"Do you want us to drop you off in Zurich, Adam?" Whitehurst inquired.
"No, sir. That won't be necessary. You can drop me by the terminal and I'll take a train into town." Dressed casually in an open-collared tan shirt and brown corduroy jacket, he would melt quickly into the ranks of the industrious "Zurchers."
Whitehurst was privy to all the details of Stern's background in the CIA, where he had been a covert operations specialist. In his mid-forties, Stern had dealt with a conglomeration of groups ranging from Contras to Afghans to Iraqis. It had required a great deal of reorientation to convince him that the old Soviet Union was not the implacable foe he had always believed. Like other savvy Roundtable leaders, Bernard Whitehurst had been doing business with the "Evil Empire" for years. The communist state had proved a profitable customer since the earliest days when American and British bankers had financed Lenin's Bolshevik Revolution. Whitehurst knew that every Soviet ruler from Stalin to Gorbachev was well aware that his supposed colossus could not survive without Western assistance, particularly in the realm of advanced technology, which could be either bought or stolen. But each of them had done an effective job of posturing, worthy of Hollywood, to scare the uninitiated into spending a few billions more here and there on defense, using money borrowed from the same bankers who were also lending to the other side.
Whitehurst had personally lectured Stern on the Roundtable's politically correct view of the Cold War. The Soviet military was vastly overrated, as witness its inability to subdue a primitive guerrilla force in Afghanistan and the poor showing of its farmed-out equipment and tactics in the Persian Gulf War. There was never any credible threat of a Soviet military strike against the West, Whitehurst insisted. The top communists were not about to bite off the handouts that were feeding them. Gorbachev, good soldier that he was, had fought to the end to preserve the status quo. His big problem lay in his outmoded economy that was sinking of its own dead weight. He had just about worked out a method of holding the union together when that group of dull-witted underlings had staged their amateur coup. Gorbachev still would have succeeded but for the opportunist Yeltsin, who was not part of the leadership loop that had long worked with the Roundtable and its counterparts in Europe and Asia. An international petroleum and minerals cartel was set to provide a large infusion of cash in exchange for rights to Soviet oil and gold mining when Yeltsin abruptly forced Gorbachev out and dissolved the union.
Over the years it had proved relatively simple to deal with a single governmental entity that exercised complete control over its people. That assured the ability of it's leadership to make whatever kind of deal they desired. Whatever kind of deal would be acceptable to the Roundtable's corporate socialists. Now they were forced to negotiate with fifteen different independent states. A real drag. That was one of the topics for discussion at the annual meeting of the shadowy international group called the Council of Lyon, named for the French town where it was organized years ago, but better known as simply "the Council." Made up of representatives of groups similar to the Roundtable, the Council would meet at a plush, secluded inn on the Vierwaldstattersee, also known as Lake Luzern, which was why Whitehurst and Coyne had flown to Zurich. They were members of the power group behind the Council, cryptically labeled "the Trustees," which would gather in secret following the main meeting for a report on the project in which Adam Stern was involved.
"Be sure to find out if the funds have all been transferred as instructed," Whitehurst said as he looked around to see where Coyne had gone.
Stern gave a slight chuckle, exhibiting a one-sided grin that seemed to indicate any effort at humor would be only half-hearted. "If the money isn't there, I'm sure the General will bring it up before I have the chance."
"You're probably right."
"Want me to get you the details on this side operation they're planning?"
Whitehurst saw Coyne come out of the hangar just as a shiny black Mercedes swung around the building and headed for the aircraft. He frowned. "I'd rather not know the details," he said. "Some fairly drastic measures will likely be required. The sort of thing our friends in the East do rather well. All I need to know is the date and the place, so I can make certain our people are somewhere else at the time."
Fine for you, Stern thought. My responsibility is to be sure the whole scenario plays out successfully. I want to know every last detail of who will be doing what to whom. If any of the wheels develops a squeak, I intend to be there with an oil can.
Adam Stern had always been a man with a mission. Over time, the outlines of the mission evolved substantially, but his dedication never lagged. It had all begun with a visit from a CIA recruiter during his senior year at Amherst. That was during the troublesome period just after the Soviets and their Warsaw Pact allies had put the "Prague Spring" in the deep freeze. An enthusiastic young Stern, ready to do battle with the forces of injustice, had promptly penned his name on the application to become a clandestine cold warrior.
After a decade of shuffling cutouts, arranging dead drops and coping with agents of frequently questionable reliability in various bleak capitals of Eastern Europe, Stern graduated to the more politically sensitive area of covert operations. He proved himself adept at dealing with the principals in a variety of vexatious entanglements ranging from Nicaragua to Afghanistan to the Iran-Iraq muddle. It was during the latter operation, with one of the Trustees involved in a lucrative arms deal, that Adam Stern came to the attention of Bernard Whitehurst. For years the Council had quietly contracted with former FBI or CIA operatives to perform various services of an intelligence nature. Whitehurst saw in Stern a man uniquely qualified to serve as a clandestine liaison, negotiator, investigator and, when necessary, enforcer, or, as he preferred, "facilitator." Laurence Coyne had made the approach and Bernard Whitehurst had sealed the deal.
Adam Stern caught a train at the rail station beneath the airport terminal building and was at Zurich's downtown Hauptbahnhof station ten minutes later. He took the stairway down to the underground shopping mall and headed for the exit to the Bahnhofstrasse, the city's main street. It was mid-afternoon. He made stops at two banks, where he was ushered into private offices for brief chats with discreet bankers who greeted him by name. Finding everything in order, he strolled back out to the Bahnhofstrasse and began to browse through its expensive shops. He had time to kill and the money to buy, should he take the notion. Stern knew he enjoyed the best of all worlds, a position of great importance to some of the planet's wealthiest and most influential men, a virtually limitless expense account, the opportunity to travel throughout the world and a sense of power akin to that of a Mafia don.
Stern enjoyed Zurich. Though it was one of the world's top financial centers, a city of obvious affluence, the people were hard-working, down-to-earth types who shunned ostentation. When he stopped at a quaint little cafe for coffee and cake, two conservatively dressed men at the next table nodded politely and resumed their quiet chat over cups of tea. They could easily be presidents of billion-dollar banks who rode to work on the city's blue trams. By contrast, his employers traveled in long black limousines or shiny Rolls Royces and kept themselves mostly to plush private clubs.
While crossing a picturesque medieval square not far from the Limmat, the river that bisected the city, Stern looked up at the massive clockface of the Peterskirche, a thirteenth-century church. It was 6:45. He headed across the Rathaus Bridge and turned toward the Niederdorf, the city's "red light" district.