Page 32 of The Cellist
“Married?”
“Apparently not.”
“How could that be?”
“It’s different these days, Eli.”
Lavon watched her carefully for a moment. “She doesn’t look like a Russian to me. She doesn’t walk like a Russian, either.”
“You can tell a Russian woman by the way she walks?”
“Can’t you?”
A moment passed in silence. Then Gabriel asked, “What are you thinking now, Eli?”
“I’m wondering why a beautiful young woman like that wouldrisk her career to give a Russian journalist confidential financial documents about an important client.”
“Perhaps she has a conscience.”
“Not possible. RhineBank doesn’t hire anyone whose conscience wasn’t removed at birth.”
She rounded the corner, into the Paradeplatz. Gabriel pulled forward in time to see her board a Number 8 tram. A few seconds later, Christopher entered the same carriage.
“Oaf,” said Lavon. “You’re supposed to get onbeforethe target, not after.”
“You’ll work with him, Eli.”
“I’ve tried,” said Lavon. “He never listens.”
17
Erlenbach, Switzerland
Christoph Bittel suggested that Gabriel run his operation from one of the NDB’s existing safe houses. Not surprisingly, Gabriel politely declined. The safe houses, he reckoned, were littered with high-quality microphones and cameras—electronics being one aspect of the trade at which the Swiss excelled. Housekeeping found a lakefront dwelling in the Zurich suburb of Erlenbach last occupied by an executive from Goldman Sachs. Gabriel paid the yearlong lease in full and then quickly dissolved the shell corporation through which the transaction had been carried out, thus depriving his newfound Swiss allies of any means of penetrating his global network of covert finances.
He settled into the villa late Monday afternoon along with the other two members of his nascent operational team. And at8:15 a.m. on Tuesday, they committed their first criminal offense on Swiss soil. The primary perpetrator was Christopher Keller, who slipped unobserved into Isabel Brenner’s apartment as she was walking toward the tram stop in the Römerhofplatz. While inside, he copied the contents of her laptop, compromised her Wi-Fi network, planted a pair of audio transmitters, and conducted a swift and minimally invasive search of her possessions. Her medicine cabinet contained no evidence of illness or physical maladies, save for an empty bottle of sleeping tablets. Her clothing and undergarments were tasteful and restrained, nothing suggesting a dark side, and the many serious works of literature lining her shelves suggested she preferred to do her reading in English rather than her native German. The compact discs stacked atop her British-made audio system were predominantly classical, along with a few jazz masterworks by Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and Keith Jarrett. In the sitting room, next to a music stand, was a fiberglass cello case.
“Did it contain an actual cello?” asked Gabriel.
“I didn’t look,” admitted Christopher.
“Why not?”
“Because one rarely keeps a cello case as a decorative piece. One keeps a cello case to store and transport one’s cello.”
“Maybe it belongs to her boyfriend.”
“There is no boyfriend. At least not one who spends any time in her apartment.”
The laptop yielded the number for Isabel’s mobile phone. And at half past one, while lunching with a colleague at a café near the office, she succumbed to a malware attack by Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence service. Within minutes, thephone’s operating system began uploading eighteen months’ worth of emails, text messages, calendar entries, GPS location data, telephone metadata, credit card information, and her Internet browsing history. In addition, the malware seized control of the camera and microphone, turning the device into a full-time video and audio transmitter. Which meant that everywhere Isabel went, Gabriel and his team went with her. In the lexicon of electronic surveillance, theyownedher.
The tidiness of Isabel’s digital life reinforced the impression Christopher Keller had formed during his brief visit to her apartment, that she was a person of enormous intelligence and talent, with no vices or moral shortcomings. The same could not be said, however, of the financial services firm for which she worked. Indeed, the documents taken from Isabel’s devices painted a portrait of a bank where the normal rules did not apply, where the prevailing culture was one of profit at any price, and where traders were expected to produce otherworldly returns on investment, even as their risky wagers pushed the bank to the brink of insolvency.
To serve as an ethical and legal watchdog in such an institution was a daily high-wire act, as evidenced by the email Isabel dispatched to Karl Zimmer, chief of RhineBank-Zurich, regarding a series of wire transfers carried out by the wealth management department. In all, more than $500 million had moved from banks in Latvia to RhineBank accounts in the United States. The Latvian banks, she pointed out, were known to be the first financial port of call for much of the dirty money flowing out of Russia. Nevertheless, the Zurich wealth managers had accepted the funds without performing even amodicum of due diligence. To conceal the origin of the money from American regulators, who were well aware of the Russia–Latvia connection, they stripped the country coding from the wire transfers.
“Isabel was concerned it demonstrated a clear consciousness of guilt,” explained Lavon. “I have to say, she seemed much less concerned about the legality of the transfers. It was more like a friendly warning from a loyal member of the team.”
“And how did Herr Zimmer react?” asked Gabriel.
