The Zurich Conspiracy

it would work. It had to be hush-hush. What was I supposed to say to Kündig anyhow? That you wouldn’t cooperate? I thought you liked Curt Van Duisen. I thought you’d be pleased.”
    “Pleased? You’re off your rocker!”
    Paul raised his hand in a conciliatory gesture. “It’s proof that the police trust you, Josefa. You can rest easy now.”
    She struggled to find her words, the rage mounting inside.
    “Shows what you know, Paul! You haven’t got the faintest idea! And how did you know where this meeting would be, anyway?”
    “Josefa, I set it up myself.”
    She shut her eyes. If things kept going like this, she could sign up for burnout therapy tomorrow.
    “Come on, let’s go to a café,” Paul suggested.
    “A café? Here, on Paradeplatz, at this hour? Forget it. They’re full of bankers now. Besides, I don’t want anybody overhearing us.”
    Paul took her tacit agreement as a sign that he might still calm her down. He thought for a second.
    “I’ve got it. Let’s go to the Fraumünster.”
    “To a church?”
    “There’s a whole gang of tourists going there to see the Chagall glass windows. Nobody will even notice us.”
    He took her arm, and she offered no resistance.
    Paul Klingler was right: A large tour bus was parked only a few steps away from the front of the Fraumünster. A guide was telling tourists inside about the history and significance of the windows, including the rose window that Marc Chagall had made in the seventies, but Josefa already knew all about it.
    She took a pew right at the front, and Paul sat down beside her. The two of them said nothing for a while; Josefa was organizing her thoughts while Paul waited patiently, something that didn’t come easily for him. But she didn’t want to make any allowances—the whole thing was so damn unfair! The police trusted her, Van Duisen trusted her, Sali trusted her, Sali’s aunt and uncle trusted her—but who could she trust?
    “We have to distrust each other. It’s our only defense against betrayal,” she finally said.
    “I beg your pardon?”
    “That’s the quotation you sent me. From Tennessee Williams.”
    “Ah, yes.” Paul was trying to get his long legs under the pew. “You’ve every reason not to trust me, Josefa, after all that’s happened. But you’ve also good reason to trust me.”
    “Who says?”
    “Your instinct. Or else you wouldn’t be sitting here.”
    Josefa shrugged. “What’s that supposed to mean? You trusted Schulmann, at the beginning, and then he double-crossed you.”
    “And now he’s dead as a doornail,” Paul added. “What’s with that mole at Loyn?”
    She decided to tell him what came up in her talk with Curt Van Duisen. Didn’t she have a mission? Paul would be her first victim.
    He listened intently, and when she told him about Thüring’s insinuation that he could force Walther to sell, he whistled softly. After she was through, he said, “I’m not much surprised…not very surprised at all. Thought that’s what the gang of four might have been cooking up. You know what I think of Van Duisen. I think the old fox thought hard about joining in. Loyn’s a jewel, enough to make a lot of mouths water. But he also figured out that the deal wouldn’t pay. The risks were too great.” He was wiggling back and forth next to her, apparently finding it difficult to sit comfortably. Or Paul might have been suffering from gambler’s fever and hoping to hit the jackpot.
    “Maybe Van Duisen was genuinely convinced that public opinion would kill the deal, one way or another.” He coughed, then took out his handkerchief. “Or that the other three couldn’t be trusted, that they’d quarrel among themselves. The fact remains that he did sit at the same table with them in St. Moritz. And sat with Westek at Lake Geneva. The tapes will reveal what they actually discussed. Apart from that, Van Duisen can say whatever he wants. Thüring’s evidently drowned, and the other two are dead for sure.”
    “You might as well say it: ‘murdered,’” Josefa shot back.
    “Well, that hasn’t been proven yet. As far as I know, the police are only treating Westek’s accident as a possible murder.”
    “And Feller-Stähli, the lawyer?”
    “He certainly had a hand in it, that’s perfectly obvious.”
    Josefa mulled it over. “I don’t think Van Duisen had anything to do with Westek’s murder.”
    “Why?”
    “The police would be treating him as a suspect if they thought he did. And