The Banker Who Died

by Matthew A Carter

  A naked female form stood bathed in that cold, white stream.

  At first, he saw only her red-soled shoes. Stanley marveled at the tiny size of the feet.

  “Turn on the light. I can’t see anything,” he asked.

  Anastasia obediently moved over to flip the switch, and it was as if the room exploded before his eyes: it was filled with so much light. When he took his hands from his face, her chest was directly in front of him. Stanley was fascinated by the color of her nipples, so dark they were almost blue.

  He turned his gaze to her legs. Anastasia might have been small, but her legs were incredibly long. Beautiful legs, perfect tanned skin, thought Stanley, looking her over. On the inside of her thigh, almost at the very top, he saw a hidden vein pulsing underneath her translucent skin. Slowly, one-two-three. Above the vein, her mons was shaved completely bare.

  “I thought you would have a trim there, but it turns out…” Stanley, trying to be clever, remembered a Russian saying, “A shoemaker without shoes!”

  “Don’t be crude, handsome. Sweet things should be smooth.” Anastasia grabbed his tie and gave it a sharp tug toward her. “Come on. I’ll rinse you off.”

  “You will? What are you going to do to me?”

  “Anything you want.”

  Chapter 6

  The next morning, McKnight spent a long time soaking in the shower and then chased two Alka-Seltzers with half a liter of lemon club soda. He thought about going for a run, but only got so far as taking his sneakers out of the suitcase before giving it up. There was a fitness center in the hotel, but he didn’t really feel like dragging himself down there, either. His last hope of a hangover cure was the man dressed in a fez and satin caftan working over a brazier in the corner of the hotel dining room. The sign on the wall nearby promised “Turkish coffee.”

  Stanley couldn’t remember a thing that happened after Anastasia had dragged him by his tie to the shower. He had the sense that he’d gone under the water still wearing his pants, shirt, and socks, but this morning everything had been laid out neatly on the ottoman by the bed. His wallet sat on top. He checked the contents, and nothing was missing: the three hundred dollars and a couple hundred francs he’d had were still there. Anastasia had disappeared long before his painful awakening, leaving only a business card with the address and telephone number of her elite dog grooming business. On the back, she had written her mobile number, and the message: “You were incredible…” Reading the Russian words, Stanley first experienced a sense of involuntary pride, then concern over the ellipsis. He remembered his Russian professor advising them to avoid the ellipsis in writing—“For us Russians, the ellipsis is a sign of confusion!”

  Pierre and Bernard were waiting for him in the hotel lobby. Lagrange looked surprisingly well, considering. He cleared that mystery up right away, though, explaining that after spending the night with the girls, he’d ordered an early-morning massage, and two masseuses had spent an hour setting him to rights.

  Bernard, on the other hand, looked concerned. He complained that he had tried to stay up to talk to them, but they’d come in too late, they hadn’t been answering his calls, that some kind of terrible machine had been making noise all night right under his windows, and when he complained to the doorman, he was told there was nothing to be done, that they were redoing the sidewalk. So he demanded a new room. While that was being arranged, the sleeping pills he’d taken started to work—the end result was that he’d fallen asleep in the lobby in his suit. He’d woken up, still wearing his suit, in a new room, with no memory of how he’d gotten there. “If you’d drunk a bottle of cognac before bed, like normal people, instead of those pills, you’d have slept happily in your pajamas, and that noise outside wouldn’t have bothered you a bit,” said Pierre.

  “Next you’ll tell me that I should have ordered a prostitute for a good night’s sleep!” Bernard shot back.

  “Of course, you should have! Time spent with hookers is never wasted. Didn’t they teach you that in your Swiss village?”

  Stanley felt his stomach twist in nausea at the talk of prostitutes. He went over to the bar and returned with a steaming cup of coffee.

  “Here, Bernard. This is the first step—hazelnut coffee.” He winked at the investment consultant. “Get one for yourself.”

  “Il n’y a pas de bonne fête sans lendemain,” said Lagrange. “What’s the second step?”

  “I have several second steps to recommend,” said Stanley. “Let’s walk over to the meeting with our first client, Mr. Peshkov. I know how to get there.”

  Lagrange opened his mouth to object, but Stanley cut him off.

  “It’s only a ten-minute walk, and it’s a lovely morning, still cool. But most importantly”—here, he pointed toward the exit—“the street cleaners have just come through and washed everything down. We all could use some fresh air.”

  Stanley’s estimate was accurate; ten minutes later, they were walking into the Coffeemania on Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street. Peshkov walked in after them and invited the bankers to the table, stumbling and looking around all the while. He looks like he had a glass of vodka with breakfast, thought Stanley.

  Peshkov waved away Bernard’s suggestion of a table outside, shooting Lagrange an irritated look, as if to say, “Where do you find such thoughtless employees?” Peshkov was a tall, well-built man, with an expressive, handsome face. If not for his thin lips, which he was constantly licking, and his darting eyes, he could have been a television presenter or sitcom actor. He had two ancient Nokia mobile phones, twenty years old at least, that he turned over and over in his hands.

  “My colleague,” began Lagrange, gesturing toward Bernard, “has prepared an offer for you, a plan to rebalance your investment portfolio. We can go over the broad strokes today, and then we’d like to set up a transfer of your funds to us under a discretionary portfolio mandate—”

  “Fuck the offer!” Peshkov interrupted. “The situation has changed. We have to take care of something, and quickly.”

  “What exactly?”

  Instead of answering, Peshkov took a napkin and quickly sketched something on it, then pushed it over to Lagrange.

  He looked at it and passed the napkin to McKnight. Stanley saw a crossed-out dollar sign, some kind of scribble, and a yuan sign.

  “You wouldn’t be able to explain this in words, would you?” Stanley asked politely.

  Peshkov looked around the café, out the window, and then whispered, “I need all my dollar cash to be transferred over to the yuan.”

  “Why?” asked Pierre.

  “For what purpose?” echoed Stanley.

  “Oof,” Bernard said on a long exhale.

  “No need to make faces,” the businessman went on. “Everyone knows that this”—he pointed at the dollar—“is going to turn into toilet paper any day now.”

  “Where are you getting your information?” asked Lagrange. “Are you absolutely sure about the American dollar? The end is at hand?”

  “Okay, I’ll give you a different answer,” Peshkov said, tapping Bernard’s laptop. “Transfer all my dollars to yuans today. I agree to the discretionary portfolio mandate, as long as it’s in yuans.”

  “Our trader will call you in five to do the FX conversion,” Pierre said calmly, but Stanley could see the tears welling up in his eyes. He was barely managing to restrain his laughter.

  “What will the fee be?”

  “A discretionary portfolio in yuans is not a standard service. I think we can offer you…” Lagrange scratched behind his ear, counting something up in his head. “We can offer you an annual management fee of 2.45 percent of the funds in your portfolio plus an annual custody fee of a quarter percent.”

  “Why so expensive?” Peshkov exclaimed. “I pay your competitors at Julius Baer a half percent, all-in fee for a full-service package.”

  Lagrange
shook his head and said sternly, “Mr. Peshkov, are you aware that there will soon be an automatic international exchange of information in the banking world?”

  “Yes, you told me about it at our last meeting in Zurich. New international tax legislation. So?”

  “I’m glad that you haven’t forgotten.” A note of steel appeared in Lagrange’s voice, and his eyes narrowed. “Soon, the Russian tax authorities are going to have access to information about all your accounts in Swiss banks.”

  “You promised that information about me wouldn’t reach Russia,” said Peshkov, sticking his lower lip out in a childish pout.

  “That’s right! And we keep our promises. In our bank, you are formally registered as a citizen of Belarus, which hasn’t signed the exchange of information agreement, and no one in Russia knows about your accounts.” Lagrange paused significantly. “But if you’re suddenly concerned about discounts, go ahead and sign with Julius Baer. No one’s stopping you.”

  “All right! To hell with you,” Peshkov agreed gloomily. “What’s next?”

  Lagrange let a satisfied smirk cross his face, and pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket’s inside pocket.

  “Meet Stanley McKnight, your new private banker. He’ll send you the documents to sign.”

  Stanley nodded to Peshkov and pinched his own leg under the table to keep from laughing. He couldn’t believe the bald-faced stupidity he was witnessing. And this was a man who had built a billion-dollar business in the shipping industry and had about $150 million in accounts in their bank.

  Peshkov stood, announcing, “I’ll expect your call within the hour!” He added, quietly, “Please wait for ten minutes before you leave. Protocol.”

  “We will be happy to do so,” Lagrange replied, all friendly smiles again, holding out his hand to shake.

  When Peshkov had gone, Pierre pointed toward the napkin, laughing out loud. “He forgot to burn it! Or eat it! I’m going to save this,” he cackled.

  Even reserved Bernard allowed himself a smile. But he was smiling for a different reason—he’d done a quick calculation of the approximate amount he’d earned in the last ten minutes.

  McKnight, however, had stopped laughing.

  “Pierre, I’m not sure he’s all there. Maybe someone drugged him? Or he’s under hypnosis or something?”

  “You’re right, Stan, and I’ve even guessed what the drug was. He’s overdosed on Russian news. Apparently, he’s been watching too much Russia Today.”

  “A strange character,” Bernard noted. “Why was he using those mobiles? They belong in a museum. He’s certainly not suffering for money.”

  “It’s a trend here in Moscow. People think the old phones are harder to listen in on, and now everybody and their mother are walking around with them. Even those who are certainly of no interest to the FSB. Nonsense, of course.” Lagrange licked his lips and looked at his watch. “That conspiracy theorist has just handed us two hours of free time before our next appointment. However, I do have a job for you, my dear Stanley. A certain Mr. Natan Grigoryan should be arriving soon, the head of the private banking department for a major Austrian bank in Russia. I’ve known him for a long time, and I must confess that I just can’t stand him. He’s such a blatant swindler that he’ll recommend clients of his bank to switch to ours—for a nice retro fee, naturally.”

  “That’s a violation of corporate ethics.”

  “Yes, it’s a bit much even for Russia. But he’s brought us hundreds of millions of dollars in client money over the last six months, and it doesn’t bother us if he’s stealing from his employer. Meet with him, discuss, and I’ll take a walk and find someplace to have a good cup of coffee. Okay?”

  “Okay.” Stanley nodded, not a little taken aback. “How will I recognize him?”

  “Don’t worry about that. He’ll find you. I described you to him. You just promise that Grigoryan anything he wants. We’ll figure it out later. This is a crook we can’t lose. Bernard, you’re free until our next meeting. You don’t have to drink coffee with me. Take a walk. Go back to the hotel. Take a nap if you can manage it.”

  Lagrange stuck a cigarette between his lips and left the café with Bernard, a spring in his step. Stanley rubbed his temples and asked for a freshly squeezed juice to help with the hangover. The juice the waiter brought him had clearly just come from a box, but Stanley couldn’t find the energy to protest, so he drank it down as quickly as he could, hoping that there was a significant dose of vitamin C in whatever concentrate had gone into making it. He looked up to see a small, pudgy man entering the café. He looked like a woman; no, wait, was it, a woman who looked like a man? Stanley thought irritably. The hangover had given him a wicked headache.

  The person was short-necked, shaggy, and pigeon-toed. He immediately picked Stanley out from the other patrons, walking straight over to his table. He asked in a contrived baritone, “Mr. McKnight? I’m Natan Grigoryan.”

  Without waiting for an invitation, he sat down across from Stanley and launched into a narrative about how he’d taught children for years at the embassy in London, had been on many business trips to England, and had a doctorate in psychology.

  “I’m very glad for you.” McKnight inclined his head. “I always dreamed of an academic career, but I guess it wasn’t meant to be.”

  At that, Grigoryan began to describe his lectures to students at the Higher School of Economics here in Moscow. Lowering his voice, he told Stanley that half the teaching staff of the university had connections to the country’s security services, but then switched back to extolling his own accomplishments—his teaching program had been chosen as the best out of anyone’s, and he was planning to become a professor.

  Stanley felt like he was slowly suffocating under the flow of words—Grigoryan was unstoppable. He chattered on, sprinkling his narrative with little witticisms, bragging about his son studying in a private English school, his wife the lawyer at Credit Suisse, something about a daughter married to an Italian aristocrat who owned one of the world’s largest private collections of Renaissance engravings. Grigoryan also touted his Moscow connections, dropping the names of highly placed government officials, almost none of whom Stanley knew, of course, but of whom Grigoryan spoke as if Stanley was on the best of terms with them: “Well you know how Ivan Ivanovich loves to fish, the kind of rods and reels he has. Everything custom-made by the best; you remember that salmon he caught in Alaska—a real beauty, isn’t that so, Mr. McKnight?”

  But he managed to slip into this veritable flood of words the actual reason for their meeting. Just after his description of a birthday party for yet another official, he told Stanley that he had another three clients ready to switch from his bank to Laville & Cie, with a combined balance of about 200 million, but “No, no, Mr. McKnight, I can’t discuss that yet. We’re both bankers. You know how it is: ethics are paramount, right, Mr. McKnight? Isn’t that right?” He would only set up this transfer under one condition.

  “What condition is that?” Stanley asked, feeling like his head was about five seconds from splitting wide open.

  “It’s nothing, really!”

  “I would still like to know.” Stanley hailed a waitress and asked for a shot of whiskey, any whiskey, as long as it arrived quickly.

  “Isn’t it a bit early for whiskey, my friend? Even on Swiss time, it’s still morning.”

  “It’s ten PM in San Francisco,” said Stanley, like Lagrange before him, beginning to nurse a sincere hatred for this arrogant Armenian. “Everyone’s drinking at ten PM in San Francisco.”

  The waitress set a glass in front of him containing some sort of brown liquid.

  “What’s this?” asked Stanley.

  “Whiskey.”

  “I’ve got that. What kind?”

  “Hibiki. Japanese whiskey.”

  “Excellent! So, at ten PM in San Francisco, everyone is d
rinking Hibiki!” Stanley raised his glass and gulped down its contents.

  “To your health, Mr. McKnight, to your health,” Grigoryan said with a gap-toothed smile. “So my condition is the following: I want you to raise my commission from 25 percent to 40. Believe me: the bank won’t even notice. But I’m getting ready to open a shelter for children. We’re getting corporate social responsibility here!”

  “Very well, we’ll consider it. We will probably be able to accommodate you. If it’s a matter of corporate social responsibility, we’re ready to do everything we can. We will be happy to support”—Stanley hiccupped—“support children, yes…”

  Stanley felt so depleted after the meeting with Grigoryan that he called a taxi to Mario, the restaurant where he was to meet Lagrange. He didn’t realize that the restaurant was a ten-minute walk away, or that the taxi driver, grasping quickly that he had a clueless foreigner on his hands, took Stanley for a ride around the city center, choosing a winding route that had Stanley completely turned around by the end.

  Lagrange was standing at the edge of the sidewalk and watched in amusement as Stanley got out. He asked how much Stanley had paid.

  “Only forty dollars, and not a penny more! And we hit so much traffic. What a mess.”

  “You could have saved those forty bucks,” said Lagrange. “Or donated them to Grigoryan’s foundation for children. Did he tell you all about his family?”

  “Oh yes, and not just them.” Stanley took off his sunglasses, wiped the bridge of his nose, and put them back on. “Why didn’t you tell me he was a former psychiatrist? He sucked out all my brains and licked my skull clean.”

  “Since when was he a psychiatrist?”

  “She—I mean he—that’s what he told me!”

  “And did he tell you about the children’s shelter he wants to open?” Lagrange laughed and slapped Stanley on the shoulder. “He was a snitch. He worked at the embassy in London until the fall of the Soviet Union.”