“What was he doing in Bern?”

“He said he was there to see his sister-in-law. Her name is Eva Kruger.”

“What do we know about her?”

“Not a thing. She’s a ghost. No national ID. No work permit. The neighbor says she’s hardly ever around.”

“But the neighbor’s seen her? In the flesh?”

“So she says. According to her, this Eva Kruger travels all the time.”

Of course she does, thought von Daniken. No doubt to exotic destinations like Darfur and Beirut and Kosovo. Plainly, she was another member of Ransom’s network. “I thought you said you had a line on Ransom.”

“We ran Eva Kruger’s name on the state and national level,” said Myer. “We got a nibble from the chief of security for the World Economic Forum being held in Davos. He told me that he vetted the same Eva Kruger, domiciled in Bern, a week ago, and granted her a pass to the event. The pass was valid for one day.”

“Today?”

Myer nodded grimly. “It’s a VIP pass. She can get access to anyplace she wants, right down to the floor of the Kongresshaus.”

“What’s on today’s schedule?”

“They have panels running all day long. Big shots from all over the world. The keynote speech this evening is to be given by Parvez Jinn, an Iranian.”

“Have you alerted event security yet?”

“Not yet.”

“Do so immediately. Tell them to invalidate her identification. Give them the latest description of Ransom. He may be armed.”

“Is that all?”

“No,” said von Daniken. “Tell them that we’ll be there in an hour.”

64

Jonathan observed the first trucks at the entry to the valley. Two army transports with a dozen soldiers loitering nearby. Five kilometers up the road, he spotted another pair of trucks. This time the soldiers weren’t loitering. They were crack troops clad in crisp camouflage uniforms, submachine guns strapped to their chests. Every passing car merited a glowering inspection.

A single route accessed the alpine town of Davos. One entry led from the north. One from the south. The military presence increased as the highway wound deeper into the valley. Jeeps. Armored personnel carriers. Roadblocks set on the highway’s shoulder, ready to be swung into place at a moment’s notice. It was a trap waiting to be sprung. At any moment, Jonathan expected a soldier or policeman to dart into the road, wave his arms, and motion for him to pull over, but the Mercedes never drew a second look.

At eleven o’clock, he passed the town of Klosters. The snow had abated, and the sky had lightened a shade. Once or twice, he even caught a fleeting pennant of blue. As church bells pealed the hour, their melancholy timbre forced a shiver the length of his spine.

The road began a series of switchbacks up the mountainside, and he caught the whir of a helicopter overhead. He picked up the World Economic Forum identification and strung it around his neck. The name printed in black block letters no longer read “Eva Kruger.” It had been altered by one letter to read “Evan Kruger.” The picture, too, had been replaced with a passport photo taken earlier this morning at a copy shop in Ziegelbrücke. The work had taken him an hour to complete. The “n” came courtesy of a stencil set that he doctored to match the official font. Fixing the photo to the identification was harder to pull off and had required the use of a lamination press.

I’ve been in training and I never even knew it.

I’ve been Emma’s pawn all along.

A medical degree hadn’t been the only requirement for a successful tenure at Doctors Without Borders. A taste for larceny and a bold imagination were equally helpful. He couldn’t count the number of times he’d falsified import and export documents to facilitate the transfer of medicine across frontiers, or as importantly, to avoid paying bribes to corrupt government officials. If penicillin was forbidden, they altered the papers to read “ampicillin,” which was stronger still but not as well known. When they discovered border guards ripping off shipments of morphine, they changed the bill of lading to read “morazine.” Let them look it up in their Physicians’ Desk Reference and discover there was no such thing.

The only part of the World Economic Forum identification he could not change was the memory chip. His solution was to run a magnet over it, effectively erasing its data. He was willing to wager that in the course of examining thousands of identification cards, security guards had come across one or two others with similar faults.

Eva Kruger’s driver’s license was easier to alter. The cardboard stock used by the Swiss authorities practically begged to be fooled with. An X-Acto knife and paint thinner combined to lift Emma’s photo from the paper. A second passport photo replaced it. He’d made sure to subtly change his appearance. Instead of his suit and tie, he left his jacket off, his collar buttoned to the throat, his hair mussed. Though taken just minutes apart, the two seemed to be from different days.

Again, he changed Eva’s name to “Evan.” Emma’s height was listed as one meter sixty-eight. He changed it to one meter eighty-eight. In fact, he was four centimeters shorter. The weight he likewise increased from fifty kilos to eighty.

He was all too aware that neither the driver’s license nor the Forum ID would stand up to more than a cursory check. Subjected to rigorous examination, they would quickly give up their secrets and be exposed as bogus. But it was the Mercedes registration made out in the name of Parvez Jinn of Teheran that was his ace in the hole and lent him the legitimacy that a simple identification could not begin to match.

Until now, he reasoned, no one could know that he possessed the details of Eva Kruger’s planned meeting with Parvez Jinn. Jonathan also knew that there would be no second Mercedes delivered to Jinn. Therefore, while Falcon might arrange for Emma’s replacement to pick up his accreditation at Security Checkpoint 1, he most probably hadn’t canceled the original pass meant for Eva Kruger.

Jonathan applied the same ruthless logic as before. The desire not to draw attention to oneself. If Eva Kruger’s name was still in the system, he was certain that there would be a note attached stating that she was to deliver the Mercedes to the Iranian official. It would be the car itself, then, that would serve as his passport to entry. It was hard to argue with a two-hundred-thousand-dollar automobile.

The first blockade was set up two kilometers from Davos. It was a vehicle inspection point located on a level straightaway. Battered wooden farmhouses stood to either side. A barrier blocked the eastbound stretch of road. He slowed and waited in a line of four cars. He tightened his necktie and sat straighter. He had his driver’s license ready, along with the registration slip. The Forum ID badge dangled from his neck. Even so, his mouth was dry as dirt, his heart hammering somewhere near his Adam’s apple. He advanced toward the blockade. He noted the soldiers encircling every vehicle. His fingers tingled and he realized that he was hyperventilating.

Emma, how did you do this for eight years?

“Sir!” A police officer rapped on his window. “Move ahead.”

Jonathan drove the car a few meters until the bumper nearly grazed the barrier. He was asked to step out of his car and produce his driver’s license.

“Destination?”

“Davos. I’m attending the Forum.”

“You’re an official invitee?”

“I’m delivering this automobile to a guest at the Belvedere Hotel. Mr. Parvez Jinn.”

“I’ll have to take a look at your ID.”

Jonathan freed the laminated badge from his neck. The policeman inserted the ID into a card reader similar to the one Jonathan had seen in the newspaper. From the corner of his eye, he watched as the policeman removed the card and thrust it into the reader a second time.