The Banker Who Died

by Matthew A Carter

  His companion produced another packet out of thin air.

  “Have you ever tried writing poetry? But maybe you better not. How about I give you more food for thought. Want some?”

  The packet slipped from her fingers.

  Stanley wanted to answer yes, but his mouth was too dry. She threw her leg over his, and then she was on top of him.

  “Scared?” she asked Stanley, running her hand down his cheek. “Everything you’re dreaming about now is on the other side of that fear.”

  Stanley felt her hand moving down his pants.

  “Get up!” she commanded, wrapping one arm around Stanley’s neck, and lifting her dress with the other. Stanley’s pants ended up around his ankles once again.

  “Like that! Just like that!” she whispered, “I’m the Spring! You’ll have to remember that as well. Like that! Yes!”

  When she left the room, she told him not to follow for at least ten more minutes. Stanley spent the time pulling himself together. He found the packet of cocaine on the floor and finished the remaining half a gram. He took a sip of warm, nasty champagne, grimaced, and glanced at his watch.

  He felt empty inside, but at the same time, thoughts whirled through his mind, his heart beating even faster. He felt stronger than he ever had, energy bursting to get out of him. Goddamned cocaine.

  Stanley crossed the room to the window.

  Two men in black suits were trying to pull a third out of the fountain by the main entrance. The man in the water was wearing only a shirt, high black socks, and shoes, and was fighting as hard as he could, threatening to chase everyone out, castrate, and kill them.

  “Comrade, Konstantin, you’ll catch cold! It’s late! Your family is waiting for you at home. And you have to be at the ministry in the morning!” said the men in black suits surrounding him. Stanley drank more champagne from the bottle and looked at his watch. Exactly ten minutes had gone by. He left the room.

  When Stanley found Lagrange in a bar on the first floor, his boss looked him over with an experienced eye, assessing Stanley’s condition.

  “Excellent! I hope the reputation of our bank is not in danger,” said Lagrange. “Your eyes are shiny from cocaine.”

  “It just happened,” answered Stanley.

  “Hm, what do we have here,” Lagrange pulled Stanley’s collar to the side. “One woman with nearly colorless lipstick, and another”—he took a half step back and pointed to the waist of Stanley’s pants—“with a bright-red shade!”

  In the corner of the bar, a thin musician with a wide smile played the guitar and sang a song about a maniac in the alley. The sparse crowd of remaining guests sang along with him discordantly.

  “I’m proud of you, Stanley!” said Lagrange. “Ah, to be thirty-three again! Where is that happy, young Pierre Lagrange? I’m proud of you, and envious. Now you just have to finish with what you started.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Whiskey! And then we’ll head right to the hotel. We have a plane in three hours.” Lagrange pointed a bottle of whiskey out to the bartender and put up two fingers. “But we’ll have one for the road!”

  Stanley smoothed the hair over his head and tried to slow down the rhythm of his heart.

  “I could use a cigarette,” he asked Lagrange.

  “Take one, and some good advice for free.” Lagrange dug around in his pack, took out the last cigarette, and handed it to Stanley. “Remember the prime commandment of the private banker.”

  “I’m all ears,” said Stanley, lighting his cigarette with a trembling hand.

  “Never do cocaine with Russian clients!”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s dangerous. You’ll get chatty, and they’ll definitely use it against you.”

  “Don’t worry. I wasn’t with a client.”

  “Who knows what the future holds and who will be a client one day?” Lagrange drank his whiskey down, shook himself, and looked at his watch. “Still, there’s nothing better in the world than drinking whiskey at six AM!”

  “I agree,” said McKnight, and tossed his glass back. “It’s even better than doing coke at five AM.”

  “You’re a quick learner,” said Lagrange, pulling Stanley toward the exit. “It’s time to go.”

  That morning, Stanley, Lagrange, and Bernard flew back to Zurich. To McKnight, it felt as though he’d been thrown into a different dimension for a couple of days, and now he was back in his own.

  Part Two:

  Private Banker

  Chapter 10

  It only took a couple of days in Zurich for McKnight’s time in Moscow to recede into the distance, his adventures there taking on the quality of some art house film. Or a nightmare, drug-induced hallucination. If it had all really happened, where was that shirt with the traces of lipstick on the collar? But he couldn’t find it anywhere. He didn’t recall throwing it away upon returning to the hotel that morning.

  One week went by, and then another, without any word from Gagarin, no references to their Moscow trip. Neither Lagrange nor Bernard were to be found at the bank, spending entire days away at client meetings and on trips. And so the frightening memories seemed to melt away in the languid, serene warmth of the Swiss summer.

  In the mornings, Stanley rode his bike past the University of Zurich on his way to work. He liked to look at the open faces of the young students, concerned about ordinary things like classes, exams, first loves. There was no place in this simple word for the crazy Russian nouveau riche, who drank like it was their last day on earth, and could buy most human beings like any other product. Or maybe I’m underestimating modern students, thought Stanley.

  In addition to everything else, he was tormented by feelings of guilt. He and Christine weren’t divorced; they may have seen each other infrequently, but they had agreed before Stanley’s move to Europe to try to revive their marriage. To give it a shot, at least. And now he had cheated on his wife with two Russian whores, two days in a row. What a bastard he was. There was no excuse for it.

  The memories of those nights filled him with heat, and shame: both for his actions and for how much he had enjoyed them. Then the shame was replaced by vague feelings of guilt that he tried to repress as best he could. He told himself that Christine was probably not living the life of a nun, either. A beautiful young woman in San Francisco, all alone? Wait, that was absurd. Would Christine really cheat on him? No, it wasn’t possible. Why would she cling to the marriage so tightly, then? She could just tell him it was all over, and start a new life. Christine, unlike him, had the guts to make a change. She had been engaged to an L.A. lawyer when she met Stanley. The lawyer was unceremoniously dismissed, even though the wedding was only two months away. As soon as Christine realized where her relationship with McKnight was going, she moved on decisively.

  McKnight buried himself at work, and it was a refuge from the unwanted memories. He began to think that it might be time to actually divorce his wife and find a new girlfriend. It would be simpler, and he could get rid of this guilt.

  Thoughts of this imagined girlfriend began to nag at him, but the girls he met in Zurich didn’t do anything for him, especially when he started to compare them with the exquisite beauties of Moscow. The local Swiss girls were a little too masculine for Stanley, a little unkempt, with gray faces, bad skin, and an eternal cigarette in the mouth. It seemed as though every damn woman in Zurich smoked like a chimney.

  The only woman Stanley spent any time with, now, was his assistant, Barbara Zika. But their relationship was strictly business; she was old enough to be his grandmother.

  Barbara’s communications with him were motivated more by curiosity than sociability.

  It sometimes seemed to Stanley that he spent his entire working day giving her a test on managing securities. To be fair, Barbara had warned him from the start that she planned to complete her e
ducation and get a degree in finance—she didn’t want to be an assistant forever.

  Stanley even began to enjoy his role as guru. Sometimes, if Barbara asked him a particularly difficult question, he asked for a little time to prepare his answer, paying no mind to the fact that his actual business affairs sat idle while he did research on the internet or the bank’s extensive online library. Meanwhile, Barbara’s secretarial work was exemplary. Her most fabulous talent, bordering on the mystical, was her intuition. All McKnight had to do, for example, was think about a nice cup of coffee, and Barbara was already walking into his office with coffee on a tray. Swiss foresight.

  Work sucked Stanley in, and he started to like that more and more. In addition to a girlfriend, he thought about buying a car, one that would be practical for city driving, but that would also telegraph that its owner was no stingy German, but a successful man who had achieved a lot and planned to achieve much more in the near future. For now, Stanley tried to switch up his bike routes as much as possible on the way to the bank and back home. That meant he had to map out his trip ahead of time, and he made a rule for himself that he had to pass at least one new site or point of interest each day.

  While he studied the map, Stanley also read up on the history of the city, its buildings, and all the famous and not-so-famous people who had lived in it. In a couple months, he was going to know this city better than any tour guide. After a couple weeks of this, Stanley made the surprising discovery that the majority of Zurich’s statues were dedicated to the naked female form.

  When he shared this with Barbara, she confirmed his observation.

  “This city only pretends to be boring,” she said. “Monsieur Lagrange can tell you that—he’s expecting you in his office in half an hour.”

  This was unexpected. Stanley had grown accustomed to his boss operating in some other dimension, only communicating through emails and couriered documents.

  “Did something happen?” asked McKnight in concern.

  “I don’t know what, exactly, but all my colleagues from Paradeplatz and Bahnofstrasse are expecting big news,” Barbara said, with a significantly raised eyebrow.

  Lagrange greeted him with an unusual expression of concern, one McKnight had never seen before.

  “Sit down and listen carefully,” Pierre said over his shoulder, pacing around the office. “First, Gagarin is going to buy that yacht. Second, he’s traveling here to discuss financing the buy. Got it?”

  “Yes, but what’s got you so worried? Gagarin already told us in Moscow that the deal was ours.”

  “He can say anything he wants,” interrupted Lagrange. “That doesn’t mean anything. That damned Biryuza suggested he set up a tender for all the banks. Asshole!”

  “So Gagarin’s word isn’t good?”

  “The word of a Russian doesn’t mean anything in this world. Gagarin will come, yes. And we’ll discuss, yes. But there’s one detail that he won’t mention.” Lagrange went over to the shelf, picked up a crystal decanter of whiskey, looked at it, then sighed, and put it back down. “Which is the following: while Viktor is making nice with us, and we walk around on eggshells, Biryuza is going to be in talks with our competitors. That sly little shit is probably getting kickbacks and is looking for the bank that will give him the best one.”

  “So what’s the problem? Why don’t we offer him a percentage of the deal?”

  “Ah, aren’t you the clever one. Except we’re already paying Durand, and if we start sharing with someone else, there won’t be any annual bonuses. Let’s see how well-informed you are. Tell me, what other banks will Anton be meeting with?”

  “UBS, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank,” said Stanley without pausing to think.

  “Excellent! Good thing you’re working for us and not them.” Pierre even smiled. “And you, McKnight, need to outdo them. Not because we are going to offer Gagarin some special perks. We can’t afford to. Besides, we don’t even know what those three banks will offer Biryuza. Even if we try to find out, they’ll spread fake numbers around to trick us.”

  Lagrange began to pace back and forth directly past McKnight, stamping down with each step as if grinding some thought down into the carpet that he couldn’t say out loud. He stopped suddenly right in front of Stanley and looked him over attentively, as if taking his measurements for a new suit, and trying to decide what style would fit him best. Then he continued, his tone now calm and even, as if dictating a tedious office memo.

  “As you can imagine, your career depends on the results of this deal. What’s on the table is the financing of $500 million for a boat. We’re also going to ask him to deposit $450 million in discretionary portfolio management with us. I want that money! I want this deal, Stanley. If Gagarin goes to another bank, no, no one will penalize you. And the bank won’t go under. We’ll focus our efforts in other areas. In hindsight, it will look like nothing more than an unpleasant episode. But this must not happen. And you have to understand that with every fiber of your being. This isn’t a matter of career or self-esteem, no. This is your life. Up until this point, your life has been a certain way; and now it will change. But the nature of that change depends on your results.” Pierre stopped to take a breath. “All the papers are with your secretary. Durand prepared them, and you need to review them all. Go and prepare. We leave for Geneva at seven AM tomorrow.”

  McKnight stood and walked to the door. Behind him, he heard Lagrange impatiently snap his fingers, and turned.

  Pierre was already holding the potbellied bottle of Zvenigorod whiskey.

  “I have faith in you,” he said, his friendly tone restored. And winked.

  McKnight nodded and went out.

  Barbara was waiting for him with coffee and a packet of chocolate cookies from the Sprüngli pastry shop near their bank.

  “I already looked over the documents. They are almost all in order. You’ll just need to clarify a few points and rewrite some figures, and the rest will take about two hours. Okay?”

  McKnight took a sip of coffee, pulled the cookies toward him, and said, “We’ll manage. We don’t even have to rush. The meeting isn’t till tomorrow.”

  As soon as Barbara heard they didn’t have to rush off anywhere, she poured her own cup of coffee and began to question McKnight like a strict teacher giving a test, as was her wont.

  “Why does he need financing from us?” she began. “He could buy three of those yachts with the snap of a finger. I know he isn’t going to read this mountain of paperwork.” She prodded the stack of documents in front of her. “And that he’ll pay this loan off without even thinking about it. So why all these trips, meetings, signings, trust management? Doesn’t he have anything better to do with his time?”

  “Because that’s how rich he is,” answered Stanley. “Because billionaires prefer to do major transactions, like the purchase of a yacht, plane, or house in London, on credit.”

  McKnight shook all the cookies out of the package and arranged them neatly into identical stacks. Barbara watched the process with growing interest.

  “Firstly, it cuts tax costs,” Stanley said, taking two cookie stacks and moving them toward his secretary. “That’s the tax money he won’t have to pay. A nice benefit, you’ll have to agree. Secondly, it’s going to be a low-cost loan for him, maybe 2 percent annual interest, unless, of course, the Federal Reserve suddenly raises the rate. At the same time, he’ll invest in bonds in different countries, and get a coupon rate of 7 percent. Or he could deposit some of those bonds in our bank at 2 percent and use them as collateral for a mortgage on a little house in Belgravia. So he makes the buy and nets 5 percent.”

  The stacks of cookies, having moved all around the table, returned to their package. McKnight used a napkin to wipe up the crumbs.

  “That’s the general idea, anyway. Make sense?”

  Barbara shrugged.

  “Hopefully, I’ll un
derstand better as we go along.” She gulped down the rest of her coffee in one go and opened her laptop. “It’s good to be rich. Move your millions around from one basket to the other, and everyone bows to you and thanks you for your efforts with a bunch of dividends.”

  “It’s not that simple,” said McKnight. “You have to understand the baskets better than anybody else. And if you get greedy and overleverage, you can get hit with a margin call, the bank demanding additional payment to cover the loans, or the sale of existing assets.”

  “And you and Monsieur Lagrange are going to convince him tomorrow that our basket is the best basket on the planet,” Barbara said, placing her fingers on the keys. “Shall we begin?”

  Stanley opened the first folder, and picked up his pen.

  Chapter 11

  It was only when he was approaching the Zurich train station that McKnight realized it would be his first visit to Geneva. He tried to remember the last time he traveled by train, and came up empty. Nor did he have any idea who was memorialized in the monument by the train station, but he didn’t walk over to read the plaque. For some reason, the thought of being taken for a tourist embarrassed him.

  Lagrange sent him a message on Telegram, saying that he was already on the train. The train was two-storied, but only the second story had unobstructed access along the entire length of the train. Stanley walked down the platform, looking in the windows of the first-class cars, but Pierre was nowhere in sight. Stanley found him in the café car just before the train departed, where he was, for a change, drinking Evian.

  “Here’s my buddy McKnight!” Lagrange told the elderly bartender, pointing as Stanley approached. “Make him a real cup of good coffee. Coffee machines at home, at work, and coffee in restaurants. And so the younger generation loses its taste for the beautiful. Then they’re surprised they have problems in their personal life. What kind of feelings are you capable of if you can’t even enjoy a cup of coffee?”