The Devil's Banker (13 page)

“So then, since he’s calling his group ‘Hijira,’ can we take it he’s Saudi?” Chapel asked. “I mean, that’s where the flight of Muhammad took place. Do you think his aims might be closer to home?”

Sarah decided she’d had enough. It was time to put the probationer in his place. “We haven’t the slightest hint that this is anything but an anti-Western group. One more Salafist Muslim organization that sees it as their holy duty to eradicate Christianity from the Ummah, the community of countries united beneath the Islamic flag. I’m afraid, Mr. Chapel, it doesn’t matter if he’s a Saudi or a Palestinian, or a Frenchman. He’s a Muslim, and whatever he plans on doing, it’s to further what he believes is the cause of Muslims and Islam around the world. No, I do not think his aims are closer to home.”

Chapel pursed his lips and sat back, his eyes flashing real anger. Sarah wondered if he was trying to intimidate her. Another tongue-tied bully? Perhaps she’d been too hard on him. No, she decided. She hadn’t. There was no point in letting their investigations get sidetracked before they’d even started. Hijira was her baby. She would point. He could dig.

Silence crowded the room as Glendenning made his way to the head of the table. “What we have on the table is a threat to the United States of America,” he said quietly. “Nothing more. Nothing less. We have all of us gathered in an effort to find the man who delivered that message and stop him and his associates from carrying out whatever assault they have in mind. We can’t afford any more of yesterday’s snafus. No more jumping the gun.” He paused, and it was clear that he was addressing the comment to Gadbois and Leclerc. “We have to lock down this investigation and keep its true focus known to only a few people. There will be no leaks. There will be no discussion of our real purpose outside of those here today. For the public, for the press, and for the police, we are engaged in a murder investigation with Middle Eastern overtones. A suspected terrorist killed four agents resisting arrest. End of story. There will be no mention of the tape and no mention of a plot. The defense minister has agreed to grant special police powers to all members of the Blood Money task force. Taking into account your expertise and experience, you are to use any and all methods at your disposal to find this man.”

Glendenning stopped speaking long enough to acknowledge all those present. “And if I’m not sufficiently clear, let me share with you the wishes of the President of the United States, as well as his close friend and ally, the President of France. You are to shoot first, and ask questions later.”

Chapter 13

“How long?” Adam Chapel asked, raising his head toward Sarah. “How long before the act do these guys make these tapes?”

“Hours,” she said. “Days. Longer if they have to travel some distance. At least that much is in our favor. If they are planning on hitting a target in America, we can assume they’ll need a little while to get there.”

“Why?” demanded Leclerc, bolting to attention. “They might have boarded the plane this morning. For all we know, they could be in Manhattan as we speak. How do we know they are not already there? Just because the tape was made in Paris, doesn’t mean that the people who will execute the plan are also here.”

“Doubtful,” said Sarah. “They needed the money for a reason. And they needed it in Paris. They took a chance by sending so much through a
hawala.
If it cost them one of their men, you can bet it was bloody important. You can also bet they made sure they got the money here in plenty of time, and that the operation isn’t going to take place until they’ve spent it.”

Only the three of them remained, and they’d gathered at one end of the table, alternately shaking their heads, smiling disconsolately at the ceiling, and silently ruing their luck, like a group of students who’d just been given a murderous assignment. Despite Sarah Churchill’s protests and an illuminated sign on the wall to the contrary, Leclerc was smoking, lobbing a parade of smoke rings toward the ceiling. He was their “baby-sitter,” Glendenning had told them. There to watch their backs, shine a light down the dimmer passageways, and provide the oil necessary to grease some of the rustier wheels in the French law enforcement community.

It was a tall order, thought Chapel. Asking them to put an identity to an unknown face, to track down and apprehend a culprit who no one confessed to knowing the first thing about, other than that he was an associate of Mohammed al-Taleel, and thus a member of Hijira.

A minute ago, Guy Gadbois had left the room in urgent conversation with Glendenning. Together the DGSE, the Sûreté, and the FBI promised to shake as many trees as possible, to call in their favors from the street, in Paris and in the States. To help them with their task, they had a single photo of Taleel five years out-of-date that didn’t look a damned thing like the man Chapel had followed across the Parisian cityscape. And that was all.

Leclerc leaned across the table, sweeping a strand of hair out of his eyes. “I have an appointment to see Mr. Boubilas later today. Perhaps he can shed some light on the situation.”

“I understand he’s not talking,” said Chapel.

“He will talk to Captain Leclerc.”

Sarah rolled her eyes, and Chapel said, “Just leave a piece of him for the next guy, if you’re not as successful as you hope. In the meantime, if we want to start building a trail on our man, I need to know who Taleel was renting the apartment from.”

“Azema Immobilier,” answered Leclerc. “One eighty-five Avenue George V. He was using the alias Bertrand Roux. There are seven other men in Paris with that name. We are checking if Taleel acquired any types of government identification under that name: driver’s license, passport, national employment card.”

“Try credit cards, too,” Chapel added. “The more places we know he frequented, the easier it will be for us to get a picture of who his associates might have been.”

“It is being done.”

“What about his apartment?” asked Sarah. “Have they turned up any of his personal effects? Anything at all?”

“There was very little to find,” explained Leclerc. “No food. No clothes. No books. The place was either deserted or he was moving out soon.”

“Not totally, it wasn’t,” complained Chapel. “I saw a TV in there and a PC sitting on his desk.”

“Ruined, I’m afraid. Maybe we can recover something from the hard disk. There is still a team over there, sifting through the rubble. It will take weeks to figure out what exactly we have. After talking to Rafi Boubilas, I’m going over to Sûreté headquarters to see what they’ve turned up.”

Every criminal left a particular scent; every organization, its own signature; and this one, Chapel realized, was sophisticated, wily, and expert. For two years, he had been investigating all manner of groups and organizations suspected of even the remotest involvement in the financing of terrorists and terrorist activities. He’d cut his teeth on the
hawalas
sending money to Iraq in violation of the U.S. embargo, and from there moved to charities funneling contributions to Hamas and Hezbollah, and then to legitimate businesses cutting checks from their bottom line to rebels in the Philippines and in Indonesia. Earlier in the summer, he’d taken down a sixteen-year-old Saudi prince who was secretly selling his father’s American equities and wiring the proceeds to a bank in Grozny to support the Muslim Chechen freedom fighters. But that was as close as he’d gotten to the enemy.

Increasingly, he was frustrated by the feeling that he had been confined to the periphery of the fight against terrorism. His was a bureaucrat’s game involving endless court appearances, demands for subpoenas and search warrants, uncounted hours studying balance sheets, P&L’s, and the tedious minutiae of monthly bank statements.

In law enforcement, there is an intoxicating myth that one man can make a difference, and that it is through effort alone that he does or does not. At some point, Chapel had decided to be that man. Like a snake molting its skin, he’d shed layer after layer of his personal life to devote more time to the job. He’d given up the weekend bike rides to Annapolis and afternoon swims at the Y. He’d cut his morning runs from six days to four, then to two, and now was lucky to hit the road even one day a week. He’d forsaken his addiction to
Monday Night Football
, his terminal rereading of John le Carré, and his love of five-alarm curry. His relationships with women, never his strong suit to begin with, had dwindled to monthly dinners with coworkers before stopping altogether. He took his shirts to the dry cleaners regardless of the cost. He gave up making his bed. He traded oatmeal and fresh orange juice at breakfast for a cup of coffee and a day-old Danish on the drive to Langley. Nutritious sit-down dinners of diced chicken breast and steamed garlic broccoli gave way to orgies of stuffed crust pizza and Coca-Cola at his desk.

All in the name of the myth.

Adam Chapel would make a difference.

Lately, though, he had begun to doubt the result of his efforts. Too often, after a twenty-hour stretch logged on to a computer terminal, he’d look at his bloodshot eyes in the mirror and ask “Why?” and wonder whether he would ever actually stop a man from committing an act, whether he was a soldier in the line or a reserve trying to fight a rainstorm with an umbrella. Selfishly, he wondered if he’d given too much of himself for an elusive cause, if he had to find the answers to his questioning heart somewhere else.

And then, in the space of a day, everything had changed. The enemy was no longer a mirage taunting him from the end of the highway. The enemy was here. He was in Paris. Chapel had stared him in the eye and by the grace of God escaped his terrible commitment. Stung by the death of four friends and a man he was only beginning to know, he realized that his efforts had not been trivial and that his ethic was rewarded in the form of a greater challenge.

“Azema Immobilier,” repeated Leclerc as he wrote down the address and slipped the paper to Sarah. “It is near the Champs-Elysées,” he said pleasantly to her, as if she were the only other person in the room. “Mr. Chapel will be pleased to know there is a Métro station quite nearby. He won’t have to walk far, though there are a few flights of stairs.”

“What did you say?” Chapel asked.

“You won’t have to walk far.”

“No. No. What did you
say
?” he repeated.

Leclerc’s face remained blank, his dolorous brown eyes darting to Sarah, then back to Chapel. He was guessing how far to push. Chapel could see it in the way his lips trembled, the little stutterstep his fingers danced on the armrest.

“You heard me,” Chapel said. “Now, answer.” It was a whisper balanced on the razor’s edge of control.

“I said you don’t have to walk far.” Leclerc chuckled joylessly and the tautness went out of his shoulders. “I was thinking about your leg. There’s something wrong with it,
non
? First you miss grabbing Taleel. Then you’re the last man into that building. I hear you run marathons. I thought you could have caught up to him. That’s all. What happened, anyway? You pull a muscle or something?”

“Nothing happened,” said Chapel. “I missed him, that’s all. I thought I could tackle him. I came close. I just—” He broke off and looked away. There was no reason he should explain to Leclerc. Yet, he couldn’t stop. He needed to say the words, if only to forgive himself. “Those were my friends in that room. I worked with them every day for two years’ running. I’m the godfather to Ray Gomez’s son. I brought Keck over from the Agency, spent twenty-four seven with him until he was up to speed. We were a team. A unit. I got there as quickly as I could. I tried so hard—are you listening?” The pressure at the back of his neck was building. Each second, he found it harder to remain seated. “I asked you a question.”

At some point, Sarah Churchill had come closer, and suddenly, Chapel was aware of her hand on his good shoulder. “Mr. Chapel,” she said softly. “I’m sure Mr. Leclerc meant nothing by his comments.”

“It’s
Captain
Leclerc, don’t you remember?” Chapel said. “And where were you, by the way?” he said to the Frenchman.

“Ahead of you,” Leclerc answered, eyes locked on Chapel. “In the back bedroom. I was just lucky, I guess.”

“You
both
were,” said Sarah Churchill. “Enormously so. Now then, Azema Immobilier, is it?” she asked, reading from the slip of paper. “Are they expecting us?”

Leclerc smiled diplomatically. “I am sure they will be the model of cooperation.”

Needing fresh air, Adam Chapel stood from his chair and walked the length of the table toward the door.

“You really think you will find them that way?” Leclerc remained seated, making a show of gathering his papers, eyes never leaving the desk.

“What way?”

“By tracking the money. They say an Indian can track a horse over rock, too. Me, I never believed it.”

Chapel paused in the doorway, a hand for the frame. “I’ll let you in on a secret,
Captain
Leclerc. All the stuff you guys gather from your informants is, by definition, suspect. Just look at who gives it to you. It’s the product of treachery, deceit, bribery, and interrogation. Money is incorruptible. Audit trails don’t lie. In the end, they’re the diary every terrorist keeps, even if he doesn’t know it.”

“If you say so,” agreed Leclerc, but to Chapel’s ears, the words were a challenge.

Prove it. And fast.

Chapter 14

Admiral Owen Glendenning paid off the taxi and made his way into the cool recesses of the Hôtel Plaza Athénée. The lobby was an oasis of marble. Marble floor. Marble columns. Marble counters. The tinkle of a fountain softened the noise of traffic drifting in from the Avenue Montaigne. A colossal spray of gladiolas and white geraniums decorated a table in the center of the atrium. Except for the very slim, very chic women sauntering through the place, Glendenning found it more like a mortuary than a five-star hotel. He’d been thinking a lot about death lately.

At the front desk, he inquired where he might use a telephone.

“Down the corridor and to the left, sir,” answered the clerk.

“Merci,”
said Glendenning, though the clerk had spoken to him in perfect English.