The Zurich Conspiracy

grief!” she exclaimed. So that’s how far things have gone .
    “We’ve got the proper tablecloths,” Kohler assured her.
    Josefa examined the furniture and then gave instructions to the movers and decorators, as she’d done dozens of times before, and she would make it work this time too.
    When the work was finished and the foreman reappeared to have her sign off on the delivery sheets, he remarked, “We’ve never found anything, you know.”
    “Found what, Herr Kohler?” Josefa asked absentmindedly, glancing through the paperwork.
    “Bugs or whatnot. We check the tables every time they come back. Maybe repairs are needed, maybe some loose screws or splintered wood. We’d definitely have spotted the gadgets.”
    “I’m no expert,” she said, “but I’d say the bugs were probably somewhere else. In the bouquets, in the ventilators, in the candleholders—what do I know.”
    “The police say they were under the tables.”
    Josefa looked at Kohler in surprise. What kind of information won’t detectives throw around…?
    The foreman kept talking. “The microphones couldn’t have been that small. There was a heavy tablecloth on the tables. And noise all around the place. We’d have to have seen them.”
    “Nobody’s blaming you,” she reassured him.
    Kohler took the signed papers and put them in a briefcase. He hesitated a moment. Obviously there was something else he wanted to get off his chest.
    “By the way, we had some trouble at the horse show in St. Moritz. We were there right on time to pick up the tables. After they were all ready to go, I mean. On time as always. Man, was he in a flap. Yelling at us that we were an hour early, and that was not what was agreed to, and we were to come back in an hour.”
    “Who yelled at you?” Josefa was all ears now.
    “Herr Bourdin,” Kohler said.
    “Francis Bourdin? But that’s not his responsibility.” Josefa looked at the foreman doubtfully, but Kohler vigorously nodded his head.
    “We had to leave and come back later. Though everything was ready for pickup.”
    Josefa’s thoughts were moving very fast.
    “Did you tell this to the police?”
    “Yes, I did. Honestly, my colleagues were really cheesed off with Herr Bourdin.”
    “And what did the police say?” she persisted.
    “They wrote it down.”
    Kohler looked at her expectantly. He probably wanted to know what she made of it. But she just thanked him, handed him a generous tip, and went to the restaurant to check the list of drinks.
    The next lull in the evening wouldn’t come until the managers and staff representatives of the software company had finished their aperitifs and were making their speeches. Josefa closed the door to the hall and retreated to a little corner table in the bar next door. The staff there was busy getting drinks ready for the dinner. Glasses tinkled. Josefa noticed a woman sitting on a barstool with a cocktail before her looking bored. She wore a black chiffon see-through blouse that allowed her pale skin to shimmer through. Her tight leather skirt barely covered her thighs.
    Josefa took a women’s magazine from the rack on the wall and looked at the ads. Loyn was represented, naturally, with a two-page spread, on paper thicker than the magazine’s other pages. There was Joan Caroll, slightly wicked and aloof, with full, shiny lips and a Mona Lisa smile, sitting on grandiose marble stairs, with skin-tight pants on her outspread legs and high heels planted like spear tips. One step below, a reclining cheetah lay with a Loyn bag between its paws. The bag was almost as seductive as Joan. Josefa heaved a sigh.
    There she sat, literally in jail, supervising an insignificant company banquet; every day she was running after jobs that had about as much sex appeal as escargot. She had to sell herself cheap as if she’d never staged brilliant blockbuster events for the most select international clientele with one of Switzerland’s most famous firms. She did miss her work at Loyn, and in moments like these she thought that resigning had been a serious mistake. There was no doubt she’d been relieved those first few weeks that she’d escaped the trench warfare of Loyn, and she was looking forward to new challenges, but the attraction of freedom regained had quickly evaporated. She missed the contact with the “ambassadors,” the interaction with her team, the stimulating interchanges in the office. She wasn’t part of anything anymore.
    It pained her that