Numbered Account Page 9
CHAPTER
8
My grandfather was a close friend of Leopold of Belgium,” bellowed Eberhard Senn, the Count Languenjoux. He was a chipper man of eighty dressed in a neat Prince de Galles suit and a sprightly red bow tie. “Do you remember the Congo, Mr. Neumann? Belgians stole the whole damned country. Hard to do that nowadays. Take that tyrant Hussein: Tried to steal the postage stamp next door and got his cheeks waxed.”
“Soundly defeated,” translated Hubert, the count’s grandson, a blond waif of twenty swallowed by a three-piece navy pinstripe. “Grandfather means that Hussein was dealt a crippling defeat.”
“Ah yes.” Nick nodded, feigning little knowledge of this minor imbroglio. Tactful ignorance was an important component of the successful banker’s repertoire. Not to mention speed.
After receiving Hugo Brunner’s call, he had raced down the corridor to retrieve Senn’s file from his official portfolio manager’s secretary. In the two minutes required to reach the ground floor and find Salon 4, he’d reviewed the client’s dossier.
“But not to our entire disadvantage, eh Hubert?” continued the count. “Fools lost all their weaponry. Tanks, machine guns, mortars. All of it. Gone. It’s a gold mine for us. The secret is Jordan. You’ll need a strong business partner in Jordan to ferry the weapons in.”
“Of course,” said Nick in firm agreement. Senn remained silent a few moments longer, and Nick worried thathe was being asked to supply the name of such a partner.
“Belgians haven’t done a damn thing since they took the Congo,” said Senn. “I’m still hoping they’ll take it back. Do the place some good.”
Nick and Hubert both smiled, each bound by a separate duty.
“And that, Mr. Neumann, is how my grandfather received his title.”
“By helping Leopold conquer the Congo?” Nick ventured.
“Of course not.” The count guffawed. “He imported European women to make the damned place habitable. Leopold’s mistresses wouldn’t go near it! Someone had to look after the king’s pleasures.”
The count’s express purpose that morning was to alter the signatures on his existing accounts. His son, Robert, had recently passed away. Nick recalled seeing a few lines in the paper:Robert Senn, 48, president of Senn Industries, a Swiss manufacturer of light firearms, pressurized aerosol containers, and ventilation systems, died when the plane in which he was traveling, a Gulfstream IV belonging to Senn Industries, crashed shortly after takeoff from Grozny, Chechnya. No speculation was made on the cause of the crash or for that matter on the purpose of Mr. Senn’s visit to the war-torn area. Recent history was littered with the corpses of arms merchants cut down by credit-poor warriors. Now the dead man’s signature must be replaced by Hubert’s. Another generation to be welcomed into the bank. The entire business would take only a few minutes.
Nick opened his leather folder and placed two blank signature cards on the desk. “If you’ll kindly sign the bottom of these forms, we can have the account transferred to Hubert by the end of the day.”
The count stared at the cards, then lifted his eyes to the young banker across the table. “Robert never wanted to stay in Switzerland. He preferred traveling. Italy, South America, the Far East. Robert was an excellent salesman. Wherever he journeyed he sold our products. There are Senn pistols and machine guns in the armed forces of over thirty nations and territories. Did you know that, Mr. Neumann? Thirty nations. And that’s only theofficial tally.” Senn directed a conspiratorial wink at Nick, then shifted in his chair to gaze at his irresolute grandson. “You know, Hubert, I told your father, “Stay away from these funny new countries, Kazakhstan, Chechnya, Ossetia.’ “New frontiers, Papa. New borders’, he said. Robert loved our clients.”
No doubt best those that paid cash, Nick said to no one.
A cloud passed over the count’s wrinkled face. He leaned forward as if puzzling over one last question. His eyes filled and a tear rolled down his cheek. “Why was he so terribly bored, my Robert? Why was he so bored?”
Hubert took his grandfather’s hand and gently patted it. “We’ll be all right, Grandfather.”
Nick kept his eyes on the polished tabletop.
“Of course we’ll be all right,” the count roared. “The Senns are like this bank: solid, indestructible. Did I tell you, Neumann, that we have been clients of USB for over one hundred years? That Holbein on the wall behind you is a gift from my father. MyOpa, the first count, started his business with loans from this bank. Can you imagine? The first Senn weapons built with money from this institution. You’re part of a great tradition, Neumann. Don’t forget that. People rely on this bank. On tradition. On trust. Not enough of it left in the world.”
Hubert motioned in the banker’s direction, signaling to move on to the business at hand. Nick placed the signature cards in front of his clients. Eberhard Senn signed the two cards and passed them to his grandson. Hubert freed his elbow from the constricts of his jacket and added his signature to one card, then the other.
Nick collected the cards and thanked the gentlemen for coming. He stood to show them the way out. Senn shook his hand vigorously. “Trust, Mr. Neumann. When you get older, it’s the only thing that really matters. Not enough of it left in the world today.”
Nick escorted Senn and his grandson to the entry, then took his leave. Crossing the lobby he thought about the count and what he had said. Eberhard Senn was an unrepentant arms merchant, the grandson of a white slaver—after all, what woman went peaceably to the Congo, the “heart of darkness,” way back in 1880?—a man whose entire family fortune had been amassedthrough the conduct of morally ambiguous commerce, and here he was going on about the importance of trust and how he relied on the unimpeachable integrity of the United Swiss Bank.
Nick’s mind rocketed to the sheet of paper that waited on his desk: the Internal Account Surveillance List. What about every other client who had put his trust in the bank? he asked himself. Didn’t they also depend on the bank’s guarantee of confidentiality? In a country where absolute secrecy was a bank’s defining characteristic, trust meant everything. Surely, Wolfgang Kaiser would not take exception to that sentiment. What had he said to the collected bankers after Sterling Thorne’s remarks?“. . . while Mr. Thorne may search far and wide for his rogue males, he shall never find what he is looking for within the walls of the United Swiss Bank.”
Why wouldn’t Thorne find them? Because they didn’t exist? Or because Kaiser would do everything within his power to prevent their discovery?
Nick reached the bank of elevators and pressed the call button. He could see Hugo Brunner lecturing a young woman dressed in a neat blue business suit. For some reason he just knew that this was her first day of work at the bank. He imagined himself through her eyes: a serious executive in a charcoal suit traversing the lobby with his head bowed, a “Do not disturb” sign practically flashing above his head. He found the picture amusing. He spun the picture on its axis and his amusement faded. In six short weeks, he had become one of the brooding gray bankers scuttling to and fro he had seen on his arrival. What would happen to him after six years?
Nick stepped into the elevator and punched his floor. Don’t worry about six years down the road, he told himself. Worry about today. The Pasha’s account number is on the bank’s Internal Account Surveillance List. He heard Peter Sprecher’s voice telling him to“mind the consequences. To the bank. And to yourself.”
The uncovering of the Pasha as a criminal pursued by the DEA would not portend well for USB. It didn’t take a genius to figure that one out. Just the suggestion of a relationship would send the press into a feeding frenzy. An actual investigation would tarnish USB’s precious public image, regardless of the results. Given Klaus Konig’s announcement that the rival Adler Bank was moving to gain control of a large block of USB shares in advance of the bank’s general assembly, now just a few weeks away, USB could under no circumstance afford any hint of scandal.
Nor could Nick’s
career.
He could hardly expect a promotion for turning in the Pasha, even if technically he was complying with the bank’s directives. On the contrary. Turn in the Pasha and he could expect a lateral move to an eminent position in office supplies management. See how far he’d get with his investigation then.
The Swiss did not lionize the whistle-blower. Eight years ago, in an unprovoked fit of morality, the government had amended its legal tomes to allow any banker to report, without recourse to his superior, acts of an illegal nature he had witnessed during the hours of his employ. In those eight years, hardly more than a dozen individuals had noticed an act of criminal intent or questionable nature that necessitated a call to the authorities. The grand majority of the one hundred seventy thousand employed by the Swiss banking industry chose to remain comfortably silent.
Such a statistic spoke volumes on the politics of the Swiss people but did not begin to describe the reasons that cold-fired in Nick a notion toward willful disobedience. Those reasons could be found in the pages of his father’s calfskin agendas, now lying less than two miles away on a top shelf in his small apartment. The agendas had given Nick a way to account for the vagaries of a turbulent life, to say “the Fall” did not come because of a random act of violence. The words were brief, terse even—Bastard threatened me! I must comply. Man is a crook, out and out—and they illuminated not only his father’s miseries but his own, for Nick was unable to dwell upon his father’s death without brooding on the consequences it had unleashed on his own life. The shuttling from town to town. The new schools every five months—ten in six years, if you wanted to count. The battles to ingratiate himself with a revolving slate of classmates, the constant efforts at fitting in, until one day he just gave up and decided that he didn’t need any friends.
The drinking came later, and it was the worst. His mother wasn’t a loud drunk. She was the other kind. The teary-eyed lush content to sip one cocktail after the other. By nine in the evening she’d have a dozen stiff ones under her belt, maybe more. He’d need a crane to get her out of the BarcaLounger and into bed. Even now Nick wondered how many teenagers had put their mother naked under a cold shower. How many had made sure she had two aspirins each morning with her coffee? And how many had tucked a fresh bottle of Visine into her handbag before she went off to work so that maybe she’d last another day without being fired?
The Internal Account Surveillance List was his chance, then. A skeleton key to the unlit corridors of the bank. The question was how to use it.
The elevator jostled unevenly on its run between floors, and Nick’s mind confronted another issue. What about Thorne? asked a crusading voice he thought long dead. What about his mission to arrest the major players in the international drug trade?
Screw Thorne, he answered. Let him pursue his rogues’ gallery of drugsupremos andnarcotraficantes, but goddamn it, not on my watch. As far as Nick was concerned all government agencies—the CIA, the FBI, the DEA, the whole rotten bunch—operated on some hopelessly stilted agenda. They were motivated as much by the self-serving and entirely human aspirations of their leaders as by a legitimate desire to remedy societal ills. To hell with them all.
# # #
Nick returned to his desk at five minutes before three o’clock. The office seemed unnaturally quiet. Sprecher’s desk was empty, as was Cerruti’s—a desolate stretch of banking highway. He had five minutes to decide how to handle the Pasha, true identity unknown, this day at odds with the laws of at least one Western nation.
Nick tapped his pen on the Internal Account Surveillance List. He had been neglecting his duties for most of the day. To divert his thoughts, or maybe to focus them more clearly, he took out the two modification of account information forms he had filled out that morning and began making the necessary additions. A valiant trumpet sounded the charge from an imaginary battlefield. He recognized the Chairman’s air. A call to arms.
Nick hazarded a weak smile and glanced up to the clock. 14:59. And then it was done . . . 15:00. He slid open his top drawer and withdrew a green transfer of funds sheet and a black pen. He laid down both in front of him, sure to cover Schweitzer’s surveillance list, and began counting. One . . . two . . . three. He could practically feel the pulses of compressed light firing through the fiber-optic cables. Four . . . five . . . six.
The phone jumped in front of him. Nick stared at the flashing light. The phone rang again. He picked up the receiver and placed it firmly against his ear.
“United Swiss Bank, Mr. Neumann, good afternoon.”
CHAPTER
9
Nick leaned back in his chair and repeated himself. “United Swiss Bank, Mr. Neumann speaking. How may I be of service?”
A brusque hissing erupted from the line.
“Good afternoon. Is anyone there?” His stomach felt empty. A streak of anxiety sparked in his lower abdomen and rose unchecked into his throat.
“Please come to my desert kingdom,” said a scratchy voice. “The pleasures of Allah await. I have heard you are a handsome and virile young man. We have many beautiful women, some very, very young. But for you I have reserved something special, something infinitely more pleasurable.”
“Excuse me,” Nick said. This didn’t sound like the man he had listened to on Monday.
“The pleasures of the desert are legion,” the voice rumbled on. “But for you, my young friend, I reserve my precious Fatima. Such softness you do not know. Like the down from a thousand pillows. And gentle . . . ahh, Fatima is a kind and loving beast. The queen of all my camels.” The voice broke down, trading its shaky Arabic accent for one of English origin. “Please you may fuck her as often as you like,” Peter Sprecher blurted out, before bursting into laughter, no longer able to continue his charade. “Am I keeping you from something more important, young Nick?”
“Bastard! You’ll pay!” Nick railed.
Sprecher laughed louder.
“Isn’t Konig keeping you busy enough? Or are you already buying shares for him? Is he going to make a bid for the entire bank?”
“Sorry, chum, I couldn’t tell you. But if I were a betting man, I wouldn’t count him out.”
“Always full of positive news . . .” Nick halted in mid-sentence. A new light on his telephone had begun blinking. “Gotta run. Our friend is here. By the way, his account is on Schweitzer’s surveillance list.” He caught the beginning of a loud exclamation before he stabbed the flashing extension. “United Swiss Bank, Mr. Neumann, good afternoon.”
“Mr. Sprecher, please.” It was him.
“This is Mr. Neumann speaking. Unfortunately Mr. Sprecher is away from the office today, but I am his assistant. May I help you, sir?”
“What is your bank reference?” the gravelly voice demanded. “I know Mr. Sprecher well. I do not know you. Please be so kind as to provide me your full name and bank reference.”
“Sir, I would be more than happy to provide you with information legitimizing my employ at the bank; however, first, I need to have either your name or your account number.”
The line faded for a second. The quietest of hums cut out, and then was back.
“Very well. My account number is”—he pronounced the numbers slowly and deliberately—”five four nine, six one seven. R. R.”
“Thank you. Now I require your code word for this account.”
Nick felt oddly empowered by the strict procedure set forth to control the identity of the anonymous individuals holding numbered accounts. For decades all that had been required to open an account at any Swiss bank was a check drawn on an internationally active bank, or for more discreet individuals, a stack of currency freely convertible against the Swiss franc. Proof of identity was welcome but by no means obligatory.
In 1990, Switzerland’s banking authorities, no longer willing to advocate a policy that could be viewed as favorable to the desperadoes who used banks as blind coconspirators, passed legislation calling for legitimate proof of a client’s identity and country of ori
gin, in the form of a valid passport, to be noted as a vital part of the client’s records.
Peter Sprecher claimed that prior to implementation of the “draconian” legislation, many of banking’s wiser heads had set aside several thousand numbered accounts to be held in the names of their favoredTreuhander, or financial middlemen. These accounts were made available to special clients of the bank interested in keeping their identity a secret—”grandfathered,” as it were. The minimum deposit required to obtain such a numbered account, no meddlesome questions asked, was five million dollars. One had to keep the riffraff out.
“The code word?” Nick repeated.
“Ciragan Palace,” said client 549.617 RR.
Nick smiled to himself. The Ciragan Palace in Istanbul had been home to the latter Turkish viziers in the nineteenth century. Clearly, Marco Cerruti had been pointing a finger at his client’s nationality when christening him the Pasha.
“I confirm, sir, Ciragan Palace,” Nick stated. “My bank reference is NXM, the family name is Neumann.” He spelled it, then asked his client if he had understood. There was an extended silence punctuated only by a rhythmic liquid clicking. Nick brought his chair closer to his desk and leaned over the Pasha’s file, as if physical proximity to his client’s paperwork would hasten the response.
“Loud and clear, Mr. Neumann,” the Pasha said with renewed vigor. “Now may we proceed to business? Please tell me the current balance of my account, 549.617 RR.”
Nick entered the account number into Cerberus, followed by the coded instructions AB30A to request the account’s balance. A microsecond later, the display spit forth the results of his inquiry. His eyes widened. The balance had never been this high. “Your account holds forty-seven million U.S. dollars.”
“Forty-seven million,” the Pasha repeated slowly. If there was any pleasure to be had in finding such an astronomical sum in one’s account, the gruff voice did not betray it. “Mr. Neumann, you have all my transfer instructions, yes? Please look at transfer matrix six.”