The alley snaked uphill to the right. He passed a bakery, a jewelry store, and a boutique selling down comforters imported from Scandinavia. Strolling past this last storefront, he stopped short to check on the price of a pair of eiderdown pillows. He took a step backward and bent closer to the window, placing his hand on the glass to deflect a streetlamp's glare. The rhythmic attack of footsteps that he had been sure were just behind him ceased. It was too strange to consider. Was someone following him?
Without a moment's thought, Nick ran back along the path he had just covered. After ten strides, he pulled up and looked in both directions. His eyes sought out the darkest corners of the alleyway and searched the entries of apartments and businesses alike. Nothing. He was alone. His breath came in bursts, his heart beating faster than the mild exertion demanded. Around him the snow-streaked windowpanes and barren window boxes drew nearer. The alley, filled in the daylight with rustic, inviting merchants, was now dark and forbidding.
Nick turned and walked up the street. A hundred yards farther along, he stopped again. He hadn't heard someone behind him so much as felt him. He darted a glance over his shoulder sure he would catch sight of his stalker. Again, there was no one. He stood as stiff as a pillar, listening to the echoes of his own footsteps carom off the cobblestones and dissolve into the misty evening air. Christ, he must be getting paranoid!
Nick hurried down the alley and rejoined the busy street running parallel to him. The Bahnhofstrasse was swollen with thousands of nightly emigres returning home from their posts with the grand banks and major insurance companies. Trams passed in both directions. Vendors hawked bags of hot chestnuts roasted in iron kettles. He forded the stream of businessmen moving north along Zurich's most famed artery and made his way in the opposite direction, toward the Paradeplatz. Anyone following him would have a harder time of it in the dense pedestrian traffic.
He walked on, head lowered, shoulders slumped forward. Every few steps, he'd peek over his shoulders and scan the crowds. Half-convinced he'd seen the peaked cap somewhere in the sea of bobbing heads behind him, he dashed across the street and hurried his pace. A few paces ahead, the door to a brightly lit boutique opened. He veered sharply to his left, sliding by an impatient husband and his dawdling wife, and entered the store.
Nick was surrounded by watches. Shimmering creations of gold, stainless steel, and diamonds. A touch of class at thirty thousand francs a shot. He had walked into Bucherer, the city's most renowned watch emporium, now crowded with early evening shoppers. Behind him the glass door offered an easy view to where he stood. Ahead he saw a flight of stairs.
The second floor was calmer. Four showcases were positioned in a square in the center of the room. Nick pretended to study their contents as he slowly circled their perimeter. His eyes shifted quickly between the watches displayed below him and the stairwell before him. Most of the watches cost more than his annual salary. An Audemars Piguet Grande Complication was priced at Sfr. 195,000. Around a hundred fifty thousand dollars. You could barely make out the actual time because of all the individual hands, and dials within dials, and days and dates. Probably someone's idea of a masterpiece. He pulled back his sleeve and looked at his own watch- a 1961 Patek-Philippe his father had left him. He thought of how much money it was worth and marveled at how he'd managed to keep it out of his mother's hands.
When Nick looked up again, he noted the arrival of a swarthy man- tall and thick with curly black hair, looking strangely his way. Could be a thug, he thought. Nick glanced up and offered a weak smile, but the ill-shaven man was examining a favorite watch and couldn't be disturbed.
Nick stopped to study a solid gold wristwatch. Come closer, he dared him. If you're a customer, like me, you'll keep walking. He kept his eyes glued to the gaudy watch- nice if you're a Vegas bookie or a loan shark in Miami Beach. Looking up, he saw that the man had vanished.
"I see that Monsieur is interested in the Piaget," came a polished voice from behind his right shoulder.
Nick turned and stared into a dazzling smile.
"Frankly, I would recommend something more casual," said the swarthy salesman. "Maybe even something a little bit rugged. You appear a man of action, a sportsman, non? Perhaps the Daytona from Rolex? We have a wonderful model in eighteen-karat gold, sapphire crystal, deployment buckle, water resistant to two hundred meters. The finest timepiece in the world for just thirty-two thousand francs."
Nick raised an eyebrow. If he ever had a spare thirty thousand francs, he wouldn't spend it on a watch. "Do you have that model with a diamond bezel?"
The salesman registered gross disappointment. "Helas, non. We have just sold our last such model. But may I propose-"
"Maybe another time then," Nick cut in apologetically before finding the staircase to the ground floor.
He exited the store and headed south toward the lake, staying close to doorways and shop windows. You are getting paranoid, he told himself. You didn't see anybody in that alley. You didn't see any peaked cap trailing behind you. The man in Bucherer was a salesman. Nick asked himself who in the world would have the slightest interest in following him. He had no idea. No logical answer suggested itself.
Relax, he told himself.
In front of him, the Bahnhofstrasse widened. The buildings to his right fell away, revealing a large open square, the Paradeplatz. Trams arrived from all four corners, encircling the kiosk and ticket station that sat shyly in the midst of their more commanding neighbors. To his immediate right stood the headquarters of Credit Suisse, a neo-Gothic edifice reflecting the Victorian era's pride in the mastery of detail. Farther across the square sat the Swiss Bank Corporation, a masterpiece of postwar anonymity. Immediately to his left, the Hotel Savoy Baur-en-Ville welcomed many a thirsty banker to Zurich's most elegant watering hole.
Nick crossed the street and turned into the square. He ducked into the entry hall of Credit Suisse where he hid, rather idiotically by his own estimation, behind a potted date tree. Well-dressed eccentrics were apparently quite common in Zurich, for none of the bank's customers, seeking the services of the twenty-four-hour bancomat, gave him a second glance. He waited five minutes, then deciding he'd studied the date tree's leaves long enough, left the bank. He paused to allow the number thirteen tram to pull into the Paradeplatz, direction Albisguetli, then trotted across the tracks, daring the number seven, picking up speed rapidly in the other direction,to hit him. With one last stride, he was clear of the tracks and on safe ground. Content that no one was behind him, he walked directly across the square to the Confiserie Sprungli.
As Nick passed through the pastry shop's doors, he was overwhelmed by a succession of intoxicating aromas, each more seductive than the last. A whiff of chocolate, the tart sniff of lemon, and in a lower register, a note of freshly whipped cream. He made his way to the counter and asked for a box of chocolate luxembergerli, confections of meringue and chocolate cream, each no larger than his thumb and lighter than air. He paid and turned toward the exit. Leave your overactive imagination at the door, he told himself.
Then, for reasons Nick couldn't quite explain, he turned to take a final look back into the pastry shop. Perhaps he'd wanted to savor the feeling of safety the shop had provided. Or, less sentimentally, and as he would prefer to believe, he had actually felt someone's eyes upon him. But look back he did. There at the opposite entryway stood a middle-aged man of olive complexion and salt-and-pepper goatee, wrapped in a houndstooth cape. He wore an Austrian mountain guide's hat, rugged green with a sandy brush extending from its brim. The hat rose like an incomplete mountain, a shallow cleft interrupting its summit. The caped shoulders were rounded.