Numbered Account (3 page)

Kaiser gave each end of his mustache a brief tug and moved away from the window. Though of medium height, he was a formidable man. Clothed, as was his custom, in bespoke navy worsted, he could be mistaken only for Lord of the Manor. But his broad shoulders, plowman’s back, and stout legs testified to a common upbringing. And of his less than noble parentage he carried a permanent reminder: his left arm, damaged at birth by the enthusiastic forceps of a drunken midwife, was thin and limp, a paralyzed appendage. Despite constant exercise during his early years, the arm had remained atrophied and would always be two inches shorter than the right.

Kaiser circled his desk, staring at the telephone. He was waiting for a call. A brief message that would bring the past into the present. Word that the circle was closing. He could not expel from his mind the message written on one of the crude placards below. “Child Killers,” it read. He didn’t know what exactly it made reference to, but still the words stung. Damned press! Vultures were thrilled to have such an easy target. The evil bankers so eager to accommodate the world’s baddies. Horseshit! If not us, then somebody else. Austria, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands. The competition was closing in.

The phone on his desk buzzed. He pounced on it in three swift steps. “Kaiser.”

“Guten Morgen, Herr Direktor.
  Brunner speaking.”

“Well?”

“The boy has arrived,” said the hall porter. “He came in at nine o’clock sharp.”

“And how is he?” Kaiser had seen photographs of him over the years. More recently, he had viewed a videotape of the boy’s interview. Still, he could not stop himself from asking, “Does he look like his father?”

“A few pounds heavier, perhaps. Otherwise, a spitting image. I sent him to Mr. Sprecher.”

“Yes, I’ve been informed. Thank you, Hugo.”

Kaiser hung up the phone and took a seat behind his desk. He turned his thoughts to the young man sitting two floors below him, and soon a faint smile pushed up the corners of his mouth. “Welcome to Switzerland, Nicholas Alexander Neumann,” he whispered. “It’s been so long since we last met. So very, very long.”

The office of the Director of Personnel (Finance Division) was located at the far corner of the first floor. Nick paused outside an open door and knocked twice before entering. Inside, a slender woman was bent over a messy desk, sorting through a collage of white papers. She wore an ivory blouse and a navy skirt that fell one frustrated sigh below her knee. Brushing a wave of hair from her face, she rose from the desk to stare at her visitor.

“May I help you?” she asked.

“I’m here to see Dr. Schon,” Nick said. “I’ve just begun work this morning and—”

“Your name, please? We have six new employees beginning today. First Monday of the month.”

Her stern voice made him want to square his shoulders, fire off a salute, and bark out his name, rank, and serial number. That would make her jump. He told her who he was, and recalling Sprecher’s comments about his posture, made sure he didn’t stand too straight.

“Hmm,” she said, suddenly interested. “Our American. Please come in.” The woman craned her neck and ran a none too discreet eye over him, as if checking to see what the bank had gotten for its money. Apparently satisfied, she asked in a friendlier voice if he’d had a good flight over.

“Not bad,” Nick said, returning her appraising stare. “It gets a little cramped back there after a few hours, but at least we had smooth sailing.”

She was shorter by a head with intelligent brown eyes and thick blond hair cut to fall in a slant across her brow. A gracefully upturned chin and a sharp nose conspired to lend her an air of assumed importance. She told him to wait a moment, then stepped through an open door that led to an adjoining office.

Nick removed his hands from his pockets and without thinking wiped his palms on the rear of his trousers. He had known a woman like her before. Confident, assertive, a little too professional. A woman who relied on perfect grooming to improve on nature’s careless oversights. In fact, he had almost married her.

“Please come in, Mr. Neumann.”

He recognized the stern voice. Poised behind a broad desk sat the woman with the intelligent brown eyes. A testy one, Sprecher had warned, who didn’t care for Americans. She had tucked her blond hair behind her ears and found a blazer to match her skirt. A large pair of horn-rimmed glasses rested on her nose.

“I’m sorry,” Nick said sincerely, “I didn’t realize . . .” His explanation petered out.

“Sylvia Schon,” she announced, standing and extending a hand across the desk. “It’s a pleasure to meet you. It’s not often the Chairman recommends a new graduate.”

“He was a friend of my father’s. They worked together.” Nick shook his head as if to dismiss the connection. “It was a long time ago.”

“So I understand. But the bank doesn’t forget its own. We’re big on loyalty around here.” She motioned for him to sit down and when he had, lowered herself into her chair. “I hope you don’t mind my asking a few questions. I take pride in knowing everyone who works in our department. Usually we insist on several interviews before extending an offer.”

“I appreciate any exceptions that were made on my behalf. Actually, I did interview with Dr. Ott in New York.”

“It was rather perfunctory, I imagine.”

“Dr. Ott and I covered a lot of ground. If you’re asking whether he went easy on me, he didn’t.”

Sylvia Schon raised an eyebrow and cocked her head as if to say, “Come now, Mr. Neumann, we both know you’re full of shit.” She was right, of course. His meeting with the bank’s vice chairman had been nothing more than an extended bull session. Ott was a short, fat, unctuous man, an unapologetic arm patter, and it seemed to Nick that he’d been told to paint the sunniest possible picture of life in Zurich and a career at the United Swiss Bank.

“Fourteen months,” she said. “That’s the longest one of our American recruits has lasted. You gentlemen come over for a European vacation, do a little skiing, take in the sights, and a year later you’re gone. Off to greener pastures.”

“If there’s been a problem, why don’t you conduct the interviews yourself?” he asked pleasantly, in counterpoint to her combative tone. “I’m sure
you
would have no problem weeding out the weaker candidates.”

Dr. Schon squinted her eyes, as if unsure whether he was a smart-ass or just an exceptionally perceptive individual. “An interesting question. Feel free to ask Dr. Ott next time you visit with him. Interviewing foreign candidates is his department. For now, though, let’s concentrate on you, shall we? Our refugee from Wall Street. I don’t imagine that a firm like Morgan Stanley often loses one of its best recruits after only four months.”

“I decided that I didn’t want to spend my career in New York. I’ve never had the opportunity to work in a foreign environment. I realized that if I wanted to move, the sooner the better.”

“So you quit like that?” She snapped her fingers.

Nick was beginning to find her aggressive tone irritating. “First I spoke with Herr Kaiser. He’d contacted me following my graduation in June and mentioned that he’d like me to come to the bank.”

“You didn’t consider anywhere else? London? Hong Kong? Tokyo? After all, if you were offered a position by Morgan Stanley, I’m sure there were other firms that went away disappointed. What brought you to Zurich?”

“I’d like to specialize in private banking, and for that Zurich’s the place. No one has a better reputation than USB.”

“So our reputation led you to our doorstep?”

Nick smiled. “Yes, exactly.”

Liar, said a determined voice from a dark corner of his soul. You would’ve come if the place was buried in shit and the last shovel had just broken.

“Remember, things move slowly here. Don’t expect a promotion to the executive board anytime soon. We’re less a meritocracy than you Americans are used to.”

“Minimum fourteen months,” said Nick. “I should just be settling in by then. Getting to know my way around.” He smiled broadly to let her know that he wasn’t put off by her predictions of a short stay and that she should get used to him. But behind the smile, the determined voice had the final say.

I’ll stay, it promised. Fourteen months or fourteen years. As long as it takes to discover why my father was murdered in the foyer of a close friend’s home.

Sylvia Schon brought her chair closer to her desk and studied some documents on it. The room fell silent. The tension of a first encounter dissipated. Finally, she looked up and smiled. “You’ve met Mr. Sprecher, I understand? Everything satisfactory?”

Nick said yes.

“He explained to you, I’m sure, that his department is a little shorthanded.”

“He said that Mr. Cerruti was ill. He’ll be back next week.”

“We hope so. Did he say anything else?”

Nick looked at her intently. She wasn’t smiling anymore. What was she tiptoeing around? “No. Just that Cerruti had contracted a virus on his business trip.”

Dr. Schon removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m sorry to bring this up on your first day of work, but I think it’s best you hear it now. I don’t suppose you know about Mr. Becker. He also worked in FKB4. He was killed Christmas Eve. Stabbed to death not far from here. We’re still very upset. It’s an absolute tragedy.”

“He was the man killed on the Bahnhofstrasse?” Nick hadn’t recalled the name, but he recognized the facts from an article in a Swiss newspaper he’d read on the flight over. The brazen nature of the murder made for front-page news. Apparently, he’d been carrying some expensive jewelry. The police did not yet have a suspect, but the article had clearly stated that robbery was the motive. Somehow USB had managed to keep its name out of the paper.

“Yes. It’s appalling. As I said, we’re still in a state of shock.”

“I’m sorry,” Nick whispered.

“No, no. It’s I who must apologize. No one deserves to hear such terrible news on their first day of work.” Dr. Schon stood and circled her desk. A signal the meeting had come to its conclusion. She forced a smile to her lips. “I hope Mr. Sprecher won’t pass along too many of his bad habits. You should be with him only a few days. In the meantime, several other matters need to be taken care of. We’ll need a few photographs and your fingerprints, of course. Those can be taken down the hall, three doors to the right. And don’t let me forget to give you a copy of the bank’s handbook.” She brushed by him and walked to a cabinet against the near wall. She opened a drawer, then picked out a blue book and offered it to him.

“Should I wait down here for the ID card to be finished?” Nick peered at the handbook. It was half the size of a phone book and twice as thick.
Rules
, he heard Sprecher saying.

“I don’t think that will be necessary,” boomed a rich, male voice.

Nick raised his head and looked directly into Wolfgang Kaiser’s beaming face. He took a step backward, though if it was from surprise or awe he did not know. Kaiser was his family’s grayest eminence: ever watching unseen from somewhere beyond the horizon. After so long, Nick was unsure how to greet him. As the man who had attended his father’s funeral and then accompanied the body to Switzerland for burial. As the distant benefactor who surfaced at odd moments across the years, sending congratulatory cards upon his graduation from high school and college and, Nick suspected, checks on the occasions when his mother had navigated them into particularly dire straits. Or as the celebrated icon of international business, the subject of a thousand newspaper articles, magazine profiles, and television interviews. The most recognized face of Switzerland’s banking establishment.

Kaiser solved Nick’s dilemma in an instant. Wrapping his right arm around his shoulders, he brought him close to his chest for a sturdy bear hug. He whispered something in his ear about the time that had passed and how he resembled his father and finally let him go, but not before kissing him smartly on the cheek.

“At your father’s funeral, you told me that one day you would come back and take his place. Do you remember?”

“No, I don’t,” Nick said, embarrassed. He caught Sylvia Schon gazing at him, and for a second he had the feeling she was sizing him up not as a trainee but as an opponent.

“Of course not,” said Kaiser. “What were you? Ten, eleven. Just a boy. But I remembered. I
always
remembered. And now here you are.”

Nick grasped the Chairman’s outstretched hand. It was a vise. “Thank you very much for finding room for me. I realize it was short notice.”

“Nonsense. Once I make an offer, it stands. I’m glad we could lure you away from our American colleagues.” Kaiser released his hand. “Dr. Schon putting you through her paces? We saw on your application that you speak our dialect. Made me feel better about the small push I gave on your behalf.
Sprechen sie gerne Schweitzer-Deutsch
?”

“Naturlich,”
Nick answered.
“Leider han-i fascht kai Moglichkeit dazu, weisch?”
The language felt heavy on his tongue. Nothing like the ease with which it flowed from his mouth in the dozens of silent rehearsals he’d conducted for this moment. He saw a cloud darken Kaiser’s animated features, then looked to Dr. Schon and saw the edges of her mouth turned up in a faint smile. What the hell had he said?

Kaiser switched back to English. “Give it a few weeks and it will come back to you. Ott told me that you did some research about the bank. He was impressed with it.”

“My thesis,” Nick explained, relieved to be back on solid footing. “A paper on the growing role of Swiss banks in international equity offerings.”

“Is that right? Remember that first and foremost we are a Swiss bank. We’ve served our community and our country for over a hundred twenty-five years. Before there was a unified Germany, our headquarters stood on this very spot. Before the Suez Canal was completed, even before a tunnel had been built through the Alps, we were open for business. The world has changed tremendously since that time, and we’re still open for business. Continuity, Nicholas. That’s what we stand for.”