The Devil's Banker (37 page)

“It’s not for us to decide that. We will alert Glen. We will tell him our suspicions about Kahn and ask him to keep it as quiet as possible for the time being. Kahn’s gone walkabout, we’ll say. Yossi as much as admitted it.”

“And Glen will call Gadbois, and the word will be all over Europe in ten minutes.”

“It’s time we bring in the big guns. We’re Laurel and Hardy.”

“We’ve gotten this far.”

“And that’s as far as we’re going to get. You’re right, Adam. Your numbers are wonderful things. I’ll admit that it’s amazing the information you can get out of a set of figures. I’m a convert. Hallelujah and all that. Count me among your adoring faithful. But there is a time to call it quits.”

Chapel looked away, infuriated by her patronizing tone. Miss Churchill, the doyenne of the secret world, talking down to him as if he were some kind of well-educated rube, a circus act, massaging him with her belief in his theory of numbers. Turning his head, he caught her anxious glance and knew there was something else.

“You’re afraid,” he said.

“Damn right, I’m afraid.”

“No, I don’t mean afraid of the bomb. You’re afraid of the responsibility. You can’t stand it that the buck has stopped, and it’s pointing at you and me.”

“It’s too damn big, Adam,” she blurted. “I’m a spy. Great title, but it’s still just a job. Point me toward the bad guys, I’ll go. Tell me look and listen, I’m your gal. Tell me to shoot, you’re getting on tougher ground. But I draw the line at taking personal responsibility for a hundred thousand innocent lives. No, thank you. That’s the general’s job.”

The general.
Sarah’s all-knowing father, R.I.P.

“The general’s dead.”

“Kahn could be headed anywhere,” she protested. “Madrid, Tripoli, Helsinki, the South Pole . . . who knows?”

“Oh, I think we know where he’s headed. You said it yourself at the embassy. There’s a reason the money was sent to Paris. Now we know what it is. It’s a payoff. Daudin or François, or whatever he calls himself, doesn’t like to stray far from the city. I’m thinking he’s got a business there, something that requires him to stay close to home. In Paris, he’s invisible. Part of the city’s fabric. On foreign turf, he sticks out. This guy’s got a serious comfort factor. He’s got his boys around him, his safe houses, his bank accounts spread around the city. Hundred to one, if Mordecai Kahn does have a bomb—if, in fact, he’s selling it to Hijira for three million dollars—the deal is going down in Paris. You can bet on it.”

Sarah was nodding. He’d won her over, yet he still needed to explain himself. Skimming a hand along the back of her head, he said, “I don’t want this gig any more than you do. You know what I want? I want to go back to my desk in Virginia, put my feet up, crack open a can of diet Coke, and get lost in my computer. I want my numbers. My sterile, safe numbers.”

The tram turned off the Limmat Quai at Centralplatz. Sarah floored the rental Mercedes, taking it around the large tram stop, through a series of tight streets, following the blue placards that showed the way to the Flughafen. They left the river and entered a tunnel.

“And so?” she asked. “Where now?”

“Find Mr. Claude François and we find Kahn,” he said.

“That simple?”

Chapel shrugged his shoulders. It wasn’t simple at all, but there it was. “Who do you trust?”

Sarah extended her hand and he took it. “I trust you,” she said, squeezing it tightly.

They left the car in the Terminal A parking lot with the keys tucked beneath the visor. At the ticket counter, they purchased three seats on the twelve o’clock flight to Paris. One for Chapel. One for Sarah. And one for the three boxes of files they’d taken from the Deutsche International Bank.

Once through passport control, they walked the length of the terminal to their gate and bought coffee and a pair of sausages. “Can’t visit Switzerland without trying the bratwurst,” said Chapel, taking a seat on a leather banquette.

“What about the chocolate?”

“I’ll get a bar to bring to Glen. A peace offering.”

“Sugar?” Sarah asked.

“No, I take it black.”

“Suit yourself.” She opened three bags of Equal and dumped them into her paper cup.

“Nasty,” commented Chapel, grimacing.

“Terrible sweet tooth. Don’t even get me started on toffee.”

“Bangers and mash?”

“Adore them.”

“Steak and kidney pie.”

“Lovely.”

“Fish and chips?”

“Yumm.”

“The Spice Girls?”

“Make me gag, but Robbie Williams is a cutie.”

“You are England’s rose.”

“I take that as a compliment, sir.”

A minute passed as the two ate in silence. Their flight was called and they traded looks to say, let everyone else get on board first. Chapel felt that something had grown between them, something more than just a night together. It was a pleasant sensation. They watched the last stragglers disappear into the jetway.

“Shall we, Miss Churchill?”

“By all means, Mr. Chapel.”

She stood, hefting the overnight bag onto her shoulder. Taking a step, she pressed her body against him and pecked him on the lips. “So how do we find him?”

“I’ve got to sit down with all this info, run the account numbers and the beneficiaries, through our database. Somewhere in here, we’ll find a hint, a trail to follow. We’ll start at the beginning. Daudin, or François back then, opened that account twenty years ago. He listed his date of birth as 1961. I’ll wager he was a damn sight less cautious back then than he is now. There’s a learning curve for terrorism, too.”

“What’s your guess? Who is he?”

“François? He’s a money man. A banker. A broker. Maybe a trader of some kind. Someone who knows the ins and outs of international finance. He’s got to be a pro, the way he juggles those accounts.”

Sarah walked toward the gate. “Takes one to know one, eh?”

“Something like—” Chapel’s cell phone chirped. “Hello.”

“Allo, mon ami,”
said Leclerc. “And where might I ask are you?”

Chapel stopped in his tracks. “On the way to Paris.”

“I hope so. There’s someone here I think you’ll greatly enjoy meeting.”

“Who’s that?”

“Right now, I’m calling him Charles François. Ring a bell? You two know each other already. I understand you bumped into him at the hospital the other day.”

It couldn’t be,
he thought.
Not so quickly.
“How?”

“Poor guy needed some cash. We nabbed him at the ATM in Neuilly. The one with three dots on it. Blue, black, and red.
Felicitations.
” The map. Leclerc was talking about the map of the BLP’s ATM locations.

“Where are you?”

“La Sante.”

La Sante. France’s most notorious maximum security prison.

“Leclerc, do not lay a hand on him.” He exchanged the strident tone for one of dead earnestness. “Please.”

“It’s too late for that. This is my town. We do things my way.”

“We’ll be there in two hours.”

Chapter 42

At the same time as Swiss International Airlines flight 765 touched down in Paris, Marc Gabriel was standing in the center of his office, surveying the naked space. The last boxes had left a few minutes earlier. The desk, the computer hardware, the phones, the photos: everything was a memory. Gabriel was left alone with his view.

To his mind the last three days had stretched into one. Taleel’s death. Ciudad del Este. George’s treason. By all accounts, he should be exhausted, both physically and mentally. Instead, he felt refreshed, invigorated, and alive to the challenges that waited. Catching his reflection in the glass, he smoothed his white shirt and flirted with his Hermès cravat. If his expression did not convey the direness of his situation, it was because he had won. The footrace was as good as over. A single call had put his worries to rest.

“The city is more beautiful than I had expected,” Mordecai Kahn had said when he’d phoned an hour earlier.

“Summer is a kind season.”

“I take it you are free this evening?”

“Of course.”

“Say, eleven o’clock?”

“Eleven would be wonderful.”

Kahn gave Gabriel the name of the establishment where he proposed they meet.

“You’re certain?” Gabriel asked, peeved at the choice.

“Neither of us can take any chances.”

Marc Gabriel had no intention of it. “Very good, then. Till eleven.”

“Bilitis’s Vineyard. It is on the third floor.”

“Bilitis’s Vineyard,” Gabriel repeated.

The package had arrived.

Chapter 43

Narrow, dank, and dripping with limestone sweat, the corridors of La Sante maximum security prison stretched before Chapel like the decaying passages of an ancient tomb. Five steps inside the place, he’d felt the walls close in on him and a grim weight fall on his shoulders. It was his first time inside a prison. He was a visitor, one of the good guys. Still, the place scared the hell out of him.

La Sante housed the worst of the worst. Murderers, rapists, terrorists. Carlos the Jackal was locked up somewhere inside its walls. Captain Dreyfus himself had spent a year here upon his return from Devil’s Island.

Chapel walked beside Leclerc, with Sarah a step behind, while the Frenchmen called out the particulars of the arrest.

“According to his passport, his name’s Charles François. He had a ticket to Dubai, round trip in the same name.”

“Who paid for it?” Chapel asked.

“Credit card. Claude François.”

François.
The same alias for twenty years.

“He hasn’t talked?” asked Sarah.

“Not a peep,” said Leclerc. “He’s well trained, this one. Disciplined. He’s got some scars on him. I’d say he’s been to a camp. We ran the passport through immigration. All we got was a trip to Athens last summer.”

“Athens,” murmured Sarah. “The great jumping-off point for voyages into the unknown.”

“We only keep track of the first leg out of the country,” continued Leclerc. “He probably had a second ticket in a different name. He knows the tricks, this kid.”

Their steps had acquired a marching rhythm. They were an executioner’s party on its way to carry out the sentence.

“The girl’s still out?” Sarah asked.

“She woke an hour ago, but the doctors forbid us from speaking to her. They’ve got her doped up on steroids to stop her brain from swelling.”

“What did you do to her?” Chapel asked.

“The girl fell poorly. Hairline fracture of the skull. Ten stitches above the ear. She’ll have a bad headache for a couple of weeks. Serves her right for hanging out with scum.”

Leclerc stopped in front of a broad, black iron door. Rivets the size of quarters studded the surface. Except for the modern lock winking from inside an ancient keyhole, it might have confined Edmond Dantes in his cell at the Château d’If. Sounds emanated from other floors of the prison. A metal cup ricocheted against the walls. Water coursed through the pipes in unpredictable surges. But most disturbing was an inmate’s brief, excruciating howl, cut off mid-cry, as if the guillotine had done its work.

“You can listen from the next room,” said Leclerc, as he wrapped boxer’s tape around his knuckles.

“You said he was a kid,” protested Chapel.

“That’s no kid in there. Too bad you missed Dr. Bac. She just left. You two could have held hands and said a prayer for the animal. Now it is time for him to talk.”

Chapel put a hand on Leclerc’s chest. “Let me talk to him.”

“How’s your French?”

“He speaks English.”

“How do you know?” Leclerc pushed past Chapel, slipping the key into the lock.

“Call it a hunch.”

“
Désolé, mon pote.
No more time for hunches.”

Sarah leaned her shoulder against the door, lowering her face to Leclerc’s. Sweat beaded his lip, and in the dim corridor, he looked ashen and ill. “Come now, let Adam have a go.”

“What did you find in Zurich? Tell me that, then maybe I let your boyfriend go.”

Sarah looked at Chapel, then back again, as if choosing sides. “More of the same,” she said. “Another numbered account. Reams of documents. If it’s of any interest, the account in Germany was opened by a Claude François.”

“We were talking about Switzerland. The Bank Menz. That was a quick trip to Zurich for nothing.”

“You know Adam,” she said. “High hopes.”

High hopes.
Leclerc’s eyes narrowed in bewilderment. The naive and sentimental tripe of a naive and sentimental country. He considered Chapel, as if measuring him for a suit. “Ten minutes,” he said, unlocking the cell door. “I’m also in a hurry. Santos Babtiste’s funeral begins at five o’clock. I’d like to pay my respects.”

“Is he cuffed?” Chapel asked.

“What do you think?”

Chapel held out his hand. Leclerc dropped a small key into his palm. “Ten minutes.
Alors, bonne chance.
”

The door slammed shut. Chapel took a step and he was in the center of the room. It was a small, confined, frightening place. The walls were painted a glossy mint green. A naked bulb dangled from the ceiling. It was exceptionally clean, but for a skein of blood that decorated a wall like a furious exclamation point. The young man who had tackled him in the hallways of the Hôpital Salpetitpierre sat at a brutish wooden table, hands cuffed behind him, head lolling on his chest.

“Hello,” said Chapel, taking the opposite chair. “I think we’ve met already. I wanted to say thank you, though. Personally. You know for . . .” Chapel cleared his throat, searching for the right words.
For what? For not killing me? For behaving like a decent human being instead of a butcher with a holy cause?
He looked back at the door. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to talk to the kid, after all—Leclerc was right about one thing: This was no kid, he was built like an NFL halfback.

Just then, the prisoner looked up, and Chapel got his first glimpse of his face. The right eye was swollen and purple. The capillaries on one side of the iris had burst, giving him a devilish look. His lip was cracked and bleeding. Chapel didn’t know if the injuries were from the arrest or from Leclerc. It didn’t matter. He felt offended and responsible. He couldn’t allow Leclerc with his taped knuckles and raging inferiority to have a go at him. He held up the key, then circled behind the prisoner and unlocked the cuffs. The young man shook his arms to regain circulation, but offered no thanks, no acknowledgment whatsoever that Chapel was even in the room.