Numbered Account (62 page)

Sylvia flinched. He had scared her. “Yes,” she said softly. “It’s very clear.”

Kaiser stroked her cheek. He had overreacted. “I apologize, darling, for raising my voice. You can’t imagine the strain we’re under. We can’t allow any harm to come to the bank in these next days, not the slightest innuendo of misdoing. My concerns are for the bank, not myself.”

Sylvia nodded her head in understanding.

Kaiser saw that her heart was divided. She needed a reminder of what the bank could do for her. “About the promotion. To first vice president?”

Sylvia raised her eyes to him. “Yes?”

“I don’t see why we’ll have to wait much longer. We can finalize things right after the general assembly. It’ll give you some more clout with the big boys in New York City.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.” He lifted her chin with an outstretched finger. “But only if you’ll forgive me.”

Sylvia considered the request for a moment. Then she laid her head on his chest and sighed loudly. Her hand delved under the covers and soon it was massaging him. “You’re forgiven,” she whispered.

Kaiser closed his eyes, abandoning himself to her touch. If only Nicholas Neumann were so easily bought.

General Dimitri Marchenko arrived at the gates to Ali Mevlevi’s compound at ten o’clock Sunday morning. The sky was a magnificent royal blue. Hints of cedar danced in the air. Spring was practically here. He stood in his jeep and signaled the line of trucks behind him to halt. A uniformed sentry fired off a crisp salute and opened the gate. Another sentry jumped onto the running board of his command jeep, pointing the way forward with an outstretched arm.

The convoy thundered into the compound, climbing a gentle incline that paralleled a playing field. The trucks crossed an asphalt parade ground and stopped in front of two large doors cut into the face of a hundred-foot cliff. Marchenko stared at the two enormous hangars, impressed by the feat of engineering. Inside the hangar to his right sat two helicopters: a Sukhoi Attack Model II and a Hind Assault. He had sold them to Mevlevi three months ago. The sentry directed the jeep toward the helicopters, then dropped his arm, indicating they should stop.

Colonel Hammid jogged to Marchenko’s jeep. He pointed into the hangar. “Order the truck carrying the “communications gear’ to go there. Then you must advise us which chopper is better suited to carrying such sensitive “eavesdropping equipment.”’

Marchenko grunted. Evidently, Hammid knew the true nature of the cargo being transported. It figured. No one could keep a secret in this part of the world. “The Sukhoi. It is faster and more maneuverable. The pilot will need to climb sharply after deploying the weapon.”

The Syrian commander offered his oiliest smile. “You do not know Al-Mevlevi’s troops. The pilot will not return. He will set the bird down and then detonate the weapon. This way there will be no failure.”

Marchenko simply nodded and climbed out of the jeep. He had never understood the roots of fanaticism. He walked to the driver of the truck that carried the Kopinskaya IV and said a few words to him in Kazakh. The driver nodded brusquely and when Marchenko stepped back, drove the truck into the hangar, stopping it near the sleek Sukhoi helicopter. Marchenko marched to the next truck in line and ordered his soldiers into the hangar. Twenty men poured from its bay and marched at double time toward the helicopter.

Marchenko wanted to attach the Kopinskaya IV to the helicopter as soon as possible. If there was any problem with the device, he wanted to know now, while time remained to remedy it. There was little risk of a renegade stealing the chopper with the bomb attached. Hammid clearly had orders to protect the weapon at all costs. Marchenko had given his soldiers the same instructions. To be safe he would order the hangar doors closed until five minutes prior to the helicopter’s departure.

Marchenko supervised the unloading of the Kopinskaya IV device. After the crates filled with outdated radio equipment had been removed, he climbed into the bay and deactivated the explosive
anti-tampering device. He took a set of keys out of his pocket and, selecting one, inserted it into a lock drilled into the chassis of the truck. He turned the key sharply to the right, withdrew it, then pulled open the container’s door. A wooden crate no different from the others littering the hangar floor sat inside it. He yelled for his men to take it out and set it down near the chopper.

Marchenko found a crowbar in the back of the truck and opened the crate. He peered inside. A stainless steel canister three feet high and two feet in diameter rested in a bed of foam rubber. He slipped a hand under one end and eased it from its housing. The canister weighed just thirty pounds. He grunted as he lifted it from the crate and set it down on the smooth hangar floor.

The bomb itself was not much to look at. Marchenko thought it resembled a large tear gas canister with one end domed and the other flat. Height: twenty-eight inches. Diameter: nine inches. Weight: eleven pounds. Its casing was made from unpolished high-tensile steel. It was an altogether unimpressive-looking object.

But it could kill.

The Kopinskaya IV carried four hundred grams of enriched plutonium 238 that when detonated had the explosive force of two thousand tons of high-grade TNT. A measly throw weight in terms of the big birds, but devastating nonetheless to any object, either living or inert, within a one-mile radius of ground zero. Anything within five hundred yards would be instantly vaporized. Inside of a thousand yards the bomb achieved a ninety-five-percent kill rate at detonation. The other five percent would die within two hours from a lethal dose of gamma radiation. The kill rate tapered off dramatically at a mile out. At three thousand yards, only twenty percent would be killed by the detonation, and those mostly by the debris blown outward from the epicenter: shards of glass, splinters of wood, chunks of concrete all propelled through the air at speeds over a thousand miles an hour. A city provided its own shrapnel.

Three latches held the canister closed. He opened them one at a time, then carefully removed the lid. He gave it to a soldier, then returned his attention to the bomb. The plutonium core was housed in a titanium casing. A chain reaction necessary to detonate the fissionable material could be initiated only when the firing rod had been inserted into the plutonium core, and the firing rod could be inserted only after the proper code had been entered in the bomb’s central processing unit. Marchenko would not enter the proper code until he had received acknowledgment that Mr. Ali Mevlevi had transferred eight hundred million Swiss francs to his account at the First Kazakhi Bank in Alma-Ata.

Until then the bomb was worthless scrap.

He took the bomb in his hand and turned it upside down. The soldier assisting him removed six screws at the base of the weapon. Marchenko put the screws in his pocket, then lifted off the inferior lid. He was pleased to see a small dot at the bottom right-hand corner of a red liquid crystal display winking at him. Below the LCD was a keypad with nine digits. He entered in the number 1111 and waited as the unit performed its self-diagnostics. Five seconds later, a green light lit up in the center of the keypad. The bomb was functioning perfectly. All he needed to do now was program the detonation altitude and key in the seven-digit code that would activate the device.

Marchenko replaced the inferior lid, carefully screwing in each of the six titanium screws. He closed the device and set it down in its foam-rubber casing. He stopped his work and listened. It was quiet here. Almost serene. He looked over his shoulder, suddenly expecting to hear the shrill whistle of a squadron of Israeli F-16s swooping in to obliterate the compound. His soldiers stood casually around him, their weapons hanging loosely on their chests. Colonel Hammid loitered a few paces away, his gaze held by the dull metallic weapon sitting on the hangar floor. He laughed at his paranoia, then turned his thoughts down more promising avenues.

Marchenko imagined his portrait hanging in every government office in Kazakhstan. He reminded himself that in less than twenty-four hour she would have brought his country a princely sum in hard currency. And himself a small one percent commission — eight million Swiss francs. Maybe this is what the Americans meant when they said “rags to riches.”

The phone rang a second time.

Nick shot up in bed. It was dark and the room was cold. Still too early for the central heating to be turned on. He looked at his watch, squinting a second as the hands came into focus. Barely six. His hand fumbled for the receiver, finding first the bedside lamp, then a glass of water, before falling on the phone. “Hello.”

“Hi, you. It’s me.”

“Hey you,” he responded groggily. “Whatcha doin’?” It was their greeting and he was surprised to discover it still a reflex after three months. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and scratched at his hair.

“Just wanted to call,” said Anna Fontaine. “See how you were doing. It’s been a while.”

He was awake now, her voice reverberating inside of him, coming at him from a dozen directions. “Um, let me check,” he said. “I don’t know yet really. It’s only six o’clock over here.”

“I know. I’ve been trying to reach you for a week. I figured if ever you’d be home, it would be now.”

“You didn’t try the office? Remember where I work, don’t you?”

“Of course I remember. I also remember a very serious former marine who would not appreciate social calls interrupting his work.”

Nick could imagine her sitting cross-legged on her bed, the phone in her lap. It was a Sunday, so she’d be wearing ratty blue jeans, a black T-shirt, and a white button-down untucked. Maybe even one of his. “Come on,” he protested, “I wasn’t that serious. You can call me anytime at work. Deal?”

“Deal,” she answered. “And how is it? Work, I mean?”

“Fine. Busy. You know, the usual trainee stuff.” He stifled a sarcastic laugh. Jeez, Anna, if you only knew the shit I was up to . . .

“What about your dad?” she asked, cutting off his self-mocking commentary. “Is that panning out?”

“Could be,” he said, not wanting to get into it with her. “I might know something real soon. We’ll see. And how are you? How are things at school?”

“Just fine,” she said. “Midterms in two weeks. Then the final push to the end. I can’t wait.”

“Well, you’ll have a couple months off before you start in New York. You are still taking the job down there?”

“Yes, Nick, I am still taking the job. Some of us still think it’s a decent place to work.”

He heard hesitation in her voice, like she wanted to get around to something but she didn’t know exactly how. Might as well help her along. After all, there could be only one reason she was calling. “You’re not working too hard, are you? I don’t want you pulling all-nighters.”

“No, and by the way, you were the one to pull all-nighters. I was the organized one who studied ahead of time.”

“Are you getting out any?” There it was, a fastball right down the middle.

Anna paused. He heard a batch of white noise fill the line. “Actually, that’s why I’m calling. I’ve met someone.”

Nick was suddenly alert. “You have. That’s good. I mean, if you like him.”

“Yes, Nick, I like him.”

Nick didn’t hear her answer. He sat still, looking around his room. In that instant, he had become acutely aware of his surroundings. He could hear the bedside clock ticking and the radiator groaning as it sprang to life. He could make out the rustling of the pipes in the ceiling above him as another early riser ran a bath. He suddenly noticed that his boxers were chafing at the waist and he decided that he really did have to lose some weight. Yes, the world was still there. But somehow his position on it had been altered.

“How serious?” he asked suddenly, interrupting her.

“He’s asked me to go to Greece with him this summer. He’s working for an insurance company in Athens while he gets his master’s degree in international relations. Actually, you may know him. His name is Paul MacMillan. Lucy’s older brother.”

“Yeah, Lucy. Sure. Wow.” It was a robot talking. Not him. He remembered no such person and she knew it. For some reason, she’d decided a degree of social proximity was necessary, as if a partial acquaintance might be more palatable than a total stranger. Her way of not wanting to break it to him too hard. Why was she calling anyway? Did she want his approbation? Did she expect a ringing endorsement of Mr. Paul MacMillan, some schmuck who thought he could provide for a girl like Anna by working in Greece?

Nick tried to find more grist for his enmity, but his fuel had run dry. He was aground on his single bed, sitting in the darkness in his one-room apartment. The time was 6:02. He was marooned in Zurich.

“Anna,” he started. “Don’t . . .”

“Don’t what?” she asked, too quickly, and for a second he wasn’t sure if he’d heard hope in her voice. Or maybe it was just annoyance.

Nick didn’t know what he wanted to say. He was aghast to find that she had retained such a large claim to his heart. It was none of his business whether she went to Greece with Paul MacMillan or Paul McCartney, and it was a little late to think he still had a claim on her.

“Don’t forget to study hard for your test,” he said. “Gotta keep that four-point average. You still have to get into a decent business school.”

“Oh, Nick . . .” Anna didn’t continue. It was her turn to leave him hanging.

“I’m glad you met someone,” he said, without feeling.
I gave you up and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. You can’t come back now. You can’t reappear at the precise moment when I need to be my strongest
. But in his heart, he was mad only at himself. He knew that she had never really left.

“Are you there?” she asked, and he realized he hadn’t spoken for a few seconds.

“Just don’t do anything stupid, Anna. I have to go now.” He hung up the phone.

Nick spotted Peter Sprecher walking toward Sprungli from the kiosk in the Paradeplatz. He was carrying a newspaper in one hand and his briefcase in the other. He wore a dark suit under a navy overcoat and had a white scarf wrapped around his neck. “Don’t look so surprised,” he
said, by way of greeting. “It’s not a holiday, is it? I mean, we are going to work.”