At twenty-five minutes to closing time in the main city branch of one of the largest and oldest banks on the Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich, the KGB officer referred to as Julius entered the front door and stated his business to the offical on reception duty. He was admitted to a room known as the secure area and obliged to wait there while the identity he produced was checked. Left alone, monitored by television cameras, unable either to gain admission or leave, Julius waited some four minutes until a female clerk in a navy blue suit and pink blouse came from the inner sanctum and spoke his name. He clicked his heels, gave the suggestion of a formal bow and followed her into the banking hall. She led him across the bronze-coloured marble floor, past the tellers’ positions and through an unmarked door.
Inside was a large room reserved for consultations between customers and bank executives. Julius was invited to sit in one of the brown leather armchairs ranged in a semi-circle on a deep golden Afghan carpet. Immediately, a door opposite him was unlocked and a slight, balding man in a grey worsted suit with a bow tie stepped forward and introduced himself as the sub-manager responsible for safe deposit facilities.
Julius presented a visiting-card and explained that he was the nephew of Fraulein Edda Zenk, a West German resident in Berlin, who in 1964 had arranged with the bank to deposit an item of value in one of its lockers. She now wished to retrieve her property, but she was in her seventies and unable to travel. She had nominated Julius as her representative and entrusted him with the key to the locker. The bank should have received a telephone call to this effect during the course of the afternoon.
The sub-manager confirmed that a lady had phoned from Berlin. He explained that the bank was obliged to insist on a properly authenticated letter of authority before it could authorise the opening of a locker by a customer’s representative. Julius handed over a paper bearing a note in Edda Zenk’s handwriting, naming him as her representative. He also produced the key. The sub-manager thanked him and asked him to wait while the signature on the note was authenticated.
Alone in the room, but overlooked by the revolving cameras mounted in the ceiling, Julius got up and examined a Corot landscape on the wall opposite until the sub-manager returned with a bank guard. The documents had been verified to the bank’s satisfaction, and Julius was invited to come to the safe deposit room.
A different door was unlocked and he was led along a passage, through another locked door and down some steps to the vaults. There, a second guard unlocked a gleaming steel grille and relocked it behind them.
On one side were rows of hundreds of steel lockers, and on the other a set of cubicles where depositors could examine their possessions. The sub-manager walked up one of the aisles with Julius, checking the numbers until he found the right one. There were two locks. The sub-manager used the key held by the bank to open the first, and then withdrew discreetly, allowing Julius to open the locker with the key he possessed.
Inside was a cheap imitation leather suitcase with chrome fastenings that were beginning to peel. Julius lifted it out, surprised by its heaviness. He closed the locker door and carried the suitcase to a desk where the sub-manager was waiting to obtain his signature against the record of withdrawal. He refused the offer of a porter’s assistance and carried the suitcase himself back through the system of doors and checks to the main hall.
He thanked the sub-manager, shook hands again, clicked heels and walked out through the exit door to where a chauffeur was waiting in a grey Mercedes. Julius got into the back seat with the suitcase beside him; the chauffeur closed the door and drove off sedately to the Soviet consulate.