Numbered Account Read online

  “Into the blue?”

  Sprecher stopped at a closed door on the left-hand side of the hallway. “Clients, chum. We have to put somebody’s pretty mug in front of our trusting customers. You look like an honest type. Got all your teeth, do you? Should be able to fool them.”

  “Today?”Nick asked, ruffled.

  “No, not today,” Sprecher answered, grinning. “The bank usually likes to provide a little training. You can count on at least a month to learn the ropes.” He leaned on the handle and opened the door. He walked inside the small meeting room and tossed the manila envelope he’d been carrying onto the conference table. “Take a seat,” he said, flinging himself into one of the quilted leather chairs. “Make yourself at home.”

  Nick pulled out a chair and sat across the table from his new boss. His momentary panic settled, giving way to the usual vague unease that accompanied his arrival at a new post. But he recognized a new sensation, too—a stubborn disbelief that he was actually there.

  You’re in, Nick told himself in the admonishing tone that had belonged to his father. Keep your mouth closed and your ears open. Become one of them.

  Peter Sprecher pulled a sheaf of papers from the envelope. “Your life in four lines, single spaced. Says here you’re from Los Angeles.”

  “I grew up there, but I haven’t called it home for a while.”

  “Ah, Sodom and Gomorrah rolled into one. Love the place, myself.” Sprecher shook loose a Marlboro and offered the pack to Nick, who declined. “Didn’t figure you for a tobacco fiend. You look fit enough to run a damned marathon. Some advice? Calm down, boy. You’re in Switzerland. Slow and steady, that’s our motto. Remember that.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.”

  “Liar,” Sprecher laughed. “I can see you’ve got a bee buzzing about your bonnet. Sit too damn straight. That will be Cerruti’s problem, not mine.” He lowered his head and puffed on his cigarette while studying the new employee’s papers. “Marine, eh? An officer. That explains it.”

  “Four years,” said Nick. He was trying hard to sit more casually—drop a shoulder, maybe slouch a little. It wasn’t easy.

  “What d’ya do?”

  “Infantry. I had a reconnaissance platoon. Half the time we trained. The other half we floated around the Pacific waiting for a crisis to flare up so that we could put our training to use. We never did.” That was the company line, and he’d been sworn to keep it.

  “Says here you worked in New York. Four months only. What happened?”

  Nick kept his answer brief. When lying, he knew it best to stay within the shadow of the truth. “It wasn’t what I had expected. I didn’t feel at home there, at work or in the city.”

  “So you decided to seek your fortune abroad?”

  “I’ve lived in the States my whole life. One day I realized that it was time for something new. Once I made the decision, I got out as quickly as I could.”

  “Wish I’d had the guts to do something like that. Alas, for me it’s too late.” Sprecher exhaled a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. “Been here before?”

  “To the bank?”

  “To Switzerland.Someone in your family is Swiss, isn’t he? Hard to pick up a passport any other way.”

  “It’s been a long time,” said Nick, purposely keeping his answer oblique. Seventeen years, actually. He’d been eleven, and his father had brought him inside this same building. It had been a social visit, the great Alex Neumann poking his head into the offices of his former colleagues, exchanging a few words before presenting little Nicholas as if he were an exotic trophy from a far-off land. “The passport comes from my father’s side. We spoke Swiss-German together at home.”

  “Did you? How quaint.” Sprecher stubbed out his cigarette and brought his chair closer to the table so that he sat directly facing Nick. “Enough small talk, then. Welcome to the United Swiss Bank, Mr. Neumann. You’ve been assigned toFinanz Kundenberatung, Abteilung 4. Financial Client Management, section 4. Our small family deals with private individuals from the Middle East and southern Europe, that is Italy, Greece, and Turkey. Right now we handle approximately seven hundred accounts with assets totaling over two billion U.S. dollars. In the end that’s still the only currency worth a damn.

  “Most of our clients are individuals who hold numbered accounts with the bank. You might see their names penciled somewhere inside their files. Penciled, mind you. Erasable. They are to remain officially anonymous. We don’t keep permanent records regarding their identity in the office. That information is kept in DZ,Dokumentation Zentrale. Stalag 17, we call it.” Sprecher wagged a long finger at Nick. “Several of our more important clients are known only to the top brass of the bank. Keep it that way. Any inclination you may have about getting to know them personally had better stop now. Understood?”

  “Understood,” said Nick. The help does not mix with the guests.

  “Here’s the drill: A client will call, give you his account number, probably want to know his cash balance or the value of the stocks in his portfolio. Before you give out any information, confirm his or her identity. All our clients have code words to identify themselves. Ask for it. Maybe ask their birthday on top of that. Makes them feel secure. But that’s as far as your curiosity runs. If a client wants to transfer fifty thousand deutsche marks a week to an account in Palermo, you say,“Prego, Signore. Con gusto.’ If he insists on sending monthly cash wires to a dozen John Does at a dozen different banks in Washington, D.C., you say, “Of course, sir. It’s my pleasure.’ Where our clients’ money comes from and what they choose to do with it are entirely their own business.”

  Nick kept his wry comments to himself and concentrated on keeping straight all the information being tossed his way.

  Sprecher stood from his chair and walked to the window, which overlooked the Bahnhofstrasse. “Hear the drums?” he asked, tilting his head toward the demonstrators who paraded in front of the bank. “No? Get up and come over here. Look down there.”

  Nick rose and walked to Sprecher’s side, from where he could see the assembly of fifteen or twenty protesters.

  “Barbarians at the gate,” said Sprecher. “The natives are growing restless.”

  “There have been calls for greater disclosure of the bank’s activities in the past,” Nick said. “The search for assets belonging to customers killed during the Second War. The banks handled that problem.”

  “By using the nation’s gold reserves to set up a survivors’ fund. Cost us seven billion francs! And still we stonewalled them over direct access to our records. The past is verboten. You can be sure of one thing: Swiss banks must be built of the hardest Bernadino granite, not of porous sandstone.” Sprecher glanced at his watch, then dismissed the demonstrators with a wave. “Now more than ever we have to keep our mouths shut and do as we’re told. Granite, Neumann. Anyway, that’s enough of Saint Peter’s pap for now. You’re to go to Dr. Schon at personnel to have an identification card made up, get a handbook, and take care of all the other niceties that make our beloved institution such a wonderful place to work. Rules, Mr. Neumann. Rules.”

  Nick leaned forward, listening carefully while directions to the personnel director’s office were given.Rules, he repeated to himself. The admonition sent him back to his first day at Officer Candidate School. The voices here were softer and the barracks nicer, but all in all it was the same. New organization, new rules, and no room to mess up.

  “And one last thing,” said Sprecher. “Dr. Schon can be a little testy sometimes. Americans are not a favorite topic. The less said the better.”

  # # #

  From his window on the Fourth Floor, Wolfgang Kaiser stared down upon the damp heads of the demonstrators gathered in front of his bank. Forty years he had worked at the United Swiss Bank, the last seventeen as chairman. In that time, he could recall only one other demonstration taking place on the steps of the bank—a protest against the bank’s investments in South Africa. He had frowned on the practice of aparth
eid as much as the next man, but politics simply didn’t factor into a business decision. As a rule, Afrikaners were damned good clients. Paid back their loans on time. Kept a decent amount on deposit. Lord knows they held gold bars up to their eyeballs.

  Kaiser gave each end of his mustache a brief tug and moved away from the window. Though of medium height, he was a formidable man. Clothed, as was his custom, in bespoke navy worsted, he could be mistaken only for Lord of the Manor. But his broad shoulders, plowman’s back, and stout legs testified to a common upbringing. And of his less than noble parentage he carried a permanent reminder: his left arm, damaged at birth by the enthusiastic forceps of a drunken midwife, was thin and limp, a paralyzed appendage. Despite constant exercise during his early years, the arm had remained atrophied and would always be two inches shorter than the right.

  Kaiser circled his desk, staring at the telephone. He was waiting for a call. A brief message that would bring the past into the present. Word that the circle was closing. He could not expel from his mind the message written on one of the crude placards below. “Child Killers,” it read. He didn’t know what exactly it made reference to, but still the words stung. Damned press! Vultures were thrilled to have such an easy target. The evil bankers so eager to accommodate the world’s baddies. Horseshit! If not us, then somebody else. Austria, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands. The competition was closing in.

  The phone on his desk buzzed. He pounced on it in three swift steps. “Kaiser.”

  “Guten Morgen, Herr Direktor. Brunner speaking.”

  “Well?”

  “The boy has arrived,” said the hall porter. “He came in at nine o’clock sharp.”

  “And how is he?” Kaiser had seen photographs of him over the years. More recently, he had viewed a videotape of the boy’s interview. Still, he could not stop himself from asking, “Does he look like his father?”

  “A few pounds heavier, perhaps. Otherwise, a spitting image. I sent him to Mr. Sprecher.”

  “Yes, I’ve been informed. Thank you, Hugo.”

  Kaiser hung up the phone and took a seat behind his desk. He turned his thoughts to the young man sitting two floors below him, and soon a faint smile pushed up the corners of his mouth. “Welcome to Switzerland, Nicholas Alexander Neumann,” he whispered. “It’s been so long since we last met. So very, very long.”

  CHAPTER

  2

  The office of the Director of Personnel (Finance Division) was located at the far corner of the first floor. Nick paused outside an open door and knocked twice before entering. Inside, a slender woman was bent over a messy desk, sorting through a collage of white papers. She wore an ivory blouse and a navy skirt that fell one frustrated sigh below her knee. Brushing a wave of hair from her face, she rose from the desk to stare at her visitor.

  “May I help you?” she asked.

  “I’m here to see Dr. Schon,” Nick said. “I’ve just begun work this morning and—”

  “Your name, please? We have six new employees beginning today. First Monday of the month.”

  Her stern voice made him want to square his shoulders, fire off a salute, and bark out his name, rank, and serial number. That would make her jump. He told her who he was, and recalling Sprecher’s comments about his posture, made sure he didn’t stand too straight.

  “Hmm,” she said, suddenly interested. “Our American. Please come in.” The woman craned her neck and ran a none too discreet eye over him, as if checking to see what the bank had gotten for its money. Apparently satisfied, she asked in a friendlier voice if he’d had a good flight over.

  “Not bad,” Nick said, returning her appraising stare. “It gets a little cramped back there after a few hours, but at least we had smooth sailing.”

  She was shorter by a head with intelligent brown eyes and thick blond hair cut to fall in a slant across her brow. A gracefully upturned chin and a sharp nose conspired to lend her an air of assumed importance. She told him to wait a moment, then stepped through an open door that led to an adjoining office.

  Nick removed his hands from his pockets and without thinking wiped his palms on the rear of his trousers. He had known a woman like her before. Confident, assertive, a little too professional. A woman who relied on perfect grooming to improve on nature’s careless oversights. In fact, he had almost married her.

  “Please come in, Mr. Neumann.”

  He recognized the stern voice. Poised behind a broad desk sat the woman with the intelligent brown eyes. A testy one, Sprecher had warned, who didn’t care for Americans. She had tucked her blond hair behind her ears and found a blazer to match her skirt. A large pair of horn-rimmed glasses rested on her nose.

  “I’m sorry,” Nick said sincerely, “I didn’t realize . . .” His explanation petered out.

  “Sylvia Schon,” she announced, standing and extending a hand across the desk. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. It’s not often the Chairman recommends a new graduate.”

  “He was a friend of my father’s. They worked together.” Nick shook his head as if to dismiss the connection. “It was a long time ago.”

  “So I understand. But the bank doesn’t forget its own. We’re big on loyalty around here.” She motioned for him to sit down and when he had, lowered herself into her chair. “I hope you don’t mind my asking a few questions. I take pride in knowing everyone who works in our department. Usually we insist on several interviews before extending an offer.”

  “I appreciate any exceptions that were made on my behalf. Actually, I did interview with Dr. Ott in New York.”

  “It was rather perfunctory, I imagine.”

  “Dr. Ott and I covered a lot of ground. If you’re asking whether he went easy on me, he didn’t.”

  Sylvia Schon raised an eyebrow and cocked her head as if to say, “Come now, Mr. Neumann, we both know you’re full of shit.” She was right, of course. His meeting with the bank’s vice chairman had been nothing more than an extended bull session. Ott was a short, fat, unctuous man, an unapologetic arm patter, and it seemed to Nick that he’d been told to paint the sunniest possible picture of life in Zurich and a career at the United Swiss Bank.

  “Fourteen months,” she said. “That’s the longest one of our American recruits has lasted. You gentlemen come over for a European vacation, do a little skiing, take in the sights, and a year later you’re gone. Off to greener pastures.”

  “If there’s been a problem, why don’t you conduct the interviews yourself?” he asked pleasantly, in counterpoint to her combative tone. “I’m sureyou would have no problem weeding out the weaker candidates.”

  Dr. Schon squinted her eyes, as if unsure whether he was a smart-ass or just an exceptionally perceptive individual. “An interesting question. Feel free to ask Dr. Ott next time you visit with him. Interviewing foreign candidates is his department. For now, though, let’s concentrate on you, shall we? Our refugee from Wall Street. I don’t imagine that a firm like Morgan Stanley often loses one of its best recruits after only four months.”

  “I decided that I didn’t want to spend my career in New York. I’ve never had the opportunity to work in a foreign environment. I realized that if I wanted to move, the sooner the better.”

  “So you quit like that?” She snapped her fingers.

  Nick was beginning to find her aggressive tone irritating. “First I spoke with Herr Kaiser. He’d contacted me following my graduation in June and mentioned that he’d like me to come to the bank.”

  “You didn’t consider anywhere else? London? Hong Kong? Tokyo? After all, if you were offered a position by Morgan Stanley, I’m sure there were other firms that went away disappointed. What brought you to Zurich?”

  “I’d like to specialize in private banking, and for that Zurich’s the place. No one has a better reputation than USB.”

  “So our reputation led you to our doorstep?”

  Nick smiled. “Yes, exactly.”

  Liar, said a determined voice from a dark corner of his soul. You wo
uld’ve come if the place was buried in shit and the last shovel had just broken.

  “Remember, things move slowly here. Don’t expect a promotion to the executive board anytime soon. We’re less a meritocracy than you Americans are used to.”

  “Minimum fourteen months,” said Nick. “I should just be settling in by then. Getting to know my way around.” He smiled broadly to let her know that he wasn’t put off by her predictions of a short stay and that she should get used to him. But behind the smile, the determined voice had the final say.

  I’ll stay, it promised. Fourteen months or fourteen years. As long as it takes to discover why my father was murdered in the foyer of a close friend’s home.

  Sylvia Schon brought her chair closer to her desk and studied some documents on it. The room fell silent. The tension of a first encounter dissipated. Finally, she looked up and smiled. “You’ve met Mr. Sprecher, I understand? Everything satisfactory?”

  Nick said yes.

  “He explained to you, I’m sure, that his department is a little shorthanded.”

  “He said that Mr. Cerruti was ill. He’ll be back next week.”

  “We hope so. Did he say anything else?”

  Nick looked at her intently. She wasn’t smiling anymore. What was she tiptoeing around? “No. Just that Cerruti had contracted a virus on his business trip.”

  Dr. Schon removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry to bring this up on your first day of work, but I think it’s best you hear it now. I don’t suppose you know about Mr. Becker. He also worked in FKB4. He was killed Christmas Eve. Stabbed to death not far from here. We’re still very upset. It’s an absolute tragedy.”

  “He was the man killed on the Bahnhofstrasse?” Nick hadn’t recalled the name, but he recognized the facts from an article in a Swiss newspaper he’d read on the flight over. The brazen nature of the murder made for front-page news. Apparently, he’d been carrying some expensive jewelry. The police did not yet have a suspect, but the article had clearly stated that robbery was the motive. Somehow USB had managed to keep its name out of the paper.