Numbered Account

CHAPTER 59

Beneath her cosmopolitan fringe, Zurich kept hidden a mantle of brooding solitude and introspection that was, in fact, her true self. A devotion to commerce that bordered on pious, an attention to community that ran to the intrusive, a worship of self that one could only call vain: all these conspired during the week to mask her spinster’s heart. But on a midwinter Sunday, when those with families retreated to the familiar confines of stolid churches and cozy kitchens, and those without cosseted themselves in a comfortable nook of their comfortable apartment, her streets were left bare and her buildings stripped of their pretentious facades. With a soft gray sky as witness, Zurich let down her veil of pomp and prosperity, and shed a single tear. And Nick, walking through the silent streets, glimpsed her lonely nature and smiled inwardly, for he knew it was his own.

He had come to Switzerland to uncover the circumstances surrounding his father’s death. He had forsaken his every moral precept to learn what his father had done to unknowingly precipitate his own murder. Yet now, having put flesh on a framework of conspiracy and deceit, he felt none of the emotions that should crown so difficult a journey. His neck didn’t bristle with rage at the crimes of which Wolfgang Kaiser was guilty. His back didn’t stand straighter for having put Mevlevi’s face to Allen Soufi’s name. And worse, his heart had unleashed no secret reservoir of filial pride as the nobility—or was it merely obstinacy?—of his father’s resistance came to light. In all, he felt neither triumph nor relief, just a cold determination to put an end to this game, once and for all.

Nothing meant a goddamm thing if he didn’t stop Ali Mevlevi.

Nick stood at the center of Quaibrucke. A crust of ice extended unbroken over the Lake of Zurich. The paper said it was the first solid freeze since 1962. A chill breeze grazed his cheeks and took with it his private melancholy. He turned his thoughts away from himself and concentrated on the Pasha, and how after tomorrow Ali Mevlevi would no longer be a force in this world. Nick felt a warm glow in the core of his stomach at the prospect of cutting short his reign of terror, and he knew it was his striving self coming back to the fore. He banished his doubt and his sorrow to a faraway place, wishing he could destroy them forever, but knowing at the same time that they were a part of him, no matter how strong he willed himself to be, and that he had to live with them as best he could.

Nick knew then that the world had changed for him. He wasn’t fighting for his father anymore. Alex Neumann was dead. Nothing he could do would bring him back. Nick was fighting for himself. For his life.

Soon, he was thinking only about the Pasha. About the pearly smile and the dismissive laugh. About the serpent’s eyes and the confident swagger.

He wanted to kill the man.

Early that evening, Nick climbed the familiar path to Sylvia Schon’s home. The road was shorn of ice, and he made good time up the hill. Too good, in fact, for soon he found himself shortening his steps, trying to delay his arrival at her doorstep. Since yesterday afternoon, he had been plagued by a festering doubt concerning Sylvia’s true nature. Why had she helped him locate his father’s files? Was it because of her affection for him? Had she found deep inside her a need to see justice done, even if it was for a perfect stranger who had died almost two decades ago? Or had she been the Chairman’s spy? Keeping tabs on Nick’s every move inside the Emperor’s Lair? Helping Kaiser for reasons he knew all too well?

He didn’t have the answers to any of his questions, and he dreaded finding out. To ask was to admit suspicion, and if he was wrong he would destroy the trust that acted as the foundation of their relationship. “Trust,” he heard Eberhard Senn, the Count Languenjoux saying. “It’s the only thing left in this world.”

Nick kept returning to the voice he had heard on Sylvia’s answering machine Friday night. The gruff, demanding voice that he was sure belonged to Wolfgang Kaiser. He would have to ask Sylvia straight out if she had told Kaiser about Schweitzer. Yet, he already knew that her words alone could not convince him. He had to hear the tape.

Nick was greeted at the door to her apartment with a kiss on the cheek and a grand smile. For the first time, part of him wondered how much of her welcome was for real.

“How was your father?” he asked, stepping inside the warm hallway.

“Lovely,” Sylvia answered. “Curious about who I’m spending my time with. He was interested to hear about my new beau.”

“You have a new beau? What’s his name?”

Sylvia wrapped her arms around him and stood on her tiptoes so that her eyes almost matched his. “I can’t remember offhand. He’s a cocky American. Some might say too much for his own good.”

“Sounds like a bum. Better dump him.”

“Maybe. I haven’t decided yet if he’s the right man for me.”

Nick chuckled as expected of him. It was difficult keeping up an easy going front. His mind kept returning to Kaiser’s office, to the moment when the Chairman had flogged his colleague of thirty years with the barbed accusations of being a spy for the Adler Bank. He asked himself for the hundredth time how Kaiser could have known about Schweitzer’s treachery. For the hundredth time, he came up with the same answer, and he hated himself for it.

“Take off your jacket,” said Sylvia, leading him by the hand into the living room. “Stay awhile.”

Nick unfastened the belt of his jacket and slipped it from his shoulders. He tried to keep from looking at her, wanting to guard a distance between them, but she had never looked more beautiful. She wore a black cashmere turtleneck, and her wheat-colored hair was pulled back into a ponytail. Her cheeks were flushed red. She looked radiant.

Sylvia took the jacket from him and put a hand to his cheek. “What’s the matter? Is something wrong?”

Nick lowered her hand from his cheek and stared into her eyes. He had rehearsed the lines a hundred times, but suddenly his mouth was empty of words. This was more difficult than he’d expected. “Yesterday afternoon I was with the Chairman. There was a group of us: Ott, Maeder, Rita Sutter. There was a crisis atmosphere around the place—every problem magnified to three times its real size, everyone at each other’s throats. Armin Schweitzer was brought in and questioned about the tips the Adler Bank had received. You know, the phony information about which of our shareholders were still undecided.”

Sylvia nodded.

“Kaiser accused him of being the culprit, of secretly providing Klaus Konig with that information. He fired him. Practically kicked Schweitzer out of the office himself.”

“Kaiser fired Armin Schweitzer?”

“On the spot.”

Sylvia appeared stunned. “The creep deserved it. You told me so yourself. You were convinced he was stealing papers from your office.”

“Sylvia, no one but you, me, and Peter Sprecher knew that the Adler Bank had a spy inside of USB. What we felt about Schweitzer, that he was the one responsible, that was only a suspicion, a guess.”

“So? If Kaiser fired him, obviously we guessed right.”

Nick shook his head in frustration. She wasn’t making this any easier. “Did you tell Kaiser that it was Schweitzer who was passing shareholder information to Klaus Konig?”

Sylvia laughed, as if the suggestion were absurd. “I could never phone Herr Kaiser directly. I barely know the man.”

“It’s okay if you told him. I can understand why you’d feel motivated to protect the bank. All of us want to stop Konig.”

“I told you. No, I did not.”

“Come on, Sylvia. How else could the Chairman have found out?”

“I believe you’re accusing me, Mr. Neumann.” Her cheeks grew redder, though now with anger. “‘How else?’ you ask. How else do you think? Schweitzer is guilty. Kaiser discovered it himself. Caught him red-handed. I don’t know. Do you think Konig’s the only one with spies? The Chairman doesn’t need you to protect him. He doesn’t need me. He’s run that bank for as long as any of us can remember.” Sylvia brushed by him. “And I sure as hell don’t have to explain myself to you.”

Nick followed her into the living room. He was certain she was lying. Sylvia and her devotion to the bank. Sylvia and her employee retention rate. She’d used the assumption of Schweitzer’s guilt as a fulcrum with which to lever her career up a notch. Why did she have to lie about it?

“What about your answering machine?” he asked.

“What about it?” she shot back.

“On Friday night, when we were checking your messages, I heard Wolfgang Kaiser’s voice. You know I heard it. I saw you. You were scared that I might have figured out who it was. Tell me the truth.”

Sylvia recoiled from him. “The truth? Is that what this is all about?” She ran to the answering machine and rewound the tape, stopping every few seconds to listen to the voice speaking. She found the section she was looking for and pressed play. “You want the truth? I wasn’t scared. I was embarrassed.”

Peter Sprecher’s voice rose from the machine. “Call me at the Adler Bank as soon as possible. We’re very interested in meeting with you. Thank you.” A pause. A beep. Then the next message. A rough voice spoke from the recorder. “Sylvia, are you there? Pick up, please. All right, then, just listen.”

The voice was unsteady and, Nick suspected, drunk.

“I want you at home this weekend. You know what we like to eat on Saturdays. It was always the boys’ favorite. On the table by seven, please. You’re a good girl, Sylvia, but I’m afraid your mother would have been disappointed—you so far away, leaving your father to grow old by himself. Well, anyway, I’ll manage. Be sure to tell your brothers. Get them here on time. Seven o’clock or we’ll start without them.”

Nick walked to the machine and turned it off. It was not Wolfgang Kaiser’s voice.

Sylvia dropped into a chair, her head slumped to her chest. “My brothers haven’t come to the house in three years. It’s just my father and me. Last night, he spent five minutes berating me for having forgotten to tell them. I just nod and say I’m sorry. So are you satisfied? Happy now that you know all about my daddy’s love of beer? How I’ve abandoned him to grow old alone?”

Nick walked to the dining room table and sat beside her. He felt utterly distraught. His carefully constructed case lay in shambles, a house of cards toppled by a single breath. How could he have been so stupid? How could he have doubted her for a minute? He had distrusted Sylvia when it really counted, insulting her instead of showing his faith in her. Look at her actions. She’s been helping you every step of the way. Why can’t you just accept that she likes you? That she wants to give you a hand? Why can’t you learn that it’s okay to rely on somebody else?

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

Sylvia wrapped her arms around herself like a distressed schoolgirl. “Why didn’t you believe me when I told you the first time? I wouldn’t lie to you.”

Nick placed his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry. I can’t really explain why…”

“Don’t touch me,” she cried. “I feel like a fool. I didn’t tell Wolfgang Kaiser about Armin Schweitzer. If you don’t like that answer, get the hell out of here.”

Nick tried again to gently cup her shoulders. This time she allowed herself to be touched and then drawn to his chest. “I believe you,” he said quietly. “But I had to ask. I had to know.”

Sylvia buried her head in Nick’s chest. “I took it for granted he would be caught. I always expected it to happen. That doesn’t mean I opened my mouth like an indiscreet teenager, blabbing to everyone who might have an interest in what Peter Sprecher had discovered.” She laid her head back so that she could see his eyes. “I would never betray your confidence.”

Nick held her close to him for a while longer. He smelled the clean scent of her hair and delighted in the drape of her cashmere sweater. “These last weeks have been tough. It’s as if I’ve been under water, swimming with a straitjacket. If I can make it through tomorrow, maybe we’ll come out of this all right.”

“Is it about your father? You didn’t tell me if you found Caspar Burki.”

“Oh, I found him all right.”

“And?”

Nick held her at arm’s length, deciding what he could tell her. Was her knowing part of the bonds that lovers share or simply an admission of his own weakness—a foolish gesture to assuage his guilt at having wounded her fragile heart?

“Tell me, sweetheart,” she pleaded. “What did you find out?”

“A lot of things are happening. Things you wouldn’t believe…”

“What are you talking about? The takeover?”

“Konig has his thirty-three percent. He’s lined up outside financing to make a full bid for the shares he doesn’t own. He wants the whole bank. And that’s the good news.”

Sylvia sagged visibly. “The good news?” Her bewildered expression made it clear she didn’t want to hear the bad news.

Nick looked into her eyes and told himself he saw compassion and love. He was tired of being alone, of shouldering life’s burden without someone else’s help. Tired of suspecting. Why not tell her the rest of it?

“Kaiser is working for Ali Mevlevi,” he said, “the man we call the Pasha. He’s been helping him launder money for years. Lots of it. Mevlevi is a drug lord operating out of Lebanon, and Kaiser is his man in Switzerland.”

Sylvia raised her hand to stop Nick. “How do you know these things?”

“You’ll have to take my word. All I can say is that everything I’m telling you I’ve seen with my own eyes.”

“I can’t believe it. Maybe this Mevlevi is blackmailing the Chairman; maybe Herr Kaiser has no other choice?”

“Kaiser’s crimes aren’t limited to his dealings with Mevlevi. He was so desperate to stop Konig from obtaining his seats that he ordered several of us on the Fourth Floor to sell off a large percentage of stocks and bonds held in our clients’ discretionary portfolios and to reinvest their money in USB stock. He’s violated the trust of hundreds of clients who placed their money in numbered accounts at the bank. He’s broken dozens of laws. No one made him do that!”

“But he’s only trying to keep the bank free from Konig. It’s his, after all.”

Nick grasped her hands in his own. “Sylvia, the bank does not belong to Wolfgang Kaiser. He’s a salaried employee like you and me. Sure he’s spent his life building it up, but he’s been hugely rewarded. What do think a guy like that makes? Over a million francs a year easy. On top of that, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s received options for thousands of shares of company stock. The bank is owned by its shareholders. It’s not Kaiser’s private fiefdom. Someone has to stop him.”

“You’re scaring me with that talk.”

“You should be scared. We all should be. Kaiser is as bad as Mevlevi. Neither of the bastards have the least respect for anybody’s law. They kill to see that their will is done.”

Sylvia spun away from Nick, walking to the picture window that led onto her terrace. “I don’t believe you,” she said stubbornly.

“Who do you think killed my father?” Nick argued bitterly. “It was Ali Mevlevi. Only then he called himself Allen Soufi, just like now he’s calling himself Allen Malvinas. Maybe Kaiser didn’t pull the trigger, but he knew what was going on. He tried his best to force my father into working for Mevlevi, and when my father refused, he didn’t do a damn thing to stop Mevlevi from killing him. You saw the activity reports. ‘Continue business with Soufi. Do not end relations.’ Why didn’t Kaiser warn my father? They grew up on the same street, for Christ’s sake. They’d known each other their entire lives! Why didn’t Kaiser do anything?”

Nick stopped speaking as a terrible realization flooded his senses. He’d known all along why Kaiser hadn’t done anything. He’d known since Marco Cerruti had talked about the competition between the two men; since Rita Sutter had mused whether if his father were alive today she might be working for him instead of Wolfgang Kaiser; since bearing witness to Armin Schweitzer’s unflagging jealousy of Nick’s elevated position inside the Emperor’s Lair. Alexander Neumann was the only man who could keep Wolfgang Kaiser from ascending to the chairmanship of the United Swiss Bank. It was about a job. Kaiser had simply done nothing to prevent the elimination of his fiercest rival. It was all just business.

“Those are terrible accusations,” said Sylvia. She looked crestfallen, as if she had been the one charged with the crimes.

“It’s the truth,” Nick railed, buoyed by the certainty that he had forged the last link of a twisted and sordid chain. “And I’m going to make both of them pay for it.” He was sick of everyone’s offended sensibilities, sick of Sprecher’s willful naivete and of Sylvia’s stubborn loyalty to the bank. His father had died to assure another man’s position. The banality of it nauseated him.

Sylvia put her arms around Nick and drew herself close to him. “Don’t do anything crazy. Don’t get yourself in trouble.”

In trouble? He already was in trouble. More trouble than he’d known in his entire life. Now he had to get out of it.

“Tomorrow morning I’m driving to the Tessin with Mevlevi. I’m going to…” Nick hesitated. He had an urge to tell Sylvia his entire plan, to lay it out for her and pray that she would think it viable, maybe even give him her blessing. But her opinion wouldn’t change things one way or the other. Grudgingly, he acknowledged the real reason that prevented him from revealing his scheme. The specter of too many unanswered questions kept tapping his shoulder, taunting him with her guilt. No matter how much he wanted to tell her, he couldn’t.

“And I’m going to put an end to this business,” he said simply. “If Mevlevi escapes tomorrow, you can measure the rest of my life on a stopwatch.” Along with my ashes.

Later, Nick and Sylvia walked through the forest that ran from her back door. A new moon sat high in the northern sky. A carpet of snow glowed in the faint light. Neither of them spoke, the dry crunch of the snow fitting punctuation to their silent conversation.

That night, he stayed with Sylvia. He held her in his arms and together they warmed the oversize bed. They made love slowly and with great care. He moved with her and she with him, each devoted only to the other. Lying so close to her body, the magic of their shared intimacy filling the room, Nick knew his feelings were undiminished by his lingering suspicions. He told himself that love was about caring for another person without ever really knowing all of them. But deep down he wondered if this was just an excuse, and if he was staying with Sylvia only to spite Anna.

Nick realized then that there was no point thinking any longer about the past or the future. All he had to do was get to the other side of tomorrow alive. Beyond that he didn’t know. And so for one night, he let himself go.