The Zurich Conspiracy

between Markus and their father, Herbert Rehmer, professor and writer, ever since Markus, a musician, had confessed in a Swiss magazine that he was bisexual. Josefa would have preferred to have closer contact with her brother, but London was far away and the music scene was foreign territory for her.
    There was another knock at the door, which Josefa opened impatiently. The man from the second floor proudly declared, “Washing machine free,” and Josefa gave him a curt thank-you. She returned to her computer to read her last e-mail before doing the laundry. And there it was again—her stomach suddenly tightened up. A message from the ominous [email protected] , again in English: A physical injury is forgotten more quickly than an insult. Arm yourself for the very worst-case scenario.
    Josefa held her breath. This wasn’t a nasty joke anymore; there was “method in it.” Her mind was spinning in confusion: Who was behind all this? And who would be writing her in English? Wouldn’t it have to be somebody in the company? They often used English in meetings because some people didn’t speak German. What was the insult mentioned in the message? Did it refer to the confrontation with Schulmann in San Francisco? But who besides him knew about it? Josefa could only think of Helene. And Stefan.
    Maybe Schulmann was behind it, maybe he was already trying to intimidate her with his dirty tricks. But why? His new position was surely victory enough. It seemed more likely that the message was trying to warn about something. But what? What was she to guard against? What was the “very worst-case scenario”? Wasn’t that…her death?
    She closed her eyes for several minutes; her nerves were shot. She needed to recuperate as swiftly as possible.

The airport terminal at Tenerife was a flat structure filled with excited crowds of people pushing their way along. Josefa had only seen this many passengers en masse at big-city airports before. Umpteen busses were waiting in front of the building to pick up vacationers. Josefa emerged into the sultry evening air and spotted her driver stowing baggage into the belly of his bus. The Loyn brand was nowhere to be seen, she noted. Climbing onto the rather full bus, Josefa found a seat next to a man of barely twenty who was already sporting a beer belly in spite of his youthful years.
    The bus made its slow progress toward town, stopping to unload passengers at their hotels. The seats gradually emptied until the only person left with Josefa was a young blonde immersed in a book, no doubt a travel guide of some sort. Josefa arrived at her hotel in just over an hour; it was a splendid structure with an enormous number of columns and red-and-gray-veined marble slabs. The blonde followed Josefa to the reception desk; the woman, a German she surmised, was traveling solo too. The hotel lobby was crowned by an impressive glass dome, and every room had a kind of balcony where guests could see the patio below, which featured a man-made waterfall, smelling of chlorine, in its center. Josefa’s room was large and comfortable, just what she’d hoped for. (She had to admit that Helene had done an excellent job selecting this hotel.) Josefa stepped out onto the balcony and was confronted with the immense void of the dark, murmuring sea stretched out before her. Guests were dining by lantern light on the beach patio below. But Josefa was too exhausted to join them; instead she tumbled into bed.
    The next morning she stood vacillating at the entrance to the extensive patio dining room dressed in a turquoise blouse and white linen pants. A waiter came and escorted her to a little table against the wall some distance from the breakfast buffet and even farther from the sunny patio. Josefa, marshaling her knowledge of Spanish, asked the waiter if she could be nearer the light.
    Scowling, the waiter looked around and shrugged. “There is no table available.”
    Josefa pointed to an unoccupied table closer to the patio, farther ahead. “That one would be better.”
    The waiter shook his head. “That one is for two only.”
    Josefa felt the anger mounting inside her. But she was already attracting some curious glances, and she didn’t need this kind of attention.
    “Then I’ll have breakfast in my room,” she declared and pushed off to the exit—where she spied the blonde from the bus standing. Josefa made a quick decision and headed over to her.
    “I saw you on the bus yesterday,” she