Numbered Account

Nick stared at him intently. At his cold blue eyes, at his indulgent mustache, and at his limp arm that was buttoned to his left coat pocket. He recalled the first time he had met Kaiser, during his father's last trip to Switzerland seventeen years ago. Then, he had been terrified of him. The booming voice. The spectacular mustache. It had been too much for a ten-year-old boy. Now, seeing him surrounded by his peers, he felt proud of his family's association with him and honored that Kaiser had offered him a position at the bank.

Three men followed Kaiser into the room. Rudolf Ott, vice chairman of the bank (with whom he had interviewed in New York), Martin Maeder, executive vice president in charge of private banking, and last, close behind but a continent apart, an unknown gentleman, tall and reed thin, clutching a battered leather briefcase. He wore a navy suit whose stiff lapels cried out American- Nick should know, his own lapels were the same- and brown cowboy boots whose spit shine would have earned a long, low whistle from the toughest D.I.

Rudolf Ott called the meeting to order. He wore wire-rimmed spectacles and stood with the defensive posture of a man accustomed to ridicule. "As this bank's representative to the Association of Swiss Banks," Ott began, his Basler accent lending his words a nasal inflection, "I have in the past days met with colleagues in Geneva, Bern, and Lugano. Our discussions centered on measures that must be taken in light of current unfavorable winds, to avoid formal federal legislation mandating divulgence of certain confidential client information, not only to the office of the federal prosecutor but to a committee of international agencies. While the secrecy afforded our valued clients remains paramount to the Swiss philosophy of banking, a decision has been made to voluntarily comply with the demands of our federal government, the wishes of our citizens, and the requests of the international authorities. We must take our place at the table of advanced industrialized Western nations and help root out those individuals and companies using our services to spread evil and wrongdoing across the globe."

Ott paused to clear his throat, and a murmur rose through the assembled ranks.

Nick looked at Peter Sprecher and whispered, "Weren't we advanced and industrialized enough to sit at that table during the Second World War?"

"You forget," Sprecher answered, "during the Second War, there were two tables. We Swiss simply couldn't decide which one to sit at."

Wolfgang Kaiser raised his head sharply, and silence descended on the room with the finality of a guillotine.

Ott lofted a hand in the gangly American's direction. "The United States Drug Enforcement Administration has provided us with a list of those transactions which they define as 'suspicious,' and likely to be linked to criminal activities- in particular the laundering of money from the sale of illegal narcotics. To give you more detail about our proposed cooperation, I present Mr. Sterling Thorne." He turned to Thorne and shook his hand. "Don't worry, they won't bite."

Sterling Thorne did not appear unreasonably worried, thought Nick, as he watched the American agent face the assembly of sixty-five bankers. Thorne's brown hair was unruly and cut a little too long, as if to say he didn't belong with the pretty boys at headquarters. He had gunslits for eyes, and cheeks that in his adolescence had fought a battle against acne and lost. His mouth was small and weak, but his jaw could break a pickax.

"My name is Sterling Stanton Thorne," began the visitor. "I am an agent for the United States Drug Enforcement Administration, have been for near twenty-three years. Lately, the powers that be in Washington, D.C., have seen fit to appoint me chief of our European Operations. That means that today I'm standing before you gentlemen asking for your cooperation in the war against drug trafficking."

Nick recognized the type if not the exact model. Nearing fifty, lifetime in law enforcement, a civil servant masquerading as a latter-day Eliot Ness.

"Over five hundred billion dollars was spent on illegal drugs in 1997," said Thorne. "Heroin, cocaine, marijuana, the works. Five hundred billion dollars. Of that sum, roughly one fifth, or one hundred billion dollars, made its way up the food chain into the pockets of the world's drug supremos. The big guns. That's quite a sum to be traveling around the world looking for a safe home. Now, somewhere down the garden path a large chunk of that money disappears. Vanishes into a black hole. No individual, no institution, no country ever reports receiving it. It just ceases to exist en route to the narcotraficantes. Location unknown.