THE CALVI CONTINUANCE: ALEX BALE
1 Zurich
The grey and overcast skies that he hoped they had left behind in London had followed the two of them to Zurich. Alex Bale gazed out of the window and traced the rivulets as they rushed across the window, their tracks fading to near vertical as the Embraer Phenom slowed to its taxi speed. The two men thanked the crew and with their bags stepped from the plane into the back of the waiting car. There was a short drive across the tarmac to the terminal where they were escorted to the VIP lounge while their passports and bags were checked. Discretion and secrecy had become the norm over the past few days and so the chatter between them covered anything and everything except the reason behind their journey. Neither Matt nor Alex bothered to remove their raincoats. Alex took a seat and began flicking through some of the glossy magazines while Matt got them each a coffee. “It should only take five or ten minutes Alex. Do you want a pastry?”
“No just the coffee. I'll give Hoops a call and let her know we’ve landed.”
Alex Bale’s relationship with Helen “Hoops” Hooper had changed in since the events in Rome. Their once on/off relationship had become a full blown romance with the type of courtship only a multi-millionaire like Bale could offer. Now though things had changed, become much more serious. Hoops, much to their delight, had become pregnant on one of their romantic trips and was now having a tortuous pregnancy. The doctors had advised her against flying and Alex had insisted that she give up her role at UniSec. However as with all best laid plans the purchase of a new family home in Holland Park and the resulting refurbishment had only seen one set of problems replaced by another. Though in Alex’s mind it was much safer for Hoops and the baby if he kept them both at arms length from the business. The past few days had been very stressful since Alex had worked out the security key to Nick’s website. They had been very careful not to try and access the site from any of the company offices or from home. Instead choosing to randomly access the site from a new laptop hard-wired to the internet at various serviced offices in and around London. Alex still carried the two sheets of notes written by Nick and handed to him by his friend Marcello Renzo. Every time Alex looked at them he smiled. Nick had been incredibly bright and even he had taken them at face value. It was only when he stood outside the Etihad Stadium, wrapped with images from May 13th that he realised the ambiguity of Nick’s doodles. The references that seemed to refer to his religious life had in reality referred to their shared love of their boyhood football club and the time that Sergio Aguero had scored the goal that had taken on biblical significance to the fans, ninety-three minutes and twenty seconds. The missing key, an access code that was so heavily protected by the seemingly unbreakable quantum cryptography that unlocked the site was just the simple, 93:20.
Matt Taylor handed Alex a coffee and picked up the glossy magazine that Alex had discarded as soon as Hoops had answered. He flicked through slowly, just grazing over the headlines and photos. It was full of the usual pages promoting life enhancing designer jewellery and clothes. The were followed by the real estate that was for sale, the kind of aspirational homes suited to the richest Russian oligarchs held little more than a passing interest for him other than that they may one day be the homes of UniSec clients. One of the society pages caught Matt’s attention. It showed the publicity shy banker that Molinari had interviewed months earlier in Rome when Nick had been murdered, Torsten Klein. Matt Taylor tapped Alex’s knee and showed him the photo as he continued his conversation with Hoops. Matt sympathised with the poor guy as he tried to focus on the relative benefits of granite over polished concrete as a work surface for their new kitchen. Alex ended the call shaking his head. Matt was keen for them to go over things one more time and looked around the lounge to make sure nobody was listening.
