Mystery in the Alps: A Chinese Family, a Swiss Inn and the World's Most Expensive Weapon
UNTERBACH, Switzerland—The Hotel Rössli, a century-old lodge in this Alpine valley village, enjoys a spectacular view from its front. The lace-curtained windows stare out into a crop of mountains capped with snow that melts into the nearby waterfall where Sherlock Holmes, in one of the novels, plummets to an untimely death.
But it is the view from the back that caught the attention of American intelligence agencies. About 100 yards from the rear of the rustic, wood-paneled inn, just past a child’s swing set, cuts the runway where the Swiss military had agreed to base several F-35s, the world’s most advanced jet fighter. The airstrip, only partly fenced, is so accessible to passersby that farmers sometimes lead cows across it, bells clanging from their necks.
Until recently, the hotel’s most pressing complaint came from elderly neighbors disappointed that its Chinese owners, the Wang family, had closed its restaurant after buying it in 2018. Though Wang Jin’s wife, Lin Jing, spoke only Mandarin, and communicated using hand gestures, he smoothed things over by introducing himself in decent German to residents who were flattered—“very Swiss,” one said.
On a crisp summer morning last year, Swiss federal police raided the Rössli, taking the Wangs and their 27-year-old son Dawei in for questioning. Somebody left a note on the door reading: “The hotel is closed.”
For months, U.S. and British national security officials had been claiming that its quaint 1903 facade offered Beijing’s intelligence services an ideal watchpost on the front edge of an escalating spy war between America and China. Xi Jinping’s intelligence agencies, U.S. officials warned, were going to enormous lengths to acquire information about the supersonic jet, built to penetrate enemy airspace undetected.
The Wangs, now in China, have emphatically denied that their lodge served anybody other than visitors to the hamlet of Unterbach (pop. 478), offering hiking trails and rides on a nearby funicular. Switzerland, a historically neutral country eager to appease both superpowers, took more than a year to weigh the American allegations against the hotel.
In the end, the U.S. laid down a condition: If Switzerland wanted the F-35, the area had to be secure. That meant the Wangs had to go.
The truth of whether the Wangs were small-time innkeepers or a secret weapon in Beijing’s decadelong effort to capture one of America’s most closely protected military secrets may never be known. The case boils down to whether the family was interested in the view from the hotel’s front, or its back.
What’s for sure is a global contest between Beijing and Washington over military secrets is spilling into new and far-flung places.
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