Numbered Account (73 page)

Mevlevi limped across the room. He was in terrible pain. “Not today, Mr. Wenker. I haven’t the time.” The leg was the least of his worries. Khan, while frantic, had been every bit justified in his worry. If Joseph was in fact an informant of the DEA, there was no end to what he might have told Thorne. Mevlevi must assume the worst. All his operations in Switzerland had been compromised. His relationship with Gino Makdisi. His control over Wolfgang Kaiser. And most important, his funding of the Adler Bank’s takeover of USB.

Khamsin was in jeopardy.

“I’m not asking you,” said a visibly agitated Wenker. “I’m telling you. Take a seat. I’ll call down to reception. The hotel is very discreet.”

Mevlevi ignored him. He stopped beside the coffee table and threw his phone into the briefcase. He looked back at the trail of bloody footprints he had left on the carpet. He was losing a great deal of blood. Damn you, Neumann.

“At least take the time to sign this last document.” Wenker waved a form in the air. He looked nervous. Sweat was forming on his brow. “Civil service is obligatory. I must have a waiver.”

“I don’t think I will be needing a Swiss passport as soon as I had previously anticipated. Get out of my way. I’m leaving.” Mevlevi secured his briefcase, then swept past Wenker and made his way down the short corridor toward the door. Blood sloshed from his Italian loafers.

“Dammit, Mevlevi,” Wenker yelled in English. “I said you’re not leaving this room.” The lanky bureaucrat charged into the corridor, brandishing a compact pistol. “What the hell have you done to Nicholas Neumann?”

Mevlevi stared at the gun, then at the man. He had been right in suspecting he knew the voice. It belonged to Peter Sprecher, Neumann’s former superior at USB. He didn’t think a banker would shoot an unarmed man. He, on the other hand, would be fully justified in using his pistol. A case of self-defense. But before he could draw his gun, the banker was coming at him, an enraged expression drawn across his features. Sprecher slammed him against the wall, asking again what he had done with Neumann.

Mevlevi was momentarily stunned. He let his body go slack under the larger man’s grip. “I told you, Mr. Sprecher. Neumann was taken ill. A cold. Now let me down. There’s no reason we can’t be civil about this.”

“You’re staying here until you tell me what you’ve done to Nick.”

Mevlevi bucked his left knee into Sprecher’s groin and brought his forehead down upon the man’s nose. It was a neat trick. He’d learned it as a young stowaway on an outbound steamer to Bangkok.

Sprecher reeled and fell against the wall. The pistol dropped to the floor. Mevlevi deftly kicked it away while reaching into his jacket and withdrawing his own Beretta nine millimeter. Bad business to leave bodies behind in a five-star hotel. Changing the linens daily was one thing. Disposing of corpses, quite another. He picked up the briefcase in his left hand and leveled the gun in his right. But Sprecher appeared to have seen this coming. The hand that had been nursing his broken nose shot forward and arrested the pistol’s downward path. The other hand latched on to the briefcase.

Mevlevi grunted and urged the pistol lower, stopping when its muzzle grazed Sprecher’s shoulder. He pulled the trigger and a bullet blew Sprecher across the narrow corridor. His back slapped against the wall. His face registered the greatest surprise. Yet one hand remained fixed to the briefcase, forcing Mevlevi to advance a step. Mevlevi rammed the pistol into Sprecher’s chest, feeling its snout jab the sternum.

Never had a man take three shots and survive,
he had told Neumann.

He pulled the trigger twice more in rapid succession. Both times, the chamber clicked on empty. Out of shells. Mevlevi spun the gun in his hand, accepting the warm muzzle as a grip, and raised it high above his head. A few smacks on the cranium would do the trick nicely.

A sharp knock on the door froze his motion.

Sprecher, all too much alive, yelled, “I need help. Come in. Now.”

The door flew open and Reto Feller barged in. He looked at the scene, muttering confusedly, “Sprecher? Where’s the count? Does the Chairman know you’re here?”

Mevlevi’s eyes shifted from one man to the next. With a whiplash snarl, he crashed the pistol’s steel butt across the chubby interloper’s face. The interloper fell to the floor, slamming onto Mevlevi’s injured leg.

Mevlevi yelped and tried to jump back, but Sprecher’s stubborn hand remained in a death grip upon the briefcase handle.

“Bastard,” mumbled Sprecher, who by now had crumpled onto the floor, arm seemingly glued to the briefcase. “You’re staying here.”

Retreat,
Mevlevi heard a voice urge him. Get the hell out of here. To Brissago. To the main square. One hour. The situation was messy. A gunshot had been fired. A man had yelled for assistance. The door to the hallway remained open.

Retreat.

Mevlevi extricated his foot from the florid man’s inert body. He gave the briefcase another yank, then abandoned it, holstering his weapon as he stepped into the hallway. He gave Room 407 a last look. One man was unconscious, the other growing weaker by the minute. No threat there. He poked his head outside the room. Elevator a far distance to the left. Interior stairwell a few feet to his right. Exterior stairs at the end of the hall, also to his right.

Mevlevi chose the safer path and hurried to the exterior staircase. Forget the limousine. It was compromised. He’d skirt the hotel entrance and walk the short distance down the main road to the stand of restaurants he had seen when arriving. From there he could call a cab. If his luck held, he could be in Brissago in less than an hour. And across the border a short time thereafter.

Khamsin will live.

General Dimitri Marchenko checked his watch, then strode across the hangar floor. The time was 1340 hours. Nearly noon in Zurich, where Ali Mevlevi was arranging the transfer of eight hundred million francs to a government account in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan. He felt a ruffle at the back of his throat and knew his nerves were acting up. He told himself to be patient. Mevlevi was nothing if not exact. He’d probably call at twelve on the nose. No point worrying until then.

Marchenko walked to a circle of soldiers standing guard around the Kopinskaya IV. He saluted, then approached the bomb. The weapon had been placed on a small wooden table a dozen paces from the Sukhoi attack helicopter. It lay on its side; its inferior lid had been removed. Time to program the altitude at which the bomb would detonate.

The pilot of the helicopter stood next to the table. He was a handsome Palestinian smiling broadly while shaking hands with his Kazakh comrades. Marchenko had learned that there had been fierce competition among the pilots to determine who would receive the honor of dropping “Little Joe,” a knock-down-drag-out fight to see who would joyously be vaporized at the moment of detonation.

The pilot described his flight plan to Marchenko. After takeoff, he would keep the aircraft close to the ground to avoid radar, maintaining a fifty-foot ceiling while keeping his airspeed a brisk hundred forty knots. Five miles from the Israeli military post at Chebaa in the hills overlooking the Lebanese border, the chopper would climb to a thousand feet. He would activate the Israeli transponder and pass himself off for one of dozens of routine flights that daily shuttle between Jerusalem and the border outposts.

Once inside Israeli airspace, he would establish a southeasterly course and make for the settlement of Ariel on the occupied West Bank. The distance was short, about sixty-five miles; flying time less than thirty minutes. Approaching Ariel, he would descend to two hundred feet. He had memorized a map of the town and studied dozens of pictures of it. When he had spotted the town’s central synagogue, he would bring the chopper down to fifty feet and detonate the bomb.

Marchenko imagined what the Kopinskaya IV would do to the small settlement. The initial blast would create a crater more than a hundred feet deep and three hundred feet wide. Every man, woman, and child within five hundred yards would be vaporized instantly, as a fireball hotter than the face of the sun roasted their bodies. Farther out, the shock waves would crumble most wooden structures and ignite any others that were still standing. In little over four seconds, the entire settlement of Ariel, and every living being in it, would cease to exist.

Marchenko lifted the nuclear weapon, bringing the LCD nearer his eyes. He hesitated for a moment, realizing that he would be directly responsible for bringing death to over fifteen thousand innocent souls. He scoffed at his wounded conscience. Who in our world is innocent? He programmed the bomb to detonate at an altitude of twenty-five feet. He checked his watch. Ten minutes before twelve in Zurich. Where was Mevlevi?

Marchenko decided to attach the weapon to the helicopter. He did not want any delays once his money had been transferred. Besides, he had to do something to keep moving or else he’d go mad. As soon as he had word from Mevlevi, he would activate the bomb, gather his men, and proceed back to Syria, where their aircraft waited to ferry them home to Alma-Ata, and to a hero’s welcome.

He ordered the chief mechanic to move the weapon to the Sukhoi and to attach it to its right firing pod. The mechanic cradled the Kopinskaya in both hands and marched to the helicopter. Marchenko himself opened the steel claws that normally held an air-to-ground missile while the mechanic fitted the bomb to the pod. The entire process took one minute. All that remained was to enter the proper sequencing code and the bomb would be primed.

Marchenko ordered the pilot to warm up the engines, then walked briskly from the hangar to the concrete bunker that housed Mevlevi’s communications center. He descended two flights of stairs and passed through a four-inch steel door before entering the radio shack. He ordered the soldier on duty to connect him with Ivlov, now positioned just two kilometers north of the Israeli border. A husky voice came on line.

“Ivlov.”

“What is your status?”

Ivlov laughed. “I have three hundred soldiers a stone’s throw from the border. Half of them are wearing more Semtex than clothing. If you don’t give the order to go soon, they’ll cross on their own. To their minds, they’re dead already. We have a battery of Katyusha rockets pointed at the heart of Ebarach. Rodenko has twice as many aimed at New Zion. It’s perfect fighting weather. We’re waiting for the green light. What the hell is going on?”

“Hang on for a few more minutes. I expect the okay anytime.”

Marchenko ended the communication, then returned to the hangar. The determined young pilot had put on his helmet and climbed into the cockpit of the attack helicopter. A minute later, the turbine engine whined as it came to life. The long rotor blades began to turn.

Marchenko looked at his watch. It was five minutes to twelve in Zurich.

Where the hell was Mevlevi? Where was his money?

Nick sped down the Gotthardo Pass, thankful for the milder climatic conditions prevailing on the southern side of the Alps. Ten minutes before he had been enveloped in swirling snow. Now, as he passed the mountain auberge of Airolo, the sky was clear except for a general haze that partially obscured his view of the green valley below. The road had also improved. After an initial series of switchbacks, the highway had widened to four lanes and assumed a straight slope downhill. With his left foot awkwardly planted on the accelerator and his right leg propped over the center console, he maintained a cruising speed of one hundred fifty kilometers per hour.

Stall him, Peter. Do not let him leave that room. I’m coming as quickly as I can.

Nick was thankful for the automobile’s hermetic seclusion. The hum of the engine was constant, nearly hypnotic. He pushed himself into its center, allowing it to absorb the pain of his injured leg, and if he was honest, the sting of his wounded heart. Sylvia had been Kaiser’s spy. At his behest, she had supplied Nick with his father’s activity reports. At his command, she had plumbed Nick’s innermost thoughts, her promise of love tawdry bait used to lure him out of his protective shell.

I loved you,
he thought, wanting to blame her for the frustration, the fury, the injustice that tore at his gut. And then he wondered if he really
had
loved her, or if part of him had always suspected that her affections had been less than genuine. He’d never really know. His view of their time together was permanently tainted by her acts. He feared that suspicion would become a permanent faculty, like sight or smell, a sixth sense that would not allow him to fully unburden himself to another, and so would never permit him to truly love. Over time, it might fade, but like it or not, it would never fully disappear.

And then another voice rebelled at the sentence he had passed on his own broken self.
Trust
, it said.
Trust in yourself. Trust your heart
. Nick smiled as the count robustly joined in,
It’s the only thing we have left these days
.

Maybe there was still hope.

An hour later, Nick had crossed through the urban center of Lugano. He drove the Ford at breakneck speed along a two-lane road that mimicked the lake’s undulant borders. A sign indicated the town of Morcote. Red tiled roofs passed in a blur. A filling station. A cafe. A taxi flew by in the opposite direction, horn blaring as it crossed over the center line. Then he saw the Hotel Olivella au Lac and his heart skipped a beat.

A half dozen police cars were crammed into the hotel’s courtyard. A steel gray van was parked next to them, its sliding door pulled open. Six policemen in navy jumpsuits rested inside. Their glum expressions attested to the outcome of the operation.

Nick pulled the Ford Cortina to the side of the road and hobbled across the street to the hotel. A uniformed security guard tried to keep him from entering the hotel.

“I’m an American,” Nick said. “I’m with Mr. Thorne.” He opened his wallet and flashed an out-of-date Armed Forces identification card. But the guard couldn’t care less about the card. He was staring at the blood-caked shirt and the torn trousers.