A Death in Geneva (22 page)

“We have good evidence, given the total absence of the attackers' fingerprints . . . anywhere, that her killers have experience in their business. Does anything I say diverge from what information you gentlemen have gathered?”

“Please go ahead, Mr. Minister.”

“Good. Now, as you will appreciate, we keep a number of individuals under continuing watch in our country. Matching their activities with events of May thirtieth produces a negative result . . . which is to say two things. First, we do not believe that any of those ‘in residence' either actively carried out the operation or assisted those who did. We would have been aware.

“Secondly, and flowing from the first, this points to the logical probability that the killers entered Switzerland for the specific purpose of committing this crime. If this is the case, it is still possible—possible—that they are within our borders, holed up until the situation cools, possibly preparing another crime. It is more likely, given the habits of such scum, that our killers have already left.” Grabner tilted back in the swivel, with some difficulty locked his fingers behind his head, and invited their reaction.

“Today, your people netted the three Italians, but they were heading north. What about last week's outbound border traffic?”

“Nothing”—Grabner's hands were still behind his head as he pushed the seat around in full circle—“nothing . . . and something.” The Swiss minister rose and took an armchair closer to his visitors. “A pregnant something, suggesting three possible clues to one of our killers. Number one, that the killer, not surprisingly, is male; number two, that this male is blonde, of fair complexion; and number three, that English is at least one of the languages he speaks.”

“One of your eyewitnesses?”

“No, not with the hoods they wore that night—no, another lifeless body. Last week, a security inspection at Cointrin led to a sedan
which had aroused the interest of a security dog. The vehicle, a rental, contained a dead body in the trunk,
no
papers,
no
passport,
no
identification, evidently locked away at least for the time the sedan had been at the airport—June second. The dead man's fingerprints did not produce results in Europe. They did in your United States. The sedan produced no fingerprints of value. It had received a professional's attention, a trait of interest given the timing of the airport discovery and the earlier absence of prints at your murder site.”

“Who was in the trunk?” The back of Sweetman's neck burned with anger. There had been no word of the airport murder either officially or in the press. Grabner was a polished performer. How the hell had it slipped by that little runt Fisker? Grabner, the bastard, must have sent off the prints for routine check, not bothering to tell Washington that they belonged to a dead man.

“The rental contained Mr. Henry Cranston, a young American in Europe for summer studies. The folder is in that stack; you are welcome to have a look. The sedan also contained the bullets which took Mr. Cranston's life, a little knocked around, but quite certainly fired from a Makarov 9mm.

“Now, to anticipate your next question, my colleagues, we inquired of the airlines as to any bookings made by Herr Cranston. We were quick to learn that on June second, just before, or more likely just after his death, a Mr. Cranston booked a one-way fare to Cairo on Trans-Global Air. We subsequently confirmed that there was no Cranston on that flight . . . and no one by that name on any flight anywhere since June second.

“Slim pickings, as you say, but, pickings, and that”—his hand again shoved against his mouth to stifle a belch—“is where we are tonight.”

“The same gun?”

“The same. We don't have it.”

Bromberger had been writing as Grabner spoke. “One, maybe more of the Burdette killers at the airport on June second . . . the bullets, clean cars . . . why kill Cranston?”

“He was hardly one of them; read the folder.”

“Blundered into their act . . . saw, heard something that threatened to blow the operation?”

“Possibly, Mr. Sweetman, but unlikely, given the pattern of his activities in Geneva, and given that it was not until the third day that
his murder took place. No, I would make the assumption that if Herr Cranston, given his personality, had had information relating to your ambassador, he would have reported it at the earliest moment.”

“You're suggesting he was killed for his papers?” Sweetman's words came quickly. “Christ, Mr. Minister, every terrorist on the Continent carries six goddamned passports. How the hell does that square?”

“I reserve my instincts for mushroom hunting, Mr. Sweetman.” Grabner had groaned upright and plodded toward the front door to show them out. “The single thread would indicate only what I have suggested. But, we will look forward to continuing our collaboration. You have my message of friendship to Ernest Lancaster.”

In the days that followed, the two agents combed through the testimony of each member of the U.S. Mission, from Pinkerslaw down. The late ambassador's maid, still shaken, took them through the residence and arranged interviews with the residence staff. She opened the ambassador's personal correspondence file to them, having first removed a very few letters which she had judged irrelevant to the investigation and not suited for others' eyes. This she had done in violation of the strict instructions sent to the mission from Washington that all was to remain untouched. She would be the judge of that. Mrs. Burdette would have expected no less.

As the testimony mounted, it was fed back across the Atlantic via the Shattered Flag channel. The pieces offered nothing. At the same time, a single word might hold the key. Fisker was the backstop, as good as automated, sifting, cataloguing, energizing the resources of the entire U.S. community, and keeping his own flow of traffic on the return circuit to Geneva.

With Howard Weems, the mission security officer, they drove and redrove the murder route. An entire day was devoted to the death car, to reviewing the driver's standing instructions, the communications gear, the emergency procedures.

Weems, a retired San Francisco policeman, had made diplomatic security his second career. On Friday June 17, Sweetman and Bromberger returned to his office buried, typical of the trade, deep inside the handsome U.S. Mission. The white paint of the walls was broken by three displays: one, a cluster of full-color photographs, the president, the secretary of state and the late ambassador. Another cluster
included a vertical row of framed citations and police awards dating back thirty years, newer meritorious citations from the Department of State, a browning front page of the
San Francisco Chronicle
with a head and shoulders photo of Weems, a photo of the lobby of the hotel, and a diagram of the hotel reception area with a dotted line running from the switchboard and vault to two
X
s where the robbers had fallen when Weems had foiled their attempted holdup. This testimony to heroism inscribed to the ages hung beside a glass partition in the office wall, the third, living display.

The senior sergeant of the watch of the mission's Marine detail sat with his back to them at a desk on the other side of the glass, a smaller office lined with alarm panels, communications and closed-circuit TV monitors. The faint unintelligible crackle of two-way communications penetrated the glass.

“Pardon, sir!” A thin, young marine, close-cropped in crisp uniform, stood at attention at the entrance to Weems's office. “Secure conference room secured, sir!”

Weems checked the digital clock suspended from the ceiling. “1604, right.” He beckoned the marine forward and took his clipboard to initial the security form.

“Thank you, sir!” The corporal turned smartly and returned to his post.

Weems spoke with assurance to the two new agents from Washington, polite, unawed by their closely held blue-ribbon credentials, confident of his own, and fully satisfied with the way he was standing up to the successive waves of investigation. Their predicted line of initial questions rained down on him. In his responses, he held to the theme he had developed with increasing polish.

“Gentleman, I think I might be most useful to you, given the demands I've already taken of your valuable time, if I were to recap a few, key points. Protection of lives, security, counterterrorism are my business, our business.” No visible reaction from either of them; he continued. “Every diplomatic post in which it has been my honor to serve has been awarded a 4.0 rating, 4.0, two continents. That's the way it has to be and that's the way I'll keep it as long as I'm on the job. Every member of this mission's staff has been trained by me, surveillance, travel, precautionary commuting techniques, vehicle sabotage checks, riot defense, explosives defense, protection and destruction of classified documents, use of tear gas and defense against same,
emergency communications, evasive driving, evacuation procedures, escape and hostage situations. When they're trained by me, they're trained from
A
to
Z
! No exceptions; they must meet my standards.”

“This included Ambassador Burdette?” Bromberger's question sounded matter-of-fact.

“Of course! The ambassador, God rest her soul, had just arrived. You know that. We covered the basic brief on residence security her first day here, and mission security was already on her schedule; Admin can give you that. The ambassador was a quick study.” His voice dropped, his eyes on the cluster of awards. “Let me tell you something, gentlemen. We brief. We train. We upgrade security. We anticipate, stay wired in through the station chief, local security forces, message traffic from Washington—threat assessments, part of the business, vital. We develop our own threat list, the best working document when you come right down to it. We do more than the regs call for. But, there's a limit beyond which
no
body can go, Mr. Bromberger, Mr. Sweetman, and that limit is resources, money!”

Still no nods of understanding. “You take today's modern point-target weapon, a submachine gun which can fire thirty high-velocity rounds in two seconds, and you get what you'd expect when it cuts into a partially armored limo. My case is in the files, gentlemen, and I hold the copies. I've been telling Washington to spend the pocket money involved—peanuts, that's all it is when you're protecting the head of the U.S.A. presence. Spend that money to upgrade where it's really needed—provide us with decent, first-generation rolling stock. I've gotten nowhere.

“We have two limos here, neither one worth a damn, one in the shop for new shocks the night the ambassador died. I don't have to tell you; Washington deals in half measures. Forgive me, gentlemen, if I'm stepping on some toes. They take the floor stock, put in just enough armor to ruin the suspension. The windows, laminates, fused to the showroom glass, weak, added on, not constructed as part of an organic defense. It's OK against a peashooter, but tissue paper against the assault that hit her! Washington has got to get through its head that there aren't any high-risk or low-risk posts anymore. They're all vulnerable. Any time an ambassador moves; you need real armor; you need a chase car . . . that's more people and more money!

“You need dedication, gentlemen; you've got it. You need a security program; you've got it. You need security equipment; you're not halfway
there. You need the decision by Washington to give higher priority to the threat, to spotting the terrorist before he can strike. The security officer can't do it alone even if he goes twenty-four hours a day, which I've done plenty of times. I thought penetration was the name of the game. Talk about jungles. We need our people on the inside. This whole continent would sell its soul for what either of you've got in your wallet right now. Spend the bucks; develop the agents. We're—”

“Weems!”

“Yes sir, Mr. Sweetman?” Weems broke off, his response the immediate, rote deference that so often stimulated respect in his visitors.

“Howard, you make some good points, but save them for your inspector general. I keep rerunning the communications, the sequence of transmissions, the comm during that last drive. Either I haven't been asking the right questions, or I'm still missing something. What do you think, Pierce?”

“Go through it again, word by word.”

“You were in your car, Weems, when the driver was enroute to the hotel with the ambassador?”

“Right, Mr. Sweetman. I had informed the DCM, Mr. Pinkerslaw, that I would be at the mission command post, even though officially it was a holiday, until we were satisfied that the evening was on track. He had gone out to the ambassador's residence. It was after 8:30 P.M., 2030, the time's in the log.”