Chapter Three: How Do You Solve A Problem Like the Da Vinci Code?
The car rolled through acre upon acre of sculptured grounds, and Harry looked out with awe. Okay, the grounds were mostly set at an angle of 45 degrees, this being Switzerland, but it was still impressive.
"My grandfather took to bingo late in life and lost most of our possessions," the Baron confided in him sadly. "And ve now only have one decent country house."
Harry goggled as the house appeared on the horizon, a monstrous edifice of towers and turrets at least the size of Hogwarts.
The car drew up by a set of huge carved doors at the top of marble steps. Uniformed flunkeys came running, two to unroll the red carpet, two to open the car doors and assist them out, and two more to blow a fanfare on trumpets.
"You will forgive me for bringing you to the back door, Harry, but I find too much formality to be a little vulgar."
Harry's suite of four rooms had a balcony overlooking severely landscaped gardens beneath, a boathouse on the lake, the airstrip and the helicopter pad.
He joined the Baron for a magnificent meal, washed down with a Swiss white wine which gave the same effect as inhaling razor blades.
After wards the Baron took him upstairs to the nursery to meet his children. As the minions carried them upstairs in their sedan chairs he explained, "I am afraid my wife deserted me a year ago, leaving me to look after my sixteen children alone. She disagreed with my somewhat rigid rejection of contraception, I am afraid. Fortunately I have a very good assistant, a young nun from the nearby convent."
They got out of their sedan chairs and went into the nursery.
Harry reeled back from the bedlam inside.
It was a huge room, and brightly lit by high uncurtained windows. The room was full of children, from two year old quads coating themselves in finger paints to an indefinite number of teenagers playing deafening house music. All seemed to be dressed in garments badly sewn together from chintz, apart from the quads whose clothing seemed to consist of Venetian blinds stapled together.
The only sign of an adult supervisor was a nun in full robes, tugging at a guitar which was chained to a pillar by no less than three padlocks.
"Sister Maria!"
She saw them and came over. "This is Sister Maria, who looks after my children, and this is my guest, Mr. Harry Potter."
Harry froze, and the limited proportion of the young sister's face visible under the veil went red.
Harry gasped. The nun was none other than Laetitia Voldmurt, the CAA agent he had worked with in LA.
"Is something wrong?"
"Er... no Baron, all nuns look the same, and this young lady reminds me of a dear friend who took the veil some time ago."
"Oh, I see. Well, Sister Maria will introduce you to the children and show you round, as I need to go and, go and… make some calls to New York."
He tugged Harry to one side, slipped him a small loaded pistol, and whispered, "If that nun looks like getting the guitar loose or goes near the curtains, let her have it."
As soon as the door closed behind the Baron Maria rounded on Harry.
"What are you doing here, Hank Potter?"
"My father had an account with his bank. I came over today and... he invited me to stay. What are you doing here, in that outfit. And by the way, did the Weasleys ever give you that new spell to, enhance your… em, figure."
She blushed, prettily. "They did, thank you. I am now a 38 C, though it is a waste of time in this outfit. Anyway, I have been put in here to infiltrate Gringütts. Some of the most important Death Eaters in the US have big accounts here, and we think we can trace you-know-who through them."
"Have you had any luck?"
She shook her head, "I am afraid not. Not with this lot to look after. I have not got a minute to spare. And when I run out of Ritalin next week I don't know how I will cope."
Harry looked at his watch. The noise was getting to him, and the smell of numerous babies overdue for changing.
"I have to see them anyway about my father's account. I'll get back to you later."
She grabbed his arm, "Oh no you don't, I am coming too."
She rang the bell and a dour butler appeared, "Friedrich, ask one of the maids to keep an eye on the children, I need to leave on an important message."
A look of panic appeared in the eyes of the aged retainer, "But zey vill give notice! Zose children are little devils!"
With a sigh Harry reached into his pocket. Not unlike the Scots, the Swiss had a way of shaking off their depression as soon as a gleam of gold appeared.
The goblin was adamant, "We can only admit Mr. Potter. It is forbidden for those persons who do not have accounts to enter here."
"Guess I'll have to wait in the bar across the road."
Laetitia stomped up to the bar. "Barkeep, gimme a pint of Budweiser. What the hell are you staring at?"
"That will be fifty francs Sister. Actually, we do not get a lot of nuns in here."
"I'm not surprised, at these prices."
She sunk her pint in seconds, brooding over the brutish children in her charge. Suddenly something touched her knee. She looked down to see an unusually homely goblin smiling up at her. "Excuse me Fraulein, but can vun buy you a drink?"
A million cutting put-downs sprang to her mind, but then she spotted the distinctive grey and gold uniform of Gringütts, and a fake smile appeared on her lips.
"Of course, but let us first find somevhere, I mean somewhere, more secluded."
Fingerprints, retinal scans and DNA tests were only the beginning of the security layers that encircled the safe deposit boxes.
At last, however, the final set of steel doors opened before Harry.
A goblin examined Harry's key and receipt, then he took a similar key from a cabinet and began to struggle into a suit marked "Bomb Squad".
"There are many privacy spells protecting these boxes."
The goblin inserted his key, and backed off quickly. To Harry's relief nothing happened when he opened his own, apart from a faint click, and soon he was sitting at a table and extracting the contents of the box.
On top was a sheaf of documents that Harry recognised as Swiss Government Bonds. He peeled off two and passed them to the goblin. "Please open a numbered account for me."
There were three photo albums, two large and one small. The first was of his parents wedding, and Harry brushed away a tear as he glanced at the smiling faces. They had honeymooned in Switzerland, and there were altogether too many pictures of Alpenhorns and cows and skiers.
The second was of later holidays they had had in Switzerland. Clearly they had taken to the place.
The small one Harry picked up and flicked open, then slammed shut and dropped abruptly back into the box, hairs on the back of his neck rising, before sealing it shut with the most powerful spell in his repertoire. As he did so he wished that his parents had stuck to the convention of taking photographs only of the daytime activities of their honeymoon.
Under the albums was a ring of keys and some documents. Harry read them with delight. It appeared he owned an apartment in Zurich.
Finally, there was a carved wooden box.
Engraved on the lid was a mystic pattern of eighty one squares, some blank, others inlaid with numbers ranging from one to nine.
The goblin returned and handed Harry a chequebook. Noticing the strange pattern he said, "I have seen those before. They must be solved to open the box. A mystical number pattern, it can only be decoded by the cleverest of wizards."
Harry reached for a quill. He had been solving the Su Doku in the "Daily Star" in the office tea break for the last two months, and now he solved the puzzle in minutes. The lid popped open.
Inside was what looked like a magic wand, but shorter and fatter than usual and with a series of coloured rods inlaid in the sides, each fixed with a hinge at one end, so that they could be folded out in line with the wand.
Harry looked at the goblin, who shrugged. Taking the wand, the apartment keys and papers, the two decent photograph albums and the chequebook, Harry went to the bar.