Steve Martini - The Enemy Inside

“Have you already had dinner?”

“No.”

“Why don’t we talk over dinner?”

Harry nods, gestures with his hand like he’s drinking from a glass. My partner is offended that I lied to the man about a job. But he has no difficulty at all plying him with liquor.

“There’s a very nice restaurant here on the second floor. Why don’t we meet there, say seven o’clock?”

“Ya, good,” he says.

I give him my name. As he writes it down I tell him to have the front desk call me when he arrives and we’ll meet him in the lobby.

“Good. See you at seven,” and he hangs up.

“He’s gonna be angry when he finds out there’s no job,” says Harry.

“What else could I say? If I told him how I came by his business card and what happened to Graves he’d hang up in my ear and run. Your job is to keep his glass full.”

“My kind of work. It is, after all, a business deduction,” says Harry.

“I go away for five days and the entire damned world falls apart,” said the Eagle. He was talking to one of his lieutenants from his hotel in Manila in the Philippines. He had one more piece of business to attend to before returning to the States. “What happened?”

“We don’t know. Our people located them. There was a shootout, a lot of damage, blood at the scene, but no bodies. And everybody disappeared.”

“What do you mean, they disappeared?”

“Our people never called in. It’s pretty clear they’re dead.”

“Who did it?”

“We have to assume the P.I. The one with Ives.”

“Was he armed?”

“We don’t know. Mexican police have the building all cordoned off. But according to reports, they found no one inside.”

“What about satellite surveillance? Don’t tell me that you weren’t watching in real time?”

“We were,” said the man, “but there was a problem. Too much smoke. The CS gas clouded out the overhead cameras. And the pavement was too hot to pick ’em up on the thermal. All we saw was a lotta smoke and white light. A white van raced into the lot in front of the place. We lost it in the smoke for maybe a minute, minute and a half. When it popped out again it was doin’ like ninety out of town headed south down the highway.”

“And you didn’t follow it?”

“We did. That’s how we know our people are probably dead. The van stopped along the coast and dumped what looked like two bodies in the ocean.”

“Who were they?”

“Johnson and Hayes.”

“Andy?”

“Yeah.”

Andy Hayes was one of his most reliable operatives. Special Forces trained, he had at one time been part of the army’s Delta Force unit headquartered at Fort Bragg. It had cost the Eagle a bundle to recruit him.

“We lost the van in a parking garage down the coast. They pulled in and never came out,” said the guy at the other end. “Musta had another car stashed. When we checked we found the van, broken windshield, dented front end, and a lot of blood inside, and no clue as to where they went.”

“That means whoever was in the van knew they were being tracked overhead,” said the Eagle.

“That ain’t the half of it,” said the other guy. “They’ve also gone dark at the law office in Coronado. Landlines are all out, cell phones down, and their link to the net, it’s disconnected.”

“What about the two lawyers?”

“They’re in Europe.”

“Where?”

“Switzerland. Lucerne.” The man would have told the Eagle that they had ’em covered, but he didn’t dare. Instead he said, “We brought in assets from Libya. Two guys under contract. They’re very good. In the meantime we’re set up overhead. They checked into their hotel and haven’t emerged.”

“Those are narrow winding streets,” said the Eagle. “I know that town. A lot of ancient buildings with a dozen ways in and out. Do you know what they’re doing there?”

“No.”

The Eagle could guess. It was clear that they had some kind of a lead. Who or what it was, that was the question. “You’re going to lose them on the satellite. You do know that?”

“Our people will be on the ground in less than an hour. We brought ’em in through Diego Garcia the minute we found out where they were headed. From there to Zurich. Then we chartered a chopper. We wired them photos of the two lawyers and the name of the hotel.”

“They know what to do?”

“Yes.”

“I hope they do a better job than the crew in Mexico,” said the Eagle, and he hung up. He checked his watch. He was already running late for his meeting at the white gingerbread structure on the Pasig River downtown-the Malacañang Palace.

Privacy is the main rule. It is as old as the industry in Switzerland. And unlike other restricted relationships, the lawyer-client, the priest ah. . what is the word in English?”

“Penitent?”

“Ya, that’s it. Unlike those, violation of bank secrecy is a serious crime with large fines and prison in Switzerland. Unlike the movies, there is no total anonymity. To open an account you must identify yourself, produce a passport if you are not a citizen, and the account number is attached to your name.”

“Here, have another drink,” says Harry. “Let me fill that mug.”

Simon Korff pushes the stein across the table, his fist the size of a sledgehammer gripped tightly around the handle. He has a smile on his red face, cheeks with so many tiny broken blood vessels they look like ground beef. He is a prototypical German; you could put his smiling face and naked body on a poster and children would instinctively dress him in lederhosen. A large man, rotund, probably blond at one time, what little hair he has left has now turned gray. He is older than what I might have pictured. I am guessing late sixties.

“Not even the Swiss government can get this information except in special cases.”

Harry lifts the pitcher of dark lager with both hands and fills the stein almost to the brim. “There you go.”

“You are a good host,” says Korff.

“I like to listen to what you have to say.” Harry lifts the nearly empty pitcher, taps the glass with his finger as he looks at the waiter to bring another.

We have been here a little over two hours. Four pitchers of beer, enough food to feed an army, and Korff is still sitting upright lecturing us on banking. Strangely enough, he hasn’t asked a single question about the supposed job offer.

“You say the government cannot even get this information?” I ask.

“No. No. NO!” He grips the stein in one hand and waves his finger in front of his nose with the other. “Only if there are serious crimes,” he says.

“For example?”

“Money laundering, drugs, evidence of organized crime. It used to be that even for tax evasion the government could not find out who had what on deposit. Now,” he says, “that has all changed.”

“In what way?” I ask.

He takes another large gulp from the stein and wipes his mouth on the back of his shirt sleeve. “Well, tax evasion was not a crime in Switzerland. At least not a serious crime. It was what you call, umm. .” He searches for the term.

“A misdemeanor?” says Harry.

“That’s the word.”

“I’m beginning to like this country,” says Harry.

“Anyway. Because it was not a serious crime in Switzerland, other governments could not pursue their citizens for tax evasion on money deposited here. The Swiss government would not cooperate with them. Now that has all changed.”

“Go on,” I say.

“Your government has caused a lot of problems,” he says. “Hurt the banks. People lost jobs. All because they want the money.” He takes another drink.