Numbered Account (34 page)

The captain returned and took their orders. Mevlevi selected the Dover sole. Rothstein, a half-pound hamburger patty, well done, with a poached egg on top. He had been eating the same vile concoction for lunch and dinner for as long as Mevlevi had known him.

Maxim Andre Rothstein. German in name, Lebanese by upbringing, the rogue was as slippery as a sturgeon on ice. He had ruled over a major part of the gambling and vice in Beirut for as long as Mevlevi could remember. Certainly since well before his own arrival in 1980. Even at the height of the civil war, Max had kept the doors to his club open. No soldier would risk the reprisal of his chieftains should any harm come to Max or his girls. To ensure that such affectionate feelings were long-lived, Max had sent out teams of croupiers to all factions, determined to bring craps, roulette, and baccarat to soldiers on both sides of the Green Line. And, of course, to extract his cut from every wager.

In a time when nearly everyone in Beirut lost not only members of their family but a large part of their material wealth, Max Rothstein grew enormously wealthy. The presence of his well-attired bodyguards attested to the fact that the bastard had felt safer during the war than since its conclusion. And added to Ali Mevlevi’s growing insecurity at being alone and unprotected in the center of a city never more than a car bomb away from anarchy.

The two men chatted amiably about the host of problems that still befell Lebanon. Neither offered firm opinions. Both knew it was best for businessmen to express their allegiance to whichever faction was in power. Yesterday, Gemayel. Today, Hariri. Tomorrow . . . who knew?

A tray of desserts was brought to the table, and both men made their choices. Mevlevi took a chocolate eclair. Rothstein, the tapioca pudding.

Mevlevi took a bite of his eclair and after confessing his delight, lowered his fork and asked Rothstein a question. “Cars or camels, Maxie?”

“Run that by me one more time.”

Mevlevi repeated his question. He thought it wise to refer to his problem in metaphorical terms for the time being. That way should Rothstein grow upset, he could extricate himself diplomatically.

Rothstein looked to his table of bodyguards, then eyed the heavens and gave a whimsical shrug. “Cars,” he said. “I’ve never taken to animals. I don’t even have a dog.”

Rothstein’s retinue laughed dutifully. Mevlevi joined in.

“I have a small problem with my car,” he began. “Maybe you can help me.”

Again the weary shrug. “I’m no mechanic, but go ahead. What are you driving?”

“A beautiful machine. Dark body, clean, sexy lines, and what an engine. I bought it about nine months ago.”

Rothstein spread his hands and smiled sagaciously. “I know what model you’re talking about.”

“Now let’s say, Maxie, that I bought this car new.”

“Well, there’s new and then, there’s new. Sometimes new is new, and sometimes new is almost new, and sometimes new is—” Rothstein chuckled and threw up his hands, “well, sometimes new can be pretty old.”

“So what if the car that I thought was new was in fact old? Let’s say a trade-in. Maybe something you were selling for a friend?”

Concern blossomed on the wrinkled face. “Would I sell you, one of my oldest customers, a used car?”

“Please, Maxie, it is no matter. That is not the issue today.”

“You having troubles with this model? Send it back. If it’s the one I’m thinking of, I could find another buyer in an instant.”

“I never send back what belongs to me. You know this, Maxie. My purchases are always final. What I no longer need, I discard.”

Rothstein ladled a spoonful of tapioca pudding into his mouth. Half dribbled onto his bib, half from his chin. He paid the mishap little mind. “Then what is the problem? Is she losing a little horsepower?” He laughed for the benefit of his coterie, and his four thugs joined in.

Mevlevi felt his patience slipping away. He tightened his grip on the hidden corner of tablecloth. “That is of no concern to you. Where did you find this car? The answer is worth more even than the car itself.”

A thick envelope was passed across the table. In it was a stack of one hundred one-hundred-dollar bills. Rothstein inserted a thumb and eyed the bills.

“Ali, I took this car in as a favor to an old friend. The friend told me the car needed a home. A place where she might get the attention she deserved. High-class, you get my drift. The car required a single owner. Definitely not a rental.”

“A fine idea,” said Mevlevi. “But there are not many gentlemen, even among us, who can afford such a car.”

“A few,” said Rothstein cagily.

“Who might this old friend be who was so kind as to bring to you such an outstanding automobile?”

“He’s a close friend of yours. Not that I put my ear to the ground, but I believe he may be one of your associates. It’s only because you two know each other that I can tell you. After all, partners shouldn’t keep secrets from each other.”

“Ah, Max. As usual, you are a man of reason.”

Mevlevi leaned forward and listened as Max Rothstein whispered the name of the man who had brought Lina to Little Maxim’s. When he heard the name, he closed his eyes and willed his tears to fire. He had found his traitor.

Nick arrived at the entrance to Sylvia Schon’s apartment precisely at 7:30. He had traveled the same route only six nights before, yet since boarding the tram at the Paradeplatz he had felt as if he were making the journey for the first time.

Sylvia lived in a modern apartment building on top of the Zurichberg. An open field fronted the building, and a dark forest lay in back of it. It had taken him ten minutes to walk up the steep hill from the tram stop on Universitatstrasse. Do that twice a day and he’d live to be a hundred.

He pressed the button next to her name and waited for her to ring him inside. He had come directly from the office and carried his briefcase in one hand and a bouquet of colorful flowers in the other. He hadn’t planned on the flowers. The idea had popped into his head as he passed a florist on the way to the tram. Even now, he felt foolish holding them, like a teenager on a first date. Suddenly, his anticipation turned sour. He wondered who’d be standing in front of Anna’s door tonight with a bouquet of flowers. None of your business, he told himself, and after a moment his jealousy left him.

The door buzzed and Sylvia’s voice told him to come downstairs. Sylvia opened it immediately. She was wearing faded blue jeans and a green Pendleton shirt. She had her hair parted in the center. He thought she was trying to dress like an American. Her eyes passed from him to the flowers, then back again. “They’re beautiful. What a lovely idea.”

Nick fumbled for an excuse. He could feel himself blushing. “I saw them in a window. It’s not polite to arrive empty-handed.”
Not twice, that’s for sure
.

“Come in. Come in.” She kissed him on the cheek and relieved him of the flowers, then led the way to the living room. “Take a seat while I put these in some water. Dinner will be a few minutes. I hope you like peasant fare. I’ve made
Spatzele mit Kase uberbacken
.”

“That sounds great.” Nick ambled to the bookshelves and looked at a few pictures before sitting down. In several of them, Sylvia stood with her arm around a tall athletic blond man.

“My brothers,” she said, coming into the room with a vase full of flowers. “Rolf and Eric. They’re identical twins.”

“Oh, really,” said Nick. He was surprised to feel relief at her words. He’d been thinking more about her than he liked to admit. He strolled to the sofa and sat down. “Where do they live? In Zurich?”

“Rolf is a ski instructor in Davos. Eric’s a lawyer in Bern.” Her words were clipped and he guessed she didn’t want to talk about them. She set the flowers on the table. “Like a drink?”

“A beer would be great.”

Sylvia walked to the terrace and opened the sliding glass door. She leaned down and took a bottle from the six-pack. “Lowenbrau okay? Our own from Zurich.”

“Yeah, great.” Nick placed his arms on the cushions and settled into the sofa. She had a very nice apartment. The floor was polished wood, covered by two Persian carpets. A small dining nook led off the living room. Two place settings and a bottle of white wine adorned the table. He felt he was seeing her real side and he liked what he saw. He turned his head and looked down a short hallway. A door was closed at the end of it. Her bedroom. If it ever came to it, he wondered which Sylvia would show up in bed: the calculating professional he knew from the office or the casual country girl who had greeted him at the door with a kiss and a smile. The thought of either one excited him.

Sylvia came into the living room carrying two beers. She handed one to Nick, then sat down on the far end of the couch. “So are you enjoying yourself so far in Switzerland?”

Nick laughed, almost spilling the beer.

“What’s so funny?”

“That’s exactly what Martin Maeder asked me on Friday.”

“Well, are you?”

“Actually, I am. It’s a lot different than I remembered it. Better, really. I appreciate how everything runs according to schedule, how everyone has pride in their work — from the garbage hauler all the way up to—”

“Wolfgang Kaiser.”

“Exactly. We could do with more of that back home.” He took a sip of beer. Discussing his point of view made him uncomfortable. He wanted to hear about her. “Tell me why
you
came to the bank. Do you like it as much as you seem?”

Sylvia appeared taken aback by his question, at least the second part of it. “I answered an ad posted at the university, originally. At first, I didn’t think I wanted anything to do with a stodgy old bank. I was aiming more for advertising or public relations. You know, something glamorous. Then I was invited for a second interview, this time at the bank. I got a tour of the building, the trading floor, the vault. I never knew so much went on behind the teller’s windows. Look at what we in the finance department are doing. We manage over a hundred billion dollars in investments. We underwrite bonds that help companies grow and countries develop. It’s so dynamic. I love it.”

“Whoa, horsie! Remember, Sylvia, I already work there. You’re preaching to the converted.” He found her enthusiasm contagious and remembered that those were exactly the reasons he had gone to work for an investment bank on Wall Street.

Sylvia covered her mouth, embarrassed. “I guess I got ahead of myself. I suppose another reason is that there just aren’t many women in banking, even today. Not high up at least.” She leaned over the coffee table and picked up a sheaf of papers that Nick hadn’t noticed. “I got my itinerary for the States today. I’ll have to wait until after the general assembly to go, which will make my job harder. Still, it’s better than nothing.”

She handed Nick the sheet. He read it, and all the worries of business school recruiting came back to him. She would travel to New York, see grads from NYU, Wharton, and Columbia. Then she was off to Harvard and MIT. Finally she’d fly to Chicago to visit Northwestern. “That’s a lot of travel just to hire one or two graduates.”

Sylvia took back the itinerary. “We take finding the right personnel very seriously. That’s why you better stay. You Americans have to start setting a better example.”

“Don’t worry, I’m staying. Do you think I’d do anything to mess up your employee retention rate?”

“Devil!” She slapped his leg playfully, then stood up and announced that she had to finish preparing dinner.

Ten minutes later, their meals were on the table. Golden brown bite-size dumplings covered with melted Swiss cheese and sprinkled with paprika. Nick ate heartily, thinking he hadn’t tasted anything so good since he’d arrived over six weeks ago. He prodded Sylvia to tell him about her childhood. At first she was a little shy, but once she got started her reticence vanished. She had grown up in Sargans, a small town eighty kilometers southeast of Zurich. Her father ran the local railway station. He was a prominent member of the community. A pillar of civic virtue, she called him. He had never remarried after his wife’s death. Sylvia had taken care of the household, assuming complete responsibility for the raising of her younger brothers.

“Sounds like you were close,” said Nick. “You were lucky.”

“We were miserable,” she blurted, then laughed. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Why were you so miserable?”

Sylvia put her hands in her lap, bunching up her napkin, and stared at Nick as if deciding whether his interest was earnest or just flattery. She looked away from him, then said, “My father was a difficult man. He spent his whole life working for the railway, so everything had to be perfectly organized — just like a train schedule — or he wasn’t happy. I think that’s why he never got over losing my mother. He hadn’t approved it. God hadn’t asked whether he could take her from him. You can imagine who bore the brunt of his discontent. Me. Mostly it was because he didn’t know how to handle a little girl.”

“What’d he do?”

“Oh, he wasn’t a bad man. He was just very demanding. I had to get up at five to fix his breakfast and prepare a sack lunch. Then, of course, there were the twins, who were four years younger than me. I had to get them up and out the door in time for school. That’s a tall order when you’re nine years old. When I look back on it, I don’t know how I did it.”

“You were strong. You still are.”

“I’m not sure if that’s a compliment.”

Nick smiled. “I was the same way. After my dad died, I always felt like I had to catch up. I worked hard in school. I tried to be the best at everything I did. Sometimes at night, I’d get out of bed, take out my books, and check if my homework was where I had put it earlier. I was scared someone had stolen it. Crazy, huh?”

“I didn’t have that problem. What I hated was having to be this perfect little family. Sargans was a small town. Everyone knew my father. Naturally we had to be on our best behavior. We couldn’t show that our life was any harder without having a wife or a mother around. Maybe I was the only one who wasn’t happy. My brothers had it great. I tidied their rooms, washed their clothes, helped them with their homework. They had a full-time servant.”