by S L Shelton
A startled murmur rolled through the room.
“So that sort of security is guaranteed?” another asked.
“You misunderstand my meaning,” Edward replied, leaning forward. “We didn’t have warning of the impending collapse… We caused it.”
Stunned silence descended over the room.
“You see,” Edward continued, “we don’t believe in taking a passive role in altering the structure of society and government. We actively shape it.”
“Crashing markets is destructive and can’t be done every year,” the first man said, his New York accent revealing itself from behind his polished elocution. “If we can’t change the underlying policies, there is no hope of sustaining that tactic.”
“Quite the contrary,” Edward said with a pleasant grin. “If you look at the taxation trends on the upper tiers over the past forty years or so, you’ll see the process has already started. We are already paying a fraction in taxes compared to the post-war years, and any industrial and commercial infrastructure that had been created by the forced reinvestment of capital, due to that exorbitant tax structure, has already begun to reverse. Infrastructure is crumbling, and the middle class is shrinking.”
There were some nods of agreement around the table.
“Slowly in the eyes of the population, but rather rapidly for our needs, the burden of funding society has slipped more and more to the middle class, while we have simultaneously been sequestering capital away from the world’s economies,” Edward said. “The resulting drag on government programs, growing national debt, and resentment from the shrinking middle class is providing us all the momentum we require to continue robbing them of everything but what we wish them to have.”
“They are already fighting each other,” William added. “They are at each other’s throats, the middle class blaming the poor while they become poor themselves, and the poor having lost hope and representation, being starved into submission by the shrinkage of the programs that support them.”
“How do you propose we cement these actions once the bulk of the middle class has fallen into poverty?” another man asked, his southern accent clearly tempered by an Ivy League education. “Once they no longer have a ‘middle class’ to defend, they will turn against us as the poverty classes already have.”
“That’s why the organization exists,” Edward said as William sat next to Braun. “Over the last seventy years, we have become more sophisticated in our operations and the management of government. By the time the middle class has collapsed, all governments will be tightly managed by corporate global entities in some form or another.”
“Hell,” William said loudly from the back of the room. “We’ve already had a trial case of a corporation running for office…a congressional seat in Connecticut.”
Chuckles rounded the table.
“It was of course put down by the courts,” Edward added with a smile. “But rest assured, before we are halfway through this century, a corporation will be elected to political office here in the US. We already have control over most of the sensitive government services, having taken them over little by little since the first auto factory was commandeered to build tanks for the military. It will only be a matter of time.”
William sat as Edward continued to woo the collected billionaires. “Edward always was more suited for public speaking,” William whispered to Braun. “His softer nature makes him more likable.”
Braun nodded, grunting his agreement.
“You have news you need to share?” William asked.
“Yes, sir,” Braun whispered. “Wolfe was located in Antwerp. Mr. Harbinger is on his trail, and we expect resolution to the issue in short order.”
Spryte nodded and returned his attention to his brother. After a moment, he turned back to Braun. “How is Mr. Harbinger doing with the other operation?” he asked, too loudly for Braun’s comfort.
Braun leaned close. “Everything is in place,” he whispered. “We’ll be getting confirmation on the schedule any day now.”
Spryte nodded again. “Excellent. I can’t help but feel optimistic about this. The resulting power vacuum should be quite easy to manage once the obstacles are removed.”
“Yes, sir,” Braun replied, looking nervously in front of him, worried about Spryte’s brazen candor in front of outsiders.
One of the billionaires at the table had inclined his head toward William Spryte and Braun ever so slightly…eavesdropping.
Spryte leaned toward Braun again. “Do we have—”
“I’m sorry, sir,” Braun said, rising quickly and grabbing his phone. “I have to take this.”
Spryte pressed his lips tightly as Braun walked past him to the door.
Braun looked over his shoulder to address Patrick, who was now following him. “Get the car,” he said quietly. “We have to make a few visits.”
“Yes, sir,” Patrick replied before turning down a connecting hallway.
“You senile old bastard,” Braun muttered after his driver had disappeared. “Please don’t bring this down around my ears before I extract myself from your insanity.”
six
Monday, January 31st
12:10 a.m.—Zurich, Switzerland
It was my first time in Zurich. I couldn’t tell if it was a trick of the mind or not, but I could almost smell chocolate and money when we got out of the SUV at the hotel. I stopped and stretched as the valet hurried around to the driver’s side.
“Do you smell that?” I asked Kathrin.
She sniffed the air. “Cold,” she said, shaking her head. “That’s all I smell.”
I chuckled as the bellhop loaded our things on a cart before the valet drove the SUV away.
I had been to other European countries and was always amazed at how unique each one was. In the US, it seemed that the cities were all cut from the same fabric, all with the same restaurants, banks, grocery stores, and department stores with few exceptions. It was as if all the mayors had ordered their cities from the same catalog, and then accessorized them with local flare—a local historical figure cast in bronze or cut from stone, a favorite eatery or prestigious old hotel scattered here and there so they could call it unique.
Zurich was distinctly Swiss. But more than that, it reflected the prestige of being, arguably, the world’s banking center. It was also one of the best places in the world to set up a shell company. The Swiss advertised their shell companies. You could barely read a newspaper without seeing an advertisement for “Vintage Trust Company For Sale” or “Established Swiss Shell For Sale”.
It made sense; in a country where you could bank privately with impunity, there was no need to hide your desire to cover your tracks. It was an environment created by a system of numbered bank accounts—no names required. It was perfect for hiding just about anything.
I hoped it wouldn’t be so successful that the source of the upstream funds would remain hidden from us.
Kathrin and I followed our luggage into the historic Schweizerhof Hotel, opposite the Zurich Hauptbahnhof—the city’s main train station. As soon as I stepped into the lobby, I felt severely underdressed. I was the only man in the lobby who wasn’t wearing an expensive suit—including the employees. Kathrin, to her credit, didn’t even seem to notice that she was the only person wearing military fatigue pants.
The women who passed through the lobby glared at her as if she were the singular cause of the collapse of modern society. She smiled and winked at them as they walked by, scowling at us. She was perfect.
“We were called in from a remote job unexpectedly and hadn’t the time or opportunity to pack appropriate attire,” I explained to the clerk as we registered. “Where might one purchase business attire nearby?”
He seemed relieved there was an explanation—if the two-millimeter rise at the corner of his lips was any indication.
“Bahnhofstrasse…the city’s main shopping district,” he said with a little too much arrogance for my taste. “There you will
find clothing for nearly any budget.” He looked at Kathrin out of the corner of his eye. “Regrettably, the shops will be closed until morning.”
I smiled. People are so funny.
“Thank you,” I replied and slipped him two hundred Euro bills. “For your trouble.”
“Thank you, Herr Stark,” he exclaimed, his demeanor suddenly shifting, “and please, sir, if there is anything else you require, don’t hesitate to ask for me personally. I am Franz.”
“Of course you are,” I muttered with a thin smile, but I nodded politely before turning to Kathrin. “Shall we?”
She lifted up on her toes and kissed me. “We shall.”
I had hoped arriving after midnight would give us a lower-profile entry, but the lobby and the hallways were buzzing with activity. I watched as well-dressed couples and individuals walked past, not doing a very effective job of hiding their disdain for our appearance.
“Accountant season,” Kathrin whispered to me after noticing my attention on the activity.
I nodded. “Ah. That explains it.” Rich people flying to Zurich to tend to their money at tax time.
Once in our room, I went to the window and drew the blinds closed.
“Why are we staying in this expensive hotel?” Kathrin asked as she dropped her bag in the middle of the floor. “And why are you using the Stark cover instead of the Noble ID you just picked up in Brussels?”
I smiled as I set my bag on the folding luggage stand in the corner. “The Noble ID is my exit ID,” I replied. “It’s my safety. And I picked this hotel for two reasons.”
I picked her bag up from the floor and set it next to mine. She shot me a crooked smile.
“First, this is a Swiss-owned hotel, not an international chain, so I don’t have to provide proof of who I am or even a credit card if I pay in cash up front,” I continued, drawing a dismissive nod from Kathrin.
“What’s the other reason?” she asked, grabbing her bag and dropping it to the floor again.
I chuckled. “We are hunting bankers,” I replied as I sat on the edge of the bed and extracted my iPad. “It wouldn’t be a believable cover if we were visiting banks and lawyers all day long but then came back to sleep in a hostel in the old part of the city.”
“I always stay in hostels,” she muttered.
“Welcome to the big league, baby… We get room service.”
I was glad she was holding her coat and not a brick, because she threw it across the room at me.
“Careful, or I’ll make you order from the kiddie menu.”
She jumped across the bed and tackled me, kissing me softly once she had knocked me over. “You American spies are so spoiled,” she whispered.
I laughed before reaching past her for the hotel phone to order some food.
Having caught her up on everything that I’d been working on during the drive to Switzerland, I was relying on her—and trusting her—to help me track down our new primary target. We pulled up the information we had available on ARG Banti and Mr. R. Loeff and ate the overpriced food that was delivered to our door.
“Give me the copy of the PDF from BKBV Privatbank that Storc sent you,” Kathrin said as she chewed on a veggie wrap, lying across the bed, propped up on her elbows in front of her laptop.
“You have Bluetooth enabled?” I asked, pointing at her computer.
She pressed two keys on her keyboard simultaneously and then nodded as she took another bite of her dinner. I opened my Bluetooth emulator, and it started scanning.
“Do you need me to look for a new device?” she asked.
I shook my head and grinned as my homemade spyware located her computer and then proceeded to hack an entry. “There you go,” I said after it achieved access and I had transferred the files. “It’s on your desktop.”
She sat up abruptly with a troubled look on her face and looked at the screen, confused. “Niiiiiiice,” she said after a moment. “Can I get a copy of that program?”
I chuckled as I returned to my research. “I’ll hook you up later.”
Despite my exhaustive search, I was unable to find any address other than the P.O. Box for a company called Banti or an individual named R. Loeff. I was about to message Storc and ask him to try hacking BKBV Privatbank’s admin systems to see if there was an e-mail or invoice for the messenger service they’d used to deliver the contracts, but Kathrin sat up and clapped her hands together.
“Got it,” she said.
I leaned over and looked at her computer screen.
“Racine Loeff,” Kathrin said. “Frau, not Herr.”
Through a simple web search, Kathrin had found an emergency services referral to the city morgue…dated almost two years earlier. Kathrin pulled the translation of the incident report up so I could read it in English.
2009-03-13 23:34
Emergency services called to residence. Adult male, 56. Heart attack. Karl Loeff. Deceased upon arrival. Caller Frau Racine Loeff, spouse. Disposition: Logged.
Notice: Every death in the City of Zurich must be reported to the Funeral and Cemeteries Office within two days. Deaths must be reported in person by a member of the deceased’s family or a person authorised to act on—blah blah blah.
“Excellent,” I muttered. Google saves the day again.
“Awww,” Kathrin moaned, sing-songy. “It’s not excellent. She lost her husband.”
“I meant—”
“I know what you meant,” she said and then pulled up the coroner’s log. “Here’s the address.”
“That’s on the other side of the city,” I said. “Do you want to go check the address now or get a couple hours of sleep first?”
Kathrin puckered her lips to the side, like a sideways kiss, as she thought about our options.
“Assuming banker’s hours for Loeff, we could head out around five o’clock or so,” I said. “We’ll have to find clothes after we find the office…if there is one.”
Kathrin grinned. “I could use the sleep,” she replied, seductively lifting one eyebrow. “We won’t see much in the dark anyway.”
I smiled back as I put my electronics on the floor next to the bed. “An early rise it is.”
As I settled back into the bed, Kathrin was already peeling her clothes off and tossing them to the floor.
“I thought you wanted sleep,” I said with a grin.
She crawled over the bed to me and began tugging at my shirt. “We’ll both sleep better…after,” she whispered softly and kissed my earlobe before tugging at it gently between her lips.
“You won’t hear me complaining,” I said as I lowered her to the bed. “Ever.”
**
5:32 a.m.—Zurich, Switzerland
Five o’clock in the morning had come quickly. We dressed in street clothes and departed the quiet hotel with barely a raised eyebrow from anyone. The only one who had seemed put off by our early departure was the valet who had to retrieve our SUV. A generous tip helped produce a sleepy smile on his bleary face.
A quick stop at a café for coffee and a few assorted breakfast items did little to shake the cobwebs from my head. And as we settled into our surveillance, half a block from Frau Loeff’s upscale neighborhood home, it wasn’t until after the first sips of coffee that Kathrin and I started communicating in anything other than exhausted grunts.
“Remind me again why we had to be here at five thirty?” Kathrin muttered after blowing on her coffee.
“We don’t know what time she leaves the house,” I muttered, my raspy voice not yet improved by my caffeine fix.
She replied with a hmph before taking another cautious sip. Back to grunting.
“I’ll watch,” I offered. “Go ahead and let your seat back. You can catch a few more winks.”
“Winks?”
“Get some sleep,” I said.
She nodded and lay back, letting the seat recline further than I had imagined it would. I let her sleep until six thirty, when a light came on and shone through an upstairs window.
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“Hey,” I whispered. “She’s up.”
Kathrin blinked, breathed in deeply, and then sat up, letting the seat follow. “What’s she doing?” Kathrin asked.
Just then, a second light went on, next to the first. Through the glazed glass, we saw a silhouette.
“Bathroom,” I said.
“If she goes back to bed after peeing, I’m going up and knocking on her door,” Kathrin said with a mild edge of bitterness.
I chuckled, prompting her to tap me on the shoulder with the back of her hand. She reached into my bag and pulled out my iPad.
“What’s the average early electronic funds transfer to the distribution banks?” she asked as the screen lit up her face.
I was about to close the protective cover when she pulled a coat around her and the iPad, blocking the light.
“Around 8:00 a.m. Zurich time,” I replied.
“So if she’s still in her pajamas at eight, we’ll know she works from home,” Kathrin said, her voice muffled under the coat. “Hey, what’s the password for your iPad?”
I looked over at the slim line of light that was peeking through her improvised blackout tent. But I didn’t answer. After a moment, she poked her head through and glared at me.
“You don’t trust me?” she asked with a sideways grin.
I reached under the coat and swiped my finger across the screen in the pattern to unlock it before returning my attention to the lights in the house. Kathrin continued to glare at me.
“What?” I asked after a moment of feeling her eyes burning a hole in the back of my head. “I unlocked it for you.”
A sharp breath of disgust issued from her nose as she pulled the coat back over her.
“I’d give you mine,” she muttered.
I smiled without looking.
After almost a half an hour of silence, disturbed only a few times by Kathrin reaching through her coat to take her coffee cup from the console, the upstairs light flicked out, followed by the downstairs lights coming on.
