Marti hung up. In less than twelve hours, he would have his proof.
59
Jonathan drove until he was exhausted. He pulled off the highway in Rapperswil at the south end of the Lake of Zurich and maneuvered through the town and into the hills beyond. When he hadn’t seen a home or the light of another car for ten minutes, he pulled to the side of the road and killed the engine. Davos was another hundred kilometers ahead.
Using the emergency flashlight clipped to the interior wall of the glove compartment, he pored over the newspapers he’d bought. He knew little about the World Economic Forum other than what he’d glimpsed on the television news.
The WEF was an annual conference that brought together approximately one thousand political and business leaders from around the globe to share information about a subject deemed crucial to the world’s welfare. This year’s topic was the proliferation of nuclear weapons. An article stated that “eighteen heads of state, two hundred cabinet-level ministers, and forty-seven of the Fortune 100 CEOs” will be in attendance. This year’s guests included two former U.S. presidents, the British prime minister, the sultan of Brunei, the king of Jordan, and the chairmen of Shell Oil, Intel, and Deutsche Bank, to name a few.
An article in the Financial Times discussed security for the event. Some three thousand soldiers would assist a battery of two hundred local police officers in guarding the World Economic Forum. No one was permitted entry without prior vetting. There were photos of large fences cutting through snow-covered fields, imposing floodlights, armed sentries with German shepherds. Based on the photographs, Davos looked more like a concentration camp than a ski resort.
In the Tages-Anzeiger, he found a boxed feature discussing a Swiss firm that manufactured the identification card readers utilized by the law enforcement authorities to govern access to the event. The company’s chief executive boasted that no one could get past his card readers. He noted that there were three levels of security. The green zone was free to residents and visitors, who nonetheless had to present a form of identification at one of three security checkpoints before being issued an official Forum identification that they must wear around their necks at all times. The yellow zone encompassed that part of the town nearer the Kongresshaus where the Forum would actually take place, as well as common areas in proximity to hotels putting up the event’s VIPs. To gain access to the yellow zone required an official invitation to the event and prior vetting by the Swiss Federal Police.
The red zone included the Kongresshaus, where all speeches were delivered and breakout sessions held, as well as the Hotel Belvedere, where many of the VIPs boarded. Identification badges permitting visitors access to these areas carried not only photographs but also memory chips loaded with pertinent information about the individual. Those individuals granted access to the red zone received their own personalized card readers. These readers scanned a ten-meter-square footprint around them to pick up signals from their fellow attendees, flashing that person’s name, photograph, and bio on the reader’s display. While no one would fail to recognize Bill Gates or Tony Blair, the oil minister of Saudi Arabia was a different story.
Jonathan dumped everything from the glove compartment onto the seat next to him. He reasoned that if Emma were to deliver the car to P.J. in Davos, she had to have been given an ID allowing her into the red zone. He sorted through the automobile’s user’s guide, a service book, and customs papers, then leaned over and ran a hand over the glove compartment’s surface. Nothing there.
He sat back, thinking. If the ID wasn’t in the bags Blitz sent to Landquart, it had to be in the car. But where? The user’s manual explained that armor wasn’t the vehicle’s only unique feature. The car also boasted run-flat tires, antiskid brakes, and automated parking.
He found what he was looking for listed under “Custom Specifications”: a strongbox hidden beneath the rear passenger seat. He got out of the car and opened the rear door. Leaning into the cabin, he muscled a tab in the center of the banquette. The seat rose. In the space beneath it was a dull black steel box. He popped the catch. A manila envelope lay inside with the name “Eva Kruger” typed on it. He ripped it open. A plastic identification card strung with a cloth lanyard fell into his hand. The ID was issued by the World Economic Forum and bore the same photo that adorned her driver’s license. There was more: a French passport with Parvez Jinn’s photograph inside and a cell phone.
A passport to go with the one hundred thousand Swiss francs and the armored Mercedes sedan. All, Jonathan surmised, in return for “Gold” to be provided by Parvez Jinn, Minister of Technology of the Fundamentalist Islamic Republic of Iran.
He picked up the phone. It was one of the cheapest models. He turned it on and saw that it had been charged with fifty Swiss francs. Why leave Emma a phone unless she had to call someone…someone who only wanted to be called on a certain number. Parvez Jinn? He checked the directory, but found no numbers listed. He wondered if Jinn was supposed to call her? That made more sense. The minister of technology would have to find a suitable moment when he was free of his guards.
Jonathan began to gain a sense of what was taking place. He didn’t fathom all of it, just the bare bones. Shipments in exchange for information. “Gold,” they called it. There was only one type of product that he imagined the Iranians desired. Products the Western world had forbade them.
Heart pounding, he sat up straighter. He logged on to the Intelink website and began reviewing the shipping lists. Centrifuges, navigation units, vacuum tubes. He worked backward through the months: December, November, October. Carbon extruders. Maraging steel. Coolant systems. And further back still. September, August. Ring magnets. Heat exchangers. He had no doubt but that the items were falsely labeled. It made no difference whether or not he knew their exact functions. He knew their purpose and that was enough.
Suddenly, he was overcome with a need to be free of the car. Stumbling outside, he set off up the road. His stride lengthened and he began to jog up the incline, pushing himself, reveling in the burn in his legs, the pounding of his heart, the scuff of his breath.
His mind took flight and he imagined himself in the mountains, deep in the wilderness, at the moment a few days out on an expedition when it finally hit that, at least for now-for a sharp, glinting moment-you’d left everything behind: your past, your present, your future. It was a new world, separate from everything that had come before, with no ties to bind you and no expectations to draw you forward. You were just a solitary man, alone with rocks and trees and fast-running streams. One beating heart surrounded by a world that had been there long before mankind had begun to despoil it. For that moment, you were boldly and gloriously alive.
After ten minutes, he reached the crest of the hill. A cairn had been erected on the summit. He circled the stones, his lungs burning, his eyes stinging from the cold. To the north the long, curving shadow of the Lake of Zurich fell away like a scythe bordered by sparkling jewels. To the south the valley was long and dark, lit at varying distances by clusters of light. Hardly a kilometer away, the foothills of the Alps pushed against the plain, erupting from the flat, fertile land as towering granite escarpments that rose in vertical plains a thousand meters or more, capped by jagged summits.
Why, Emma? he demanded silently. How could she send these materials to the most dangerous country in the world? It’s to make bombs. And not just any bombs. The bomb.
After a while, he headed down the hill. In ten minutes, he regained the Mercedes. He climbed inside and turned on the heat. One question stayed with him above all.