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  They’re face-to-face.

  Kasper can see a hint of both apprehension and curiosity in Savage’s eyes, and on his neck a blue line: a throbbing vein, the outward sign of his temper.

  “We have someone to meet in Zurich,” Savage murmurs.

  “You already told me that.”

  “This someone claims to know you. He says you’re not what you seem to be. He says you screwed them over once before, the Colombians who—”

  “Screwed them over how?”

  “He says you’re not just a pilot. You’re a narcotics agent, according to him.”

  “The asshole who’s telling you all this shit. Is he a Colombian?”

  “Yeah…”

  “It’s him we’re going to meet? He’s the one who claims to know me?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Good. Let’s go then,” Kasper says, pointing at the train. “I want to meet him. I want him to look me in the eye and repeat that bullshit.”

  They travel in first class, seated facing each other. The carriage they’re in is half-empty.

  The train speeds through the Swiss landscape. Kasper reads a worthless magazine he’s found on the seat beside him. Articles on trout fishing and horses. Every now and then he looks out the window. Michael does the same, closely observing Kasper the whole time. Kasper wants Savage to make the first move. So he waits.

  “Are you hungry?” the Irishman asks a half hour into their trip. “Do you want to eat something?”

  “I just want to get there,” Kasper replies.

  “Are you pissed off?”

  “Extremely. I can’t wait for us to get this business settled and call it a day.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Kasper disappears.”

  “What the fuck are you saying?” Savage hisses, leaning forward a little.

  “I’m not working with someone who believes what he hears from some random Colombian cokehead and then tells me nothing about it for days….”

  “I wanted to tell you in person.”

  “Now I understand all the recent delays, all the hesitation. I understand—”

  “I was waiting for the right moment to talk to you about it.”

  “Because you wanted to see how I would react. Well, here I am. Let’s go and talk to this Colombian jerk-off and hear what he has to say. But I want proof. I want him to specify how, where, and when. We’ll see what he’s got, and if I’m a dope cop, okay, you get to shoot me in the head. But if your Colombian pal is full of shit, I walk, and you have to pay me all the same. And then you find another pilot to fly your fucking plane.”

  “You can’t back out.”

  “You’ll see if I can’t,” says Kasper, grinning. “And now, if you’ll allow me, I’m going to piss.”

  In the train toilet, he looks at himself in the mirror and considers his performance thus far.

  Not a bad start. But it’s only the beginning. Now he must go back there and play at least one more hand. The stakes are pretty high. His skin is on the table.

  Michael smiles at him as he resumes his seat. “I got us two cheese sandwiches,” he says. “And two beers.”

  “Not Irish beer, I hope.”

  “No, it’s some German crap. High alcohol content,” Michael says, handing him a can.

  “My favorite.”

  They eat and drink in silence, but Kasper knows that Michael won’t let the subject drop. Before he hands Kasper over to his Colombian friends, Michael wants to be certain. He won’t do anything unless he’s absolutely sure it’s right.

  And that’s what Kasper has to gamble on. But at the proper time.

  The conductor informs the passengers that they’ll be arriving in Zurich right on schedule.

  “Fucking Swiss,” Michael chuckles when they’re alone again. “Are you worried? If you’re all right, the flight’s still on.”

  “And who’s going to certify that I’m ‘all right’? A Colombian’s word against mine, or rather against Wanchai’s? How long have you known Wanchai, anyway?”

  “Longer than I’ve known you,” Michael says, nodding placidly.

  “And your new Colombian buddy?”

  “Never met him before. I’ll lay eyes on him for the first time tonight.”

  “Perfect. Wanchai will be delighted when he hears about this.”

  “I just want you to see him. I want him to be able to go back to Medellín and tell his guys he was wrong.”

  “Do you know those people or not?” Kasper growls, close enough to breathe on his companion’s freckles. “Every one of them would sell his mother’s ass on her deathbed if he thought it could help him rise in the hierarchy!”

  “We’ll see.”

  “So we will, and now let’s stop talking about it. We’re not far from Zurich, fortunately.”

  —

  Kasper’s room is on the third floor.

  Michael Savage has told him to wait there. Kasper’s sure their Colombian was in the lobby when they arrived at the Mövenpick. And probably not alone.

  Kasper didn’t even look around. He knew that any move he might make, any possible sign of nervousness, would be instantly noted and interpreted.

  He puts his small black rolling suitcase on the bed and opens it.

  He’s carrying no weapons, obviously. But he has his wedges. After a quick check of the room he jams the wooden wedges into the four inside corners of his doorframe, thus barricading himself inside. Anyone wanting to enter would have to stave in the center of the door, and therefore—theoretically—Kasper would have enough time to do something.

  Jump out the bathroom window, for example. There’s a rooftop a few meters below. A plausible escape route.

  He sits on the bed and tries to put his thoughts in order.

  He could call Wanchai and tell him his Irish friend has been taken in by one of the Colombians’ little tricks. He imagines the telephone call and his necessary conclusion: “I’ll do what I have to do, my dear Wanchai, and then I’m pulling out. Too bad for them. I don’t work with amateurs.”

  Would it do any good? Probably not.

  Kasper reflects back on that meeting with Wanchai and Savage in Bangkok a year ago. They hammered out the details on the roof terrace of a skyscraper that was still under construction. Savage led the meeting, which included two Thais who work with him and an Israeli. A Mossad agent looking to finance undercover operations whose costs couldn’t appear on the official balance sheets.

  In fact, it was the Israeli’s idea to increase the shipments from Colombia to Europe, if possible to Italy. Which is why it occurred to Kasper to call the job born in that rooftop meeting “Sinai.”

  The telephone rings in his Zurich hotel room.

  “I’m downstairs in the lobby,” Michael Savage says. “The meeting’s been postponed until tomorrow.”

  “What’s the matter, your Colombian friend ran out of dope?”

  “You’re a little too sour for my taste.”

  “If I wanted to vacation in Zurich, I’d get a Swiss girlfriend.”

  “See you in the morning. Sleep well,” says Michael, and hangs up.

  Kasper decides not to call Wanchai. It could be interpreted as a sign of weakness. And if they’ve already decided to take him out, a phone call to Wanchai will surely not suffice to save his ass. He’ll have to save it himself.

  He checks the room again, more closely than before.

  No hidden bugs or similar devices, apparently. He carefully closes the curtains, rummages in his suitcase, and takes out a spare cell phone with a new SIM card. Then he calls Clancy and explains what’s going on.

  “If the Irishman wanted to take you out, he wouldn’t bring you all the way to Zurich to do it,” Clancy observes. “Which means he doubts the Colombian’s story.”

  “That’s what I think too.”

  “But it’s always better to be prepared. We have someone in the area. I’ll see what I can—”

  “All I want is a piece. You know which
one I prefer.”

  Kasper hangs up, calls the colonel in Rome, and outlines his situation, giving only the essential details. Still too many, as far as the colonel’s concerned.

  “I could send a team to cover you, but we’d need an authorization. And even if I request one, hours could pass. Or I could call the local—”

  “Don’t do either one.” Kasper explains that he’ll be in contact with someone from the Company right here in Zurich. “I’ll feel better once I have a weapon,” he tells the colonel.

  “If they’ve decided to take you out, a pistol won’t save you.”

  “I just have to convince Savage that the Colombians are trying to screw him over.”

  “And if you don’t?”

  “I will.”

  —

  He leaves the hotel and gets in a taxi.

  It’s late in the afternoon, almost evening, but there’s still a lot of light.

  They take a long, meandering ride. Kasper’s sure they aren’t under surveillance; nevertheless, out of an abundance of caution, he has the cabbie stop behind a gas station for a while and makes him change his route several times.

  Nine minutes later, the taxi stops in Bellevueplatz. Kasper pays the fare and gets out of the old Mercedes.

  The bar across Rämistrasse has a row of little outside tables, all of them occupied. A woman wearing eyeglasses and sitting at the second table from the left is reading the Financial Times. She’s had her eye on him ever since he got out of the taxi. He walks over to her and asks her what time it is.

  “It’s the right time. Good evening, Kasper.”

  She points to the empty chair on her right. Kasper sits askew on the chair, his back against a column. He orders a caffè Americano. She gets another Coca-Cola.

  “I was told to stay just a few minutes,” she explains in a heavy Texas drawl.

  “I can imagine,” he says with a smile.

  She’s rather young, not yet thirty. Now that she’s removed the spectacles, her pretty face looks even fresher and more luminous. The dark eyes scrutinize him without a trace of uncertainty.

  “We’ll get to know each other better next time,” he promises her.

  “Sure,” she says, giggling as if she was really amused by his inane flirtatiousness. “Were you careful coming here?” she asks. “I hear there’s a lot of traffic on your side of town.”

  “No problem. The hard part will be getting back in the hotel. You know how it is, I might find the room occupied.”

  “You’ll find what you need in the bag under the table. I was told it should be enough….”

  “Yes, very good. It’ll be enough.” Kasper knows this isn’t a response. It’s a mantra he’s repeating to himself.

  She nods and asks, “Is there anything else I can do for you?”

  “Not at the moment, unfortunately.”

  “Well, I wish you good luck. With everything.” She takes two sips of her Coke, stands up, and shakes his hand briefly in farewell. Code name: Gloria. Kasper will never learn her real name.

  —

  The piece he prefers. A Glock 18C, with two 33-round clips.

  God bless the CIA, he thinks, sitting on his bed and checking the pistol once again. Perfect. Used, but perfect. The serial number has been thoroughly filed away; the 9X19 cartridges in the clips are Chinese and therefore untraceable. The gym bag contained nothing else, apart from a nylon holster for the gun and a couple of towels to wrap it in.

  Returning to his hotel required more time and effort than the first half of his excursion. Getting back into his room was particularly troublesome. The suspicion that a South American committee would be lying in wait subsided only after he sat down on his bed again. To be sure, he’d taken the precaution of sending one of the hotel’s bellhops into the room first, on the pretext of wanting him to check the air-conditioning.

  But there was no one there. And now he’s got his four wedges stuck back in the corners of the doorframe. He lies down on the bed.

  His fingers caress the butt of the pistol. Distant music makes him think someone’s having a party in one of the other rooms—or maybe it’s someone like him, feeling alone and waiting for company.

  It occurs to him that he could call the concierge and ask to be provided with some companionship. In exchange for payment, he could spend a few carefree hours. Don’t be an asshole, he tells himself a second later.

  Slowly, he drifts into sleep.

  —

  He sleeps and wakes, sleeps again and wakes again. The night passes like that. It can’t be otherwise. It’s his old nightmare. He’s a prisoner in some enclosed, stifling space he doesn’t know how to get out of. His heart races, his throat tightens. Until something breaks. A sudden rift, and then air and light. Air, at last. And he’s able to escape. He takes flight.

  The flight. A getaway begun a long time ago. Begun and never concluded.

  Faces from his better days stream past him. He’s almost forty, and like everyone else he knows there’s no turning back. He regrets the faces, the voices, the gestures, and above all the opportunities he’s allowed to slip away. The things he didn’t understand at the time and then understood afterward, when it was too late.

  The things he didn’t say to those he loved.

  Like Silvia, the Colombian girl who fell in love with him during Operation Pilot. Beautiful, like a vision. Melancholy, like one instinctively aware of her own fate, of its inevitability.

  They’d meet in the humid Medellín nights and make love and forget about everything else.

  “Next time I’m going to Italy with you,” she told him on the eve of his second flight from Colombia to Tuscany. “If you really want me and if everything goes well,” she added.

  The plan was a success. Everything went well.

  Only a few more days were required to conclude the story.

  Silvia was one of the first victims of the operation. The narcos executed her because she was guilty of having loved the spy, the infiltrator, the pilot/agent who fucked them all.

  And then others died as she had. People who trusted him. People who believed him.

  —

  The colors of the Zurich dawn reprieve him.

  He rises from the bed. He’s not tired. He’s wiped out. The Glock’s lying on the right side of the bed, beside the imprint of his body. If he should die, he thinks, nothing will be left of him but a shadow. With a pistol on its right-hand side.

  He calls the colonel.

  Kasper tells him he’s still waiting. He’s armed now, Kasper says, but if he doesn’t make it, he’s got a place where he keeps all his stuff. Including documents regarding his life as an undercover agent for Italian intelligence, for the SISMI and the ROS. “There’s a lot of interesting material. Please make good use of it,” he murmurs, trying not to sound pathetic.

  The colonel doesn’t hesitate. “If something happens,” he says, “the Irishman won’t be going back to Thailand.” The colonel gives no details, and Kasper asks him no questions. “We’ll talk again soon,” the colonel says, ending the call.

  Two hours later, Kasper has breakfast in his room. Fruit juice and vanilla wafers. He’ll get coffee when he has a chance. At nine on the dot, the telephone rings. “Good morning. Are you ready?” Michael Savage asks.

  “In a couple of minutes.”

  “Check out of the hotel. We’re leaving.”

  Kasper calls reception and asks them to send him the housekeeper for his floor. He takes the wedges out of the door and gets ready.

  The Glock’s in its holster, on his belt, under his jacket.

  When the housekeeper knocks, he shouts in English that he’s in the bathroom and that she should let herself in. She unlocks the door; he sticks his head out of the bathroom and asks her if the party’s over.

  “What party, sir?” she asks, rather puzzled.

  “Wasn’t there a party in one of the neighboring rooms?”

  She gives a shrug of incomprehension. “There’s not a soul in
any of those rooms, sir.”

  That’s what he wanted to know. He comes out of the bathroom, hands her ten dollars, and grabs his suitcase. She watches him, no doubt thinking that people can be very strange.

  She has no idea.

  —

  They have coffee in a half-empty dining room. Kasper looks around and sees only a few Northern Europeans, two probably American couples, and an Arab absorbed in the New York Times.

  “Relax, the Colombians aren’t here,” says the smiling Michael Savage.

  “They’re waiting for us somewhere?”

  “They’re not waiting.”

  “Which means…”

  “That the meeting is canceled.”

  Kasper’s first reaction is end of the line.

  In a few seconds a door will open. A waiter will approach the table pushing a food trolley, reach under it, and pull out the AK-47 that will put an end to Kasper’s stay.

  Kasper instinctively observes the comings and goings of the wait staff. And in fact he spots some untoward movement. A young man, red-faced and plump, is taking orders from the maître d’. It isn’t a pleasant scene. The boy’s on the verge of tears.

  Kasper raises his hand and summons the maître d’ to his table. “Have you been in the army?” Kasper asks the man in English.

  His dark eyes grow wider and he shakes his big head with its comb-over and gray muttonchops. “No, sir. Why do you ask?”

  “Because in the army, we used to give people who tortured recruits an extremely bad time.”

  “Please, sir, believe me, it—”

  “I believe what I see and hear. And I don’t like it. You understand me, right?”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “I have several contacts in this hotel. They’ll keep me informed. We’ll see each other again, you and I.”

  “Very well…I understand. Of course.”

  While he’s walking away, Michael looks at Kasper with a sly smile on his face and leans toward him. “I adore you, Kasper.”

  “You’re not my type, Gordon.”

  “I’ll make you change your mind.” The Irishman chuckles and then turns serious. “I asked the Colombian a few questions. He hemmed and hawed; he wasn’t sure about anything. An idiot. I told him that as far as I was concerned, the meeting was off. I told him I wasn’t going to lose a pilot over hearsay. If you think he’s a narcotics agent, I said, go and kill him. But I’m staying out of it, and you’d better pray to your God you’re right.”