The Key to Midnight

furnished largely with exercise machines. The high ceiling featured richly carved moldings, painted white with accents of gold leaf, and the plaster was pale blue.
        Carerra was on the dais, imitating a machine, grimly working through yet another set of two-arm, standing presses. His obsessive-compulsive behavior in his private gym was similar to his approach to everything in life. He would almost rather die than lose, even when his only competition was himself. He pressed the great weight up, up, up again, through a haze of pain that, like a fog, engulfed him. He was determined to make it through the set of ten repetitions, just as he had endured tens of thousands of other sets over the years.
        Antonio Paz, another bodybuilder who served as bodyguard and exercise partner to Carrera, stood slightly behind and to one side of his boss, counting aloud as each repetition was concluded. Paz was forty years old, but he also appeared to be younger than he was. At six two, Paz was three inches taller than Carrera and twenty-five pounds heavier. He had none of his employer's good looks: His face was broad, flat, with a low brow. He also claimed to be Brazilian, but he was not.
        Paz said, 'Three.' Seven repetitions remained in the set.
        The telephone rang. Carrera could barely hear it above his own labored breathing. Through a veil of sweat and tears of pain, he watched Paz cross the room to answer the call.
        All the way up with the barbell. Hold it at any cost. Four. Bring it down. Rest. Take it up. Hold. Five. Lungs burning. Bring it down. Machinelike.
        Paz spoke rapidly into the phone, but Carrera could not hear what he was saying. The only sounds were his own breathing and the fierce thudding of his heart.
        Up again. Hold. Arms quivering. Back spasming. Neck bulging. The pain! Glorious. Bring it down.
        Paz left the telephone handset off the hook and returned to the dais. He resumed his former position and waited.
        Carrera did four more presses, and when at last he dropped the barbell at the end of the set, he felt as though quarts of adrenaline were pumping through him. He was soaring, lighter than air. Pumping iron never left him tired. On the contrary, he was filled with an effervescent feeling of freedom.
        In fact, the only other act that gave him as much of a rush was killing. Carrera loved to kill. Men. Women. Children. He didn't care about the sex or age of the prey.
        He didn't often get the chance to kill, of course. Certainly not as frequently as he lifted weights and not as often as he would have liked.
        Paz picked up a towel from a chair at the edge of the dais. He handed it to Carrera. 'Marlowe is on the line from London.'
        'What does he want?'
        'He wouldn't say. Except that it's urgent.'
        Both men spoke English as if they had learned the language at an upper-class school in England, but neither had ever attended any such institution.
        Carrera stepped off the platform and went to the telephone to deal with Marlowe. He didn't move with the heavy, purposeful steps of his bodyguard but with such lightness and grace that he appeared to know the secret of levitation.
        The telephone was on a table by one of the tall, mullioned windows. The tapestry drapes were drawn aside, but most of the light in the room came from the huge chandelier that hung above the dais; its hundreds of crystal beads and finely cut pendants shimmered with rainbow beauty. Now, in the late afternoon, the winter sunlight was thin, tinted gray by curdled masses of snow clouds; it seemed barely able to pierce the panes of the windows. Beyond the leaded glass lay Zurich, Switzerland: the clear blue lake, the crystalline Limmat River, the massive churches, the discreet banks, the solidly built houses, the glass office buildings, the ancient guildhalls, the twelfth-century Grossmunster Cathedral, the smokeless factories - a fascinating mix of oppressive Gothic somberness and alpine charm, modern and medieval. The city shelved down the hills and spread along the shores of the lake, and the Carrera house stood above it all. The view was spectacular, and the telephone table seemed to be perched on top of the world.
        Carrera picked up the receiver. 'Marlowe?'
        'Good afternoon, Ignacio.'
        Rolling his shoulders and stretching as he spoke, Carrera said, 'What's wrong?'
        He could be direct with