The Cellist by Daniel Silva

15NDB Headquarters, Bern

As a general rule of thumb, spies from different countries rarely play nicely together. Sharing a juicy piece of regional gossip or a warning about a terrorist cell is commonplace, especially between close allies. But intelligence services avoid joint operations whenever possible, if only because such endeavors inevitably expose personnel and cherished field techniques. Spymasters guard these secrets jealously, like family recipes, and reveal them only under duress. Moreover, national interests rarely align seamlessly, never less so than where matters of high finance are concerned. It was true what they said about money. It definitely changed everything.

Like ultrafine Novichok powder, it was odorless, tasteless, portable, and easy to conceal. And sometimes, of course, it was deadly. Some men killed for money. And when they had enough of it, they killed anyone who tried to take it away from them. Increasingly, much of the money that flowed through the veins and arteries of the global financial system was dirty. It was derived from criminal activity or drained from state coffers by kleptomaniacal autocrats. It poisoned everything it touched. Even the healthy were not immune to its ravages.

Many financial institutions were all too happy to soil their hands with dirty money—for a substantial fee, of course. One such institution was RhineBank AG. At least that was the rumor; money laundering was one of the few financial misdeeds for which the bank had not been punished. Its most recent brush with regulators came in New York, where the state’s Department of Financial Services fined RhineBank $50 million over its dealings with a convicted sex trafficker. One red-hot RhineBank derivatives trader remarked that the payment was smaller than his annual bonus. The trader was foolish enough to repeat the claim in an email, which ended up in the pages of the Wall Street Journal. During the mini-scandal that followed, RhineBank’s spokeswoman sidestepped questions as to whether the trader had in fact earned such an astronomical amount of money. And when the bonus was disclosed in a subsequent corporate filing, it ignited a scandal as well.

The bank was headquartered in a menacing tower in the center of Hamburg that architectural critics had derided as a glass-and-steel phallus. Its busy London office was in Fleet Street, and in New York it occupied a sparkling new skyscraper overlooking the Hudson. Because RhineBank was a truly global bank, it answered to an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies. Any one of them would have been interested to learn that a compliance officer from the Zurich office was leaving packets of sensitive documents at drop sites scattered across Switzerland. Were the nature of those documents ever to become public, RhineBank’s share prices would likely tumble, which in turn would adversely impact its infamously overleveraged balance sheet. The damage would quickly spread to RhineBank’s business partners, the banks from which it received loans or lent money in return. Dominoes would fall. Given the fragile state of the European economy, another financial crisis was a distinct possibility.

“Obviously,” said Christoph Bittel, “such a scenario would not be in the interests of the Swiss Confederation and its all-important financial services industry.”

“So what shall we do about her?” asked Gabriel. “Pretend she doesn’t exist? Sweep her under the rug?”

“It’s a tradition here in Switzerland.” Bittel eyed Gabriel across the shimmering rectangular table in the conference room. “But then, you already know that.”

“We closed my Swiss accounts a long time ago, Bittel.”

“All of them?” Bittel smiled. “I recently had occasion to rewatch the interrogation I conducted with you after the bombing of that antiquities gallery in St. Moritz.”

“How was it the second time?”

“I suppose I did the best I could. Still, I wish I’d been able to pin you down on a few more specifics. The Anna Rolfe affair, for example. Your first Swiss adventure. Or was it the Hamidi assassination? It’s hard to keep them all straight.” Greeted by silence, Bittel sailed on. “I was lucky enough to see Anna perform with Martha Argerich a few weeks before the lockdown. An evening of Brahms and Schumann sonatas. She still plays with the same fire. And Argerich . . .” He held up his hands. “Well, what else can one say?”

“Which Brahms?”

“I believe it was the G Major.”

“She always adored it.”

“She’s living here in Switzerland again, in her father’s old villa on the Zürichberg.”

“You don’t say.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

“Anna?” Gabriel glanced at Christopher, who was watching the Sunday-afternoon traffic flowing along the A6, a half smile on his face. “It’s been an age.”

Bittel returned to the matter at hand. “We’re not the only ones who will suffer if there’s a scandal. The British have enormous exposure to RhineBank, as do the Americans.”

“If it’s handled properly, there won’t be a scandal. But if RhineBank has broken the law, it should be punished accordingly.”

“What do I say to RhineBank’s regulators?”

“Nothing at all.”

Bittel was appalled. “That’s not the way we do things here in Switzerland. We follow the rules.”

“Unless it suits you not to. And then you flout the rules as readily as the rest of us. We’re not policemen or regulators, Bittel. We’re in the business of stealing other people’s secrets.”

“Recruit Isabel Brenner as an agent? Is that what you’re saying?”

“How else are we going to find out the name of the high-profile Russian who’s been looting state assets and stashing them here in the West?”

“I’m not sure I want to know his name.”

“In that case, let me handle it.”

Bittel exhaled heavily. “Why do I know I’m going to regret this?”

Gabriel didn’t bother to offer his Swiss colleague assurances to the contrary. Intelligence operations, like life, were invariably full of regrets. Especially when they involved the Russians.

“What do you need from us?” asked Bittel at last.

“I’d like you to stay out of my way.”

“Surely we can provide some assistance. Physical surveillance, for example.”

Gabriel nodded toward Christopher. “Mr. Marlowe will handle the surveillance, at least for now. But with your approval, I’d like to add another operative to our team.”

“Only one?”

Gabriel smiled. “One is all I need.”