Numbered Account

by Christopher Reich

  A pool of blood was growing steadily on the ivory Berber carpet.

  # # #

  Downstairs, a forest-green Range Rover drew into the circular forecourt of the hotel. The car’s tires squealed painfully as it negotiated a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn and slid to a halt in front of the main entry. The passenger door swung open, and an imposing man in a three-piece charcoal suit descended. Wolfgang Kaiser straightened his jacket and smoothed his bristly black mustache. He checked his reflection in the passenger window and satisfied as to his appearance, marched into the lobby.

  “Time?” he called over his shoulder.

  “Eleven-fifteen,” answered Reto Feller, rushing to join him.

  “Fifteen minutes late,” complained Kaiser. “No doubt the count will be impressed. For that I can thank you, Mr. Feller. And your new automobile.” The fucking car had gotten a flat tire in the middle of the St. Gotthard tunnel. It was a miracle they hadn’t choked to death on the exhaust fumes.

  Feller scurried ahead to the front desk, where he rang the arrival bell twice. “We are looking for the Count Languenjoux,” he announced breathlessly. “What room can we find him in?”

  A hotelier in black morning coat delivered himself to the polished walnut counter. “Whom may I announce?”

  Kaiser presented his business card. “We are expected.”

  The hotelier discreetly read the card. “Thank you, Herr Kaiser. The count is in Room 407.” He leaned closer, and in a gesture of implied intimacy, spoke softly from beneath a furrowed brow. “We’ve received a number of calls for you this morning. All extremely urgent. The caller insisted on waiting on the line until you arrived.”

  Kaiser arched an eyebrow. He glanced over his shoulder. Feller stood three paces behind him, taking in every word.

  “A woman from your office in Zurich,” said the hotelier. “Shall I check if she is still on hold?”

  “Do you know her name?” Kaiser asked.

  “Fraulein Schon.”

  “By all means, please check.” How had she found him here? He had told no one of his trip except Rita.

  “Sir, the count is waiting,” said Feller.

  Kaiser could imagine the little weasel’s impure thoughts. “Then go keep him company,” he ordered. “I’ll be up in two minutes.”

  The hotelier returned to the desk. “The lady is still on the line. I’ll have the call transferred to one of our private cabins. Directly behind you, Herr Kaiser. Booth number one, the first glass door on the left.”

  Kaiser thanked the hotelier and walked rapidly to the booth. He closed the glass door and sat down on a stool facing the telephone. The phone jangled in an instant. “Kaiser.”

  “Wolfgang, is it you?” asked Sylvia Schon.

  “What’s going on? What’s so important that you demean the good name of the bank by calling this hotel in a frenzy? Word will certainly get back to the count.”

  “Listen to me,” Sylvia commanded. “You must leave the hotel immediately.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve only just arrived.”

  “It’s Nicholas Neumann. He’s arranged some sort of trap. I’ve been trying to reach you all night.”

  What nonsense was this? wondered Kaiser. “Nicholas is with an important client of mine,” he said sternly.

  Sylvia’s voice grew frantic. “Nick thinks that your friend, Mr. Mevlevi, killed his father. He said you knew all about it. He told me he has proof, but he wouldn’t say any more. Now listen to me and get out of that hotel this second.”

  “Who has proof?” demanded Kaiser. The girl was rattling on at a hundred kilometers an hour, and he didn’t care for the gist of her argument.

  “Just leave the hotel,” she pleaded. “They’re going to arrest you and Mr. Mevlevi.”

  Kaiser took a deep breath, unable to decide if her ranting had merit. “I have an appointment with one of our bank’s most important shareholders. His votes could be crucial to our long-term ability to keep Konig from enacting his plans. I can’t just come back.”

  “Haven’t you heard?”

  Suddenly Kaiser felt very alone. The concern had fallen from her voice. Pity had replaced it. “What?”

  “The Adler Bank has offered five hundred francs a share for the bank. Konig announced it on the radio this morning at nine. A cash bid for all the shares he doesn’t own.”

  “No, I hadn’t heard,” Kaiser managed to whisper after a few seconds. Reto Feller had insisted on listening to the Brandenburg Concerto on his new car’s hi-fi. He would kill him.

  Sylvia said, “Konig is going to ask for a vote of confidence from the executive board at tomorrow’s general assembly.”

  “Oh,” said Kaiser halfheartedly. He was no longer listening. A commotion was brewing in front of the hotel. He could hear car doors slamming and instructions being issued in a flat military tone. Several members of the hotel staff hastened toward the revolving door at the front entry. He brought the phone closer to his ear. “Sylvia, be quiet for a few moments. Stay on the line.”

  He pushed open the cabin’s glass door a crack. Outside the hotel, a heavy motor rumbled closer, then quit. Commands were given in excited Italian. A parade of jackbooted feet hit the ground. A bellboy ran into the lobby and disappeared behind the front desk. A moment later the hotel’s general manager appeared, senatorial in dress and demeanor. He nearly jogged to the revolving door and went outside. Seconds later, he returned accompanied by two gentlemen, one of whom Kaiser recognized as Sterling Thorne. The other man, identifiable from countless photos in the daily papers, was Luca Merolli, the Tessin’s crusading prosecuting attorney.

  Thorne stopped in the center of the hotel lobby. He bent over the hotel manager and announced in his booming provincial accent, “We’re going to send a dozen men up to the fourth floor. They have loaded guns and their captain’s permission to fire. I don’t want anybody to interfere with them. Understand?”

  Luca Merolli repeated Thorne’s words and gave them his own authority.

  The general manager bobbed excitedly on his toes.“Si. We have the elevator and the interior stairwell. Come, I show them to you.”

  Thorne turned to Merolli. “Bring in your men right away. Kaiser’s up there this very second with Mevlevi. My two rats are sitting in a gilded cage. Hurry up, goddammit. I want both of them.”

  “Si, si,”shouted Merolli as he ran out of the lobby.

  “Wolfgang?” came a faraway voice. “Are you there? Hello?”

  Kaiser stared dumbfounded at the receiver in his hand. She was telling me the truth, he whispered. I’m to be arrested with Ali Mevlevi. Curiously, his concerns were not for himself, but for the bank. What will become of USB? Who’ll protect my beloved institution from that bastard Konig?

  “Wolfgang, are you there?” asked Rita Sutter. “Listen to Fraulein Schon’s warnings. You must come home immediately. For the good of the bank, get out of there now.”

  Rita’s calm voice awoke in him a rational sense of self-protection. He took stock of just where he was and what was happening. He realized that not only did he have a full and unimpeded view of Sterling Thorne, but that the odious American had an equally unobscured view of him. One glance in his direction and Thorne would spot him. Kaiser removed his foot from the sill of the door, letting it close. He shifted on the velvet stool so that his body faced the interior wall.

  “Rita, it appears you were correct. I’ll try and get back as soon as possible. If anyone calls for me, press, television, simply say that I am out of the office and cannot be reached. Do I make myself clear?”

  “Yes, but where will you go? When can we expect—”

  Kaiser replaced the receiver and shielded his face as best as possible with his right arm. He didn’t dare look toward the lobby. He focused his gaze on a patch of carpeting near his left foot, where the embers of another guest’s cigarette had burned a neat round hole. Staring at this petty ingratitude, he cringed in expectation of the sharp knock against the transparent door. He
imagined the leering visage of Mr. Sterling Thorne staring at him through the window, beckoning him with a crooked finger to give himself up. Wolfgang Kaiser’s life would end at that moment.

  But no sharp knock came at the cabin window. No American voice demanded that he vacate the booth. He heard only the orderly procession of a large number of men crossing the marble floor. Tic tac, tic tac, tic tac. Thorne yelled more instructions. Then, thankfully, there was quiet.

  # # #

  Ali Mevlevi looked up from his bleeding leg and said, “I’m afraid I must go immediately.”

  Yves-Andre Wenker pointed at the pool of blood. “You can’t go anywhere bleeding like that. Take a seat. Let me get you medical attention. You need to see a doctor.”

  Mevlevi limped across the room. He was in terrible pain. “Not today, Mr. Wenker. I haven’t the time.” The leg was the least of his worries. Khan, while frantic, had been every bit justified in his worry. If Joseph was in fact an informant of the DEA, there was no end to what he might have told Thorne. Mevlevi must assume the worst. All his operations in Switzerland had been compromised. His relationship with Gino Makdisi. His control over Wolfgang Kaiser. And most important, his funding of the Adler Bank’s takeover of USB.

  Khamsin was in jeopardy.

  “I’m not asking you,” said a visibly agitated Wenker. “I’m telling you. Take a seat. I’ll call down to reception. The hotel is very discreet.”

  Mevlevi ignored him. He stopped beside the coffee table and threw his phone into the briefcase. He looked back at the trail of bloody footprints he had left on the carpet. He was losing a great deal of blood. Damn you, Neumann.

  “At least take the time to sign this last document.” Wenker waved a form in the air. He looked nervous. Sweat was forming on his brow. “Civil service is obligatory. I must have a waiver.”

  “I don’t think I will be needing a Swiss passport as soon as I had previously anticipated. Get out of my way. I’m leaving.” Mevlevi secured his briefcase, then swept past Wenker and made his way down the short corridor toward the door. Blood sloshed from his Italian loafers.

  “Dammit, Mevlevi,” Wenker yelled in English. “I said you’re not leaving this room.” The lanky bureaucrat charged into the corridor, brandishing a compact pistol. “What the hell have you done to Nicholas Neumann?”

  Mevlevi stared at the gun, then at the man. He had been right in suspecting he knew the voice. It belonged to Peter Sprecher, Neumann’s former superior at USB. He didn’t think a banker would shoot an unarmed man. He, on the other hand, would be fully justified in using his pistol. A case of self-defense. But before he could draw his gun, the banker was coming at him, an enraged expression drawn across his features. Sprecher slammed him against the wall, asking again what he had done with Neumann.

  Mevlevi was momentarily stunned. He let his body go slack under the larger man’s grip. “I told you, Mr. Sprecher. Neumann was taken ill. A cold. Now let me down. There’s no reason we can’t be civil about this.”

  “You’re staying here until you tell me what you’ve done to Nick.”

  Mevlevi bucked his left knee into Sprecher’s groin and brought his forehead down upon the man’s nose. It was a neat trick. He’d learned it as a young stowaway on an outbound steamer to Bangkok.

  Sprecher reeled and fell against the wall. The pistol dropped to the floor. Mevlevi deftly kicked it away while reaching into his jacket and withdrawing his own Beretta nine millimeter. Bad business to leave bodies behind in a five-star hotel. Changing the linens daily was one thing. Disposing of corpses, quite another. He picked up the briefcase in his left hand and leveled the gun in his right. But Sprecher appeared to have seen this coming. The hand that had been nursing his broken nose shot forward and arrested the pistol’s downward path. The other hand latched on to the briefcase.

  Mevlevi grunted and urged the pistol lower, stopping when its muzzle grazed Sprecher’s shoulder. He pulled the trigger and a bullet blew Sprecher across the narrow corridor. His back slapped against the wall. His face registered the greatest surprise. Yet one hand remained fixed to the briefcase, forcing Mevlevi to advance a step. Mevlevi rammed the pistol into Sprecher’s chest, feeling its snout jab the sternum.

  Never had a man take three shots and survive,he had told Neumann.

  He pulled the trigger twice more in rapid succession. Both times, the chamber clicked on empty. Out of shells. Mevlevi spun the gun in his hand, accepting the warm muzzle as a grip, and raised it high above his head. A few smacks on the cranium would do the trick nicely.

  A sharp knock on the door froze his motion.

  Sprecher, all too much alive, yelled, “I need help. Come in. Now.”

  The door flew open and Reto Feller barged in. He looked at the scene, muttering confusedly, “Sprecher? Where’s the count? Does the Chairman know you’re here?”

  Mevlevi’s eyes shifted from one man to the next. With a whiplash snarl, he crashed the pistol’s steel butt across the chubby interloper’s face. The interloper fell to the floor, slamming onto Mevlevi’s injured leg.

  Mevlevi yelped and tried to jump back, but Sprecher’s stubborn hand remained in a death grip upon the briefcase handle.

  “Bastard,” mumbled Sprecher, who by now had crumpled onto the floor, arm seemingly glued to the briefcase. “You’re staying here.”

  Retreat,Mevlevi heard a voice urge him. Get the hell out of here. To Brissago. To the main square. One hour. The situation was messy. A gunshot had been fired. A man had yelled for assistance. The door to the hallway remained open.

  Retreat.

  Mevlevi extricated his foot from the florid man’s inert body. He gave the briefcase another yank, then abandoned it, holstering his weapon as he stepped into the hallway. He gave Room 407 a last look. One man was unconscious, the other growing weaker by the minute. No threat there. He poked his head outside the room. Elevator a far distance to the left. Interior stairwell a few feet to his right. Exterior stairs at the end of the hall, also to his right.

  Mevlevi chose the safer path and hurried to the exterior staircase. Forget the limousine. It was compromised. He’d skirt the hotel entrance and walk the short distance down the main road to the stand of restaurants he had seen when arriving. From there he could call a cab. If his luck held, he could be in Brissago in less than an hour. And across the border a short time thereafter.

  Khamsin will live.

  CHAPTER

  65

  General Dimitri Marchenko checked his watch, then strode across the hangar floor. The time was 1340 hours. Nearly noon in Zurich, where Ali Mevlevi was arranging the transfer of eight hundred million francs to a government account in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan. He felt a ruffle at the back of his throat and knew his nerves were acting up. He told himself to be patient. Mevlevi was nothing if not exact. He’d probably call at twelve on the nose. No point worrying until then.

  Marchenko walked to a circle of soldiers standing guard around the Kopinskaya IV. He saluted, then approached the bomb. The weapon had been placed on a small wooden table a dozen paces from the Sukhoi attack helicopter. It lay on its side; its inferior lid had been removed. Time to program the altitude at which the bomb would detonate.

  The pilot of the helicopter stood next to the table. He was a handsome Palestinian smiling broadly while shaking hands with his Kazakh comrades. Marchenko had learned that there had been fierce competition among the pilots to determine who would receive the honor of dropping “Little Joe,” a knock-down-drag-out fight to see who would joyously be vaporized at the moment of detonation.

  The pilot described his flight plan to Marchenko. After takeoff, he would keep the aircraft close to the ground to avoid radar, maintaining a fifty-foot ceiling while keeping his airspeed a brisk hundred forty knots. Five miles from the Israeli military post at Chebaa in the hills overlooking the Lebanese border, the chopper would climb to a thousand feet. He would activate the Israeli transponder and pass himself off for one of dozens of routine flights that daily
shuttle between Jerusalem and the border outposts.

  Once inside Israeli airspace, he would establish a southeasterly course and make for the settlement of Ariel on the occupied West Bank. The distance was short, about sixty-five miles; flying time less than thirty minutes. Approaching Ariel, he would descend to two hundred feet. He had memorized a map of the town and studied dozens of pictures of it. When he had spotted the town’s central synagogue, he would bring the chopper down to fifty feet and detonate the bomb.

  Marchenko imagined what the Kopinskaya IV would do to the small settlement. The initial blast would create a crater more than a hundred feet deep and three hundred feet wide. Every man, woman, and child within five hundred yards would be vaporized instantly, as a fireball hotter than the face of the sun roasted their bodies. Farther out, the shock waves would crumble most wooden structures and ignite any others that were still standing. In little over four seconds, the entire settlement of Ariel, and every living being in it, would cease to exist.

  Marchenko lifted the nuclear weapon, bringing the LCD nearer his eyes. He hesitated for a moment, realizing that he would be directly responsible for bringing death to over fifteen thousand innocent souls. He scoffed at his wounded conscience. Who in our world is innocent? He programmed the bomb to detonate at an altitude of twenty-five feet. He checked his watch. Ten minutes before twelve in Zurich. Where was Mevlevi?

  Marchenko decided to attach the weapon to the helicopter. He did not want any delays once his money had been transferred. Besides, he had to do something to keep moving or else he’d go mad. As soon as he had word from Mevlevi, he would activate the bomb, gather his men, and proceed back to Syria, where their aircraft waited to ferry them home to Alma-Ata, and to a hero’s welcome.

  He ordered the chief mechanic to move the weapon to the Sukhoi and to attach it to its right firing pod. The mechanic cradled the Kopinskaya in both hands and marched to the helicopter. Marchenko himself opened the steel claws that normally held an air-to-ground missile while the mechanic fitted the bomb to the pod. The entire process took one minute. All that remained was to enter the proper sequencing code and the bomb would be primed.