"Any Swiss box with a number in the seventeen hundreds at Gilbert et Clie is among the most precious antique boxes in the vault," she told him. "That's because it's a triple-lock box. Very unusual. Only a few were manufactured in 1923 by Bauer AG in Zurich. Extremely rare."
Conrad touched the brass and steel box. It was only about three inches wide, two inches high, and seven inches long. Just how big was the secret Baron von Berg hoped to hide in such a small box?
"I see only two locks on the door," he said. "The four-dial combination lock and the keylock next to it."
"That's all you're supposed to see," she told him. "The distinctive combination lock you can't miss. It has four alphabetic brass dials for a total of 234,256 possible combinations. This is a lock you never forget."
Neither did Baron von Berg, thought Conrad, already imagining himself turning the four dials in sequence to line up the letters A-R-E-S. "What about the other two locks?"
Dee Dee nodded and said, "The two other lever locks share a mechanism housed inside the box's single keyhole."
"Two locks inside one keyhole?" Conrad repeated. "How does that work?"
"With two keys, of course," she said, and placed two keys on the table. One was silver, the other gold. "One bank key and one client key. Let me show you. I'll be the bank, you be the client."
She handed him the gold client key and picked up the silver bank key. "First things first. You need to open the combination lock. I've set the code for this box. It's OGRE."
Conrad turned the first dial to the letter "O," the second to the letter "G," the third to the letter "R," and the fourth to the letter "E," and heard an unmistakable click inside the box. "Wait a second," he said. "If the client has to open the combination lock first, before any keys are inserted, then the banker will know the combination to the client's box."
"Yes, but the client will change the combination before he closes the box," she told him. "It's like changing passwords on a computer system, only more secure." She held up the silver bank key. "Now for the tumbler-lever lock. It has seven brass levers and two different bolt levers for a total of nine levers." She inserted the silver key into the single hole. "The bank key moves the three top levers and the top bolt lever to unblock the first part of the lock." She turned the key and then removed it. "This enables you, the client, to insert your key. Go ahead."
Conrad inserted his gold key into the hole and turned it until he felt it stop.
"Your key moves the four bottom levers and the bottom bolt lever," she said. "The bottom bolt lever is connected to the door bolt and the combination lock. That's the resistance you're feeling."
"Why won't it open?"
"Each dial of the alphabetical combination lock needs to be on the proper letter in order for you to be able to turn your key ninety degrees into a vertical position."
Conrad checked the dials again. They clearly spelled OGRE. "The dials are right. What's the problem?"
"The problem is that you're not finished yet," she told him. "Once the client key is vertical and the bolt is partially retracted, you need to scramble each dial again so your key can turn fully to the right and open the lock."
Conrad shook his head. Von Berg, you paranoid son of a bitch, he thought. Then again, he'd have watched his back, too, if he had worked for the world's craziest dictator.
Dee Dee seemed to feel she owed him an explanation. "Scrambling the combination before the door was opened was supposed to ensure that nobody else in the vault besides the banker could see the baron's secret combination while he was busy inspecting the contents of his safe deposit box."
"And if I make a mistake along the way somehow?"
"No second chances," Dee Dee said. "The box's chemical seal will break and destroy the contents. That's why a man as powerful as Roman Midas can own the bank and still not get to the contents of Baron von Berg's box. You have only one shot to open a box of this type. Go ahead. Give it a try."
Conrad turned the key, and the lock clicked open. He lifted the box lid and saw stacks of U.S. dollars-Ben Franklins. There had to be ten million dollars in the box. Conrad looked up to see Dee Dee lock eyes with him. "You will exchange the contents of your box for this one with Mr. Zawas after you leave the bank," she said, pausing to make sure they understood each other. Abdil Zawas didn't miss a trick; he wanted to give Conrad every incentive to come back after the job.
"I get it," Conrad said. "And if I don't show, I'm sure Mr. Zawas has a bigger box to stuff my corpse in."
"Mr. Zawas said that what you are after is not the contents of the box but the information those contents convey," Dee Dee said, and closed the box. "That being the case, he wants the contents for himself and is happy to pay you for them at this agreed-upon price."
"Fine, but there's only one problem," he told her. "I have the combination code, but I don't have a client key."
"The bank probably does," Dee Dee said. "Clients like Nazi generals who traveled to far-flung or dangerous parts of the world often allowed the banks to keep their keys because they didn't want to lose them. As long as they didn't forget their box number or combination code-or share them with anybody else-it was pretty foolproof."
"Even if I don't look like Baron von Berg's heir or, worse, I'm recognized on sight?"
"The bank's huissier will know you have business there as soon as you write down your box number, and she'll conclude from the seventeen hundred series that you're one of the bank's largest clients."
"No biometrics or anything?"
"Only in the movies," Dee Dee said. "The genius of the Swiss security system is that it's plain and transparent. You don't have to worry about somebody hacking your computer system and accessing your data or faking your biometrics. Locks, keys, and combinations beat the computer chip any day. Like the pyramids of Egypt that you raid, Swiss boxes will survive the ages. Think of this bank as just another tomb to raid, and you'll be fine."
"And when I present the box number and the huissier promptly informs Midas that someone has come to open the box?"
"Oh, they'll let you open the box," she said. "They just won't let you walk out of the bank with it. I can't help you there. But Mr. Zawas says you have the architectural blueprints to the bank."
"Yes," Conrad said. "But I don't know how accurate they are."
"I'm afraid that's a combination I can't help you with," she told him. "No doubt Sir Roman Midas has made some modifications to the bank not reflected in your schematics."
"No doubt," Conrad said.
21
PARIS
It seemed to Serena that all of Paris had come to the church of Saint Roch to bid adieu to Mercedes Le Roche. Uniformed police held back the crowds lining Rue Saint-Honore while office workers and residents in the buildings above leaned out their windows. All were straining to glimpse the celebrities arriving beneath a giant screen and loudspeakers broadcasting the funeral ceremony live.
Benito nudged the limousine ever closer to the hive of paparazzi ahead. Serena felt uneasy as she sank back in her seat and into the soft gray trouser suit and black trench coat that the people from Chanel had requested she wear to the funeral. A few years ago the Vatican's public relations agency had made some sort of bizarre agreement granting Chanel the right to dress Serena for affairs of state. It was an arrangement that she had always found ways to ignore. But having already packed her bags-and globes-for sunny Rhodes and not the cool rain of Paris, she'd had to reluctantly oblige this time.
The idea of a funeral as a fashion show, however, made her ill.
"Her funeral has a budget bigger than all her documentaries put together," she said. "Hardly anyone here knew her, and even fewer cared."
"It's Papa Le Roche's rank in French society that has brought out all the movie stars and other celebrities who have come to offer him their condolences," Benito said. "That would include you and President Nicolas Sarkozy."
"Where are the 'least of these' that Jesus talked about, Benito?"
"Wa
tching the television, signorina."
Hopeless, she thought. Not only was she upset about what had happened to Mercedes, she was worried sick about Conrad and whether she'd ever see him again. She was also worried that she'd fail in Rhodes tomorrow. In fact, looking at the circus outside, she wondered if she and the Church had failed the world already with their complicity in this stagecraft of death. But Papa Le Roche had personally requested her presence for the family, and this was another chance to size up Roman Midas before Rhodes. Surely the grieving boyfriend would be on hand to eulogize the lover he had so ruthlessly slain.
She decided she desperately needed some fresh air. Cracking open her window just a bit, she could hear the crowds actually applauding every time a rocker or fashion designer stepped out of a limousine. As if this were some kind of award show. Which in a sense it was, she supposed, for Papa Le Roche.
"Skip the main entrance," she ordered Benito. "Take me around to the side."
They drove past the mob, turned a corner, and passed through a side gate, pulling up behind a black Volvo hearse. The hatch was up, and Serena could see Mercedes's casket in the back before the driver with an earpiece shut the door. He was going to go around the block to the crowds at the main entrance, where pallbearers would bring the casket into the church.
She was greeted at the side door by a young priest, who escorted her inside to the sanctuary. She was seated in the front row alongside a grief-stricken Papa Le Roche, a rather smug Roman Midas, and an expressionless President Sarkozy and his beautiful wife, Carla Bruni.
Serena offered her condolences to Papa Le Roche, who thanked her profusely for coming. Sarkozy and Midas looked at each other awkwardly, as if to say that today was certainly an unscheduled stop on the way to the EU peace summit on Rhodes tomorrow. Serena knew that neither had anticipated seeing the other before then. But while Sarkozy looked like he would have preferred not to be seen so close to the former Russian oligarch boyfriend of a woman who had died so violently, Midas seemed to relish his photo op next to the French president and among European society.
It was the French first lady, however, whose curious gaze after their kiss-kiss had made Serena the most uncomfortable. For some odd reason, it had prompted her to recall that she was ten years junior to Carla, who herself had been ten years junior to Sarkozy's second wife and thirteen years younger than his first. Then Serena saw the gray trouser suit beneath Carla's open black trench coat and realized that they were wearing the same outfit. Somebody at Chanel clearly hadn't cross-checked the cosmic social calendar.
Not that it bothered Serena. She was a linguist first and foremost, a nun second, and a celebrity who could raise funds for humanitarian aid a distant third. But she did feel bad for Karl Lagerfeld, the designer. He was sitting four pews behind with a row full of fashion icons, and when she glanced back to offer him a tender smile, he looked positively panic-stricken.
As the church bells tolled, six pallbearers in black Pierre Cardin suits carried Mercedes's casket into the church. They laid it feet toward the altar and then opened it to reveal a luminous Mercedes, frozen in time, with a rosary in her hands and flowers all around.
The tribute to Mercedes began with video clips of her childhood, followed by clips from her first documentary for French television. Several speakers read poems, and one played a vulgar song that was a favorite of hers. Then Midas rose to speak to his dearly departed.
Looking at Mercedes, he said, "You were a flower who faded too soon from this earth. But your sweet aroma will linger forever."
Serena wanted to gag. The duet of mourner and mourned did not go down well with her. She'd never liked eulogies staged during de facto state funerals, anyway. Especially when the deceased wasn't much of an angel or terribly sorry about it.
But what was she supposed to do? Stand up before all the bereaved, who right now were calculating their own odds of entering the pearly gates, and speak the truth, however awful, about Mercedes? Or was she supposed to bow to social convention and assure everyone in earshot that Mercedes was in heaven? Surely anybody who knew her, even her father, doubted it. She herself doubted that eulogies even belonged in church. After all, this was supposed to be a place where self-confessed sinners gathered in the holy presence of God. Not a stage for them to pat each other on the back for their illusory virtues.
What she especially didn't like was the feeling that none of them should have been there that day. Not the French president. Not her. Not Midas. And certainly not Mercedes. She wasn't supposed to die. None of this was supposed to have happened. But it did. Why?
Conrad. He'd happened. He had shown up at the Bilderberg party and put all the wheels in motion. He had turned her life upside down, like he always did, and it was never going to be put right until he and she were right.
It was her turn to speak.
She got up and placed a wheat sheaf on the coffin and repeated the eternal rest prayer. It was the most honest thing she could say. Not in French but in Latin, the way Mercedes likely would have wanted to tweak her proud nationalist papa, who liked to believe that Jesus was really a Gaul and not a Jew and that French was the language of angels.
Requiem?ternam dona ei Domine; et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace. Amen.
What Serena was saying was: "Eternal rest grant unto her, O Lord; and let perpetual light shine upon her. May she rest in peace. Amen." She could tell that the dignitaries in the front pew didn't understand, although they pretended they did. But several mourners in the fashion row nodded enthusiastically.
Father Letteron, wearing white and violet vestments, conducted the funeral Mass. There were flowers and candles all around. When it was over, Serena watched the shroud-draped coffin float out of the church before the hundreds of onlookers and cameras. Following behind was Father Letteron, who sang the antiphon "In Paradisum," a prayer that the holy angels would bear the immortal soul of Mercedes Le Roche to paradise.
If that meant television ratings, then perhaps Mercedes had indeed finally found her heaven.
The show inside over, Carla Bruni and Nicolas Sarkozy once again gave their condolences to Mercedes's father and then wordlessly marched outside to the waiting world. Midas took Papa Le Roche's arm and guided him out of the church. The rest of the mourners exited wherever they'd be sure to be photographed by the media.
Serena stood alone in the first pew, the hypocrisy of the world around her-and her place in it-feeling like a punch to her gut. She took a deep breath and stepped into the aisle only to be blocked by a young French aide. He looked red-faced with shame.
"I beg your forgiveness, Sister Serghetti," he said in French.
"Is there a problem?"
He hemmed and hawed. "I don't know how to say this."
Serena's patience had worn thin over the course of the funeral. "Spit it out."
"The first lady requests that you mourn a little longer in private," the Frenchman said, barely able to form the words. "She fears there might be, eh, speculation in the press that you have, eh, upstaged her in some way with your youth and beauty."
Holy Mother of God, she thought. But then she quickly confessed her angry, inner burst to God and forced an understanding smile to the aide. She could only imagine how many times each day this poor messenger got shot while bearing his little tidings of great vanity. And this was the church where Napoleon had mowed down royalist insurgents on the front steps.
"Quite all right," she said. "I'll just exit discreetly from the side."
He made the sign of the cross and bowed his head. "Thank you."
She did her best to make it to Benito and the car outside. She had to put Paris behind her and press on to Rhodes. But halfway out, her sadness and rage at the events of the morning began to overwhelm her, and she stopped to compose herself at the free-standing holy water stoup by the side door.
As she dipped the tips of her fingers into the marble basin and crossed herself, she could see her pale reflection in the water. Suddenly, the side door
flew open, and she looked up to see a camera flash in her face.
22
BERN. SWITZERLAND
Conrad paid the cabdriver and walked up the steps toward the venerable private banking firm of Gilbert et Clie. The bank was an austere granite building in Bern's Old Town, its presence marked only by a discreet brass plaque set in the wall.
A porter greeted Conrad as he entered the lobby with a leather weekender bag slung over his shoulder. The porter asked Conrad to state his business and then directed him to a reception area outside the private executive offices. Here, a smiling brunette in a red cashmere sweater took his Burberry raincoat. Her pale blue eyes seemed to linger in admiration of his athletic build beneath his three-piece suit. In the most exquisite French, she informed him that Monsieur Gilbert would see him in but a moment.
Conrad took a seat and surveyed the shabby but elegant reception area. The faces of several generations of Gilberts looked down from the oil paintings on the walls. For well over a century, the bank had remained in family hands, an outgrowth of their merchandising business. Why the family had sold the bank was just another one of the secrets it kept inside its vaults. It was one of only a few private banks in Bern, as most were in Geneva, and the only one with a French surname, not German. Like the other private banks, Gilbert et Clie was unincorporated and never published its balance sheets.
The mademoiselle returned and ushered Conrad into Gilbert's office. A tall, gray-haired man, elegant in boutonniere and black suit, rose from his desk. His resemblance to the faces in the paintings was unmistakable.
"A pleasure to meet you, Monsieur von Berg," Gilbert said in German, regarding Conrad keenly. "Please sit down and make yourself comfortable."
"Thank you," Conrad replied in English, dispensing with any Bavarian pretense.
An officer of the bank, a big, bald man whom Gilbert introduced as Monsieur Guillaume, stood silently by his side. He regarded Conrad warily from under his heavy eyelids.
The Atlantis revelation a-3 Page 10
