by Ward Larsen
THIRTY-ONE
In the office they stood split by a navigation table where a map of Sweden was pressed under a scarred sheet of Plexiglas. Sanderson saw that various points around the country, mostly remote lakes and coves, had been circled with markers and then connected by lines to Magnussen Air Charter’s Oxelösund hub.
“He hired me out for a charter,” she said. “I took him out Monday morning and dropped him on an island. Picked him up at the same place yesterday morning.”
“What did he look like?”
Her description left no doubt in Sanderson’s mind—they were talking about Deadmarsh.
“Where exactly did you drop him?”
Magnussen referenced the map and pointed to the cove on Bulleron Island. She described her delivery and the next day’s pickup, then circling over Stockholm while Deadmarsh threw mobile phones out the window. She told him about the gun and a forced flight to the German coastline. Her story rang true to Sanderson, and at the end he was left with two questions.
“Do you know who he met on that island?”
“He told me it was his wife. She had a sailboat.”
Again, this made perfect sense. Sanderson asked, “And where did you drop him off yesterday?”
Magnussen pulled a different chart from a cabinet and unfurled it on the table. Sanderson saw that it covered the Baltic and northern Europe.
She tapped her finger on a spot high on the German coastline. “Right here. It was nearly dusk last night.”
“When did you arrive back here?” he asked.
“About ten o’clock last night.”
“And you waited until this morning before making a report to the authorities?”
“I was rather shaken last night.”
Sanderson said nothing.
“Even when I called this morning I don’t think the constable believed what I was telling him. You have to admit, it sounds rather fantastic. He asked if I’d been drinking—which I have been known to do.”
“You shouldn’t have waited,” Sanderson said. “To not immediately report something like this is a crime in itself.”
“It’s also a crime to impersonate a police officer.”
For the second time in a matter of minutes, she had him off-balance.
Magnussen gave a wry smile. “Your credentials expired years ago, Inspector. I have very good eyesight.”
“And I have very little patience for games. This man is dangerous. Did he offer you money? Is that why you’ve given him a head start?”
“Possibly. But I could also say I felt threatened. He shot my airplane—I can show you the damage.”
“Anything else?”
She cocked her head to one side. “In all honesty—I rather liked him.”
Sanderson leaned forward on the table, feeling suddenly weak.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“Yes, I … I’m fine.”
She looked at him doubtfully, then said, “So now you know my story. But what are you doing here?”
“I’m a policeman.”
“Not according to your paperwork.”
“All right, I’ll grant you that. I’m here unofficially. Until recently I was heading up the search for this man. I was put off the case for a medical issue, but I don’t like leaving things unfinished.”
“I know who he is,” Magnussen said. “I’ve been watching the news reports—all that uproar in Stockholm.”
Sanderson nodded.
“So where do we go from here?” she asked. “Will you call back to headquarters and tell them everything I’ve said? Or would that put you in an awkward position?”
He said nothing.
Magnussen took a rag and began erasing a line on her map. “We’re both in a fix, aren’t we, Inspector?”
“Perhaps we could adopt a broader view,” said a circumspect Sanderson. “You were abducted by this man. He threatened you at gunpoint, so you felt intimidated for a time. But eventually you called the police. I don’t see that you’ve done much wrong.”
“Even if he were going to send me money? That’s what you suggested.”
“Did I? I’d already forgotten about that. My memory isn’t what it used to be.”
“Would you vouch for all this?” she asked.
“I might. Under the right circumstances.”
“Which are?”
Sanderson told her.
Janna Magnussen gave him a wide grin “You know, Inspector—I think I’m beginning to like you as well.”
* * *
For two hundred years Zurich’s Bahnhofstrasse has been the recognized financial center of Switzerland. It is where banking icons Credit Suisse and UBS have long made their homes, housed in buildings that are as solid and enduring as the Alps, yet muted with just enough architectural vagueness to give clients—they are never called customers—the impression that while their money is unerringly present, it is not necessarily accounted for. The balance of the street’s tenants are a more candid bunch. Gucci, Coach, and Cartier are all here, and their sales staffs clearly well fed. Bahnhofstrasse is clean, safe, and polished. There is not a crack in the sidewalk to catch a Christian Louboutin heel, and the shells dropped by squirrels onto the heads of tolerant passersby are soon swept clear. It is a place with a great many attributes. What it does not have is public phones.
For a two euro tip, Slaton made his call from the bar of a waking basement nightclub. He dialed a number he had memorized years ago, and it was answered efficiently, almost certainly by the same woman he’d spoken with the last time he’d called.
“Krueger Wealth Management.”
“Yes,” Slaton said, “I’d like to make an appointment with Herr Krueger.”
“Are you an existing client, sir?”
“I am. The name is Natan Mendelsohn. Please inform Herr Krueger that I will join him for dinner this evening at Il Dolce. Seven o’clock.”
A hesitation. “Sir, Herr Krueger is already committed this evening to meet a long-standing client who—”
“Just give him the name, the time, and the place. He will see me. And tell him to please bring the package he’s been holding.”
Slaton did not wait for a reply.
* * *
Arne Sanderson did not like airplanes. He particularly did not like small airplanes. Small airplanes that took off and landed on the sea, in his mind, were a clear defilement of physical laws.
All the same, here he was.
They had taken off three hours earlier, Sanderson watching the Swedish coastline slip in and out of view amid the clouds until it disappeared completely. Since then Magnussen had been flying on instruments in heavy weather. In a way Sanderson was happy, because the gray shroud around them gave no perception of height or speed or movement—they were simply floating in a bubble of moisture with no sense of up or down.
“How is the weather where we’re going?” he asked.
Magnussen pulled her headset away from the nearest ear. “It’s still good,” she said. “We should have no trouble landing. I’ll have you at the seaplane dock at Sassnitz in roughly twenty minutes. Do you have your passport? There are immigration controls.”
Sanderson was happy that it had been in his car. “Yes, I’ve got it. But I have to ask you again—are you sure this man didn’t give you any idea where he was heading?”
She shook her head. “Sorry. But from his point of view, why would he?”
Magnussen pushed the plane into a descent and soon they were skimming under the clouds, the northern coastline of Germany rising in front of them. Sanderson gripped his armrests as the sea came closer, and his eyes were shut tight when the airplane settled to the water with surprising smoothness. Minutes later he was standing on a floating dock, much like the one from which he’d boarded back in Oxelösund. Magnussen had a brief conversation with a man about fuel before walking over and offering her hand.
“Our bargain is complete, is it not?”
Sanderson shook her tiny hand.
“Such as it is. Have a safe flight back.”
“What will you do from here?” she asked.
Sweeping his eyes across the place, Sanderson said, “I’ll be damned if I know.”
THIRTY-TWO
It was a mystery to many how Walter Krueger, a man of reputable upbringing and high acquaintances, had gone adrift at the crest of life. He’d been born into a solid Zurich family, and as a young boy attended the most prestigious private academies. On graduating from university he married a woman of impeccable pedigree, not the least of whose attributes involved being the lone daughter of a prominent banker. So it was, when Krueger began his corporate climb it was with a solid midlevel job at one of the largest banks in Switzerland, rapid advancement a given. His home life showed equal promise when it became apparent that his wife’s bland figure disguised a thriving fertility. Within eight years of landing at Bank Suisse, Walter Krueger was the assistant director of investor relations, and he had to his credit six children, a ski chalet in Klosters, and a raging peptic ulcer. For a Swiss banker, life was as it should have been.
Then, one early spring day four years ago, Walter Krueger had lost it all. The investigation was born from a trivial act of spite—a low-level clerk, terminated for failing a drug test, had before he was sacked manipulated routing numbers and forged his supervisor’s signature, having the effect of diverting the bank’s entire quarterly tax disbursement to a vice president’s personal brokerage account. The mischief was quickly sorted, but not before the bank examiners had stuck their noses in. During the course of their inquiry Krueger fell under separate scrutiny, in particular his dealings with a wealthy Israeli, rumored to be an arms dealer, who generated great sums of dollars to be legitimized in the form of Swiss government bonds and U.S. Treasury certificates. With the bank regulators circling, Krueger was called to a meeting with the firm’s board—his father-in-law centered between four equally unsmiling men. Krueger walked out of that meeting unemployed. He was permitted by the bank to keep the contents of his desk, and by his father-in-law to keep his wife and children. The client in question was quietly asked to do business elsewhere, and the sated bank examiners flapped onward to the next carcass. With Walter Krueger sacrificed, everyone went back to the business at hand.
This was where Krueger had surprised many of those who knew him. At the age of forty-one, and shored comfortably by his wife’s fortune, he could well have retired to the chalet with Greta and their six children. He did not. Perhaps harboring an ill vision of some kind of Von Trapp existence in the Tyrolean Alps, Walter Krueger took a different path. If his reputation was ruined, his qualifications remained intact, and he struck out to open his own private bank, leasing a small suite in a bland building in the shadows of the Bahnhofstrasse giants.
His first client, by no coincidence, was a wealthy Israeli looking for less obvious rinse cycles for his soiled assets. His name was Benjamin Grossman, and he was indeed an arms merchant. Krueger set out by retaining a good lawyer, actually an entire firm, and was soon testing the curbs of law and privacy to manage Grossman’s money. It was a delicate operation, but the fees and margins Krueger demanded, and that Grossman allowed, were percentages that would have given his father-in-law palpitations.
The workings of Israel’s top arms merchant did not escape Mossad. Certain branches of the Israeli government—Shin Bet and Aman among them—had logged substantial files on the opaque dealings of Benjamin Grossman, indeed enough to shut him down had they been of that mind. But Mossad’s director at the time, Anton Bloch, was always one to put opportunity above justice. He reasoned that a recognized and well-financed arms dealer, already in cahoots with a dexterous Swiss banker, could prove invaluable for Israel as a sayan, a Hebrew word that translated roughly to “helper.” Across the world, these were Mossad’s enablers, men and women who offered money, influence, and expertise to advance the Israeli cause. In the case of Grossman, all Mossad needed was a trusted agent to make their delicate connection, and they found him—or created him actually—in the persona of Natan Mendelsohn. Krueger Asset Management had found its second client, alias David Slaton.
Il Dolce was as pretentious a restaurant as resided on Bahnhofstrasse, superb food and vintage wine at ruinous prices. More directly, it was a place where business was done. Slaton watched the restaurant from across the street, a bookstore with a good view of the entrance, and saw Krueger arrive, punctually and alone, and disappear inside. He kept watching for five minutes, then walked up the street for a secondary inspection. He saw nothing out of place.
Slaton had scouted the area earlier, and spent ten minutes inside the restaurant, ostensibly to make a reservation. The place was exactly as he remembered. He had met Krueger here on four previous occasions, two of these with the arms dealer Grossman also in attendance. Over Il Dolce’s exquisite beef and fowl, the three had coordinated funding and arms shipments for a series of Mossad initiatives, the details always later knotted in the privacy of Krueger’s office. In time, the operation with Grossman had gone dormant, Anton Bloch sensing too much risk. It was a loose end Slaton had never had the chance to clean up, and one that he now hoped Mossad had forgotten about.
He found Krueger at the reserved table, a quiet corner near a fire exit. The banker had a menu in hand, but spotted Slaton straightaway.
Krueger rose and extended his hand. “Monsieur Mendelsohn, how good to see you. It has been a long time. You look well.” He kept to the English they’d always preferred.
Slaton shook his hand. “It’s good to see you, Walter.”
They took their respective seats. Krueger was as Slaton remembered: big and plump with a horseshoe of close-cropped hair around his balding crown, a great marshmallow of a man in a thousand-dollar Italian suit. Yet if his exterior was soft, his gaze was as keen as his investment results implied. Slaton’s most compelling question was one he could not ask. He wondered if Mossad had come back in his absence to install a surrogate for Natan Mendelsohn. If so, it would be written on Krueger’s face right now. It was not. The man looked unbothered, even happy to see him.
“I’ve been abroad for some time,” Slaton said.
“Pleasure or business?” Krueger asked.
“Only business. Men like us have little time for the other, no?”
“D’accord. My chalet in the Alps has been gathering dust since last winter.”
“Business is good then?”
“Reasonably so,” replied Krueger. “The Americans have been pushing our government for more transparency in banking, yet only when it comes to those who owe taxes to their IRS.”
The two exchanged a knowing smile and were soon chatting about families, Slaton hoping he remembered correctly the number of children birthed by the fictional Natalya Mendelsohn. The waiter came and took their order, and everyone switched languages. In Zurich business was conducted in English, contracts written in Swiss German, and dinner ordered in French. It all created a degree of confusion, but this was not unintended. If clients did not get what they expected, salesmen, attorneys, and chefs all had a reasonable case for missed communications. Krueger selected duck a l’orange, Slaton grilled trout Ruden. A pair of martinis found their way to the table and, after a toast to nothing in particular, Slaton took the helm.
“Did you bring my package?” he asked.
“Of course.” Krueger reached into his jacket and pulled out a sealed envelope, slightly larger than a standard letter. “It has been in my safe for fifteen months now.”
Slaton took the envelope, pocketed it, and said, “I haven’t seen an account statement in some time—did you bring one?”
Krueger went ashen. “Statement?” A long hesitation, then, “The account you speak of … are you not aware that it was brought to zero some months ago?”
“Was it?”
“By your own attorney.”
“My attorney.”
“The woman who came to see me. The papers were completely in order,” Krueger said uneasily, “your limite
d power of attorney. All perfectly valid and certified. I don’t see how—”
Slaton held up a hand to put the Swiss at ease. “Yes, I understand all that. I made the authorization, of course. But nothing at all remains in the account?”
“The account itself is intact, as your attorney directed. Quite clear. But the balance is zero. All funds were transferred to the bank in Tel Aviv.”
Slaton considered this. It made a certain sense. There had been perhaps twenty thousand U.S. in the account when he’d last seen it, along with a smaller secondary standing in zero-coupon Swiss bonds. Were Mossad’s bean counters only being meticulous? Recovering funds gone astray? Or was there something more? That the account had been left alive struck Slaton as unusual. Procedurally, it would have been more typical for Mossad to close it, effectively cutting all ties to Grossman. But then it occurred to Slaton that leaving the account open was like setting an alarm. If inquiries were made, perhaps by the police or bank examiners, Mossad would be forewarned. Yes, he thought, that made sense. A tripwire—and one that he had just activated. Slaton twirled his martini by the stem of its glass, hoping idly that Krueger would offer to pay for dinner. He needed cash, needed it now, and while there were any number of ways to acquire funds, all entailed a certain amount of time. A certain amount of risk. His entire approach to Geneva would have to be rethought.
“I hope I have acted to your satisfaction,” Krueger prattled.
“Yes,” Slaton said distractedly, “the timeline of those transactions escaped me for a moment, but it doesn’t matter.”
Krueger beamed. “Bon.” The banker then turned tentative, lowering his voice amid the burble of conversation around them—a man about to voice serious concerns. “I am happy to have not disappointed you, monsieur. There is, in fact, a separate matter we should discuss.”
“A separate matter?”
“I have been trying unsuccessfully to reach you for many months. The address I have on file, the postal box in Oxford, seems to have reverted. And your previous phone number has been disconnected. I even tried to contact you through your attorney, but she and her staff seem to have taken an extended holiday. They do not return my calls.”
