Джозеф Файндер - Extraordinary Powers

And for an instant I remembered the rainy evening of the gunfire on Marlborough Street in Boston, the tall, gaunt passerby...

It was him. My reaction time had been dismayingly slow, but now I was quite sure. It was him. The same man in Boston was now here, in Zurich.

“What?” Molly asked.

I turned back, continued into the bank. “Nothing,” I said. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

“What is it, Ben?” she asked, frightened. “Was someone there?”

But before she could say anything further, a male voice came over the intercom, asking us to state our business.

I gave my real name.

The receptionist responded, with the barest hint of deference, “Come in, please, Mr. Ellison. Herr Direktor Eisler is expecting you.”

I had to give John Knapp credit; he obviously had some clout around here.

“Please be sure you have no metal objects on your person,” the disembodied voice implored. “Keys, penknives, any significant number of coins. You can place anything for safekeeping in this drawer.” A small drawer now jutted out of the wall. We both divested ourselves of coins, keys, and whatnot, and placed them in the drawer. An impressive and thorough operation, I thought.

There was a faint hum, and a set of doors in front of us were electronically unlocked. I glanced up at a twin set of miniature Japanese surveillance cameras mounted near the ceiling, and Molly and I passed into a small chamber to wait for the second set of doors to open electronically.

“You’re not carrying, are you?” Molly whispered.

I shook my head. The second set of doors opened, and we were met by a young, plain blond woman, a little chunky, wearing oversize steel-rim glasses that would probably have been fashionable on anyone else. She introduced herself as Eisler’s personal assistant, and led us down a gray-carpeted corridor. I made a quick stop in the restroom and then joined up with the two women.

Dr. Alfred Eisler’s office was small and simple, paneled in walnut. A few pastel watercolors in blond wooden frames adorned the wall, and not much else. None of the decorating touches I had expected — no Oriental rugs, grandfather clocks, mahogany furniture. The director’s desk was a simple, uncluttered glass-and-chrome table. Facing the desk were two comfortable-looking white leather armchairs of Swedish modern design and a white-leather-upholstered couch.

Eisler was fairly tall, about my height, but somewhat portly, wearing a black wool suit. He was somewhere in his forties, with a round, jowly face, deep-set eyes, and large protruding ears. Deep lines were scored around his mouth, across his forehead, and in the furrow between his eyebrows. And he was completely bald, shiny-bald. Eisler cut an arresting if somewhat sinister figure.

“Ms. Sinclair,” he said, taking Molly’s hand. He knew who the proper center of his attention should be: not the husband, but the wife, the legal heir to her father’s numbered account, according to the provisions of Swiss banking law. He gave a slight bow. “And Mr. Ellison.” Eisler’s voice was a low, growly basso profundo; his accent was a mélange of Swiss-German and high-Oxbridge English.

We sat in the white leather chairs; he sat facing us on the couch. We made introductions, and he had his secretary bring in a tray of coffee for each of us. As he spoke, the lines that creased his brow deepened even more, and he gesticulated with his manicured hands in a manner so delicate, it seemed almost feminine.

He smiled tautly to signal that the meeting had begun; what was it, his expression asked, that we wanted?

I pulled out the authorization document signed by Molly’s father and handed it to him.

He glanced at it and looked up. “I trust you desire access to the numbered account.”

“That’s correct,” Molly said, all business.

“There are a few formalities,” he said apologetically. “We must confirm your identity, verify your signature, and such. I assume you have bank references in the United States?”

Molly nodded haughtily and produced a set of papers on which was all the information he needed. He took them, pressed a button to summon his secretary, and handed the papers to her.

Not five minutes of idle chat went by — about the Kunsthaus and other must-sees in Zurich — before his phone buzzed. He picked it up, said, “Ja?” listened for a few seconds, and replaced the receiver in its cradle. Another taut smile.

“The miracle of facsimile technology,” he said. “This procedure used to take so much longer. “If you would—?”

He handed Molly a ballpoint pen and a latex clipboard on which was a single sheet of Bank of Zurich letterhead, and asked her to write out the account number, in words — her numerical signature — on the thin gray line at the center of the page.

When she had finished writing the account number that her father had encoded so elaborately, he summoned his secretary again, handed her the paper, and chatted a bit longer while her handwriting was optically scanned, he explained chattily, compared with the signature card faxed from our bank in Boston.

The phone buzzed again; he picked it up, said “ Danke ,” and hung up. A moment later his secretary returned with a gray file folder marked 322069.

Clearly, we had passed the first hurdle. The account number was correct.

“Now,” Eisler said, “what precisely can I do for you?”

I had deliberately chosen the seat closest to him. I leaned forward, focused.

Cleared my mind. Took advantage of the moment of silence. Focused.

It came. German, naturally, a tumble of phrases.

“Please?” he said, watching me sitting with head bent and brow furrowed.

Not enough to go on. I had learned German, had gone through intensive language training in it at the Farm, but he was thinking too quickly for me.

I couldn’t do it.

I said, “We’d like to know how much is in the account.”

I leaned toward him again, tried, focused , tried to isolate from the flow of German something, anything I could understand, grab on to.

“I am not permitted to discuss particulars,” Eisler said phlegmatically. “In any case, I do not know.”

And then I heard a word. Stahlkammer.

Unquestionably, that was the word that leapt out at me. Stahlkammer.

Vault.

I said, “There is a vault attached to this account, is that correct?”

“Yes, sir,” he admitted, “there is. A rather sizable one, in fact.”

“I want access to it at once.”

“As you wish,” he said. “Certainly. At once.” He rose from his couch. His bald head glinted in the pinpoint lights recessed in the ceiling. “I assume you have the combination access code.”

Molly looked at me, signaling that she was out of her element.

“I believe it’s the same as the account number,” I said.

Eisler laughed once and then sat down again. “I really wouldn’t know. Although for security reasons we would certainly discourage our clients from doing that. And in any case, it’s not the same number of digits.”

“We may have it,” I said. “I’m quite sure we do — somewhere. My wife’s father left us quite a collection of papers and notes. Perhaps you can help us. How many digits are in the code?”

He glanced down at the file. “I’m afraid I can’t say.”

But I heard it, a few times, a number he thought but was defiantly not saying, articulating somewhere in the speech center of his brain... “Vier” ...

Four digits, did that mean?

I said, “Might it be a four-digit code?”

He laughed again, shrugged: this game is fun, his body language said, but now we are all through.