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“But, sir, you know I can’t allow you to enter a room without protection unless it has been checked.”
“You can and you will. Now go stand by the door.”
Brown hesitated briefly and then relented. He stepped out of the way and watched as the person he was charged with guarding stepped into a steel cage with a man Brown barely knew. The door slid shut, and somewhere behind the thick walls Brown could hear the electric motor of the elevator kick in. This entire trip was quickly becoming a textbook example of how not to run a security detail. Brown returned to the other two agents and began venting.
“I want you both to write this up before your heads hit the pillow tonight. Make it very clear that he has prevented us from doing our jobs.” Brown looked back at the elevator and added, “Now go find that staircase and secure it.”
THIRTY FEET BENEATH the house the elevator came to a stop. The door retracted to reveal a huge underground cavern. They stepped onto a hewn stone slab that had been polished to a reflective sheen. In front of them was a vault with row upon row of wine racks. The dimension of the room, and the lack of any support columns shocked Ross more than the size of the wine collection.
“Joseph,” was all he managed to say.
“I know. It took me three years, and it had to be done with the utmost secrecy.”
“But why?”
“This is Zermatt, the heart of the environmentalist movement. This wine cellar is carved right into the mountain. The town would have never granted me permission for such a project. It was difficult enough to get my house built. I had to bribe and cajole every official and inspector in the valley.”
Ross stepped forward and looked into the cavernous room. Expensive crystal chandeliers hung from th
e barrel vaulted ceiling every fifteen feet or so. Racks of wine jutted out from the wall on both sides like pews in a grand church. To his immediate left was a door, to his right, a wine tasting table and four leather chairs.
“How big is it?”
“One hundred feet deep by thirty feet wide.”
“Amazing. How did you do it?”
“I brought in a family of Albanian miners. A father and four sons.”
“How many bottles?”
From the shadows a voice answered, “Thirty thousand, give or take a few.”
Midway down the cavern a man stepped from between the racks. He was wearing a blue blazer with gold buttons and an open-collar white shirt. His hair was brown and slicked back, which made it appear darker than it actually was. He was of average height, tan, and overweight in a way that could be attributed more to indulgence than neglect. His nose was by far the most prominent feature on an otherwise forgettable face.
“What are you holding there?” Speyer asked with uncharacteristic concern creeping into his voice.
“Oh…this?” The man flipped the bottle up in the air. It turned end over end twice and he caught it.
Speyer gasped, his entire body going rigid. “Please tell me that is not one of my forty-two Rothschild Château Moutons.”
“No. It’s one of your forty-one Château Moutons.” The man spoke with a slight New York accent. “Isn’t that the same year your father’s friends rolled into France?”
“They were not my father’s friends, and the year was nineteen forty.” Speyer marched forward and took the extremely expensive bottle from the man’s hands.
“I thought it was well documented that the Nazis carted off the Rothschilds’ private collection during the war. It just seems a bit of a coincidence that the son of a Swiss banker would be in possession of so many rare bottles of wine.”
“I can assure you,” said a slightly more calm Speyer, “that I paid for every bottle of wine in this cellar. Most of it with the fees I earn by hiding your vast fortune from the U.S. government.”
The man with the New York accent smiled broadly showing a set of freshly capped white teeth. “You are worth every penny, Joseph. Now how about we open one of these rare bottles in celebration of our victory?”
The banker hesitated for a second and then said, “I think that is a wonderful idea. An absolutely wonderful idea.” Speyer was now nodding with enthusiasm. “I will decant it, and in the meantime I will find something significantly less expensive and infinitely more suitable to your boorish American palate.” Speyer sauntered off, leaving the two Americans alone.
“Cy, you look well.”
Cy Green was born in New York in 1950 to Jewish immigrants who had fled Hungary as the communists consolidated their power over the country in the wake of WWII. He’d made his first million by the age of twenty-five and his first billion by the age of thirty-five.
“Thank you,” replied Green. “I’ve been on vacation for a long time now.”
