I shake my head. If he’s right, Harry and I have hit a stone wall. A long trip for nothing.
“Excuse me,” says Korff, “but I’m getting the sense that you’re not really here to offer me a job. Instead, you’re looking for information. Am I right?”
“Yeah,” says Harry. “But you have to admit that the beer in this place is pretty good.”
“I thought so.” The German’s happy expression collapses. “Yes. The beer was good. And I enjoyed the meal,” he says. “And it is good to get out of my son’s apartment, to give them some time alone. So for that I thank you. I have enjoyed the conversation. When you get to be my age, it is good to be listened to by people who, at least for the moment anyway, think you have something important to say.”
I am feeling like a heel.
“It is difficult to lose one’s job when you get old,” he says. “There are not a lot of opportunities.”
“I’m sorry that ours was a lie,” I tell him. “Sorry that we had to deceive you. If there had been an easier way we would have taken it.”
“I understand,” he says. “I’m not going to ask you why you’re doing what you’re doing. Looking at your faces, listening to your questions, I assume that your motives are proper and correct. For whatever reason you are doing this, I hope you get them.”
By “them” I am assuming he means the PEPs. That’s not our mission, but if they should happen to tumble along the way, neither Harry nor I would shed any tears.
“So do we,” says Harry.
“All of this, the money, the PEPs, the corruption, it troubled me greatly.” He uncouples his hand from the beer stein, looks down at the table for a moment. When he lifts his head there is a tear running down one cheek.
“It is difficult, very difficult to do the right thing, and to end up as I do. I had worked for Gruber for twenty-two years. I knew the original owners. Nice men. To watch and see other people do what these people have done. To see them prosper. And to watch as society cloaks them with protection. . ”
I reach across the table, grab one of his fat hands before he can say anything more. “I’m not going to lie to you again and tell you that I feel your pain,” I say. “But I do understand. We both understand,” I tell him. “You need not have any doubts. You did the right thing. I think you know that and so do we. And if your family is any judge of character, and my guess is that they are, they know it as well. Whatever these other people did, they have to live with it. Take it to the grave with them.”
“I may not be much of an audience,” says Harry. “But I’ve been around long enough to know that it wasn’t the beer talking tonight. Sometimes life sucks,” he says.
“Yes, it does. But not always.” Korff lifts his head and wipes the tear away with his sleeve. “Sometimes you get lucky, as you have tonight.”
“How’s that?” says Harry.
“Because you see, there is another set of records.”
“What do you mean?” I look at him.
“I had to be sure I could trust you,” he says. “I am not the good person you think I am. I want my pound of flesh. The American PEPs used a broker. He would have his own set of files, account numbers, names, all of it. I assume he was a broker, at least that’s what I was told.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because I saw him. Everything about the way these accounts were handled was unusual. Normally an account is opened and funds are deposited, everything done between the bank and the client. No one else involved.
“But this, the transfer of all these accounts, the use of cash so that there would be no paper trail. To say nothing of the amounts involved. That and the fact they had such a short period of time to complete everything. That is probably why they used the broker. In fact, there were two of them. The actual broker and his lawyer. They were in the bank every day for almost two months.”
“Did you know them?” says Harry.
“No. They were both Americans, US passport holders. I know that. I was told that the broker was an acquaintance of Gruber’s president, that they had done business over the years, that the broker once worked for an American branch of a large Swiss bank headquartered in Zurich. They kept most of the staff at Gruber away from them, including myself. Only those in direct support had any contact.”
“Can you remember any names, anything about them?” I ask.
“You know, after he left, I thought about it, and I realized I forgot to tell your friend Graves about the woman, the lawyer. I only saw her a couple of times and always at a distance. I never heard anyone call her by her Christian name. They referred to her only as Fraulein Zerna.”
“You spell that with a Z?” says Harry.
“No. First letter S.”
“You mean Serna.” Harry looks at me.
“My English is not always good,” says Korff.
“Can you describe her?” I ask.
“As I say, I didn’t see her up close. I would estimate she was maybe. . a hundred and seventy centimeters in height.”
“In feet and inches?” says Harry.
He thinks for a moment, a quick conversion, banker’s brain. “About five foot seven in inches. She had short dark hair. Medium build. She spoke both English and Spanish. I remember that. Oh, and she worked for a law firm in Washington, D.C. I’m sorry I don’t know the name.”
“Well, we won’t be talking to her,” says Harry.
“Why not?”
“She’s dead,” I tell him.
“Oh.” Korff flashes a look at Harry, then back to me, weighs what is left unstated and says, “How did she die?”
“Officially?”
He looks at me and nods.
“An accident.”
“But you don’t think it was?”
“We know it wasn’t,” I tell him.
This doesn’t seem to surprise him. “I wondered,” he says, “how long it would take before this kind of thing began to occur. With that much money and these kinds of clients, it was certain to happen.”
“Why is that?” I ask.
“It’s the nature of the animal,” he says. “The thing about PEPs. They commit bad acts, they take money, and because of it they are highly vulnerable to extortion. It’s how they got the name ‘Politically Exposed Persons.’ Depending on the power they possess, there is a high correlation to violence. From what you’re saying, I take it then you knew these people, the broker and his lawyer? I expect that he is probably dead as well.”
“Do you have a name?”
“Yes,” he says. “Rubin Betz.”
I think about it for a moment and suddenly it all makes sense. The whistleblower. It was little wonder they had him locked up. It was probably the only reason he was still alive, that and the radioactive pile of information he had salted away.
FORTY
The two Libyan mercenaries took turns watching from a rooftop across the river with a pair of 20×80 binoculars, powerful field glasses that brought everything up close. The location five stories up gave them a good line of sight through the windows along the second-story balcony into the restaurant.
They had located and identified the American lawyers earlier in the day from photographs soon after their quarry had checked into the hotel. In the evening the lawyers were joined by another man, an older European who arrived on foot. They saw him cross the wooden bridge and head toward the hotel until finally all three ended up in the restaurant.
The Libyans had been fully briefed on what to do. Anyone meeting and talking with the lawyers was in their cross hairs. But now they were getting stiff lying out in the open air on the cold hard roof. Whatever the three men were discussing, it was taking far too long to suit the Libyans out on the roof.
Finally the man with the field glasses observed one of the lawyers as he paid the bill. “Wake up. They are getting ready to leave.”
The other Libyan stirred, cleared his eyes, and started to get up.