Numbered Account (54 page)

“I’ll expect an answer by tomorrow,” said Von Graffenried. “We’ll be here all day long.”

Sprecher slapped the paper onto his desk and withdrew a pen. He read the
sheet, suppressing an urge to laugh aloud. Look at the handwritten notes Neumann
had inscribed:
Called at 10:00, called at 12:00. No answer. We must not fail
!! Young Nick, earnest to the last.

Dutifully, Sprecher picked up the phone and rang the number written on the sheet. An answering machine responded after the fourth ring. The voice sounded familiar but he couldn’t place it, and upon hearing the beep, he left a brief message. “This is Mr. Peter Sprecher calling on behalf of the Adler Bank. We would very much like to speak with you as soon as possible regarding the voting of your block of USB shares at the general assembly on Tuesday. Please feel free to call me back at the following number. Mr. Konig and Mr. Von Graffenried would personally enjoy meeting with you to discuss the Adler Bank’s famed investment strategies and to point out how the value of your shareholding would greatly increase with benefit of the Adler Bank’s wise counsel.”

“Very well done,” applauded Hassan Faris. “This is Mister Peter Sprecher. Send out your wives and daughters. Trust us. We want only to ravage and enslave them. Do not worry.”

Hassan’s troop burst into laughter.

A light on the equity trader’s desk lit up. Faris jabbed at the lit button and brought the phone to his ear. He plugged his finger into his other ear, then motioned for his charges to be quiet.

“Shut up!” yelled Faris. He swept his hands through the air, and his followers dispersed.

Sprecher sat up and took note. He rolled his chair closer to his neighbor while inclining his head so as best to eavesdrop on Faris’s conversation.

“Wait a moment, sir, I must write this all down,” said Faris. “I never make a mistake on so big an order . . . Yes, sir, that is why you hired me . . . For-tee million . . . Is that U.S. dollars or Swiss francs? . . . Dollars, yes sir . . . At the market . . . One minute . . . Mr. Konig, our cash account shows only two million dollars . . . Yes, of course I can arrange for settlement on Tuesday . . . No, we aren’t required to say anything . . . Well, technically, yes, but we’ll just pay twenty-four hours late, that’s all . . . On Tuesday morning at ten . . . Will the money have arrived by that time? . . . Yes, sir . . . I repeat: An order to buy forty million U.S. dollars of USB shares at the market for settlement Tuesday. The entire purchase to be booked into the Ciragan Trading Account.”

Sprecher eased his chair back another few inches. He wrote down the words exactly as Faris had spoken them.

“Yessir, I will call with a fill before the day is out . . . We may have to work on the after market . . . I will keep you informed.” Faris slammed down the receiver.

“What is the Ciragan Trading Account?” asked Sprecher. Best to pry while the trader was occupied tending to the details of the call.

Hassan scribbled Klaus Konig’s instructions onto his order block. “What’s
that, Sprecher?
Ciragan
? It’s Konig’s private account.”

“Konig’s? That doesn’t sound like the name of a Swiss trading account. Surely it doesn’t belong to the Adler Bank proper.”

“It is the account of his largest investor. Most of the USB stock we have purchased is being held in Ciragan Trading. We hold proxy over all shares in that account. They’re as good as ours.” Hassan looked up from his writing. He wrinkled his brow in annoyance. “Why am I telling you? It’s none of your fucking business. Go back to your work, whatever the hell it is you do all day.”

Sprecher watched Faris call down to the floor of the Zurich stock exchange. The trader excitedly relayed the “open to buy” for forty million U.S. When the order was filled, the Adler Bank would pass the thirty-three percent barrier. It could, for all intents and purposes, count on winning two seats on the board of the United Swiss Bank. Kaiser would be finished. Nick too.

Ciragan Trading, Sprecher whispered. He’d heard that word only once in his life.
Ciragan Palace
. The password for numbered account 549.617 RR. The Pasha.

Zurich wasn’t a big enough town for it to be a coincidence.

He picked up the telephone to call Nick. The whine of Faris’s voice reminded him that calling from the Adler Bank was no longer wise. He grabbed his cigarettes and his jacket. Time for a late lunch. “Be a good chap, young Nick,” he whispered to himself, “and keep your bloody ass firmly planted behind your desk for the next ten minutes.”

Nick trudged up the steep hill. The sidewalk was as slick as a wet bar of soap, cobbled with fissures of ice. Normally, this kind of walk would put him into a dark mood. Tonight, he found a grim enjoyment to it. Anything to divert his mind from the events he’d been party to that afternoon. Three hours ago, he had tried to murder a man. He had willed himself to pull the trigger and take the consequences. Even now, part of him wished he’d been successful.

Nick slowed and rested against a barren tree. He was content to hear his heart beating and see his breath’s vapor wash. But after a second, another chorus of sound and light took their place. He heard the muted crack of Mevlevi’s pistol as it fired three bullets into Albert Makdisi’s chest. He caught the Pasha’s contemptuous sneer as Rita Sutter announced Cerruti’s death. He saw Albert Makdisi’s wrecked face, its crushed nose and accusing eyes and he imagined his own face replacing it. Suddenly, he felt sick. He dropped to his knee and heaved. His empty stomach produced a trickle of bile that burned his throat. He gasped, sucking in the cold night air. He had become Mevlevi’s pawn. He was in hell.

After leaving the Platzspitz, Mevlevi had ferried him back to the bank. Kaiser was out. The Emperor’s Lair was quiet. Three messages from Peter Sprecher lay on his desk. He ignored them. Reto Feller called once, saying that he’d taken the remaining portfolios Nick had not yet “liberated,” and that USB now controlled fifty-eight percent of its outstanding votes. The Adler Bank was mired at thirty-two percent.

Pietro from payments traffic called at 4:15 to inform him that a newly activated numbered account (one of the five Mevlevi had obtained from the International Fiduciary Trust that morning) had received a transfer from the Schiller Bank. The amount: forty million dollars. Nick followed the Pasha’s instructions and immediately transferred the full amount to the banks specified by matrix one. Immediately afterward, he left the bank.

Nick resumed his slow walk to Sylvia’s apartment. He hadn’t wanted to go home after work. He couldn’t face the cramped one-room apartment. He thought of it as a cell and of Mevlevi as his jailer. Arriving at the crest of the hill, he paused and turned to study the slope behind him. His eyes skimmed hedges and fences, trees and entryways. He was looking for a phantom he knew must be somewhere behind him — a shadow sent by Mevlevi with instructions to stop any sudden and ill-advised flight to the police.

Nick was exhausted when he reached the entrance to Sylvia’s building. Cold, confused, and out of breath. He checked his wristwatch and saw it was only 5:30. He doubted she would be home but rang the buzzer anyway. No one answered. She was probably still at work. He longed to be inside the glass door where he could wait in the warmth and relative comfort of her hallway. Sighing, he closed his eyes and pressed his back against the wall, then slid down until his bottom rested on the crusty snow. Sylvia would be home any minute, he told himself. Relax. His shoulders sagged.

Just a few minutes more till she gets home.

Somewhere over the horizon the earth was shaking. The ground rent itself into towering slabs of concrete that threatened to topple onto his prostrate form. A blunt object poked him in the ribs. Someone shook his shoulders. “Nick, get up,” his mother called. “You’re blue.”

Nick opened his eyes. Sylvia Schon was hunched over him. She felt his cheek with her warm hands. “Are you all right? How long have you been here? My God, you’re frozen stiff.”

She had too many questions to wait for any one answer.

Nick shook himself and stood up. His back was sore and his right knee a rock. He checked his wristwatch and groaned. “It’s almost seven. I sat down at five-thirty.”

Sylvia clucked like a mother hen. “Get inside right now and take a hot shower. Get those clothes off.” She gave him a quick kiss. “You’re cold as ice. You’ll be lucky not to catch pneumonia.”

Nick followed her into the apartment. He took note of the faded yellow dossiers she carried under her arm. “You were able to get more activity reports?”

“Of course,” Sylvia said proudly. “I have the rest of 1978 and all of 1979. We have the entire weekend, don’t we?”

Nick smiled and said they did. He marveled at the facility with which Sylvia checked information into and out of the bank. He wondered briefly if she had told Kaiser about their lunch yesterday, then dismissed the thought. It had probably been Rita Sutter or that asshole Schweitzer — either one of them might have overheard his conversation. Be happy you have at least one person on your side, he told himself. He started to thank her for the reports, but before he could she began peppering him with questions. Where had he been all day? Had he heard the dreadful news about Marco Cerruti? Why hadn’t he called if he had planned on joining her for dinner?

Nick sighed and allowed himself to be led into the bathroom.

The watcher stood fifty yards from the apartment hidden in a copse of tall pines. He punched a number into his cellular phone, keeping his eyes pasted to the entry of the apartment building. The desired party answered after a dozen rings. “Where is he?”

“With the woman. She just came home. He’s inside with her now.”

“Just as we thought.” A knowing laugh. “At least he’s predictable. I knew he wouldn’t go to the police. By the way, how does he look?”

“Exhausted,” said the watcher. “He slept in front of her apartment building for an hour.”

“Go home,” said Ali Mevlevi. “He’s one of us now.”

Nick huddled beneath a fierce shower, enjoying the needles of hot water that pounded his skin. Another hour in here and he’d feel human again. He savored the warmth, willing it to take away his despair. He thought about that afternoon. He had to look at it analytically, to divorce himself from what he had witnessed. He wanted desperately to talk about it with someone, probably just so that he could proclaim his innocence. He considered confiding in Sylvia but decided against it. Knowledge of the Pasha’s actions would serve in the long run only to incriminate her. He didn’t want to share his troubles.

Nick turned his face upward, allowing the bristling water to massage his eyelids and tickle his nose and his mouth. Suddenly, a memory stirred deep inside his confused brain — a souvenir from earlier that afternoon. He closed his eyes and concentrated. A word or two flickered — something sparked by his interest in the activity reports. He tried to coax it out, sure for a split second that he had a letter or two. But no, it kept itself hidden, swimming just below the surface. He gave up. Still, he knew something was there, and its presence fired in him a fierce desire for its discovery.

A dinner of veal scaloppini and spaetzle went mostly to waste. Nick couldn’t find his appetite. He told Sylvia that plain fatigue had caused him to fall asleep outside her apartment. He just couldn’t keep up with the Chairman. She accepted the explanation without comment, or for that matter, interest. She was too busy replaying her colleagues’ reactions to Marco Cerruti’s suicide. No one could begin to understand why he had taken his own life.

Nick did his best to share her feelings of bewilderment and anguish. “He must have been a brave man. Shooting yourself requires a helluva lot of courage.”

More than Cerruti had, that was for certain.

“He’d been drinking,” Sylvia explained. “Drink enough and you’ll do anything.”

Cerruti drink?
The hardest stuff he touched was classic Coke. “Where did you hear that?”

“That he’d been drinking? Nowhere. Someone at the bank mentioned it. Why?”

Nick pretended as if his conscience had been offended, not his memory. “It’s a nasty thought, isn’t it? As if that explains it all. The guy juiced himself up and capped himself in the noggin. I’ll buy it. Now we can forget he even existed. Our consciences are spotless. None of us to blame.”

Sylvia frowned. “I wish you wouldn’t talk about the poor man like that. It’s tragic.”

“Yeah,” Nick agreed. “A crime.”

A heap of yellow folders covered the dining room table. Each one contained three monthly activity reports submitted by Alex Neumann. Nick selected the folder dated July through September 1978 and drew it toward him. Sylvia slid a chair from the table and sat down. She held the agenda from 1978 close to her chest. “I checked our personnel records on Mr. Burki, first initial C — the executive at USB London who referred Soufi to your father. His name is Caspar Burki. He retired from the bank as a senior vice president in 1988.”

“Still alive?”

“I have an address in Zurich. That’s all. I can’t tell you whether it’s current.”

Nick took his father’s agenda from Sylvia and opened it to the month of
April. He turned to the fifteenth of the month and found the first mention of
Allen Soufi. Suddenly, the hidden recollection shot to the surface. He saw
himself walking alongside Ali Mevlevi in the Platzspitz earlier in the day. He
heard the Pasha’s voice complaining about his father:
I could never be a derv. The spinning, the chanting. I was only interested in this world
.

Nick stared for a moment at his father’s handwriting. “
A. Soufi
.” He repeated the name several times and felt a jolt of adrenaline fire through his chest. The elusive memory was close. Mevlevi’s voice echoed louder.

“Sylvia, do you know anything about dervs? You know, whirling dervishes?”

She eyed him suspiciously. “Are you serious?”

“Humor me. Do you?”