Steve Martini - The Enemy Inside

“I may not be much of an audience,” says Harry. “But I’ve been around long enough to know that it wasn’t the beer talking tonight. Sometimes life sucks,” he says.

“Yes, it does. But not always.” Korff lifts his head and wipes the tear away with his sleeve. “Sometimes you get lucky, as you have tonight.”

“How’s that?” says Harry.

“Because you see, there is another set of records.”

“What do you mean?” I look at him.

“I had to be sure I could trust you,” he says. “I am not the good person you think I am. I want my pound of flesh. The American PEPs used a broker. He would have his own set of files, account numbers, names, all of it. I assume he was a broker, at least that’s what I was told.”

“How do you know this?”

“Because I saw him. Everything about the way these accounts were handled was unusual. Normally an account is opened and funds are deposited, everything done between the bank and the client. No one else involved.

“But this, the transfer of all these accounts, the use of cash so that there would be no paper trail. To say nothing of the amounts involved. That and the fact they had such a short period of time to complete everything. That is probably why they used the broker. In fact, there were two of them. The actual broker and his lawyer. They were in the bank every day for almost two months.”

“Did you know them?” says Harry.

“No. They were both Americans, US passport holders. I know that. I was told that the broker was an acquaintance of Gruber’s president, that they had done business over the years, that the broker once worked for an American branch of a large Swiss bank headquartered in Zurich. They kept most of the staff at Gruber away from them, including myself. Only those in direct support had any contact.”

“Can you remember any names, anything about them?” I ask.

“You know, after he left, I thought about it, and I realized I forgot to tell your friend Graves about the woman, the lawyer. I only saw her a couple of times and always at a distance. I never heard anyone call her by her Christian name. They referred to her only as Fraulein Zerna.”

“You spell that with a Z?” says Harry.

“No. First letter S.”

“You mean Serna.” Harry looks at me.

“My English is not always good,” says Korff.

“Can you describe her?” I ask.

“As I say, I didn’t see her up close. I would estimate she was maybe. . a hundred and seventy centimeters in height.”

“In feet and inches?” says Harry.

He thinks for a moment, a quick conversion, banker’s brain. “About five foot seven in inches. She had short dark hair. Medium build. She spoke both English and Spanish. I remember that. Oh, and she worked for a law firm in Washington, D.C. I’m sorry I don’t know the name.”

“Well, we won’t be talking to her,” says Harry.

“Why not?”

“She’s dead,” I tell him.

“Oh.” Korff flashes a look at Harry, then back to me, weighs what is left unstated and says, “How did she die?”

“Officially?”

He looks at me and nods.

“An accident.”

“But you don’t think it was?”

“We know it wasn’t,” I tell him.

This doesn’t seem to surprise him. “I wondered,” he says, “how long it would take before this kind of thing began to occur. With that much money and these kinds of clients, it was certain to happen.”

“Why is that?” I ask.

“It’s the nature of the animal,” he says. “The thing about PEPs. They commit bad acts, they take money, and because of it they are highly vulnerable to extortion. It’s how they got the name ‘Politically Exposed Persons.’ Depending on the power they possess, there is a high correlation to violence. From what you’re saying, I take it then you knew these people, the broker and his lawyer? I expect that he is probably dead as well.”

“Do you have a name?”

“Yes,” he says. “Rubin Betz.”

I think about it for a moment and suddenly it all makes sense. The whistleblower. It was little wonder they had him locked up. It was probably the only reason he was still alive, that and the radioactive pile of information he had salted away.

The two Libyan mercenaries took turns watching from a rooftop across the river with a pair of 20×80 binoculars, powerful field glasses that brought everything up close. The location five stories up gave them a good line of sight through the windows along the second-story balcony into the restaurant.

They had located and identified the American lawyers earlier in the day from photographs soon after their quarry had checked into the hotel. In the evening the lawyers were joined by another man, an older European who arrived on foot. They saw him cross the wooden bridge and head toward the hotel until finally all three ended up in the restaurant.

The Libyans had been fully briefed on what to do. Anyone meeting and talking with the lawyers was in their cross hairs. But now they were getting stiff lying out in the open air on the cold hard roof. Whatever the three men were discussing, it was taking far too long to suit the Libyans out on the roof.

Finally the man with the field glasses observed one of the lawyers as he paid the bill. “Wake up. They are getting ready to leave.”

The other Libyan stirred, cleared his eyes, and started to get up.

“Wait.” They spoke in Arabic.

Across the river the three men got up from the table. They shook hands and walked toward the back of the restaurant, where they disappeared.

“All right. You know what to do?” The man with the field glasses looked at his partner.

“Yes.”

“I will stay and watch to make sure the other two go to their rooms. If they follow the old man I will call to warn you.”

“Good.”

“Check your phone. Make sure it’s on.”

The one holding the glasses said, “Go!”

The other Libyan scurried across the roof and clambered down a fire escape at the back of the building. There was no reason to hurry. He knew that the old man would cross the wooden footbridge moving toward him. All he had to do was get to the end of the bridge on this side of the river and wait.

He reached the ground, walked briskly toward the bridge, and checked his watch. It was after one in the morning. The narrow winding back streets of the old town were almost completely deserted. The shops along the way were all closed, the interiors dark. The open-air street vendors had long since shuttered the stalls, hauled away their perishables, and headed for home.

Occasional traffic could be heard on the four-lane auto bridge a hundred meters or so to the east, where the waters of Lake Lucerne flowed into the river.

The Libyan quickly found a position near the end of the wooden footbridge. He hunkered in the shadows near one of the closed stalls on the curving cobbled quay along the riverbank. He waited as he listened to the lonely whine of a motor scooter somewhere off in the distance as it shifted gears until it was swallowed by the silence of the night.

We left Korff in the lobby. He was a few sheets to the wind, uneasy on his feet. Still, for a man who had downed an ocean of beer, the fact that he was standing at all was itself an Olympian feat. We gave him some cash, three hundred Swiss francs, for his time, for the information, and to hire a taxi to take him home. Harry and I offered to go with him. But he said no. He took the cash, thanked us profusely, and headed to the counter to call the night clerk to get a cab.

Harry and I headed up to our rooms. European style, each of the adjoining rooms has a tiny bath with a shower and a window overlooking the river, comfortable but small and very expensive.