Zaugg & Cie.’s office is a discreet family-run bank on Bahnhof-Strasse in Zurich, where March and Charlie pursue the numbered account linked to Stuckart. The investigation there turns a small brass key and an authorization letter into a route toward the Wannsee meeting—and shows how a bank’s guarded records can preserve evidence even as laws and secrecy obstruct access to it.

Setting and Appearance

The bank’s address appears on a letter dated July 8, 1942, printed on thick blue paper and signed by Hermann Zaugg, its director. The letter identifies its bearer as a joint holder of account 2402; a small brass key accompanies it. March recognizes why Stuckart had kept the documents locked away: a German citizen could not legally hold a foreign account without Reichsbank permission, and the penalty was death.

March and Charlie find the office behind the shops and bustle of Bahnhof-Strasse, whose visible commercial life masks the courtyards and offices where the banks operate. Zaugg & Cie. is one of the small, family-run concerns typical of the street, with only a dozen or two employees and a modest brass plate. Its entrance lies in a side street behind a jeweler, watched by a remote camera like the one outside Zaugg’s villa. Charlie photographs the door and nameplate before they enter.

Inside, the unassuming exterior gives way to a glass-and-chrome staircase and a broad reception area decorated with modern art. The contrast frames the office as a protected interior: understated at the threshold, more imposing once access has been granted. Zaugg is waiting when March and Charlie arrive, accompanied by a bodyguard.

Account 2402 and Access

The key and letter give March and Charlie a basis to ask for the records. Zaugg examines the letter, then calls for the file for account 2402. A middle-aged employee brings him a thin sheaf of papers in a manila binding, and March begins by asking when the account was opened. The encounter makes clear that their access rests on documentary authorization, not on their official standing alone.

When March asks to inspect the box itself, the group takes a small elevator down to the vault. The descent compresses March and Charlie together with Zaugg and his bodyguard. The vault’s white-tiled corridor extends about thirty meters, with barred compartments along both sides and a security guard seated at a desk near the far gate. Zaugg searches a heavy ring of keys, chained to his belt, for the one that will open the box. A tram passing overhead makes the ceiling vibrate: the protected records lie beneath the ordinary movement of the city.

The bank’s privacy is not merely a matter of discretion. Zaugg invokes client privilege and the Swiss Banking Code, telling March that disclosure would be illegal and that he has already supplied everything March is entitled to know. The office therefore serves at once as a repository and a boundary: it holds records relevant to the investigation, but the rules governing those records limit what the investigators can learn and how they can proceed.

The Wider Swiss Banking System

The office belongs to a financial world whose secrecy had been hardened by conflict with the German security apparatus. In 1934, a Gestapo agent sent by Reinhard Heydrich tried to identify German account holders in Switzerland by cultivating bank employees and posing as an intermediary. When a bank accepted his deposit, the authorities took that as proof that an account existed; the holder could then be arrested and tortured, and the bank pressured to repatriate the assets.

German surveillance extended to calls, cables, and letters between Germany and Switzerland. Clients faced execution or concentration camps, while Swiss banks faced growing risk in dealing with German citizens. After the agent’s exposure and expulsion, the Swiss National Assembly adopted a banking code making disclosure of clients’ holdings punishable by imprisonment. By 1939, the German numbered-account business had collapsed: communications were dangerous, hundreds of accounts had been abandoned, and reputable banks had little reason to take part in transactions entangled with life and death.

That history explains the tension in March and Charlie’s visit. Account 2402 is not an isolated secret kept by one banker; it is protected by a system shaped in response to the Gestapo’s efforts to pierce Swiss banking confidentiality. The law that obstructs March’s inquiries also reflects the danger that disclosure could expose account holders to German persecution.

Records, Secrecy, and the Investigation

The account investigation ultimately intersects with a second kind of protected record: official documents concerning the January 20, 1942 interagency meeting at Wannsee. A letter from Reinhard Heydrich, dated January 6, confirms that the meeting, postponed from December 9, would take place at the International Criminal Police Commission’s office at Am grossen Wannsee, 56–58. When March and Halder search for the minutes, they find a notice stating that they have been removed at the request of the Reichsführer-SS. The notice is dated April 6, 1964, and the minutes had been extracted eleven days earlier.

The evidence does not make the bank itself the source of the Wannsee records. Rather, the office’s part in the investigation belongs to a broader pattern in which documents survive in guarded repositories, while other records are withheld or removed by state authorities. At Zaugg & Cie., the numbered account, its key, and its letter open a narrow path into hidden financial dealings; elsewhere, March encounters the deliberate absence of meeting minutes. The contrast makes access and disappearance equally consequential to his search.

The novel repeatedly tests the reliability and vulnerability of records through their physical forms. March later carries poor-quality photocopies made from archive documents, while a recovered affidavit sworn by Stuckart records an allegation about the massacre of Jews in Rumbula Forest. Much later, an official transcript from the Forschungsamt identifies telephone surveillance as the source of information used to track Martin Luther. Across these episodes, paper, copies, recordings, and intercepted calls can reveal concealed actions, but their custody and circulation remain subject to power. Zaugg & Cie. gives this tension a concrete setting: a modest doorway, a guarded vault, and a numbered file that can be approached only under strict limits.