Strait nodded and Thorne let go of the finger.

"You're a schoolyard bully," yelled Strait. He shook his hand to lessen the pain.

"I may be a bully, but I also happen to be running things out here, so watch your mouth."

"Not for long if I have my way. The director sent me out to keep an eye on you. He had a feeling you'd be getting antsy."

"I already have a shadow," said Thorne.

"Well, now you have two. Consider yourself a lucky man." Strait walked to the couch on the opposite side of the room and slumped onto its lumpy cushions. "Just tell me one thing. Tell me, please, that no activity came across that account."

"It's your lucky day. Yours and Mevlevi's, that is. No activity has come across the account. For months Jester has been calling the transfers into and out of that account like clockwork. The day that account goes on their surveillance list, Jester goes cold. Frankly, it has me wondering."

"Our priority is Eastern Lightning," said Strait. "And Eastern Lightning is about drugs. That's the word from the director. Is that clear? I'm just here to make sure you toe the line."

Thorne stared out the window and waved a tired hand in Strait's direction. "Go away, Terry. The op is safe and sound for the time being."

"That is what I needed to hear," Strait said exhaustedly. "From now on, clear any ideas you might have with me. And tell Franz Studer to take that damn account number off his list."

Thorne waved his hand once more. "Fuck off, Terry."

Outside, a white Volvo from the Zurich Police Department had drawn up on the sidewalk, behind the DEA's rented vehicles. A young policeman wearing a knee-length black leather topcoat was lecturing one of the junior agents. It was clear from the officer's exaggerated gestures that the improvised parking spaces constituted an infraction of the highest magnitude. Somewhere above breaking and entering but below first-degree murder.

Who sent this joker? Thorne wondered. By instinct, he looked up at the old woman perched at her window. The hag caught sight of him and quickly withdrew into the shadows of her apartment. The window slammed shut a second later.

A bewildered Sterling Thorne shrugged and returned to his desk. "Christ, I hate this place."

CHAPTER 15

Two hours earlier, Nick Neumann sat in a stiff leather armchair, allowing his eyes to adjust to a dimly lit office on the Fourth Floor of the United Swiss Bank. Iron window blinds built into the walls like a medieval portcullis remained fully lowered. A single lamp sprouting from the left forecorner of the imposing crescent-shaped desk provided the room's only light.

Nick stared across the room at Martin Maeder, executive vice president for private banking. Maeder's head was lowered, his eyes riveted on two pieces of paper lying side by side on his desk- no doubt some report concerning Nick. He'd been sitting this way for the past ten minutes, not saying a word. Nick figured his silence to be a tactic designed to soften up his insides and make him ready to confess to a whole litany of crimes, one or two of which he just might have committed. Grudgingly, he admitted it was working.

Nick guarded his strict posture, determined not to appear nervous in any way. The peaks of his shoulder blades brushed the back of the chair. His elbows rested on the armrests and his hands were folded in his lap, thumbs raised to form a steeple. He examined his shoes, which were spit polished, and his trousers, which sported a razor crease. He studied his hands, which were immaculate and had been ever since the age of nine when his father had started a nightly homework review.

During the fall of Nick's fifth-grade year, it became his father's practice to meet with him every evening at six o'clock in the dining room to review his schoolwork. Nick would put on a fresh shirt and using a fingernail brush his father had given him, wash his hands and nails assiduously. Before presenting his homework for review, he'd show his father his hands- palm up, palm down- while answering the usual questions about how school had been that day. He could still remember the feel of his dad's hands, so large and soft and strong, taking his own little ones into them, turning them over, checking for dirty nails. When the inspection was finished, they'd shake hands, interlocking their little fingers. It was their secret handshake. Then they would begin work. This went on for a year and a half, and during that time Nick convinced himself he hated it.

The first Monday after his father was killed, Nick came down to the dining room table exactly at six o'clock. He had done all his homework, then put on a clean shirt and washed his hands, using his dad's fingernail brush. He waited at the table for an hour. He could hear his mother watching TV in the den, getting up every fifteen minutes to make herself a drink. He came down every evening for the rest of that week. Each night he hoped that she would take his father's place. Each night he prayed that things would be like they'd been before.

But his mother never came to the table. After a week, Nick didn't either.

Martin Maeder lifted his head from the documents. He cleared his throat, then leaned across the desk and drew a cigarette from a sterling silver mug. "So, Mr. Neumann," he said in flawless English, "is Switzerland agreeing with you?"

"More or less," Nick answered, trying hard to match Maeder's easygoing tone. "The work more, the weather less."

Maeder picked up a cylindrical lighter with both hands and lit his cigarette. "Let me rephrase that. Since you arrived, would you say your glass has been half-filled or half-emptied?"

"Maybe you should ask me that question after this meeting."

"Maybe." Maeder laughed and took a long drag. "You a tough guy, Neumann? You know, Sergeant Rock, the howling commandos, the whole nine yards. Oh yeah, I lived in the States. Little Rock, 1958 to 1962. The height of the cold war. We had to practice taking cover under our desks. You know the drill." He clenched his cigarette between his front teeth and clasped his hands behind his head. "Put your head between your knees and kiss your ass good-bye." He removed the cigarette, exhaled a thin stream of smoke, and continued smiling. "You're an army man, you should know."

Nick didn't answer right away. He gazed at Maeder. His hair was slicked back off the forehead in a viscous wave. His complexion was chalky. Bifocals perched at the end of a suspicious nose partially hid his dark eyes while his mouth remained twisted in a kind of perpetual grin. Nick recognized that it was the grin that betrayed the solid jaw and the scholarly spectacles, the grin that gave him the irrevocable impression that Maeder was a trickster. A well-groomed one, to be sure; but a con, all the same.

"Marines," said Nick. "Rock was army. We were more the Alvin York type."

"Well, Nick, army, marines, Boy Scouts, whatever. We have one pissed-off client who doesn't give a fuck if you're the emperor Ming. Get my drift? Just what the hell did you think you were doing?"

Nick asked himself the same question. Any certainty that his actions on behalf of the Pasha would be appreciated had evaporated at 6:15 that morning, when Maeder woke him with an invitation to an informal meeting at 9:30 A.M. Since the summons, Nick's mind had been racing.

How could anyone have learned so quickly of his failure to transfer the Pasha's money? None of the European banks to which he should have wired the funds could confirm their arrival or absence until this morning at ten the earliest. While the forty-seven million dollars should have exited USB's accounts last night, the banks to which the funds were wired wouldn't officially credit the money to their client's account until sometime this morning, the overnight float being theirs to enjoy. As two hours were required for the bank to catalogue the past day's transfers, no confirmation of Nick's wire transfer could be given to even the most inquisitive client before 10:00.