Numbered Account

He had never in his life borne witness to so horrific a sight. He winced at the memory of the smell: the rank odor of a hundred midnight laboratories. He shut his eyes against the recollection of the pale bodies drifting in the pool. He covered his ears to muffle the laugh. Mr. Mevlevi howling with glee as poor Marco fainted.

Cerruti sat up in his bed for the second time that night. Perhaps Thorne was right. Perhaps Mevlevi did have to be stopped. The guns, the pool, heroin, too, according to the DEA. What more did he need to recognize a villain?

Cerruti clutched the sheets to his chin as the nightmare returned. The black water. The demons lurking just beyond the periphery of his vision. He couldn't go back to sleep with the dream awaiting him. Instead, he rocked gently back and forth moaning "Suleiman's Pool." He repeated the words like a mantra. Suleiman's Pool. Switzerland had a law for just such a situation. And even though it remained more or less untested years after its inclusion in the country's legal tomes, he knew that no one qualified more aptly as "a client whose activities lead the employee to infer illegal business practices" than Mr. Ali Mevlevi.

Cerruti drew in several deep breaths. Tomorrow morning he would call Mr. Thorne and show him the papers that sat in his desk. He would turn over evidence of the Pasha's accounts at the United Swiss Bank and confirmations of the transfers made twice each week. He would help the international authorities bring the scoundrel Mevlevi to justice.

"No, Mr. Thorne, I am not a criminal," he declared aloud to the silent walls, and then quietly to himself, "I don't want to go to prison."

Cerruti sat upright in his bed, proud of his decision. Slowly, though, the faint smile faded. He couldn't make such a momentous decision alone. Discussion was required. But whom could he share his feelings with at this late hour? He had no relatives, none at least who would understand such complex issues. Friends? None. Colleagues? He wouldn't consider it.

Cerruti lay in his bed thinking, and soon a damp sweat bathed his entire body. There was only one man with whom he could talk about this. The man who had helped him make so many of the major decisions in his life. Only he could help Marco rid himself of the nightmare.

For the second time in a quarter of an hour, Cerruti turned back the sheets and rose from his bed. He padded to the closet and pulled out a terry-cloth robe. He walked through the apartment turning on all the lights, stopping last in his small study, where he sat himself down behind his desk. He opened the drawer and removed a slim gray book- his personal phone directory- which he laid on his desk beside the telephone. His hand shook only a little as he found the proper page and located the number. He stared at the book, and though the apartment was heated to a mild seventy degrees, he began to shiver. For while he recognized the first number listed on the page, and had in fact called it on a hundred occasions during his long career, he had never called the second number. For emergencies, Marco, he heard the stentorian baritone tell him. For the closest of friends in the direst of times.

Cerruti pondered his decision- whether this was an emergency, whether it was in fact the direst of times- and when after a few minutes of this he found himself unable to fight back an onslaught of tears, he knew he had his answer.

At 1:37 A.M., he picked up the telephone and dialed his savior.

***

Wolfgang Kaiser picked up the phone on the second ring.

"Now what is it?" he asked, keeping his head on the pillow and his eyes closed. A dial tone answered noncommittally. Nearby, a phone rang again.

Kaiser dashed off the bedcovers and swung his feet to the floor. Kneeling, he grasped the handle of the bedside cabinet and flung open the door. A black telephone sat on a sliding drawer. His hand found the receiver as the phone rang once more.

"Kaiser," he announced in a gruff tone.

"Please engage now." A command.

Kaiser pressed a transparent cube on the base of the special phone, engaging the Motorola Viscom III Scrambler. Static tickled his ear. The line bulged with white noise. A moment passed and the line regained its clarity.

"Kaiser." This time he spoke quietly, deferentially.

"I will be arriving in two days," said Ali Mevlevi. "Make the usual arrangements. Eleven A.M. Zurich Airport."

Kaiser placed the phone on his left shoulder, using his right hand to cover the mouthpiece. "Out," he hissed to the lump on the far side of his bed. "Go to the bathroom, shut the door, and turn on the bathwater. Now!" He removed his hand from the phone. "Eleven A.M.," he repeated. "Unfortunately, I cannot be there to welcome you."

"I would not dream of disturbing the day of such an influential man. I hope I am not disturbing your night." A hoarse laugh.

Kaiser pressed the phone against his chest and grunted at the form next to him, "Hurry up. Raus!"