Numbered Account (56 page)

Marchenko walked to the six-ton truck carrying his precious cargo. He was a short man, stout and heavyset around his jaw and neck. He carried his weight well, using it to add extra swagger to his step. He lifted the canvas canopy and climbed aboard, inviting his Syrian counterpart to join him. Together, they checked that straps securing the crates had been properly tightened. The crates were filled with obsolete radio transmitters, polished up and triple wrapped in plastic to make them look new. The Kopinskaya IV was packed in a reinforced steel container welded to the truck’s flatbed. A sophisticated
anti-tampering switch had been attached to the container. If someone attempted to remove the container from the truck, or to forcibly open it, a small packet of Semtex explosive would be ignited and the bomb would be destroyed. No one would steal Little Joe.

Marchenko flopped his rump on the tail of the truck, then jumped to the ground and made his way forward to the command jeep. The idea to sell a small percentage of his nation’s conventional armaments had not been his own. The Kazakh government had embraced it early on, believing it was acting no differently than the former Soviet government. From there, talk moved naturally to another of the republic’s salable assets: her nuclear arsenal. No one had ever considered selling off one of the big birds, the SS-19s or SS-20s — missiles equipped with a twenty-megaton warhead and a six-thousand-mile flight span. At least, not seriously. The Kazakhs were a moral people. Besides, the logistics were overwhelming.

Attention had focused on how to profitably dispose of the stockpile of enriched plutonium kept in the vaults of the Lenin Atomic Research Laboratory, one of the former Soviet Union’s most secret installations, located forty kilometers outside Alma-Ata.

Until 1992, the installation had been guarded by a division of mechanized infantry. Over five hundred men patrolled the compound and the surrounding woods twenty-four hours a day. Six separate checkpoints had to be cleared before reaching the maze of buildings that made up the laboratory itself. Since that time, however, security had become considerably more lax. Today a single post stood at the compound’s entry. A smile and a flash of one’s military identification were all that was necessary to gain admittance.

Marchenko scowled, recalling events from the recent past. The Americans had also known about the Lenin Laboratory and the airtight rooms filled with lead canisters holding fissionable materials. Their covert agents had easily penetrated the compound’s porous security and had reported back that a paperboy could con his way in, fill his pockets with uranium, and pedal out again. In the summer of 1993, a joint inspection team of CIA and KGB officers landed in Alma-Ata and made directly for the Lenin Atomic Research Laboratory. The operation, code-named Sapphire, had been a complete success. Almost. The interlopers removed over two tons of enriched weapons-grade uranium-235 and plutonium from the Lenin Laboratory and shipped it west. But they had missed a few items.

Marchenko was not a stupid man. He had imagined such an event, if tardily, and had moved with haste on learning of the Americans’ plans. He and his colleagues had pinned their hopes on a small weapons manufacturer inside the grounds of the Lenin Laboratory; a factory charged with overseeing the construction of next-generation weapons prototypes. Among the items being developed for introduction into the armed forces was a highly mobile, easily launchable low-yield nuclear device. A battlefield nuclear weapon.

Hours ahead of the Americans, he had stolen his way into the laboratory and removed the existing functional prototypes. Two Kopinskaya IV concussive bombs, each possessing a two-kiloton load. His country’s true patrimony.

Marchenko climbed aboard the jeep. The deal is almost done, he said to himself. And though his face retained its veneer of stolid dissatisfaction, inside he was as giddy as a fifteen-year-old. He tapped the driver on the shoulder and ordered him to move out. Up and down the line, motors turned over as the small convoy got under way. It would be an eight-hour drive to their destination. Closing his eyes for a moment, he enjoyed the warm desert wind that tickled his face. Sure that no one could see him, he smiled.

It was time someone else suffered.

The number 10 tram lurched out of the morning mist like an arthritic serpent. Its blunt blue snout and reticulated body rattled through the curtain of dew, groaning and sighing as it drew to a halt. Doors jerked open. Passengers got off. Nick lifted a hand to help a stooped old lady whose slow descent threatened the punctuality of the entire transit system. The witch batted it away with her bent umbrella. He dodged the blow and stepped aboard. So much for starting the day on the right foot.

Nick shuttled down the aisle looking for an empty seat. Gray faces sagging with the burdens of living in the world’s wealthiest democracy greeted him. Their unsmiling countenances shoved him with a thump out of Sylvia’s bed and back into the real world. The world where he was an accessory to murder, conspirator to fraud, and prisoner of a man who might very well have had a hand in murdering his father.

Nick sat down at the rear of the tram. An elderly man in front of him was reading
Blick
, the country’s daily scandal sheet. He had the paper open to the second page. A photograph of Marco Cerruti slumped in a leather recliner occupied the upper left-hand corner. The headline read “Despondent Banker Takes Life.” The text was short, included so to dignify the lurid photograph. Cerruti looked peaceful enough, sleeping except for a small black crater carved into his left temple. His eyes were closed and a fluffy white pillow was propped on his stomach.

Nick waited for the old man to finish reading the paper, then asked if he might have a look. The man eyed him long and hard, as if assessing his creditworthiness. Finally, he handed him the paper. Nick stared at the picture for a while, wondering how much cash the paper had slipped the police photographer, then directed his attention to the brief article.

“Marco Cerruti, 55, vice president of the United Swiss Bank, was found dead at his home in Thalwil early Friday morning. Lt. Dieter Erdin of the Zurich Police classified the death as a suicide and listed the cause as a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. Officials at the United Swiss Bank reported that Cerruti had been suffering from nervous exhaustion and had not worked on a daily basis since the beginning of the year. A memorial scholarship in his name will be established by the bank at the University of Zurich.”

Nick studied the picture closely. It took him a few seconds to locate the detail that irked him — the bottle of Scotch upended in his lap. Cerruti didn’t drink. He didn’t even keep a bottle for guests. Why didn’t the police know that?

Nick closed the paper, frustrated at the police’s incompetence. Headlines emblazoned across the front page caught his eye. “Crime Boss Gunned Down in Platzspitz.” A color photograph of the crime scene showed Albert Makdisi’s corpse lying on the ground next to a stone wall. He folded the newspaper and handed it back to the man in the next row, thanking him for his kindness. He didn’t need to read the article. After all, he was the killer.

Nick unlocked the door to his apartment and stepped inside. Every time he came home, he wondered if someone might have been snooping around during his absence. He didn’t think anyone had broken in since the day three weeks ago when he had smelled the traces of a sickly sweet eau de cologne and found that his gun had been tampered with. But he could never be sure.

He leaned forward to open the dresser’s bottom drawer, then ran his hand under his sweaters until he felt the smooth crease of his holster. He grabbed ahold of it and set it down in his lap. He withdrew the Colt Commander and held it snugly in his right hand, staring at it as if it were an extension of his own person. The familiar heft of the gun allowed him to relax for several seconds. It was a false comfort and he knew it. Still, he had to take what he could get.

Nick stood and walked to his desk. He removed a chamois cloth, spread it out, then laid his gun down on top of it. He set about taking apart and cleaning his pistol. He hadn’t fired a round in months, but right now he needed to fall back on the rigorous order of his past. He wanted to reside in some distant universe where rules still existed for everyday conduct. As far as he knew there was still only one way to clean a Colt .45-caliber pistol. No one could tamper with that.

Nick ejected the clip and popped out the bullets. All nine of them. He locked back the slide and turned the gun on its side, allowing the chambered round to fall onto the beige cloth. His hands assumed a rhythm of their own, following steps ingrained in his memory long ago. But only half his mind supervised the cleaning of his pistol. The other half damned him for his selfish actions.

His willful deceit had led him to be a participant in fraud and a witness to murder. If he hadn’t delayed the Pasha’s transfer, Mevlevi’s accounts would have been frozen; the bank, under severe scrutiny, would not have embarked on its insane plan to manipulate its customers’ discretionary accounts; the Pasha would not have dared come to Switzerland; and, most important, Cerruti would still be alive.

Maybe . . .

Nick fought a sudden rush of heat that flooded his neck and shoulders. He tried to concentrate harder on his weapon, willing the tide of emotion to recede. But it was no good. Guilt won. It always did. He felt guilty for shielding the Pasha and guilty for Cerruti’s death. Hell, he felt guilty for every fucking thing that had happened since he’d come to Switzerland. He wasn’t just an innocent bystander; he wasn’t even an unwilling accomplice. He was a one-hundred-percent willing participant in this mess.

He unscrewed the gun barrel and raised his eye to it, checking for any oil residue. The grooves were clean, dulled by a sheen of lubricant. He put the barrel on the cloth, then paused in his work. Yesterday’s actions came back to him in an instant. He stood helpless as Albert Makdisi crumpled under the force of three shots point-blank to the chest. He watched stunned as the Pasha tossed him the pistol and he caught it. His muscles twitched with the recollection of raising the gun and pointing it at Mevlevi’s leering face. Even now, eighteen hours later, he felt a feral desire rise in him to kill another man.

Nick held the chassis of the pistol in his hand. The last thought he’d had as he pulled the trigger had been of his father. Arm extended, aim taken, standing there with no doubt in his mind whatsoever that he was going to willingly end the life of a bad man, he had looked to his father for approval.

Nick moved his gaze from the gun to the window. A Slavic woman walked briskly down the street, dragging her young son roughly by the hand. She stopped suddenly and raised a finger at the boy, chastising him loudly.

Nick replaced her muted shouts with the plaintive strain of his own mother’s voice. “Do as you’re told,” she had said to his father. “You said yourself you didn’t really know if he was doing anything wrong. Stop making such a big deal about it!”

Dammit, Dad, Nick demanded, why
didn’t
you do as you were told? Why did you have to make such a big deal about it — whatever “it” was? You’d probably still be here today. Alive. We could have been a family. Fuck the rest of it! Your discipline, your dignity, your integrity. What good has it brought any of us?

Nick slammed the gun down on his desk. He heard a voice telling him that all his life he’d been doing what other people had wanted him to. That the marines was just another excuse not to have to make his own decisions. That a degree from Harvard Business School and the high-paying career it promised would have made his father proud. And that abandoning his career to come to Switzerland to investigate his father’s murder would have been Alex Neumann’s only recommended course of action.

As Nick stared out the window into the bleak morning sun, a strange sensation took hold of him. He felt as though he were seeing himself from a distance. He wanted to tell the man standing in the dim apartment to stop living for yesterday, and that while finding his father’s murderer might make the past easier to deal with, it wouldn’t provide any magic path into the future. He’d have to find that path for himself.

Nick nodded, taking the advice to heart. He finished cleaning the components of his pistol, then put the Colt back together again. He screwed the barrel back in, reracked the slide, shoved home the clip, and chambered a round. He couldn’t sit back and watch anymore. He had to act.

Nick raised the gun and took aim at a ghostly figure only he could see — a shadowy silhouette looming in the dusky middle distance. He would clear his own path into the future. And Ali Mevlevi was standing right in the middle of it.

The phone rang. Nick holstered his weapon and put it away before answering. “Neumann speaking.”

“It’s Saturday, chum. You’re not at work, remember?”

“Good morning, Peter.”

“I suppose you’ve heard the news. Just saw the papers myself. Didn’t think the jumpy bastard had it in him.”

“Neither did I,” said Nick. “What’s up?”

“Since when don’t you return phone calls? Three times I called yesterday. Where the hell were you?”

“I wasn’t in the mood for a drink last night.”

“I sure as hell wasn’t calling about a drink,” complained Sprecher. “We need to talk. Serious business.”

“I heard your message. That was Sylvia’s number you called.”

“I wasn’t calling about the shareholder lists. It’s a damn sight more important than that. Something came up yesterday that I—”

“Keep it short, Peter. To the point.” Nick imagined that if his place had been searched, his phone had probably been bugged. “Let’s keep our conversation private. Follow?”

“Yeah,” Sprecher replied hesitantly. “Okay, I follow. Maybe what you were saying about our best client wasn’t entirely off base.”

“Maybe,” answered Nick noncommittally. “If you want to talk about it, go to our favorite watering hole in two hours. I’ll leave instructions where to meet me. And Peter . . .”