The Zurich Conspiracy

regularly. Josefa felt ancient among all the girls and boys. A tall blonde, her hair blowing behind her, was skating just ahead. She obviously had great fun shaking off her admirers with daring caprioles. But it wasn’t long before her persecutors were snapping at her heels once again.
    Josefa’s feet were tired. She decided to take a break and have a hot chocolate. She glided over to the exit, where a young man was just putting a foot on the ice.
    “Hi, Josefa,” someone called to her. She had to look twice before she recognized him under his colorful knitted cap.
    “Hey, Joe,” she replied with a grin. “You surf on the Web and on the ice too?” She held on tightly to the rail, thinking that Joe looked like a Nepalese Sherpa in that hat.
    “Never thought I’d meet you up here,” was his rejoinder. “But it’s perfect timing. I was about to e-mail you anyway. Because of that business…”
    Josefa had repressed “that business” with a mighty effort the past few weeks. The unknown e-mailer hadn’t sent one of his disturbing messages for some time. But remarkably, Josefa found the sudden silence just as scary.
    “Were you able to find out anything?” she asked reluctantly.
    “Yes and no.” Joe tried to scratch his head, unsuccessfully, given his gloves and hat. “The only thing I can safely say is that one sentence was a quotation from an English writer, Oscar Wilde. My friend Jack in England told me.”
    “Oscar Wilde?”
    “Yes, but it refers to men, not women.”
    “So it’s a quotation, a well-known quotation.”
    Joe nodded. “And Jack says a couple of the other messages sounded like quotations too.”
    “That’s really interesting,” Josefa muttered.
    Joe seemed happy about her reaction. “Are you going home already?” he asked.
    “I really wanted to…” she began, but then a distinctive cap caught her eye. Like hell it was a rusty-red ski jacket —Sebastian Sauter’s ski outfit was dark blue. “…go around one more time,” she finished her sentence.
    “Thanks, you helped me a lot,” she called to Joe. “You’ve got a good bottle of wine coming,” she promised before gliding away.
    “Make that vodka,” she could still hear him say.
    Josefa went on the trail of the dark blue skater, who was maneuvering rather shakily over the ice. “There’s something familiar about you,” she said when she caught up to him.
    Sebastian Sauter was so surprised he made an unintended turn and almost lost his balance. “Yes, I know, the skates.”
    “The skates?”
    “Yes, you’ve got some too.”
    Josefa laughed. Not bad for a detective , she thought.
    “Come this way, we’re holding up people around us.” He took her by the sleeve and skated with her over to the rail. “And how long have you been admiring my clumsy attempts at slipping and sliding?” he asked, fishing out his handkerchief.
    “I saw you just this minute,” Josefa confessed. “Are you going for the national championship?”
    Sauter blew his nose. “My son wants to play hockey with me so I’ve got to practice a bit. I don’t want him to lose respect for me.” His expression changed into a questioning one. “And what are you doing here? I’ve never seen you at the rink.”
    She didn’t answer but suggested they go to the cafeteria instead.
    Josefa blew over her hot chocolate for a while and then finally screwed up her courage enough to ask Sauter something that had been bothering her for a long time. “Tell me, Herr Sauter, what section do you in fact work in at the police department?”
    Josefa used the eternity it took him to answer to examine this man a little more closely. The top of his ski suit was folded down so that she could see his broad shoulders—and the start of a little paunch, as he sat across from her, slowly stirring his pitch-black coffee. At last he said, “I thought you’d ask me that someday.”
    “That’s a very vague answer, if I may say so.”
    “You’re right there,” he remarked, turning very serious. “I’m with Criminal Investigation but get involved with burglary in exceptional cases. Right now I’m working with the feds on a political crime.”
    “Do you mean to say the break-in at Esther Ardelius’s was a political crime?” Josefa’s hands suddenly felt cold despite the warm cup she was holding.
    “There was suspicion that it might have something to do with a political crime. Frau Ardelius was probably not the burglar’s intended victim.”
    “Who was,