The Cellist by Daniel Silva

14Bern

The drop site was located a few paces from the edge of a leafy footpath stretching along the bank of the river Aare. The possibility of Russian involvement required Gabriel to assume the worst, that the contents of the parcel, whatever they might be, were contaminated with the same nerve agent that had killed Viktor Orlov. If that were the case, it had to be removed immediately by a CBRN team, lest an innocent passerby or a curious child open it by mistake. Which left Gabriel no choice but to bring the Swiss into the picture.

Protocol and good manners dictated that he contact his counterpart at the NDB, Switzerland’s internal security and foreign intelligence service. Instead, he telephoned Christoph Bittel, who ran the domestic side. They had once crossed swords over an interrogation table. Now they were something like allies. Bittel nevertheless answered his phone warily. A call from Gabriel rarely brought good news, especially when it arrived after midnight.

“What is it now?”

“I need you to pick up a package for me.”

“Is there any chance it can wait until morning?”

“None.”

“Where is it?”

Gabriel explained.

“Contents?”

“It’s possible they might be sensitive financial documents. To be on the safe side, you should assume they’re contaminated with ultrafine Novichok powder.”

“Novichok?” asked Bittel, alarmed.

“Do I have your attention now?”

“Does this have something to do with Viktor Orlov’s assassination?”

“I’ll explain when I get there.”

“You’re not actually thinking about getting on an airplane, are you?”

“A private one.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me about the package?”

“I have a feeling the Russians might be watching it. If it’s not too much trouble, I’d like you to scare them off before you send in the CBRN team.”

“And how might I do that?”

“Make some noise, Bittel. How else?”

Ninety minutes later, at 1:47 a.m. local time, units of the Swiss Federal Police established a cordon around the normally tranquil Old City of Bern. They offered no explanation, though subsequent news reports would suggest the Swiss intelligence service had received a credible tip about a bomb hidden along a popular market street. The source of the warning was never reliably identified, and despite a prolonged and robust search of the elegant quarter, no explosive device was ever found. Hardly surprising, for no such device ever existed.

The true target of the early-morning police activity was a benign-looking parcel resting at the base of a poplar tree near the bank of the Aare. Rectangular in shape, it was wrapped in heavy plastic and sealed with clear packing tape. A CBRN team removed the object shortly before four a.m. and transported it to the Federal Institute for NBC-Protection in the nearby town of Spiez. There it underwent a battery of tests for biological, radiological, or chemical contaminants, including the deadly Russian nerve agent known as Novichok. All the tests were negative.

At which point the contents of the package, having been removed from their original plastic wrapper, were placed in an aluminum-sided attaché case for the journey to NDB headquarters in Bern. Gabriel and Christopher arrived there a few minutes after eight a.m., in the back of an Israeli Embassy car. Bittel received them in his top-floor office. Tall and bald, he had the stern countenance of a Calvinist minister and the pallor of a man with little time for outdoor pursuits. Gabriel introduced his traveling companion as an MI6 officer named Peter Marlowe and then delivered the promised briefing on the connection between the package of documents and the murder of Viktor Orlov. Bittel, with some justification, believed about every other word of it.

“And the journalist from the Gazeta?” he asked. “Where is she now?”

“Somewhere the Russians will never find her.”

The phone on Bittel’s desk purred softly. He lifted the receiver and spoke a few words in Swiss German before hanging up. A moment later a young NDB officer appeared in his doorway, attaché case in hand. Gabriel and Christopher reflexively leaned away as Bittel removed the contents, a stack of paper about five centimeters thick. He displayed the first page. It was blank, as were the next twenty-five.

“It looks as though the Russians were having a bit of fun at your expense.”

“That would imply they have a sense of humor.”

Bittel leafed through another twenty pages, then stopped.

“Well?” asked Gabriel.

Bittel slid the page across the desktop. Six words, sans serif typeface, approximately twenty-point in scale.

I know who killed Viktor Orlov.

“May I make another suggestion?” asked Gabriel after a moment.

“By all means,” said Bittel dryly.

“Find out who left this next to that tree.”

The footpath was freshly paved and black as a vinyl record. On one side, the land climbed steeply toward the edge of the Old City. On the other flowed the mucus-green waters of the Aare. The poplar tree clung precariously to the grassy embankment, flanked by a pair of aluminum benches. To reach it, one had to swing a leg over a rustic-looking wooden rail and cross a patch of open ground.

The nearest CCTV camera was about fifty meters downriver. It was mounted atop a lamppost, upon which a graffiti artist had scrawled a slur directed against Muslim immigrants. Bittel obtained a week’s worth of surveillance video, commencing at dawn the previous Sunday and concluding with the parcel’s removal by the CBRN team. Gabriel and Christopher reviewed it on an NDB laptop, in a glass-enclosed conference room. Bittel used the time to clear the debris from his in-box. Because it was an otherwise quiet Sunday in Switzerland, the office was largely deserted. The only sound was the occasional ring of an unanswered telephone.

The email from Mr. Nobody had arrived in Nina Antonova’s ProtonMail in-box at 8:36 p.m. Gabriel synced the CCTV video to the same time and then played it in rewind mode at twice the normal speed.

For several minutes the footpath was deserted. Finally, two figures appeared at the distant end of the image, a man wearing a fedora and a large dog of no discernible breed. Man and beast walked backward toward the camera, pausing briefly next to a rubbish bin, from which the man appeared to extract a small plastic bag. They paused again next to the lamppost, where the canine crouched on the verge of the footpath. What happened next was rendered in reverse order.

“I wish I could unsee that,” groaned Christopher.

The evening turned to dusk, and the dusk to a golden summer afternoon. A fallen leaf rose like a resurrected soul and attached itself to a limb of the poplar tree. Lovers strolled, joggers jogged, the river flowed—all in reverse. Gabriel grew impatient and increased the speed of the playback. Christopher, however, appeared mildly bored. While serving in Northern Ireland, he had once spent two weeks watching a suspected IRA terrorist from a Londonderry attic. The Catholic family living beneath him had never known he was there.

But when the time code reached 14:27, Christopher sat up suddenly in his chair. A figure had slithered over the wooden rail and was walking backward toward the bank of the river. Gabriel clicked pause and zoomed in, but it was no use; the camera was too far away. The figure was little more than a digital smudge.

He clicked rewind, and the smudge removed the backpack it was wearing. At the base of the poplar tree, it retrieved an object.

A rectangular parcel wrapped in heavy plastic and sealed with clear packing tape . . .

Gabriel clicked pause.

“Hello, Mr. Nobody,” said Christopher quietly.

Gabriel clicked rewind again and watched as Mr. Nobody placed the parcel in the backpack and sat down on one of the aluminum benches. According to the video time code, he remained there for twelve minutes before returning to the footpath.

“Walk this way,” whispered Gabriel. “I want to have a look at you.”

The distant smudge seemed to hear him, because a moment later it was walking backward toward the lamppost upon which the CCTV camera was mounted. Gabriel increased the speed of the playback and then clicked pause.

“Well, well,” said Christopher. “Imagine that.”

Gabriel zoomed in. Shoulder-length blond hair. Stretch jeans. A pair of stylish boots.

Mr. Nobody was a woman.

Fluorescent lights flickered to life as Gabriel and Christopher followed Bittel along a corridor to the NDB’s operations center. A single technician was playing computer chess against an opponent in a distant land. Bittel gave him a camera number and a time code reference, and a moment later the woman who called herself Mr. Nobody appeared on the main video screen at the front of the room. This time they watched the drop in its proper sequence. Mr. Nobody approached from the east, sidled over the wooden rail, and spent twelve long minutes contemplating the river before placing the parcel at the base of the poplar tree and departing to the west.

The technician switched to a new camera, which captured her ascent up a flight of concrete steps to the edge of the Old City. There she made her way to the rail station, where at 3:10 p.m. she boarded a train for Zurich.

It arrived exactly one hour later. In the Bahnhofplatz she boarded a Number 3 tram and rode it to the Römerhofplatz in District 7, a residential quarter on the slopes of the Zürichberg. From there it was a pleasant walk up the incline of the Klosbachstrasse to the small modern apartment block at Hauserstrasse 21.

Two minutes after she entered the building, a light appeared in a third-floor window. A rapid check of a government property database indicated that the unit in question was owned by an Isabel Brenner, a citizen of the Federal Republic of Germany. A further check revealed that she served as a compliance officer in the Zurich office of RhineBank AG, otherwise known as the world’s dirtiest bank.