At that moment the telephone began to ring. Zoe picked it up.

“Hello?”

“Zoe?” It was Seth Ridgeway. “Zoe, is that really you?”

“Seth!” Zoe felt her voice crack, her hands begin to tremble. “Oh, God! It’s you. Seth, I’m so happy to hear your voice. Oh, God,” and she began to weep softly. “I missed you so much, darling. I missed you so much.”

The tears of agony she had dammed up for so long rushed forward in a flood of relief.

“Zoe… Zoe,” Ridgeway’s voice came urgently over the earpiece. “Zoe, hold on a minute, I need your help.” Zoe felt her heart catch. She could hear his heavy breathing.

“Seth? Where are you?” she asked. “Are you all right?”

Seth looked around him. He stood in a telephone booth on the Gloriastrasse, just across the street from the entrance to the University Hospital. Groups of students, some of them in medical whites, others obviously undergraduates, walked past the booth in clots of two and three. None of them paid him any attention. But that wouldn’t last for long. He was sure there would be alerts out for him in minutes.

In the distance, from the direction of Yost’s building, he could hear the wail of sirens. “Yeah, I’m fine… right now,” he replied. “I’m in Zurich and—”

“I know,” Zoe interrupted. “But where in Zurich?”

Seth cocked his head to one side, listening intently as the sounds of a siren grew louder. It climbed the steep hill from the direction he had run just minutes ago. “Look, do you have a car?” he asked urgently.

Zoe hesitated. “Yes, I… we’ve got one.” George Stratton gave her a questioning look. “It’s Seth,” she said to Stratton.

“What?” Seth replied.

“I was talking to George Stratton. He works for the government… he saved my life.”

“He what?” Ridgeway asked. Just then a police car screamed into view, trailed closely by an ambulance. Together, their blinking lights reminded Ridgeway of an alien spacecraft.

“Never mind,” Ridgeway said. “Honey, you have got to get me out of here as soon as you can.”

“Get you out of where?” Zoe asked.

“I’m just across the street from the University Hospital … up on the hill above the Old Town on the east bank. I—”

A second police car rounded the corner slowly, with no flashing lights or siren. The officer in the passenger seat was working a spotlight, playing it along the walls and sidewalks. Had someone spotted him? The car was no more than a hundred yards away, the brilliant beam of the spotlight cutting through the night.

“I’ve got to go,” Seth said. ‘Meet me at the Groβmünster.”

“The what?” Zoe asked.

The cop with the searchlight seemed to look right at Seth.

“GroBmiinster. It’s a big church. Ask anybody.” Without waiting for a reply, he hung up the receiver and slipped into the night.

TWENTY-SEVEN

“The Groβmünster,” Zoe said as she finished tying her running shoes and started to pull on her coat “I think that’s a church down near the river.”