A Most Wanted Man by John le Carré Read Free Book Online Page B

vintage year, he thought. My poisoned chalice. Never heard of a Karpov, but I wouldn’t have done, would I? The Lipizzaners were your private stable.
    “All movements on this account and all client instructions to be reported immediately and personally to EAB before any action is taken. Edward Amadeus Brue,” he read.
    Personally to you. Russian crooks being your personal preserve. Lesser crooks—investment managers, insurance brokers, banking colleagues—may sit in the waiting room for half an hour and end up settling for the chief cashier, but Russian crooks, on your personal orders, go direct to EAB.
    Not printed. Not rubber-stamped by Frau Elli, at that time your young, devoted and very private secretary, but hand-inscribed by you in fine blue strokes of your ubiquitous fountain pen, ending with your signature in full, lest the casual reader—not, God knows, that there ever was one—happened to be unaware that EAB stood for Edward Amadeus Brue, OBE, the banker who throughout his life never bent the rules, until the end of it, when he broke them all.
    Relocking the cabinet, then the strong room, Brue wedged the file under his arm and climbed the elegant staircase to the room where two hours earlier his weekend peace had been so brutally disturbed. The detritus of Mad Marianne strewn across his desk seemed a year ago, the ethical concerns of the Hamburg Stock Exchange irrelevant.
    And yet again: Why?
    You didn’t need the money, dear father of mine, none of us did. All you needed was to stay as you were: the rich, respected doyen of the Viennese banking world, soundness your watchword.
    And when I barged into your office one evening and asked Frau Ellenberger to leave us alone—Fräulein, as she then was, and a jolly pretty fräulein too—and purposefully closed the door behind her, and poured us both a large scotch, and told you I was sick to the heart of hearing us referred to as Mafia Frères, what did you do?
    You screwed on your banker’s smile—all right, a painful version of it, I grant you—and you patted me on the shoulder and told me there were secrets in this world that even a man’s beloved son is better off not knowing.
    Your words. A total snow job. Even Fräulein Ellenberger knew more than I did, but you’d sworn her to silence from the day she began her noviciate.
    And you had the last laugh as well, didn’t you? You were dying by then, but that was another of your secrets I wasn’t allowed to share. Just when it was beginning to look like a close-run race between the Grim Reaper and the Viennese authorities as to who would get you first, enter old Westerheim’s beloved Queen of England, who out of a clear blue sky had decided, for no reason known to mortal man, to command you to the British embassy, where with due pomp her loyal ambassador would appoint you a Member of the Order of the British Empire, an honor, I was afterwards informed, although you never personally told me, that you had coveted all your life.
    And at the investiture you wept.
    And so did I.
    And so would your wife, my mother, have wept if she’d been around, but in her case the Grim Reaper had won long ago.
    And by the time you joined her in the Happy Bank in the Sky, which with a return to your fabled prudence you accomplished a mere two months later, the move to Hamburg looked more attractive than ever.
     
    Our clients are not what you would consider normal clients, Mr. Brue.
    Chin in hand, Brue flipped back and forth through the skimpy, tight-lipped file. The index had been doctored, papers removed to protect the holder’s identity. An encounter report—only Lipizzaners had them—recorded the time and place of meetings between rogue client and rogue banker, but not the subject matter.
    The account owner’s capital was invested in a Bahamian offshore management fund, standard practice for Lipizzaners.
    The management fund belonged to a Liechtenstein foundation.
    The account owner’s share of the Liechtenstein