Excuses, it may be said. The man makes a fool of himself. Clearly, he has to blame someone or something, so he picks on a church clock and a sleepless night.
Not so. My mistakes on that occasion had all been made the day before. What is remarkable is that, having suffered the sort of sleepless night after which a man normally needs tranquillizers if he is to function at all, I succeeded in behaving with such decision and efficiency.
I sat in the armchair until five-thirty. Then, I shaved, bathed, put on my new white shirt and black tie and waited for daylight. At six-thirty, while it was still dark, I went down and consulted the night-duty concierge about the possibility of getting a taxi. He said that it might take a while, but that he would phone for one. When he had done so, I asked him about getting some coffee. The kitchen did not open until seven. Casting about in my mind for other ways of killing time, I thought of my bill and asked if I could pay it. Yes, I could. A surprise, until I caught the look of resignation on the concierge’s face. I was evidently not the first guest in the place who had been in a hurry to get away. Nor would I be the last. Very early departures were normal.
So, I paid the bill and said that I would return later for my bag. That was my first piece of luck.
A taxi came eventually and I went to the Carlton-Elite Hotel. There, in the restaurant, I ate a large American breakfast and read the German-language papers. Later, in the lobby, I read the Italian papers and did the Paris Herald-Tribune crossword. By then it was nearly time to go to the funeral.
To the doorman I explained my wants; a taxi or a hire car with a driver who would take me to the crematorium, wait and then drive me to an apartment in the Hottingen district. That was where the Kramer apartment was. The doorman said that a hire car would cost no more for that sort of journey and would be more comfortable. He could have one there in five minutes.
It was a black four-door Taunus and the driver was an elderly man with beautiful iron-grey hair and a thin, sad face. He knew exactly where the crematorium was and obviously enjoyed funeral work, of which, he told me gently, he did a great deal.
‘Was the departed a close relative of the gentleman?’ he asked as he fought his way out of the central traffic.
‘No. He wasn’t a relation of any kind.’
‘A close friend of the gentlemen perhaps?’
‘A friend, a business friend.’
‘Ah.’ He cheered up at once and proceeded to give me some man-to-man advice. ‘Then the gentleman will probably be wise to sit at the back of the chapel during the service. That way, one is able to avoid at the conclusion too much involvement with the close relatives if one does not wish it. A brief word of sympathy to the chief mourner in order to show that one has been present is all that is necessary then before leaving.’
‘I expect you’re right.’
I spoke distantly and he got the message. I heard no more about the theory and practice of funeral attendance. Unfortunately, he had made me think.
I had, in fact, been ‘close’ to Kramer and his wife for several years. But was I a friend? Even a business friend? A more accurate description, and one that Krom may smack his lips over if he wishes, would be ‘co-conspirator’.
I recruited Kramer at an Interfiscal Society Congress in Monaco.
A director of one of the big-three Swiss banks had been there to give a lecture on his country’s bank secrecy laws. It was a good lecture, neither as defensive nor as plaintive as such public-relations exercises usually are, and I said so to a man from the same bank who had accompanied the director to the Congress. That was Kramer and he was strictly middle management. He was there, I gathered, partly so that the director should be seen to have some sort of ADC in attendance, and partly to latch on to any worthwhile business that might be floating around among the delegates to the Congress.
The director was the man with the personality, the financial mastermind. Kramer had his dignity, too, but it was that of the good soldier. He would rise no higher in the bank hierarchy. He obviously knew this and was, for an otherwise sensible man, surprisingly bitter over what he saw as an injustice. He spoke over-respectfully of his superiors in the bank. The sardonic smile, of which he made much use, was the final give-away. He was, I decided, open to an approach.
I made it over a drink in the Hotel de Paris.
‘What I don’t understand,’ I said, ‘is the nature of the penalties that your secrecy laws impose. They seem so light.’
‘You think so, Mr Firman?’
‘Well, supposing an officer of your bank, a man in the head office where you work, is approached by a stranger who is — oh, what shall we say? — an agent of the American Internal Revenue Service? Not impossible?’
He restrained his inner amusement. ‘It has been known,’ he said solemnly.
‘Right. Now, supposing the agent offers this officer of yours three thousand dollars for the name of each and every American citizen on your books and the size of his account with you. What is to stop your man accepting?’
‘Assuming that our man, as you call him, has management status in the bank sufficient to give him access to the information requested, what would be most likely to stop him, leaving aside the question of how law-abiding he might be, would be the risk he takes if he accepts.’
‘A twenty-thousand franc fine and six months in jail maximum? With a hundred thousand dollars, and most likely much more, in an entirely different bank, what’s he got to lose?’
‘I don’t think our director made it quite clear, Mr Firman, that the penalty of fine and imprisonment you mention may be applied for every single offence proved against the accused and that the sentences would run consecutively. Ten offences against the secrecy law would mean five years in prison, twenty offences ten years.’
‘But with zero risk the question hardly arises, does it? Do you mean to tell me that it doesn’t happen all the time? I can tell you of a dozen cases. In one, the British Treasury got all they wanted on a dozen accounts for a measly two thousand dollars.’
He was drinking a silver-fizz, a long drink made of gin and egg-whites mostly. Some women like it and barmen usually provide a straw to drink it with to save the lipstick. He now removed the straw from his glass before he answered.
‘There is no such thing as zero risk, Mr Firman.’ He folded the straw in two and put it in an ash-tray. ‘And what I mean is that, for the kind of information of which you speak, three thousand dollars per item is too little by half.’
It was so easy that Carlo became convinced that Kramer was a provocateur and had to be persuaded that there was no risk on our side. Above all, he said, I must not put myself in the dangerous position of pretending to be an IRS agent. I asked Kramer once whether he thought I was from the IRS, and it was the only time I ever heard him laugh. He said that I was not the IRS agent type. I was never able to decide whether he had intended that as a compliment or not. In time he must have arrived at a very clear understanding of the ways in which the information he supplied me with was used.
One thing I can state with confidence. During the years of our association, Kramer received from us, and in my opinion earned, considerably more than that notional one hundred thousand dollars we had discussed in the Hotel de Paris.
When we reached the crematorium chapel where the service for Kramer was to be held, the tail-end of a procession of mourners was just mounting the steps to go inside.