Numbered Account

"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 fiancee, 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.

CHAPTER 4

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.