Numbered Account (48 page)

An hour or two or three later, Kaiser enjoys the attentions of a slim young woman. A waif, he would call her. Long black hair frames a sensuous face. Frail dark eyes flash from under thick lashes. Another drink and the strap of a sequined cocktail dress dangles off a soft but well-muscled shoulder. Her English is impeccable. She asks in a throaty voice for him to move closer. He cannot draw himself away from her probing fingers and her sweet breath. She insists on saying the nastiest things.

Mevlevi is smoking another of his filthy Turkish cigarettes. Black tobacco bombs expelling rivers of blue smoke. His glass is full. Isn’t it always?

The raven-haired waif has insisted that Kaiser accompany her to her apartment. Who is he to deny? After all, it is only three blocks from the club, and the grand Mevlevi has given his benediction, a fraternal pat on the back and a sly wink that all would be taken care of at Little Maxim’s. The girl asks for a drink and points to the bar. Kaiser splashes liberal helpings of Scotch into two glasses. He knows he has drunk too much but is not sure if he cares. Perhaps recklessness becomes him. She puts the glass to his lips and he takes a sip. She swallows the rest in one fearsome gulp. She staggers and searches the folds of her handbag. Something is awry. An unpleasant cast crosses her features. Suddenly, she is smiling. The problem is resolved. An immaculate pile of white powder sits on the underside of a perfectly manicured fingernail. She sniffs and then offers the like to her evening’s companion. He shakes his head, but she insists. He bends forward and sniffs. “The white pony,” she giggles and offers him another pile.

The banker from Zurich is growing disoriented. He has never felt such a roar of blood through his veins. The pressure builds in his head, only to be replaced a moment later by relief. His chest tingles. Warmth suffuses his entire body. He wants only to sleep, but a greedy hand rouses him, its kneading grip drawing the heat from his chest to his loins. Through glazed eyes, he sees the lovely woman from Little Maxim’s undoing his pants and taking him into her mouth. He has never been harder. His vision blurs and he realizes he has forgotten her name. He opens his eyes to ask. She is before him, her dress peeled down to her waist. Her chest is flat, her nipples too small and pale and surrounded by tufts of black hair. Kaiser sits up, yells for this woman . . . for
this man
to stop, but another pair of hands holds him back. He struggles drunkenly, vainly. He neither sees nor feels the needle that enters the prominent blue vein running across the top of his shrunken left hand.

“If you’ll sign at the bottom of the paper, we can put this messy situation behind us.”

Ali Mevlevi hands Wolfgang Kaiser a receipt issued by the Beirut representative office of the United Swiss Bank for the sum of twenty million U.S. dollars. Where he has procured the official paper is a mystery. As is so much else.

Kaiser meticulously refolds his handkerchief and places it in his pocket before reaching forward to accept the document. He places the receipt on top of a stack of color photographs, eight by tens. Photographs of which he, Wolfgang Andreas Kaiser, is a prominent subject, one might even say the star. He and a horribly mutilated transvestite he has learned carried the name Rio.

Kaiser signs his name to the document, knowing with each loop of the pen that this “messy situation” will never be behind him. Mevlevi watches with detached interest. He points to three worn duffel bags stuffed to bursting slumped in the entryway. “Either you discover a way to deposit the money within three days or I will report it stolen. Your country looks rather harshly upon bank fraud, does it not? Lebanon is no different. But I fear her jails are not so comfortable as your own.”

Kaiser straightens his back. His eyes are puffy and his nose stuffed. He tears off the top copy of the receipt, places it in an empty plastic tray, then gives the yellow copy to Mevlevi. The Swiss banker’s refuge is order; procedure, his sanctuary. The pink copy, he says, will stay in this office. The white copy will go to Switzerland. “With the money,” he adds, managing a smile.

“You are a remarkable man,” says Mevlevi. “I see I have chosen the proper partner.”

Kaiser nods perfunctorily. Now they are partners. What torture will this relationship hold in store for him?

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.

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.

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.