Cat In A Topaz Tango

Reinvention Waltz

Fiery leg aches sent shooting pains through his entire frame, but for the first time since his escape, sitting in the elegant Hummerbar drinking an aquavit, he felt he lived up to his real name, “Max.”

Maximilian Fleming was registered at the Hotel St. Gotthard on Zurich’s main shopping, eating, banking street—the Bahnhofstrasse.

Five new stolen credit cards reposed in the eel skin vertical wallet in the breast pocket of his new leather blazer. His magician’s fingers were still matchless at the Misdemeanor Waltz. The five cards had been extracted from obvious American tourists, all the better to remain undiscovered for longer. Tourists moved on fast these days, and, in patchwork Europe, could scoot two countries over in a day.

His slacks and silk turtleneck were Ralph Lauren, his shoes Bruno Magli. He’d also bought an electric razor that would beat back his black beard (with a slight gray sheen—when had that happened? Or was it new? Just how old was he?) to a disguising, yet film-star-hip smudge of three days’ growth. The way the bristles had annoyed him on the road, he figured he’d been smooth-shaven previously. His hair had been expensively barbered into the miserable spiky male coxcomb in vogue nowadays that made guys look like the village idiot, or worse, Clay Aiken. Everything elegant and costly was available within walking distance on the Bahnhofstrasse, despite the current economic swoon, a key advantage. Conspicuous consumption never died.

He figured bold was the best disguise. A rich Irishman would not be out of place here. The once-impoverished island nation where his forebears had starved for want of potatoes was having an Irish Spring of high-tech industrialization.

Yes, he’d donned a faint mist of brogue. It came as easy to him as German, even the Swiss variation. As had the facts of recent Irish economic upswing before the recent global recession. That he knew these geopolitical facts and other languages made Garry Randolph’s story about their being partners in counterterrorism for years ring ominously true.

The only things he didn’t know about was his childhood, boyhood, and personal, educational, professional, and romantic history. Details.

He’d shopped before he approached the Gotthard’s front desk, where he’d muttered in broken German about a skiing accident in the Alps having delayed his getting to a banking appointment in Zurich. He was rather embarrassingly marooned at the moment but had a crucial appointment at Adler and Company, Privatbank, in the morning. Was any sort of suite or even a single room available?

His illness-drawn face and the hokey carved cane, which he regarded with rueful disdain and reluctant dependence, had convinced the hotel manager. That and his Gucci bag. Snooty service staff assessed women first by their handbags, then their shoes, and finally their jewelry. For men, the order was watch, luggage, wallet, shoes.

That’s why a shiny new Patek Philippe high-dollar watch weighed down Max’s bony wrist, courtesy of an oil company executive from Texas. Max didn’t like the piece’s looks and overhyped luxury, but wore it proudly in the name of Enron ripped-off ex-employees everywhere. Corporate greed deserved a comeuppance.

See? It was all coming back. The nightly news. The exhausted American economy, the Irish renaissance. Brand names. Foreign words. But . . . nothing Personal. He felt like a data-gorged robot.

Maybe that was why he was chasing Revienne and her Mercedes chariot when he ought to let her go her own way, villain or victim, true purpose unknown.

But he couldn’t. She’d laughed over dinner in the mountain village, and wolfed down her meal like a real girl. She’d scavenged for him in the mountain meadow farmholds, finding a saw to cut through his imprisoning casts, begging food and clothing. She’d massaged his mending legs until he’d fallen asleep, as trusting as an infant.

If she’d been kidnapped because of him . . .

If she’d been leading him on . . .

Who was Max? Hero or killer? Or just Garry Randolph’s protégé, long past the age of needing mentors?

After this drink, and a dinner of the restaurant’s famed seafood, Max would be whisked five stories high in this 1889-vintage building to an arty suite with an Internet connection.

Did he even know how to connect to the Internet, much less real people, including Revienne? Had to. If the languages had come back to him, so would the technology. Just . . . nothing Personal.

His mind did another of its disconcerting flashbacks: to bright alpine wildflowers, a bouquet of fragrant yellow freesias, a pretty brunet bus driver who wrangled a major German bus and had granted him passage, and . . . a redheaded woman with gray-blue eyes. Revienne was blond.

Max lurched up. The “lurch” was partly his legs and partly his aquavit. Time for dinner and then a tour of the world by Internet. He’d punch in the words “Garry Randolph,” “Revienne,” “Schneider,” and “Max.”

As Edward R. Murrow, the pioneer TV broadcaster, used to say in closing his TV news program, “Good night and good luck.”

See! He remembered vintage catchphrases from before he was born.

Why not his own damned history?