The Alex Kovacs Series Box Set

by Richard Wake

  I leaned over and told her, "Five thousand."

  She shook her head. "Rich, wasteful fool."

  "That's Herr Rich Wasteful Fool to you and me," I said.

  She half-smiled.

  12

  After shuffling some paperwork for a while, the lunch with Cronstadt went as expected, and the two glasses of wine -- "Come, come, Herr Cronstadt, we must have a second glass to toast our agreement!" -- reestablished my equilibrium. I was actually feeling pretty good when I returned to the bank and was told by Marta that I had a last-minute appointment, a 4 p.m. at the office of Peter Ruchti, the police detective.

  "Can you call him back and tell him I'm busy?"

  "It wasn't a request," Marta said.

  So. Coming so soon after Martin Stern's visit to my office, my nerves were naturally vibrating a bit. A shot of schnapps from the crystal decanter on my sideboard dulled them a bit. Then I sipped a second shot to maintain that level of anesthesia as I tried to figure out what Ruchti might know.

  I kept coming back to the idea that he knew nothing. Michael Landers, he of the bullet in the eye, had been in my company precisely three times. Once was in Fritz Blum's home, when we were arranging the withdrawal credentials. His house was miles away from the center of the city, and no coincidence in the world would have had a witness place me there. For one thing, the meeting was at night.

  A second time was an accidental meeting in a random bar, where we looked at each other and decided, what the hell, it's only one drink. There were only three people in the place, and we were two of them, so what were the odds anyone saw us? And it was over a mile away from the murder, so why would a cop go looking there to connect the two of us?

  The third time was the most dangerous, the time I walked him into the bank on a Saturday afternoon to make a withdrawal. But thinking back on it, the day had been rainy, and we both were wearing hats and overcoats with our collars turned up -- and Lander was carrying an umbrella. Even if someone had occasioned to look out the window and see us, and even if they recognized me, there was no way they could have gotten a good look at Landers' face. No way.

  The only other potential problem would have been if Ruchti had gotten a look at my diary. But he hadn't, and without being asked, Marta had covered over Landers' name with a relatively-believable accidental ink spill that blotted out several of the entries from that day. She even blotted out another afternoon, three months previous, to make the spill seem less unusual.

  So what did Ruchti know?

  His office was right along the Limmat River, in the police station at Bahnofquai 3. It was a building already famous for being the best-decorated police station in the world because of the murals that the artist Augusto Giacometti had painted in the lobby. I had never seen them, so at least I would experience a little culture before dealing with Ruchti's inquisitiveness.

  As I waited for him to come down, I spent a few minutes with the murals. The locals call the place Blüemlihalle because of all of the flowers in the murals, but they weren't actually flowers but floral shapes, eight petals in a circle around a center. There were flowers and crosses and a lot of orange and a lot of green, from floor to ceiling, forming roofs and arches and all kind of bordering around the main murals.

  One featured a boy performing all manner of mathematical and geometry tasks, all angles and equations. In another, the theme was astronomy, with someone looking through a telescope at stars and a crescent moon. A third panel showed five stone masons building a wall, laying bricks, and troweling cement. One figure was of a man chipping away at a rock. And in the fourth mural, there were two carpenters. One of them was wielding a big saw. The first two murals were dated 1926. The last two, of the masons and the carpenters, were dated 1925.

  Ruchti caught me in front of the carpenters. "Ah, Herr Kovacs. There you are, admiring a depiction of honest labor. Why would a banker be attracted to such a scene?"

  This was the second crack about bankers that Ruchti had made. Yes, I was counting. I tried to keep things light as if that would matter.

  "I'm surprised there is no mural of bankers," I said. "If this artwork is indeed a Swiss national treasure."

  "Yes, how could a national treasure not contain a depiction of those in charge of the national treasure?"

  "Perhaps because of the statutes prohibiting profanity?" I said.

  Ruchti laughed. "Herr Kovacs, you are not like the typical Swiss banker. I find that intriguing. Perhaps you can tell me about your bank."

  "Not much to tell. Small, wealthy clientele. Ties to Czechoslovakia. Some old Czech clients -- I think I can reveal that much without running afoul of the secrecy laws. But that is about it. You know as well as I do that I cannot say anything more. But there are several dozen banks in this city just like it."

  He pointed past the reception desk and toward the front doors. We began to walk along the river. If he had planned to arrest me, I figured he would have done it while we were inside. So, what? Ruchti said nothing as we strolled. I had matched his silence before, back in my office, and I could do it out there, too. Absent somebody who had seen Landers and me together, the only way I could get into trouble was if I dragged myself into it with an unthinking remark. So, silence, for one block, then a second.

  Finally: "I always enjoyed this view," Ruchti said, pointing ahead, the Grossmunster on the other side of the Limmat, the lake ahead. "I like it better than some of the views from the Uetliberg. What do you think? Have you been up there?"

  The Uetliberg. It was, on the one hand, a celebrated Zurich vantage point. It was, on the other hand, a hell of a coincidence for him to bring it up about two weeks after I had met Groucho there. Unless it wasn't a coincidence.

  "Funny you should mention it -- I was up there recently," I said, riffing with a bit of the truth. "It was a cloudy day, though. I didn't get the full experience."

  "But I'm sure you were enlightened nonetheless," Ruchti said. Then, again, silence.

  Uetliberg. "Enlightened." If Ruchti wasn't delivering a message, then I wasn't nearly pissing myself, which I was. But it didn't make sense. He was a cop investigating a murder. It was hard to believe that he had access to the kind of manpower it would take to follow me around all day for weeks at a time. And for what reason? I really hadn't given him one. The business card in Landers' pocket wasn't enough to make that kind of commitment. I had explained it away, and it really was true -- I did give out about 50 of my cards every month. It wouldn't have been hard for Ruchti to find that out. All he had to do was ask another banker because we all did the same thing.

  Maybe it was just my imagination.

  We got to the lake, and then Ruchti turned us around and walked us back, retracing our steps along the riverbank. He said something about the weather. I said something back. We got to the police station, and he shook my hand. He said, "Okay, we'll be in touch." It was the same thing he had said in my office.

  I watched Ruchti as he climbed the steps and re-entered the building. If his purpose had been to do anything other than mess with my head, I don't know what it was.

  13

  Manon and I settled into a relationship that I would describe as comfortably passionate. The passionate part was obvious enough -- we were spending about three nights together per week, right from the start. I was 40, and she was 30ish -- still not sure, exactly -- and there seemed little reason for pretense or the dating dance. She had a job, and I had a job, hers busier than mine but both requiring occasional overnight travel, and the thought of flowers and chocolates and such seemed silly. There was an attraction, and it was real, and I know that at least a couple of times a day, I found myself zoning out of a conversation or forgetting everything I had read on the previous page because I was thinking of Manon. I sensed that the feeling was mutual, and that was enough.

  Some nights, she would just show up at Cafe Fessler when I was sitting at my stammtisch, going over a pile of bank paperwork after dinner. It was easy, natural. I would finish my work while s
he had a drink, chatting with whichever Fessler happened to be handy. Sometimes she brought a novel and sat with me and read while I plowed through the pile -- initial here, sign there, daydream for a second and feel the stirring below the table.

  The Fesslers left us alone, for the most part, other than to say a quick hello. They would have this look on their face that unnerved me, just a bit. It was a shade on the beatific side, not a typical look between friends, and I even asked Henry about it at one point.

  "Look, we're just happy for you," he said. I knew that was it, but I hated what it left unsaid. That is, that my life before had been such an abject pile of shit that Manon was somehow rescuing me from misery.

  But here's the thing: I wasn't miserable. I enjoyed my own company, for the most part. I had been on a dry spell, and that was true enough. And I was finding it hard to meet new people, also true. But I was content. I was not miserable. I had dated more in Vienna and had a few somewhat serious girlfriends along the way, but Henry and his father had many times seen me very happily alone for significant stretches of time. I was not some kind of social basket case. Henry was always the one who seemed to need a girlfriend, and who fell the hardest when the relationship ended -- usually right after they found out what daddy did for a living. But I was never like that. My life was not an abject pile of shit.

  This night, it was Liesl who made the quick visit. She looked at me and offered up the smile. Manon looked at Liesl and giggled as she walked away.

  "What was that about?" I said.

  "Nothing."

  "Come on."

  "She's just happy to know that I'm getting it on a regular basis."

  "No way. Women don't think like that."

  She stopped, shook her head. "For future reference, what's German for 'men are complete idiots'?"

  I had been thinking about Johanna, the girlfriend I had in Vienna at the time of the Anschluss. She was the daughter of a baron and baroness whose star (and bank account) were fading, and likely to fade even quicker under the Germans. But she wouldn't leave when I left, for a lot of reasons -- and mostly because I didn't even ask her to leave in the end. We wanted different things, and she could never let go of the notion that she was tied to her family, and her family was tied to Austria, and that was that. But part of it was that I had kept the spying part of my life from her, and when I finally told her, she laughed in my face, laughed as if it were impossible to see the traveling magnesite salesman acting for any kind of noble, higher cause.

  That her opinion stung went without saying. Her disdain then, the beatific smiles now -- how exactly did people see me? My Uncle Otto had taught me many things, but one of them -- "Cards to the vest, son, cards to the vest in life and in love" -- had stuck with me, maybe too much. I always figured, if you didn't let people in, they would just see what you showed them. But more and more, it was dawning on me that a blank canvas was just an invitation for other people to fill it in however they wanted.

  I didn't want that with Manon. I didn't know where we were headed, but I didn't want that. So I wanted to tell her something about the spying part of my life, but I didn't want to endanger her or scare her. Because there was little doubt I was going to get in deeper. As soon as I heard about the Nazi gold, I knew. I couldn't just walk away from that kind of knowledge. I didn't know what to do with it, and I didn't even know if it was entirely true, but it was the kind of thing that could affect Germany's ability to fight in a very big way, and I had to pursue it. I just felt it inside, that I needed to get involved, regardless of the risk. And fuck Johanna.

  But what to tell Manon? I couldn't tell her what happened in Vienna. And while I might be able to tell her soon about being the banker for the Czech spy network in Switzerland -- the Fesslers all knew, so what was one more? -- but it still seemed awfully soon for that. I settled on telling her the gold story but without the details of who told me or how or when. I said it was a guy from another bank who got drunk and told me he heard it third-hand. And that there was no proof.

  Manon was simultaneously fascinated and enraged.

  "The goddamn Swiss," is how she began, followed by a recitation of every lousy thing she could say about the country and its people, ending up with, of all things, "and that includes the fucking fondue."

  "But I don't know what to do now?"

  "You need to embarrass them," she said.

  "But how?"

  "You need to get the story published. Nobody here would ever do it, but you have that friend in Paris, right?" she said. I had thought about Leon. This is the kind of story he would kill to write. He had worked on a scandalous tabloid in Vienna, and he had worked on a serious broadsheet, and his heart was with the serious. To expose the Swiss banking system for making a deal with the Nazi devil would be his highest honor.

  "But I don't even know if it's true," I said.

  "Then you have to find out. Get your banker friend drunk again and go from there. You need to do this. Publicizing this is the only way to get these assholes to do the right thing."

  There might be some other ways after I had spoken again to Groucho. But none of that came up as we made what turned out to be an extra-quick walk back to my flat.

  14

  Arriving at the bank the next day, trying to figure out how I was going to contact Groucho, the answer came in the morning post. It was a picture postcard. On one side was a photo of the Fraumunster, the church that stares across the Limmat at its big brother, the Grossmunster. It was a photo of the outside of the church, marred by a red X that was drawn on the bottom right, in the foreground. It was just a random, stray mark, you would assume, except that on these kinds of postcards, there was no such thing as a random, stray mark.

  On the other side were my name and the bank's address, along with this message:

  It was great seeing you! Zurich has so many wonderful sites! One day, we saw 7 of them and, let me tell you, we were exhausted -- slept till nearly 11 the next morning. Heading home soon. Thanks again for the hospitality!

  G

  It was easy enough to figure out -- Groucho wanted to meet on the 7th at 11 a.m. at the spot marked by the X. The 7th was the next day. As it turned out, the X marked the spot of the Fraumunster Kreuzberg, the cloister. Behind an iron gate, open to tourists and worshippers and lovers of murals painted of nuns and angels, it was a courtyard in the center with the murals along the sides, tucked into covered walkways supported by marble pillars. Some of the walkways were darker than others, depending upon the time of day and the angle of the sun. I understood why Groucho picked the place. There were plenty of places to hide in the midst of a public place. From what I could see, there were six people in the cloister.

  I stood in the center of the courtyard and scanned the scene, my face painted with as much religious fervor as I could muster, turning slowly, trying to spot Groucho, my left arm embracing my body, my chin cupped in my right hand. I sneaked a look at my wristwatch. It was 11:05, but I didn't see him. Then I heard a cough. It came from the side to my right, an area wholly darkened by shade and a spot I couldn't see because of one of the pillars. I walked over and found Groucho pretending to admire a painting of two nuns cowering behind a deer, their faces framed between antlers that the artist bathed in a kind of ethereal light.

  "A fan, are you?" I said.

  "It's art, I guess," he said.

  "It's holy art, sir. In some circles, your skepticism would be heard as heresy. Your soul would be damned."

  "My soul was damned a long time ago."

  "Finally, something we agree on," I said.

  I asked him what he had been doing during his stay in Zurich, and he really didn't answer, other than to say that he wasn't in Zurich the entire time. I tried to draw him out a little more, but he seemed uninterested in chitchat and eager to get to the point. I preempted him, though, and surprised him by saying, "I changed my mind. I'm in."

  "Well, fuck me," Groucho said.

  "Shhh," I said, and then pointed at the nuns o
n the wall.

  He laughed. "I have to admit that I'm surprised -- no, shocked. I hesitate to ask why you changed your mind because I don't want to jinx it, but why did you change your mind?"

  I told him the story about the Nazi gold. I had learned in my time working with Groucho that he was interested pretty much only in the provable and less in theory, which he dismissed as "intellectual embroidery" and with gruff interruptions that demanded a return to the facts. But while this was a story light on facts and heavy on theory, Groucho was mesmerized. His only interruption was a single "holy shit," half-whispered, followed by an encouragement for me to continue talking.

  When I was finished, we stood there in silence -- Groucho and I, the two nuns and the deer. We had been there for five minutes, but no one in the cloister had interrupted us. Finally, Groucho spoke. He actually took an exaggerated deep breath before he started, as if steeling himself.

  "Look, this is huge -- you can see that," he said. "We need to find out if it's true, that's the first thing. But you know, that might be the easy part."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I don't have to tell you that we work for smart people who sometimes have no instincts. I don't have to tell you that we might have stopped Hitler before he took Austria with a little show of Czech muscle. We might have stopped him before Munich if the French had a set of balls. It's obvious to you, and it's obvious to me what this gold laundering means, but part of me thinks our bosses won't see it the same way."

  "How is that possible?" I was incredulous. Because while Groucho was right about the rest of it, as he had said up on Uetliberg, things were different now. This was much bigger. If he was right, France was next. They had to see what this meant.