LITMIR.BIZ

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      Prentice put two plates of beef and bubble-and-sqeak on the coffee table in the living-room. When Anderson sat down the table looked ridiculously small.

      Anderson began to eat hungrily but unenthusiastically Between mouthfuls he said: ‘You’re not trying to tell me that any of this worries you?’

      ‘I merely have to be a little more cautious.’

      ‘If he’s stashed away a fortune then we’ve got him. Maybe we’ve got him anyway. We know he was born in Leningrad in 1941. We know he was infiltrated into Berlin in 1945 with his parents. We know they turned up in Switzerland in 1947 with forged German-Swiss papers. We also know, thanks to you, George,’ liberally smearing mustard on a piece of beef, ‘that a lot of the bread that he makes speculating with currency doesn’t reach the coffers of the Soviet Foreign Bank.’

      ‘We can’t prove that,’ Prentice pointed out. ‘We need that numbered bank account. When you can wave that under his nose then he’s yours.’

      ‘Ours,’ Anderson said, pushing aside his half-eaten meal. ‘You really enjoy that stuff?’

      ‘I was brought up on it.’

      ‘Jesus,’ Anderson said. He washed away the taste with a mouthful of beer. ‘But you haven’t answered my question. How long is not long?’

      ‘Tonight if I’m lucky,’ Prentice said. He reached for the sports jacket with the leather-patched elbows. ‘See you later.’ He nodded towards the radio receiver. ‘Happy listening’.

      As he crossed the Munster Bridge, heading for Bahnofstrasse, Zurich’s Fifth Avenue George Prentice ruminated on Anglo-American collaboration. It worked beautifully up to a point. That point would be reached when he carried out his instructions to kill Karl Danzer.

      * * *

      The Swiss legalised banking secrecy in 1934. The aim was to conceal the identities of Jewish customers from their German persecutors. Whenever the Swiss are under attack for their fiscal discretion they remind their critics of its humane origins. Then, glowing with self-righteous indignation, they retire to the vaults to tot up the billions entrusted to them by despotic heads of state, Mafia dons, crooked financiers, businessmen avoiding (not evading) the attentions of tax inspectors, oil sheikhs, misers, bankrupts, politicians championing the cause of the impoverished; the spectrum, in fact, of humanity embarrassed by riches.

      Numbered accounts have their disadvantages: interest is virtually non-existent and, in some instances, a depositor may have to pay a bank a small sum to safeguard his money; he is, of course, buying secrecy and, unless it can be proved that the money was obtained by criminal means, his anonymity is assured.

      Such obsessive reticence naturally arouses curiosity, and in the cities of Berne, Zurich, Geneva and Basle there are many agencies dedicated to undermining the system. Among them professionals described euphemistically as industrial consultants, blackmailers and spies.

      George Prentice, recruited to British Intelligence when he was precociously teaching at Oxford, represented all three categories. He knew the identities of sixty-nine eminent personages holding numbered accounts – knowledge which had rubber-stamped his entry into the monied Establishment – and was about to make Karl Werner Danzer the seventieth. Although in Danzer’s case, he was reversing the process: he knew the name but not the number.

      The information concerning numbered accounts is known only to two or three bank executives. It was therefore these worthies that Prentice cultivated. Many proved intransigent – it is difficult to bribe a wealthy banker – a few succumbed readily to Prentice’s blandishments.

      Danzer banked with a relatively small establishment in a side street near Zurich’s railway station. The modest pretensions of the bank had encouraged Prentice: its officials were likely to be paid less than their counterparts in the big banks, and would thus be more resentful of their customers’ wealth.

      Prentice’s contact at Danzer’s bank was Hans Weiss. Weiss, plump, middle-aged and embittered, had lost most of the money he earned gambling with currency. He hated Danzer who gambled similarly but successfully.

      Prentice met him in a small café frequented by taxi-drivers and printers. It was crowded and noisy and cigarette smoke floated in shafts of sunlight. Weiss was eating a cream cake and drinking chocolate.

      Prentice ordered tea. ‘Well?’ he said as Weiss licked a dab of cream from the corner of his mouth.

      ‘Have you got the money?’

      ‘If you’ve got what I want.’

      ‘It’s here.’ Weiss slid his hand inside his jacket. ‘Where’s the money?’ He glanced around the café nervously.

      ‘The information first please.’

      Weiss stared at him speculatively. Prentice was used to the expression; it was frequently assumed when people first became aware of the hardness in his voice. And when they suddenly realised that, beneath his indifferent clothes, his body was just as hard.

      A waiter brought the tea. The tea-bag had been placed in the milk at the bottom of the cup. Prentice added boiling water but it made little impression on the tea-bag.

      Weiss said: ‘How do I know you’ll give me the money?’

      ‘You don’t.’

      Weiss sipped his chocolate. His hand holding the cup was trembling. Prentice knew he badly needed the money, two thousand dollars jointly funded by the CIA and MI 6.

      ‘It isn’t fair,’ Weiss finally said.

      The remark sounded ludicrous, the words of a schoolboy negotiating a sale of marbles. ‘No one said it was.’ Prentice pushed his cup aside in disgust. ‘The envelope please.’

      Reluctantly Weiss handed it over. Prentice glanced at the contents – a photostat of Account No. YT 43 9/8541. The balance in Swiss francs was the equivalent of five hundred thousand dollars. He asked: ‘How can I be sure this is Danzer’s account?’ and would have forgiven Weiss if he had replied: ‘You can’t.’

      But Weiss’ mind was on the money. ‘The letter,’ he said.

      Folded inside the photostat of the account was a copy of a letter signed by Johann Beyer, the manager of the bank. It assured Karl Danzer of the bank’s best attention at all times and confirmed the number of the account.

      Prentice handed over the envelope containing the money. Weiss snatched it from his hand, ruffled the bills inside with his thumb.

      Prentice said: ‘Try pa-anga this time.’

      ‘I beg your pardon?’

      ‘The currency of the Tonga Islands. A hundred seniti to one pa’anga. If you’re going to speculate you could do worse. But I know what I’d do with that money if I were you.’

      ‘What would you do?’

      ‘Put it in a numbered account,’ Prentice said as he stood up and strode out of the café into the sunshine.

      * * *

      The cable surprised Karl Danzer. They usually telephoned from the Soviet Embassy in Berne to make appointments. A change of policy, perhaps. The coded message instructed him to report to an address on the Limmat Quai at 10 pm that evening.

      Walking to work in the crisp morning sunshine, Danzer considered the immediate implications of the cable. A nuisance, nothing more. He had planned to take Helga Keller to dinner, then to bed. Perhaps not such a nuisance …. He would cancel the dinner and still take her to bed, thus avoiding the boredom of answering her ridiculous questions as she gazed at him across the table like a schoolgirl with a crush on a pop star. In bed Danzer found her ardour and inexperience stimulating; soon, he surmised, she would do anything he asked. Except, perhaps, sleep with other men; in that respect, Danzer sensed, she was different to the other girls.

      All in all the recruitment of Helga Keller had been a thoroughly

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