The Zurich Numbers

by Bill Granger

  “Cheeseburger,” Rita said.

  “Nothing,” said Devereaux.

  “Do you have a salad?” asked Mrs. Neumann.

  “No,” the waitress said.

  “Chili,” Mrs. Neumann said.

  She went away.

  Hanley put the briefcase on the table. Devereaux took it and slipped it under the table, next to his chair. “The money? Passports? Addresses.”

  “Levy Solomon picked Teresa Kolaki up this morning in Los Angeles. The black fellow is going back.”

  “You didn’t use your own phone.”

  “No.”

  “How does Levy feel about this?”

  “He likes it. The payment for him is in a separate envelope.”

  “I thought he’d like it.”

  “I didn’t even know you were aware of him.”

  “We worked together once in Germany. How long’s he retired now?”

  “Three years.”

  “And the other address?”

  “Yes. I got everything. They’re going to trace this sometime.”

  “By then, it shouldn’t mean anything. I just need time.”

  “And then you come back in.”

  “No. Then I…” Devereaux paused. “Well, we’ll see what the Opposition has in mind.”

  Rita Macklin said, “Are you going to let them kill him?” To Hanley.

  Mrs. Neumann stared at Hanley.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “No,” Devereaux said.

  “The New Man. He’s come down on me,” Hanley said. “NSA knows something’s up. You know you’re putting Miss Macklin at risk.”

  Devereaux frowned, did not look at her. “She was dead,” he said. “Maybe there’s some way to keep her alive. Other than trusting to your good intentions.”

  “Damn you.”

  “Yes. Damn me and you and everyone but it’s still the way it is. Hanley, the fucking KGB has an open contract. I’m tagged. And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men are not going to stop them. I’ve stopped putting my faith in governments. Or the Section.”

  “Who did you… put in Chicago?”

  “A friend.”

  “I didn’t know you had so many friends.”

  “He was someone I knew. A long time ago.”

  “A friend,” Hanley repeated, turning the foreign word over in his mind.

  “Yes,” Devereaux said. “Who would have thought it?”

  18

  ZURICH

  He was tired of trains.

  Felix Krueger folded his copy of the Neue Züricher Zeitung and placed it on his lap and closed his eyes. In a moment, they were open again. He couldn’t sleep sitting up, in the middle of the day.

  The train rattled along on the edge of a mountain pass, beneath the snowy peaks of the range that contained the Jungfrau. Spiez to Brig in a little over an hour, a perfectly isolated train journey from nowhere to nowhere, just this side of the Italian border.

  He had been on many trains in the past two weeks, to Prague and then to various points in East Germany, through to Warsaw, back to Zurich again.

  He could not describe his fear of flying, even to himself. Now, in the empty compartment, a thousand feet above the floor of the snow-covered valley, he could look down at the hamlets with perfect, godlike calm. But in the coffin of an airplane, the walls pressed against him, the smell of other people around him, hurtling against the sky…

  He closed his eyes again to erase the vision.

  When he opened them, Morgan was across from him.

  “Mr. K.” Morgan smiled.

  “How do you do again?” Stiffly. “Was this necessary?”

  “My favorite meeting place. Just you and me.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Troubles, Mr. K. We got troubles in River City.”

  “I don’t understand you.”

  “Our arrangement, Mr. K.” The voice soft, the bright blue eyes glistening, the black hair pushed straight back from a low crown. “Once is an accident, twice is bad business practices.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Four days ago Mrs. Krakowski was killed. Might have been suicide, maybe not. She had enough drugs and booze in her to open an all-night liquor store in Harlem.”

  “I didn’t know this.”

  Morgan smiled. “I figured that. That’s what bothers us. You ought to know these things. You’re dealing with some very yahoo-type people over there, you know that?”

  “Did they kill her?”

  “What does it matter? One of her sisters in the house has bolted. We have hysterical women on our hands, Mr. K. Bad for morale, first a kid getting himself killed, then his mom. People stop believing in our religion. We need an evangelist.”

  Thickly. “Will you please stop this American talk? I can’t understand half of what you say to me.”

  “Understand this, Mr. K. You are making a lot of bread keeping this network alive. A tear in the fabric on their side reflects on us. Mirror to mirror, you might say.”

  Krueger blinked, stared. “What do you propose?”

  “Talk to them. Find out what’s going on in their little paranoid minds.”

  “What do you suppose is going on? In their minds?”

  “Christ, if I knew that, I’d be Henry Kissinger, wouldn’t I? I’m just a poor dumb American who does what he’s told. I’m told that the cost of the network is getting too high.”

  “The money is justified,” Krueger said, missing the point.

  “No. I mean if the thing is going to be blown because their side can’t handle it, then maybe we should blow it up ourselves before someone else does it for us. We’re not the only baseball team in the league.”

  “Baseball,” Krueger said, not understanding again.

  “I mean that if we get more accidents, more defections, if the Opposition gets careless, we might just have to shut down the Numbers. Now do you see?”

  Krueger saw. Self-interest demanded he see it.

  The following morning, shortly before noon, the housekeeper ushered the group into the large dining room on the first floor of the house on Frohburgstrasse. This group was Czech, mostly from Prague, a couple from Pilsen. There were four women and two men. Rimsky was there as well, and the Czech translator. All spoke English to some extent, but not always as successfully as Felix Krueger needed.

  He had asked Rimsky, carefully, about the return of Mary Krakowski to Poland.

  There had been no problem, Rimsky said.

  She was all right? Krueger asked.

  Still in mourning, Rimsky said.

  Would Rimsky convey the bond money to her, the guarantee of five hundred thousand Swiss francs?

  Of course, Rimsky said.

  He was certain there was no problem?

  None at all, Rimsky said.

  Krueger had smiled oddly. He said he would have the money in a few days from the interest-bearing account in his bank.

  The refugees had all signed the bonds. They wore their best clothes and appeared, at best, bewildered. One of the women kept looking around as though she had entered the great room of an art museum. True, Krueger had a few treasures on his wall but her awe was greater than that. Outside, it was snowing. A fire crackled in the marble-manteled fireplace.

  Felix Krueger took his place at the head of the dining table in the octagonal room.

  A French clock on the mantel above the fireplace struck noon with tinny chimes: bim-bam, bim-bam, bim-bam…

  “My name is Felix Krueger. We will have lunch together.”

  The refugees had rooms in a small hotel halfway up the hill from the Bahnhof. They had straggled up to Felix Krueger’s house in double file with the interpreter at the front, Rimsky at the rear. A double line of children on a class outing.

  “It is more beautiful to see Praha,” one of the Czechs had said to another as they climbed.

  “But the noise of this city is more beautiful,” the other had said.

  The interpre
ter sat next to Felix Krueger. Rimsky sat at the foot of the table. He was staring at Krueger. He had forgotten the money, the bond guarantee. He began to figure the worth of five hundred thousand Swiss francs in rubles. Even at the official rate…

  The room was intimidating to someone not accustomed to it. The interpreter, who was new this trip, looked around with the others. The room, immense and spare, spoke of elegance in the muted whisper that is elegance itself. The table was cherrywood. It was bare save white linen place napkins and pewter cutlery and crystal glasses that caught the light of the chandelier.

  “I wish you all to have a glass of my Riesling,” Felix Krueger said in German. They reached for their glasses, following the lead of the two who spoke German.

  A maid brought soup in a tureen, and Krueger, the host, stood at the head of the table and filled each bowl passed to him as a father does for his children. The soup was hot and creamy, filled with puréed potatoes and green chives floating on the cream.

  “Do you like this?” he asked one of the refugees near him, a small-boned woman with delicate cheekbones and a wide mouth. She had been at the University of Prague Hospital. She was unmarried. She had a child, four. She now waited on tables in the café of the Intercontinental Hotel in Prague.

  “It is very good,” she said in English. “Why do you serve us this food?”

  “Because you are my guests,” he said.

  “That seems an odd thing to call us,” she said precisely.

  “You speak English very well. You’ll do well.”

  “I never thought I would ever leave Prague.” Sadly. Spooning the soup thoughtfully.

  “Is it difficult?” Krueger asked, smiling.

  “Do you always live here? In Zurich?”

  “Yes.”

  “From the time you are a child?”

  “My father. And his father. And his father. For six generations. Before that, our people came from Zug, which is not far from here.”

  “So you go on the streets of the city, you know it so well. You know the people, the cafés—”

  Krueger stared at her. “Yes. I see now what you mean. It must be very compelling for you to do this.”

  “I have no choice,” she said.

  After the soup came a form of sole meunière, the filets cut at the sideboard, the spines removed, the whole drenched in butter and wine sauce.

  “This is excellent. In Prague, at the Intercontinental Hotel, they serve this in the roof restaurant,” the pretty woman said to Krueger.

  “I know. I’ve been there many times.”

  She blushed. “Of course.”

  “I hope it compares—”

  “It is better, I would think. I don’t know. I never ate there.”

  She cut at the flesh, put it in her mouth. Such a lovely mouth, he thought. He thought he would like her.

  He glanced down to the foot of the table and saw Rimsky smiling at him.

  Krueger frowned and resumed eating.

  Course followed course, until coffee and cheese at the end of the meal. During the long, surrealistic luncheon, the refugees had not spoken to each other. Only the pretty young woman had spoken, and only in response to Felix Krueger.

  There was no need to tap his spoon against his water glass. He had their attention.

  “I hope you have enjoyed this little repast.”

  The interpreter followed in Czech.

  “The contracts are signed, you are delivered on the first part of your journey.”

  He paused; the interpreter followed again.

  “So far, it is as it was explained to you in Prague. All is guaranteed. But now I will tell you something that will not set very well with that gentleman at the end of the table.”

  Rimsky sighed. It was an old show and his part in it was small.

  Krueger pointed a sausage finger at him. “You wonder about him? KGB, just as you thought. But now you are all KGB in a sense. You wonder if the agreement will be kept? What are the guarantees but bits of words on paper?

  “And why should they trust you? KGB? In America, you will be far from their grip.

  “Trust, my friends. The network works on trust. And I guarantee the trust. To you. To that man at the end of the table.”

  Rimsky scowled on cue. He was calculating the amount of interest five hundred thousand Swiss francs could earn in a Zurich bank over the next two years.

  “You have been studied. All of you. Not everyone can be eligible for this opportunity. For a new life. Each of you has someone you desperately love in Czechoslovakia. And you would not emigrate without that loved one. That guarantees the government’s trust in you. You will obey, simply because it is the only way you will see your loved one again. Because if you do not, you will never see your loved one again on this earth.”

  Krueger paused, looked from face to face. They understood. They always equated the power of this opulent room with the power of his words.

  “But your guarantee—that’s more subtle, isn’t it? The government promises your loved one will be free at the end of your indenture. What is your guarantee of that?

  “Me. I am the guarantee of good intentions.”

  They stared at him while the interpreter rattled on.

  “I have taken five hundred thousand Swiss francs of my own money and placed it in interest-bearing accounts, in each of your names, in the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt here in Zurich. This is a considerable amount of money—to you and to me. You have the credit letters, the account numbers. At the end of your… service to the state, you will sign over the credit letters back to me in exchange for your loved one joining you in America. It is that simple. If, on the other hand, you run away, or if anything happens to your loved one”—he looked up at Rimsky—“then I will lose five hundred thousand Swiss francs. I cannot remain in business if this happens to me. It is based on trust, this network, but it is also based on guarantees.” Felix Krueger pounded his fist on the cherrywood tabletop in front of him; the glasses tinkled. “You see? Business. To me, you are numbers, nothing more.”

  The pretty woman stared up at him and believed him. His face, so charming and open during the luncheon, was now completely closed from them, from everyone in the room. He had not altered his appearance but he had changed from within.

  “Accounts. I am a man of accounts. You are my accounts, my little numbers. For my service, there is a fee collected from the state. It is worth my while to do these things, believe me. There are others like me, I can tell, in other parts of the world—a man in Hong Kong, one in Caracas, another in Mexico City—but I am your gate here, in Europe, to America. You pass through me. The gate is narrow but it is wide enough.” He laughed then and the interpreter struggled, but the joke, if it was that, could not be translated. The six smiled politely.

  He looked down at the pretty woman. “Do you have a question?”

  She stared at him. There were tears in her eyes. She dabbed at them with a napkin. “No.”

  “Why do you weep?”

  “Because it is final. Because it is two years away from my child.”

  “Two years is nothing.”

  “You say it easily.”

  “Because I do not live your life. But it will be over. For you as it has for many. And then you will be free.”

  “I don’t believe it is that much freer in America. It is just a new life for me.”

  “You are mistaken,” Felix Krueger said to her gently. “America is the freest country on earth. Safe. Free.”

  19

  SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA

  Denisov walked along the beach, on the hard, wet sand left in the wake of the retreat of high tide. He walked for miles. He did this most mornings.

  Three years in this place.

  He had been KGB. This was the place they had brought him to and freed him—the Relocation Division of R Section—after a “defection” that had been nothing more than an abduction by force. The bitterness still filled his heart as he walked along the beach. This was
the end of the West. The East was over there, beyond the gray ocean. He would never see it again.

  Dmitri Ilyich Denisov was thinner now and looked more than three years older. He was tanned—it was inevitable in this climate—and there was gray at his temples and gray streaking his once jet-black hair. He still wore rimless spectacles. He paused, stared at the horizon. A rare gray day. The seamless ocean was torn only once by the skeleton of a hideous oil rig several miles off shore.

  Yes, he would admit to himself, he felt fitter. He walked everywhere. California meals were so light that, gradually, his heavy body had yielded to diet.

  Three years before, he had been in Florida, against the American agent who had dogged his steps around the world for twenty years. They knew each other like brothers. Cain and Abel. But which was Cain?

  The agent was November. The trap was brutal, direct. “Welcome to America,” he had said at the point of a gun.

  But, Denisov had thought many times in these solitary walks along the beach, he had seen the trap as well. Had he wished to walk into it? Had he wanted endgame?

  A mental puzzle without solution.

  Had KGB believed the lie? Perhaps. It didn’t matter. He was dead to them, dead to himself. He was the pawn removed from the board early in the game, sitting on the side, while queen and knight and rook maneuvered still. He waited at the edge of the West for the second death, the one that would be sleep.

  He wore a heavy black coat and his hands were folded behind his back. He bowed to the wet Pacific wind slapping along the shore. His glasses were flecked with foam from the sea. He walked on, feeling the cold, thinking the old thoughts.

  Devereaux had visited him once after springing the trap. In Washington. In the briefing section, where he was gradually unburdening himself of secrets. He brought Denisov a complete collection of the D’Oyly Carte Company’s versions of Gilbert and Sullivan. It was a prize worth more than Devereaux knew; it was strange he had known that, that Denisov’s passion for years had been the Savoy operas.

  Denisov accepted the gift stiffly. They said nothing of consequence to each other.

  He had the collection still and a few other recordings. He played Gilbert and Sullivan sparingly, afraid he might grow tired of the operas one day and then would have little left.