The Sigma Protocol by Robert Ludlum Page B

table. As his police escorts remained standing, a man in a short white coat emerged and, without making eye contact, said, “ Ihre Hände, bitte .” Ben extended his hands. It was pointless to argue, he knew. The technician pumped a mist from a plastic spray bottle on both sides of his hands, then rubbed a cotton-tipped plastic swab lightly but thoroughly over the back of his right hand. Then he placed the swab in a plastic tube. He repeated the exercisefor the palm, and then did the same with Ben’s other hand. Four swabs now reposed in four carefully labeled plastic tubes, and the technician took them with him as he left the room.
    A few minutes later, Ben arrived at a pleasant, sparely furnished office on the third floor, where a broad-shouldered, stocky man in plainclothes introduced himself as Thomas Schmid, a homicide detective. He had a wide, pockmarked face and a very short haircut with short bangs. For some reason Ben remembered a Swiss woman he’d once met at Gstaad telling him that cops in Switzerland were called bullen , “bulls,” and this man demonstrated why.
    Schmid began asking Ben a series of questions—name, date of birth, passport number, hotel in Zurich, and so on. He sat at a computer terminal, typing out the answers with one finger. A pair of reading glasses hung from his neck.
    Ben was angry, tired, and frustrated, his patience worn thin. It took great effort to keep his tone light. “Detective,” he said, “am I under arrest or not?”
    “No, sir.”
    “Well, this has been fun and all, but if you’re not going to arrest me, I’d like to head on back to my hotel.”
    “We would be happy to arrest you if you’d like,” the detective replied blandly, the barest glint of menace in his smile. “We have a very nice cell waiting for you. But if we can keep this friendly, it will all be much simpler.”
    “Aren’t I allowed to make a phone call?”
    Schmid extended both hands, palms up, at the beige phone at the edge of his crowded desk. “You may call the American consulate here, or your attorney. As you wish.”
    “Thank you,” Ben said, picking up the phone and glancing at his watch. It was early afternoon in NewYork. Hartman Capital Management’s in-house attorneys all practiced tax or securities law, so he decided to call a friend who practiced international law.
    Howie Rubin and he had been on the Deerfield ski racing team together and had become close friends. Howie had come to Bedford several times for Thanksgiving and, like all of Ben’s friends, had particularly taken to Ben’s mother.
    The attorney was at lunch, but Ben’s call was patched through to Howie’s cell phone. Restaurant noise in the background made Howie’s end of the conversation hard to make out.
    “ Christ , Ben,” Howie said, interrupting Ben’s summary. Someone next to him was talking loudly. “All right, I’ll tell you what I tell all my clients who get arrested while on ski vacations in Switzerland. Grin and bear it. Don’t get all high and mighty. Don’t play the indignant American. No one can grind you down with rules and regulations and everything-by-the-book like the Swiss.”
    Ben glanced at Schmid, who was tapping at his keyboard and no doubt listening. “I’m beginning to see that. So what am I supposed to do?”
    “The way it works in Switzerland, they can hold you for up to twenty-four hours without actually arresting you.”
    “You’re kidding me.”
    “And if you piss them off, they can throw you in a dirty little holding cell overnight. So don’t.”
    “Then what do you recommend?”
    “Hartman, you can charm a dog off a meat truck, buddy boy, so just be your usual self. Any problems, call me and I’ll get on the phone and threaten an international incident. One of my partners does a lot of corporate espionage work, point being we’ve got access to some pretty high-powered databases. I’ll pull Cavanaugh’s records,see what we can find. Give me the phone number where you