Rules of Deception

50

Von Daniken kept his car in the passing lane, the speedometer pushing one-eighty. The highway cut through terraced vineyards high on the slopes of Lake Geneva. The lake’s broad blue canvas filled the windscreen. Beyond it, wreathed in cloud, rose the snow-covered peaks of the French Haute-Savoie.

As he neared Nyon, on the outskirts of Geneva, his cell phone rang. He thumbed the answer button on the steering wheel.

“Rohde, Zurich medical examiner’s office.”

“Yes, Doctor…” Von Daniken remembered that he’d moved Rohde’s call last night to the delete file.

“It’s about the Lammers postmortem. We discovered something odd.” Rohde spent several minutes summarizing his findings about the batrachotoxin, or frog poison, coating the bullets. “My colleague, Dr. Wickes, at New Scotland Yard, is convinced that whoever killed Theo Lammers worked with the Central Intelligence Agency at one time.”

Von Daniken didn’t answer. The CIA. It figured. When it became clear that Blitz wasn’t a German but an Iranian, and a former military officer to boot, he’d suspected the killings to be the work of a professional intelligence organization. He thought of Philip Palumbo. Either the American agent wasn’t in on the operation or he had purposely kept the information from him.

Offering his thanks, von Daniken terminated the call. The highway narrowed as he entered the city. The road dipped and followed the borders of the lake. A great rolling park extended to his left, snowy meadows sloping to the shore. He passed a succession of stately institutional compounds built on these grounds. The United Nations. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. The World Health Organization.

The address he was seeking was located in a less stately part of town. He parked on the Rue de Lausanne in front of a Chinese restaurant and a Turkish tailor. It was five past twelve. He was late. The person he was due to meet would have to wait a few more minutes.

He scrolled through his phone’s list of contacts to the letter “P.” A faraway buzzing filled his ear as the signal bounced between transmission towers connecting him to God only knew what corner of the world.

“Hello, Marcus,” answered a hardscrabble American voice.

Von Daniken knew better than to ask where Philip Palumbo was. “I’m afraid this call falls outside the boundaries of our formal relationship,” he began, eschewing any preamble as meaningless bullshit.

“This about the news I gave you yesterday?”

“It is. I need to know if there’s any more information about Quitab-the man we know as Gottfried Blitz-that you’re not telling me.”

“That’s it, my friend. First I heard of him was two days ago, straight from Gassan’s lips.”

“And that goes for the plan, too? No prior indications that there was a cell in Switzerland planning an attack? Nothing about his associates? A man named Lammers, for example?”

“You’re making me nervous, Marcus. What is it you want to know?”

“I need to know if you have a team working on my soil.”

“What kind of team?”

“I don’t know what you call it. Wet work. Liquidation. Sanctions.”

“That’s a helluva question.”

“Yes, it is, and I think I’m owed an answer.”

“I’d say I paid off that debt yesterday.”

“Yesterday was by the books. It’s as much in your interest to stop Gassan and his pals as ours. It’ll count as your victory, too.”

“Maybe,” Palumbo admitted. “Either way, I need something more to work with.”

Von Daniken sighed, pondering how much information he should divulge. He didn’t really have much choice. Such was the price of working with a superpower. Or these days, rather, the superpower. He couldn’t ask for Palumbo’s confidence without showing his own.

“We were working on Blitz, too, but from a different angle. This man I asked you about, Theo Lammers, was an associate of his. The two of them met four nights ago. We believe that Lammers gave Blitz a state-of-the-art drone capable of flying five hundred kilometers per hour and carrying a nacelle packed with twenty kilos of plastic explosives. Lammers was killed the night after they met. It was a professional job. We’re guessing that it was the same man who killed Blitz. We have evidence suggesting that the shooter is one of yours.”

“What evidence is that?”

Von Daniken told him about the bullets dipped in frog poison and the practice’s roots with Indians taking part in the Salvadoran squads run by the CIA.

“Sounds like you might be stretching things,” Palumbo responded. “Superstitious Indians, death squads, poison…you’re talking almost thirty years back. That’s ancient history.”

“I don’t think either of us believe in coincidence.”

“You got me there,” said Palumbo, but he offered no further assistance.

“Phil, I’m asking you straight-out: Is this guy on the Agency payroll or is he freelancing out to someone else?”

“I can’t tell you. You’re talking about something that would be run out of Operations. That’s the sixth floor. Way above my pay grade. I don’t think the deputy director would take kindly to me butting in where I don’t belong.”

“I realize that,” said von Daniken. “But someone’s paying this man. Someone’s pointing him in the right direction. It seems to me that he knows more about what’s going on than you or me. I, for one, find that frightening. I thought that you could ask around. Perhaps…unofficially.”

“Unofficially?”

“Whatever you can find…”

“Frog poison, eh? Then we’re even?”

“All square,” said von Daniken with the kind of enthusiasm the Americans thought denoted honesty.

Palumbo chewed on this awhile, leaving von Daniken to listen to the sandpaper scrabble of wireless communications. “Alright then,” he said finally.

“Alright what?”

“I’ll be back at you,” said Palumbo without elaboration.

The line went dead.