The Atlantis revelation

18

It was a five-hour drive from Zurich Airport to the chic ski village of Gstaad. The A1 autobahn took Conrad and his rented BMW through the Swiss capital of Bern. He fought the temptation to drive by Midas's bank containing the secret safe deposit box of Baron von Berg and instead turned onto the A6 to Thun, where he exited on Route 11 for Gstaad.

He had one shot to break into that bank, and the only man who could help him was hopefully still holed up in these Alps.

Conrad arrived just after the runs had closed and the five-star restaurants, bars, and discos were filling up with the fashionably rich of Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. He parked his car several blocks from Sultan's Palace and walked the rest of the way. He had exchanged plates with another BMW at a restaurant stop outside Zurich while the owner was inside eating. All the same, it would be nice to have the car buried under snow by morning.

Sultan's Palace was the grande dame of Gstaad, a multi-spired castle combining the intimacy of Aspen's Little Nell with the majesty of St. Mortiz's Badrutt's Palace. Besides its breathtaking views of mountains and crystalline lakes, it boasted five restaurants, three bars, a world-renowned spa, and the members-only Sultan's Club, infamous across the Alps for its live music performances, dancing, and endless revelry with no curfew. It was, in other words, the very embodiment of its owner, Abdil Zawas, the man Conrad had come to see.

Conrad walked a red "flying carpet" across a frozen moat and through a regal gate into the palace's elegant lobby. At the front desk, he asked for the general manager. While he waited, he looked around at the guests sharing drinks by the fireplaces.

The hotel certainly attracted an unusual quotient of celebrities and royals, he thought, starting with Abdil himself. His mother's side of the family traced itself to Egypt's deposed monarchy, the house of Mohamed Ali Pasha. His father's side of the family, however, had made Abdil first cousin to the late, great Egyptian air force colonel Ali Zawas, whose death Abdil at one time blamed on Conrad.

Come to think of it, Conrad recalled, at some point or other Abdil may have issued a fatwa against him. He hoped Abdil had remembered to rescind it after Conrad helped him out with the design of the Atlantis Palm Dubai resort and theme park. It would be just like Abdil to have forgotten that all was forgiven.

"Guten Abend, herr," said a man's voice.

Conrad turned to see the hotel's middle-aged general manager looking him up and down. Apparently, the German approved of the ski outfit Conrad had swiped from an unsuspecting doppelganger back in baggage claim in Zurich.

"Good evening," Conrad replied in English. "I'm here to see Abdil."

The manager's eyes narrowed. "You have an appointment?"

"I don't need one."

The German regarded him dubiously. "And who may I say is calling, herr?"

"The herr who did this," Conrad said, and slid the front page of the Berlin daily Die Welt across the desk. He had picked it up in Zurich and now tapped his finger on the photos of the Midas.

The manager frowned but took the page and said, "A moment, please." He disappeared into a back office. Conrad could hear the dial tone and clacking of a fax machine. This was followed by a conversation in German that was too quiet for him to make out.

The hotel manager emerged again, all smiles. "This way, herr," he said, and escorted Conrad across the lobby to the hotel's three elevators. "His Highness will see you now."

"How high is my friend Abdil these days?" Conrad said.

The German was not amused. "The Sultan's Palace rests at an altitude of only thirty-two hundred feet, quite low for the Alps and just right for an undisturbed night's sleep. But our slopes are over nine thousand feet. So we always remind our guests to drink plenty of water to stay hydrated."

Conrad said, "I'm sure there will be plenty to drink with Abdil."

The doors of the middle elevator opened to reveal two security types, definitely Middle Eastern, with earpieces and bulging shoulder holsters under their expensive-looking suits.

Conrad glanced at the hotel manager, who gestured to the elevator. "Guten Abend, herr."

Conrad stepped inside. The doors closed, and one of the security guards slid a special card key into a slot to unlock access to the hotel's penthouse floor. He pushed a series of buttons in combination, and the elevator began its ascent to the very top of the palace.

The doors opened to reveal a spectacular two-story stone-and-glass penthouse. The last rays of sunset streamed in through the atrium windows between rock walls with waterfalls. The room's size dwarfed that of the hotel lobby, and the clusters of furniture sets, fireplaces, and marble spas were populated with women in various stages of undress.

A voice called brightly from above: "Ah, the enemy of my enemy!"

"Is your friend," Conrad said, glancing up to see Abdil, with the wild mane of a black stallion, waving from the top of the sweeping marble staircase.

The big Egyptian was in his trademark royal bathrobe and boxers, and as he descended the steps with much fanfare, Conrad could see the pearl handle of a Colt pistol tucked inside his waistband. Abdil fancied himself Lawrence of Arabia without the horses and dung, preferring to plot his next moves from the comforts of his pleasure palaces across the globe. He preferred Switzerland to Egypt in order to better tap the global financial markets-and to avoid extradition for his off-balance-sheet activities.

"Welcome, my friend," Abdil said and gave Conrad a kiss on each cheek. "Come to my private dining room."

A woman appeared on either side and helped Conrad off with his coat. He followed Abdil to a dining room with a spread of food that resembled the brunch buffet at the Four Seasons in Amman, Jordan.

"Do you know what it's like to build the world's greatest yacht only to have a Russian thug build one but a meter longer?" Abdil said, taking a seat. "I might as well have been circumcised by the Jews."

"Well, you're the…longest on the seas once more," Conrad said. He was tempted to add that it all would be for naught if Abdil kept walking around with a Colt jostling in his boxers. "So I was hoping you could do me a favor."

"Favor?" Abdil's eyes lit up. Conrad liked that Abdil never resented doing favors; he always trusted his negotiating skills to extract something more valuable in return. "Please tell me how I can help my friend."

"Midas owns something you were once interested in," Conrad said. "A bank in Bern called Gilbert et Clie."

Abdil nodded. "The bank of Nazis, Arabs, and other assorted terrorists," he recited sarcastically. "Slander, I tell you."

For several years, Abdil had been on the U.S. global terrorist watch list at the behest of the Saudis, who claimed that Abdil posed a greater threat to the House of Saud than Osama bin Laden. Conrad knew Abdil was no Muslim fanatic, much less a terrorist. Why blow yourself up for seventy-two virgins when you already had them at your beck and call?

Abdil's "big idea" had been to flood the Middle East with mobile phones. While the ayatollahs blew hot air in mosques and on state television, Arab boys and girls prohibited from even acknowledging the opposite sex in public could now text each other behind the backs of their parents. Abdil believed mobile networks would effectively multiply the "disruptive force" of American popular culture-the more profane and nonsensical, the better-and break the centuries-old lock of Islam's paternalistic society, upending the despots in the region with a true democratic revolution. Abdil was indeed an Arab radical of a different kind.

What had soured Abdil and the Americans on each other was the CIA's interference in his operations with cellular network carriers. The Americans wanted to operate or at least control the networks to better monitor voice and text conversations. Abdil couldn't get them to understand that this wasn't at all the point and that they were behaving no better than the despots they hoped to depose. The funds at the heart of Abdil's great Arabian youth mobilization network, held at the bank of Gilbert et Clie in Bern, were frozen. What kind of world was it, Abdil had complained, where you could own your own bank and yet not tap your own money?

Conrad looked at the giant lobster tail that had just been placed before him and asked, "Why did you let Midas buy the bank?"

"Because I saw no upside," Abdil said as he tore into his own lobster. "The rules of Swiss banking and international terrorism are such that if there were any advantage to one party owning the bank itself, then no other parties would hold their deposits there. No fun at all for me. But you obviously think Midas has some advantage?"

"There's a safe deposit box inside the bank that he wants," Conrad said. "It belonged to an SS general named Ludwig von Berg."

"The Baron of the Black Order?" Abdil's eyes grew wide.

Conrad nodded. "It's got a four-character alphabetic combination. Midas doesn't know the code. I do."

"One of the older boxes," Abdil said, leaning forward. "Is it in the seventeen or eighteen hundred series? It must be if Midas hasn't attempted to break it open."

"Yes."

"I thought so!" Abdil smiled. "Von Berg's box probably has a chemical seal that will break and destroy its contents if the combination is off by a single letter. Ha! How it must pain Midas to hold something in his hands and not be able to open it." Abdil leaned back in his chair and made a steeple with his fingers, contemplating the situation. "You think you can steal it out from under his nose if I can get you inside the bank."

"I do." Crafty minds like Abdil's always cut to the chase. That was why doing business with him was mostly straightforward-until it came time for Abdil's payback.

"Yes, yes, yes," Abdil said. "But no more words of this until the morning. The night is still young and the men too few for my girls."

"Thank you for your generosity, Abdil. But I'd really like to just climb into bed in my own room, if that's okay."

"But of course." Abdil snapped his fingers. "Layla!" A shapely young woman with an olive complexion appeared, carrying a digital clipboard. She displayed it to Abdil like a hostess showing the maitre d' of a fine restaurant a map of tables.

"Suite 647 will suit our friend's tastes," Abdil said with a smile.

Ten minutes later, Conrad was shown his room. While considerably smaller than Abdil's penthouse, it didn't lack for amenities, including a young woman on his bed in nothing but a Miami Dolphins jersey.

"I'm Nichole," she said in an American accent. "What's your story?"

"Tired," he said, and decided it was best for everybody if she did the talking. "Tell me yours."

She was an American who had arrived in Gstaad a few months earlier after the Super Bowl with her boyfriend the professional football player. He'd left, she'd stayed. Blah, blah, blah.

Conrad concluded there was no way he could decline the present that Abdil had offered him. He didn't want to offend his host or make it appear that the nubile Nichole was anything less than a sexy vixen worthy of a royal harem.

"So which Dolphin am I competing against here?" he asked her.

"All of them." She giggled and pulled off her jersey.