Rules of Deception

30

“Is it him?”

Von Daniken compared the snapshot of Gottfried Blitz standing next to the drone with the ruined face lying at his feet. “You tell me,” he said, handing the photo to Kurt Myer and turning away before the bile rose any farther in his throat.

“Same sweater. Same eyes. It’s him.” Squatting on his haunches, Myer studied the corpse with an expert’s keen eye. “He was killed while seated in the chair, then moved to the floor. The shot had to be taken at waist level with the muzzle aimed downward to have expelled Blitz’s brains all over the desk and wall.”

Using a fountain pen, he pointed to the rash of gunpowder tattooed into the skin. “Look at the abrasion collar and the stippling. The shooter was a foot away when he pulled the trigger. Blitz didn’t even know he was there. He was working on his laptop until the moment he was shot.”

But von Daniken was interested in something else Myer had said. “Back up a second, Kurt. What do you mean ‘moved to the floor’? Are you saying the killer shot him, then laid him on the carpet? Did he bring him the towels, too?”

“Someone did. It certainly wasn’t Mr. Blitz.” Myer tested the pile of towels heaped near the body. “Still warm.”

The men shared an uncomfortable glance.

From the street came the sound of another siren approaching. Doors slammed. There was a commotion in the hall. Two paramedics entered the study.

“That was quick,” said von Daniken, referring to the near instantaneous arrival of the medical technicians.

“Did you call?” one of the paramedics asked. “Dispatch said it was an American.”

“An American?” Von Daniken traded looks with Myer. “How long ago did the American call?” he asked the paramedic.

“Twelve minutes ago. Nine-oh-six.”

“It’s him,” said Myer. “Ransom.”

Von Daniken nodded, then glanced at his watch. During the drive from the airfield, he’d called Signor Orsini, the station manager, for a description of the man who’d shown up at his door early that morning impersonating a police officer and asking about who had sent a certain pair of bags to Landquart. Afterward, he’d phoned the Graubünden police for details about the murder of one of its officers the day before, also in Landquart. Orsini’s description perfectly matched that given by a witness to the crime. The police in Landquart even had a name: Dr. Jonathan Ransom. An American. There was more. Ransom’s wife had perished two days earlier in a climbing mishap in the mountains near Davos.

“If it was Ransom who called,” he said to Myer, “that explains the towels. He’s a doctor.”

Lieutenant Conti, who had been listening in on the exchange, tucked his chin into his neck and lifted his hands in a quintessentially Italian gesture. “But why would Ransom shoot Blitz and then call the ambulance to save his life?”

Von Daniken exchanged looks with Myer. Neither man wanted to answer the question for the time being.

Von Daniken walked over to the desk and tapped a few keys on the laptop. The screen displayed a hodgepodge of fractured colors. Here was something else that bothered him. Was Blitz working on a broken computer when he’d been shot? Or had he purposefully ruined it to prevent anyone from finding out what was on its hard drive?

One by one, he opened the desk drawers. The top two were empty, except for a few scraps of paper, rubber bands, and pens. The bottom drawer was locked, but appeared to have been tampered with. He glanced up and noticed a few moving boxes placed against the wall. He rushed to see what was inside and was disappointed to find them empty as well.

Just then, the crime scene technicians arrived. All unnecessary personnel were ordered out of the room. Myer slipped past von Daniken in the corridor, whispering that he was going to get the daisy sniffer, which was what he called the explosives and radiation detector.

As the technicians filed into the house, von Daniken went upstairs and made his way to Gottfried Blitz’s bedroom. He wasn’t thinking about the victim so much as the man who might have killed him. He was looking for a clue as to why a cop killer whose wife had died in a mountaineering accident was in such a hurry to visit Blitz.

The search of Blitz’s bedroom turned up nothing. The night table was stacked with German celebrity glossies; the dresser filled with neatly folded clothing; the bathroom stuffed to bursting with cologne, hair products, and a variety of prescription drugs. But nowhere did he find anything that would tie Blitz to the drone, or indicate how he planned to use it.

Von Daniken sat down on the bed and stared out the window. It came to him that there were two groups and that they were somehow battling one another. There was Lammers and Blitz on the one side, and those who wanted them dead on the other. The quality of the killings combined with the discovery of the drone and the RDX marked it as an intelligence operation.

The prospect angered him. If an intelligence agency knew enough about a plot involving RDX and a drone to take decisive measures to stop it, why hadn’t they contacted him with the information?

He turned his mind to Dr. Jonathan Ransom, who apparently had phoned the paramedics. According to the station manager, Ransom had been hellbent on discovering who had sent the bags to Landquart earlier in the week. The logical assumption was that he didn’t know Blitz. How, then, had Ransom come to be in possession of the baggage claims?

If, however, von Daniken were to assume that Ransom and Blitz were working together-that they did know each other-the pieces fell into place. Stopped by the police after picking up the bags, Ransom had panicked, killed the arresting officer, then run down his partner in his hurry to flee the scene. Cover compromised, Ransom fled to Ascona to seek instructions from his controller. His ignorance of Blitz’s address could be put off to a cardinal rule of espionage: Compartmentalize information, or in the vernacular, keep it need-to-know. Hence, his need to speak to Orsini.

And the wife? The Englishwoman who had perished in a freak mountaineering accident? Might Ransom have killed her when she’d discovered that he was an agent?

Von Daniken scowled. He was grasping. Spinning fantasies out of thin air. Rising, he made his way to the stairs. He wanted to know what was in the bags that had made Ransom deem them worth killing for. There was little prospect of finding out, at least in the short term. The officer Ransom had struck with the car lay in a coma. His prognosis was not optimistic.

Von Daniken’s phone rang, interrupting his thoughts.

It was Myer, and he sounded worried. “In the garage. Come quickly.”