Gabriel watched the taillights melt into the darkness, then sat down at his computer and reread the last encrypted dispatch from the ops center. Six a.m. London time, seven a.m. Geneva time…After that, Graham Seymour was planning to press the panic button and bring the Swiss into the picture. That left Gabriel, Navot, and Shamron just two and a half hours to strike a deal on better terms. Terms that didn’t include exposing the operation. Terms that wouldn’t allow Martin and his centrifuges to wriggle off Gabriel’s hook.

In London, the computer technicians and analysts were searching the contents of Martin’s hard drive for a bargaining chip. Gabriel already had one of his own—a list of names and account numbers hidden for sixty years inside Portrait of a Young Woman, 104 by 86 centimeters, by Rembrandt van Rijn. Gabriel laid the three pages of fragile onionskin carefully on the desk and photographed each with the camera of his secure mobile phone. Then he typed a message to London. Like the one he had received just a few minutes earlier, it was brief and entirely lacking in ambiguity. He wanted Ulrich Müller’s telephone number. And he wanted it now.

CHAPTER 69

69

GSTAAD, SWITZERLAND

The Swiss ski resort of Gstaad lies nestled in the Alps sixty miles northeast of Geneva in the German-speaking canton of Bern. Regarded as one of the most exclusive destinations in the world, Gstaad has long been a refuge for the wealthy, the celebrated, and those with something to hide. Martin Landesmann, chairman of Global Vision Investments and executive director of the One World charitable foundation, fell into all three categories. Therefore, it was only natural Martin would be drawn to it. Gstaad, he said in the one and only interview he had ever granted, was the place he went when he needed to clear his head. Gstaad was the one place where he could be at peace. Where he could dream of a better world. And where he could unburden his complex soul. Since he assiduously avoided traveling to Zurich, Gstaad was also a place where he could hear a bit of his native Schwyzerdütsch—though only occasionally, for even the Swiss could scarcely afford to live there anymore.