“He suggested they discuss the matter offline. His word, not mine.”
“What was the date?”
“The seventeenth of February. Ten days later, during her lunch hour, she walked to an athletics field in District Three. The one with the red artificial running track,” added Lavon. “Her location data matches up with all the other drops as well, with the exception of the package that killed Viktor.”
“Any other interesting travel?”
“She went to the United Kingdom in mid-June and again in late July. In fact, she was there two days before Viktor was murdered.”
“London is a global financial capital,” Gabriel pointed out.
“Which makes it all the more surprising that she never set foot in RhineBank’s London office.”
“Where did she go?”
“I’m not sure. She switched off her phone for several hours on both visits.”
“How long did she stay?”
“A single night.”
“Hotel?”
“The Sofitel at Heathrow. She paid the bill with her personal credit card. Her airfare, too. On both trips she caught the first flight back to Zurich and was in the office by nine a.m.”
Isabel’s telephone, like her apartment, contained no evidence of a fiancé or a long-term romantic partner, male or female. But that evening, after boarding a Number 8 in the Paradeplatz, she arranged to have drinks on Friday with someone called Tobias. When her streetcar reached the Römerhofplatz, she picked up a few things at the Coop market and, followed by Christopher Keller, headed up the slope of the Zürichberg to her apartment. Shortly after her arrival, the two concealed microphones captured the sound of Bach’s Cello Suite in D Minor. Several minutes elapsed before Gabriel and Lavon realized they were not listening to a recording.
“Her tone is...”
“Intoxicating,” said Gabriel.
“And she doesn’t seem to be using sheet music.”
“Obviously, she doesn’t need it.”
“In that case,” said Lavon, “I have another question for her.”
“What’s that?”
“Why would a woman who plays the cello like that work for the world’s dirtiest bank?”
“I’ll be sure to ask her.”
“When?”
“As soon as I’m certain she’s not a Russian in a clever disguise.”
“She might not walk like a Russian,” said Lavon as Isabel began the suite’s second movement. “But she certainly plays the cello like one.”
In all, Isabel Brenner’s home computer surrendered some thirty thousand internal RhineBank documents and more than a hundred thousand emails from her corporate account. It was far too much material for Lavon to review on his own. He needed the help of an experienced financial investigator who was well versed in the wicked ways of the Kremlin’s kleptocrats. Fortunately, Gabriel knew just such a person. She was an investigative reporter from a crusading Moscow weekly that regularly exposed the misdeeds of Russia’s rich and powerful. Perhaps more important, she had been in regular if anonymous contact with Isabel Brenner for several months.
The reporter in question arrived at the safe house on Wednesday afternoon and joined Eli Lavon’s excavation of the RhineBank documents, leaving Christopher to shoulder the burden of Isabel’s surveillance alone. He followed her to work each morning and home again each evening. Most nights she practiced the cello for at least an hour before making herself something to eat and phoning her mother in Germany. She never raised the topic of her work at RhineBank. Nor did she discuss it with the small circle of friends with whom she was in regular contact. There was nothing in her communications to suggest she was an asset or officer of Russian or German intelligence. Christopher saw no evidence that anyone else was watching her.
On Thursday she had a post-work drink with a female colleague at Bar au Lac on the Talstrasse. Returning home, she practiced the cello without pause for three hours. Afterward, she watched a report on Swiss television regarding a missing Russian journalist named Nina Antonova. It seemed her colleagues at theMoskovskaya Gazetahad not heard from her sincethe previous Wednesday, when she flew from Zurich to London for a meeting with the magazine’s murdered owner. TheGazeta’s editor in chief had asked the British government for help in locating her. Perhaps not surprisingly, he had not made a similar request of the Kremlin.
Isabel passed a restless night and the following morning left her apartment twenty minutes later than usual. After dropping her bag in her office, she headed upstairs to the top-floor conference room for a mandatory company-wide call with the Council of Ten, the firm’s executive steering committee. She lunched alone and upon returning to the office had a testy exchange with Lothar Brandt, the head of the wealth management department. Evidently, Brandt was burning up the wires with suspect transfers. Isabel advised him to reconsider several of the larger transactions. Otherwise, he risked setting off automatic tripwires in New York and Washington. Brandt in turn advised Isabel to perform a sexual act upon herself before expelling her from his office.
The bitterness of the exchange was still evident on her face when she emerged from RhineBank at six fifteen. Christopher followed her aboard a Number 8 in the Paradeplatz, as did Nina Antonova, who claimed the seat next to her. As the streetcar lurched forward, Nina handed her a single sheet of paper. Six words, sans serif typeface, approximately twenty-point in scale.
