Numbered Account

Nick escorted Se

Nick's mind rocketed to the sheet of paper that waited on his desk: the Internal Account Surveillance List. What about every other client who had put his trust in the bank? he asked himself. Didn't they also depend on the bank's guarantee of confidentiality? In a country where absolute secrecy was a bank's defining characteristic, trust meant everything. Surely, Wolfgang Kaiser would not take exception to that sentiment. What had he said to the collected bankers after Sterling Thorne's remarks? "… while Mr. Thorne may search far and wide for his rogue males, he shall never find what he is looking for within the walls of the United Swiss Bank."

Why wouldn't Thorne find them? Because they didn't exist? Or because Kaiser would do everything within his power to prevent their discovery?

Nick reached the bank of elevators and pressed the call button. He could see Hugo Bru

Nick stepped into the elevator and punched his floor. Don't worry about six years down the road, he told himself. Worry about today. The Pasha's account number is on the bank's Internal Account Surveillance List. He heard Peter Sprecher's voice telling him to "mind the consequences. To the bank. And to yourself."

The uncovering of the Pasha as a criminal pursued by the DEA would not portend well for USB. It didn't take a genius to figure that one out. Just the suggestion of a relationship would send the press into a feeding frenzy. An actual investigation would tarnish USB's precious public image, regardless of the results. Given Klaus Konig's a

Nor could Nick's career.

He could hardly expect a promotion for turning in the Pasha, even if technically he was complying with the bank's directives. On the contrary. Turn in the Pasha and he could expect a lateral move to an eminent position in office supplies management. See how far he'd get with his investigation then.

The Swiss did not lionize the whistle-blower. Eight years ago, in an unprovoked fit of morality, the government had amended its legal tomes to allow any banker to report, without recourse to his superior, acts of an illegal nature he had witnessed during the hours of his employ. In those eight years, hardly more than a dozen individuals had noticed an act of criminal intent or questionable nature that necessitated a call to the authorities. The grand majority of the one hundred seventy thousand employed by the Swiss banking industry chose to remain comfortably silent.

Such a statistic spoke volumes on the politics of the Swiss people but did not begin to describe the reasons that cold-fired in Nick a notion toward willful disobedience. Those reasons could be found in the pages of his father's calfskin agendas, now lying less than two miles away on a top shelf in his small apartment. The agendas had given Nick a way to account for the vagaries of a turbulent life, to say "the Fall" did not come because of a random act of violence. The words were brief, terse even- Bastard threatened me! I must comply. Man is a crook, out and out- and they illuminated not only his father's miseries but his own, for Nick was unable to dwell upon his father's death without brooding on the consequences it had unleashed on his own life. The shuttling from town to town. The new schools every five months- ten in six years, if you wanted to count. The battles to ingratiate himself with a revolving slate of classmates, the constant efforts at fitting in, until one day he just gave up and decided that he didn't need any friends.

The drinking came later, and it was the worst. His mother wasn't a loud drunk. She was the other kind. The teary-eyed lush content to sip one cocktail after the other. By nine in the evening she'd have a dozen stiff ones under her belt, maybe more. He'd need a crane to get her out of the BarcaLounger and into bed. Even now Nick wondered how many teenagers had put their mother naked under a cold shower. How many had made sure she had two aspirins each morning with her coffee? And how many had tucked a fresh bottle of Visine into her handbag before she went off to work so that maybe she'd last another day without being fired?

The Internal Account Surveillance List was his chance, then. A skeleton key to the unlit corridors of the bank. The question was how to use it.

The elevator jostled unevenly on its run between floors, and Nick's mind confronted another issue. What about Thorne? asked a crusading voice he thought long dead. What about his mission to arrest the major players in the international drug trade?

Screw Thorne, he answered. Let him pursue his rogues' gallery of drug supremos and narcotraficantes, but goddamn it, not on my watch. As far as Nick was concerned all government agencies- the CIA, the FBI, the DEA, the whole rotten bunch- operated on some hopelessly stilted agenda. They were motivated as much by the self-serving and entirely human aspirations of their leaders as by a legitimate desire to remedy societal ills. To hell with them all.

Nick returned to his desk at five minutes before three o'clock. The office seemed u

Nick tapped his pen on the Internal Account Surveillance List. He had been neglecting his duties for most of the day. To divert his thoughts, or maybe to focus them more clearly, he took out the two modification of account information forms he had filled out that morning and began making the necessary additions. A valiant trumpet sounded the charge from an imaginary battlefield. He recognized the Chairman's air. A call to arms.

Nick hazarded a weak smile and glanced up to the clock. 14:59. And then it was done… 15:00. He slid open his top drawer and withdrew a green transfer of funds sheet and a black pen. He laid down both in front of him, sure to cover Schweitzer's surveillance list, and began counting. One… two… three. He could practically feel the pulses of compressed light firing through the fiber-optic cables. Four… five… six.

The phone jumped in front of him. Nick stared at the flashing light. The phone rang again. He picked up the receiver and placed it firmly against his ear.

"United Swiss Bank, Mr. Neuma