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“That you’re wrong about this. Problem is, that doesn’t happen very often. Let me see your phone.” She gave it to him. He got out his Swiss Army knife and went to work.
Sam, his head bent over the dissected iPhone in his lap, finally muttered, “There you are.”
Remi leaned down. “Something?”
Using his knife’s tweezers, he lifted a pinkie nail-sized circuit chip from the iPhone’s innards. A pair of monofilamentlike leads trailed down to the phone’s battery. “The culprit,” he said. The good news was, the bug was set to transmit only when the phone was on; no signal ping would alert Kholkov that they’d found the device. Sam detached the leads and dropped the chip into his shirt pocket and started reassembling the iPhone.
Twenty minutes later, with most of the mist dissipating under a sun-filled blue sky, they rounded the Hirschau Peninsula. Saint Bartholomae came into view, its bright red onion domes glowing in the sun and the snow-veined granite of the mountains rising behind them. The meadow in which Saint Bartholomae’s sat was on a forty-acre wedge of shoreline extending back to the forest. There were two dock areas, one for visitor arrivals and departures; the other, situated nearer the chapel, a covered boathouse. Strung out behind the chapel on islands of green lawn and meandering paths were a dozen wooden outbuildings, all rough-hewn and ranging from barn- to cabin-sized.
The captain circled the dock area once, waiting for another electric boat to disgorge its passengers, then headed in and glided alongside the pier. A crewman jumped across the gap, tied off the stern and bow lines, then swung up the boat’s protective railing.
Scanning their fellow passengers for familiar faces, Sam and Remi disembarked, pausing to drop some Trinkgeld into the bulkhead cup.
“Didn’t see anyone,” Sam muttered as he stepped onto the dock, then offered his hand to Remi. “You?”
“No.”
Theirs was the second boat of the morning to put ashore; the majority of the first group was still lingering in the landing area and around the gift shop, snapping photos and studying maps. Sam and Remi moved along the split-rail fence that encircled the landing, scanning faces before the crowd had a chance to disperse.
As they walked they could hear several tour guides starting their introductory speeches over the background babble:
“Originally built in the twelfth century, Saint Bartholomae was once considered the protector of alpine farmers and of milkmaids. . . .”
“. . . find the interior floor plan is based on the Salzburg Cathedral and the exterior stucco work was done by famed Salzburg artist Josef Schmidt. . . .”
“. . . until 1803 the hunting lodge adjacent to the chapel was the private retreat of the Prince-Provosts of Berchtesgaden, the last of whom . . .”
“. . . After Berchtesgaden became part of Bavaria, the lodge became a favorite Wittelsbach hunting cabin. . . .”
Sam and Remi completed their circuit of the landing and ended up back at the dock. They’d seen no familiar faces. A half mile up the fjord, two more electric boats were coming around the peninsula.
Sam said, “We can wait here and check faces as each boat comes in or mix with the crowds and start hunting for clues.”
“I’m not a big fan of waiting,” Remi said.
“Me neither. Let’s get moving.”
They made their way into the gift shop, where they selected a pair of sweatshirts—one a pale yellow, the other a dark blue—from the rack, then a pair of floppy hats from another display. They paid for their purchases and headed to the restrooms to don their new clothing. If Kholkov and his men had been observing them from the Schönau docks, these rudimentary disguises, combined with the crowds, which had by now swelled to over two hundred, might provide Sam and Remi enough cover to move about anonymously.
“Ready?” he asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” Remi replied, tucking her auburn hair under her hat.
For the next twenty minutes they loitered around the landing area, taking pictures of the fjord and the mountains until Remi said, “Got him.”
“Where?” Sam replied without turning.
“The boat that’s circling, waiting to dock. Starboard side, fourth window back.”
Sam turned and pointed his camera across the fjord and caught the incoming boat in the corner of the frame. He zoomed in, took a few pictures, lowered his camera. “Yep, that’s Kholkov. I counted three others. Wait here.”
Hat pulled low over his eyes, Sam strolled back toward the dock. “Hey, there, just a minute,” he called to the deckhand who was getting ready to untie the docked boat. “Forgot the Trinkgeld.” Sam held up a ten-euro note.
“Certainly, sir, go ahead,” the deckhand said.
Sam hopped aboard, dropped the note and transponder chip into the Trinkgeld cup, then stepped back onto the dock. While in the bathroom he’d used the price stickers from their sweatshirts to affix a spare watch battery to the chip. The battery wouldn’t power the transponder for more than thirty minutes, he suspected, but it would be long enough for their purposes.
He made his way back to Remi, who asked, “Think it’ll work?”
