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pressed the button under his desktop, unlocking the door.
    “Herr Horch?” Günter leaned in through the half-opened door. “Herr Hoffgeitz wishes to see you.”
    *
    “Hey! Open the door!” Bathsheba knocked and tried the handle again. “I’m going to wet my pants!”
    “I’m almost done.” Gideon dried his face on a towel and turned the key. “All yours.”
    “Don’t leave.” Bathsheba held the door as he exited the bathroom. “I like sharing.”
    “I don’t.” He realized she was about to slip out of her nightgown and turned away. “What happened yesterday should never happen again.”
    “Never? Then you’ll be in a lot of pain. I heard men have to ejaculate at least once a day to maintain—”
    “We’re colleagues, not lovers!” He reached back without looking and shut the bathroom door.
    “Fine,” she said behind the closed door, “go ahead, play hard-to-get, I’ll play along if it makes you feel better.”
    “I’m not playing. I mean it.”
    “How about a cold shower then?”
    “If you continue, one of us will have to resign from the service.”
    “The service?” Bathsheba started the water in the shower. “What service? We’re working for the Elie Weirdo Freak Show.”
    Gideon struggled to control his anger. “The Special Operations Department reports directly to the prime minister’s office, and Elie Weiss is a great mentor—”
    “Weirdo!”
    “He might be different, but he’s very powerful. We’re not the only team working for him undercover—”
    “Weirdo!”
    “He hired us when Mossad wouldn’t. Where is your gratitude?”
    “Weirdo!”
    *
    “Lemmy!” Armande Hoffgeitz waved him in. “Did you made it back from Paris okay?”
    “Why not?”
    “Driving that little toy of yours?” The banker shook his head. “I’ll never understand why you’d rather drive an old Volkswagen all the way there instead of taking a short flight in first class.”
    “It’s a Porsche, not a Volkswagen.”
    Armande waved in dismissal. “A Beetle is a Beetle even with a low roof and a fancy name.”
    “And a much higher speed.”
    “It should, considering all the time and money you have put into it. How was Paris?”
    “Very productive. I took a Saudi client to see Madame Butterfly at the Paris Opera. Maria Teresa Uribe played Cho-Cho-Sun. Incredible performance!”
    “Not my cup of tea. And how are Paula and Klaus Junior?”
    “Your grandson insists on a Saturday-morning sailing. I told him it’s going to be chilly, but he wouldn’t give it up.”
    “He’s a true Hoffgeitz, just the way his uncle was.” Armande glanced at the photo of his late son in a black frame on the desk. Klaus V.K. Hoffgeitz had died in a freak skiing accident in 1973. “Tell Junior that I’ll join him at the bow. We’ll face the wind together!”
    “Bring your coat and hat.”
    “I will.” He patted a pile of computer printouts filled with numbers. “Look, I’m too old to learn new tricks, and so is Günter. We’ve always kept records with pen and paper—”
    “It’s not the computer system. It’s me. I failed to earn Günter’s trust.”
    “Nonsense. He respects you greatly.” Armande Hoffgeitz pushed up his glasses. “But he’s accustomed to the safety of physical records and steel doors, not wires and keyboards.”
    “Let me propose,” Lemmy said, “that Günter will enter new transactions into the computer database and at the same time continue to update his paper records.”
    “Why can’t we let him keep only paper records for my clients while the rest of the bank transitions to the electronic records?”
    “We need all the numbers in the computer system in order to maintain a correct daily balance of the bank’s total assets, reflecting deposits and withdrawals in all the accounts without exception. Every bank in Zurich will soon be automated the same way. The Banking Commission set the new accounting regulations, and compliance would be impossible without a