The Alex Kovacs Series Box Set

by Richard Wake

  I was telling some of this to Marc, and parrying his attempts to find out some details of the sex, when I sensed a hulking presence over my shoulder. Marc said, "Herman, Herman, sit down. Alex, this is Herman Stressel."

  "I don't mean to interrupt," Herman said. The accent was German, maybe Alsatian.

  "Please do," I said. "You can assist me in changing the subject."

  "Alex, I'm an old married man. Just a few details to warm my night."

  Herman said, "Maybe I should leave."

  "You're staying," I said. "Marc's nights are warm enough. Tell me about you. What do you do for a living? Are you German?"

  Stressel was indeed an emigre, a magazine publisher. I was worried I was going to have to watch my mouth, just as a matter of politeness -- because you never knew where people stood until you knew. This dance had been all the rage in Vienna before the Anschluss when you didn't know if somebody hated the Nazis or was ready to welcome them with a smooch. It was the same thing in this part of Switzerland, where -- emigres aside -- there were so many people with a German heritage or a love for German culture, and you just didn't know if that love extended to the maniac with the mustache. So you spoke carefully until one of you hinted where he stood, and then you took the hint. Delicate did not begin to describe the process.

  But Stressel wasn't 30 seconds into his abbreviated biography when he made a reference to "that shithead Goebbels," so we were going to be fine. Marc and I had done the Nazi dance the first night we met, and while he represented all that was proper and neutral when he wore his uniform, he could motherfuck Hitler with the best of them after a couple of pops. So it was going to be a relaxed evening.

  As it turned out, Herman left Germany in 1936. "I wasn't exactly one step ahead of the Gestapo, but I wasn't a mile ahead, either. I couldn't publish what I wanted, and I couldn't sneak enough of my true beliefs between the lines of what I could publish. They confiscated one of my editions because of a story where, if you looked only at the first letter of every paragraph, it spelled out "FUCK YOU ADOLF." Sophomoric, I know. And then there was a mysterious fire that would have destroyed my printing press if I hadn't been in the office late one night because I was fucking my secretary."

  He could see my eyes widen. "True story," he said. "We were both stark naked throwing buckets of water on the fire. But, anyway, that's when I decided to get out. Now I publish what I want here."

  "And what about the secretary?"

  "Now she's my wife," he said. "True story."

  Marc had apparently heard the tale before. I caught him checking his watch and asked if anything was wrong. He said that Hildy, his 3-year-old, was sick with the croup. He wanted to get home and see her before it got too late.

  "Next month," he said, gathering his coat and his hat. "And then, I want details. No excuses accepted."

  10

  I offered Herman my bare-bones biography, leaving out the spying part and the business about how I came to be running Bohemia Suisse. If you don't know all the details, the story is a little bit thin. Seriously, how does a traveling salesman from a Czech magnesite mine suddenly find himself parachuted into Switzerland as the president of a private bank? Most people, though, just let it go, either because they weren't listening, or they didn't care, or if they did care, they didn't want to get involved. Because that was one thing about the Swiss -- they were buttoned-up tight, and that was true, but the melange of cultures and languages and the emphasis on banking and money seemed to leave everyone with a secret or two.

  Herman, though, was less complicated, and he saw through my story. Or, as he said, "Do people actually believe that bullshit when you tell them?"

  I tried to act offended, then confused by his question. He literally laughed in my face.

  "I'm a lot of things," he said. "But I'm not a fucking idiot. You're connected, somehow, and you're going to tell me."

  "And why would I do that?" I said.

  "Because we're both half-drunk, on the way to three-quarters. And because I already told you my true story, and you owe me."

  For some reason -- because I was, indeed, half-drunk, and because he was a friend of Marc's -- I trusted Herman. But I offered a caveat.

  "Marc doesn't know, and you can't tell him," I said.

  He agreed. And I told him the story -- again, not all of it, but enough. I told him I was a courier for the Czechs. I didn't tell him I tried to kill a Gestapo captain and ended up in a tribunal in front of Rudolf Hess, the deputy Fuhrer. I told him that I was forced to flee Austria after the Anschluss and that the Czechs sent my friends and me here as a favor. I didn't tell him that I was still working for Czech intelligence. That seemed not to matter.

  "So you're still spying?" he asked.

  "No," I said.

  "So they set you up with a plush job as a bank president because they're swell people who were doing you a solid?" he asked.

  "Yes," I said.

  "I know that's bullshit and you know that's bullshit, but I like you, so I won't embarrass you by pressing for any more details. At least for a while."

  I drank and thought for a second. The story really was pretty thin. Finally, I said, "Do you think Marc knows?"

  "I'm sure if he doesn't know, he suspects. But he's more polite than I am."

  We started talking about Hitler and Poland and what might be next. I had opinions. Herman had opinions. But as we kept drinking, and I kept working harder and harder to listen to what he was saying, it suddenly struck me that he was offering military details that were interlaced within the opinions. Finally, I stopped him and repeated back a statement he had just made about the thickness of the armor on some such model of a Panzer tank.

  "Twenty millimeters on the sides, huh?" I said. "So now who's the fucking spy?"

  "I'm not a spy. But I do continue to have, shall we say, sources of information within the German military establishment."

  "That makes you a spy."

  "Only if I covertly give the information to a foreign government, which I have not done. I am merely a humble reporter."

  "Do you write this stuff?"

  "A little. Enough so that serious people know I'm a serious journalist -- it helps sell the magazine, and my wife and I do need to eat. But I don't print enough to get us killed in our bed while we sleep."

  "But have you been approached by anyone about getting more information?"

  "Now who's being nosy?" he said.

  I let it go, as we were both entering severe hangover territory and it wasn't even 9 p.m. For me, the decision was to leave now and have a chance for at least a somewhat productive day at the bank on Friday, or keep drinking and write off Friday as a sick day.

  I decided to get up and leave -- because I did have things to do at the bank, and because I didn't trust myself anymore to keep the few secrets I had remaining from Herman. I stood up to reach for my coat from the rack next to the table, and he grabbed my arm.

  "One more," he said.

  "I can't."

  "Then just listen. You might be interested. This is one I'm afraid to write -- partly because I don't have all of the facts nailed down, partly because I like living here."

  He stopped and read what I assumed was the quizzical look on my face. I hoped that my quizzical face was appreciably different than my about-to-throw-up-in-the-gutter face. Apparently, it was.

  "Just listen," he said. "I'm going to make a little speech here, so don't interrupt me."

  I belched. Herman continued.

  "We all know about the Swiss and their 'historical prerogative.' You know, their neutrality. They see it as some kind of divine fucking right or something, and, well, fine. They have their culture. They have their mountains to protect them. Fine. Even though there's a monster next door, fine.

  "But what is neutral? What does that mean? They seem to think it means that you don't help either side and you keep doing business, at least a little bit of business, with both sides. Because they see that as their other divine fucking right
-- keeping the cash register ringing, no matter what."

  I was trying to follow what Herman was saying, but the fog had suddenly descended. He seemed to sense my predicament -- perhaps it was my mouth fixed wide open, or the permanent tilt of my head to the left -- and gave my arm a poke.

  "I'm with you -- promise," I said.

  Whatever. Herman talked faster.

  "So the Swiss see it as their right to keep doing business with the Nazis," he said. "What does that mean? Well, Nestle sells chocolate to the Wehrmacht, so that the boys can have a little sweet before they lob a few more shells into Warsaw. Fine. It would be embarrassing if I wrote it, but only that. It would be a little more embarrassing if I wrote that Hitler was getting at least a few of his anti-aircraft guns from Oerlikon-Buhrle."

  "A Swiss company? You sure about that?"

  "Pretty sure. But that's not the real story. I can live with that. I think France and England could live with that. War brings out the greed in a lot of people, and it isn't that big of a deal -- I mean, if they didn't get it here, they'd just get the chocolate from someplace else."

  I was more awake now. "So what are you talking about?" I said.

  He leaned in and almost whispered.

  "Gold," he said.

  Again, my quizzical face, apparently.

  "Look, you know Germany doesn't have sufficient resources," Herman said. "You know it first-hand -- you sold them that stuff to line their blast furnaces. They need iron, they need nickel, they need oil and food most of all -- you can't make war without them. Hitler needs money to pay for all of that. Most of the world won't deal with him. The neutral countries that will -- like, say, Portugal -- can't be seen as doing it. They can't take German gold, and they certainly can't take the gold the Nazis stole from Austria and Czechoslovakia.

  "But you know what?" Herman said. "They can take Swiss gold."

  Again, my face betrayed my ignorance.

  "Don't you get it?" he said. "The Swiss are laundering the Nazis' gold for them -- maybe the national bank itself. And that is much bigger than some chocolate bars. And stopping it could be the difference between crushing this asshole or not."

  11

  I was pretty sure I wasn't stinking of alcohol when I arrived at the bank at 9:30 the next morning, but that was the only hint I wasn't offering of my consumption of the night before. I showered and did my best, but my face still appeared as if it had been spanked with a shovel, and there was no remedy but time.

  I'm pretty sure Anders could tell. He grunted a greeting when he unlocked the door to let me in, which wasn't unusual, but it was the way he grunted. As for Marta, well, she was less opaque. Within seconds of me sitting down at my desk, she arrived carrying a tray that held a cup of coffee, a tall glass of water and a bottle of paracetamol. She didn't say anything, but she didn't need to. Her's was not a motherly concern. She pretty much dropped the tray on the desk in disgust, and I'm still not sure how nothing spilled. As it was, I nearly knocked over the water as I grabbed it with a shaky hand.

  My diary was carried closed and under her armpit. She opened it and said, "You have Herr Stern at 10, and then lunch at Veltlinerkeller with Herr Cronstadt at 12:30." With that, Marta was gone. If disdain left a stain, we were going to need to have the carpets cleaned.

  Cronstadt was from Kreditanstalt. He was offering me a sliver of the financing work on a municipal road improvement bond that was being floated by the city of Schlieren, just outside of Zurich. It wasn't a pimple on Kreditanstalt's ass, but it was projects such as this, doled out piecemeal to the smaller banks, that kept everyone in line. The deal would be done to Cronstadt's specifications, and I would be happy to be included in the grand Swiss money-lending ecosystem -- because a pimple on their ass was a big hill to me and the other small private banks. Kreditanstalt and Bankverein would use these deals, granting them as rewards for good behavior or withholding them to make a point. And if they did it just right, they would keep everyone financially sated, planets happily revolving around these dual suns, nothing to challenge the stable profitability of their world.

  The deal was already done -- not that I really cared, other than that it was essential for me to seem that I cared if people were to believe I was a real banker. The lunch was just a reaffirmative formality. And by 12:30, and with the accustomed glass of wine at lunch -- OK, maybe two -- the day would likely be brighter. But first, there was Stern at 10. He was another one of Kerner's "nephews”, here to make his first withdrawal, the first since Michael Landers was murdered. And I could feel the dread of this one in my head, my stomach, down to my bowels -- first what Herman Stressel told me the night before, now this.

  I could say that the stuff that Herman told me upset me so much that I couldn't sleep, but that would be a lie. I somehow got back to my flat, passed out on the couch in my clothes, and slept okay. My memory was a little fuzzy, though. I remembered that he had told me about the Swiss somehow laundering Nazi gold, but I didn't remember how or exactly why. I think he mentioned the national bank, but I wasn't sure. My overall sense was that it was something very big, though, if he could prove it. It was also something I should tell Groucho, although that would be my first unmistakable step, and I just didn't want to get back into the game.

  I kept trying to tell myself that, if I played it just right, I could maybe do this on my own terms. I could tell Groucho what I heard, but make up some shit about how it was all third-hand, and I didn't even know who I was talking to, and there was no way for me to contact the guy for more details or anything. What could he say to me at that point other than, "OK, thanks for the info, and if you hear anything else, let me know." So I would be in, and then I would be out, and there wouldn't be anything Groucho or his masters in London could do about it.

  Over and over again in my head went variations on this strategy, and repetition seemed to make them more plausible. That made me feel a little better, that and the paracetamol and the coffee. I was approaching human status when Marta rang my phone to tell me that Herr Stern had arrived. I told her to walk him back, which she did, closing the door behind her, leaving behind another stare of disdain.

  I think it was for the customer, though, another of the trust fund kids for whom she had no time. And he was a kid. I remembered wondering about his age the night I met them all and distributed the credentials that would allow them to make withdrawals if I wasn't around.

  "No offense," I said after we settled into facing wing chairs in my office sitting area, away from the imposing desk. "But how old are you."

  "Nineteen," Stern said, with all of the arrogance he could muster.

  "No offense, I repeat, but that's bullshit."

  "Almost nineteen," he said, the arrogance giving way just a bit, the eye contact disengaged for a second before reconnecting.

  This was another reason I wanted no part of getting back in. I was more than twice this kid's age. Besides the physical stuff that he could do that I could no longer do, if it came to that -- run, climb, whatever -- there was something else. He was too young to know what he was risking. He probably had nothing, so he had nothing to lose.

  The door of the office was closed, and the leather-padded walls were further protection against being overheard. Still, when we began to talk, I instinctively lowered my voice, just a bit, and Stern followed.

  "What's your first name again?"

  "Martin. Marty."

  "Are you OK, Marty?"

  "I'm a little shaken up -- we all are," he said.

  "Do you have any theories about why Michael was shot?"

  "That's the thing -- we don't. We have no idea. He wasn't into anything crazy, at least that we know of. And even if he was, it's almost like a gentleman's game here. Nobody gets arrested. Nobody gets deported. There's no fucking way anybody gets killed, but Michael did."

  "What do you mean, a gentleman's game?"

  "This doesn't go to my level or Michael's level," Marty said. "But the level above me, like Fritz Blum -- the spies all
know each other. They all drink in the same place in Bern. I've been there -- German spies at one table, Czech spies at another table, French spies at another table, Swiss cops at another table. They don't talk to each other, not really, not much more than a hello, but they all nod to each other and acknowledge each other and buy each other drinks. It's not a big secret. It's not supposed to be dangerous. Like I said, just gentlemen shuffling paperwork in the paperwork capital of the world -- but then Michael ends up dead, and we have no idea why."

  As it turned out, Marty had just finished up at the gymnasium. His parents wanted him to give university a try before taking over the family business, which was manufacturing nails in Winterthur. Or, as Marty said, "manufacturing fucking nails in fucking Winterthur," explaining that he convinced his parents to allow him to take a year off and live in Zurich. He found a job in a bookstore, where the ancient proprietor allowed him to live above the shop in a spare apartment. In exchange, he did all of the lifting and cleaning and watched the register while she napped after lunch. As it turned out, the bookstore was a place where the Czech spies passed messages. The proprietor was originally from Prague, and after he had figured out half of the story, she supplied him with the rest. He immediately wanted to join, and she was happy to have him.

  "But why?" I said. "It's not your fight."

  "Not yet," he said.

  "The Swiss will never fight."

  "The Swiss are fools if they think this doesn't affect them."

  "All they care about is doing business."

  "Well maybe that's the problem," Marty said.

  The arrogance was back in his eyes. I walked over to the desk and made out his withdrawal slip. I went out to the small cash window, which was more of an artifice than anything -- we could have kept a cash box in Marta's bottom drawer just as easily -- and got the money. Marta eyed me up as I carried the pile back into my office.