breaking speed limits. Though it was not exactly an ambulance, such repair vans were typically dispatched for automotive emergencies, including crashes. The vehicle's guise was well chosen.
He would be safe in this vehicle, at least for a while. As he tore through the countryside, time was a blooming montage of sunlight and shadow, of streets filled with people and roads filled with motorists. Veering one way and then another, he navigated around small, officious cars and big, pavement-rumbling tractor-trailers. Everything seemed a conspiracy to impede his progress-or, rather, his consciousness registered little except for such impediments. Meanwhile, the van itself gulped down the steepest grades with ease, its snow tires and four-wheel drive gripping the pavement with assurance. The gears never strained, no matter how hard he stressed them; the engine never whined, no matter how hard he pushed the limits of its capacity.
There were moments when he dimly recognized the dazzling beauty of his surroundings-the towering pines ahead of him that winter had turned into a castle of snow, a Neuschwanstein built from branches; the mountain peaks that punctuated the horizon like the sails of distant ships; the roadside freshets, fed by mountain streams, that continued to gush even while all around them was frozen. Yet his mind was consumed with the imperative of motion-of speed.
He had decided that he could safely drive this vehicle for two hours, and in those two hours he had to consume as much of the distance between him and his destination as he possibly could. At the end of the line, there was danger-dangers to be confronted, dangers to be averted-but there was hope as well.
And there was Laurel. She was there, would have arrived already. His heart swelled and ached as he thought of her, his Ariadne.
Oh God, he loved her so.
Laurel, the woman who had saved first his life and then his soul. It did not matter how beautiful the landscape was; anything that separated him from Laurel was, simply by virtue of this, detestable.
He looked at his watch, as he had been doing obsessively since he had entered Switzerland. Time was running out. Another steep ascent of the Alpine road, followed by a shallower descent. He kept the accelerator pedal at or near the floor, grazed the brake pedal only when absolutely necessary. So close and yet so far: so many gulfs behind, so many gulfs ahead.
Chapter Thirty-One
Davos
Few places on earth were at once so vast in the popular imagination and so diminutive in physical scale-essentially a mile or so of houses and buildings clustered mostly along a single road. Hulking snow-laden conifers surrounded it like frosted sentries. Geographers knew it as the highest-altitude resort town in Europe, but this was not merely a truth about its physical elevation. For a few days every year, it represented the pinnacle of financial and political power as well. Indeed, the town had become synonymous with the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum-a gathering of the world's global elite that took place there in the last week of January, when the seasonal gloom ensured that the visiting illuminati would sparkle and shine even more brightly. Although the forum was dedicated to the free movement of capital and labor and ideas, it was itself a heavily guarded encampment. Surrounding a sprawling compound of semi-spheres and blocks-the Congress Center, where the conference was actually held-were hundreds of Swiss military policemen; temporary steel fences blocked off all points of informal entrance.
Now he left the van in a parking lot behind an old, bleak church with a steeple like a witch's hat and trudged up a narrow street, Reginaweg, to the town's main street, the Promenade. The sidewalks had been carefully cleared of snow, the result of ceaseless efforts; wind continually swept in snow from the slopes even when none was falling from the skies. The Promenade was an arcade of sorts, with one shop after another, interrupted only by the occasional hotel and restaurant. Nor was there anything quaint about the storefronts. Here were upscale outlets of international brands like Bally, Chopard, Rolex, Paul & Shark, Prada. He passed a store selling linens called Bette und Besser and a tall modern building that displayed three flags as if it were a consulate; in fact, it was a UBS branch office, displaying the flags of the state, the canton, and the company. Ambler had no doubt which of those commanded the bank's true fealty. Only the hotels-the Posthotel, with an iconic horn above its giant block