The Key to Midnight

politics when so much research awaited. He departed gracelessly but without challenging the powers that had gone after him with such success, and eventually the morals charge was dropped.
        'He might not have been guilty of molesting that girl, but he was probably guilty of molesting others. I know him well. Too well.'
        Unable to endure the haunted expression in her eyes, Alex stared for a moment at the half-eaten cake on the plate in front of him, and then he took another yellowed clipping from the stack.
        Six months after Dr. Zombie was forced out of the university, he liquidated his holdings in West Germany and moved to Saint Moritz, Switzerland. The Swiss granted him permanent residency for two reasons. First, Switzerland was a country with a long and admirable tradition of providing asylum for prominent - though seldom ordinary - outcasts from other countries. Second, Rotenhausen was a millionaire many times over, having inherited a fortune and later having earned substantially more from his dozens of medical and chemical patents. He reached an agreement with the Swiss tax authorities, and each year he paid a tithe that was meager to him but that covered a substantial percentage of the government's expenses in the canton where he lived. It was believed that he continued to do research in his private laboratory in Saint Moritz, but because he never wrote another word for publication and never spoke to newsmen, that suspicion couldn't be verified.
        'With time he's been forgotten,' Joanna said.
        'Too many new monsters to excite the media every day. No time to keep track of the old ones.'
        Finished with the clippings, they turned to the unfinished, unsigned, handwritten letter from Chelgrin to his daughter. It was two pages of half-baked apologia: an ineffective, self-justifying whine. It provided no new information, not even a single fresh clue.
        'How does Rotenhausen connect with the senator and with whatever happened in Jamaica?' Joanna wondered.
        'I don't know, but we'll find out.'
        'You said the senator mentioned Russians when you spoke to him on the phone.'
        'Yeah, but I don't know what he meant. It seems ridiculous. The Cold War was still on in those days, but it's over now.'
        'What would Rotenhausen have been doing in a deal with the Soviets, anyway? He sounds more like a Nazi than a Communist.'
        'Nazis and communists have a lot in common,' Alex said. 'They want the same thing - absolute control, unqualified power. A man like Franz Rotenhausen can find sympathy in both camps.'
        'Now what?' she asked.
        'Now we go to Switzerland.'

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    52
        
        As a hard wind blew shatters of rain against the cafe windows and as London seemed to dissolve toward prehistoric rock formations, Joanna leaned across the table. 'No, Alex. Please, let's not do that. Not Switzerland. Not into… into his lair. We can turn this whole thing over to the police now.'
        'We still don't have enough proof.'
        She shook her head adamantly. 'I disagree. We've got all these clippings, this letter, a dead body at the Churchill Hotel, and the fact that my fingerprints match Lisa's.'
        Alex reached across the table and put his hand over hers. 'I understand your fear. But what police should we go to? The Jamaican police? The Americans? Chicago police? The FBI, the CIA? Japanese police? The British? Scotland Yard? Or maybe the Swiss police?'
        She frowned. 'It's not so simple, is it?'
        'If we go to any cops now, we'll be dead by morning. These people, whoever they are, have been hiding something big for a long time. Now the cover-up isn't working any more. The whole thing's falling apart and they know it. That's why they killed the senator - they've finally decided to clean up the mess before anyone notices it. Right now they're probably looking for us. Whatever immunity you might have had is gone - gone with your father. If we go public with the case now, we'll just be targets. Until we've got the entire story, until we understand the why of it, until we can blow them out of the water, we'll stay alive only as long as we stay out of sight.'
        Joanna seized on that. 'But we'll be extremely visible if we go hunting Rotenhausen in Switzerland.'
        'We won't blunder straight over there. We'll be discreet.'
        She wasn't impressed. 'The senator tried to sneak into London. It