Numbered Account (39 page)

Nick waits until Keely is inside the rest room, then moves quickly. He drops the cane, then turns and grasps the unsuspecting man by the shoulders, spinning him around while throwing an arm around his neck to pin him in a headlock. Keely yelps in fear. Nick seeks the carotid artery, and with his free hand, blocks the flow of blood to the brain for five seconds. Keely collapses to the floor, temporarily unconscious. Nick removes a rubber doorstop from his pocket and wedges it under the door. He knocks twice and hears the same signal given in return. A sign stating that the rest room is out of order has been placed on the door. Stackpole has delivered.

Nick limps to Keely’s prostrate body. Despite the pain from his leg, he bends over to slap the ruddy face twice. “Get with it,” he says. “We have a hot date.”

Keely shakes his head, instinctively avoiding a third strike. “What the hell is going on? This is a secure government facility.”

“I know it’s a secure facility,” says Nick. “I fucking secured it. You ready?”

Keely raises his head and asks, “For what?”

“Payback, brother.” Nick’s right hand flashes downward and catches Keely across the cheekbone, sending him sprawling onto the floor.

“It was the fucking radio,” gasps Keely. “I told you already.”

Nick draws back his left foot and kicks the agent in the face. Blood splatters across the tile floor. “Give me the good news,” he says.

“Forget it, Neumann. It’s beyond you. We’re talking realpolitik, policies that influence the well-being of millions of people.”

“Fuck your realpolitik, Keely. What about my team? What about Johnny Burke?”

“Who the fuck’s Burke? That green looie who got shot in the gut? That was his fault, not mine.”

Nick reaches down and grabs a patch of Keely’s scalp. He brings the man upright so that he can stare into his eyes. “Johnny Burke was a man who gave a shit. That’s why he died.” He butts Keely with his forehead, crushing the older man’s nasal cartilage and breaking his nose. “You’re dirty,” he says. “I smelled your stink back in the ops room of the
Guam
before we went in, but I was too fucking naive to do anything about it. You set us up. You knew about the ambush. You sabotaged the radios.”

Keely pushes both hands to his nose, trying to stanch the flow of blood. “No way, Neumann. It wasn’t like that. It’s bigger than you think.”

“I don’t care how big it was,” says Nick, towering over Keely’s quivering body. “You set my men up and I want to know why.” He draws back his boot and freezes, suddenly sickened by his bloodlust. For nine months he has dreamed of this moment. He has imagined the crunch of his fist against Keely’s cheek. He has told himself that his actions will constitute only revenge and that Johnny Burke deserves at least this measure of satisfaction. But now looking at Keely’s prostrate form, ropes of blood hanging from his nose, he is no longer sure.

“Yeah, all right,” says Keely, throwing his hands to his face in an impotent gesture to ward off the blow that does not come. “I’ll give you the story.” He drags himself to a corner of the rest room and puts his back to the tiled wall. He blows a clot of blood from his nose and coughs. “The Enrile hit was sanctioned by the NSC, the National Security Council — we wanted to show the Philippine government we were behind them in their efforts at building a long-lasting democracy in the American tradition. I mean without all the Marcos cronyism and corruption. Understand?”

“So far.”

“But some members of the Philippine government didn’t think the plan was sufficient. It wasn’t enough to accomplish their goals.”

“Sufficient for what?” asks Nick.

“To bring back the U.S. in a bigger way to the Philippines. You know, like the old days. Capital investment, new business, a spigot of dough opened full bore. They needed an excuse to bring America charging back into the Philippines.”

“And that excuse was American blood?”

Keely sighs. “A plea from a fellow democracy. Our boys killed planting freedom’s flag. Christ, it works every time. If you heroes had just died like you were supposed to, we’d already have ten thousand servicemen back in Subic Bay where they belong. We’d have a squadron of F-16s sitting pretty at Clark Airfield and half the Fortune 500 bursting down the doors trying to get back in the P.I.”

“But that was
your gig
, wasn’t it? Setting us up. The NSC didn’t know shit about that. Right, Keely? That was between you and your pals in the P.I.?”

“It was a win-win proposition. Some of us over here made a little extra money, all the poor devils in the P.I. would make out a lot better, too.”

“Win-win?
Did I hear you spouting that bullshit, you miserable fuck? You set up nine United States marines to die so you could feather your own lousy nest. You got one good man killed and another permanently disabled. I am twenty-five years old, Keely. I’ll have this leg for the rest of my life.”

Keely’s moral complacency drains the pond of mercy that had begun to form inside of Nick. Qualms about physical retribution and the purposeful infliction of pain vanish. His world turns to black, and then very distinctly, he hears something inside him snap. He sees Burke’s smoldering torso splayed on the Philippine sand; he recalls the ragged crater carved from the back of his right leg, can feel himself gagging at the sight, not believing that is
his leg;
he hears the plush tones of the doctor’s voice telling him that he will never walk properly again and relives in a microsecond the painful months of rehabilitation to prove him wrong. He spins and lashes out with his strong leg, whipping the hardened toe of his boot with all his force into Keely’s exposed crotch. Keely expels his breath and keels over onto his side. His face is a deep crimson and as he vomits, his eyes look as if they will pop from his skull.

“Payback, Keely. That one was for Burke.”

Nick’s memories faded as quickly as they had come. Only a second had passed. Maybe less.

“I’m sorry, Thorne. I just can’t be of service to you. That’s all there is to it.”

“Neumann, don’t make it hard on yourself. Once I tell Kaiser about your discharge, he’s going to have to fire you. He can’t have a convict working as his assistant. The way I see it, you don’t have much of a career left in this business anyway. Might as well do some good while you’re still there.”

Nick brushed past the federal agent. “Nice try. Do what you gotta do. So will I.”

“I didn’t have you figured for a coward, Neumann,” Thorne shouted. “You let the Pasha get away once. His crimes are on your soul!”

The office was dark, except for a halo of light focused on a stack of papers in the center of his desk. The building was quiet. No footsteps scurried through the hallways. Only the hushed electronic breathing of the computer disturbed the pall of silence that surrounded him like a fertile cocoon.

Wolfgang Kaiser was alone.

The bank once again belonged to him.

Kaiser stood with his cheek pressed against the glass, staring out the arched window behind his desk. The object of his attention was a stout gray building fifty yards up the Bahnhofstrasse: the Adler Bank. No lights glowed from behind its shuttered windows. Squat and ominous it sat, eyes closed for the night. The predator, like its prey, was asleep.

Kaiser peeled his cheek from the cold window and circled his desk. For twelve months he had been aware that the Adler Bank was accumulating USB’s shares. A thousand here, five thousand there. Never enough to upset the average daily volume. Never enough to bid up the price. Just small blocks. Slow and steady. He had guessed Konig’s intentions, if not his means. In response, he had conceived a modest plan to permanently cement his own position as Chairman of the United Swiss Bank.

Twelve months earlier the bank had celebrated its one hundred twenty-fifth birthday. A celebratory dinner was given at the Hotel Baur au Lac. The collected members of the board of directors and their ladies were invited. Toasts were made, achievements recognized, and perhaps a tear was shed, but only by one of the pensioned board members. Kaiser’s active colleagues remained far too concerned with the evening’s final announcement to praise the labors of their predecessors. Their hearts were on money. Specifically, on how much of it they’d get their grubby hands on before the evening was over.

Kaiser recalled the greedy glow that lit those ratlike faces that evening. When he had announced that each member of the board was to receive an anniversary bonus of one hundred thousand francs, he was greeted by silence. His guests were incapacitated, man and woman alike. For several seconds, they sat as still as the dead, perched on the edge of their seats. The pressure from a lone mouse’s fart would have sent them sprawling onto the dining room floor. And then came the applause. A thunderous barrage of hand clapping. A standing ovation. Cries of “Long live USB!” and of “To the Chairman!”

How could he have doubted that the board was comfortably in his pocket?

Kaiser allowed himself a self-pitying laugh. Less than a year later, many of the executives so content to pocket a cool hundred grand had joined Klaus Konig’s snarling wolf pack, eager to denounce his own “antiquated” management strategies. The future lay with the Adler Bank, they argued, with aggressive trading in options and derivatives, with controlling stakes in unrelated companies, with leveraged wagers on the directions of foreign currencies.

The future, Kaiser summarized, lay with the inflated value of USB shares a takeover by the Adler Bank would bring.

The Wild, Wild West had arrived in Zurich. Gone were the days of negative interest rates, when foreigners anxious to deposit their funds in a Swiss bank would not only forgo interest but actually pay the bank account-management fees to accept their money. Switzerland was no longer the only safe haven for capital “in flight.” Competitors had raised their banners both near and far. Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, and Austria all offered stable, discreet institutions rivaling their Swiss neighbor’s. The Cayman Islands, the Bahamas, and the Netherlands Antilles each provided sophisticated banking services catering to the harried businessman in need of a secure hiding place for funds spirited from under the blind eyes of a trusting partner or the vengeful maw of a wronged spouse. Swiss banks weren’t the only game in town.

In this hostile environment, Wolfgang Kaiser had struggled to maintain USB’s position at the top of the private banking hierarchy. And succeeded. True, accounting measures of the bank’s profitability were down. Key indicators of the bank’s financial strength — its return on assets and return on equity — had suffered as internal investment was funneled toward those areas that would ensure continuing supremacy in private banking. Still, net profits would increase for the ninth consecutive year: a gain of seventeen percent over the past year was expected. At any other time such gains would be admirable. This year they were deemed a failure. How could you compare a rise of seventeen percent against the two hundred percent increase registered by the Adler Bank?

Kaiser slapped his hand against his thigh in frustration. His course for the United Swiss Bank was sound and correct. It respected the bank’s history and played aggressively to her strongest points. For its first hundred years the bank had prospered as one of a dozen medium-size local institutions that catered domestically to the commercial requirements of Zurich’s smaller concerns and internationally to the discreet demands of those foreign neighbors, who wanted to place their earnings in an atmosphere of maximum security and minimum scrutiny. When deciding where to deposit these newly gotten gains, more than a few educated heads turned toward the far-off safety of Switzerland and to the private banking division of the United Swiss Bank. Others followed.

Kaiser stood alone in the center of his dark office, savoring the past. He swore he would not allow Klaus Konig and his damned Adler Bank to take USB. Yet the situation was not encouraging. Even USB portfolio managers eager to lock in a decent return on their clients’ managed assets had taken to selling shares of USB stock. Meanwhile, the Adler Bank continued its purchase of shares on the open market, if at a calmer tempo. Was it too soon to hope that Konig’s inexhaustible supply of cash had dried up?

The Chairman returned to his desk, sat down, and looked at his neatly stacked papers. The lacquered ear of a photograph protruded from the bottom of the pile. He pulled it out and gazed at its lifeless subject. Stefan Wilhelm Kaiser. Sole fruit of an acrimonious and short-lived union. His mother lived in Geneva, remarried to another banker. Kaiser hadn’t spoken with her since the funeral.

“Stefan,” he whispered aloud to the ghosts hovering in his office. His only son had died at nineteen from an overdose of heroin.

For years, Kaiser had shielded himself from the pain of his death.
His son
was still ten years old.
His son
loved skating at the Dolder Ice Rink.
His son
clamored to swim at the local
hallenbad
. He did not know this man on the slab, this unkempt ruffian with the matted hair and acned skin. This drug addict who had exchanged a soccer jersey for a leather jacket, who preferred cigarettes to ice cream cones. This man he did not know.

Now Kaiser had a second chance. The son of a man he had known as well as a brother might replace Stefan. The thought of young Neumann on the Fourth Floor comforted him. The boy’s resemblance to his father was uncanny. Glimpsing him each day was like glimpsing the past. He saw every opportunity he’d taken and every one he’d missed. Sometimes when he looked at Nicholas he felt like grabbing him and asking him whether all his work had accomplished anything. And he could see in Neumann’s eyes that the answer would be yes. A resounding yes. Other times he felt as if he were staring at his own conscience, and he prayed for it never to betray him.

Kaiser turned off the light. He leaned back in his chair and wondered where it all was going to end. He didn’t care for the image of his tired body lying on the slag heap of deposed corporate chieftains. He’d give his last franc to remain Chairman of the United Swiss Bank until his death.