Numbered Account

Nick swung an arm around the windowless office. It measured eight feet by ten feet. Bookshelves covered two walls and a credenza the third. "What, this?"

"You know what I mean. The Fourth Floor. Working with the Chairman."

He knew exactly what she meant. "I guess I'm pretty lucky, but right now we're so busy I haven't had time to congratulate myself."

"Consider this a present to celebrate your promotion." She took the yellow folder from under her arm and tossed it playfully on his desk.

"What is it? Don't tell me. A questionnaire to be filled out in triplicate asking how I like my furniture?"

She smiled impishly. "Not exactly."

"A listing of every school I attended, days absent, and what I did for every summer vacation."

She laughed. "Now you're getting closer. Take a look."

Nick picked up the file and turned it sideways to read its title. United Swiss Bank, Los Angeles Office. Monthly Activity Reports 1975. "I should never have asked you to get these for me. I wasn't thinking of your position here at the bank at all. It was unfair and rude. I don't want you to put yourself in a bad spot for me."

"Why not? I told you I owed you a favor and besides I want to."

"Why?" he asked, a little louder than intended. He was afraid one day she'd help him and the next turn him in.

"It was me who was being selfish the other day, not you. Sometimes, I can't help it. I've worked so hard to get here that even the smallest bump frightens me." She raised her head and addressed him in a forthright tone. "Frankly, I'm embarrassed about my behavior and that's why I hadn't called you back. I thought about what you asked me and I decided that a son has every right to know as much as he possibly can about his father."

Nick appraised this providential turn of fortune. "Should I be suspicious?"

"Should I?" She took a step closer and laid a hand on his arm. "Just promise me one thing: that soon you'll tell me what this is all about."

Nick laid the dossier on his desk. "All right. I promise. How about tonight?"

Sylvia looked taken aback. "Tonight?" She bit her lip and stared directly at him. "Tonight would be wonderful. My place at seven-thirty? You remember where it is, don't you?"

"Deal."

A minute after she had gone, Nick stared at the place where she had stood as if her presence had been an illusion. On the desk lay a faded yellow folder with a neatly typed title, and next to it, a bin number and a coded reference.

All neat.

All proper.

And for the next twenty-four hours, all his.

CHAPTER 30

At the same time that Nick received the files from Sylvia, in a warmer location some three thousand miles to the east, Ali Mevlevi inched his Bentley along the rue Clemenceau, happy to be within shouting distance of the Hotel St. Georges, where he had been due for lunch fifteen minutes earlier. Ahead, the white porte cochere of the hotel beckoned as an oasis from the noxious exhaust that fleeced the center of town at midday. Beirut had grown so civilized as to boast a noontime bouchon equal to her more fashionable sisters of Paris and Milan.

Mevlevi tapped his foot furiously on the automobile's floorboard, exhorting the vehicles in front of him to progress another fifty feet so that he could offer his car to the hotel valet. Rothstein would hate him for being late. The proprietor of Little Maxim's was famed for his slavish devotion to habits long ago adopted. Mevlevi had practically begged to join him for his weekly lunch at the St. Georges. The memory of his pleading brought a sour taste to his mouth.

You did it for Lina, he reminded himself. To clear her name. To prove once and for all that she cannot be the spy cosseted in your nest.

Mevlevi gave himself up to the unmoving traffic, relaxing momentarily. He thought of Lina. He remembered the first time he had seen her, and he smiled.

***

Little Maxim's sat like a worn piece of clothing at the far end of Al Ma'aqba Street, two blocks from the waterfront. The place was done up like a seedy bordello on the Barbary Coast. Velvet couches and leather ottomans were spread throughout the room. In front of each grouping resteda glasstable, invariably soiled with the spit olive pits and spilled mezza of the party just departed. But if Max gave little attention to his furnishings, the same could not be said of his girls. Scattered about the room like loose diamonds on a mountain of coal were two dozen of the world's most alluring women.

That night, Mevlevi had wandered in around two, ragged from working his phones. He chose his usual table and had only just sat down when a slim Asian girl, lacquered pageboy and bursting lips, sauntered over and suggested she join him. He politely declined. As he declined a full-bottomed redhead from Tbilisi and a platinum man-eater from London whose oversize breasts were on display through a mesh blouse. He required not overwhelming beauty, not refined sexuality, but a carnal revelation: raw and primal. An atavistic reincarnation of primordial desire.

It was a tall order, granted.