Numbered Account

An hour after he'd begun his monotonous travail, Nick was interrupted by Yvan, the postman. Yvan entered his office and handed him several manila envelopes, the medium of internal postage in corporations the world over. Nick signed for them. He recalled Thorne's words, Check your mail, young man, and began tearing open the envelopes.

The first held a memorandum from Martin Maeder addressed to all portfolio managers "suggesting" that they consider upping their clients' holding of USB common stock. Obviously, it was a tactic designed to inflate the bank's control over its own shares. Technically, the request bordered on a violation of the sacrosanct "Chinese wall," the invisible boundary that separated the worlds of investment and commercial banking that coexisted under the roofs of all universal Swiss banks. In the world of the managed account, where investments were made with the discretion of the portfolio manager alone, the bank had tremendous power to manipulate the prices of stocks, to ensure the successful underwriting of a bond or equity issue, or to move the value of a currency.

Nick tossed Maeder's memo in the trash bin and opened the second envelope. Inside was a white letter inscribed only with his name and the bank's address. No stamp was affixed, no postmark noted. He slit open the envelope. Inside was a copy of Nick's separation papers from the United States Marine Corps and a one-page ruling from the Board of Inquiry citing the grounds for his dishonorable discharge. Felonious assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm. Intent? Hell, he'd beaten the living tar out of Keely. He'd pummeled the fat-assed motherfucker to within an inch of his worthless life. Payback, Agent Keely, courtesy of First Lieutenant Nicholas A. Neumann USMCR.

Nick threw the papers onto his desk, at once furious and incredulous that Thorne had gotten hold of them. By law, they were to be graded top secret and kept sealed at Headquarters Marine Corps in D.C. He had told no one about his discharge, certainly not Kaiser. The official record accorded him a general discharge. He had served his country well, had done his duty. As a man, he had acted honorably. As a soldier, maybe less so. But it was no one's business but his and Jack Keely's.

He dropped his hand to the underside of his right thigh and massaged the unnatural indentation behind his right knee, where more than a pound of flesh and muscle was missing. Thorne and Keely. Different men, different times, but with the same agenda, the same motivation. Neither could be trusted.

Nick looked at the note from Thorne and squinted as if staring into the rays of a morning sun. He envisioned the dusty clearing where Arturo de la Cruz Enrile lay dead with an American bullet in his brain. He saw Gunny Ortiga bounding across the open space, then spotted the olive bandana that held Enrile's thumb, precious proof of the insurgent's death. And for a second, he swore that he could feel the shuffle of the Gunny's steps as he neared their skirmish line, but in fact, it was only the tread of the postman's footsteps as he shuffled through the hallways.

And then he was back in the jungle. Nothing else existed. Not Thorne, not Schweitzer, not the entire fucking bank. It was just him lying on his belly in the warm red dirt waiting to lead his men back to the USS Guam. And with the curse of perfect hindsight, he knew that hell was waiting for him.

CHAPTER 29

For a few seconds, all is calm. The incessant chatter of the jungle canopy is no more. Ortiga lies sweating behind the dirt berm. "It was a clean shot," he says. "He was dead before he hit the ground."

Nick relieves Ortiga of his grisly trophy, trying hard not to think of the severed thumb wrapped in the sticky cloth. He signals for his men to withdraw into the foliage and form up. A thirteen-mile retreat through the steaming jungle beckons. One by one the marines slide on their bellies backward toward the protective sanctuary of the jungle.

A woman's scream peels through the morning air.

Nick yells for his men to freeze where they are, to keep out of sight.

Again, the woman screams. Her fear dissolves into a guttural cry. Sobbing.

Nick raises his binoculars and scans the clearing but can see only the shape of Enrile's corpse. The sun shines directly on it, and already a circus of flies is congregating near the pool of blood under his head. A small brown woman emerges from behind the white farmhouse. She runs, then falters, then runs again toward the body. Her shrieking grows with every step. Her arms flail around her head, then descend to beat her sides. A child totters from the house seeking its mother. Together they stand above the dead man, wailing.

Nick looks to Ortiga. "Where the hell did she come from?"

Ortiga shrugs. "Must've been in the truck. Recon said the house was deserted."