The Billion Dollar Sure Thing Read online

  “Yes. I asked for you. Don’t bother to sit down. It won’t take long,” said Stepanov. “You recognize these sheets?” He held up, between finger and thumb, the foreign exchange position sheets which Lofkin had delivered to Melekov not much longer than an hour ago.

  “Yes, sir. These are our—”

  “My friend Lofkin, I know quite well what they are. I’ll now tell you. They are the results of the work of two raving maniacs—Melekov and you, you insolent little bastard.”

  He proceeded very slowly and deliberately.

  “Now, do you know what we are going to do? Well I’ll tell you. We are going to buy enough dollars in the forward market to cover every open short position you have. And then some. Do you hear! And we are going to start buying this morning. And we’re going to start in Zurich. They’re three hours behind us. This means they open for business in about one and a half hours. I want you to be in there right at the opening. And we are going to finish the job before you go to sleep again. Do you also hear that? I want a progress report every thirty minutes. By you. In person. In writing. Now get out of here.”

  Lofkin got out of there.

  The first thing he tried to do when he got back to his office was to get hold of Melekov. He was informed that Melekov would not be back in the bank for the rest of the day. Then Lofkin got his staff together and gave them instructions. That done, he felt sick to his stomach. He reached into the bottom drawer of his desk, got out a bottle of kirschwasser—a gift from Melekov after his recent trip to London and Zurich—and took a large slug.

  15

  IN Switzerland it was still a bit early for kirschwasser—even in the Alps it would have been unheard of at seven in the morning. But at least two people there thought they could have used a drop on this morning of November 6—Dr. Bernoulli because he was as frustrated as he had ever been in his life and Dr. Walter Hofer because he was as worried as he had ever been.

  Bernoulli’s frustration was understandable. He had gone through his whole story with the Swiss minister of finance the previous evening. He had been positive that something was not making sense. After leaving the office of the Bank of International Settlements in late afternoon, he simply could not accept the story about the Russians. Because it was too pat; too much of a sinister international plot to be true.

  “Hell, things just don’t happen that way,” he had told the minister. Then he had given the details about Mr. Stanley Rosen. The facts were clear. First, Rosen was in the Three Kings Hotel the entire time both before and after the theft of the red dossier from Bollinger’s safe. Second, Rosen was actually seen in company with the man who had organized this theft, ex-policeman Lutz, head of the Swiss Security Consultants A.G. They had staggered their way through almost every known bar within twenty kilometres of Basel—in Switzerland, France, and Germany—finally to bring back two prostitutes who were refused entry to the Three Kings. Third, the reports which the minister had received from New York confirmed beyond any doubt that Rosen was connected with the Mafia—and with the top people in that organization.

  And then there was our fine Herr Dr. Hofer, chairman of the board of the General Bank of Switzerland. He was the only man to have seen the secretary of the treasury of the United States and the secretary-general of the BIS together in London. He was not exactly a fool. He could add two and two faster than anyone in Zurich. He probably also knew the work habits of Bollinger: The fact that, as a bachelor, he spent almost every weekend working and always took an enormous briefcase of papers with him to his house. And then back to the Swiss Security Consultants A.G. Who was their most important customer? The General Bank of Switzerland. Bernoulli did not for one split second doubt that a member of the Swiss banking community was capable of organizing such a project.

  But the minister was not interested in such theories. The behaviour of the Russians was no longer in the realm of theory; it was a fact, a confirmed fact.

  It had been difficult for Bernoulli to argue with this logic. The Russians had an obvious motive. They had had the opportunity to organize the theft in Basel. And they were following through consistently and brutally.

  But then should they not pick up the head of Swiss Security Consultants, Rolf Lutz? Under sufficient pressure, surely he would confirm what had truly happened and settle the matter once and for all. The minister of finance said no. “If it is the Russians, we simply do not want to know.” Fair enough. Lutz was taboo because the Russians were taboo. But for Bernoulli that still had not been the end of it. During the long night after this conference, the problem had kept turning over and over in his mind. He could not dismiss Rosen and Hofer with such ease. In fact, the more he thought of Hofer, the more suspicious he got. If the Russian thing was too pat, maybe the Mafia thing was equally so.

  Bernoulli had the advantage of coming from a banking family. They had come to Switzerland as Huguenot immigrants in the seventeenth century. Their French love of money plus Calvinism had soon produced family prosperity in their new homeland, and prosperity had led to the foundation of a private bank, a family bank, in 1796. His father was the ninth Bernoulli to head the institution. Now, as then, the only sign identifying the premises was a gold plate—24-karat gold—about the size of a calling card, mounted discreetly to the left of the massive oaken door leading into the building. It was marked with nothing more than an engraved B. To be sure, the letter was capitalized.

  His father had been anything but pleased when George had chosen government work, instead of staying within the family fold. But he had never openly criticized George for his choice. There had remained no doubt in his mind that the blood which flowed in his son’s veins would only endure so much humanitarianism, or whatever it was that George was trying to accomplish over in Geneva and Bern. The true calling of practicing benevolent capitalism would inevitably take hold in time.

  But George knew all about this kind of benevolence. He had, after all, heard it over the dinner table year after year as a boy. That’s why George Bernoulli went into government work. And that’s also why he watched all bankers with a totally jaundiced eye, including the good Doktor Hofer. More than once he had met Hofer at his parents’ home. How anybody could be five feet five and still look down on the entire rest of the world was beyond George. But Hofer managed it. And George’s father put up with it, because Hofer was, even then, at the top of the heap in Swiss banking circles. Big profits, always bigger than everybody else’s in the business. Never a setback. Uncanny, in fact, thought Bernoulli, impossible.

  For there were some things that just could not find a logical explanation. For instance, metals. The General Bank of Switzerland had always specialized in precious metals. Unlike American or British banks, Swiss banks could be all financial things to all men. They were not only commercial banks, but also underwriters, stockbrokers, commodity dealers—the list was almost endless. They were the ultimate financial supermarkets. But even the big ones had their specialities. In the case of the General Bank, it had been gold, silver, platinum, palladium.

  The 1960s, especially the latter part, had been great years for precious metals. During the entire period the General Bank was bullish and invested both their clients and themselves heavily. It was said that Hofer was behind this, and Hofer was never wrong. Sure enough, by 1968 all four metals reached record highs. The General Bank continued to be bullish and continued to buy, in spite of the temporary lull that followed. But, as time proved, there was nothing temporary about it. Month after month, year after year, prices of precious metals slid down. Silver went from $2.80 an ounce to $1.50. Platinum fell from $450 to $95. Palladium collapsed completely. Only gold held. Rumour had it that in the early 1970s Hofer’s bank had been forced to sell. Their continual attempts to prop up all four markets almost singlehandedly had simply eaten up too much of their liquidity. The losses must have been monumental. But what happened to them? Not a word in the annual reports. Not a clue in the balance sheets. In fact, profits kept rising consistently, year after year,
at the rate of 20 percent.

  Then there were those loans to Chile, Egypt, Algeria, Pakistan, Rhodesia. Together they must have involved at least $250 million. Big publicity when they were announced. But since then, not a word. Their repayment was quite obviously impossible. Their amortization could not be avoided.

  Yes, there could be no doubt that a big, big killing in the gold and foreign exchange markets would come in mighty handy for Dr. Walter Hofer.

  But what about this fellow Stanley Rosen? There could be absolutely no doubt that he was managing the biggest pool of illegal money ever to be packaged in the history of the United States. He was big! But he was apparently also extremely successful. This was very well known to the American authorities. Bernoulli knew; they had sent him a dossier on Rosen that was almost 200 pages long. A summary. Rosen had been investigated at least twelve times during the past five years. Almost every federal and state agency that could possibly find an excuse had already been through his shop. But there was nothing to find. Rosen did only one thing. He served as an investment advisor, on a fee basis, to some twenty-five or thirty offshore investment companies. All quite legal and completely in line with the regulations laid down in the 1940 investment act. His partner, Harry Stahl, ran a small brokerage company, with seats on both the New York and American exchanges, and recently also on the Pacific Coast exchange. He would accept brokerage business from the general public only when they almost forced their way through the door. That sort of stuff was just a nuisance. He was strictly interested in one client only—Stanley Rosen.

  The whole system stood or fell with one link in the chain: the movement of the funds out of the United States. For once they were out, that was it. They disappeared into anonymous corporations in the Caribbean or other weird little countries spotted around the world, places to which the United States authorities had no access.

  In the early days of Rosen’s game, it had been simple. Anybody could walk into any commercial bank in the country, make a transfer to a foreign bank, and the money was gone forever, without a trace. Year after year, billions of dollars had been leaving the United States completely unnoticed. They finally appeared, laconically listed under “Errors and Omissions” in the balance-of-payments statistics of the Department of Commerce. The country which was the ultimate beneficiary of most of such “Errors” was, peculiarly enough, Switzerland. Uncle Sam played into the hands of people like Rosen and his friends for years before catching on. Then things changed. First, the banks had to start reporting all major transfers out of the country. Then the Internal Revenue Service required a listing of all foreign bank accounts as part of the regular income tax return. Finally, in July, 1972, anyone carrying more than $5,000 in cash with him out of the United States had to report it in detail. Suddenly the risks for international financial engineers like Stanley Rosen had become immeasurably greater. That, thought Bernoulli, may be the explanation for Rosen’s Beirut connection. He wants to get some reinsurance in the form of non-American clients. And he must prove himself over here. Make a spectacular showing. Then the clients from the Near East, from Europe, would flock to him, just as the Americans had during the past decade. But in the future, as in the past, it would no doubt be shady money. And in the future, as before, fellows like Rosen would need the secrecy cover of Swiss banks to do their thing. Here was where they were a menace to Switzerland. Their blatant abuse of the facilities offered by Swiss banks could undermine the entire system, a system upon which Swiss prosperity had been built. If it turned out that Stanley Rosen had organized the theft of the gold-dollar plan of the United States government, and if it was discovered that his criminal machinations had been carried out through numbered accounts in Zurich, the Swiss banking system would be dealt a mortal blow. For Bernoulli also knew America. They would not stand for any more of that kind of crap.

  Bernoulli decided that it would definitely not help anybody if he stayed in bed any longer. There was one way in which he might be able to cut right through the dilemma facing him: by employment of the most honoured of European police tactics—the confrontation.

  First, he would have to tackle Walter Hofer. Then Stanley Rosen. And finally, confront both of them, separately of course, with Rolf Lutz of Swiss Security Consultants. He would get to the bottom of this yet.

  Dr. Walter Hofer had also not gotten up immediately after waking on that Thursday morning. For he also had things to think about. His was a position where real difficulties, not to speak of downright public failure, were unthinkable. They had to stay unthinkable. Unfortunately, in recent years the possibility could no longer be dismissed as totally absurd. The men at the top of Rolls Royce had found this out. So had those of Penn Central. Hofer had known men from both companies. They had his sympathy. But his own position was even more difficult. He was a banker. And one thing bankers never do is make a mistake and admit it. They always find a way out. So must he. Well, he thought, I’ll know a lot more in just a few hours.

  “Walter,” came his wife’s voice from downstairs. “Will you be ready soon?”

  “Yes, Martha. I’ll be down in five minutes. Please go ahead. I’ll join you right away.”

  As usual he took an almost cold shower and also as usual donned a dark blue suit. Except for vacations and formal affairs, Dr. Hofer inevitably wore a blue suit. He had twenty-one in his closet. He also wore blue socks, black shoes, and tended toward dark shades of red in his ties. His wife always picked his suits out for him before he rose in the morning. Also his ties. In fact, she also bought them all. The ties, that is. The suits came at the rate of two every month. His tailor brought them up to the house for the last fittings. Martha supervised that part of it. The results were always good.

  Within ten minutes Hofer was at the breakfast table.

  “Aren’t you going to drink some orange juice this morning?” his wife asked.

  “No, just coffee and a sweet roll, Martha.”

  “You do feel all right, don’t you, Walter?”

  “Of course. Just didn’t sleep too well last night. Probably the Föhn. Anyway, it’s getting near the end of the week. Maybe both of us could just take it easy this weekend. Stay at home and relax. What do you say?” Hofer drank his coffee black. During the past ten years he had not gained a pound. His tailor had told him more than once that he had never seen a man who held his figure so constant for so long.

  “Oh yes, Walter. That would be nice for a change. But there is one thing. You must give that talk on Sunday evening in Altdorf to the Ecumenical Society. But I know you always enjoy those meetings. So I’m sure it won’t take much preparation.”

  “I’d forgotten about that. You’re right, though. I should be able to draft that out on Sunday morning. Tell me, do they expect a good crowd?”

  “I’m sure so. You know how curious people are about you. Many cannot understand how you find time for church affairs with all the other things you must attend to. Probably some are jealous and come in the hope of seeing you make a fool of yourself.”

  “Now Martha. But I must be going. Is Heinrich waiting?”

  “Yes, he pulled into the driveway just before you came down.”

  “Fine. I must go. I’ll see you around six.”

  Walter Hofer gave his wife the usual peck on the cheek and, with a final wave of the hand, disappeared into the back seat of the bank limousine.

  The early morning traffic up the right bank of the Lake of Zurich was extremely heavy and the road narrow.

  “And how are you this morning, Heinrich?” Hofer asked his chauffeur.

  “Couldn’t be better, sir. Won exactly 526 francs in the football pool yesterday. Hit ten out of twelve correctly. The wife and I went out last night for dinner to celebrate. First time we’ve done that during the week for years. You ever try the pools, sir?”

  “No, I’m afraid not, Heinrich. I wouldn’t even know how to fill out one of those coupons,” said Hofer, laughing. “Anyway, just imagine if I hit the jackpot and it got all over the pape
rs. That wouldn’t do at all.”

  “No, you’re right, sir.”

  “Quite a bit of fog, this morning. When do you expect to get to the bank?”

  “It’ll thin out as usual within a kilometre or two. We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”

  In exactly fourteen minutes they passed the front of the massive entrance to the General Bank of Switzerland and, after rounding the corner, disappeared into the huge underground parking facility.

  “Will you be needing me this morning?” asked the chauffeur as Hofer stepped out.

  “No. I’ll see you down here around five-thirty this afternoon. And don’t worry about the weekend, Heinrich. I will be staying at home, so feel free to work out anything you might have in mind with the family.”

  “Thank you, sir, I’ll do that. I think I’ll take the boy to the football game on Sunday. Quarter finals in the European Cup, you know.”

  But Dr. Hofer had already turned his mind to other things as he walked to the elevators.

  “Guten Tag, Herr Doktor.”

  “Guten Tag, Herr Doktor.”

  The morning ritual. Hofer merely tipped his hat to his people.

  “Guten Tag, Herr Doktor.” This time it was Kellermann.

  “Herr Kellermann. Say, would you perhaps join me for a moment in the elevator.”

  When the next elevator arrived, the growing group of incoming executives waited respectfully as Hofer waved Kellermann into the lift. No one else joined them. It was an unwritten rule of the bank that Dr. Walter Hofer always went first class, in splendid isolation.

  Both men stepped out on the fourth floor.

  “Tell me, Kellermann, what’s developed on the fellow from New York?”

  “I expect we’ll have a full report waiting for us on the Telex. But I’m afraid that the news will not be good. Late yesterday afternoon I received a call from the Basel police, asking about Rosen.”

  “What did they want to know?”

  “The usual questions about his relationship with us. A kommissar named Bucher. He was quite firm about it. Said that if necessary he would get a court order. I felt that there would be no sense in going through that, so I did confirm that he was a client of ours and did an extremely large volume of business with us.”