make your investigation that much easier. I’ll expect a report daily.” He tapped the folder twice with his knuckles, indicating the matter was closed. “And so? What is it, then? Your secretary informed me that you have something on the murder in Erlenbach last night. What’s this about a search warrant?”

Von Daniken hesitated, waiting for Marti to ask him to be seated. When it became apparent that no such invitation was forthcoming, he launched into a summary of what he’d learned about Lammers, including his past history designing artillery pieces and his recent interest in MAVs. He ended with his suspicion that the Dutchman was part of a larger network and his request for a warrant to search the premises of Robotica AG.

“That’s all?” asked Marti. “I can’t fill in ‘suspicious miniature airplane’ on a warrant. This is a legal document. I need a legitimate reason.”

“It’s my opinion that Lammers posed a threat to national security.”

“How? The man’s dead. Just because you saw a model airplane…not even a model airplane…a pair of wings with God knows what.”

Von Daniken tried on a smile as a means to camouflage his simmering anger. “It’s not just the plane, sir. It’s the whole setup. Lammers had been in place a long time. He’s got a history of playing with the bad boys, and then one day, out of the blue, he’s executed on his own front stoop. I’m certain that something’s going on. Either it’s coming together or falling apart. The evidence may be inside his office.”

“Conjecture,” barked Marti.

“The man had an Uzi hidden in his workshop, along with a batch of passports that were stolen from individuals either living in or visiting the Middle East. That much is not conjecture.”

The New Zealand embassy in France had called back minutes before von Daniken reached Marti’s office, reporting that the passport found in Lammers’s car had been stolen from a hospital in Istanbul. The true passport holder was, in fact, a quadriplegic who’d been confined to a nursing facility for three years. He hadn’t even known that his passport was missing. Lammers had pulled the same trick as in Jordan, claiming to be a businessman who had lost his passport.

“There’s only one reason someone would want to steal a Belgian and New Zealand passport,” von Daniken went on. “Ease of passage in and out of the Middle East. Especially to countries with travel restrictions. Yemen. Iran. Iraq. This kind of operation requires not only funding but infrastructure and some damned fancy footwork. Lammers was scared. He saw this coming. The operation was active.”

“Conjecture,” repeated Marti. “‘Scared’ is not grounds for issuing a warrant to search a registered Swiss company. We’re talking about a corporation here, not a private citizen.”

Von Daniken forced himself to count to five. “By the way, sir, the official name for the device is ‘micro airborne vehicle.’ It’s also called a drone.”

“You can call it a mosquito on steroids for all I care,” retorted Marti. “I still won’t sign the warrant. If you want to search his premises so badly, open a dossier with an investigating judge in Zurich. If he thinks you’ve got enough evidence to warrant a search, you won’t need me.”

“That will take a week at the least.”

“And so?”

“What if there’s an imminent threat to Swiss soil?”

“Oh, Christ, let’s not get hysterical.”

Behind Marti’s desk was a photograph of him entering the Olympic Stadium at the end of his disastrous marathon. Even in a still frame, he looked wobbly. It was apparent that he had vomited on himself earlier in the race. Von Daniken wondered what kind of man displayed an image of himself at the lowest, most humiliating moment in his life.

“If you believe that there’s an imminent threat, then give me some substantiation,” said Marti. “You said Lammers used to design artillery pieces. Fine. Then show me a big gun. This warrant isn’t just going to disappear into a file. It’ll be my head if I act as your rubber stamp. I’ll be damned if I let you go off half-cocked, mobilizing every resource to check out a wild hunch.”

A wild hunch? Is that what thirty years of experience boiled down to? Von Daniken studied Marti. The hollow cheeks. The too-fashionable long hair dyed a too-fashionable henna. The man could make a Dutch pretzel out of the law if he desired. He was purposefully being obdurate as payback for the botched raid on the CIA jet.

“What about the Uzi?” von Daniken asked. “What about the passports? Don’t those count for anything?”

“You said it yourself. He was scared. He was on the run. Those facts alone do not allow us to invade his privacy.”

“The man is dead. He doesn’t have any privacy anymore.”

“Don’t play games with me! I will not quibble over semantics.”

“God forbid we piss someone off.” Von Daniken respected the constitution as much as the next man. Never in his career had he strayed from either its letter or its intent. But a policeman’s job had changed radically in the last ten years. As a counterterrorist, he needed to stop a crime before it happened. Gone was the luxury of collecting evidence after the act and presenting it to a magistrate. Often, the only evidence was his experience and intuition.

He walked to the window and looked out over the River Aare. Dusk had turned the sky into a palette of warring grays doing battle low over the city’s rooftops. The snow, which had tapered off earlier, was falling again in earnest. A gusting wind batted the flakes into an angry maelstrom. “Don’t bother with the warrant,” he said finally.

Marti stood and rounded the desk, shaking his hand. “I’m glad to see that you’re being more reasonable.”

Von Daniken turned and headed to the door. “I have to be going.”

“Wait a minute…”

“Yes?”

“What are you going to do about the little plane? The MAV?”

Von Daniken shrugged as if the matter no longer interested him. “I’m not going to do anything,” he said.

It was a lie.