The matter of entering Switzerland from Germany was something to think through. Slaton knew that with the adoption of the Schengen Area, Switzerland no longer staffed border control points on roads leading into the country. Equally, rail and bus service were not regularly monitored. But this was not an absolute—customs officers had full authority to stop anyone entering the country, and they randomly patrolled trains to ask for identification and search baggage. Carrying no identity papers whatsoever, Slaton was not keen to travel in a vehicle of any sort. On the other hand, he was facing a firm deadline—an appointment to kill a man in four days’ time. The latter forced his hand, and he decided that with the precautions of good tradecraft, it would be best to take the train straight through.

Two and a half hours after leaving Munich, the Intercity Express breached the Swiss border near the town of Bregenz, Austria, and crossed the Rhine to afford a sweeping view of Lake Constance. An announcement was made over the public address system regarding the border crossing, but Slaton saw no customs officers, and neither he nor any of the other passengers bothered to reference the folding cards in the seat pockets that served as official notice, in three languages, of the duties, laws, and responsibilities assumed by those entering Switzerland.

The annuity salesman, still at his opportunistic best, had begun chatting up a thickset man across the aisle. Slaton saw the old peddler pull out his wallet, ostensibly to produce a business card, but also managing to put on display an inset photograph of his lovely wife and two daughters. It occurred to Slaton that he had never in his life kept such a picture in his wallet, even in his recent “domestic period” as Christine called it. Would it ever happen? Would a day come when he could walk through the world without the specter of entangling his wife, and now their child, in his violent past? In the last year he had covered much new ground. He had paid a water bill and opened a credit account, albeit under the alias of Edmund Deadmarsh. For the first time in years he kept a legitimate home address, if one discounted the dusty storage facility in Tel Aviv where a few inherited household items had been moldering for years. Yet now he was slipping back, returning to the abyss.