White Death: An Alex Hawke Novella

CHAPTER FIVE

“Ah, there you are, Sir David!” Hawke said, feigning overwhelming joy at the sight of the man he worked for, a stern-looking gentleman in a blue worsted suit who awaited them on a curving red leather banquette. He was in his usual spot, nursing a light whisky soda in a quiet corner of the Men’s Grille at the London gentlemen’s club in St. James known as Boodle’s.

“Oh, hullo. You look bloody awful,” C said to Hawke, inspecting him up and down.

“We try.”

“You should never again be seen in public wearing those tartan golfing slacks again. Tartan! Painful. It reflects badly upon me and on the entire Secret Service.”

“With all due respect, I’d intended to spend the day at the golf course, not in a London gentlemen’s club, sir.”

Trulove waved the excuse away.

“Time is wasting,” he said. “Sit down, both of you, and have a drink. You both look like you could use one. A pair of drowned rats, soaked to the skin!”

“Rats?” Congreve whispered out of the corner of his mouth, certain he’d misunderstood the word.

“What can I offer you, Inspector Congreve?” C said. “I caught you looking rather longingly at the barman over there.”

“Oh. Was I really?”

“Name your poison, Chief Inspector.”

“Macallan’s single malt, if you have it, if not, Dewar’s, please,” Ambrose smiled. “It never varies, you know. Believe me, I speak from vast experience.”

“And for you, Alex?”

“Rum, please. A tot of Gosling’s Black Seal if you don’t mind. The 151 proof.”

Sir David repeated their requests to the club steward and added a glass of Margaux for himself. When the drinks were in hand, he raised his glass and said, “Slange var! A Gaelic toast meaning ‘Get it to the hole!’ ”

“Slange var!” his guests said, raising their glasses and sipping.

C crossed his legs and said, “Despite your appalling taste in haberdashery, you are looking fit, Alex. Two weeks at your Teakettle Cottage in Bermuda seems to have agreed with you.”

“Thank you, sir. But despite my much younger age and condition, I still can’t beat this wily sportsman over here at the game of golf.”

Trulove chuckled and gazed up at a grand painting of Admiral Lord Nelson’s Victory at Trafalgar.

“Now, Alex, let me get to the reason I called you both down to London on a Saturday. There’s been a bizarre murder in Zurich, according to our chief of station there. A crime that is of great interest, not only to MI6, as you’ll soon understand, but to the Crown as well. Spent much time in Switzerland, have you?”

Hawke thought about it. “Well. Let me see. Went to school there briefly, Le Rosey, before transferring to Dartmouth Naval College, sir. Later on, the odd business trips to Zurich, ski holidays in St. Moritz or Gstaad, that sort of thing. Done a bit of mountain climbing there in my younger days, as you may remember. The tragedy on Der Nadel was the beginning of the end of all that foolishness.”

“Yes, a tragic event, Alex, tragic. But you did have another go, correct? One more? You almost conquered that mountain a few years ago, as I recall. That’s quite a conquest for a semiprofessional climber coming out of retirement.”

“Thank you, sir. I won’t claim it wasn’t a bit daunting in the doing. A bit creaky for that sort of thing now. Oh, and I fell.”

“Ambrose? How about you?”

“Mountain climbing? Me? Good Lord, no!”

“He doesn’t even ski,” Hawke put in, quite unnecessarily.

“I refer only to Switzerland, Chief Inspector. Spent much time there?”

“Ah. Yes, a good bit, actually. The usual thing. Mostly business in Zurich, but in Geneva and Bern as well. You know the drill, sir. Intricate financial cases involving British clients and old Swiss banks, neither of whom want their names in the papers. Private family matters … the odd murder. Investigated a crime involving a lesser-known British royal recently. Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle, one of Her Majesty’s lesser nephews. A kidnapping, just last year. A horse, as a matter of fact, yes.”

“Horse?” Trulove said. “Extraordinary!”

“Long story, sir.”

“Well. At least you’ve both been there enough to know your way around. Good contacts, I would say. Knowledge of the history and customs and so on.”

“We’re going to Switzerland, I take it,” Congreve said.

“You are indeed. Something has come up.”

Hawke and Ambrose eyed each other across the table. That phrase “Something has come up!” was C-speak for “the poop has hit the poopdeck again.”

“Pray tell, Sir David,” Congreve said. “What exactly has come up?”

“Well. It won’t come as any great surprise for you to learn that the case involves financial misdeeds as well as a grisly murder. The large private bank accounts of a select group in the House of Lords have recently been subjected to very sophisticate hacking attacks. There were substantial losses prior to discovery of the incursion. Not to mention some losses in a number of accounts belonging to Her Royal Highness, the Queen herself.”

“The Queen?”

“Yes, the Queen. One of Her Majesty’s many charitable accounts in Zurich has been systematically looted over the last six months into near nonexistence. That discovery triggered the investigation. And that, we think, led to the murder of a very prominent Swiss banker.

“And that, gentlemen, is why I asked you here. I hesitate to add that one of the British accounts burgled was held by you, Alex. Your account with Credit Suisse was recently attacked. However, in the main, your cybersecurity bulwarks held fast, Lord Hawke.”

“Attacks on my accounts? Really? Hard to believe. I’ve not heard a word about it from my bankers there.”

“Nor will you, except from me. The ongoing criminal investigations are taking place under a blanket of total security so as not to alert the hackers. As of yet, our MI6 lads in Zurich have been unable to trace these attempts back to the primary source. But MI6 Cyber Warfare here in London has been able to verify the origin of one of these attacks as being China. And, more recently, our Russian friends.”

“Christ,” Hawke said, “here we go again. I’ve gotten to the point with Putin and the Russians that I much prefer the Chinese.”

“I believe we all have, Alex. Behold Putin unchained.”

“Hmm. Vlad the Impaler. How did you learn of all this financial skullduggery, sir?” Congreve asked.

“Sheer luck. One of our Zurich station’s MI6’s techies had his home laptop freeze up while looking at something strange going on. Very strange, indeed. He was simply running a cursory check on the Swiss government’s Cybertech Division’s UK accounts monitoring that morning when something very disturbing popped up. That was a week ago.

“Our man had somehow tapped into a peek inside the books of all the major Swiss banks with British accounts. He suddenly saw things he’d never seen before. Wild swings in overnight balances. He happened on it while at home, rebuilding his MacBook Air, if you can imagine. He immediately got on to our MI6 station chief in Zurich to alert him to what was going on. And thus the call I received.”

“Schultz, was it?”

“Yes. Herr Fritz Schultz. Called ‘Blinky’ by many of his MI6 colleagues. Something or other to do with his eyes. He called me late last night. His message was that a prominent banker named Leo Hermann had been found dead by a Swiss Army alpinist near the base of a mountain just south of Zurich. Hermann handled Her Majesty’s private accounts at Credit Suisse. Top man. We need to run this thing to ground immediately lest it go any further. And shut down whoever was behind not only the hacking but this very odd murder as well.”

Hawke, now fully engaged in the conversation, leaned forward and stared at C.