Numbered Account Read online

  Mevlevi lost his jocular mien. “Nicholas, please. The time for games has passed. There is a corpse behind you and your fingerprints are all over the murder weapon. You’ve made your stand. As I said before, I am most impressed by you. I see defiance runs in your veins, too.”

  Had Kaiser also defied the Pasha? Nick wondered. Or was he talking about somebody else? “I’m taking this gun with me and leaving. Don’t expect to see me Monday morning.About this”—he motioned his head toward the lifeless body of Albert Makdisi—”there’s only one thing I can do. I’ll have to explain best I can.”

  “Explain what?” said Gino Makdisi, who had pulled himself to his feet and taken a position next to Mevlevi. “That you killed my brother?”

  Mevlevi said to Gino, “I am so very, very sorry. I did as you requested. I gave him a last chance to apologize.”

  “Albert?” scoffed Gino. “He never apologized to anyone.”

  Mevlevi returned his attention to Nick. “I’m afraid it appears that you, my friend, killed Albert Makdisi.”

  “Yes,” agreed Gino Makdisi. “Two witnesses. We both saw you do it.”

  Nick laughed grimly at his predicament. Mevlevi had bought off Gino Makdisi. A wild thought came to him. Fuck it all, then. One man’s death was already on his soul. Why not two? Why not three? He stepped toward the Pasha and firmed his grip around the pistol’s steel butt. He raised his arm and drew a bead on Ali Mevlevi’s face, suddenly absent its smug smile. You killed Cerruti, you son of a bitch. You murdered your partner in cold blood. How many more men have you killed before that? Becker too? Was he snooping around a little too much? And now you want to frame me?

  Nick’s world narrowed to a tight corridor. His periphery grew dark. Anger spread through every inch of his being. Unconsciously, he increased his pressure on the trigger. The muscles in his forearm contracted and his shoulder hardened. This is what it feels like to do some good, he told himself.

  Do some good.

  “Think of your father,” Mevlevi said, as if reading Nick’s mind.

  “I am.” Nick extended his arm and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked. He pulled it again. Metal struck metal.

  Ali Mevlevi exhaled noisily. “Quite some feat. I must admit it requires real courage to stare down the barrel of a gun even when you know it to be empty. For a moment there, I forgot how many shots I had given Albert.”

  Gino Makdisi took a snub-nosed revolver from his jacket and pointed it at Nick. He looked to Mevlevi for instructions. Mevlevi lifted a hand and said, “I’m deciding.” Then to Nick, “Please give me the gun. Slowly. Thank you.”

  Nick looked away from the men to the river running below them. The dry firing of the pistol had shattered the rage pounding inside his skull. He had expected the gun to buck in his hand, to feel the crack of the bullet, to hear the tinkling of the spent shell as it hit the ground. He had expected to kill a man.

  Mevlevi tucked the silver pistol back into his jacket. He knelt and collected the spent shell casings. Standing, he whispered in Nick’s ear. “I told you this morning that I wanted to thank you. What better way to show my gratitude than to make you a member of my family? Cerruti’s passing has left a convenient opening.”

  Nick stared through him. “I’ll never be a member of your family.”

  “You have no choice. Today, I let you live. I gave you life. Now, you’ll do as I ask. Nothing serious. At least, not yet. For the moment I simply want you to do your job.”

  Gino Makdisi said, “Remember the gun, Mr. Neumann. It carries your fingerprints. I may be a criminal, but in court my word is as good as the next man’s.” He shrugged his shoulders as if things weren’t so bad, then twisted his bulk toward the Pasha. “Can you drop me at the Schiller Bank? We’ll have to hurry if we’re to make the transfer this afternoon.”

  The Pasha smiled. “Not to worry. Mr. Neumann is an expert at processing late-arriving transfers. Every Monday and Thursday at three o’clock, right, Nicholas?”

  CHAPTER

  48

  Peter Sprecher drummed his fingers on top of his desk and told himself in a stern voice that he must count to ten before exploding. Silently, he invoked Almighty God, the King James variant, thank you, to pacify the jabbering crowd gathered around the hexagonal trading desk adjacent to his own. He heard Tony Gerber, a rat-faced options specialist, rave about the “strangle” he had put on USB shares. If the shares stayed within five points of their current level, he’d take down a two-hundred-thousand-franc profit in just thirty days. “Go ahead and annualize that return,” he heard Gerber brag. “Three hundred and eighty percent. You try and beat it.”

  Sprecher reached seven before deciding he could stand it no longer. He slid his chair back and tapped his neighbor Hassan Faris, the bank’s chief of equities trading, on the shoulder. “I know it is a quiet Friday afternoon but if you wish to continue this infernal racket, take your pack of thieves off to another corner of the cave. I’ve another dozen calls yet to make and I can’t hear myself think.”

  “Mr. Sprecher,” answered Faris over the continuous buzz, “you are sitting in the center of the trading floor of a bank that derives its entire income from buying and selling financial instruments. If you have a problem hearing, I’ll be happy to order you a headset. Until then, mind your own fucking business. Okay?”

  Sprecher grumbled something about not being an operator and slid his chair back to his desk. Faris was right, of course. The place was supposed to be a hive of activity. The more frenetic, the better. A moving market meant someone somewhere was making money. He scanned the floor. Like bumpers on a snooker table, seven hexagonal desks sprang from the green baize floor. Around them, men stood in varied positions of action. He heard someone fire off an order for a thousand OEX contracts at the market. Beside him, Alfons Gruber was whispering feverishly into his handset, “I know Philip Morris is up twelve percent in the last week, but I still want to short the sucker. I hear the jury’s ready to convict. I’m telling you, short it!”

  Sprecher felt lost. This was not his world. It was everything he had rebelled against. A trader’s career was nasty, brutish, and short. He did not enjoy phoning ladies and gentlemen with whom he had no prior acquaintance and hectoring them to put in their lot with Klaus Konig and the Adler Bank. It made him feel cheap. In his heart he was still a USB man, and probably would be until the day he died.

  Sprecher returned to the task at hand. Officially stated, his job was to rally the votes of those institutional shareholders holding sizable blocks of USB stock to the Adler Bank’s cause. It had been a difficult task, confidential shareholder lists pirated from USB notwithstanding. Holders of Swiss bank stocks tended to be a conservative lot. The Adler Bank was having little luck winning votes based on its past returns. Too risky, too aggressive by half, stammered the stodgy investors. With days remaining until USB’s general assembly, he was convinced that the sole route open to capture two seats on the board of the United Swiss Bank was straightforward share accumulation: cash purchases on the open market.

  There was only one problem. The Adler Bank’s cash reserves had dried up. The bank had leveraged its assets beyond any prudent measure to secure its current position of thirty-two percent of USB’s outstanding shares, a stake valued as of yesterday’s close at 1.4 billion Swiss francs. God forbid Konig failed to gain the deciding one percent: the price of USB stock would collapse, and the market value of Adler’s portfolio would drop between eighteen and twenty percent overnight.

  Sprecher spotted a tall man waving to him from across the room. It was George von Graffenried, Konig’s number two and head honcho on the bond desk. He waved back and began standing but Von Graffenried motioned for him to stay seated. A few moments later he was squatting by Sprecher’s side.

  “I’ve just received another surprise from our friends at USB,” Von Graffenried said quietly, handing him a sheet of paper. “Get on it. A block of one hundred forty thousand shares. Exactly the one percent we need. Find whoever run
s this Widows and Orphans Fund of Zurich and get your butt over there as quickly as possible. We have to capture their votes!”

  Sprecher picked up the photocopy of USB stationery and brought it closer to his eyes.The Widows and Orphans Fund of Zurich. Fund manager Mrs. F. Emmenegger. He smirked. His American friend’s ploy had obviously worked. Such was the pressure to surpass the thirty-three percent vote barrier that neither Konig nor Von Graffenried, despite never having heard of the fund, had bothered to research its authenticity.

  “I’ll expect an answer by tomorrow,” said Von Graffenried. “We’ll be here all day long.”

  Sprecher slapped the paper onto his desk and withdrew a pen. He read the sheet, suppressing an urge to laugh aloud. Look at the handwritten notes Neumann had inscribed:Called at 10:00, called at 12:00. No answer. We must not fail!! Young Nick, earnest to the last.

  Dutifully, Sprecher picked up the phone and rang the number written on the sheet. An answering machine responded after the fourth ring. The voice sounded familiar but he couldn’t place it, and upon hearing the beep, he left a brief message. “This is Mr. Peter Sprecher calling on behalf of the Adler Bank. We would very much like to speak with you as soon as possible regarding the voting of your block of USB shares at the general assembly on Tuesday. Please feel free to call me back at the following number. Mr. Konig and Mr. Von Graffenried would personally enjoy meeting with you to discuss the Adler Bank’s famed investment strategies and to point out how the value of your shareholding would greatly increase with benefit of the Adler Bank’s wise counsel.”

  “Very well done,” applauded Hassan Faris. “This is Mister Peter Sprecher. Send out your wives and daughters. Trust us. We want only to ravage and enslave them. Do not worry.”

  Hassan’s troop burst into laughter.

  A light on the equity trader’s desk lit up. Faris jabbed at the lit button and brought the phone to his ear. He plugged his finger into his other ear, then motioned for his charges to be quiet.

  “Shut up!” yelled Faris. He swept his hands through the air, and his followers dispersed.

  Sprecher sat up and took note. He rolled his chair closer to his neighbor while inclining his head so as best to eavesdrop on Faris’s conversation.

  “Wait a moment, sir, I must write this all down,” said Faris. “I never make a mistake on so big an order . . . Yes, sir, that is why you hired me . . . For-tee million . . . Is that U.S. dollars or Swiss francs? . . . Dollars, yes sir . . . At the market . . . One minute . . . Mr. Konig, our cash account shows only two million dollars . . . Yes, of course I can arrange for settlement on Tuesday . . . No, we aren’t required to say anything . . . Well, technically, yes, but we’ll just pay twenty-four hours late, that’s all . . . On Tuesday morning at ten . . . Will the money have arrived by that time? . . . Yes, sir . . . I repeat: An order to buy forty million U.S. dollars of USB shares at the market for settlement Tuesday. The entire purchase to be booked into the Ciragan Trading Account.”

  Sprecher eased his chair back another few inches. He wrote down the words exactly as Faris had spoken them.

  “Yessir, I will call with a fill before the day is out . . . We may have to work on the after market . . . I will keep you informed.” Faris slammed down the receiver.

  “What is the Ciragan Trading Account?” asked Sprecher. Best to pry while the trader was occupied tending to the details of the call.

  Hassan scribbled Klaus Konig’s instructions onto his order block. “What’s that, Sprecher?Ciragan? It’s Konig’s private account.”

  “Konig’s? That doesn’t sound like the name of a Swiss trading account. Surely it doesn’t belong to the Adler Bank proper.”

  “It is the account of his largest investor. Most of the USB stock we have purchased is being held in Ciragan Trading. We hold proxy over all shares in that account. They’re as good as ours.” Hassan looked up from his writing. He wrinkled his brow in annoyance. “Why am I telling you? It’s none of your fucking business. Go back to your work, whatever the hell it is you do all day.”

  Sprecher watched Faris call down to the floor of the Zurich stock exchange. The trader excitedly relayed the “open to buy” for forty million U.S. When the order was filled, the Adler Bank would pass the thirty-three percent barrier. It could, for all intents and purposes, count on winning two seats on the board of the United Swiss Bank. Kaiser would be finished. Nick too.

  Ciragan Trading, Sprecher whispered. He’d heard that word only once in his life.Ciragan Palace. The password for numbered account 549.617 RR. The Pasha.

  Zurich wasn’t a big enough town for it to be a coincidence.

  He picked up the telephone to call Nick. The whine of Faris’s voice reminded him that calling from the Adler Bank was no longer wise. He grabbed his cigarettes and his jacket. Time for a late lunch. “Be a good chap, young Nick,” he whispered to himself, “and keep your bloody ass firmly planted behind your desk for the next ten minutes.”

  CHAPTER

  49

  Nick trudged up the steep hill. The sidewalk was as slick as a wet bar of soap, cobbled with fissures of ice. Normally, this kind of walk would put him into a dark mood. Tonight, he found a grim enjoyment to it. Anything to divert his mind from the events he’d been party to that afternoon. Three hours ago, he had tried to murder a man. He had willed himself to pull the trigger and take the consequences. Even now, part of him wished he’d been successful.

  Nick slowed and rested against a barren tree. He was content to hear his heart beating and see his breath’s vapor wash. But after a second, another chorus of sound and light took their place. He heard the muted crack of Mevlevi’s pistol as it fired three bullets into Albert Makdisi’s chest. He caught the Pasha’s contemptuous sneer as Rita Sutter announced Cerruti’s death. He saw Albert Makdisi’s wrecked face, its crushed nose and accusing eyes and he imagined his own face replacing it. Suddenly, he felt sick. He dropped to his knee and heaved. His empty stomach produced a trickle of bile that burned his throat. He gasped, sucking in the cold night air. He had become Mevlevi’s pawn. He was in hell.

  After leaving the Platzspitz, Mevlevi had ferried him back to the bank. Kaiser was out. The Emperor’s Lair was quiet. Three messages from Peter Sprecher lay on his desk. He ignored them. Reto Feller called once, saying that he’d taken the remaining portfolios Nick had not yet “liberated,” and that USB now controlled fifty-eight percent of its outstanding votes. The Adler Bank was mired at thirty-two percent.

  Pietro from payments traffic called at 4:15 to inform him that a newly activated numbered account (one of the five Mevlevi had obtained from the International Fiduciary Trust that morning) had received a transfer from the Schiller Bank. The amount: forty million dollars. Nick followed the Pasha’s instructions and immediately transferred the full amount to the banks specified by matrix one. Immediately afterward, he left the bank.

  Nick resumed his slow walk to Sylvia’s apartment. He hadn’t wanted to go home after work. He couldn’t face the cramped one-room apartment. He thought of it as a cell and of Mevlevi as his jailer. Arriving at the crest of the hill, he paused and turned to study the slope behind him. His eyes skimmed hedges and fences, trees and entryways. He was looking for a phantom he knew must be somewhere behind him—a shadow sent by Mevlevi with instructions to stop any sudden and ill-advised flight to the police.

  Nick was exhausted when he reached the entrance to Sylvia’s building. Cold, confused, and out of breath. He checked his wristwatch and saw it was only 5:30. He doubted she would be home but rang the buzzer anyway. No one answered. She was probably still at work. He longed to be inside the glass door where he could wait in the warmth and relative comfort of her hallway. Sighing, he closed his eyes and pressed his back against the wall, then slid down until his bottom rested on the crusty snow. Sylvia would be home any minute, he told himself. Relax. His shoulders sagged.

  Just a few minutes more till she gets home.

  # # #

  Somewhere over the horizon th
e earth was shaking. The ground rent itself into towering slabs of concrete that threatened to topple onto his prostrate form. A blunt object poked him in the ribs. Someone shook his shoulders. “Nick, get up,” his mother called. “You’re blue.”

  Nick opened his eyes. Sylvia Schon was hunched over him. She felt his cheek with her warm hands. “Are you all right? How long have you been here? My God, you’re frozen stiff.”

  She had too many questions to wait for any one answer.

  Nick shook himself and stood up. His back was sore and his right knee a rock. He checked his wristwatch and groaned. “It’s almost seven. I sat down at five-thirty.”

  Sylvia clucked like a mother hen. “Get inside right now and take a hot shower. Get those clothes off.” She gave him a quick kiss. “You’re cold as ice. You’ll be lucky not to catch pneumonia.”

  Nick followed her into the apartment. He took note of the faded yellow dossiers she carried under her arm. “You were able to get more activity reports?”

  “Of course,” Sylvia said proudly. “I have the rest of 1978 and all of 1979. We have the entire weekend, don’t we?”

  Nick smiled and said they did. He marveled at the facility with which Sylvia checked information into and out of the bank. He wondered briefly if she had told Kaiser about their lunch yesterday, then dismissed the thought. It had probably been Rita Sutter or that asshole Schweitzer—either one of them might have overheard his conversation. Be happy you have at least one person on your side, he told himself. He started to thank her for the reports, but before he could she began peppering him with questions. Where had he been all day? Had he heard the dreadful news about Marco Cerruti? Why hadn’t he called if he had planned on joining her for dinner?

  Nick sighed and allowed himself to be led into the bathroom.

  # # #

  The watcher stood fifty yards from the apartment hidden in a copse of tall pines. He punched a number into his cellular phone, keeping his eyes pasted to the entry of the apartment building. The desired party answered after a dozen rings. “Where is he?”