The Zurich Conspiracy

something,” Esther said, nodding at the cap on the chair beside her. Josefa put the kettle on the burner.
    “It can wait,” she replied as she put Sauter’s cap in her dresser drawer.
    Josefa woke up in the middle of the night. It was unusually quiet; not even the sound of the occasional car could be heard. Josefa genuinely wished this silence would go on forever, but something told her that this moment of calm would be her last for a long, long time. Although she could just make out the sound of Esther’s breathing from the next room, Josefa suddenly felt very much alone.
    The next morning Esther had just retreated to her apartment when Claire Fendi arrived.
    “I thought it best to come by in person,” she explained, her voice as thin as a violin string.
    “Come on in,” Josefa said and was soon sitting with somebody in her kitchen again. Claire folded her arms across her chest protectively.
    “Won’t you take your jacket off?” Josefa asked.
    “No, no, I must get to the office right away. Officially I’m at the dentist.”
    Claire was not well; Josefa could see that at once. Her face was a sallow, gray color, her eyes were red, and her nervous hands were nestled in her jacket sleeves. Josefa could almost feel her tension.
    Claire took a deep breath. “Werner…I mean, Herr Schulmann…He’s put forward a plan for the music festival to the management board.”
    The music festival…Josefa and Claire had been working for months on a plan they were both very proud of. They had culled their experience from years past and added a few splendid new ideas to it as well.
    Josefa stared at Claire, flabbergasted.
    “I don’t get it…He can’t work that fast; he doesn’t have any idea what it’s all based on, or what the management board wants, all the records from past…All he can possibly come up with is hot air.”
    Claire fixed her eyes on the table in front of her. She had folded her hands now, white-knuckled.
    “Wrong, Josefa, he knows all the details…He got them from my computer.”
    The air in the kitchen turned to ice.
    “What is that supposed to mean? Did you show him any data?”
    “No…No. I had our plans on my computer. You know I often work on the details at home. Sometimes…Werner would interrupt me when he came over. I didn’t always turn off the computer; he’d often catch me by surprise, and I intended to go back to work afterward. I honestly didn’t have any idea that he’d…” Claire paused and shut her eyes for a second. “He must have looked at my files when I went to the bathroom or the kitchen or something. But it could also be…I mean, it’s possible he got to my data when the computer crashed, and he got it running again. He…he knows what he’s doing with technical stuff. He probably simply copied the data.” Claire buried her face in her hands.
    Josefa was dumbstruck. It slowly dawned on her what all of this implied.
    “You mean to say, then, that he copied our plan. Stole it.”
    “He didn’t copy it exactly. He stuck in a few technical items, but I recognized our plan right away. Bourdin crowed about how fantastic Werner’s plan was. So I went to Werner’s office one night and…looked around a bit. Werner was so damn sure of himself that he simply left the papers on his desk.” She rested her head on her fists. “I recognized it immediately.”
    Josefa slapped the table.
    “He’s not going to get off so easily,” she said vehemently. “This time he’s gone too far.”
    “What can you do? Even if we tell Bourdin or Walther that Werner stole our project—they’d never believe us in a million years. They’ll think we want to cut him down. They’ll think we’re out for revenge because you didn’t get Werner’s job.” Then she suddenly sounded resigned. “And of course Werner will deny everything. We’ve got no proof.”
    “Sure we’ve got proof. We’ve got the draft in our computers. How could those plans get there if we hadn’t come up with them in the first place? Schulmann could never argue that he planted them in our computers!”
    “Oh, yes he can,” Claire contradicted. “He can claim he told me about them.”
    “And how can he?” Josefa pushed her chair back. “How’s he going to back it up? How’s he going to tell our guys he let us in on his secret project even before he took the job at Loyn?”
    Claire kept her eyes off Josefa. “He could tell them about our love affair, and the fact that it’s now