Nick kept his wry comments to himself and concentrated on keeping straight all the information being tossed his way.

Sprecher stood from his chair and walked to the window, which overlooked the Bahnhofstrasse. "Hear the drums?" he asked, tilting his head toward the demonstrators who paraded in front of the bank. "No? Get up and come over here. Look down there."

Nick rose and walked to Sprecher's side, from where he could see the assembly of fifteen or twenty protesters.

"Barbarians at the gate," said Sprecher. "The natives are growing restless."

"There have been calls for greater disclosure of the bank's activities in the past," Nick said. "The search for assets belonging to customers killed during the Second War. The banks handled that problem."

"By using the nation's gold reserves to set up a survivors' fund. Cost us seven billion francs! And still we stonewalled them over direct access to our records. The past is verboten. You can be sure of one thing: Swiss banks must be built of the hardest Bernadino granite, not of porous sandstone." Sprecher glanced at his watch, then dismissed the demonstrators with a wave. "Now more than ever we have to keep our mouths shut and do as we're told. Granite, Neumann. Anyway, that's enough of Saint Peter's pap for now. You're to go to Dr. Schon at personnel to have an identification card made up, get a handbook, and take care of all the other niceties that make our beloved institution such a wonderful place to work. Rules, Mr. Neumann. Rules."

Nick leaned forward, listening carefully while directions to the personnel director's office were given. Rules, he repeated to himself. The admonition sent him back to his first day at Officer Candidate School. The voices here were softer and the barracks nicer, but all in all it was the same. New organization, new rules, and no room to mess up.

"And one last thing," said Sprecher. "Dr. Schon can be a little testy sometimes. Americans are not a favorite topic. The less said the better."

From his window on the Fourth Floor, Wolfgang Kaiser stared down upon the damp heads of the demonstrators gathered in front of his bank. Forty years he had worked at the United Swiss Bank, the last seventeen as chairman. In that time, he could recall only one other demonstration taking place on the steps of the bank- a protest against the bank's investments in South Africa. He had frowned on the practice of apartheid as much as the next man, but politics simply didn't factor into a business decision. As a rule, Afrikaners were damned good clients. Paid back their loans on time. Kept a decent amount on deposit. Lord knows they held gold bars up to their eyeballs.

Kaiser gave each end of his mustache a brief tug and moved away from the window. Though of medium height, he was a formidable man. Clothed, as was his custom, in bespoke navy worsted, he could be mistaken only for Lord of the Manor. But his broad shoulders, plowman's back, and stout legs testified to a common upbringing. And of his less than noble parentage he carried a permanent reminder: his left arm, damaged at birth by the enthusiastic forceps of a drunken midwife, was thin and limp, a paralyzed appendage. Despite constant exercise during his early years, the arm had remained atrophied and would always be two inches shorter than the right.

Kaiser circled his desk, staring at the telephone. He was waiting for a call. A brief message that would bring the past into the present. Word that the circle was closing. He could not expel from his mind the message written on one of the crude placards below. "Child Killers," it read. He didn't know what exactly it made reference to, but still the words stung. Damned press! Vultures were thrilled to have such an easy target. The evil bankers so eager to accommodate the world's baddies. Horseshit! If not us, then somebody else. Austria, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands. The competition was closing in.

The phone on his desk buzzed. He pounced on it in three swift steps. "Kaiser."

"Guten Morgen, Herr Direktor. Brunner speaking."

"Well?"

"The boy has arrived," said the hall porter. "He came in at nine o'clock sharp."

"And how is he?" Kaiser had seen photographs of him over the years. More recently, he had viewed a videotape of the boy's interview. Still, he could not stop himself from asking, "Does he look like his father?"

"A few pounds heavier, perhaps. Otherwise, a spitting image. I sent him to Mr. Sprecher."

"Yes, I've been informed. Thank you, Hugo."

Kaiser hung up the phone and took a seat behind his desk. He turned his thoughts to the young man sitting two floors below him, and soon a faint smile pushed up the corners of his mouth. "Welcome to Switzerland, Nicholas Alexander Neumann," he whispered. "It's been so long since we last met. So very, very long."

The office of the Director of Personnel (Finance Division) was located at the far corner of the first floor. Nick paused outside an open door and knocked twice before entering. Inside, a slender woman was bent over a messy desk, sorting through a collage of white papers. She wore an ivory blouse and a navy skirt that fell one frustrated sigh below her knee. Brushing a wave of hair from her face, she rose from the desk to stare at her visitor.

"May I help you?" she asked.

"I'm here to see Dr. Schon," Nick said. "I've just begun work this morning and-"

"Your name, please? We have six new employees beginning today. First Monday of the month."

Her stern voice made him want to square his shoulders, fire off a salute, and bark out his name, rank, and serial number. That would make her jump. He told her who he was, and recalling Sprecher's comments about his posture, made sure he didn't stand too straight.

"Hmm," she said, suddenly interested. "Our American. Please come in." The woman craned her neck and ran a none too discreet eye over him, as if checking to see what the bank had gotten for its money. Apparently satisfied, she asked in a friendlier voice if he'd had a good flight over.

"Not bad," Nick said, returning her appraising stare. "It gets a little cramped back there after a few hours, but at least we had smooth sailing."

She was shorter by a head with intelligent brown eyes and thick blond hair cut to fall in a slant across her brow. A gracefully upturned chin and a sharp nose conspired to lend her an air of assumed importance. She told him to wait a moment, then stepped through an open door that led to an adjoining office.

Nick removed his hands from his pockets and without thinking wiped his palms on the rear of his trousers. He had known a woman like her before. Confident, assertive, a little too professional. A woman who relied on perfect grooming to improve on nature's careless oversights. In fact, he had almost married her.

"Please come in, Mr. Neumann."

He recognized the stern voice. Poised behind a broad desk sat the woman with the intelligent brown eyes. A testy one, Sprecher had warned, who didn't care for Americans. She had tucked her blond hair behind her ears and found a blazer to match her skirt. A large pair of horn-rimmed glasses rested on her nose.

"I'm sorry," Nick said sincerely, "I didn't realize…" His explanation petered out.

"Sylvia Schon," she announced, standing and extending a hand across the desk. "It's a pleasure to meet you. It's not often the Chairman recommends a new graduate."

"He was a friend of my father's. They worked together." Nick shook his head as if to dismiss the connection. "It was a long time ago."

"So I understand. But the bank doesn't forget its own. We're big on loyalty around here." She motioned for him to sit down and when he had, lowered herself into her chair. "I hope you don't mind my asking a few questions. I take pride in knowing everyone who works in our department. Usually we insist on several interviews before extending an offer."