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“Understood,” I said at the same time many others in the room responded affirmatively. Sure, I wanted to head straight back up the staircase and spend the rest of the night alone with Schön, but after this was all over, I planned to convince her to spend much longer than that with me.
“I’m going to patch the team in from Shere, then we’ll begin. Oleander? Poseidon? Which of you will brief on your findings?”
“I’ll let O take this one,” Poseidon responded when his wife stood and approached Verity.
“Cutting straight to the chase, we walked into the Swiss intelligence field office this afternoon, and Poseidon agreed to let me scare the shit out of all of them. It was working pretty well until I came face-to-face with Ehren.”
“Was she in custody?” I asked.
“She was not. However, she was anxious to clear her name.” Oleander looked at Schön. “While she was an absolute bitch to you, Ehren had nothing to do with the guy who tried to intercept you and Magnet in Zurich, nor did she have anything to do with the fire. It was all Schmid, and she had proof.”
When Schön nodded, Oleander continued. “We left the field office and went to a private residence belonging to a friend of hers, where she felt she’d be safe telling us what she knew.” Oleander glanced over her shoulder. “As Verity will tell you, I suck at writing briefs, but lucky for all of you, my husband doesn’t. What I’m trying to say is I’ll give you the vector version. He’ll bring you down in the weeds.”
According to what Ehren told O and Poseidon, she’d found a connection between Schmid and Godwin almost as soon as she returned to St. Moritz after being relieved from coalition duty.
“She was still gathering evidence when Schön and Magnet arrived, but it was when the rest of us descended on St. Moritz that Schmid went into overdrive. What he didn’t know was the guy he’d paid to start the fire at the chalet was still tight with Ehren from back before Baumgartner was killed. Anyway, she put some pressure on him when he was fingered, and he confessed everything to her, including how much Schmid paid him and where they met to finalize the deal.”
Oleander glanced over her shoulder again, but this time, at Poseidon. “Have I forgotten anything crucial?”
“Nothingcrucial.”
“Poseidon and I were about to leave to corroborate her story at the place the alleged deal was done when she shouted after us, something about a bomb being planted at Schön’s chalet. We immediately got in touch with Fuchs, who happened to be with Macht. Who, in turn, engaged the bomb squad.” She looked over at him. “In record time, I might add.” O rested on the arm of a chair. “What I’m going to say next may not go over well. However, for the good of the mission, I insist we bring Ehren back. I believe she can help us piece together the relationship between Schmid and Godwin. I also think she may have a lead on the mystery woman—the one I pray like fucking hell is our A.”
While most tried to do it surreptitiously, all eyes in the room rested on Schön.
“It’s your call, Agent Baur,” said Nemesis via the videoconference.
“I trust that if Oleander believes Ehren is telling the truth, then she is.”
“You’re sure about this?” Oleander asked, surprising me as well as Ares and Zeppelin, based on their expressions.
“I’m sure.”
22
SCHÖN
Oleander terrified me, which was why I’d agreed we should work with Ehren. While I appreciated being asked, I truly didn’t feel it was my call. In terms of how my fear of O played into it, I knew without any doubt that if Ehren did try to hurt me, Oleander would annihilate her. Then Magnet would. Then the team sitting in this room would scrape whatever bits were left of her off the floor and burn them to ash. Not that I had strong feelings about the woman.
What I trusted was that I was safe here, with these people. I belonged with them, and nothing had ever made me feel as protected.
Despite it all, though, I believed Ehren’s story. Logically, why would an agent good enough to be recommended for a United Nations coalition harbor enough resentment to want to kill me? She knew I wasn’t the one who’d fired the shots that took down Baumgartner, nor did I have anything to do with him showing up in the middle of the sting. That was on him.
I recognized that being around me would serve as a reminder of her loss, but she never could’ve passed the necessary psyche tests to remain in intelligence if she were plotting homicide.
Schmid, on the other hand, had never had much oversight in his role as director. He reported to the Swiss Federal Council, who, historically, maintained a hands-off policy where intelligence was concerned. I thought back to how everyone I’d worked with referred to him as theführer. Yes, he had been dictatorial, but more, at times, he’d seemed truly mad, much in the same way he had in the bedroom of the chalet when he pointed the gun at me.
“Before we move on to the progress made by the other three teams, Schön, are you ready to share your experiences today?” Verity asked after Oleander sat down beside Poseidon.
Magnet squeezed my hand, then let go.
“I am,” I responded, standing. “There are four key statements Schmid made in the two or three minutes he had a gun pointed at me. First, he said he had one last mission for ‘the honey trap’ and that I’d played into his hands perfectly by getting so many members of the deployed team to the chalet.”
My eyes met Magnet’s, and in them, I saw he took the blame for us being there. It wasn’t his fault, and later—maybe not tonight, but in the near future—I do everything I could to convince him the fault was Schmid’s. No one else’s.
“When he said we’d all go up together, meaning he had no intention of trying to get out of the chalet before the bomb detonated, I asked him why he’d give his life. His response was as follows, ‘You got too close. I blame myself for letting you live as long as I did. I never dreamed you were smart enough to piece it all together.’ At the time, I had no idea what he meant when he said I’d gotten too close. Now, I believe he meant to uncovering his relationship with Godwin. However, my gut is telling me there’s far more to it.”
“I believe we’ll discover Schmid had a direct connection to AMPS, or at least he was ensuring Godwin never fell under suspicion,” said Oleander.