Numbered Account (6 page)

A decade had passed since that memory had taunted him. His father had been right to worry. He could hardly remember him.

Nick stayed in the shed for a while longer. He had given up the idea of learning more about his father. To have the opportunity from Alex Neumann’s own hand was almost too much to believe. An unexpected gift. But his joy proved short-lived. A receipt acknowledging acceptance of his father’s possessions signed by a “Mrs. V. Neumann” was tucked inside the front cover of one of the leather-bound books. His mother had known about the agendas. She had purposely hidden them from her only son.

Nick spent the return flight to New York examining the agendas. He read both from cover to cover, first perusing the daily entries, then, alarmed, slowing to read each page carefully. He found mentions of a slippery client who had threatened his father and with whom, despite this, he had been pressed to do business; a shadowy local company that had merited the attentions of the Zurich head office; and most interesting, one month before his father’s death, a note providing the phone number and address of the Los Angeles field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Taken singly, the entries constituted only small worries. Taken together, they demanded explanation. But when set against the backdrop of his father’s unsolved murder and his own guilty memories, they ignited a fire of doubt whose flames cast ill-defined shadows on the inner workings of the United Swiss Bank and its clients.

Nick returned to work the next day. His training schedule called for classroom instruction from eight to twelve. An hour into the first lecture — some dry cant about the underpricing of initial public offerings — his attention began to waver. He cast his eye around the auditorium, sizing up his fellow trainees. Like him, they were graduates of America’s leading business schools. Like him, they were pressed and coiffed and packaged into tailored designer suits and polished leather shoes. All managed to convey a slight insouciance in their postures while writing down every single word the speaker uttered. They regarded themselves as the chosen ones, and in fact, they were. Financial centurions for the new millennium.

Why then did he hate them so?

The afternoon saw his return to the trading floor. He took up his position at the elbow of Jennings Maitland, resident bond guru and avowed nail chewer. “Sit yer ass down, shut yer toilet, and listen up” was Maitland’s daily greeting. Nick did as he was told and for the next four hours immersed himself in the floor’s activity. He paid close attention as Maitland spoke with his clients. He kept dutiful track of the trader’s open positions. He even celebrated his boss’s sale of ten million bonds to the New York Housing Authority with an airborne high five. But inside him, his guts roiled and he wanted to throw up.

Five days before, Nick would have flushed with pride at Maitland’s big score as if his own presence were responsible in some minor, inconstruable way for the sale. Today he viewed the commerce with a jaundiced eye, wishing to distance himself not only from his boss’s dumping of ten million bonds (“fuckin’ dogs,” to quote Maitland, “real bowwows”) but from the entire trading operation.

He stood as if to stretch and peered around him. Row upon row of computer monitors stacked three high ran what looked like the length of a football field in every direction. A week ago he had gloried at the sight, thinking it a modern battlefield. He had relished his opportunity to join the fray. Today it looked like a technological minefield, and he wanted to stay the hell away from it. Lord pity the robots who passed their lives glued to bank upon bank of microwave-spewing cathode-ray tubes.

During the long walk home, Nick told himself his disillusion was temporary and come tomorrow he would regain his appetite for work. But five minutes after setting foot inside his apartment, he found himself pasted to his desk scrabbling through his father’s agendas, and he knew he’d been lying to himself. The world, or at least his view of it, had changed.

Nick went back to work the next day, and the day after that. He managed to keep up an eager facade, to pay attention in class and to laugh when required, but inside him a new plan was taking shape. He would resign from the firm, he would fly to Switzerland, and he would take the job Wolfgang Kaiser had offered him.

Friday night, he broke the news to his fiancée. Anna Fontaine was a senior at Harvard, a dark-haired Brahmin from the crustiest section of Boston with an irreverent wit and the kindest eyes he’d ever seen. He’d met her a month after beginning his studies. And a month after that they were joined at the hip. Before moving to Manhattan, he asked her to marry him and she’d said yes, without hesitation. “Yes, Nicholas, I want to be your wife.”

Anna listened without speaking as he laid out his argument. He explained that he had to go to Switzerland to find out what his father had been involved in when he was killed. He didn’t know how long he would be away — a month, a year, maybe longer — he only knew that he had to give his father’s life an ending. He handed her the agendas to read, and when she had finished, he asked her to go with him.

She said no. Without hesitation. And then she told him why he, too, could not go. First off, there was his job. It was what he’d been slaving for his entire life. No one passed up a slot at Morgan Stanley. One in seventy. Those were the odds of nabbing a slot as an executive trainee at Morgan Stanley, and that was after you’d made it through college and business school. “You did it, Nick,” Anna said, and even now, he could hear the pride in her voice.

But all he had to do was look at the agendas to know he hadn’t done anything at all.

What about her family? she asked, her delicate fingers interlaced with his. Her father had taken to Nick like a second son. Her mother couldn’t go a day without asking how he was and cooing about his latest successes. They would be crushed. “You are a part of us, Nick. You can’t leave.”

But Nick could not become part of another family until the mystery of his own was solved.

“And what about you and me?” she asked him finally, and he could see how much she hated to resort to her own attachment to convince him to stay. She reminded him of all the things they’d said to each other: that they were in it for the long haul; that they were the ones who really loved each other; friends forever, lovers who would die in each other’s arms. Together they’d take Manhattan. And he’d believed her. Hell, he’d believed all of it because it was true. As true as anything he’d ever known.

But that was before his mother died. Before he found the agendas.

In the end, Anna couldn’t understand. Or she just refused to. She broke off their engagement a week later, and he had not spoken to her since.

A sharp wind blew, mussing Nick’s hair and bringing tears to his eyes. He had given up his job. Shit, he’d even returned his seven-thousand-dollar signing bonus. He had cut off his fiancée, the one woman he’d ever really loved. He had turned his back on his entire world to track down a phantom lying hidden almost twenty years. For what?

It was at this moment that for the first time Nick felt the unalloyed impact of his decision. And it hit him like a sucker punch to the gut.

The number thirteen tram pulled into the Paradeplatz, metal wheels groaning as the brakes were applied. Nick climbed aboard and had the pick of the entire car. He slid into a seat halfway back. The tram started forward with a jolt, and the abrupt movement refocused his attentions on the memories of the day. The moment of utter panic when for one life-ending second he’d truly believed that in a matter of hours Peter Sprecher was going to stick him in front of the paying public; his being found in front of
Dokumentation Zentrale
, ostensibly lost; and worst, his unforgivable faux pas when addressing Wolfgang Kaiser informally in Swiss-German.

He pressed his cheek to the window and kept his eye on the brooding gray buildings that lined both sides of the Stockerstrasse. Zurich was not a friendly town. He was a stranger here and he’d better remember it. The jar and rustle of the tram, the empty cabin, the unfamiliar environs, all of it only bolstered his uncertainty while amplifying his loneliness. What could he have been thinking, giving up so much to come on this wild goose chase?

Soon the tram slowed and Nick heard the driver’s gruff voice announce his stop.
Utobrucke
. He lifted his cheek from the window and stood up, grabbing the overhead safety rail for balance. The tram stopped and he stepped outside, happy to be wrapped in the night’s cold embrace. His worries had bound themselves together into a prickly ball and taken refuge in a hollow basin deep inside his stomach. He recognized the feeling. Fear.

It was the feeling he’d had before walking into his first high school dance when he was thirteen, the dread that came from knowing that once you stepped into the auditorium you were putting yourself on display, and one way or the other you had to ask a girl to dance and just pray you wouldn’t be rejected.

It was the feeling he’d had the day he’d reported to officer candidate school in Quantico, Virginia. There was a moment when all the recruits were gathered in the processing hall. The paperwork was finished, the physical exams were completed; suddenly, the hall became very quiet. Every man in the room knew that on the other side of the steel fire doors, ten rabid drill instructors were waiting for them, and that in three months they’d either be a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps or a washout standing on a street corner somewhere with a couple of dollars in their pocket and a label that they’d never be able to erase.

Nick watched the tram recede into the darkness. He breathed in the pure air and relaxed, if only a little. He had given a name to his uncertainty and its recognition strengthened him. As he walked, he consoled himself. He was on an upward track. College at Cal State Northridge, the Corps, Harvard B-School. He had made something of his life. As far back as he could remember he had promised to pull himself out of the slime into which he’d been thrust. He had sworn to reclaim the birthright his father had worked so hard to give him.

For seventeen years these had been his guiding lights. And on this winter’s night, with a new challenge before him, he saw them more clearly than ever.

One week later, Marco Cerruti had still not returned to his desk in the Hothouse. No further word regarding his condition had been passed along. Only an ominous memo from Sylvia Schon that no personal calls should be made to the sick portfolio manager and the firm instructions that Mr. Peter Sprecher should assume all his superior’s responsibilities, including the attendance of a biweekly investment allocation meeting from which he had just returned.

Talk at the meeting had not centered on the ailing Cerruti. In fact, his condition was never mentioned. Since nine o’clock that morning, those present at the meeting, as well as every other living, breathing employee of the bank, had been talking about one thing and one thing only: the shocking announcement that the Adler Bank, an outspoken rival whose headquarters sat no more than fifty yards down the Bahnhofstrasse, had purchased five percent of USB’s shares on the open market.

The United Swiss Bank was in play.

Nick read aloud from a Reuters financial bulletin that blinked across his monitor. “Klaus Konig, Chairman of the Adler Bank, today announced the purchase of a five percent stake in the United Swiss Bank. Citing USB’s “grossly insufficient return on assets,’ Konig vowed to take control of the board of directors and force a repositioning of the bank into more lucrative activities. The transaction is valued at over two hundred million Swiss francs. USB shares are up ten percent in heavy trading.”

““Grossly insufficient return,”’ said Sprecher indignantly, slamming a fist onto his desk. “Am I losing my mind or did we not report record earnings last year, an increase in net profits of twenty-one percent?”

Nick peered over his shoulder. “Konig didn’t say there was anything wrong with our profits. Only with our return on assets. We’re not using our money aggressively enough.”

“We are a conservative Swiss bank,” Sprecher spat out. “We’re not supposed to be aggressive. Konig must think he’s in America. An unsolicited takeover bid in Switzerland. It’s never been done. Is he totally insane?”

“There’s no law against hostile takeovers,” said Nick, enjoying his role as devil’s advocate. “My question is, where is he getting the money? He’d need four or five billion francs before it’s all over. The Adler Bank doesn’t have that kind of cash.”

“Konig might not need it. He only needs thirty-three percent of USB’s shares to gain three seats on the board. In this country that’s a blocking stake. All decisions taken by the board of directors must carry by two thirds of those voting. You don’t know Konig. He’s a wily one. He’ll use his seats to foment a rebellion. Make everyone’s dick hard by bragging about Adler’s fantastic growth.”

“That shouldn’t be too difficult. The Adler Bank’s profits have grown at something like forty percent per year since its founding. Last year Konig’s bank earned over three hundred million francs after tax. There’s a lot to be impressed about.”

Sprecher eyed Nick quizzically. “What are you? A walking financial encyclopedia?”

Nick shrugged. “I wrote my thesis on the Swiss banking industry. The Adler Bank is a new breed over here. Trading is their principal activity. Using their own capital to bet on stocks, bonds, options; anything whose price can go up or down.”

“Figures then that Konig would want USB. Get his greedy hands into the private banking side of things. He used to work here, you know — years ago. He’s a gambler. And a canny one at that. “A repositioning into more lucrative activities.’ I can just see what he means by that. It means betting the firm’s capital on the outcome of next week’s OPEC meeting or guessing the next actions of the United States Federal Reserve. It means risk spelled in capital letters. Konig wants to get his hands on our assets to increase the size of the Adler Bank’s bets.”

Nick studied the ceiling as if figuring a complex equation. “Strategically, it’s a sound move for him. But it won’t come easy. No Swiss bank will fund an attack on one of their own. You don’t invite the devil into the house of the Lord, not if you’re a priest. Konig would have to attract private investors, dilute his ownership. I wouldn’t worry yet. He only holds 5 percent of our shares. All he can do is scream a little louder at the general assembly.”