"You don't get it, do you? One week I'm supposed to make sure nothing happens. The next week I receive instructions to make progress. I keep two files-one for angry messages asking me what the hell do I think I'm doing, the other for angry messages asking me why the hell I'm not doing more."
The ash from his cigar fell onto his trousers. As he leaned to brush it off, a shot rang out. The cushion on the back of his chair exploded. In an instant, practically before the sound died away, Jeno reached across the table, pushed the delegation leader down, shouted at me to take cover, and screamed some commands into a small radio that he pulled from his pocket-all a split second before he yanked a pistol from a holster under his jacket. Then it was over, almost as if nothing had happened, except that Jeno was breathing hard. I wasn't breathing. I wasn't scared or rattled, just amazed. I had yet to see cows with cowbells walking up a dainty Swiss hillside. The only travel calendars I could bring back home with good conscience had men with broken necks and people under a table by the lake. I started to get up. Jeno grabbed my arm and pushed me down. "Nobody moves," he said, "until I say it's okay."
"Sure, I like it under tables with black bags." I shook off his hand. "But if my pal here gets shot while I'm under a table, any table, I'll never live it down in the Ministry." I climbed to my feet and looked around. What was left of the cushion lay on the ground. It must have been hit by a tank round, judging by the hole in it. "I guess cigar smoking isn't bad for your health, after all," I said to the delegation leader.
"You're not helping things, standing there like that, Inspector," he said, looking up at me.
"You want me to go find the cannon that did that?" I pointed to the cushion.
Jeno put the earphone in his ear and listened for a moment. "Don't bother. We already have it." He put the pistol back in its holster; his eyebrows did a skeptical promenade. "That's why there wasn't a second shot."
"What took you so long to get him?"
Jeno smiled at me. He seemed genuinely amused. "I guess it's hard to be a sniper like that."
"Like what?"
"You know, with only three fingers."
That made me sit down. "Where is he?"
"The shooter? Under a tree. Must have fallen. He broke his neck."
The delegation leader picked up his cigar. "Anyone have a light?"
8
"Here are your tickets. Out of politeness, I should wish you a pleasant flight, Inspector, but really I cannot help hoping you hit rough air all of the way home, so bad the stewardesses cannot get up to serve drinks. So bad that your teeth rattle and your stomach rolls. You get the picture. I've never been in anything like the mess we have right now. This is Switzerland, for heaven's sake! Keeping it quiet is going to be a full-time job. I should have followed my first instinct and booted you out immediately. Maybe it was that green hat. It was a distraction, really."
"Perhaps," I said, "we'll meet again under better circumstances."
"Not in this lifetime, God willing."
"You're not the one who has to explain two dead countrymen to thick-necked men with dour expressions as soon as the plane lands. They probably won't even let me claim my suitcase before they start throwing questions at me. I hope that's all they throw. Oh, and did I mention, the head of my delegation-a senior diplomat, I might add-was nearly assassinated on the shores of your peaceful lake?"
"At least I'm not the only one whose career will suffer. Did you know that even the fact that your negotiations with the Americans fell apart is being pinned on me."
"Career?" I laughed. "If that's your only worry, count yourself lucky. I'm going to have to write a long and very convincing report about what happened to Sohn, which will be doubly difficult because I have no idea what the truth is. And that means I can't even concoct a decent story. Sohn had enemies at home, but he had friends as well. And his friends will start from the assumption that it's all my fault."
"Well, at least you can report the man with the strange hand died doing his job."
"True, but I never took him for an assassin."
"Assassin? What do you mean?"
"He tried to kill the delegation leader. That shot would have blown his head off if he hadn't dropped cigar ash on his pants at just that moment."
M. Beret looked puzzled. "Is that what you think?"
"Of course it's what I think. I was there, wasn't I? I saw it. We were both under the table."
"You were at the lake. How could you see what was going on five hundred meters away?"
"Who do you think the target was?" My blood froze.
"Yes." M. Beret spoke slowly. "It was you."
"He was trying to shoot me?"
"No, he didn't fire the shot. He disrupted it. The bullet was aimed at you. I thought you were just showing sangfroid."
"Pardon me?"
"Unflappable. Cold blood, literally, but that may not be the best translation under the circumstances. You knew, of course, that his job was to protect you." He watched my face. "You knew that, yes? Someone in your capital was trying to disrupt the talks, completely blow them up. The best way to accomplish that, they figured, was the death of a delegation member. They couldn't kill an American; that would get them in a lot of trouble. But murdering someone on your side… well, it wouldn't be the first time, eh? Apparently, the most expendable one was you. I expect that's why Sohn came out here. He had discovered elements of the plot. He needed to warn you."
Warn me? He took his sweet time about it, if that was his intent. So much time he never got around to it, someone made sure of that. "M. Beret, there's no way you could possibly know any of what you just told me. I appreciate your sense of drama, but it is pure fantasy, and if you paid for such reporting, you really should demand your money back from the source. Out of curiosity, what is the rest of the fable? Who was in the tree, trying to kill me?"
"I believe they are about to close your gate, Inspector. Au revoir."
"Just tell me this, what happened to him, the Man with Three Fingers? Jeno said he was dead."
M. Beret paused for a fraction longer than he should have. "We have an unidentified Mexican in the morgue, if that's what you mean. Now hurry, please. If you miss your plane I will be inconsolable."
"I will miss you, too." I kissed him on both cheeks, which I figured was a photo he might like for the files.
PART V
Chapter One
"He's dead." I was in Pak's office, squinting against the sun that bounced off the windows of the Operations Building across the way. The gingkoes in the courtyard were useless, weeks away from getting leaves that could soften the light. Worst of all, three months into the New Year, their branches had all the charm of dinosaur limbs. March is bad enough, my grandfather would say, without having to look at gingko trees.
"Really?" Shock registered in Pak's eyes. "What happened?" He wasn't feigning ignorance. I could see that he really didn't know, which meant the news hadn't gotten back here yet. Pak might be only a chief inspector, but no one had more lines out than he did. If Sohn's death had been reported, no matter in what channel, Pak would have known. Even if the news were closely held deep in the Center, Pak would find it.
"The Swiss are classifying it as an accident."
"By which I take it, you don't think so."
"I think he was murdered. That's what they suspect, too, only it would cause them too much trouble to say so."
"And why would you think this was murder?"
"For one thing, his neck was broken. That doesn't just happen. You can fall through a gallows' trapdoor, or off a horse, or out of a car, or down the stairs, but generally it isn't easy to break your neck all by yourself. If he fell, there would have been bruises. He didn't have any. None."