The Zurich Conspiracy

enthusiasm. That is why I am making up for it now; you are very near and dear to us,” he offered, with a look meant to melt her away at once.
    Whatever Bourdin did, Walther would cover for him. Bourdin was vital to the company; Walther had put his money on him, and Loyn’s success proved him right.
    He started talking again without asking for a response.
    “You’ve carried out almost superhuman tasks in the last several days, Frau Rehmer; you’ve hardly had time to catch your breath. That’s about to change. We should like to relieve you of some tasks that have nothing to do with your core activity.”
    Now it’s coming , Josefa thought. I knew it was coming .
    Walther laced his fingers together, forming a dome with his hands.
    “We have decided to fill the position of marketing head externally, again.”
    “Herr Walther, I’m very astonished by your decision. Particularly after the bad experience we had,” Josefa replied, trying to stay as calm as possible.
    Walther knew what she was talking about. The head marketing spot was vacant because the man who last held it had been a fiasco, driving everyone in the firm crazy. And since then, Josefa had taken over most of his duties, with Bourdin carrying out the rest.
    “You know,” Walther explained, “we need a competent head for such an important area. We need a middleman, a hinge, a contact person for our colleagues, our guests, and company management.”
    “Our colleagues? Our guests? But that part of it is working extremely well,” Josefa blurted out, feeling nauseated with anger. She even considered showing him Van Duisen’s telegram—but no, she wasn’t some kid looking for recognition.
    “Frau Rehmer,” Walther continued, in his paternal tone, “no one has the slightest doubt about your competence. Perhaps you didn’t understand me properly. We want to relieve you of some of your duties. So that you can concentrate on your core work. And I am convinced that this time we’ve hired an exceptionally capable, outstanding candidate. His name is Werner Schulmann.”
    Josefa was dumbstruck. She felt as if the rug had been pulled out from under her feet.

Pius Tschuor was standing in the doorway of Josefa’s office. With his full, dark hair that a carefully groomed haircut couldn’t even tame, together with his blue eyes and perfectly chiseled, masculine mouth—not too full, not too soft—Pius was a striking individual. Josefa sometimes wondered how Loyn was ever able to catch the guy. She’d discovered him herself— or more precisely, his pictures, she thought coyly. She’d seen his photographs in a gallery and contacted him immediately, then passed his portfolio on to Bourdin, who instantly signed him up to do the next catalog. And in no time at all this young man had become a kind of court photographer at Loyn. This was the bread-and-butter job he would use to finance his passion, which was admittedly not very lucrative: He photographed underground cave systems, dark lakes, hidden gorges, and small, mysterious creatures that saw light for the first time thanks to his flash units. It puzzled Josefa why Pius would choose to hide his athletic physique from the light of day, and from so many admiring eyes, just to flee into the bowels of the earth.
    “Is it longing for the female uterus,” she once teased him, with a wink. That was how she communicated with him: wisecracking, kidding him, poking the fire but never playing with it. If they were working on a project together, there was an immediate, concentrated rapport between them; she was seldom at odds with Pius, and he always seemed to know instantly what she wanted.
    Now he was considering her silently, an inquiring gaze on his handsome face. Josefa was in an unmistakable bad mood. She sat in her chair as if turned to stone; her arms propped on the armrests, her hands folded, stubbornly looking straight ahead. Finally she spat it out: “I feel like screaming right now.”
    Pius prowled like a puma around the desk and stopped at the window. “Oh-oh-oh,” he uttered. “How bad is it this time?”
    Josefa rubbed her nose. “Bad enough to ruin my whole holiday.”
    “Nobody in this company has any right to an enjoyable vacation, you know that,” he replied with a smile.
    “No right to a vacation, no right to recognition, no right to be treated with human dignity,” Josefa exclaimed, realizing she shouldn’t speak so loudly with the door open. But she didn’t give a damn. About