by Martin Suter
On the final day of the deadline Carlos travelled continually between the apartment and the Internet cafés, logging into the Allmen International bank account on an almost hourly basis.
When the deadline came, the money still hadn’t appeared.
“Now what?” Allmen asked.
Without hesitating for a second, Carlos copied another large section from the beginning and end of the file onto the website.
Carlos returned from the next monitoring trip with a message from Brookfield Klein. “Stop. Transfer in progress.”
Neither Allmen nor Carlos slept much that night. But they were still wide awake when they checked the Allmen International account next day. It showed a balance of 2,503,114.35 Swiss francs.
Allmen sounded almost offended: “I didn’t realize we still had over three thousand in the account.”
59
In the excitement Allmen transferred a hundred thousand Swiss francs to Don Gregorio. Twenty as capital for his venture, plus ten thousand for everyone in the apartment so they could get some practice at having money.
“They’ll send the money home, Don John,” Carlos warned him.
Allmen reflected, then said, “Even that will give them a sense of what it’s like to have money.”
They all gathered in the windows to watch the departure of Don John and Carlos in Herr Arnold’s 1978 Cadillac Fleetwood. They watched as the window on Allmen’s side was lowered and a slender hand with white cuffs waved to them. Then the three men vanished into their other world.
Epilogue
Once Carlos’s share had been deducted, all outstanding debts settled, and the overdrafts on both his personal bank accounts paid off, Allmen was left with a credit of just over nine hundred thousand francs.
He put part of it into his ongoing expenditure—expanding his wardrobe, acquiring certain items for his art deco collection, sorely depleted over the past two years—and on two weeks of Indian summer in the Terrace Suite at the Wheatleigh Hotel in Lenox, Massachusetts. Very finely refurbished indeed.
But perhaps due to his recent exposure to genuine poverty he put the lion’s share into a portfolio of stocks compiled with the help of his old friend, the banker Roland Kerbel. It still came to over half a million.
His butler and business partner Carlos continued to work as a part-time janitor and gardener for K, C, L & D, although given his financial situation he was no longer dependent on this pocket change. But it was a welcome contribution to the salary of Maria Moreno, who was now assured a permanent position. Allmen loved staff, and Carlos loved Maria Moreno.
Carlos had placed part of his capital in a savings account, but the majority hung, wrapped in watertight, fireproof packaging, halfway up the chimney of the gardener’s cottage.
And so it withstood the sudden crash that came shortly before Christmas, in which Allmen’s portfolio, poorly chosen by Roland Kerbel, lost over half its value.
There was much speculation in the media as to what had triggered the crash. The culprit was believed to be an unidentified high-frequency trading program.
My brother, Dr. Daniel Suter-Châtelanat, enlightened me on the subject of high-frequency trading. The programmer and IT expert Ivan Melnychuk gave me tips on how it’s possible to lose a lot of money in a short span of time on the stock market. My editor, Ursula Baumhauer, and my wife, Margrith Nay Suter, supported me as ever with very constructive criticism, and my little daughter, Ana, accidently deleted a passage on the screen, which in hindsight proved to be superfluous. My heartfelt thanks to all of you.
—Martin Suter
ALLMEN AND THE DRAGONFLIES
BY MARTIN SUTER
This is the first of a series of humorous detective novels devoted to a memorable gentleman thief who, with his Guatemalan butler Carlos, creates an investigative firm to recover missing precious objects. Johann Friedrich von Allmen, a bon vivant of dandified refinement, has exhausted his family fortune by living in Old World grandeur despite present-day financial constraints. Forced to downscale, Allmen inhabits the garden house of his former Zurich estate. Pressured to pay off mounting debts, he absconds with priceless Art Nouveau bowls decorated with a dragonfly motif and embarks on a high-risk, potentially violent bid to cash them in.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/allmen-and-the-dragonflies/
THE ANIMAL GAZER
BY EDGARDO FRANZOSINI
A hypnotic novel inspired by the strange and fascinating life of sculptor Rembrandt Bugatti, brother of the fabled automaker. With World War I closing in and the Belle Epoque teetering to a close, Bugatti is increasingly obsessed with zoo animals. He closely observes the caged baboons, giraffes and panthers, finding empathy with their plight. Edgardo Franzosini recreates the young artist’s life with intense lyricism, passion, and sensitivity.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-animal-gazer/
THE MADELEINE PROJECT
BY CLARA BEAUDOUX
A young woman moves into a Paris apartment and discovers a storage room filled with the belongings of the previous owner, a certain Madeleine who died in her late nineties, and whose treasured possessions nobody seems to want. In an audacious act of journalism driven by personal curiosity and humane tenderness, Clara Beaudoux embarks on The Madeleine Project, documenting what she finds on Twitter with text and photographs, introducing the world to an unsung 20th century figure.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-madeleine-project/
ADUA
BY IGIABA SCEGO
Adua, an immigrant from Somalia to Italy, has lived in Rome for nearly forty years. She came seeking freedom from a strict father and an oppressive regime, but her dreams of film stardom ended in shame. Now that the civil war in Somalia is over, her homeland calls her. She must decide whether to return and reclaim her inheritance, but also how to take charge of her own story and build a future.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/adua/
IF VENICE DIES
BY SALVATORE SETTIS
Internationally renowned art historian Salvatore Settis ignites a new debate about the Pearl of the Adriatic and cultural patrimony at large. In this fiery blend of history and cultural analysis, Settis argues that “hit-and-run” visitors are turning Venice and other landmark urban settings into shopping malls and theme parks. This is a passionate plea to secure the soul of Venice, written with consummate authority, wide-ranging erudition and élan.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/if-venice-dies/
A VERY RUSSIAN CHRISTMAS
This is Russian Christmas celebrated in supreme pleasure and pain by the greatest of writers, from Dostoevsky and Tolstoy to Chekhov and Teffi. The dozen stories in this collection will satisfy every reader, and with their wit, humor, and tenderness, packed full of sentimental songs, footmen, whirling winds, solitary nights, snow drifts, and hopeful children, the collection proves that Nobody Does Christmas Like the Russians.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/a-very-french-christmas/
OBLIVION
BY SERGEI LEBEDEV
In one of the first 21st century Russian novels to probe the legacy of the Soviet prison camp system, a young man travels to the vast wastelands of the Far North to uncover the truth about a shadowy neighbor who saved his life, and whom he knows only as Grandfather II. Emerging from today’s Russia, where the ills of the past are being forcefully erased from public memory, this masterful novel represents an epic literary attempt to rescue history from the brink of oblivion.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/oblivion/
THE YEAR OF THE COMET
BY SERGEI LEBEDEV
A story of a Russian boyhood and coming of age as the Soviet Union is on the brink of collapse. Lebedev depicts a vast empire coming apart at the seams, transforming a very public moment into something tender and personal, and writes with stunning beauty and shattering insight about childhood and the growing consciousness of a boy in the world.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/year-of-the-comet/
&n
bsp; MOVING THE PALACE
BY CHARIF MAJDALANI
A young Lebanese adventurer explores the wilds of Africa, encountering an eccentric English colonel in Sudan and enlisting in his service. In this lush chronicle of far-flung adventure, the military recruit crosses paths with a compatriot who has dismantled a sumptuous palace and is transporting it across the continent on a camel caravan. This is a captivating modern-day Odyssey in the tradition of Bruce Chatwin and Paul Theroux.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/moving-the-palace/
THE 6:41 TO PARIS
BY JEAN-PHILIPPE BLONDEL
Cécile, a stylish 47-year-old, has spent the weekend visiting her parents outside Paris. By Monday morning, she’s exhausted. These trips back home are stressful and she settles into a train compartment with an empty seat beside her. But it’s soon occupied by a man she recognizes as Philippe Leduc, with whom she had a passionate affair that ended in her brutal humiliation 30 years ago. In the fraught hour and a half that ensues, Cécile and Philippe hurtle towards the French capital in a psychological thriller about the pain and promise of past romance.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-641-to-paris/
ON THE RUN WITH MARY
BY JONATHAN BARROW
Shining moments of tender beauty punctuate this story of a youth on the run after escaping from an elite English boarding school. At London’s Euston Station, the narrator meets a talking dachshund named Mary and together they’re off on escapades through posh Mayfair streets and jaunts in a Rolls-Royce. But the youth soon realizes that the seemingly sweet dog is a handful; an alcoholic, nymphomaniac, drug-addicted mess who can’t stay out of pubs or off the dance floor. On the Run with Mary mirrors the horrors and the joys of the terrible 20th century.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/on-the-run-with-mary/
THE MADONNA OF NOTRE DAME
BY ALEXIS RAGOUGNEAU
Fifty thousand people jam into Notre Dame Cathedral to celebrate the Feast of the Assumption. The next morning, a beautiful young woman clothed in white kneels at prayer in a cathedral side chapel. But when someone accidentally bumps against her, her body collapses. She has been murdered. This thrilling novel illuminates shadowy corners of the world’s most famous cathedral, shedding light on good and evil with suspense, compassion and wry humor.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/madonna-notre-dame/
THE LAST WEYNFELDT
BY MARTIN SUTER
Adrian Weynfeldt is an art expert in an international auction house, a bachelor in his mid-fifties living in a grand Zurich apartment filled with costly paintings and antiques. Always correct and well-mannered, he’s given up on love until one night—entirely out of character for him—Weynfeldt decides to take home a ravishing but unaccountable young woman and gets embroiled in an art forgery scheme that threatens his buttoned up existence. This refined page-turner moves behind elegant bourgeois facades into darker recesses of the heart.
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-last-weynfeldt/
THE LAST SUPPER
BY KLAUS WIVEL
Alarmed by the oppression of 7.5 million Christians in the Middle East, journalist Klaus Wivel traveled to Iraq, Lebanon, Egypt, and the Palestinian territories to learn about their fate. He found a minority under threat of death and humiliation, desperate in the face of rising Islamic extremism and without hope their situation will improve. An unsettling account of a severely beleaguered religious group living, so it seems, on borrowed time. Wivel asks, Why have we not done more to protect these people?
http://newvesselpress.com/books/the-last-supper/
To purchase these books and for a full listing of New Vessel Press titles, visit our website at www.newvesselpress.com