Kaiser responded calmly. "Mr. Feller, you may rest assured we shall never allow the Adler Bank to reach a position where they will be entitled to even a single seat on our board. We have underestimated Mr. Konig's intentions. That shall no longer be the case. Part of our efforts will be aimed at winning over our institutional shareholders, many of whom reside in North America. Mr. Neumann, here, will be in charge of contacting those shareholders and convincing them to vote with reigning management at our general assembly in four weeks."
Feller took a step back and looked down at Nick. "Excuse me," he muttered. "The name is Feller. Reto Feller. Glad to meet you." He was short and dumpy and not much older than Nick. He wore thick horn-rimmed glasses that made his dark eyes look like moist, ill-focused marbles. He had a halo of curly red hair on an otherwise bald pate.
Nick stood and introduced himself, then made the mistake of saying that he hoped they would enjoy working together.
"Enjoy?" barked Feller. "We're at war. There'll be no enjoyment until Konig is dead and the Adler Bank gone to perdition." He turned to Kaiser. "What shall I tell Dr. Ott? He's waiting with Sepp Zwicki on the trading floor. Shall we begin our program of share accumulation?"
"Not so quickly," said Kaiser. "Once we start buying, the share price will skyrocket. First we line up as many votes as possible. Then we commit the bank's capital to fight Konig."
Feller bowed his head and scurried from the office without a further word.
Kaiser picked up the telephone and phoned Sepp Zwicki, the bank's chief of equity trading. He relayed his orders to delay commencement of their share accumulation plan, then asked who could be counted on to sell the Adler Bank large blocks of shares. When talk turned to the effect of Konig's bid on the prices of USB mutual funds, Nick's attention wandered. He swiveled in his chair and for the first time took a thorough look at Wolfgang Kaiser's office.
In size and form, the office resembled the transept of a medieval cathedral. The ceiling was high and vaulted. Four rafters ran its width, their purpose more decorative than structural. Entry was gained through two sets of double wooden doors, which ran from floor to ceiling. The status of the doors mirrored that of the business being conducted within. Open doors allowed all members of the bank's executive board free access without need for advance notice. Should the inner doors be closed, the Chairman could be interrupted, but only by Rita Sutter. She had explained the system to Nick herself, earlier this morning. Should both sets of doors be closed, and the admonition "Do not disturb" given, only a man "desirous of immediate defenestration" would dare venture in. Her words. Presuming, Nick added, he had been capable of bypassing Rita Sutter.
She was hardly the party queen he'd seen in the photograph at Marco Cerruti's apartment. Her hair was a sober blond cut to fall shy of her shoulders. Her figure appeared trim beneath an elegant taupe ensemble, but her blue eyes no longer sparkled as innocently as they had in the photograph. Instead they appraised from a distance. She exuded an unimpeachable sense of control- more a top executive than the Chairman's secretary. Nick thought she probably knew more about what went on inside the bank than Kaiser. He made a point to talk to her about his father.
Visitors to the imperial den had to walk ten paces across a blue carpet to reach the Chairman's desk, which stood directly facing the entryway. The desk was the room's centerpiece, an immovable mahogany altar, and on it sat the objects required for the worship of the Gods of International Business: two computer monitors, two telephones, a desktop speaker, and a Rolodex the size of an impoverished village's water mill.
The desk was framed by a grand arched window that ran from floor to ceiling. Four steel rods vertically intersected the window giving the visitor, in most instances, a secure sense of confinement inside the world's most opulent vault. Or, to those with a guiltier conscience, the dread of being held prisoner inside the barbican of a central European fortress.
Nick followed a beam of sunlight as it penetrated the morning fog and illuminated the recesses of the vast office. Two pictures adorned the wall opposite him. One, an oil portrait of Gerhard Gautschi, who had governed the bank for thirty-five years. The other a Byzantine mosaic whose title could only be the moneychangers in the temple. A kneeling moneylender offered a bag of gold to a mounted Saracen brandishing a jewel-encrusted scimitar. The mosaic was fantastic, and even to Nick's untrained eye, a masterpiece of its kind.
A full suit of samurai armor stood in the corner nearest the Chairman's desk. It was a gift from the Sho-Ichiban Bank of Japan, with which USB shared a two percent cross holding. And on the wall to Nick's left, above the couch where he had sat earlier, hung a small impressionist painting of a wheatfield in high summer. A cloudless blue sky was seared by the sun's oppressive heat. A single farmer worked in the field, his back bent under the weight of cut wheat he carried back to the mill. The artist had left his signature in the lower right-hand corner. Renoir.
Nick pressed his back into the quilting of his chair and tried to find the thread that wound through the decor of Wolfgang Kaiser's office. You could easily be overwhelmed by the beauty of any one of the fabulous items on display. How often do you find a Renoir in a private collection or a sixteenth-century suit of Japanese battle armor? Yet, Kaiser wasn't the type to assemble a meretricious display of vanities, however priceless. He had surrounded himself with souvenirs of his bank's climb to eminence, personal trophies of hard-won battles, and objets d'art that spoke to a private corner of his soul.
Nick felt that there was an order to the eclectic mix of art and antiquities. A message that begged recognition. He looked around the room again, not focusing but feeling; not seeing but absorbing. And then he knew. Power. Vision. Scope. The entire office was a monument to Kaiser's reign. A shrine to the preeminence of the United Swiss Bank and to the man who had brought the bank that glory.
Nick was startled by the crash of a phone being slammed onto the desk.
Kaiser leaned back in his chair and ran a hand through his abundant hair. He fussed with each horn of his mustache. " 'L'audace,' Neumann. "Toujours l'audace!' You know who said that?" He didn't wait for a response. "We don't want to end up like him, do we? Marooned on an island in the middle of nowhere. Our play must be more subtle. No whiff of grapeshot for the United Swiss Bank. Not if we wish to put an end to this revolution quickly and effectively."
Nick knew better than to correct the Chairman, but in fact, Frederick the Great, not Napoleon, had uttered that famous battle cry.
"Get out some paper. Take down what I say and don't become a frantic rat like Mr. Feller. A general must remain his calmest when a battle reaches its most intense."
Nick grabbed a block of paper that lay on the desk in front of him.
"Feller was right," said the Chairman. "It is a war. Konig wants to take us over, always has, if I read things clearly. He's holding shares worth just over five percent of our outstanding capital and has open orders to buy fifteen percent more. Who knows how many shares his backers are holding, but if he's able to put together a block carrying thirty-three percent of our votes, then two seats on the board are his. With two seats he can influence other board members and forge a blocking position on matters of importance.
"His war cry is that we are stuck in the Middle Ages. Private banking is going the way of the buggy whip, says Konig. Trading is the way of the future. Using your firm's capital to bet on and influence the direction of markets, currencies, interest rates. Anything that he and his cohorts can securitize, they will. Oil futures, home mortgages, Argentinean beef contracts. Any investment that doesn't post gains of twenty percent per year is ready for the slaughterhouse. Not us, by God. Not the United Swiss Bank. Private banking is what made this bank what it is today. I have no intention of abandoning it, or risking our solvency by joining Konig's band of riverboat gamblers."