The Sigma Protocol (67 page)

“Well, you’ve got me,” he said as he handed her credentials back to her.

“Excuse me?”

“You’ve piqued my curiosity. I’m told a woman is here to see me from the American government in connection with a ‘personal matter’—how could I possibly resist such a lure?”

She wondered how much he knew about her. She could see already that he was as smooth and hard as polished stone.

“Thank you for seeing me,” Anna returned courtesy
with courtesy. “I’ve been on special assignment, investigating a series of murders around the world—”

“
Murders?
” he said. “What in heaven’s name can I tell you about murders?”

She knew she had one chance, and she’d have to hit him hard. Any weakness, any hesitation, any uncertainty, and the game was over. She would stick to one issue of narrow concern: the Sigma homicides.

“The murder victims were all involved in a corporation known as Sigma, of which Gerhard Lenz was a founder. We’ve established a direct connection between the deaths and a subsidiary of the chemical giant Armakon, on whose board you sit…”

Lenz seemed to relax. He laughed deeply, mellifluously. “Ms. Navarro, in all my years of crusading against the evil that my father did, I’ve been accused of many terrible things—disloyalty to family, disloyalty to my country, opportunism, insincerity, you name it—but no one has
ever
accused me of murder!”

Anna had known what to expect. He would be poised, nonconfrontational, evasive. So she had tried to anticipate his every response, and she was ready with a reply. “Dr. Lenz,” she said, “I hope you’re not denying that you’re on the board of Armakon.”

“It’s purely honorary.”

She hesitated, then said, “I don’t want to waste your time. As you know, Armakon is the secret owner of a biotech start-up in Philadelphia called Vortex.”

She watched his face. His eyes were neutral, guarded. “I’m sure Armakon owns many inconsequential start-ups around the world. So?”

“Vortex,” she went on, “is the inventor and manufacturer of a synthetic substance that’s used in basic research, for molecular tagging. It’s also a deadly poison that, once injected into a person’s bloodstream, induces
immediate death by heart failure, and is then undetectable in the blood.”

He replied in a flat voice, “How interesting.”

“That particular toxin was found in the ocular fluid of several of these murder victims.”

“Do you have a point?”

“I do,” she said quietly, eyes locked on his. She was momentarily startled by what she saw there: absolute searing contempt. “I have evidence linking you directly to those murders.”

For a moment there was only the ticking of a clock. Somberly, Lenz clasped his hands. He looked like a Lutheran minister. “Agent Navarro, all these terrible charges you hurl at me. These terrible things you say I’ve done. I took time out of an extremely busy day—time I can scarcely afford to squander—because I thought we could help each other in some way. Perhaps a friend of mine was in trouble. Perhaps someone needed my help, or vice versa. Instead, you come here on what I believe is called a ‘fishing expedition.’” He rose from his chair. “I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”

Heart hammering, she thought:
Not so fast, you bastard
. “I’m not done yet,” she said with a firmness that she could see surprised him.

“Agent Navarro, I really don’t have to talk to you. Correct me if I’m wrong, but anyone who visits me as an agent of American law enforcement is here as a guest of my country. If you wish to interrogate me because of who my father was, you must ask permission of the Austrian government, yes? Have you done that?”

“No,” she admitted, flushing. “But let me be clear—”

“
No
, madame,” he said, raising his voice. “Let
me
be clear. You haven’t done that because you are no longer in the employ of your country. In fact, you are yourself a fugitive from justice. Let us
both
put our cards on the
table. Your investigations have taken you outside the boundaries of lawful conduct. My secretary conveys the insistent requests of an American agent to see me. At my behest, she makes a few phone calls to verify your identity.” His eyes didn’t leave her face. “She discovers that you are a wanted woman. But then you must have expected we would take such precautions. And yet you came to see me all the same. Which piqued my curiosity further.”

“Anything to alleviate the dull tedium of your days,” Anna said.

“Put yourself in my position, Ms. Navarro. A rogue U.S. agent takes a very peculiar interest in me—this isn’t something that happens every day. Naturally I wonder: Have you come across someone or something that is a threat to me? Have you broken ranks and come to tell me about some hostile intrigue within American intelligence? I know our investigations of Operation Paper Clip have earned me enemies in some American circles. Have you come to warn me of some imminent menace? The imagination whirls. The mind boggles. So how could I resist meeting with you? You knew I could not.”

“We’re getting off the subject,” Anna broke in. “None of this—”

Lenz talked over her. “So you’ll appreciate how sorely disappointed I was when I learned that you’re here only to hurl absurd, unfounded, and easily discredited accusations. From all indications, you’re not only off the reservation, as your countrymen like to say—you’re out of your mind.” He pointed to his desk. “I need only pick up this phone and call a friend of mine in the Justice Ministry and you would be remanded to the tender mercies of the U.S. authorities.”

You want a fight
, she thought,
you got it
. He was not going to intimidate her. Not with what she knew about him.

“You’re perfectly right,” she said calmly. “You could pick up that phone and do that. But I wonder whether it would best serve your interests.”

Lenz had turned his back on her and was heading toward the exit. “Miss Navarro, your silly games really don’t interest me. Now would you please leave my office this moment, or shall I be forced to—”

“Just before I came here I stopped at the local DHL office, where a document was waiting for me. It contained the results of a search I requested. I had submitted a set of your fingerprints and asked the lab to identify them. It took a long time. Our Latent Fingerprints Section had to dig deep to find a match. But they did.” She took a breath. “Dr. Lenz, I know who you are. I don’t understand it. I really can’t fathom it, to be quite honest. But I know who you really are.”

She was terrified, more frightened than she’d ever been before. Her heart was hammering; blood rushed in her ears. She knew she had no backup.

Lenz stopped short, a few feet from the exit, and closed the door. When he turned around, his face had gone dark with rage.

Ben joined the modest crowd of journalists and cameramen assembled outside the Wiener Stadthalle Civic Center, the large, beige stone structure where the International Children’s Health Forum was to be hosted. He made eye contact with a cold and miserable-looking man—paunchy, middle-aged, dressed in a fraying tan trench coat. Ben extended a hand. “I’m Ron Adams,” he said. “With
American Philanthropy
magazine. Been standing out here long?”

“Too damn long,” the rumpled man said. He spoke with a cockney accent. “Jim Bowen,
Financial Times
. European correspondent and pathetic wretch.” He shot Ben a comic, mock-baleful glance. “My editor sweet-talked me into going with promises of schnitzel and strudel and
Sachertorte
, and I thought to myself, ‘Well, that’s a bit of all right then.’ Higgins will
never
hear the end of it: there’s a solemn vow. Two days of standing around in this lovely frigid rain, my little piggies turning into popsicles, down to practically my last fag, and all we get are the same damn press releases they’re faxing all the bureaus.”

“But you must be seeing some pretty grand poobahs sauntering in and out. I’ve looked at the guest list.”

“Well, that’s the thing—wherever they are, they’re not here. Maybe they’re just as bored with the program as everybody else. Probably all decided to nip out and take a quick skiing vacation. Strictly B-list, the only
people I’ve caught sight of. Our photographer’s taken to drink, he has. I think he’s got the right idea, too. I’ve got half a mind to pop down the corner for a pint, except they serve the ale too damn cold in this country. Ever notice that? Plus which, the stuff they make tastes like piss.”

The big names weren’t here? Did that mean that the Sigma conclave was taking place elsewhere? Ben’s stomach plummeted: Had he been misled? Perhaps Strasser had been mistaken. Or perhaps he and Anna had made a false assumption somewhere along the line.

“Any rumors about where the muckety-mucks are hanging out?” Ben kept his tone light.

The cockney scribe snorted. “Bloody hell. Know what it is? It’s like one of those sodding nightclubs where all the really hip people get shown to a special room, and the squares get stuck in a pen with hay on the floor.” He rummaged through a badly squashed and nearly empty pack of Silk Cuts. “Bloody hell.”

Ben’s mind raced. Jürgen Lenz was clearly calling the shots here. Just as clearly, the real action wasn’t taking place at the conference at all. The answer was no doubt to be found in the Lenz Foundation’s activities. And here, an indirect approach would probably yield the quickest results. Back at the hotel, he worked the phones, keeping one eye on his watch. He wanted to collect as much information as possible before he and Anna compared notes at the end of the day.

“Cancer Foundation of Austria.”

“I’d like to speak with the administrator in charge of fund-raising, please,” Ben said. There was a click, several seconds of hold music—“Tales from the Vienna Woods,” naturally—and then another woman’s voice: “Schimmel.”

“Frau Schimmel, my name’s Ron Adams, and I’m an American journalist in Vienna, working on a profile of Jürgen Lenz for
American Philanthropy
magazine.”

The administrator’s voice changed instantly from wary to exuberant: “Yes, certainly! How may I help you?”

“I guess I’m really interested—especially in light of the International Children’s Health Forum—in documenting his generosity, the extent of his support for your foundation, his involvement, that sort of thing.”

The vague question elicited an even vaguer reply. She went on at length, then he hung up, frustrated. He had called the Lenz Foundation and asked a low-level staffer for a list of all charities they funded. No questions were asked: as a tax-exempt institution, the Lenz Foundation was obligated to divulge all of its gifts.

But what he was looking for specifically, he had no idea. He was probing mindlessly. There had to be a way to penetrate the facade of Jürgen Lenz, philanthropist. Yet there seemed to be no logic to the type of grants Lenz made, no commonality, no organizing principle. Cancer—Kosovo—Progeria—The German-Jewish Dialogue? Those were the main ones. But if there was a connection, he had yet to find it, even after calling three different charities.

One more try, he told himself, and then move on. He got up from the desk in the hotel room, got a Pepsi from the little refrigerator, returned to the desk, and dialed another number from the list.

“Hello, Progeria Institute.”

“May I speak to the administrator in charge of fund-raising, please?”

A few seconds went by.

“Meitner.”

“Yes, Frau Meitner. My name is Ron Adams…”

Without much hope he went through his now-standard interview. The woman was, like all the administrators he talked to, a great fan of Jürgen Lenz and delighted to sing his praises.

“Mr. Lenz is really our chief benefactor,” she said. “Without him, I think we could not exist. You know, this is a tragic and exceedingly rare disorder.”

“I really don’t know anything about it,” he said politely. He realized he was wasting time when there was none to spare.

“To put it simply, it’s premature aging. The full name is Hutchinson-Gilford Progeria Syndrome. It causes a child to age seven or eight times faster than he should. A ten-year-old child with progeria will look like an eighty-year-old man, with arthritis and heart problems and all the rest. Most of them die by the age of thirteen. Seldom do they grow taller than the height of the average five-year-old.”

“My God,” Ben said, genuinely appalled.

“Because it’s so rare, it is what is called an ‘orphan disease,’ which means it gets very little funding for research, and the drug companies have no financial incentive to find a cure. That’s why his help is so terribly important.”

Biotech companies… Vortex
.

“Why do you think Mr. Lenz takes such a personal interest?”

A hesitation. “I think perhaps you should ask Mr. Lenz.”

He sensed the sudden chill in her voice. “If there’s anything you’d like to tell me off the record…”

A pause. “Do you know who Jürgen Lenz’s father was?” the woman said carefully.

Did anyone?
“Gerhard Lenz, the Nazi doctor,” Ben replied.

“Correct. Off the record, Mr. Adams, I’m told that Gerhard Lenz did some ghastly experiments on children with progeria. No doubt Jürgen Lenz simply wishes to undo what his father did. But please don’t print that.”

“I won’t,” Ben promised.
But if Jürgen Lenz was not Gerhard’s son, why the interest in the same causes? What sort of bizarre masquerade was this?

“You know, Mr. Lenz even sends a few of these poor children to a private sanatorium in the Austrian Alps that his foundation runs.”

“Sanatorium?”

“Yes, I think it’s known as the Clockworks.”

Ben bolted upright. The Clockworks: the place where Strasser had sent the senior Lenz electron microscopes. If Jürgen
was
Gerhard’s son, he would have inherited it. But was he really using it as a sanatorium?

He attempted a breezy tone. “Oh, where’s that?”

“The Alps. I don’t know exactly where. I’ve never been there. It’s exclusive, private, very luxurious. A real escape from the bustle of the city.”