"I was to get all of the credit for unmasking Blake's assassin program and destroying it. As far as John Sinclair was concerned, he'd simply escaped one more time, and his whereabouts were unknown. However, I was now to act as a kind of super-broker between unnamed-and fictitious-members of Blake's family and various intelligence agencies, including the CIA, around the world. Like I told you in the car, they took care of all the forged documents and legal work that had to be done in order to transfer everything that Blake owned over to Jan. In exchange, they would have access to all of Blake's files in order to remove any items of information they might be uncomfortable with; only minor items of an embarrassing nature would be kept by Miss Rawlings, as a gesture of good faith."
"But Sinclair had copies of everything."
"Sure, but only Jan and I knew that. It made me the guarantor, the watchdog, of the bargain; they got what they wanted, and Jan's inheritance was never to be successfully contested by anyone, anywhere, at any time. And she was to be completely left alone. Needless to say, everyone went for it; as a matter of fact, all of the other parties were ecstatic. They were really anxious to clean out those files."
Garth cocked his head to one side, narrowed his eyelids slightly as he studied Insolers. "And you never mentioned Sinclair to any of these people?"
Insolers laughed. "Are you kidding me? Talk about a deal-breaker! Any one of the parties involved would have bombed the place before they turned it over to anyone at the request of John Sinclair. No. They got what they wanted, and this castle is a free zone as far as all those agencies are concerned. They're not interested in Jan, or the money. That attitude would change very rapidly, to say the least, if they even suspected that this was John Sinclair's principal place of residence. But they don't suspect it- yet. I have to assume that they monitor what Jan does with her power and money, but she's astute; she's done nothing to threaten them, and she's a prime mover behind all sorts of good causes. She is what Cornucopia only pretended to be."
Harper turned to the woman sitting beside her. "How he must love you, Jan," she said quietly.
"And Jan him," Veil said thoughtfully. "Sometimes it takes as much love and courage to accept a great gift as it does to give it."
Jan's only response was to lower her eyes. Harper glanced at me sharply, and I felt my face grow warm. I looked away.
"Obviously," Veil continued, looking at Insolers, then at Jan, "the deal has held up for years. Jan, I have to tell you that Insolers came about as close to dying as a man can get in an effort to try to stop us from coming here. He seems to be a man of his word."
"Which brings us," I said, turning my attention to the CIA operative, "to the question of just why Mr. Insolers is in Switzerland in the first place."
Jan made an impatient gesture with her hand. "It was always clearly understood that Duane had the right to continue hunting Chant. It's his job." She paused to fix her gaze on the rodent-faced man, and when she continued, there was more than a hint of anger in her voice. "But not here; not in our home. Like you said, Duane, it was also clearly understood that this castle is a free zone. You had no right to lead people here, Duane. You have no right to be here yourself."
"I didn't come here to hunt him, Jan," Insolers said evenly. "I came to warn him."
Jan frowned uncertainly, shook her head. "Warn him?"
"I don't have any interest in hunting or killing Chant, Jan, even if it is supposed to be part of my job. You may not know it, but he's been feeding me bits of information over the years, just as he did with Bo Wahlstrom and others. Those bits have proved invaluable, and I might even daresay that the good guys have won a couple of battles because of information he's provided. On paper, if you will, we're enemies, but we're also bound together by the agreement we made. That's all well and good, but the fact of the matter is that I owe the man my life and more, and I know it. Just keeping my part of the bargain isn't enough. Pardon me if I sound less cynical than you've come to expect, Jan, but I came to Switzerland to pay off my debt. I don't want him killed, and I don't want him captured. So I came to warn him."
Jan Rawlings looked decidedly unconvinced. "Of what, Duane?"
"It's an assassin, Jan. The CIA has an assassin in place."
The tall woman's response was to smile thinly, set down her teacup. "Duane, I can't believe you're serious. During the past two decades, when has there ever been a time when Chant wasn't being hunted by assassins sent by a dozen different governments, or hit men from criminal organizations like Blake's? Your own employer has an open contract out on him."
"This time it's different," Insolers said in a low, tense voice. "This assassin is different."
Jan looked up at him. "How different?"
"I'm not sure. I don't even know if it's a man or a woman. I do know that I've never seen the top people in the company so confident about their chances of finally bringing him down. They know something. It may be a very special assassin with certain information about Chant, but from hints that have been dropped I'm afraid it's someone in the inner circle, someone he trusts, and may even go to for help-or someone who knows how to reach him. I think the agency is forcing, or paying, a friend to betray him."
Jan stiffened and turned her face away. "I don't believe it, Duane. Chant has never been wrong about the people with whom he's chosen to share his secrets. In more than twenty years, you're the first person who's ever put him at risk."
"I didn't come here to betray Chant, Jan. I came to help him."
I asked, "Why didn't you just call Jan and deliver your message, Insolers? She'd have relayed your warning, and you'd have accomplished your goal."
"Because that would have posed an unacceptable risk. If I'm right about this assassin being an insider, it could mean the person is a servant. I know Jan and Chant have dozens of people working for them, at different residences around the world. I couldn't take a chance that her telephone might be bugged."
"Then you should have written her a letter."
"Same answer; her mail is possibly being monitored, intercepted. And I didn't want to come here to see her; I'm watched, just as I watch other people. I felt I had to contact him in the field because Sinclair is definitely up to something. In the past, after an operation like the scam he pulled on Neuberger, he'd simply have disappeared-quietly come back here, or gone off with Jan to one of their other homes. But he's still out there, and he's leaving tracks all over the place, playing cat and mouse with Interpol and the Swiss authorities, not to mention all the people who want to kill him."
I shook my head. "What kind of tracks?"
"American spy satellites can not only hear a pin drop, Frederickson, they can usually see it-if they're aimed in the right place. Sinclair knows where they're aimed. He's been making telephone calls he knows will be heard, allowing blind mail drops he's used in his business for years to be exposed just so people will think he's trapped and panicking. He's neither. He's doing it on purpose. I think he may be the one doing the trapping, inviting-or sucking in-his enemies, or one particular enemy, for a showdown." He paused, looked at the brown-eyed woman. "Am I right, Jan? Is that what he's doing?"
Jan, now obviously troubled, slowly shook her head. "I don't know. He hasn't been in touch since this all started."
"Can you get in touch with him?"
The woman didn't reply.
"I considered it an unacceptable risk to try to contact you in any way, Jan," Insolers continued. "I did everything I could to keep these people away. I've been trying the best I could to contact him in the field; I was hoping that if I sent out enough signals, he might contact me, and I could deliver my warning."