Numbered Account Page 38

  Mevlevi speaks again. “You may tell your superiors that I have agreed to pay a special fee of two percent of funds deposited to handle the administrative costs of opening my account. Not bad. Four hundred thousand dollars for a day’s work. Or should I say a night’s?”

  Kaiser does not comment. He strains to keep his back pinned to his chair. If he loses contact with the hard surface, if the pressure against his spine slackens, he will go mad.

  # # #

  The next morning the branch manager boards a flight to Zurich, via Vienna. In his four suitcases he has packed twenty million one hundred forty-three thousand dollars. Mevlevi had lied. There were three one-dollar bills.

  At passport control, Kaiser is waved through. At customs, though pushing a cart laden with a mountain of bulging suitcases, he does not receive a second glance. The passenger following him, while carrying only a small valise, is detained. Kaiser signals his understanding to the immigration official. What else is one to do with a dirty Arab?

  # # #

  Gerhard Gautschi, chairman of the United Swiss Bank, is too stunned to speak. Kaiser explains that he could not turn down the opportunity to generate so substantial a profit for the bank. Yes, there was a risk. No, he cannot envision committing such a foolhardy act again. All the same, the money is safely deposited in the bank. A sizable commission has been earned. Better yet, the client wishes to invest in securities. His first purchase? Shares of the United Swiss Bank.

  “Who is he?” asks Gautschi, referring of course to Kaiser’s new client.

  “A well-respected businessman,” answers Kaiser.

  “Naturally,” laughs Gautschi. “Aren’t they all?”

  Kaiser leaves the Chairman’s throne room, but not before Gautschi has a last word.

  “Next time, Wolfgang, let us send the plane for you.”

  A smattering of snow slapped the windshield and brought Wolfgang Kaiser back to the present. A sign ahead indicated that he had reached Thalwil. Seconds later he sped through the shadow of the Lindt and Sprungli chocolate manufacturer, an industrial monstrosity painted a lavender blue. He slowed the car, lowering his window and extinguishing the heat. A numbing cold invaded the cabin.

  Sick of him, aren’t you?Kaiser asked himself, referring of course to Ali Mevlevi, the man who had destroyed his life.Of course I am. I’m sick of the midnight calls, of the tapped phones, of the unilateral orders. I am sick of living under another man’s heel.

  He sighed. With luck, that might soon change. If Nicholas Neumann was as willful as he estimated, if he was as mean-spirited as his military records indicated, Mevlevi might soon be a memory. Tomorrow young Neumann would be introduced to the guileful ways of Ali Mevlevi. Mevlevi himself had stated that he planned to make sure Neumann was “one of us.” Kaiser could well imagine what those words meant.

  For the past month, he had allowed himself the fantasy of using Nicholas Neumann to get rid of Mevlevi. He knew that Neumann had spent time in the Marine Corps, but his record of service was a mystery. Some of the bank’s better clients were higher-ups at the U.S. Department of Defense—procurement analysts. Rich bastards. A little digging had yielded some startling answers. Neumann’s military record had been officially sealed, labeled “Top Secret.” More interesting, the boy had received a dishonorable discharge. Three weeks prior to his discharge on medical grounds, he had ruthlessly attacked a civilian defense contractor named John J. Keely. Beaten the man senseless, apparently. Rumor said it was retribution for a failed operation. All very hush-hush.

  No more information was forthcoming, but to Kaiser it was more than enough. A soldier with a bad temper. A trained killer with a short fuse. Of course, he could never ask the boy outright to kill another man, a client, to boot. But he could see to it that someone with a bent toward mayhem came up with the idea himself.

  After that, it had been easy. Assign Neumann to FKB4. Give him some time working with account 549.617 RR. Cerruti’s illness and Sprecher’s departure had been marvelous coincidences. The arrival of Sterling Thorne, even better. Who better to prime Neumann on Mevlevi than the United States Drug Enforcement Administration? And now Mevlevi actually coming to Zurich. His first visit in four years. If Kaiser were a religious man, he would call it a miracle. Being a cynic, he called it fate.

  At 9:15, Kaiser parked the car in a private lot abutting the lake. He placed the weighty oilskin in his lap and turned it over and over until the weapon’s silver skin flashed in the darkness. Cupping the pistol in the craw of his left hand, he drew back the slide and chambered a round. With his thumb, he clicked the safety to its off position. He looked in the mirror and was relieved to find the man with dull, lifeless eyes staring back at him.

  First, one chore.

  A block from the apartment building, Kaiser slowed his pace and sucked in the brittle air. Lights burned in every corner of the penthouse. Was that a shadow crossing the window? He lowered his head and walked on. His hand stroked the smooth metal object in his pocket, as if like some magical talisman it might deliver him from this circumstance. He reached the door too soon. The voice that blurted from the speaker was nervous and high-strung. Kaiser could already see the blinking eyes.

  “Thank God you’re here,” said Marco Cerruti.

  CHAPTER

  43

  Ali Mevlevi sat alone in the spacious cabin listening to the pilot announce their initial descent toward Zurich Airport. He put down the sheaf of papers that had held him in their embrace the past three hours and tightened his seat belt. His eyes burned and his head ached. He wondered if it had been a smart idea coming to Switzerland, then dismissed the question outright. He hadn’t had a choice. Not if Khamsin was to succeed.

  Mevlevi returned his attention to the papers in his lap. His eye wandered from top to bottom. It began with the heading, written in large Cyrillic script and emblazoned in maroon ink across the top of the page. He knew it to read “Surplus Arms Warehouse.” A polite introductory paragraph written in English followed. “We sell only the finest new and used armaments, all in perfect operating order.” He half expected to see a disclaimer informing him that he could return the merchandise after thirty days if he was in any way dissatisfied. The Russians were giving international commerce their best shot. He turned the page and reviewed the list of the material he had purchased.

  Section I: Aircraft. Item 1. Hind Assault Helicopter Model VII A (the winged beast of Afghan fame). Price: $15 million per copy. He’d taken four. Item 2. Sukhoi Attack Helicopter. Price: $7 million. He’d taken six. Item 3. Unpronounceable air to ground missiles at fifty thousand a pop. Two hundred sat in his hangar. Turn the page. Section II: Tracked Vehicles. T-52 Tanks at $2 million apiece. He had a damned fleet of them, twenty-five in all. Mobile Katyusha Rocket launchers. A bargain at half a million per. He’d taken ten. Next to item seven,page two, the Zhukov armored personnel carrier with rear-mounted quad .50-caliber machine guns on sale at $250,000 per, there was a star and a handwritten addendum:“Still in use by the Russian Armed Forces—spare parts available!!!” He’d taken a dozen. The list went on and on. A devil’s cornucopia of deadly toys. Field artillery, mortars, machine guns, grenades, mines, t.o.w.’s. Enough weaponry to fully equip two reinforced companies of infantry, a company of armored cavalry, and a squadron of attack helicopters. Six hundred men in all.

  And to think they were only a diversion.

  Mevlevi laughed slyly while he turned to the final page of the document. The main event, as it were. He moved his eyes across the page. The words leaped up at him as if it were the first time he had seen them, and not the hundredth, causing his scrotum to tighten and his skin to bristle with goose bumps.

  Section V. Nuclear Ordnance.1 Kopinskaya IV two-kiloton concussive bomb. Mevlevi’s mouth grew dry. A battlefield nuclear weapon. An atomic device no larger than a mortar shell carrying one tenth the destructive power of the Hiroshima bomb with only one fiftieth the radioactivity. Two thousand tons of TNT with hardly a stray atom.

&n
bsp; It was the only item he had not been able to purchase. It would cost him roughly eight hundred million Swiss francs. He would have the money in three days’ time. And the bomb in three and one half.

  Mevlevi had chosen the target with great care. Ariel—an isolated settlement of fifteen thousand Jews in the occupied West Bank, constructed even as the Israelis proclaimed their good faith in negotiations concerning their withdrawal from that exact area. Did they think the Arab stupid? No man builds a town he will leave in one year. Even the name was perfect.Ariel— no doubt in honor of Mr. Ariel Sharon, the Israelis’ most belligerent Arab hater, the beast who had personally supervised the massacres at Shatila and Sabra in 1982.

  Ariel—the name would come to symbolize the Jews’ woe.

  Mevlevi yawned unexpectedly. He had risen at 4:00 A.M. to conduct a predawn review of his men on the main training field. They had looked magnificent, clad in their desert warfare utilities. Row upon row of inspired warriors, ready to advance the work of the prophet; ready to give their life for Allah. He walked their ranks, offering words of encouragement.Go with God. Inshallah. God is great.

  From the field, he continued on to the two immense hangars he had had carved into the hills at the south end of his compound five years ago. He entered the first hangar and was deafened by the roar of twenty battle tanks conducting final checks on their transmission and drive trains. Mechanics swirled around the mighty beasts, asking drivers to rev the engines and rotate the turrets. Last measures of petrol were added to the lumbering giants, jerricans strapped to their steel hulls. He stopped to admire the immaculate paintwork. Moshe Dayan would turn over in his grave. Every tank had been painted to the exact specifications of the Israeli Army. Each carried an Israeli flag to be raised at the moment of the attack. Confusion was a raider’s greatest ally.

  Mevlevi walked to the second hangar, which housed his helicopters. “Death from above,” cried the Americans and their Israeli vassals. Now they’d learn firsthand. He looked at the Hind choppers, their stout wings bent under the weight of so much ordnance. And the sleeker Sukhoi attack helicopters. Just staring at these instruments of destruction sent a chill down his spine. The helicopters had also been painted the dirty khaki tones of the Israeli armed forces. Three of them carried Israeli transponders captured from downed craft. When the birds crossed the Israeli border, they would activate the transponders. For all the world, or at least every radar installation in the Galilee, they would appear to be friendly forces.

  Mevlevi’s last stop before climbing aboard the aircraft to Zurich had been to the operations center, a reinforced underground bunker not far from the hangars. He wished to conduct a final review of the tactical situation with Lieutenant Ivlov and Sergeant Rodenko. Ivlov summarized the plan of battle: At 0200 Saturday, Mevlevi’s troops would cross into Syria and move south toward the Israeli border. Their movement was timed to coincide with the beginning of an anti-Hezbollah exercise conducted by the South Lebanese Army. Syrian reconnaissance would be expected. Intelligence confirmed that no satellites would be overflying the operational area at this time. One company of infantry would take up position three miles from the border near the town of Chebaa. The other company, working in concert with the armored cavalry, would travel seven miles east to Jazin. The tanks themselves would be transported to the staging area by seven lorries normally used to deliver tractors. Each lorry could take up to four tanks. All troops would be in position by dawn Monday. They would attack on their master’s command.

  Mevlevi assured Ivlov and Rodenko that the plan would go forward as set forth. He didn’t dare tell the two Russians that their incursion across the border to destroy the newest Israeli settlements of Ebarach and New Zion was only a feint, a bloody charade designed to lure the Jews’ attention away from a small flight corridor above the northeasternmost corner of their homeland. To be sure, a few hundred Hebraic settlers could count on losing their lives. It wasn’t as if Ivlov’s attack would have no positive consequences. Just insignificant ones.

  Mevlevi dismissed the Russian mercenaries, then descended a spiral staircase to the communications facility. He asked the clerk on duty to leave and, when he was alone, locked the door and moved to one of the three secure telephone lines. He picked up the phone and dialed a nine-digit number.

  A groggy voice at the Surplus Arms Warehouse in downtown Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, answered.“Da?”

  “General Dimitri Marchenko. Tell him it is his friend in Beirut.” Mevlevi expected Marchenko to be sleeping. However, this was his private line, and the general was proud to offer twenty-four-hour service, a concept he had no doubt picked up during one of his military exchanges to the United States. Besides, he was one of the general’s better customers. So far he had paid him and his sponsors in the Kazakh government $125 million.

  Two minutes later Mevlevi’s call was transferred to another line.

  “Good morning, comrade,” boomed Dimitri Marchenko. “You are an early riser. We have a Russian proverb, “The fisherman who—”’

  Mevlevi interrupted him. “General Marchenko, I have a plane waiting. Everything is in order for our last piece of business.”

  “Wonderful news.”

  Mevlevi spoke using the agreed-upon code. “Please bring your baby to visit. He must arrive no later than Sunday.”

  Marchenko did not speak for a few seconds. Mevlevi could hear him lighting up a cigarette. If the general pulled off this deal, he would be a patron saint to his people for generations to come. Kazakhstan had not been blessed with abundant natural resources. Her land was mountainous and her soil barren. She had some oil, a little gold, and that was about it. For the essentials, wheat, potatoes, beef, she had to rely on her former Soviet brethren. But wares were no longer distributed according to a centrally mandated five-year plan. Hard currency was required. And what better place to begin than with her national armory? Eight hundred million Swiss francs would turn around his impoverished country’s balance of payments overnight. Not exactly beating swords into plowshares, but close enough.

  “That is possible,” said Marchenko. “However, there is still the small matter of payment.”

  “Payment will be made no later than noon on Monday. I guarantee it.”

  “Remember, he cannot travel until I give him his final instructions.”

  Mevlevi said that he understood. The bomb would remain inert until a preprogrammed code was entered into its central processing unit. He knew Marchenko would enter this code only after he had learned that his bank had received the full eight hundred million francs.

  “Da,”said Marchenko. “We will bring our baby to your house on Sunday. By the way, we call him Little Joe. He is like Stalin. Small but a mean sonuvabitch!”

  Recalling the conversation, Mevlevi silently corrected the general.No, its name is not Little Joe. It is Khamsin. And its devil wind will hasten the rebirth of my people.

  CHAPTER

  44

  Nick watched from the backseat of the bank’s Mercedes limousine as the Cessna Citation taxied through the falling snow. The roar of its engines oscillated, alternately whining and growling, as they drove the jet off the skirt of the runway toward an empty patch of tarmac. Abruptly, the jet braked, bouncing off its front wheel as it came to a complete halt. The engines were cut and their purring faded. The door of the jet shuddered and collapsed inward. A flight of stairs descended from the fuselage.

  A lone official from customs and immigration climbed the stairs and disappeared into the aircraft. Nick opened the car door and stepped onto the tarmac. He prepared his best welcoming smile while rehearsing his greeting to the Pasha. He felt curiously detached from himself. He wasn’t really going to spend the day playing tour guide to an international heroin smuggler. That was someone else. Another former marine whose knee was so stiff that every step felt like broken glass grinding into his joints.

  He walked to within ten yards of the aircraft and waited. The man from customs reappeared a few seconds later. “You ma
y go aboard,” he said. “You’re free to exit the airport directly.”

  Nick said thanks, wondering why he had never cleared customs so quickly.

  When he turned his head back to the plane, the Pasha was standing at the open door. Nick straightened his shoulders and covered the distance to the plane in four quick steps. “Good morning, sir. Herr Kaiser extends his sincerest greetings, both personally and on behalf of the bank.”

  Mevlevi shook the extended hand. “Mr. Neumann. We finally meet. I understand thanks are in order.”

  “Not at all.”

  “I mean it. Thank you. I commend you on your sound judgment. Hopefully during my stay I can find some better way of expressing my gratitude. I try not to forget those who have done me a service.”

  “Really,” said Nick, “it’s not necessary. Please come this way. Let’s get out of the cold.”

  The Pasha was hardly the hardened criminal Nick had expected. He was slim and not very tall—maybe five eight or five nine—and weighed no more than one hundred sixty pounds. He was dressed in a navy suit, a bloodred Hermes tie, and polished loafers. In the manner of an Italian aristocrat, he had draped an overcoat over his shoulders.

  Put me in a crowd next to this man, thought Nick, and I would take him for a high-ranking executive or the foreign minister of a Latin American country. He could be an aging French playboy or a prince of the Saudi royal family. He did not look like a man who made his business peddling thousands of kilos of refined heroin to the greater European continent.

  Mevlevi drew the coat around him and shivered theatrically. “I felt the chill even at thirty thousand feet. I have only two bags. The captain is taking them from the cargo hold.”

  Nick showed Mevlevi to the car, then returned to the plane to retrieve the suitcases. The bags were stuffed full and heavy. Lugging them to the limousine, he recalled the Chairman’s orders to do exactly as Mevlevi instructed. In fact, only one appointment had been fixed for the Pasha’s visit. A meeting with the Swiss immigration authorities in Lugano, three days from now, on Monday morning at ten. The subject: issuance of a Swiss passport.