Extraordinary Powers

by Joseph Finder

“I’ll do my best,” my friend in Erie said.

  “I’ll call back,” I replied.

  We sat in silence. I glanced through Dulles’s memoir. He had begun the section “Codes and Ciphers” with that famous stern dictum from Henry Stimson, the secretary of state in 1929: “Gentlemen do not read each other’s mail.”

  He was wrong, of course, and Dulles took pains to point that out. Everyone in the spy biz reads everyone else’s mail, and anything else they can. Maybe, though, spies aren’t gentlemen.

  And I wondered what the hell Henry Stimson would have declared about whether gentlemen read each other’s minds.

  I called Erie back an hour later. He answered the phone on the first ring. His voice was different, strained.

  “I couldn’t get it,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Had someone gotten to him?

  “It’s deactivated.”

  “Huh?”

  “Deactivated. All copies withdrawn from circulation.”

  “As of when?”

  “Yesterday. Ben, what’s this all about?”

  “Sorry,” I said, my chest tightening. The Wise Men. “I’ve got to run. Thanks.” And I hung up.

  * * *

  The next morning we walked along Bahnhofstrasse, a few blocks from the Paradeplatz, until we found the correct street number. Most of the banks were headquartered in the upper levels of the buildings, above the fashionable shops.

  Despite its grandiloquent name, the Bank of Zurich was small, family-owned, and very discreet. Its entrance was concealed on a small side street off Bahnhofstrasse, next to a Konditorei. A small brass plaque said simply B. Z. et Cie. If you had to ask, you had no business knowing.

  We entered the lobby, and as we did, I sensed a movement behind us. I turned quickly, tensing, and saw that it was only someone, probably a Zuricher, passing by. Tall, quite thin, in a dove-gray suit, he was no doubt a banker or shopkeeper going to work; I relaxed and, my arm around Molly, entered the lobby.

  But something stuck in my mind, and I glanced back again, and the shopkeeper was gone.

  It was the face. Pale, extremely pale, with large, elongated yellowish circles under the eyes, pale, thin lips, and thin blond hair combed straight back.

  He looked strikingly familiar, there was no doubt about it.

  And for an instant I remembered the rainy evening of the gunfire on Marlborough Street in Boston, the tall, gaunt passerby …

  It was him. My reaction time had been dismayingly slow, but now I was quite sure. It was him. The same man in Boston was now here, in Zurich.

  “What?” Molly asked.

  I turned back, continued into the bank. “Nothing,” I said. “Come on. We’ve got work to do.”

  FORTY-FIVE

  “What is it, Ben?” she asked, frightened. “Was someone there?”

  But before she could say anything further, a male voice came over the intercom, asking us to state our business.

  I gave my real name.

  The receptionist responded, with the barest hint of deference, “Come in, please, Mr. Ellison. Herr Direktor Eisler is expecting you.”

  I had to give John Knapp credit; he obviously had some clout around here.

  “Please be sure you have no metal objects on your person,” the disembodied voice implored. “Keys, penknives, any significant number of coins. You can place anything for safekeeping in this drawer.” A small drawer now jutted out of the wall. We both divested ourselves of coins, keys, and whatnot, and placed them in the drawer. An impressive and thorough operation, I thought.

  There was a faint hum, and a set of doors in front of us were electronically unlocked. I glanced up at a twin set of miniature Japanese surveillance cameras mounted near the ceiling, and Molly and I passed into a small chamber to wait for the second set of doors to open electronically.

  “You’re not carrying, are you?” Molly whispered.

  I shook my head. The second set of doors opened, and we were met by a young, plain blond woman, a little chunky, wearing oversize steel-rim glasses that would probably have been fashionable on anyone else. She introduced herself as Eisler’s personal assistant, and led us down a gray-carpeted corridor. I made a quick stop in the restroom and then joined up with the two women.

  Dr. Alfred Eisler’s office was small and simple, paneled in walnut. A few pastel watercolors in blond wooden frames adorned the wall, and not much else. None of the decorating touches I had expected—no Oriental rugs, grandfather clocks, mahogany furniture. The director’s desk was a simple, uncluttered glass-and-chrome table. Facing the desk were two comfortable-looking white leather armchairs of Swedish modern design and a white-leather-upholstered couch.

  Eisler was fairly tall, about my height, but somewhat portly, wearing a black wool suit. He was somewhere in his forties, with a round, jowly face, deep-set eyes, and large protruding ears. Deep lines were scored around his mouth, across his forehead, and in the furrow between his eyebrows. And he was completely bald, shiny-bald. Eisler cut an arresting if somewhat sinister figure.

  “Ms. Sinclair,” he said, taking Molly’s hand. He knew who the proper center of his attention should be: not the husband, but the wife, the legal heir to her father’s numbered account, according to the provisions of Swiss banking law. He gave a slight bow. “And Mr. Ellison.” Eisler’s voice was a low, growly basso profundo; his accent was a mélange of Swiss-German and high-Oxbridge English.

  We sat in the white leather chairs; he sat facing us on the couch. We made introductions, and he had his secretary bring in a tray of coffee for each of us. As he spoke, the lines that creased his brow deepened even more, and he gesticulated with his manicured hands in a manner so delicate, it seemed almost feminine.

  He smiled tautly to signal that the meeting had begun; what was it, his expression asked, that we wanted?

  I pulled out the authorization document signed by Molly’s father and handed it to him.

  He glanced at it and looked up. “I trust you desire access to the numbered account.”

  “That’s correct,” Molly said, all business.

  “There are a few formalities,” he said apologetically. “We must confirm your identity, verify your signature, and such. I assume you have bank references in the United States?”

  Molly nodded haughtily and produced a set of papers on which was all the information he needed. He took them, pressed a button to summon his secretary, and handed the papers to her.

  Not five minutes of idle chat went by—about the Kunsthaus and other must-sees in Zurich—before his phone buzzed. He picked it up, said, “Ja?” listened for a few seconds, and replaced the receiver in its cradle. Another taut smile.

  “The miracle of facsimile technology,” he said. “This procedure used to take so much longer. “If you would—?”

  He handed Molly a ballpoint pen and a latex clipboard on which was a single sheet of Bank of Zurich letterhead, and asked her to write out the account number, in words—her numerical signature—on the thin gray line at the center of the page.

  When she had finished writing the account number that her father had encoded so elaborately, he summoned his secretary again, handed her the paper, and chatted a bit longer while her handwriting was optically scanned, he explained chattily, compared with the signature card faxed from our bank in Boston.

  The phone buzzed again; he picked it up, said “Danke,” and hung up. A moment later his secretary returned with a gray file folder marked 322069.

  Clearly, we had passed the first hurdle. The account number was correct.

  “Now,” Eisler said, “what precisely can I do for you?”

  I had deliberately chosen the seat closest to him. I leaned forward, focused.

  Cleared my mind. Took advantage of the moment of silence. Focused.

  It came. German, naturally, a tumble of phrases.

  “Please?” he said, watching me sitting with head bent and brow furrowed.

  Not enough to go on. I had learned German, had
gone through intensive language training in it at the Farm, but he was thinking too quickly for me.

  I couldn’t do it.

  I said, “We’d like to know how much is in the account.”

  I leaned toward him again, tried, focused, tried to isolate from the flow of German something, anything I could understand, grab on to.

  “I am not permitted to discuss particulars,” Eisler said phlegmatically. “In any case, I do not know.”

  And then I heard a word. Stahlkammer.

  Unquestionably, that was the word that leapt out at me. Stahlkammer.

  Vault.

  I said, “There is a vault attached to this account, is that correct?”

  “Yes, sir,” he admitted, “there is. A rather sizable one, in fact.”

  “I want access to it at once.”

  “As you wish,” he said. “Certainly. At once.” He rose from his couch. His bald head glinted in the pinpoint lights recessed in the ceiling. “I assume you have the combination access code.”

  Molly looked at me, signaling that she was out of her element.

  “I believe it’s the same as the account number,” I said.

  Eisler laughed once and then sat down again. “I really wouldn’t know. Although for security reasons we would certainly discourage our clients from doing that. And in any case, it’s not the same number of digits.”

  “We may have it,” I said. “I’m quite sure we do—somewhere. My wife’s father left us quite a collection of papers and notes. Perhaps you can help us. How many digits are in the code?”

  He glanced down at the file. “I’m afraid I can’t say.”

  But I heard it, a few times, a number he thought but was defiantly not saying, articulating somewhere in the speech center of his brain … “Vier” …

  Four digits, did that mean?

  I said, “Might it be a four-digit code?”

  He laughed again, shrugged: this game is fun, his body language said, but now we are all through.

  “There is a numbered account, which we administer and service,” he explained patiently as if to a slow child. “You are permitted by law to withdraw or transfer those funds, as you wish. But there is also a vault—in effect, a safe-deposit box, which we are charged with keeping safe. But we do not have access to it. We never do, except in the most extraordinary circumstances. As the late Mr. Sinclair stipulated, in order to open the vault, an access code is required.”

  “Then you can provide it to us,” Molly said, summoning all of her hauteur.

  “I’m sorry, but I cannot.”

  “As legal heir to his account, I request it.”

  “If I could, I would gladly give it to you,” Eisler said. “But under the terms of the arrangement set up here, I cannot.”

  “But—”

  “I’m sorry,” the banker said with finality. “I’m afraid it is not possible.”

  “I am the legal heir to all of my father’s estate,” Molly said indignantly.

  “I am deeply sorry,” Eisler said, unperturbed. “I very much hope you did not come all the way here from—Boston, is it?—to learn this. A simple phone call would have saved you the time and expense.”

  I sat in silence, barely listening to this exchange, absently unzipping my leather portfolio.

  And then I heard it again:… “Vier” … and then a string of other numbers. “Acht” … “Sieben” … I watched him studying the file, and then, in sequence and quite distinctly, it came:

  “Vier … Acht … Sieben … Neun … Neun.”

  “You see, Ms. Sinclair, this is,” the banker said aloud, “a double-passkey system, designed—”

  “Yes,” I interrupted. Shuffling through the notes in my portfolio, I feigned examining one sheet closely. “It’s here. We have it.”

  Eisler paused, nodded, then examined me suspiciously. “Excellent,” he said as I spoke the numbers. “By the terms established by the owners of the account, now that you have accessed it, this account is altered from dormant to active status—”

  “Owners?” I interrupted. “There is more than one?”

  “Yes, sir. It is a double-signature account. As legal beneficiary, your wife is one of the owners.”

  “Who’s the other one?” she asked.

  “That I cannot disclose,” Eisler said, at once apologetic and disdainful. “Another signature is required. To be perfectly truthful, I don’t know the identity of the other owner. When the second owner presents us with the access code, the sequence of numbers is inputted into our computers. The co-owner’s signature is encoded in the database, and when the proper code is entered, the signature is printed out graphically. This is our bank’s security system to ensure that no bank personnel can be implicated in the event of a claim against us.”

  “So what does that mean?” Molly demanded.

  “It means,” Eisler said, “that you are legally permitted to inspect the vault and to ascertain its contents. But without the authorization of the second owner, you may neither transfer nor withdraw the contents.”

  * * *

  Dr. Alfred Eisler escorted us into a cramped elevator down several flights. We were descending below Bahnhofstrasse, he explained, and into the catacombs.

  We emerged into a short gray-carpeted corridor, a cage lined with steel bars. At the end of the corridor stood a beefy security guard in an olive-green uniform. He nodded at the bank’s director, then unlocked the heavy steel door.

  None of us spoke as we passed through the door, down another steel-bar-lined corridor, until we reached a small enclosed area marked Sieben. Steel bars comprised three walls of the cage. The other wall was entirely metal, made of some sort of brushed chrome or steel. At its center was an enormous steel wheel with six spokes, evidently the mechanism by which the metal wall could be caused to open.

  Eisler pulled a key from the ring attached to his belt and unlocked the cage.

  “Please sit, if you would,” he said, indicating a small gray metal table in the center of the cage at which were two chairs. In the center of the table was a beige desk phone without any buttons, and a small black electronic keypad.

  “The stipulation of the account,” the banker said, “is that no officer of the bank is permitted to remain in this area while the combination is being accessed. Enter the digits of the access code slowly, checking the digital readout to be sure you have not made a mistake. If you have, you are permitted a second try. If that fails, the electronic locking mechanism will seize. Access will not be permitted for at least twenty-four hours.”

  “I see,” I said. “What happens after we enter the access code?”

  “At that point,” Eisler explained, pointing toward the six-spoked wheel, “the inner vault will electronically unlock, and you then turn the wheel. It’s much easier than it looks, fear not. And the vault door will open.”

  “And when we’re done?” Molly asked.

  “When you are finished examining the contents, or if there are any problems, please call me by simply lifting the handset.”

  “Thank you,” Molly said as Dr. Eisler left.

  We waited a moment until we heard the second steel door shut.

  “Ben,” Molly whispered. “What the hell do we—”

  “Patience.” Slowly and carefully—my gauze-wrapped fingers had little dexterity—I entered 48799, watching as each number appeared in red electronic digits on the small black panel. When I had entered the final 9, there was a mechanical whooshing sound, as if a seal had been broken.

  “Bingo,” I said.

  “I can barely breathe,” Molly said, her voice choked.

  Together we walked over to the wheel and turned it. It moved easily in our hands, gliding clockwise, and a large section of the steel wall jutted open.

  Weak fluorescent lights illuminated the interior of the vault, which I saw was remarkably small, disappointingly so. The uneven, brick-walled inner chamber was maybe five feet by five feet. It was entirely empty.

  And at second
glance I realized that our eyes had been deceived by an optical illusion.

  What at first had appeared to be the vault’s brick inner walls, roughly seamed and scored, could now be seen, as our eyes adjusted to the insufficient light, to be something else entirely.

  They were not bricks. They were bars of gold, dull yellow, with a reddish tinge.

  The cavernous vault was filled—almost entirely, floor to ceiling—with gold bullion.

  FORTY-SIX

  “My God,” Molly whispered.

  I could only gape. Tentatively, almost gingerly, we advanced into the vault toward the walls of solid gold. They did not glitter or glimmer, as one might have imagined. The overall coloration was a dull, mustardy yellow, but upon closer inspection I saw that some of the closely packed bars were a bright butter-yellow (new, and almost one hundred percent pure), and some were reddish-yellow, which indicated copper impurities: they had probably been cast from melted gold coins and jewelry. Each bar was stamped at its end with large serial numbers.

  Were it not for the deep yellow hues and mellow patina, these gold bars might have been bricks, neatly stacked bricks, of the sort you could find at any construction site.

  Many were scarred and dented; these had probably been in existence in Russia for a century or more. Some, I knew, had been stolen from Hitler’s armies by Stalin’s victorious troops; most had been mined in the Soviet Union. The edges of several of them were notched: assay marks. The newer bars were of a trapezoidal formation, but by far the majority were rectangular.

  “Jesus, Ben,” Molly said, turning to me. Her face was flushed, her eyes wide. “Did you have any idea?” For some reason, she was whispering.

  I nodded.

  She went to lift one of the bars up, but failed. It was too heavy. With two hands she managed to hoist it. After a few seconds she put it down on top of the others. It made a dull thud. Then she sank her thumbnail into it.

  “It’s the real thing, isn’t it?” she said.

  I nodded mutely. I was nervous, naturally, and excited, and scared, and my bloodstream coursed with adrenaline.

  There’s a famous remark made by Vladimir Lenin: “When we are victorious on a world scale, I think we shall use gold for the purpose of building lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities in the world.”