Numbered Account

CHAPTER 11

Nick bounded down the stairs leading from the employee entrance of the bank, happy to be freed from the fluorescent confines of the Hothouse. He jogged several yards, shaking off the bank’s behavioral corset, then slowed to gulp down a lungful of the pure Swiss air. The last two hours had dragged on forever. He’d felt like a thief trapped in a museum, waiting for the alarm to go off after he’d stolen a painting. At any moment, he had expected Armin Schweitzer to storm into his office demanding to know what Nick had done with the Pasha’s transfer. Remarkably, no alarm had sounded; Schweitzer had been nowhere to be seen. Nick had escaped.

With an hour until his dinner with Sylvia Schon, he decided to make his way to the head of the Bahnhofstrasse, where the lake of Zurich narrowed and ran into the Limmat River. Bundled in his overcoat, he set off through the alleys that ran parallel to the Bahnhofstrasse. The day’s light was fading fast, and patches of ice were rapidly forming. His thoughts, though, were not on the ground in front of him. Like the snow and mist trawling the deserted back streets, his mind cast about in the hazy events of the day, searching for defenses to his actions and calculating the responses that might follow.

According to Sterling Thorne’s rules, should any account on the bank’s internal account surveillance list receive funds greater than ten million dollars and transfer at least half of that amount to an unrelated financial institution within one business day, the bank would be compelled to report such a transaction to the international authorities. While such cooperation rested on a gentlemen’s agreement, USB could ill afford to violate a peace brokered by the president of Switzerland’s Bundesrat. Just in case they had any ideas in that direction, the DEA had placed agents full-time in the payments-trafficking department of every major bank.

Nick’s decision to delay the transfer of the Pasha’s funds by forty-eight hours meant the transaction would not qualify as one of suspect intent. Thorne would no longer have the right to demand all papers pertaining to the account in question. Nor could he call for the account to be frozen pending investigation. The Pasha would elude the grasp of the DEA. And in so escaping, he would protect the United Swiss Bank from scandal.

Nick continued through the dusky alleys, hands dug into the pockets of his overcoat, chin nestled into his scarf. He passed a gaslight lamp long since converted to electricity and watched an elongated shadow take shape on the pitted concrete wall blocking his path. A left turn here should take him to the Augustinergasse, a right turn to the Bahnhofstrasse. He hesitated, not sure of his way, then took off to the left. The pitted wall continued along his right, but as he was no longer in the lamp’s path, his shadow disappeared. He began climbing the winding street but slowed when he noticed an odd shadow appear on the wall ahead of him. A man, he guessed, with rounded shoulders and a peaked hat. The tremulous form gave the impression of a southern Klansman backlit by faint candlelight. Nick stopped to watch the distorted shadow grow. Abruptly, the shadow halted, then shrunk back and disappeared. Nick shrugged and continued on to the Augustinergasse.

The alley snaked uphill to the right. He passed a bakery, a jewelry store, and a boutique selling down comforters imported from Scandinavia. Strolling past this last storefront, he stopped short to check on the price of a pair of eiderdown pillows. He took a step backward and bent closer to the window, placing his hand on the glass to deflect a streetlamp’s glare. The rhythmic attack of footsteps that he had been sure were just behind him ceased. It was too strange to consider. Was someone following him?

Without a moment’s thought, Nick ran back along the path he had just covered. After ten strides, he pulled up and looked in both directions. His eyes sought out the darkest corners of the alleyway and searched the entries of apartments and businesses alike. Nothing. He was alone. His breath came in bursts, his heart beating faster than the mild exertion demanded. Around him the snow-streaked windowpanes and barren window boxes drew nearer. The alley, filled in the daylight with rustic, inviting merchants, was now dark and forbidding.

Nick turned and walked up the street. A hundred yards farther along, he stopped again. He hadn’t heard someone behind him so much as felt him. He darted a glance over his shoulder sure he would catch sight of his stalker. Again, there was no one. He stood as stiff as a pillar, listening to the echoes of his own footsteps carom off the cobblestones and dissolve into the misty evening air. Christ, he must be getting paranoid!

Nick hurried down the alley and rejoined the busy street running parallel to him. The Bahnhofstrasse was swollen with thousands of nightly emigres returning home from their posts with the grand banks and major insurance companies. Trams passed in both directions. Vendors hawked bags of hot chestnuts roasted in iron kettles. He forded the stream of businessmen moving north along Zurich’s most famed artery and made his way in the opposite direction, toward the Paradeplatz. Anyone following him would have a harder time of it in the dense pedestrian traffic.

He walked on, head lowered, shoulders slumped forward. Every few steps, he’d peek over his shoulders and scan the crowds. Half-convinced he’d seen the peaked cap somewhere in the sea of bobbing heads behind him, he dashed across the street and hurried his pace. A few paces ahead, the door to a brightly lit boutique opened. He veered sharply to his left, sliding by an impatient husband and his dawdling wife, and entered the store.

Nick was surrounded by watches. Shimmering creations of gold, stainless steel, and diamonds. A touch of class at thirty thousand francs a shot. He had walked into Bucherer, the city’s most renowned watch emporium, now crowded with early evening shoppers. Behind him the glass door offered an easy view to where he stood. Ahead he saw a flight of stairs.

The second floor was calmer. Four showcases were positioned in a square in the center of the room. Nick pretended to study their contents as he slowly circled their perimeter. His eyes shifted quickly between the watches displayed below him and the stairwell before him. Most of the watches cost more than his annual salary. An Audemars Piguet Grande Complication was priced at Sfr. 195,000. Around a hundred fifty thousand dollars. You could barely make out the actual time because of all the individual hands, and dials within dials, and days and dates. Probably someone’s idea of a masterpiece. He pulled back his sleeve and looked at his own watch—a 1961 Patek-Philippe his father had left him. He thought of how much money it was worth and marveled at how he’d managed to keep it out of his mother’s hands.

When Nick looked up again, he noted the arrival of a swarthy man—tall and thick with curly black hair, looking strangely his way. Could be a thug, he thought. Nick glanced up and offered a weak smile, but the ill-shaven man was examining a favorite watch and couldn’t be disturbed.

Nick stopped to study a solid gold wristwatch. Come closer, he dared him. If you’re a customer, like me, you’ll keep walking. He kept his eyes glued to the gaudy watch—nice if you’re a Vegas bookie or a loan shark in Miami Beach. Looking up, he saw that the man had vanished.

“I see that Monsieur is interested in the Piaget,” came a polished voice from behind his right shoulder.

Nick turned and stared into a dazzling smile.

“Frankly, I would recommend something more casual,” said the swarthy salesman. “Maybe even something a little bit rugged. You appear a man of action, a sportsman, non? Perhaps the Daytona from Rolex? We have a wonderful model in eighteen-karat gold, sapphire crystal, deployment buckle, water resistant to two hundred meters. The finest timepiece in the world for just thirty-two thousand francs.”

Nick raised an eyebrow. If he ever had a spare thirty thousand francs, he wouldn’t spend it on a watch. “Do you have that model with a diamond bezel?”

The salesman registered gross disappointment. “Helas, non. We have just sold our last such model. But may I propose—”

“Maybe another time then,” Nick cut in apologetically before finding the staircase to the ground floor.

He exited the store and headed south toward the lake, staying close to doorways and shop windows. You are getting paranoid, he told himself. You didn’t see anybody in that alley. You didn’t see any peaked cap trailing behind you. The man in Bucherer was a salesman. Nick asked himself who in the world would have the slightest interest in following him. He had no idea. No logical answer suggested itself.

Relax, he told himself.

In front of him, the Bahnhofstrasse widened. The buildings to his right fell away, revealing a large open square, the Paradeplatz. Trams arrived from all four corners, encircling the kiosk and ticket station that sat shyly in the midst of their more commanding neighbors. To his immediate right stood the headquarters of Credit Suisse, a neo-Gothic edifice reflecting the Victorian era’s pride in the mastery of detail. Farther across the square sat the Swiss Bank Corporation, a masterpiece of postwar anonymity. Immediately to his left, the Hotel Savoy Baur-en-Ville welcomed many a thirsty banker to Zurich’s most elegant watering hole.

Nick crossed the street and turned into the square. He ducked into the entry hall of Credit Suisse where he hid, rather idiotically by his own estimation, behind a potted date tree. Well-dressed eccentrics were apparently quite common in Zurich, for none of the bank’s customers, seeking the services of the twenty-four-hour bancomat, gave him a second glance. He waited five minutes, then deciding he’d studied the date tree’s leaves long enough, left the bank. He paused to allow the number thirteen tram to pull into the Paradeplatz, direction Albisguetli, then trotted across the tracks, daring the number seven, picking up speed rapidly in the other direction,to hit him. With one last stride, he was clear of the tracks and on safe ground. Content that no one was behind him, he walked directly across the square to the Confiserie Sprungli.

As Nick passed through the pastry shop’s doors, he was overwhelmed by a succession of intoxicating aromas, each more seductive than the last. A whiff of chocolate, the tart sniff of lemon, and in a lower register, a note of freshly whipped cream. He made his way to the counter and asked for a box of chocolate luxembergerli, confections of meringue and chocolate cream, each no larger than his thumb and lighter than air. He paid and turned toward the exit. Leave your overactive imagination at the door, he told himself.

Then, for reasons Nick couldn’t quite explain, he turned to take a final look back into the pastry shop. Perhaps he’d wanted to savor the feeling of safety the shop had provided. Or, less sentimentally, and as he would prefer to believe, he had actually felt someone’s eyes upon him. But look back he did. There at the opposite entryway stood a middle-aged man of olive complexion and salt-and-pepper goatee, wrapped in a houndstooth cape. He wore an Austrian mountain guide’s hat, rugged green with a sandy brush extending from its brim. The hat rose like an incomplete mountain, a shallow cleft interrupting its summit. The caped shoulders were rounded.

Nick had found his Klansman.

The man stared intently in his direction for several moments. When he realized that his subject was returning his gaze, his mouth turned upward in an insolent smile. His eyes narrowed, then he rushed from the store. The bastard was letting him know he’d been following him.

Nick remained where he was for perhaps five seconds. The realization had left him too shocked to move. Moments passed. Bewilderment was replaced by anger. Furious, he raced out the nearest exit to confront his stalker.

The Paradeplatz was jammed with hundreds of people. Nick dashed into a multitude of shoppers, commuters, and tourists. He darted through the crowd, raising himself on his tiptoes to see the people ahead. The evening gloom, the snow and mist, made it impossible to separate one group from the next. Still, he searched for the creased hat, the Holmesian cape. He circled the square twice, looking everywhere for the little man. He had to know why he was being followed. Was the man in the cape just some middle-aged freak with nothing better to do, or had someone put him up to it?

Fifteen minutes later, he decided that further search was futile. His stalker had vanished. Just as bad, sometime during his search, he’d dropped the box of pastries. Nick returned to the Bahnhofstrasse and continued south toward the lake. He noted that the crowds had thinned. Few stores were open. Every tenth step he turned and checked for the presence of his gentlemanly escort. The street was empty. Only the trail of his own footprints in the powdery snow followed him.

Nick heard the whine of an engine approaching behind him. This part of the Bahnhofstrasse was reserved for trams. Automobile traffic was limited to several blocks going north and south. He checked over his shoulder and confirmed the presence of a late-model Mercedes saloon car: black with smoked windows and consular plates. It appeared to have come from the Paradeplatz. The car gunned its motor and pulled up alongside him. The passenger window lowered and an ungoverned head of brown hair popped out.

“Mr. Nicholas Neumann,” called Sterling Thorne. “You’re an American, correct?”

Nick took a step back from the automobile. Wasn’t he popular tonight? “Yes, I am. Swiss and American.”

“We’ve been interested in meeting with you for a few weeks now. Did you know that you’re the only American working at the United Swiss Bank?”

“I don’t know all the members of the bank,” answered Nick.

“Take my word for it,” Thorne suggested affably. “You’re flying solo.” He was wrapped in a suede jacket, collar turned down to expose a lamb’s wool lining. His eyes were ringed with dark circles, his cheeks sunken, pocked with a hundred pinpricks.

“How do you like working in that nest of vipers?” he asked. “I mean being an American and all.”

“We’re a pretty benign group. Hardly vipers.” Nick matched Thorne’s cordial tone, wondering where this was leading, sure it was nowhere he wanted to go.

“Well, I will agree that you fellas don’t look like much, but looks can be deceiving, can they not, Mr. Neumann?”

Nick leaned down to look into the car. One look at Thorne brought back his aversion to agents of the United States government. He thought of the man in the cape with the mountain guide’s hat—his stalker. He couldn’t link the dignified clothing, the European headgear, the overall refined bearing with Sterling Thorne. The two were oil and water. “What can I do for you? It’s snowing. I have a dinner appointment. Mind if we get to the point?”

Thorne stared straight ahead and shook his head. He chuckled in disbelief as if to say “How about that boy’s manners?” “Bear with me, Nick. I think it would behoove you to listen to what a representative of Uncle Sam has to say. As I recall, we did pay your salary a few years back.”

“All right. But make it brief.”

“We’ve been keeping an eye on that bank for some time now.”

“I thought you were looking at all the banks.”

“Oh, we are. But yours is my personal favorite. I wasn’t kidding when I told you you’re working in a viper pit. Your associates are up to a lot of funny business. Unless you think it’s normal procedure to accept deposits of a million dollars in precounted packets of tens and twenties. Or if you think it’s standard operating procedure for a client to open accounts in Panama and Luxembourg without giving his name, rank, or serial number, and for you to say ‘Of course, sir, it’s our pleasure. What else can we help you with today?’ But it’s not. That’s what my daddy called doing the devil’s handiwork.”

Nick looked at Thorne’s partner, a chubby man in a charcoal suit. The man was sweating. His hands nervously tapped the steering wheel. He didn’t want to be there.

“What’s this got to do with me?” Nick asked. As if he didn’t know the answer.

“We need your eyes and ears.”

“Do you now?”

“If you cooperate with us,” said Thorne, “we’ll cut you some slack when we bring that house of cards down. I’ll put in a word to the federal prosecutor. Get you out of here on the next plane.”

“And if not?”

“Then I’ll be forced to bring you in with the rest of your buddies.” He extended an arm out the window and tapped Nick’s cheek twice. “Tell you the truth, it’d probably feel pretty good to corral an arrogant cocksucker like you. But that’s your choice.”

Nick brought his face closer to the American agent. “Are you trying to threaten me?”

Thorne threw his head back and snorted. “Why, Lieutenant Neumann, where did you get that idea? I’m only reminding you of your sworn duties. Did you think that oath you took to obey the President and protect your country stopped when you took off your uniform? I got the answer for you: No. It sure as hell did not. You’re a lifer. Just like me. You can’t hide behind your little red passport. That blue one you got is bigger and stronger.”

Nick felt his anger welling up inside of him. He ordered himself to control it. “If and when the time comes, that’s my decision.”

“I don’t think you fully grasp the picture here. We’ve got your number. We know what you and your pals are up to. This is not a request. It’s a standing order. Consider it as coming from the commander in chief himself. You are to keep your eyes wide open and report when ordered. You legally blind pricks at USB and every other fucking bank in this town are helping a lot of dangerous individuals clean up their profits.”

“And you’re here to save us from them?”

“Put it this way. Without you, Neumann, they wouldn’t be sitting in a sixty-foot cabin cruiser off of Boca Raton smoking cigars, getting laid, and planning their next score. You’re as guilty as they are.”

The accusation incensed Nick. Heat prickled the back of his neck. He clenched his jaw, telling himself to calm down, but it was too late.

“Let me make something clear to you, Thorne. First off, I served my country for four years. I’ll carry the oath I took every day for the rest of my life. It’s a two-inch piece of shrapnel sitting behind what’s left of my knee. Every day it cuts a little more of my tendon, but it’s so far in there no one even wants to try to get it out. Second, you want to go chasing bad guys around the world, be my guest. That’s your job. But if you can’t stop them, don’t go running around looking for fall guys. I take my job seriously and I try to do it to the best of my abilities. All I see are a bunch of papers, people putting money in, moving it around. We don’t have guys bringing in a million bucks over the counter. That’s a fairy tale.” Nick put his hands on the windowsill and brought his face close to Thorne’s. “And finally,” he whispered, “I don’t give a good goddamn who you work for. You ever touch me again, I’m gonna haul your skinny ass out of that car and bounce it around the street until there isn’t anything left of you but your belt, your boots, and your fucking badge. My leg is still strong enough to do that.”

Nick did not wait for a response. He backed away from the car, straightening, grimacing as his right knee gave a sour snap, then set off toward the lake.

The black Mercedes matched his speed.

“Zurich’s a small town, Neumann,” called Thorne. “Surprising how often you run into your friends. I imagine we’ll be seeing each other again.”

Nick kept his eyes focused in front of him, vowing not to be baited by this asshole.

“I wasn’t kidding about those vipers,” Thorne shouted. “Ask Mr. Kaiser about Cerruti. Keep your eyes open, Nick. Your country needs ’em. Semper fi!”

Nick watched the car accelerate down the Bahnhofstrasse and turn left toward the Quai Brucke. “Semper fi,” he repeated, shaking his head.

The last refuge for a scoundrel and the first for Sterling Thorne.