Numbered Account

"Alas, then you do not have to worry." He stood and hugged his Lebanese tigress. She discarded her rebel's stance and wrapped her arms around him, sighing. He had found her three months ago at Little Maxim's, a nasty establishment in the back alleys of Beirut's waterfront district. A discreet conversation with the proprietor had secured her services on a permanent basis. She stayed with him six nights a week and returned to her mother in Jounieh the seventh. She was a Christian, from a Phalangist family. He should be ashamed. Yet even Allah could not control the heart. And her body took him to realms he had never before discovered.

Joseph strode across the marble entryway and into his study. In front of him, head slack on a sunken chest, stood Kamal, a homely boy recruited only two months before to serve as a member of Mevlevi's private security detail. "He was found in your study, rummaging through your private affairs."

"Bring him to me."

Joseph guided the teenager forward. "He has lost the will to speak."

More likely the ability, thought Mevlevi. With a sack of ripe oranges and an extension of rubber pipe, the dark-skinned devil could make Netanyahu confess his undying love of the prophet Muhammad while leaving the fat Jew's body unmarked.

"He is in the pay of Mong," said Joseph. "He has admitted to as much."

Mevlevi approached the sallow youth and with a firm finger lifted up his chin. "Is what Joseph tells me true? Are you working for General Mong?"

Kamal's eyelids fluttered. His jaw ground upon itself, but he uttered no sound.

"Only the infinite one's love can heal the rift you have torn in the heart of Islam. Surrender unto His will. Know Allah and paradise will be yours. Are you ready to accept His mercy?"

Did the youth nod his head?

Mevlevi motioned for Joseph to lead Kamal outside. The prisoner was marched to a round pillar behind which glowed the faint outline of Beirut.

"Assume the position of supplication to the Almighty."

The teenager kneeled and looked out over the calm expanse of the Mediterranean Sea.

"Let us recite the Ode to Allah."

As Mevlevi spoke the ancient prayer, Joseph withdrew into the house. Lina remained silent at her master's side. The last words of the prayer drifted away on the evening's languorous breeze. A compact pistol was drawn and its silver muzzle laid against the nape of the traitor's neck. For several seconds the gun grazed among the boy's downy hairs. The weapon was lowered. Aim was taken. Three rounds were fired into the prisoner's back.

The boy fell forward, eyes open but unseeing, the torn remnants of his heart bruising the pale stone terrace.

"The punishment for traitors shall be death," proclaimed Ali Mevlevi. "So sayeth the prophet. And so sayeth I."

CHAPTER 11

Nick bounded down the stairs leading from the employee entrance of the bank, happy to be freed from the fluorescent confines of the Hothouse. He jogged several yards, shaking off the bank's behavioral corset, then slowed to gulp down a lungful of the pure Swiss air. The last two hours had dragged on forever. He'd felt like a thief trapped in a museum, waiting for the alarm to go off after he'd stolen a painting. At any moment, he had expected Armin Schweitzer to storm into his office demanding to know what Nick had done with the Pasha's transfer. Remarkably, no alarm had sounded; Schweitzer had been nowhere to be seen. Nick had escaped.

With an hour until his dinner with Sylvia Schon, he decided to make his way to the head of the Bahnhofstrasse, where the lake of Zurich narrowed and ran into the Limmat River. Bundled in his overcoat, he set off through the alleys that ran parallel to the Bahnhofstrasse. The day's light was fading fast, and patches of ice were rapidly forming. His thoughts, though, were not on the ground in front of him. Like the snow and mist trawling the deserted back streets, his mind cast about in the hazy events of the day, searching for defenses to his actions and calculating the responses that might follow.

According to Sterling Thorne's rules, should any account on the bank's internal account surveillance list receive funds greater than ten million dollars and transfer at least half of that amount to an unrelated financial institution within one business day, the bank would be compelled to report such a transaction to the international authorities. While such cooperation rested on a gentlemen's agreement, USB could ill afford to violate a peace brokered by the president of Switzerland's Bundesrat. Just in case they had any ideas in that direction, the DEA had placed agents full-time in the payments-trafficking department of every major bank.