The Broker

He walked past four cabins, each with at least three passengers, none of whom looked suspicious. He went to the restroom, locked the door, and waited until the train began to slow. Then it stopped. Zug was a two-minute layover, and the train so far had been ridiculously on time. He waited one minute, then walked quickly back to his cabin, opened the door, said nothing to Madame, grabbed his briefcase and his cane, which he was perfectly prepared to use as a weapon, and raced to the rear of the train where he jumped onto the platform.

It was a small station, elevated with a street below. Marco flew down the steps to the sidewalk where a lone taxi sat with a driver unconscious behind the wheel. "Hotel, please," he said, startling the driver, who instinctively grabbed the ignition key. He asked something in German and Marco tried Italian. "I need a small hotel. I don’t have a reservation."

"No problem," the driver said. As they pulled away, Marco looked up and saw the train moving. He looked behind him, and saw no one giving chase.

Chapter Sixteen

The ride took all of four blocks, and when they stopped in front of an A-frame building on a quiet side street the driver said in Italian, "This hotel is very good."

"Looks fine. Thanks. How far away is Zurich by car?"

"Two hours, more or less. Depends on the traffic."

"Tomorrow morning, I need to be in downtown Zurich at nine o’clock. Can you drive me there?"

The driver hesitated for a second, his mind thinking of cold cash. "Perhaps," he said.

"How much will it cost?"

The driver rubbed his chin, then shrugged and said, "Two hundred euros."

"Good. Let’s leave here at six."

"Six, yes, I’ll be here."

Marco thanked him again and watched as he drove away. A bell rang when he entered the front door of the hotel. The small counter was deserted, but a television was chattering away somewhere close by. A sleepy-eyed teenager finally appeared and offered a smile. "Guten abend," he said.

"Park inglese?" Marco asked.

He shook his head, no.

"Italiano?"

"A little."

"I speak a little too," Marco said in Italian. "I’d like a room for one night."

The clerk pushed over a registration form, and from memory Marco filled in the name on his passport, and its number. He scribbled in a fictional address in Bologna, and a bogus phone number as well. The passport was in his coat pocket, close to his heart, and he was prepared to reluctantly pull it out.

But it was late and the clerk was missing his television show. With atypical Swiss inefficiency, he said, also in Italian, "Forty-two euros," and didn’t mention the passport.

Giovanni laid the cash on the counter, and the clerk gave him a key to room number 26. In surprisingly good Italian, he arranged a wake-up call for 5:00 a.m. Almost as an afterthought, he said, "I lost my toothbrush. Would you have an extra?"

The clerk reached into a drawer and pulled out a box full of assorted necessities-toothbrushes, toothpaste, disposable razors, shaving cream, aspirin, tampons, hand cream, combs, even condoms. Giovanni selected a few items and handed over ten euros.

A luxury suite at the Ritz could not have been more welcome than room 26. Small, clean, warm, with a firm mattress, and a door that bolted twice to keep away the faces that had been haunting him since early morning. He took a long, hot shower, then shaved and brushed his teeth forever.

Much to his relief, he found a minibar in a cabinet under the television. He ate a packet of cookies, washed them down with two small bottles of whiskey, and when he crawled under the covers he was mentally drained and physically exhausted. The cane was on the bed, nearby. Silly, but he couldn’t help it.

In the depths of prison he’d dreamed of Zurich, with its blue rivers and clean shaded streets and modern shops and handsome people, all proud to be Swiss, all going about their business with a pleasant seriousness. In another life he’d ridden the quiet electric streetcars with them as they headed into the financial district. Back then he’d been too busy to travel much, too important to leave the fragile workings of Washington, but Zurich was one of the few places he’d seen. It was his kind of city: unburdened by tourists and traffic, unwilling to spend its time gawking at cathedrals and museums and worshiping the last two thousand years. Not at all. Zurich was about money, the refined management of it as opposed to the naked cash grab Backman had once perfected.

He was on a streetcar again, one hed caught near the train station, and was now moving steadily along Bahnhofstrasse, the main avenue of downtown Zurich, if in fact it had one. It was almost 9:00 a.m. He was among the last wave of the sharply dressed young bankers headed for UBS and Credit Suisse and a thousand lesser-known but equally rich institutions. Dark suits, shirts of various colors but not many white ones, expensive ties with thicker knots and fewer designs, dark brown shoes with laces, never tassels. The styles had changed slightly in the past six years. Always conservative, but with some dash. Not quite as stylish as the young professionals in his native Bologna, but quite attractive.

Everyone was reading something as they moved along. Streetcars passed from the other direction. Marco pretended to be engrossed in a copy ofNewsweek, but he was really watching everyone else.

No one was watching him. No one seemed offended by his bowling shoes. In fact, he’d seen another pair on a casually dressed young man near the train station. His straw hat was getting no attention. The hems of his slacks had been repaired slightly after he’d purchased a cheap sewing kit from the hotel desk, then spent half an hour trying to tailor his pants without drawing blood. His outfit cost a fraction of those around him, but what did he care? He’d made it to Zurich without Luigi and all those others, and with a little more luck he’d make it out.

At Paradeplatz the streetcars wheeled in from east and west and stopped. They emptied quickly as the young bankers scattered in droves and headed for the buildings. Marco moved with the crowd, his hat now left behind under the seat in the streetcar.

Nothing had changed in seven years. The Paradeplatz was still the same-an open plaza lined with small shops and cafes. The banks around it had been there for a hundred years; some announced their names from neon signs, others were hidden so well they couldn’t be found. From behind his sunglasses he soaked in as much of the surroundings as he could while sticking close to three young men with gym bags slung over their shoulders. They appeared to be headed for Rhineland Bank, on the east side. He followed them inside, into the lobby, where the fun began.

The information desk hadn’t moved in seven years; in fact, the well-groomed lady sitting behind it looked vaguely familiar. "I’d like to see Mr. Mikel Van Thiessen," he said as softly as possible.

‘And your name?"

"Marco Lazzeri." He would use "Joel Backman" later, upstairs, but he was hesitant to use it here. Hopefully, Neal’s e-mails to Van Thiessen had alerted him to the alias. The banker had been asked to remain in town, if at all possible, for the next week or so.

She was on the phone and also pecking at a keyboard. "It will be just a moment, Mr. Lazzeri," she said. "Would you mind waiting?"

"No," he said. Waiting? He’d been dreaming of this for years. He took a chair, crossed his legs, saw the shoes, then put his feet under the chair. He was certain that he was being watched from a dozen different camera angles now, and that was fine. Maybe they would recognize Backman sitting in the lobby, maybe they wouldn’t. He could almost see them up there, gawking at the monitors, scratching their heads, saying, "Don’t know, he’s much thinner, gaunt, even."