Numbered Account

It landed facing Nick. He looked down at it and grimaced. The photograph showed the corpse of a nude man lying on a silver table. The table was an autopsy platform in a morgue. The man's eyes were open, shaded a translucent blue. Blood ran from his nose. His mouth was open, caked with a milky froth.

"Stefan," gasped Wolfgang Kaiser. "This is my son."

" 'Course it's your son. Wiped out on heroin. Looks like he chased the dragon one too many a time. They found him here in Zurich, didn't they? That means the poison in his veins came from Ali Mevlevi. The Pasha. The holder of account 549.617 RR." Thorne pounded the coffee table. "Your client."

Kaiser scooped the photo off the table and stared at it silently.

Thorne continued, clearly unburdened by any sympathy for Kaiser. "Help me nail Mevlevi. Freeze the Pasha's accounts!" He looked to Nick for support. "Stop his cash and we can stop the drugs. Isn't that a simple suggestion? It's time we protect kids from the same stuff that killed your boy. How old was he anyway? Nineteen? Twenty?"

Wolfgang Kaiser stood as if in a daze. "Please leave, Mr. Thorne. We have no information for you today. We do not know any Mevlevi. We do not work with heroin smugglers. That you would stoop so low as to bring my boy into this is beyond my understanding."

"Oh, I don't think it is, Mr. Kaiser. Allow me to light the last couple of candles on this cake before I leave. I want to make sure you have plenty to think about over the next few days. I know about your time in Beirut. Four years over there, eh? Mevlevi was there, too. Seems he was setting up his operations around the time you arrived. He was a big shot around town, if I'm not mistaken. What I find curious is how you could have lived in the same town for three years and never met the man. Not once, you say. Excuse me, Mr. Kaiser, but wasn't it your job to beg for the scraps of the local gentry?"

Kaiser turned to Nick as if he hadn't heard a word Thorne had said. "Please escort Mr. Thorne from the premises," he said pleasantly. "I'm afraid we've run out of time."

Nick admired Kaiser's self-restraint. He placed a hand on Thorne's back and said, "Let's go."

Thorne spun to knock the hand away. "I don't need an escort, Neumann, thanks all the same." He pointed his finger at Kaiser. "Don't forget my offer. A little information on Mevlevi is all that's required or else I'll take your whole damned bank down with you standing at the wheel. Is that clear? We know all about you. Everything."

He walked away from the Chairman, and as he passed Nick, he smiled and whispered, "I'm not through with you, young man. Check your mail."

As soon as Thorne had gone, Rita Sutter swept into the office, her dignified bearing restored. "That man is a beast. Why, the nerve…"

"Everything is all right, Rita," said Kaiser, who looked pale and shrunken. "Would you be so kind as to bring me a cup of coffee and a Basel Leckerei."

Rita Sutter nodded in response to the command, but instead of leaving, came a step closer to the Chairman. She placed a hand on his shoulder and asked tenderly, "Gehts? Are you all right?"

Kaiser lifted his head and met her eyes. He shook his head slightly and he sighed. "Yes, yes, I'm fine. The man brought up Stefan."

She scowled, patting Kaiser on the shoulder, then walked out of the room.

When she had left, Kaiser straightened his shoulders, regaining some of his martial bearing. "You mustn't believe the lies Thorne is spreading," he said to Nick. "He's a desperate man. Clearly he'll stop at nothing to capture this man, this Mevlevi. Is it our job to be a policeman? I hardly think so."

Nick cringed at hearing Kaiser fall back to the Swiss banker's standard defense. To his ears, it was a startling admission of the bank's complicity with the heroin dealer, Ali Mevlevi.

"Thorne has nothing," Kaiser was saying, his voice grown vigorous once again. "He's flailing his sword in the wind, hoping to chop down anything he comes in contact with. The man is a menace to the civilized business world."

Nick nodded his head in understanding, thinking how odd life's random and symmetrical balance could be. He had lost his father. Kaiser had lost his only son. For a moment he wondered if Kaiser had desired his arrival in Zurich more than he himself had.

"I'm sorry about your son," he said softly, before leaving the room.

Wolfgang Kaiser did not acknowledge the condolence.

CHAPTER 28