The First Billion

An amused chuckle trickled through the slat. "Yeah, but not around here. We suspect someone's guilty, we put him in jail, then we collect the proof. Sometimes it takes a month. Sometimes a year. It depends. I wouldn't worry, mon ami: It's not us who wants you. It's your friends in America. The longest you'll be here is two months. They'll extradite you before then… unless, of course, you fight it. Now sit down and relax. I bring you a Coke, anyway."

"Just give me a phone."

The slat banged shut, and Gavallan slammed his fist against the door. Calm down, he urged himself. No one's going to find you guilty of a murder you didn't commit. Five minutes in front of a judge and you'll be free.

But he wasn't worried about himself so much as Grafton Byrnes. It was the fear of being trapped that rattled him, of being powerless to affect his friend's destiny. It was the stock dream of being chased down a street, your pursuers getting closer and closer while your flailing legs carried you nowhere. It was the terror of the silent scream.

In a little more than sixty hours, Mercury Broadband was set to go public. Kirov would get his two billion dollars. And Grafton Byrnes would have outlived his usefulness.

All Jett Gavallan could do was sit quietly and lament it.

***

It was a perfect day for golf. At 5 P.M. in Zurich, the sky remained a regal blue, not a cloud to be seen. The temperature had crested at a lovely 75 degrees. The air smelled of pine and grass, and occasionally of the lake a few miles below them. Hay, freshly cut and rolled, sat ready for pickup in the fields nearby.

On the fourteenth green at the Golf & Country Club Zurich, located in the quaint township of Zumikon in the hills above his country's banking capital, Hans-Uli Brunner, Swiss minister of justice, spent a second longer studying the line of his putt. Ten feet for a birdie. Taking a breath, he approached the ball, settling his feet a shoulder's width apart. He looked at the hole, then at the ball, then at the hole again. A birdie. On a two-handicap hole, no less, where he already got a stroke. Sink this one and the match was his.

He steadied his head.

He drew back the blade of the putter.

As he stroked the putter toward the ball, an ominous tune chimed from within his golf bag. The first bars of "Beethoven's Fifth." The blade met the ball askew and it sailed three feet past the cup.

"Damn it!"

Stalking to the fringe of the green, he unzipped his bag and answered the call. "Brunner," he said gruffly.

"Is that any way to greet an old friend? And all this time I thought the Swiss were so polite. A nation of innkeepers?"

Brunner looked back toward the pin, where his playing partners were scowling openly at him. "Excuse me," he called, a gloved hand cupped to his mouth. "An emergency."

Though friends of thirty years, the three players did not disguise their displeasure. It was against club rules to carry a cell phone on the golf course, though in Brunner's case, a grudging exception had been made.

Zumikon, as the course was referred to, counted itself the most elite golfing establishment in Switzerland. Accordingly, the rules of golf were worshiped with a sanctity accorded the Ten Commandments. No better proof could be found than the Englishman brought over each April on a seven-month work permit to serve as club manager, normally a retired military man with long golfing experience. Only an Englishman would do. He was their mantle of legitimacy, their direct link to the "ancient cradle of golf."

Brunner hurried a few yards down the fairway until he was out of earshot of his fellow golfers.

"Good afternoon, my dear fellow," he said with a smile, the frustration of his missed putt eons away. He'd recognized the voice immediately, and knew it might promise many good things. "What a pleasant surprise. How have you been?"

"In truth, better, Herr Minister. I'm calling on a matter of some delicacy."

"Go ahead."

And for two minutes, His Honor, Bundesrat Hans-Ulrich Brunner, member in high esteem of the seven-man council that served as Switzerland's executive branch, listened as his "close friend" outlined his problem and how he wanted it resolved.

"Geneva, you say. He's wanted for murder? Yes, yes, I can understand that you want to deal with this on your own. Get him back into your neck of the woods. Good idea. As it happens, I have some close friends in the canton. It will be difficult, but I may be able to arrange things."

"I hope the usual arrangements are acceptable?"

Brunner glanced back at the green. He thought of the missed putt, the heated expressions, the apologies owed. Surely he would have to buy the foursome drinks, maybe even dinner. A call on the fourteenth green. They would talk about it for days. "The usual" was hardly adequate.

"It is the weekend," Brunner explained, "and we are talking about Geneva." His apology was pained and heartfelt. "Alors, la Suisse Romande. These Calvinists… I'm sorry to say they are notoriously difficult to convince."