Numbered Account

Why then did he hate them so?

The afternoon saw his return to the trading floor. He took up his position at the elbow of Je

Five days before, Nick would have flushed with pride at Maitland's big score as if his own presence were responsible in some minor, inconstruable way for the sale. Today he viewed the commerce with a jaundiced eye, wishing to distance himself not only from his boss's dumping of ten million bonds ('fuckin' dogs," to quote Maitland, "real bowwows") but from the entire trading operation.

He stood as if to stretch and peered around him. Row upon row of computer monitors stacked three high ran what looked like the length of a football field in every direction. A week ago he had gloried at the sight, thinking it a modern battlefield. He had relished his opportunity to join the fray. Today it looked like a technological minefield, and he wanted to stay the hell away from it. Lord pity the robots who passed their lives glued to bank upon bank of microwave-spewing cathode-ray tubes.

During the long walk home, Nick told himself his disillusion was temporary and come tomorrow he would regain his appetite for work. But five minutes after setting foot inside his apartment, he found himself pasted to his desk scrabbling through his father's agendas, and he knew he'd been lying to himself. The world, or at least his view of it, had changed.

Nick went back to work the next day, and the day after that. He managed to keep up an eager facade, to pay attention in class and to laugh when required, but inside him a new plan was taking shape. He would resign from the firm, he would fly to Switzerland, and he would take the job Wolfgang Kaiser had offered him.

Friday night, he broke the news to his fiancee. A

A

She said no. Without hesitation. And then she told him why he, too, could not go. First off, there was his job. It was what he'd been slaving for his entire life. No one passed up a slot at Morgan Stanley. One in seventy. Those were the odds of nabbing a slot as an executive trainee at Morgan Stanley, and that was after you'd made it through college and business school. "You did it, Nick," A

But all he had to do was look at the agendas to know he hadn't done anything at all.

What about her family? she asked, her delicate fingers interlaced with his. Her father had taken to Nick like a second son. Her mother couldn't go a day without asking how he was and cooing about his latest successes. They would be crushed. "You are a part of us, Nick. You can't leave."

But Nick could not become part of another family until the mystery of his own was solved.

"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, A

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 a

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.