The car pulled away from the curb and out of sight of the terminal. The windshield wipers beat out a steady rhythm as they cut at the light drizzle. Tomorrow night. It's funny how life works. You can run in the same circles for months, years, even decades, then a change comes like a sudden storm at sea blowing you hundreds of miles off course, often forcing you to realize you had no course to begin with. I didn't know nearly enough about what I was getting into, but I was getting in anyway. I wanted to know more about them, and more about myself. I knew this would be a good change for me, it had to be.

Street signs printed in German lined the highway that ran into the heart of the city's old quarter. The driver exited onto the main thoroughfare that paralleled the slow-moving Limmat River. The city got older the farther he drove. Centuries-old church spires rose toward the heavens in front of us. Each narrow, cobblestone side street opened for a split second then closed its secrets as we rushed by. We crossed the river over an old stone bridge and turned down a twisting one-way side street only wide enough for one car. 'Augustiner Strasse' was painted in a rectangle on the wall of a building at the end of the block. The serpentine trail of wet cobblestones ended in front of a white brick hotel, The Hotel St. Germain. We pulled into the circular driveway and stopped in front of the large black front door. I looked over at her for some indication of what was going on. My heart was hammering.

"This is home. This is the Cognomina," she said, waiting for the driver to open her door.

I followed her. She pulled on a white rope that hung next to the door, ringing a bell inside. I sat down my things, put my nervous hands in my pockets to keep them from moving and rocked back and forth. I looked at her, then looked at the door. Two deadbolts cleared their latches before the door creaked open.

A tall, thin, tuxedo-clad man appeared behind the door. He stood just over six feet tall. The tuxedo jacket hung loosely on his lanky frame. His narrow chiseled face betrayed little about his age, but with the grey intermingled in his black hair and his tired posture I would have guessed him to be about fifty-five. He didn't have the tattoo on his hand. He smiled when he saw her. "Hello Madame, so nice to see you again," he said in English with a thick German accent.

"Thank you, and how are you doing?"