Tom Bishop emerged from the Bern train station, dodging commuters as he struggled to orient himself. There was the church Reto had mentioned, and there was the covered tram station, and in between was the large open space where Reto said they’d meet.

Tom quickly crossed the street and stood where he felt he’d be most visible. Placing his carry-on between his feet, he surveyed his surroundings.

He’d been abroad before, for pleasure as well as business, but he was always struck by the age of the rest of the world and America’s relative youth. The country he was now standing in had existed, in one form or another, for more than 700 years, and some of these buildings were perhaps as old as the country itself.

Yet Switzerland was the leader of nothing and had always been, while the United States, half a millennium younger, had been the leader of the free world for more than fifty years.

Tom, who loved his country, felt this was something to be proud of, yet it also inspired perspective. Not far to the south was Italy, a country that had once ruled the modern world and had given it so much. Today it was a theme-park version of its former self and in precipitous decline. What would the United States be like in fifty or a hundred years? Would it still be admired for what it was, or best remembered for what it had been?

There was a commotion near the train station entrance, the people who’d been loitering there suddenly scattering. A man wearing only a hospital gown stumbled into view, his skin an icy green, the front of his gown spattered with what looked like blood.

Instinctively, Tom slipped a hand into his jacket. But he’d left his gun behind.

“Tom Bishop!” a thin, accented voice exclaimed. “I certainly hope you aren’t armed.”

A short, rotund man had appeared in front of Tom, smiling up at him through a goatee that provided his round face with its only definition. By all appearances, the man was less than harmless, yet Reto Barandun was one of Europe’s cleverest law enforcers, a man whose instincts and intellect had led him to quickly ascend the ranks of the EJPD — the Swiss Federal Department of Justice and Police.

“Hello, Reto,” Tom said, shaking the other man’s hand as he picked up his carry-on. “Good to see you.”

“You too. Although of course, the circumstances…”

As Reto’s voice trailed off, Tom nodded then asked, “What’s going on over there?”

The man in the hospital gown had been apprehended but he was far from subdued, continuing to bite and scratch at the men who were holding him. Luckily just then two police vehicles pulled up to the sidewalk, while at the same time a security team rushed out of the station.

“I don’t know,” Reto said with a shrug that indicated he didn’t care either. “I’m sure the city police will take care of it. Shall we go to my office?”

A howl of pain drew Tom’s attention back to the station entrance. The man in the hospital gown had fresh blood on his mouth, and one of his would-be apprehenders had fallen away.

“Did he just bite that man?” Tom asked.

“Perhaps,” Reto said. “We have crazy people in Switzerland, too!”

He took Tom by the arm.

“Come,” he said. “We have some things to talk about, you and I.”

***

High-ceilinged, with walls of solid masonry and tall windows with paned glass, Reto Barandun’s office had been a government office for a hundred years. Yet providing government employees with space and comfort, not to mention ample benefits and a generous salary, was hardly a thing of the past. In many countries, working for the government was a thankless dead end. Not Switzerland.

“Please, sit,” Reto said, pointing to an upholstered chair in front of his desk. “You want something to drink? Coffee, water?”

“I’m fine,” Tom assured him. “Thank you.”

Reto moved behind his desk and glanced at his monitor. Tom thought he saw an open inbox on the screen but couldn’t be sure. In any event, Reto seemed to see nothing of interest there.

“Okay,” Reto said, lowering himself into a high-backed leather chair. “I had a call from Carol Shaw yesterday.”

“She knows I’m here,” Tom guessed.

Reto scrunched up his nose and bobbed his head from side to side, his eyes pointed upward.

“I don’t think she knows, no,” he said. “The passport you used to fly here, I think she’s not aware of that one, so they have no record of Tom Bishop leaving the country. But she knows that the man you’re looking for is here. And apparently there were some phone calls, one from Zurich airport to your phone. And of course , one from your phone to here.”

Reto laughed.

“A call to my office!” he exclaimed, as if all of it was so silly and harmless. A prank badly pulled; a white lie revealed.

Tom knew Reto well enough to know that his tone meant nothing, nor his choice of words. You often only knew where he was going once he got there.

“What does she want you to do?” Tom asked.

“She wants me to arrest you, of course,” Reto said, suddenly serious. “I think I was able to convince her that we didn’t speak. It was a short call, after all. Maybe you just spoke to my secretary. But she seems sure that you will try to reach me again.”

“So,” Tom said, “am I under arrest?”

Reto laughed again.

“Does this seem like arrest?” he asked. “We Swiss are perhaps too kind to our criminals, but I have never invited one to my office and offered him coffee. No, you are not under arrest.”

Reto again glanced at his monitor — a casual, seemingly harmless act, but who knew? Maybe Tom had made a mistake. He’d expected Reto to help him, but that expectation had been driven by hope and desperation. Maybe he’d walked into a trap. Maybe this is where his pursuit of Walker Sheffield would end.

“As I mentioned,” Reto went on, “the man you are looking for is here. We have surveillance video of him in Zurich, as well as here in Bern. Unfortunately, here is where we lost track of him. But I am optimistic that he is not far away and that he can be found.”

Tom looked out through one of the tall windows. The sky was blue, cloudless. A dark, urgency was building up inside him. Was Walker somewhere nearby, underneath the same sky?

“Can I see the videos?” he asked.

“Please, Tom, you’re getting ahead of things.”

“Is he still with his wife and son?”

“Please, Tom–”

“Can you at least tell me when they were here, in Bern?”

Reto placed his hands in his lap and leaned back.

“If I may,” he said.

Tom nodded but didn’t relax.

“I know that you are done at the F.B.I.,” Reto announced. “From Carol that much is clear. We cooperated in the past, you and I, as peers, but today you sit before me as a private citizen — one who entered the country using a false passport, I might add.”

At this Reto smiled, again as if this were a minor transgression, as if he were scolding a child.

“So there can be no quid pro quo,” he continued. “If I helped you, it would be out kindness, not professional courtesy.”

“I understand,” Tom said.

He’d thought about this himself. He’d reached out to Reto because there’d been no one else, but he’d known that the man owed him nothing and that he’d never be able to pay him back.

“Furthermore,” Reto went on, “Carol is not an idiot. If I helped you, she would know it or she would assume it. No matter what, there would be consequences for me and my relationship with her. And she’s an influential woman, so these consequences would be far-reaching, I think. It could become impossible for me to work with your organization at all.”

Catching himself, Reto nodded apologetically and pursed his lips.

“Your former organization, I mean.”

Tom Bishop stood.

“Where are you going?” Reto asked, looking legitimately confused.

“You have no reason to help me,” Tom said, “and if you did it would have a negative impact on you professionally. I understand. Am I free to go?”

“Of course you are free to go,” Reto said, with a dismissive wave at the door. “But I think you should wait until I’ve made myself clear.”

“You can’t help me,” Tom said.

“You’re wrong,” Reto said. “I shouldn’t, but I can. And I’m going to. But not for any of the reasons you might’ve expected, which is my point.”

Tom hesitated, then lowered himself back into his chair.

“You maybe don’t know how often you talked about Michelle,” Reto said.

He let a moment slip by, waiting for Tom to react if he wanted to. But there was nothing.

“You’re not an emotional man,” Reto continued. “You don’t reveal much. But I learned one thing about you. Every time we spoke, you talked about her. Every time. You probably would have liked to have concealed your feelings about her, but you couldn’t. You loved her too much for that.”

“Every man loves his children.”

“Do they?” Reto asked. “We’ve spoken many times over the last ten or fifteen years. How many children do I have? What are their names? How old are they?”

Tom put his hands together, looked at the floor, tried to remember. The truth was, he had no idea.

“I’m sorry, Reto–”

“Don’t be, please. I love my children — I have four, by the way, all grown up — but with you and Michelle, I always felt there was something more. In all those years, she was the only thing personal about you that ever slipped through. She’s the only thing I know about you.”

Tom felt his face tighten, his anguish threatening to overwhelm him as he remembered his words to Ryan Sheffield: That child isn’t just my daughter. The way I love her, it’s more than that. She’s one of my best friends.

“I am humbled, and I am inspired,” Reto said, finally arriving where he’d been headed the whole time. “And I am entirely at your disposal.”

Reto stood and extended a hand across his desk. Tom stood and shook it, his emotions back under control.

“I would embrace you,” Reto said, “but you seem like a handshake man to me.”

The phone on Reto’s desk rang.

“Excuse me,” he said as he picked it up.

As Reto spoke — in German, so he knew it wasn’t Carol on the phone — Tom moved to the window. He could hear distant sirens but could see no emergency vehicles below. Everything appeared normal, the sidewalks full of peaceable pedestrians, the cars on the streets moving slowly through the city center.

At that moment, no one could’ve known that a week later the city would be evacuated, or that the army would be under orders to shoot on sight any people it encountered on its patrols. It wasn’t yet the beginning of the end, but it was close.

“That’s interesting,” Reto said, hanging up the phone.

Tom turned away from the window and waited.

“Your friend at the train station,” Reto explained. “As it turns out, he’s too much for the city police to handle. So he’s my problem after all.”

Reto pulled out his SIG Sauer, popped the magazine, checked it.

“So let’s go have a look,” he said.