The vision jolted her. Peter!
She held her position and kept her eyes on him. For several seconds she tried to weigh everything that had happened between him and her, and everything she had learned about “John Sun” and the events in Switzerland. What was he hanging around with her for? To guide her safely through to the recovery of the pietà or to cut her throat when it served his purposes. In Kiev, reluctantly, she had killed someone as well, and she prayed that God would someday have mercy on her. But was Peter any worse than she was, or vice versa.
Something told her that she would have to continue her present path, to keep giving Peter the benefit of her doubts. But was it an angel telling her or a demon? God or the Devil?
Peter turned. She caught a huge expression of relief on his face when he saw her. He made no acknowledgement but walked to her.
“Thank heaven!” she said.
“Yeah,” he said with a long sigh. “Me too!”
Then, impulsively, she stood. They embraced, then broke apart quickly. “Let’s go to the bar,” she finally said, gathering her laptop and other things. “It’s more private, but we can still keep an eye on the door.”
“That would be good,” he said.
“Follow me.”
“I’ve been looking all over for you,” he said. “I came to the hotel yesterday and you had checked out. I went to all our fall-back places. I sat for hours in that obnoxious Russian café. Nothing. You okay?” he asked.
“I’m okay. You?”
“Yes. I didn’t know whether to leave town or just ditch completely. I figured I’d give it a couple more days, at least till Tuesday. Tried to get McKinnon on the phone but it’s a weekend.”
“He should have picked up the phone anyway,” she said as they entered the bar.
Peter shook his head. “He’s got some girlfriends,” he said. “When he goes to visit them, he carries a different cell so his location can’t be traced. I don’t have that number.”
“You’ve got more problems than that,” she said. “You’ve got some you don’t even know about.”
He seemed to tense. “Uh oh,” he said.
They settled in at a table.
“Anyway, I was with Yuri Federov,” she said. “Spent the night at his place, but not the way that sounds.”
“You talk. I’ll listen,” he said.
“Fine bodyguard you are,” she said, relaxing slightly. “His people walked through the hotel walls and abducted me.”
“What?”
A waiter appeared. They ordered soft drinks and finger food. There were other Americans in the bar, so as a mild precaution, Alex switched to Spanish and spoke in low tones. She brought him up to date on the events of the last several hours. Then Peter, continuing in Spanish, ran though his own set. He had experienced no problems with the Swiss police, he said, but had been completely flummoxed when he had come to this hotel and there had been no record of her arrival or departure, or at least none they were willing to share. She sensed Federov’s hand in the mix on that detail too but didn’t explain.
When they were caught up, she shifted the topic of the conversation. “Do you know what we’re going to do now?” she asked.
He hunched his shoulders. “You tell me,” he said.
“We’re going to trade information,” she said.
“About what? Are we on the black bird again?”
“I think so. I’m going to tell you something for free,” she said. “And then I’m going to ask you a few questions. And since what I have to say is going to have considerable value to you, I expect you to give me straightforward answers in return. Shall we try that?”
“Nothing to lose,” he said.
“I have information that a certain ‘John Sun’ was in Zurich very recently, an emissary of your government. Except there is no John Sun. John Sun is a pseudonym for another agent of the government of China, one that will remain nameless right now.”
His eyes settled in on her. “Keep going,” he said.
She told him what she learned about John Sun without revealing her sources. “So I take it that it would come as a double surprise to you to learn first that John Sun’s fictitious identity has been blown. And second, that Interpol is looking for a Chinese agent traveling on a different passport who might match Sun’s description.”
A long pause, and, “It would, yes. And this would be a very good thing for me to know. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“I should plan accordingly,” he said.
“Yes, you should.” She paused. “I get the idea that somewhere, stashed away in various dead drops, car panels, and safety deposit boxes, you probably have a whole library of passports, diplomatic or otherwise. You could also pass for American, Canadian, or English if you worked at it, Peter. So why limit yourself to your native country?”
“I don’t. Very insightful, Alex.”
“You don’t mind if I call you ‘Peter,’ do you? It’s possibly your name.”
For the first time, a laugh. “It’s my name.” He thought for a moment. “You could even check my Columbia University records.”
“I already did,” she said. “Or at least I had my boss in Washington do it for me. Roar, Lion. Wasn’t Barack Obama there around the same time?”
“He was there several years earlier. Fortunately for both of us, we didn’t know each other.”
“That is a good break,” she said. “For both of you.”
“But what I don’t immediately understand,” he said slowly, “is how the Swiss police might have positively linked ‘Sun’ in Zurich to ‘Sun’ in Geneva.”
“I can only guess,” she said. “And my guess would be this: within their bureaus, this case has attained some importance. And similarly, if they had been more aggressive in retrieving the ATM surveillance photos in Geneva from Tissot’s neighborhood and shown them around the gendarmerie in Zurich where Sun retrieved that body, they might have gotten a match much faster. It’s a hypothesis, but it’s a sound one.”
“But all Asians look alike, right?” he asked facetiously.
“Maybe, but in your case that would work against you, not for you, wouldn’t it? You wouldn’t even want to be picked up to have to explain things, would you?”
“No. Of course not.”
“Are you, as Peter Chang, traveling on a diplomatic passport?”
A pause as he sensed the direction of this. “No,” he said.
“Then you could be detained, couldn’t you? Arrested, actually. And there’s even the fair chance that your arrangement with your government is such that they couldn’t admit who you are. Not for several years.”
“It could happen,” he said, after another pause, “if I were unlucky. Or careless.”
“Then if I were you, I would be very careful,” she said.
“Who else knows about this?” he asked.
“No one.”
“So,” he said, “not to put bad thoughts in the air, if anything happened suddenly to you…”
She laughed. “That would work out poorly for you too.”
“Why’s that?”
“Suppose you were picked up and questioned about the two murders in Geneva. Were your two peers, David and Charles, in Europe yet?”
“No.”
“The date of the murders was September seventh and eighth. I was alone that night, myself. In Barcelona. In my hotel room.”
He smiled.
“So who’s to say I wasn’t there, also?” he said.
She nodded. “And thank you for saving my life in Madrid the other night. What goes around comes around. Karma,” she said.
“Karma,” he agreed. “Now, what did you want to ask me?”
She unloaded. “Why did Lee Yuan want The Pietà of Malta?” she asked. “Why did he personally want it?”
“What makes you think he did?” Peter asked.
“I hate it when I ask a question and get another one in return,” she said. “But the other night you mentioned your personal connection to Lee Yuan. And you mentioned finishing his business for him. Well, if it were just a wealthy collector in China who got swindled, I don’t think you’d be here. So my guess is that Lee Yuan wanted the carving himself. It wasn’t delivered to him, his money was taken by criminals who were out to finance some activity somewhere else. But they didn’t bargain on who he was or the fury they would unleash by harming him.”