The Jungfrau Watch

Prologue

October 1978

On the Hills of Bellosguardo, Switzerland

With a notebook in one hand and binoculars hanging from his neck, Vladimir Karpiski followed a trail down a slight decline, counting his steps. From time to time he glanced over the fence that surrounded a nearby mansion. When he reached the bottom of the hill he took a pen out of his coat pocket, and wrote down the distance he had mentally calculated—one thousand feet. The trail ran parallel to the path which, starting at the mansion’s doorsteps, led to the entry gate. The municipal road skirted the front of the property, then swirled to the left and cut through the woods.

Karpiski, a proud member of the political group known as the Red Brigades, needed to monitor the movements around the house without raising suspicion. He walked under a copse of chestnut trees and took off his hat, then sat down and opened a manual on bird-watching. The afternoon sun was still high and a breeze whispered among the leaves. He focused his binoculars on the one-storey house in front of him. In several places the gray stucco had crumbled, exposing the red bricks, now discolored. Bushes and shrubs grew wild around the small construction and climbing ivy had invaded the eaves. Its appearance confirmed the information his two comrades had given him, that the building was unoccupied. He panned toward the mansion. He needed to gather information on the people inside it: how many were there? What kind of cars did they drive? How often did they leave the premises? From time to time he made notes directly on the bird manual. Slowly the sun finished its downward arc and disappeared, leaving only suffused light. The breeze picked up and chestnuts began to fall around him, many still inside their bristly brown husks. Karpiski decided to call it a day and put his binoculars inside their case. He filled his hat with the nuts on the ground, rose and moseyed on down the valley. He’d hidden his pickup truck in the woods a quarter mile away.

Tomorrow morning his two young comrades would continue the surveillance. Karpiski had two concerns. First, his two men were still in training. He only hoped that their eagerness for action and blind obedience would make up for their lack of experience. The second concern was more serious. Kidnapping in Switzerland was unheard of. The police were efficient, the locals were supportive of one another and, worst of all, people were nosy. Though the place nestled only thirty miles from the Italian border, he wasn’t sure he could make a run for it. And then, that incredible new rule—at all costs he was to avoid killing and other forms of violence! He had to kidnap a woman for ransom—it was important that she be treated well and released unharmed. The Red Brigades had recently established new, higher standards. They wanted to be considered honorable business persons who didn’t harm people, just extracted money from the rich to carry out the much-needed revolution that would bring justice to all mankind. Karpiski shook his head. He had many doubts that the new system would work.

He looked at the photograph of the would-be victim, a young woman with an auburn shag and bright green eyes. He wouldn’t have any problem identifying her.

Now it was time to make some plans.

***

Reeve Antonio Sarpa rearranged his desk. He set the pen-and-pencil holder to his left and stretched the phone cord to bring the phone to his right. A daily planner lay open in front of him, only one sentence written in it: Check on the Schreiber sisters. He couldn’t decide whether to go see them or just call them.

Helga and Rosmund Schreiber lived in what had been the gamekeeper’s house, a small building near the Erdeli estate. They had come to Bellosguardo twenty years before, after Helga, the older sister, had a car accident and was confined to a wheelchair. The pies Helga baked were the best around, and the baby outfits and shawls she knitted were sold in the fanciest shops of Lugano and Zürich. Rosmund, the younger of the two sisters at eighty-two, was always on the go. Weather permitting, she walked to the center of Bellosguardo every morning. She first visited the old church, where she faithfully recited a rosary. Then she shopped a little, mainly for groceries, and went to sit at the only café in town, waiting for the newspaper—The Ticino Express—to arrive. The time she spent at the café was her social outing. She talked to the owner and the occasional customer. There weren’t many though, since Bellosguardo boasted only 723 people.

Around eleven o’clock, Rosmund headed back home, a good half-mile away, her big bag hanging from her shoulder. But yesterday, as two days before, she had stopped in his office. Antonio Sarpa was reeve, fire marshal and chief of police all in one. He seldom had to exercise any of his duties. Rosmund had been excited as she talked of a young man—tall, blond and handsome—wandering in the woods. Reeve Sarpa had checked around; nobody had seen a tourist in or out of town. He drummed his fingers on the old wooden desk, pondering on the Schreiber sisters—too old to be living by themselves in an isolated spot up in the hills. Maybe they should move to a different place? For the time being, he should pay them a visit.

***

October 1978

Bonn, Germany

Johannes Volpieren put the phone back in its cradle and glanced out of his office window, admiring the boats cruising on the Rhine. He rubbed his hands together: things were going well. Karpiski had told him the kidnapping was set for tomorrow, and Karpiski’s credentials as a believer in the common cause were as good as his own. The kidnapping of the Erdeli woman would bring in about half a million dollars, but that was not all: he also had a personal stake in the abduction. The time she spent in captivity would surely convince the wild heiress that it was time to appreciate the comfort of a secure, married life in his company.

When he had asked her to marry him, she said she liked him but was too young to tie the knot. Of course she liked him: he had great looks and money! He needed that marriage to get close to her father, the renowned Swiss banker, Wolfang Erdeli, and several of his wealthy friends. The marriage would provide him with an impeccable cover.

If Ms. Erdeli had not been so obsessed with being independent, he would have spared her the discomfort of being kidnapped and held prisoner. But she was one of those dangerous women who wanted to think for herself. A lesson was in order.

PART 1

One

March 2003

Vermeil, Ontario

Alesh Stefanich heard the garage door open followed by the noise of a car engine: his wife was leaving for work. Only seconds later the door of the matrimonial bedroom squeaked and his twin four-year-old boys, Fred and Dan, climbed into his bed, one on each side. They fell asleep right away, their heads in the crooks of his arms. Their morning visit, punctually occurring every time Mom left early, was a little secret the three of them shared. Nobody talked about it anywhere, anytime.

Alesh Stefanich didn’t fall asleep. He lay in bed, careful not to move, and thought of the interview ahead of him. It was going to be difficult to show he had all the knowledge required to be hired while avoiding questions about his former job and employer.

Fred stirred, then emitted a light cry followed by a deep sigh, as if he was caught in a nightmare. Alesh stroked him gently as the child moved to lie on his chest.

He desperately wanted to have a successful interview, and get the job, because his children should grow to be proud of him.

***

Malcolm Clark, the head of the investigative agency Invicta, was perplexed. Alesh Stefanich was the man he needed to break into the criminal ring known as The Rampant Lion. Stefanich was articulate, attentive and spoke several languages. And although the information in his possession showed that The RampantLion had a strong hold in Vermeil, its tentacles were thought to span from Europe to Asia. Alesh Stefanich had all the qualifications he was looking for, including an appreciation for modern technologies. What worried Malcolm was why Alesh Stefanich was still for hire.

He nervously flipped a pencil between his fingers, as he did every time he had to make a decision he was not comfortable with. He sighed, knowing he couldn’t wait any longer. From the Eastern countries he had received several papers that needed to be translated, and, most urgently of all, a trap had to be set. A phony lab established to simulate the manufacturing of domestic appliances powered by Proton-Exchange-Membrane cells, PEMs for short, would attract almost anybody interested in stealing original designs or prototypes. Those fuel cells, based on the interaction between hydrogen and oxygen, had been much advertised in the media: they were an innovative, clean source of energy, they claimed, and their size, now of a lap-top battery, was supposed to decrease considerably in the near future. Alesh Stefanich is definitely my man, Malcolm Clark thought. Stefanich could give the lab the necessary credibility, and make the so much needed breakthrough. Another point in his favor was that he was married to Lorraine, a lawyer Malcolm had come to know and appreciate in the last couple of years.

He glanced at the agenda lying on his desk. Before seeing Stefanich, however, he should meet with his new client, Bernard Corvin, and soon after have a chat with Ludmille Bremin, to see if the snooping she had been carrying on at the Endless Trail had finally given any results.

It was going to be a long day.

***

Johannes Volpieren was thrilled. He had been invited to the Mayor’s spring reception—the major social event of the city of Vermeil. He would have a chance to meet with influential members of the community as well as celebrities. New contacts were extremely important for his business.

Volpieren set the invitation upright in the middle of the coffee table, as to mark a milestone in his career. Life hadn’t been easy. It had taken him more than ten years to recover from the collapse of the Soviet Union and the consequent lack of support. He had set up his business in Canada, a country where people have the utmost respect for privacy. They never questioned the origin of his fortune, the reason he had immigrated, or his credentials as an honorable business man. Step by step he had contacted most of those who had worked for him and established an organization responding to the demands of the current market. Different groups in several countries turned to him to obtain designs without paying the patent fees. Once he received the order and half the payoff, Volpieren penetrated the targeted firm and corrupted or blackmailed the people in charge. His most powerful weapon was the private information he had collected on high-profile executives who might otherwise deny him a favor. In a short time, industrial espionage had become his specialty.

Now that he had gained a respectable position, he would think about how to get at the woman who had brutally rejected him. She had been hiding from him, but he would find her. Only revenge would appease his long-repressed anger.

Two

Vermeil, Ontario

It was a big responsibility, but Malcolm Clark loved challenge. From now on Invicta was in charge of security for TechnoArt & Décor, a company that produced objects of various kinds—from custom jewelry to fancy décor items. The owner, Bernard Corvin, employed only thirty employees, but the company was expanding rapidly. Malcolm would have preferred Bernard Corvin had waited a few months to move his business to Vermeil, since many companies in town had been plagued with industrial espionage. In the last year alone there had been dozens of incidents involving engineering drawings being copied and of prototypes being stolen and illegally reproduced abroad.

Five companies had joined forces and hired the services of Invicta, determined to put a stop to those criminal activities. Information pouring in from other parts of the world pointed at a secret organization whose members had a rampant lion tattooed on their chest. That’s why the organization had been quickly nicknamed The Rampant Lion. The five victimized companies, which didn’t want to advertise their problems, had approached Malcolm Clark and offered him three million dollars to find the perpetrators and bring them to justice. It would be up to Malcolm to convince other industrialists to join in the effort. Malcolm had proposed the creation of a fake laboratory that would attract the attention of criminals. Today he was going to meet with Bernard Corvin first, and then with Alesh Stefanich.

A knock at the door told Malcolm that Bernard Corvin had arrived. He briskly stood up to greet his client. With surprise he saw that a tall, blond, older woman accompanied him.

Glad to meet you in person, Bernard said, as he shook hands with Malcolm, then indicated the woman who was with him. Ms. Kimberly Vance, my new associate. He turned to Kimberly. I’ve placed my business in Malcolm’s hands. Then he looked back at Malcolm. Kimberly wants to be my silent partner. Bernard laughed. I told her she didn’t have to speak if she didn’t feel like, but I thought it was only fair that you two meet. Kimberly has to leave pretty soon, but the three of us will have other occasions to spend time together.

Kimberly gave Malcolm’s hand a firm shake. Pleased to meet you, Malcolm. I told Bernard I was too old to be an active partner. Investing in Bernard’s company seemed good business. That’s all the interest I had in his company. She smiled at him. But I’ll be seeing you at TechnoArt & Décor, since Bernard insisted on giving me an office.

The yellow blouse underneath Kimberly’s navy suit enhanced the shade of her light blond hair. Her fine facial features gave her a frail look. She wore flat shoes; she was tall, about six feet, and her erect posture made her look even taller.

Bernard appraised Malcolm’s office. Nice place you have here, Malcolm. I like old furniture—it creates a warm ambience.

Try one of the armchairs. His voice raised an octave. The back is straight, the seat is firm and the velvet makes the armrests soft to the touch. He winked at his guests. That what the saleswoman told me when she convinced me to renew my sitting area. He turned toward Kimberly. Time for a coffee?

Just a little one. Black, please.

As Malcolm presented them each with a mug, he tried to guess Kimberly’s age. Sixty, he thought. But well preserved. So how do you like our town?

Bernard had no hesitation. Love it. He paused. But I don’t know whether I’ll establish a year-round residence here. My parents live in Montreal. I’ve rented an apartment. It’ll do for the time being.

Kimberly looked at her watch. Sorry, but I really have to leave. I have ordered a cab and I bet he’s already waiting for me. She rose briskly and waved goodbye to Bernard and Malcolm, then left.

Malcolm sat opposite Bernard. I won’t take much of your time. I’d like to brief you on some measures that my company has taken in the interest of protecting the businesses operating in this area. Malcolm quickly explained what other businessmen had decided to do and asked Bernard whether he was interested.

Absolutely, Bernard replied. My company’s reputation would be incredibly damaged if even the simplest product is duplicated illegally elsewhere. Secrecy is essential in my work. He drank his coffee in a long swallow. I have some news too. Thanks to my new partner’s infusion of capital, I’m expanding my business. As a side line, I plan to serve a large community of entrepreneurs with a hologram machine—sporting goods companies, custom jewelry manufacturers and the like. Some of them like to place more than one label on their products, and yet use the same amount of space.

Hmm… Malcolm mumbled. More customers mean more contacts and more possibilities of leaks.

Bernard shrugged. That’s part of the game. He rose. I’m confident that you’ll provide my company with good protection. Besides, I select my employees carefully—they are honest people—I don’t tolerate any other kind.

We’ll do our best. Malcolm saw him to the door. Good luck with your business expansion, Bernard.

His guest gone, Malcolm glanced at the walls of his office where diplomas and awards of all kinds hung, more or less straight. He had founded Invicta, an international private agency for the active protection of citizens against crime, in 1997 after serving in the force for over twenty years. A graduate in medicine from DromouthUniversity, he had abandoned the medical profession to join law enforcement in 1971, following the death of his wife—a victim of an unpunished crime.

Since the start, Invicta had prided itself on including among its employees former officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and of other members from high-profile police departments around the country and abroad. Malcolm had received personal recognition from all over the world for his ability to solve intricate cases. But the case he was pursuing now was by far the most complex of all. His personal reputation and that of his firm were at stake.

Three hours later Alesh Stefanich’s interview was coming to an end. Let’s recap. You speak fluently in English, Croatian and Russian. said Malcolm. He was trying to assess Stefanich’s personality more than his qualifications. Others? Stefanich had served as a translator in several court cases. Clearly, his wife, Lorraine, had been instrumental in finding that job for him. Lorraine Stefanich was a young immigration attorney who had already made a name for herself.

Stefanich answered coolly. Italian. To a minor degree, German. I like to learn languages. It’s both my passion and hobby. I began to learn Arabic a few years ago.

I see. Malcolm was not going to get any more information out of Stefanich in person than he had gotten from the letters of reference. The man was on guard all the time. Most immigrants are. When Malcolm had transferred from Quebec to Ontario, he too had been very careful about what to say. That was only a transition from one province to another. You attended courses in chemical and electronic engineering at the university in Zagreb, am I correct?

Yes. But I never got a degree. My father moved out of Zagreb before I could graduate.

Malcolm leafed through the stack of papers that constituted Stefanich’s dossier. With your expertise in languages and extensive travel as the son of a consulate employee, I would have expected that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, CSIS, would have contacted you. Did they?

Yes. When I first applied for immigration they asked whether I wanted to serve. Stefanich paused and seemed to search for an explanation. Because of my father’s job I moved from country to country—that’s why it was so easy for me to learn different languages. He paused again. I helped out on some occasions—workshops for newcomers, for instance—but it was all minor stuff. I was never involved in activity of any importance, nothing that required a clearance, I mean. He opened his lips to a smile. I told them I couldn’t be useful to them and, frankly, the idea of working for CSIS scared me.

Alesh Stefanich had presence and knowledge. He could be a very good acquisition for Invicta. You understand that the work we do here requires the utmost confidentiality.

Of course. If you hire me, you won’t be disappointed.

Malcolm liked that assertion: he was taken with Stefanich’s conviction. For the first time Stefanich had said something that hadn’t come out of a script.

Let’s give it a try, then. Malcolm rose. Come with me. I have a letter from a former member of the KGB. We need you to translate it. Let’s see what it says.

Ludmille Bremin answered the phone at the first ring. Without preambles Malcolm asked, Any news? Ludmille was supposed to make contact with Richard Attlee, the owner of the Endless Trail, a spectacular resort center in New Brunswick.

Some. Today Mr. Attlee invited all the riders to have a drink at his center. We were about twenty—he exchanged word with each of us. He’s a wonderful host.

Don’t tell me you didn’t get his attention!

Somewhat… I stayed longer than anybody else. I thought I would have an opportunity to be alone with him when somebody called him on the phone and he had to leave.

What kind of call?

Business, I gathered. An urgent matter, Mr. Attlee said.

The Endless Trail was an exclusive center that made most of its money by hosting large, international conventions. Nothing better for hiding illegal activities, and in fact the last two conventions had assembled guests of dubious reputation.

Ludmille was speaking again. I went to the center more than a dozen times. I simply can’t find a way to spend time with Mr. Attlee alone. It’s very frustrating.

And expensive, Malcolm thought. Any information about the way he operates? You must have talked to most of his staff by now.

He’s well liked. He loves horses and he’s an experienced rider. He keeps much to himself after the death of his wife. Ludmille paused again. Maybe we should give up.

No way! You stay there. He’s bound to break down. Talk to you tomorrow.

Malcolm stretched on his chair and put his feet on the coffee table. He knew it would be difficult to get Richard Attlee out of his shell. He could guess Mr. Attlee’s feelings, since he had a similar experience. After the death of his beloved wife, Violette, he had buried himself in his work and never given another woman a chance to get close to him. He hated to admit that Ludmille Bremin could be right: maybe her mission was a waste of time and money.

Three

Lelyldoré, New Brunswick

Richard Benjamin Attlee walked down the trail that led to the pond. Keeping out of sight, he glanced at the beautiful, light-gray horse that was happily rolling in the sand, and at the