The Zurich Conspiracy

cold and still…It was scary. I felt so lonely.”
    “I know. It must have been horrible. You’re very brave, Josefa. Everybody’s very impressed with you. I wished I could have… Esther Ardelius phoned me because she was so worried. I was… Your father moved heaven and earth.”
    “Papa?”
    “Yes, I heard from a colleague that he called up somebody in the canton government to urge the police to get a move on. He used all his pull to get them to look for you. And your friends, Helene and Esther—what terrific friends you have, Josefa. They’d move mountains for you. They—”
    “Sebastian.”
    “I’m talking too much, right? I know, I ought to let you rest, I—”
    “Sebastian. I thought about Rigoletto when I was down there. And that we wanted to go to the opera. Isn’t that crazy? I thought Sebastian’s sure to have bought tickets already. I can’t now…I can’t just simply go like this…like…like…Do you understand?”
    “Yes, yes, I understand. Oh, Josefa. You can’t imagine how I… When are you back in Zurich?”
    “Soon, Sebastian. Very soon.”

She heard thunder in the distance. It lasted several seconds. She listened hard. An avalanche. It must be an avalanche.
    But she was safe here. The hut had stood here for fifty years. Her father had told her that on a family picnic.
    The snow was thinning out, might even stop completely. Suddenly she was shivering, though the heat from the fire was intense. Remembering Karl Westek must have caused her uneasiness.
    How angry she was during those weeks when it looked like Westek was letting the whole thing slip through his fingers. He was extremely nervous; Thüring and Salzinger had been rubbed out, Feller-Stähli was no longer in the land of the living either, Van Duisen wasn’t in the game anymore. And to make their misery complete, Westek was right in the middle of expensive divorce proceedings.
    That wimp. Her hopes were dashed; her climb to the top of Loyn looked like it was in the utmost danger.
    She got madder and madder every time she thought about it. She kicked a piece of wood across the room. That son of a bitch. That backstabber. Westek had wanted to drop her and go it alone. That bastard thought because his pals were dead that maybe his hour had come. Westek, going it alone. He sniffed an opportunity because he had good reason—good information—to suspect that Loyn was buried in debt, that Walther would be forced to sell. Westek supposed as much, thanks to information he had from her . That vulture. She’d given him all the data, and now he was cold-blooded enough to cut her out.
    It took great effort back then to keep her anger in check. How she’d loved to have drowned him in boiling water! Like a farmer in her village used to do with June bugs. But she knew she had the upper hand, and that kept her calm enough to deal with it.
    How stupid Westek was to think she wouldn’t find out about his plans. Now that she was so close to Hans-Rudolf Walther, now that she was indispensable to the old boss, everything had changed. She’d never been so high up before.
    No doubt about it: she was coming down to the wire.
    Westek had thought he could exploit Walther’s dicey position. He wanted to present himself as a savior in time of need. A white knight. And this was all going on behind her back. A rank amateur, that Westek. She had to ditch him; he was getting in her way.
    It had been so simple. They went to the Düsseldorf Investors Convention in his Porsche. She wore a wig, and they registered under an assumed name—he didn’t want to make his divorce any more complicated than it already was. And while he was off on business, she had time, a lot of time, to take care of the Porsche’s motor and brakes. He thought she was going shopping. ( Because that’s what women like to do most of all, don’t they, Herr Westek? ) And she did do it, afterward. After all, she needed an alibi—and shopping bags with impressive names on them. Just in case.
    The snow was getting heavier. Her rage had subsided, she noticed with a smile. She fished out a hard, anise-seed stick out of a tin can and nibbled on it, lost in thought. How easily things had gone afterward! The big row with Westek just before the trip home to Switzerland, along the lines of: I’m just your sex kitten, a cheap lay. You don’t love me, et cetera. The sort of things men hate. Naturally he wanted to get rid of her, so she just had to burst into tears, pack her things,