Numbered Account

CHAPTER 4

One week later, Marco Cerruti had still not returned to his desk in the Hothouse. No further word regarding his condition had been passed along. Only an ominous memo from Sylvia Schon that no personal calls should be made to the sick portfolio manager and the firm instructions that Mr. Peter Sprecher should assume all his superior’s responsibilities, including the attendance of a biweekly investment allocation meeting from which he had just returned.

Talk at the meeting had not centered on the ailing Cerruti. In fact, his condition was never mentioned. Since nine o’clock that morning, those present at the meeting, as well as every other living, breathing employee of the bank, had been talking about one thing and one thing only: the shocking announcement that the Adler Bank, an outspoken rival whose headquarters sat no more than fifty yards down the Bahnhofstrasse, had purchased five percent of USB’s shares on the open market.

The United Swiss Bank was in play.

Nick read aloud from a Reuters financial bulletin that blinked across his monitor. “Klaus Konig, Chairman of the Adler Bank, today announced the purchase of a five percent stake in the United Swiss Bank. Citing USB’s ‘grossly insufficient return on assets,’ Konig vowed to take control of the board of directors and force a repositioning of the bank into more lucrative activities. The transaction is valued at over two hundred million Swiss francs. USB shares are up ten percent in heavy trading.”

“‘Grossly insufficient return,’” said Sprecher indignantly, slamming a fist onto his desk. “Am I losing my mind or did we not report record earnings last year, an increase in net profits of twenty-one percent?”

Nick peered over his shoulder. “Konig didn’t say there was anything wrong with our profits. Only with our return on assets. We’re not using our money aggressively enough.”

“We are a conservative Swiss bank,” Sprecher spat out. “We’re not supposed to be aggressive. Konig must think he’s in America. An unsolicited takeover bid in Switzerland. It’s never been done. Is he totally insane?”

“There’s no law against hostile takeovers,” said Nick, enjoying his role as devil’s advocate. “My question is, where is he getting the money? He’d need four or five billion francs before it’s all over. The Adler Bank doesn’t have that kind of cash.”

“Konig might not need it. He only needs thirty-three percent of USB’s shares to gain three seats on the board. In this country that’s a blocking stake. All decisions taken by the board of directors must carry by two thirds of those voting. You don’t know Konig. He’s a wily one. He’ll use his seats to foment a rebellion. Make everyone’s dick hard by bragging about Adler’s fantastic growth.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult. The Adler Bank’s profits have grown at something like forty percent per year since its founding. Last year Konig’s bank earned over three hundred million francs after tax. There’s a lot to be impressed about.”

Sprecher eyed Nick quizzically. “What are you? A walking financial encyclopedia?”

Nick shrugged. “I wrote my thesis on the Swiss banking industry. The Adler Bank is a new breed over here. Trading is their principal activity. Using their own capital to bet on stocks, bonds, options; anything whose price can go up or down.”

“Figures then that Konig would want USB. Get his greedy hands into the private banking side of things. He used to work here, you know—years ago. He’s a gambler. And a canny one at that. ‘A repositioning into more lucrative activities.’ I can just see what he means by that. It means betting the firm’s capital on the outcome of next week’s OPEC meeting or guessing the next actions of the United States Federal Reserve. It means risk spelled in capital letters. Konig wants to get his hands on our assets to increase the size of the Adler Bank’s bets.”

Nick studied the ceiling as if figuring a complex equation. “Strategically, it’s a sound move for him. But it won’t come easy. No Swiss bank will fund an attack on one of their own. You don’t invite the devil into the house of the Lord, not if you’re a priest. Konig would have to attract private investors, dilute his ownership. I wouldn’t worry yet. He only holds 5 percent of our shares. All he can do is scream a little louder at the general assembly.”

A sarcastic voice smirked from the entryway, “The future of the bank decided by two of its greatest minds. How reassuring.” Armin Schweitzer, the bank’s director of compliance, marched into the Hothouse, stopping before Nick’s desk. “Well, well, our newest recruit. Another American. They come and go once a year—like a bad case of the flu. Made the reservations for your return flight yet?” He was a bullet-shaped man of sixty, all hulking shoulders and gray flannel. He had steady dark eyes and a tight, pained mouth.

“I plan on a long stay in Zurich,” Nick said, after he had risen and introduced himself. “I’ll do my best to better your impression of American labor.”

Schweitzer’s meaty hand appraised the stubble of his scalp. “My impression of American labor was destroyed long ago, when as a young man I made the regrettable mistake of purchasing a Corvair.” He pointed a stubby finger at Peter Sprecher. “Some news regarding your esteemed superior. A private chat, if you please.”

Sprecher rose and followed Schweitzer from the room.

Five minutes later, he returned alone. “It’s Cerruti,” he said to Nick. “He’s out until further notice. A nervous breakdown.”

“From what?”

“That’s what I’m asking myself. Sure, Marco is high-strung, but with him it’s a permanent condition. Kind of like it is for Schweitzer to be an asshole. He can’t help it.”

“How long is he gone for?”

“Who knows? They want us to run this section as is. No replacement for Cerruti. The first fallout from the good Mr. Konig’s announcement: control rising costs.” Sprecher sat down at his desk and searched for his security blanket, the red and white pack of Marlboros. “Christ, first Becker, now Cerruti.”

And when are you out of here? Nick asked silently.

Sprecher lit his cigarette, then pointed the burning embers at his colleague. “Any reason why Schweitzer should dislike you? I mean besides being a cocky American.”

Nick laughed uneasily. He didn’t like the question. “No.”

“Ever meet him before?”

“No,” Nick repeated louder. “Why?”

“He said he wants a sharp eye kept on you. He was serious.”

“He said what?”

“You heard me. I’ll tell you something—you do not want Schweitzer on your tail. He’s relentless.”

“Why should Schweitzer want you to look after me?” Had Kaiser given him those instructions?

“Probably just because’s he’s an anal retentive prick. No other reason.”

Nick sat forward, ready to protest. The phone rang on his desk. He picked it up on the first ring, happy to be saved from making a disparaging remark about the bank’s director of compliance. “Neumann,” he said.

“Good morning. Sylvia Schon speaking.”

“Good morning, Dr. Schon. How are you?”

“Well, thank you.” A dismissal—trainees had no business engaging in pleasantries with their superiors—but then the voice eased. “Your Swiss-German is sounding better already.”

“I still need a little time to get it back, but thanks.” He was surprised how good the compliment made him feel. He’d been spending an hour every evening reading aloud and having conversations with himself, yet until now no one had remarked on his improvement.

“And your work?” she asked. “Mr. Sprecher providing proper guidance?”

Nick eyed the pile of portfolios sitting on his desk. It was his job to make sure that the investments in each corresponded to the breakdown set forth by the investment allocation committee. Today that breakdown stipulated a mix of thirty percent stocks, forty percent bonds, and ten percent precious metals, with the rest to be kept in cash. “Yes, plenty to do up here. Mr. Sprecher is keeping me very busy.”

Across the desk, Sprecher tittered.

“It’s a shame about Mr. Cerruti. I suppose you’ve heard.”

“Just a few minutes ago, as a matter of fact. Armin Schweitzer informed us.”

“Under the circumstances, I wanted to schedule a time to meet with you to make sure you’re settling in all right. I’m holding you to your promise of fourteen months.” Nick thought he heard a smile in her voice. “I’d like to suggest a dinner, something a little more informal than usual. Let’s say February 6 at Emilio’s.”

“February 6 at Emilio’s,” Nick repeated. He asked her to wait one moment, then put the phone on his shoulder while he checked an invisible calendar. “That would be fine. Yes, perfect.”

“Seven o’clock, then. In the meantime I need to see you in my office. We have to cover some issues regarding our bank secrecy requirements. Do you think Mr. Sprecher could spare you tomorrow morning around ten?”

Nick glanced at Sprecher, who stared back, a bemused grin screwing up his face. “Yes, I’m sure Mr. Sprecher can do without me for a few minutes tomorrow morning.”

“Very good. I’ll see you then.” Instantly she was gone.

Nick hung up the phone and asked Sprecher, “What?”

Sprecher chuckled. “Emilio’s, eh? Can’t recall seeing any personnel files in there. But it’s bloody good grub and not cheap either.”

“It’s routine. She wants to make sure I’m not too worried about Cerruti.”

“Routine, Nick, is the cafeteria. Third floor, down the hallway to your left. Wiener schnitzel and chocolate pudding. Dr. Schon has something else in mind for you. Don’t think for a second she doesn’t know of our august chairman’s interest in you. She wants to make sure you’re well fed and comfortable. Can’t afford to lose you, can she?”

“You’ve got this all worked out, haven’t you?”

“Some things even Uncle Peter can figure out on his own.”

Nick shook his head in disbelief, laughing. He reached for his agenda and penciled in her name on the appropriate page. His date with Sylvia Schon—check that, his meeting with her—would constitute its first entry. He raised his eyes and saw Sprecher typing a letter on his computer. Bastard still had a smirk on his face. She has something else in mind for you, he’d said.

Nick ran the words through his mind a second time, and then a third. What exactly had Sprecher meant? As he pondered his colleague’s comments, his unsupervised imagination wandered down to the first floor and tiptoed into Dr. Schon’s cozy office. He saw her working diligently behind her cluttered desk. Her glasses were pushed into her hair, her blouse unbuttoned a notch lower than perfectly decent. Her slim fingers massaged a chain that dangled from her neck and brushed the swell of her cleavage.

As if reading his thoughts, Sprecher said, “Watch yourself, Nick. They’re smarter than we are, you know.”

Nick looked up, startled. “Who?”

Sprecher winked. “Women.”

Nick averted his gaze, though if it was from guilt or embarrassment he didn’t know. The frank sexual nature of his daydream surprised him. He had no doubt where it would have led had Sprecher not interrupted him, and even now he found it difficult to clear his mind of the seductive images.

Two months ago he’d been ready to bind himself to another woman for the rest of his life. A woman he’d loved and respected and relied on more than he ever knew was possible. Part of him still refused to believe that Anna Fontaine was gone. But as his vivid daydream made clear, another part of him had resolved itself to the fact, and was antsy to move on. One thing, though, was perfectly clear. A relationship with Sylvia Schon was not the place to start.

Nick returned to his task of verifying that their clients’ portfolios met the proper strategic asset allocation model. It was a monotonous chore and in theory never ending, for the bank changed its investment mix every sixty days or so, just the amount of time he’d need to make it through every one of his section’s seven hundred discretionary clients.

After a week at the bank, his days had assumed a familiar pattern. He rose each morning at six, then forced himself to withstand fifteen seconds of an ice-cold shower (an old habit from the Corps), the theory being that after suffering through the frosty agony the rest of the day didn’t look so bad. He left his one-room apartment at 6:50, caught the 7:01 tram, and hit the office by 7:30, latest. Normally he was among the first to arrive. His morning’s work invariably concerned gathering a group of client portfolios and studying them for stocks performing poorly or bonds that were due to expire. These noted, he issued sell recommendations that Sprecher approved uniformly.

“Remember, chum,” Sprecher was fond of saying, “revenue is paramount. Commissions must be generated. It’s the only true yardstick of our diligence.”

But Nick’s activities were not restricted to those set forth by Peter Sprecher. Each day he found time to pursue inquiries of a more private nature. His unofficial duties, he liked to call them, and these involved finding ways to dig into the bank’s past, to see what nuggets he might discover about his father’s work those many years ago. His first excursion, undertaken on the Wednesday after his arrival, was to the bank’s research library, WIDO—Wirtschafts Dokumentation. There he scoured old annual reports, documents issued internally before the bank had gone public in 1980. He found a mention of his father in several of them, but only a passing reference or a notation in an organigram. Nothing that might shed any real light on his day-to-day tasks.

Other times, Nick studied the bank’s internal phone directory searching for names of executives that sounded familiar (none did) while checking by rank who might have been at the bank with his father. It was a hopeless task. To approach every executive over the age of fifty-five and inquire whether he had known his father was to invite news of his activities to be publicly broadcast.

Twice Nick returned to Dokumentation Zentrale. He would slide by the door, daring himself to step inside, dreaming of the miles and miles of retired papers he’d find filed in meticulous order. He grew convinced that if his father’s murder was tied in any way to his activities on behalf of the bank or its clients, the only extant clues would be found there.

The call came that afternoon at three o’clock, as it had the previous Monday and Thursday. As it had for the past eighteen months, maybe longer, said Peter Sprecher. Nick found himself guessing the amount the Pasha would transfer that day. Fifteen million dollars? Twenty million? More? Last Thursday the Pasha had transferred sixteen million dollars from his account to the banks listed on matrix five. Less than the twenty-six million he had transferred the previous Monday, but still a king’s ransom.

Nick thought it odd, as well as inefficient, that they had to wait to check the balance of account 549.617 RR until the Pasha phoned. Rules forbade the perusal of a client’s accounts. Why didn’t the Pasha just leave a standing order at the bank asking that all moneys that accumulated in the account be transferred out every Monday and Thursday? Why this waiting until three o’clock to call, this causing such a rush to wire the funds out before closing?

“Twenty-seven million four hundred thousand dollars,” said Peter Sprecher to the Pasha. “To be transferred on an urgent basis according to matrix seven.” He was using a voice he’d labeled the disinterested monotone of the professionally jaded.

Nick handed him the orange file, opened to matrix seven, and silently read the banks listed: Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank; Singapore Trade Development Bank; Daiwa Bank. Some European banks were included: Credit Lyonnais; Banco Lavoro; even the Moscow Narodny Bank. A total of thirty internationally respected financial institutions.

Later, as Nick left to deliver the transfer of funds form to Pietro in Payments Traffic, he thought of the seven pages of wire instructions included in the Pasha’s file and the hundreds of banks that were listed. Try as he might, he could not help himself from imagining the scope of the Pasha’s activities.

Was there one bank in the world with which the Pasha did not maintain an account?

The next morning at ten A.M. sharp Nick presented himself at the door to Dr. Sylvia Schon’s office. He knocked once, then entered. Apparently her assistant was either sick or on vacation, for as on the first day he had met her, the office was empty. He made some shuffling noises, then said, “Neumann here. Ten o’clock meeting with Dr. Schon.”

She responded immediately. “Come right in, Mr. Neumann. Sit down. I’m glad to see that you are punctual.”

“Only when it keeps me on time.”

She did not smile. As soon as he was seated, she began speaking. “In a few weeks you’ll begin meeting clients of the bank. You’ll help them review the status of their portfolios, assist in administrative matters. Most likely, you will be their only contact with the bank. Our human face. I’m sure Mr. Sprecher has been teaching you how to handle yourself in such situations. It’s my job to ensure that you are aware of your obligation to secrecy.”

The second day on the job, Nick had been presented by Peter Sprecher with a copy of the country’s legislation governing bank secrecy—“Das Bank Geheimnis.” He had been forced to read it, then sign a statement acknowledging his understanding of, and compliance with, the article. Sprecher hadn’t made a single wisecrack the entire time.

“Are there any further papers I need to sign?” Nick asked.

“No. I’d just like to go over some general rules to stop you from developing any bad habits.”

“Please, go ahead.” This was the second time he’d been warned about bad habits.

Sylvia Schon clasped her hands and laid them on the desk in front of her. “You will not discuss the affairs of your clients with anyone other than your departmental superior,” she said. “You will not discuss the affairs of your clients once you leave this building. No exceptions. Not over lunch with a friend and not over cocktails with Mr. Sprecher.”

Nick wondered whether the rule of discussing the affairs of his clients only with his departmental superior would supersede the “no discussion over booze” rule but decided to keep his mouth shut.

“Be sure not to discuss any business concerning the bank or its clients over a private telephone, and never take home any confidential documentation. Another thing…”

Nick shifted in his seat. His eyes wandered the perimeter of her office. He was looking for some personal touch that might give him an idea about who she really was. He didn’t see any photographs or keepsakes on her desk. No vase of flowers to brighten up the office. Only a bottle of red wine on the floor next to the filing cabinet behind her desk. She was all business.

“… and it’s never wise to make personal notes on your private papers. You can’t be sure who might read them.”

Nick tuned back in. After a few more minutes, he felt like adding “Loose lips sink ships” or “Shh, Fritz might be listening.” The whole thing was a little dramatic, wasn’t it?

As if sensing his mental opposition, Sylvia Schon stood abruptly from her chair and circled her desk. “You find this amusing, Mr. Neumann? I must say that is a particularly American response—your cavalier attitude about authority. After all, what are rules for, if not to be broken? Isn’t that how you look at things?”

Nick sat up stiffly in his chair. Her vehemence surprised him. “No, not at all.”

Sylvia Schon perched herself on the corner of the desk nearest him. “Just last year a banker at one of our competitors was jailed for violating the bank secrecy law. Ask me what he did.”

“What did he do?”

“Not much, but as it turned out enough. During Fastnacht, the carnival season, it’s a tradition in Basel to turn off all the town lights until 3:00 A.M. the morning the carnival commences. During this time the Fastnachters congregate in the streets and make merry. There are many bands, costumes. It’s quite a spectacle. And when the lights are turned on, the Stadtwohner, the persons living in the city, shower the revelers with confetti.”

Nick kept his gaze focused. The smart-ass in the back of his mind was sitting in the corner until further punishment was handed down.

Sylvia continued, “One banker had taken home old printouts of his client’s portfolios—passed through the shredder, of course—to use as confetti. Come three o’clock in the morning, he threw these papers out the window and littered the streets with confidential client information. The next morning, street cleaners found the shredded printouts and handed them over to the police, who were able to make out several names and account numbers.”

“You mean they arrested the guy for using shredded portfolio printouts as confetti?” He recalled the story of the Esfahani rug weavers of Iran who had painstakingly reassembled the thousands of documents shredded by U.S. Embassy personnel in Tehran just after the shah’s fall. But that was a fundamentalist Islamic revolution. In what country did street cleaners burden themselves with the responsibility to inspect their pickings? And worse, rush to the police to report their discoveries?

She blew the air from her cheeks. “This was a major scandal. Aachh! The fact that the papers were unreadable is secondary. It’s the idea that a trained banker violated the confidence of his clients. The man was put in jail for six months. He lost his position at the bank.”

“Six months,” Nick repeated gravely. In a country that didn’t prosecute tax evasion as a criminal offense, half a year for throwing shredded papers out the window was a stiff sentence.

Sylvia Schon put her hands on Nick’s chair and brought her face close to his. “I am telling you these things for your own benefit. We take our laws and our traditions seriously. You must also.”

“I realize the importance of confidentiality. I’m sorry if I looked as if I were growing impatient, but the rules you were reciting sounded like common sense.”

“Bravo, Mr. Neumann. That’s just what they are. Unfortunately, common sense isn’t so common anymore.”

“Maybe not.”

“At least we’re in agreement there.”

Dr. Schon returned to her chair and sat down. “That’s all, Mr. Neumann,” she said coldly. “Time to get back to work.”