The Zurich Conspiracy

Pius’s mercy for better or worse.

Richard Auer was sitting in the interrogation room with a slightly irritated expression on his face. The police had summoned him at six in the morning. He had to postpone an important nine o’clock interview with a headhunter, but he wanted to make a show of cooperating. The two officers sitting across from him mustn’t think he had something to hide.
    It was like a bad movie, one of those soft porn flicks he sometimes watched in anonymous hotel rooms on business trips—although this was anything but arousing. He felt bossed around, goaded; he was on the point of telling the officers that he thought it an impertinence to have to listen to this lewd tape, but he felt the eyes of the two officers on him so he tried to appear relaxed. One of the men pressed a button at last, ending the embarrassment.
    “Why did we play this tape for you, Herr Auer? Can you explain that?” Franz Kündig asked, looking exhausted. His interrogation tactics were not as well honed today as usual. Kündig’s baby was teething, and the pain was worse at night, cutting Kündig’s normal sleep in half—from five hours to two and a half.
    In some world, certainly not his, people had sex in public. Or half in public, if you considered that sex in this case took place under a table with a tablecloth that reached the ground. Kündig’s exhausted state rendered him incapable of finding anything erotic in that; he would have gone to sleep under the table, and there’d be nothing on the tape but the sound of his snoring.
    Richard Auer frowned. “No, no idea, but I hope you can clear this up for me so I can be of some further help.”
    “Do you recognize the voices of the two parties?”
    “No, I’m sorry.”
    “Are you sure, Herr Auer? We can give you more time to think about it if you’d like.”
    “Herr Kündig, I can only repeat what I’ve said: I do not recognize these voices. Sorry.”
    “We’ll play a section for you once again,” Kündig said, motioning to Zwicker.
    Richard Auer folded his arms, resigning himself to yet another round.
    But suddenly he sat up. The male voice on the tape did sound familiar. That was—no, it couldn’t be. The man was speaking English, American English…Now the woman’s voice. Good God, it really was like a porn tape!
    Zwicker cut the sound. “Did you understand that sentence, Herr Auer?”
    “Yes.” He was rocking back and forth on his chair.
    “‘I love you, Dick.’ Are you that Dick?”
    “How’s that?” Auer thought he’d misheard.
    “Dick as in Richard. You must know that. It’s your nickname, after all.”
    It took a moment for Auer to clue in. And then he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But he did neither. Instead he took some deep breaths, something he’d learned to do as a German in Switzerland: always be polite, never arrogant, never didactic, never steamroll the sensibilities of the Swiss confederation.
    “Let me hear that part again,” he requested.
    Kündig and Zwicker exchanged glances. “Glad to, Herr Auer.” They rewound the tape and pressed play.
    You couldn’t miss it now. He hadn’t been mistaken, either time. He waved for them to stop. Then he said, slowly and deliberately, “What the woman on the tape is saying is not ‘I love you, Dick.’ She is saying, ‘I love your dick ,’ get it?”
    Because the officers showed no immediate reaction, he elaborated. “Dick means…well…it means Schwanz . Dick is…let’s say, a vulgar word for penis. The woman’s telling the guy she loves his Schwanz . It’s got nothing to do with Richard.”
    The two officers looked at Auer, the meaning of his words slowly dawning on them. Kündig turned to his colleague and said, “Can this difference be acoustically enhanced—‘you’ and ‘your’?”
    Zwicker’s hand stroked his head; he was nearly bald. “We’d best have a sound technician look into it. But we can’t rule out some confusion.”
    “Believe me, gentlemen…” Richard Auer began—he wanted to say, you’re barking up the wrong tree but caught himself just in time—“that is not my voice. But it does remind me of somebody.” He hesitated. Kündig leaned forward—a movement that subtly encouraged disclosure.
    “I would not want to accuse anyone, but I’m just saying the voice reminds me—”
    “Of?” Zwicker lacked Kündig’s patience for interrogation.
    “Of Pius Tschuor.”
    “The photographer?” Zwicker couldn’t conceal his