Numbered Account

CHAPTER 5

On a snowy Friday evening, three weeks after he had begun work at the United Swiss Bank, Nick made his way through the back alleys of Zurich’s old town en route to a rendezvous with Peter Sprecher. “Be at the Keller Stubli at seven sharp,” Sprecher had said when he called in at four that afternoon, several hours after failing to return to the office from lunch. “Corner of Hirschgasse and the Niederdorf. Old sign banged all to hell. Can’t miss it, chum.”

The Hirschgasse was a narrow alley whose lopsided brickwork snaked uphill about a hundred yards from the river Limmat to the Niederdorfstrasse, the old town’s primary pedestrian thoroughfare. A few lights burned from cafes or restaurants at the top of the street. Nick walked toward them. After a few steps, he was aware of a shadow over his head. Sprouting from the wall of a pockmarked building was a bent wrought iron sign from which chipped gold leaf hung in tatters like moss from a willow. Below the sign was a wooden door with a ringed knocker and an iron window grate. A plaque buried in verdigris bore the words “Nunc Est Bibendum.” He ran the Latin words through his mind and smiled. “Now is the time to drink.” Definitely, Sprecher’s type of establishment.

Nick opened the heavy door and entered a dark, wood-paneled watering hole that reeked of stale smoke and spilled beer. The room was half-empty but sported the type of seedy decor that made him think that soon it would be filled to capacity. A Horace Silver tune played wistfully from the sound system.

“Glad you could make it,” yelled Peter Sprecher from the far end of an arolla pine bar. “Appreciate your showing at such short notice.”

Nick waited until he reached the bar before answering. “I had to juggle my schedule,” he said wryly. He didn’t have a friend in the city and Peter knew it. “Missed you this afternoon.”

Sprecher threw open his arms. “A meeting of great import. An interview. An offer even.”

Nick heard at least three beers talking. “An offer?”

“I accepted. Being a man of few principles and unrivaled greed, it was an easy decision to make.”

Nick drummed his fingers on the countertop, digesting the news. He recalled the snippet of conversation he’d overheard his first day at work. So Sprecher had gotten his extra fifty thousand. The question now was from whom. “I’m waiting for the details.”

“Take my word, you’ll need a drink first.”

Sprecher drained the glass in front of him and ordered two Cardinals. When the beers arrived, Nick took a decent swig, then set his glass on the bar. “Ready.”

“The Adler Bank,” said Sprecher. “They’re starting a private banking department. Need warm bodies. Somehow they found me. They’re offering a thirty percent boost in salary, a guaranteed fifteen percent bonus, and in two years, stock options.”

Nick could not conceal his surprise. “After twelve years at USB, you’re going to work for the Adler Bank? They’re the enemy. Last week you were calling Klaus Konig a gambler and a bastard, to boot. Peter, you’re due for a promotion to first vice president later this year. The Adler Bank? You’re not serious?”

“Oh, but I am. The decision has been made. And by the way, I called Konig a canny gambler. ‘Canny’ as in successful. ‘Canny’ as in wealthy, and ‘wealthy’ as in extremely fucking rich. If you’d like, I’ll put in a word for you. Why break up a good team?”

“Thanks for the offer, but I’ll pass.”

Nick found it difficult to think of his colleague’s action as anything but a betrayal. Then he wondered: Of what? Of whom? Of the bank? Of himself? And knowing full well he had hit upon the answer, chastised himself for his selfish thoughts. In their short time together, Sprecher had slipped into the role of irreverent big brother, dispensing advice on personal and professional matters. His easy banter and cynical worldview were welcome antidotes to the rigid bureaucracy of their workplace. They’d continued their relationship after hours, Sprecher leading the way to one bar or another, Pacifico, Babaloo, Kaufleuten. Soon he’d be leaving the bank and giving up his role as a supporting player in Nick’s life.

“So you’re going to leave the Pasha to me?” Nick asked. Business seemed a sturdy refuge for his disappointment. He remembered Sylvia Schon’s admonitions about client confidentiality and realized too late that he’d acted as cavalierly as she had expected. Just another American.

“The Pasha!” Sprecher swallowed hard and slammed his beer onto the counter. “Now there’s a rum bastard, if ever was one. Money’s so hot he can’t leave it in one spot for more than one hour for fear it’d burn through his mum’s ironing board.”

“Don’t be so sure of his wrongdoing,” Nick countered reflexively. “Regular deposits of customer receivables, quick payment of suppliers. It could be one of a thousand businesses. All of them legal.”

“Suppliers in every goddamned country around the globe?” Sprecher waved his hands, dismissing the suggestion. “Black, white, gray, let’s not argue legality. In this world everything is legal until you get caught. Don’t misunderstand me, young Nick, I’m not passing judgment on our friend. But as a businessman, I’m interested in his game. Is he looting the coffers of the U.N.—a bent administrator lining his pockets with gold? Is he some tin-pot dictator siphoning off his weekly due from the widows and orphans fund? Maybe he’s pushing coke to the Russians? Few months back we sent a bundle to Kazakhstan, I recall. Alma bloody Ata, Nick. Not your everyday commercial destination. There are a thousand ways to skin a cat and I’ll wager he’s a master at one of them, our Pasha is.”

“I’ll grant you his transactions are interesting, but that doesn’t make them illegal.”

“Spoken like a true Swiss banker. ‘The Pasha,’” Sprecher announced, as if reading a newspaper headline, “an ‘interesting’ client makes ‘interesting’ transfers of ‘interesting’ sums of money. You’ll go far in this life, Mr. Neumann.”

“Didn’t you tell me that it’s really none of our concern what he does? That we shouldn’t poke our noses into our clients’ business. We’re bankers, not policemen. You said that, right?”

“I did indeed. You’d have thought I’d have learned by now.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Sprecher lit a cigarette before answering. “Put it this way, it’s not just more money that’s got me leaving the bank. Your friend, Peter, has a dash of self-preservation in him. Cerruti out with a nervous breakdown—might never come back. Marty Becker just plain dead—definitely can’t count on him. Survival instinct, you boys in the marines might call it.”

It hadn’t taken Nick long to question the odds of two portfolio managers from the same department being knocked out of their jobs by sickness or, in Becker’s case, murder. After all, his own father’s murder was unrelated to his work at the bank. At least officially. Still, he had dismissed Cerruti’s illness as a case of personal burnout, and he had never questioned the fact that Becker’s murder was a mugging gone awry.

“What happened to them had nothing to do with their work.” He hesitated a second. “Did it?”

“Of course it didn’t,” Sprecher said earnestly. “Cerruti’s been a nervous wreck forever. And Becker just had the worst kind of luck. I’m just spooked. Or maybe I’ve just had one too many a beer.” He nudged Nick with an elbow. “In any event, some advice?”

Nick leaned closer. “Yeah, what?”

“Keep your nose clean after I’m gone. I can see that look in your eyes sometimes. Been here a month and every morning you come in like it was your first day all over again. You’ve got something going. Can’t fool Uncle Peter.”

Nick looked at Sprecher as if what he’d said were absurd. “Believe it or not, I like it here. There’s nothing going on.”

Sprecher shrugged resignedly. “If you say so. Just do as you’re told and keep Schweitzer off your back. You know his story?”

“Schweitzer’s?”

Sprecher nodded, his eyes opened widely in mock terror. “The London Ladykiller.”

“No, I don’t.” And after thinking about Becker and Cerruti, he wasn’t sure he wanted to.

“Schweitzer made his name with the bank trading Eurobonds in London during the late seventies,” said Sprecher. “Eurodollars, Europetrol, Euroyen—they were halcyon days. Everyone was making a fortune. From dawn till dusk, Schweitzer leaned on his staff to package a maximum of offerings. From dusk till dawn, he prowled London’s poshest clubs, dragging an entourage of once and future clients from Annabel’s to Tramp. If you couldn’t syndicate a double A deutsche mark offering at three A.M., two bottles of Tullamore Dew down the hatch and a quiver of tarts at the by, you shouldn’t be in this business: the Schweitzer credo. And it put USB at the top of the rankings.”

Sprecher laughed at the thought, then finished off the dregs of his mug.

“One fine spring afternoon,” he continued, “Schweitzer arrived a little late to his suite at the Savoy Hotel. The board of directors had reserved it permanently on his behalf. Convinced them he needed a refined setting in which to meet his clients, he had. The office was too small, too busy. So in walks Armin only to find his most recent mistress, a young minx from Cincinnati, Ohio, and his wife arguing like wildcats.”

Nick thought the whole thing sounded like a bad soap opera. “So what happened?”

Sprecher ordered another beer, then went on. “What happened next is still foggy. The official version put forth by the bank stated that at some point during the ensuing altercation, the good Frau Schweitzer, mother of two daughters, treasurer of the Zollikon curling club, and wife of fifteen-odd years to a philanderer of notorious repute, removed a handgun from her purse and shot Armin’s mistress dead. A single round through the heart. Appalled at her actions, she put the revolver to her own head and fired a bullet into her right temporal lobe. Death was instantaneous. As was the transfer of her dearly beloved back to the Zurich head office, where he was assigned to a post of comparative importance though, I dare say, reduced visibility. Got himself a broom closet in the basement. Compliance.”

“And the unofficial version?” Nick demanded.

“The unofficial version found its champion in Yogi Bauer, Schweitzer’s deputy at the tragic moment. He’s been retired awhile, but you can find him in some of Zurich’s seedier watering holes, of which the Gottfried Keller Stubli, I am proud to say, is one. Lives here day and night.”

Sprecher looked over his left shoulder and whistled loudly. “Hey, Yogi,” he yelled, hoisting a full glass above his head. “Here’s to Frau Schweitzer!”

A black-haired figure bent over a table in the darkest corner of the bar raised a glass in return. “Fucking unbelievable,” Yogi Bauer yelled. “Only housewife in Europe who could smuggle a loaded handgun through two international airports. My kind of girl! Prosit!”

“Prosit,” answered Sprecher, before taking a long pull from his beer. “Yogi’s the bank’s unofficial historian. Earns his keep regaling us with tales from our illustrious past.”

“How much of that one is true?” Nick asked.

“April 19, 1978. Look it up in the papers. Made big news over here. The point is steer clear of Schweitzer. He has a hard-on for Americans. Half of the reason Ott’s recruits don’t last is because Schweitzer is all over them from day one. Yogi claims the American mistress had called Schweitzer’s wife and told her that he was going to ask for a divorce so he could marry her. Ever since, Armin hasn’t been a big fan of the Stars and Stripes.”

Nick placed both hands in front of him and patted the air gently, as if telling his colleague to slow down. “We’re talking about the same Armin Schweitzer. Big guy, nice gut hanging over his belt. You’re telling me this guy was a real Casanova?”

“The prick who told you yesterday morning that he’d rather drive a ‘Trabi’ than a Ford. That’s him. The one and only.”

Nick tried to smile, to slough off all he had heard, but he couldn’t. Somehow being party to Sprecher’s inchoate suspicions had altered his perception of the bank. Becker murdered; Cerruti, a basket case unable to cope; and now Schweitzer, a gun-toting maniac. Who else was there he didn’t know about?

Suddenly, Nick was accosted by a memory of his parents quarreling. One of countless spats that had poisoned the house the winter before his father’s murder. He heard his father’s commanding baritone echoing through the hallways and up the stairs to where he sat perched in his pajamas, listening. Eerily, he remembered every word.

“He’s left me no choice, Vivien. I keep telling you it’s not about my authority. I’d wash the floors if Zurich told me to.”

“But you don’t even know that this man’s a crook. You’ve told me yourself. You’re guessing. Please, Alex, stop fighting this. Don’t be so hard on yourself. Just do as you’re told.”

“I won’t work with him. The bank may choose to do business with criminals. I will not.”

What criminals had his father meant?

“That’s why I’m telling you,” Sprecher was saying. “Keep your nose clean. Do as you’re told and Schweitzer will stay off your back. If rumors about our cooperating with the authorities are true, it will be his job to clamp down on all portfolio managers. He is compliance.”

Nick sat bolt upright on his stool, his attention rooted once again in the here and now. “What are you talking about? What rumors?”

“Nothing official,” Sprecher said quietly. “We’ll find out Tuesday morning. But it seems there’s too much hue and cry about our conduct these days. The banks have reasoned that they’d prefer to cooperate voluntarily rather than face some form of mandatory regulation. I don’t know the p’s and q’s of it, but for a little while at least, we’ll be helping the authorities gather some information about our clients. Not about everybody, mind you. The federal prosecutor will examine evidence presented him and decide which numbered accounts the authorities have a right to examine.”

“Jesus Christ. It sounds like a witch hunt.”

“Indeed,” agreed Sprecher. “They’re looking under every rock for the next Pablo Escobar.”

Nick caught his friend’s gaze, and he knew they were both thinking the same thing. Or the Pasha. “God have mercy on the bank who’s hiding him,” he said.

“And the man who turns him in.” Sprecher raised two fingers at the barman. “Noch zwei Bier, bitte.”

“Amen,” said Nick. But he wasn’t thinking about the beers.