“The possibilities,” replied Ingrid, “are endless.”
The subsequent three days were spent in the pursuit of Peter Hoffmann’s second mobile phone. Not the device itself, at least not initially, but merely a number that Gabriel could enter into the hacking malware Proteus. They searched for it in the only source they had—the digital debris of his public-facing device. They isolated seventy-eight possible candidates and dialed each of the numbers from a prepaid device they purchased from a shop in Zurich Hauptbahnhof. Twenty-two of the phones were answered by women, thirty-eight by men other than Peter Hoffmann, and three by young girls. The remaining phones repeatedly went straight to voicemail. Gabriel fed the numbers into Proteus and in short order determined that none of the devices were in the possession of a banker from Zurich.
It was at this point, on the Thursday morning of that week, that Gabriel reached the unsettling conclusion they had no choice but to illicitly acquire the phone itself. He ruled out breaking into the Hoffmann villa in Küsnacht. It was undoubtedly protected by a high-quality security system, and finding the device would be akin to searching for the proverbial needle in a haystack. The only alternative, he submitted, was to remove the device from the owner’s pocket.
“We would need a professional pickpocket,” said Peel.
“We have one,” replied Gabriel.
He was the first to acknowledge, though, that the plan was not perfect—far from it, in fact. The target only set foot outside the insular world of his bank at lunchtime, which meant the theft would haveto occur on the Bahnhofstrasse or an adjacent street. Moreover there was no guarantee the target would be carrying his second phone when he left the office—or that the thief would necessarily be able to discern one device from the other. It was quite possible, he admitted, that she might steal the wrong phone.
“Which would leave us in the dark,” said Peel.
“Until he gets a new phone,” answered Gabriel.
They had seen enough of Peter Hoffmann to know that he was right-handed and carried his phone in the left breast pocket of his suit jacket. It followed, therefore, that he would carry a second device in the opposite pocket, the right. It was, Ingrid explained, the easier of the two pockets for her to pick, for she was right-handed as well. Her preferred method involved pleating the pocket lining to make the valuable easier to obtain. She demonstrated the technique on Peel during a rehearsal in the apartment in Zollikon. He admitted, much to his dismay, that he had felt neither the elusive touch of her hand nor the phone leaving his pocket.
He steadfastly refused, however, to serve as Ingrid’s accomplice, only her chauffeur. They left the apartment at eleven thirty and made the short drive up the lakeshore to the Bahnhofstrasse. Ingrid did a bit of shopping, and at twelve forty-five, bags in hand, she was admiring the silver and gold trinkets displayed in the window of the luxury jewelry boutique located on the ground floor of Bänzinger HQ. Peter Hoffmann stepped from the door of the building two minutes later, bound for a business lunch at Restaurant Kronenhalle, his phone to his ear. Ingrid chose that instant to conclude her examination of the jewelry and, as misfortune would have it, a minor collision occurred. Peter Hofffmann, like Timothy Peel before him, never felt the touch of her hand. The breast pocket it probed was empty.
“Forgive me,” she said in German. “I’m hopelessly clumsy.”
“The pleasure was mine,” said Peter Hoffmann with a smile, and walked away.
Which left them one final bite at the apple before the weekend. Because the target had got a good look at the thief, she would have to make a drastic change to her appearance. The second collision occurred at 1:07p.m.Friday outside a popular Zurich restaurant specializing in the cuisine of Tuscany. The other party to the incident was a small, strikingly handsome man in his mid-thirties, or so it appeared to the target. Once again he failed to notice the hand that slipped inside his suit jacket. This time, however, it discovered a mobile phone resting on the bottom of the right breast pocket.
Polite apologies were exchanged, and the two went their separate ways. Within minutes, though, each would make a startling discovery. The banker discovered that his mobile phone was missing. The thief, much to her dismay, realized that it was the banker’s primary device.
Leaving his office that evening, he walked to a nearby Apple store and, with a British detective looking on from a safe distance, purchased a replacement phone for the one that was now lying on the bottom of the Zürichsee. By the time he arrived home in Küsnacht, the hacking malware Proteus had seized control of the phone’s operating system, and the device was acting as an audio and video transmitter. He passed a quiet evening with his wife and children, and early the following morning loaded a quantity of climbing gear into the trunk of his Audi sedan. It was a few minutes after seven o’clock when he sped past a small apartment house in the neighboring suburb of Zollikon. A rented Mitsubishi SUV eased from the curb and followed after him.
31
Bernese Oberland
He skirted the northern shore of the lake, plunged into the Uetliberg Tunnel, then headed south on the A4 toward Lucerne. His new iPhone was resting on the Audi’s center console, and the car’s superb Bang & Olufsen audio system was tuned to Radio Swiss Jazz. For that much, at least, Gabriel was grateful. At present he was slouched in the passenger seat of the Mitsubishi, laptop balanced on his knees. Ingrid was stretched out in the back seat, eyes closed. Peel was handling the driving.
“Where do you suppose he’s going?” he asked.
It was Ingrid who answered. “To the mountains, Inspector Dalgliesh. Where else?”
“And when he arrives? What then?”
“Someone,” said Gabriel, “will have to make the climb with him.”
“Since I’ve spent the entirety of my life at sea level, it will have to be someone other than me.”
“I couldn’t possibly do it. My back is giving me fits today.”
“That leaves your friend.” Peel lowered his voice. “The one who stole the wrong bloody phone.”
“It was an understandable mistake, Timothy. Anyone could have made it.”
“Anyone?” Peel shook his head. “There aren’t more than a handfulof pickpockets in the world who could pull off a move like hers. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“You should see her with a pool cue in her hands.”
“Where did she learn her craft?”
“Billiards?”
