I Am Pilgrim

Murdoch continues to reflect on his start as an intelligence officer investigating internal corruption. Murdoch begins his new role with a sweeping search for all lingering corruption and links to his predecessor’s operation. This includes uncovering how compromised agents were paid and leads him to a member of a Greek crime family named Christos Nikolaides.

Murdoch’s investigation takes him to Geneva and the world of Swiss banks, famous for their privacy laws that facilitate a variety of corrupt transactions. He orchestrates the kidnapping of a banker’s daughter in exchange for bank data that will confirm Nikolaides is the link to the corrupt agents. This leads Murdoch to reflect, “And of every kind of love […] the love that a parent has for their child is the greatest of them all” (39). He anticipates convincing the banker, Bucher, to reveal Nikolaides’s identity using his daughter as collateral.

Murdoch explains that his cold-blooded behavior was made possible by a significant childhood trip with his foster father, Bill Murdoch. Bill took a younger Murdoch to a former Nazi concentration camp called Natzweiler-Struthof. The horrors depicted included a photograph that changed him forever, showing a young mother lovingly leading her children toward a gas chamber.