The Devil's Banker (47 page)

“Sarah!” he yelled, moving back to the walk.

Just then, the door opened. “Come in,” she said soberly.

Stepping into the foyer, Chapel was struck by the acrid scent of spent cordite, and then something else . . . something brash and metallic. He saw the bodies sprawled on the floor, the bamboo walking sticks lying askew, the pools of blood.

“No sign of forced entry,” said Sarah. “No struggle, either. He knew whoever it was who killed him.”

Chapel was too stunned to speak.

“Stay here,” she commanded. “Don’t touch a thing. I need to look around.”

She was back in three minutes, holding a crumpled plane ticket and a battered pink sheet of paper. “Claire Charisse signed for a pallet of expired pharmaceuticals this afternoon in Philadelphia. Here’s her plane ticket. Point of embarkation: Geneva. Return portion unused.” She looked at Chapel. “Taleel wasn’t planning on accompanying Gabriel to the States. He was planning on accompanying Claire Charisse.”

“How’s that?”

“Claire Charisse is Gabriel’s sister, Noor.”

Chapel examined the discarded airline ticket. “I don’t think she’s planning on going home.”

Sarah read over the shipping forms, mumbling the names of the different drugs. “Half these medicines contain radioactive isotopes. It’s here, Adam. The bomb is in the city. She got it in with the drugs.”

Chapel let his eyes fall to Glendenning’s corpse. It was hard not to stare at the shirt. Blood had dyed the entire chest a deep crimson and pooled on the carpet around him. Sarah knelt next to the other body. It belonged to a man with very little of his face remaining.

Sarah found his wallet and removed the identification. “FBI,” she said. “Spencer, Samuel A. Director, videotape unit.” She replaced the ID. “He’d come to tell Glendenning who he’d found on the digital tape.”

“Noor?”

Sarah looked for the tape on their bodies, but found nothing, “Maybe,” she said. “Doesn’t matter now. We know it’s her. Where’s he going, Adam? Where was Glendenning headed all dolled-up like this?”

From the corner of his eye, Chapel noticed a glimmer of gold. A flash from the coffee table. Carefully, he lifted the highball glass and picked up the invitation beneath it. The eagle of the presidential seal sparkled beneath beads of moisture. “The White House,” he said. “Eight o’clock.”

Sarah was on the phone three seconds later. Chapel watched as she dialed a Washington number, followed by four digits, and a moment after that, another two.

“Bonjour, Jean-Paul, c’est moi . . . oui, il est là . . . Monsieur l’Ambassadeur, il est à chez vous? . . . bien, écoutes . . . il me faut un smoking—?”
She lowered the phone and asked Chapel, “What’s your jacket size?”

“Forty long.”

“Quarante long,”
she continued.
“T’as quelque chose pour moi . . . formidable . . . alors, trente minutes.”

Chapel stared at her as she put down the phone. “Who are you?” he asked.

Chapter 59

It took him five minutes to reach the crest of the highest dune near the camp. Looking north, Omar al-Utaybi surveyed the sweeping, undulant expanse of the Rub ‘al Khali. The Empty Quarter. Sand. Rock. Parched herbage. It was a landscape of despair. Yet, no other vista could thrill him as this one did.

In fewer than twelve hours, he would begin executing the plan to make it his own.

“Sheikh,” came a young boy’s cry. “The council is waiting.”

Utaybi waved to his second son from his second wife. “I shall come at once.”

Taking a last look at the sweeping sands, he started down the dune to the mobile encampment that was home to his government in exile. It was more a small, vibrant town than a camp. Eighty-four persons in all. Fourteen Land Cruisers. Seven trailers modified for desert travel. Eleven four-wheel all-terrain vehicles. Sixteen all-weather tents. Four portable generators capable of providing enough electricity to power a state-of-the-art communications facility, a mobile refrigeration unit, and a pair of Liebert air conditioners to keep the all-important servers, mainframes, and laptops that comprised the nerve center of any invading army at a perfect sixty degrees Fahrenheit.

Omar al-Utaybi had ordered camp established at the leeward base of a great dune. The cusp of the dune, and the dunes around it, all rising eighty feet or more, provided a natural bowl that deflected electronic surveillance measures and made it difficult for eyes on high to penetrate. A two-square-acre web of camouflage netting interwoven with the advanced reflective composites used in the construction of Stealth fighter aircraft helped nature with the task.

Utaybi threw back the flap to the communications tent and entered. As one, the ten men present bolted from their consoles and stood at rigid attention. All wore the starched white
dishdasha
and the red-checked
khaffiyeh
of his country’s ruling classes. Sweeping off his headdress, he motioned for them to sit.

“Let us begin our review with the armed forces,” he said. “Colonel Farouk, if you please.”

Farouk was stocky and tactiturn, a thirty-year veteran who had been passed over for promotion because of his fierce fundamentalist beliefs. On Utaybi’s cue, he began a recitation of the events that would unspool upon the death of the Saudi chief of staff and his deputy, both guests of the King during his four-day state visit to the United States of America. A liquidation squad in place in Riyadh and Jidda would target the remaining army leaders loyal to the King. Farouk’s men would replace them and storm the palace compound. Martial law would be declared until Omar al-Utaybi reached the city and imposed his clan as the new and rightful rulers of Arabia. The cost of Farouk’s complicity came to one hundred million dollars.

One hundred million dollars to the Bank of Riyadh.

“Finance,” Utaybi called out.

“World markets are down on average five percent since the shorts were put on. Marked-to-market, our positions show a profit of seventy million dollars. Authorized wire transfers have been submitted to all our brokers. We are anticipating a first day’s decline of between twenty and thirty-five percent, more on the volatile Asian exchanges.”

Treasury had been bought for sixty million.

Sixty million dollars to the Jordani Bank of Commerce.

Utabyi listened intently, while his mind imagined the havoc the bomb would wreak.

The detonation of a one-kiloton nuclear device inside the White House would obliterate every building within a two-square-block radius. The explosion, the equivalent of one thousand tons of TNT, would vaporize the White House, including the West Wing, the Old Executive Office Building, the Treasury Building, and the Treasury Annex and leave behind a crater two hundred feet across and forty feet deep. Everyone inside these buildings would die instantly and painlessly, as the initial gamma-ray blast would literally erase every trace of their bodies before the electrical signals from their sensory organs could reach their brain. The expanding shock waves would level the Veterans Administration Building, the Commerce and Interior departments, the headquarters of the American Red Cross, and every building around them. If lucky, the force of the blast might even topple the Washington Monument, though it was not prudent to hope for so much.

As the blast spread outward it would create winds upward of one hundred miles an hour, wreaking severe structural damage on all buildings within a two-mile radius and shattering windows up to five miles away. The narrow corridors of the Federal Triangle would become a killing zone as shards of metal, concrete, and glass rocketed through the air at near-supersonic speeds. The intense heat generated by the explosion would melt the asphalt streets before causing them to burst into flame, and ignite a firestorm engulfing everything in its wake. Thehurricane-force winds would feed and enlarge a mushroom cloud, pushing it a mile into the night sky.

While the American system of democracy was capable of marching on with hardly a stutter in its step, the deaths of the King, his ministers of finance and education, and his chief of armed forces would leave Utaybi’s oil-rich homeland paralyzed and open to new, more capable leadership. Evidence linking certain Saudi princes to Hijira would prove the final straw.

Though espousing a return to the fundamental values of the Koran, Gabriel would not sever relations with the Americans. He was already realizing that his earlier plans to return Arabia to its pure Wahhabi roots might prove unwise. He would limit “the rot.” Oil workers would be forbidden from visiting the larger cities. American troops would be expelled. Yet, he would wield a carrot as deftly as a stick. He would break with OPEC. He would lower prices. He would increase twofold his oil production. No one would threaten such a proponent of economic growth. The U.S. would move quickly to recognize the new regime. The House of Utaybi’s reign would be assured.

“Education,” Utaybi called, and discreetly he checked his gold Piaget wristwatch.

Chapter 60

The couples passed through the front door of the White House, the men in tuxedos, the women in gowns. Upon entering, each presented their engraved invitation to the social secretary, who in turn read the name to one of the younger, handsomer agents assigned to the White House detail. The agent checked the name against the list of invitees and nodded his approval that they enter. Heightened security demanded that all handbags be passed through a metal detector, neatly disguised to resemble a polished oak hutch. Vapor detectors, designed to sniff out conventional explosives and radiation sensors remained hidden.

Michael Fitzgerald kept his distance from the arriving guests. For most, attending a state dinner was the invitation of a lifetime. It was to be an elegant affair, and security, though rigorous, was to be invisible.

“Hey, Fitz,” came a voice in his earpiece. “The Frenchie’s here. Black dress, white jacket, pearls. She’s a looker.”

“She got Glendenning in tow?”

“Don’t see him yet.”

“Hold her,” said Fitzgerald. “I’ll be right there.”

Fitzgerald moved out of the shadows and approached Claire Charisse. She was a dazzler, he thought. Those flashing brown eyes were capable of luring the most faithful husband away from his wife. He was more concerned, however, about Glendenning’s absence. Putting on his diplomat’s smile, he took the woman’s arm.

“Excuse me, Miss Charisse, but would you mind coming with me?”

A broad smile greeted him. “Certainly.”

“You are the guest of Admiral Glendenning?”

“I’m afraid Glen’s been delayed. Work.”

“Will he be arriving soon?”

“Frankly, I do not know. It concerns the terrorists in Paris. One of his men has been arrested.”

Zee terrorrr-eeests.
The accent was a little too strong for Fitzgerald’s ear. He wondered if she was pouring it on for his behalf.

He steered her toward the doorway that permitted access to the elevators that would take the guests upstairs. A knot of guests was backed up at the checkpoint, cheerfully presenting their handbags for inspection, allowing his agents to run metal detectors over their bodies. He thought he’d clear her through security and have her take a seat until Glendenning arrived. Just then, he remembered that she was ill and receiving radioisotope therapy. His deputy had spoken with her doctor in Geneva and confirmed her course of treatment. Metastron. Doxorubicin. Cyclophosphamide. She was a walking radioactive cocktail. The moment she got near one of the Investigator Radiation Screeners embedded in the wall, the alarm would start screaming like a banshee. Fitzgerald changed direction. He had no intention of causing a scene. Safer to take her up the back way. He’d screen her himself.

“Would you mind if I phoned him to confirm?” he asked.

“Not at all.” Claire rattled off his work number at the CIA. “If there’s any problem at all, I’d be happy to stay with you until he comes. To tell you the truth, I’m not quite up to such a radiant affair. Glen insisted. Perhaps I can sit down while you call.”

“Certainly, ma’am.” Fitzgerald had to catch himself. He’d almost addressed her as “madame.” He led her up two stairs to a bank of Louis XV chairs set against the main stairwell. “If you please . . . oh, and watch your step. The carpet’s come up a bit—”

It was too late. As soon as he uttered the warning, she caught her heel on a bulge in the carpet. Fitzgerald reached for her arm a second late and could only bear witness as her ankle turned beneath her and she collapsed to one knee. The woman let out a pathetic cry.

“Miss Charisse, please allow me to . . .” Then he saw it, and he knew he had to get her out of the entry hall PDQ. The wig. “Excuse me, ma’am.”

She was holding her ankle and her cheeks had grown taut and pale. “I’m so sorry,” she said, dazed. “I’m so clumsy these days.”

Christ,
thought Fitzgerald,
how do you tell a sick dame her wig’s coming off?
“Ma’am, please excuse me for saying it, but your hair . . . it’s uh . . .”

The woman’s hands flew to her head. Appalled, he could see her eyes dashing from one guest to the next, anticipating their impolite stares. She tried to stand, but fell back again. He heard an angry sniff, and he thought,
No, not on my watch.
He wasn’t going to have another Mrs. Hersh start bawling in the main entrance of the White House with fifty of the country’s most important movers and shakers on their way to what was supposed to be the dinner of their lives.

Gently, he lifted her by the arm and guided her past the brace of agents blocking access to the stairs, around the maroon velvet rope behind them, and directly upstairs to a private bathroom off the Blue Room restricted for “Buckskin” himself. When she emerged a few minutes later, Fitzgerald had forgotten all about phoning Admiral Owen Glendenning. He was thinking that it had been a stupid idea even to question the woman. She worked at the World Health Organization. A do-gooder. And Glendenning? The man was a medal winner.
The
goddamned medal. As close a thing to a hero as they minted these days.

“Enjoy yourself, ma’am,” said Fitzgerald, all but doffing an invisible cap as he escorted her into the throng of guests enjoying predinner cocktails and the music of the Marine Band in the Blue Room. “If you need anything, just ask for me. Michael Fitzgerald. The boys all know me.”