The Devil's Banker (7 page)

The doors rattled open, and Taleel stepped out and walked down the platform toward the exit. Chapel followed. From the corner of his eye, he saw Leclerc’s diminutive form slink past and shuffle up the stairs.

And then Taleel did an odd thing. He stopped. Dead in the center of the platform. A rock in the midst of a fast-flowing stream. The exiting passengers walked past him, and Chapel had no time to react, no choice but to follow them. In a moment, he was ascending the escalator, sure he had blown the assignment, the light of day as punishing as his own tortured conscience.

“He’s staying put,” he said to Babtiste. “He’s still on the platform.”

“
Montez.
We have a clear signal.”

The van idled at the corner. Chapel climbed in and a second later, Leclerc followed suit. The three huddled close to one another, all eyes on the beacon. A minute passed. Then another. A tremor shook the van. A new train had pulled into the station beneath them.

“Which way?” Chapel asked, his eyes moving from Babtiste to Leclerc to the illuminated screen. Suddenly, the red spot began moving.

“Salaud,”
said Leclerc. “Just waited for the next train in the same direction.”

They drove. The city took on a grittier feel. Gone were the monuments, the grand boulevards, the chic boutiques and the pricey cafés. This was the old Paris. The Paris of artists and immigrants and the hopeless poor. The streets were narrow and unloved, the buildings painted black with soot and grime. Every once in a while, Chapel caught a glimpse of the Tour Montparnasse, the tallest building in the city, looming before them like a mystical glass tower.

“End of the line,” said Leclerc as they pulled to a halt at a red light. Beside them in a beat-up blue Renault, Keck and Gomez nodded hello. Spurts of men and women exited the Métro as trains came and left. The red dot stopped moving. Taleel’s train had arrived. A few people trickled out. At their tail came Taleel. He crossed the street without looking around him. His gait slackened, the briefcase dangling at his side, and Chapel guessed he was on his home turf, relaxing, congratulating himself on a job well done.

“We’re close,” he said. “Let’s not spook him. We follow him in, let him get comfortable, count all his dough.”

“If he’s going home,” cautioned Babtiste.

It was Leclerc on the street, Santini playing his shadow. Gomez and Keck followed a block up and over, Chapel and Babtiste keeping in the rear. The city changed its clothing once again, the urban grit yielding to leafy roads lined with pleasant apartments. This part of town was called the Cité Universitaire, and true to its name, it housed thousands of students doing their course work at one of the French capital’s many outstanding academic institutions. Taleel turned down a broad avenue. As Babtiste edged to the corner, Chapel had a clear view down the road.

It was a landscape by Renoir. Century-old elms lined the street, the tallest branches providing a verdant canopy through which determined rays of sunlight penetrated, each marvelously accented, defined in shades of orange, yellow, and gold. Halfway down the block, a park began. Rolling grass hills cradled a fountain that shot a plume of water into the sky. Somewhere, a dog was barking, and for a moment, it all seemed to blur together in a collage of beauty and hope and the infinite possibility of a glorious summer’s day. Chapel knew that he’d been right to follow Mohammed al-Taleel, that his gamble had paid off, that they would capture Taleel, and maybe his associates as well, and that
they
—meaning the law enforcement communities of the Western nations allied against the new scourge of Islamic terrorism—stood a good chance of learning what Taleel was up to, and stopping it, then and there.

He heard the first shrill notes of the siren, and at first, he didn’t understand. He thought it was an ambulance passing a few blocks behind them. Taleel checked over his shoulder, a little nervously. But the acoustics and the Doppler effect were playing tricks on both of them. The source of the siren was in front of them, not behind. The assonant wail grew louder. At the end of the street, a French police car hurtled into view, shrieking to a halt at the next cross street. A second car followed, then a third, doors flying open, uniformed officers forming a phalanx, weapons drawn. Incredibly, Taleel ran toward them.

Chapel opened his door and jumped to the ground, even as he shot Santos Babtiste an uncomprehending glance. “You bastard,” he said. “You screwed me.”

“Never,” protested Babtiste. “I swear it. I told nobody!”

Chapel was running, Santini at his side, Gomez and Babtiste a step behind. Twenty yards ahead, Taleel cut across a strip of grass, the briefcase tucked under an arm, jaw pressed forward in divine concentration. He leaped a hedge, landed, and made toward the front entrance of an apartment building.

The battered Renault flew past, turned hard onto the sidewalk, and slid to a halt inches from the dorm entry. Keck half fell out of the driver’s side, picked himself up, and dashed toward the door, in perfect position positioned to cut off Taleel. Steps away, a frightened bystander hurried to escape the scene, his Scotty barking madly.

“Keck,” shouted Chapel. “Heads up!”

“What?” One hand in his jacket going for his gun, Keck collided with the pedestrian full-force and the two tumbled to the ground, the terrier on Keck in an instant, growling and nipping at his arms.

Taleel hurdled the two men, his foot catching Keck’s shoulder. Hitting the ground, he stumbled, his loafers slipping on the sidewalk, losing a second before he regained his balance and charged ahead.

Skirting Keck, Chapel saw his chance. Five feet separated him from Taleel. He wanted the Saudi outside, on the ground, where he could be subdued without the force of arms. With a last terrific stride, he threw himself at the Arab. His outstretched hand found a hip but his fingers closed too early. The hand slipped to the calf, Taleel still running, looking behind him, grunting as he kicked off Chapel’s advance, a loafer coming free as Chapel skidded across the sidewalk.

Flinging open the dormitory door, Taleel disappeared into a murky half dusk.

Chapel was there a second later. Pulling open the door, he slowed a beat, checking to see who was behind him. He met a straight-arm that propelled him against the exterior wall. “Not you, Kreskin,” puffed Carmine Santini. “This is the real thing. No guessing this time.”

“Fuck, man, you had him,” cursed Gomez, sliding in behind him.

Babtiste and Keck ran inside. A gunshot rang out. Stunned, Chapel drew a breath, needing only a second to decide that Santini was wrong, that he was ready for the real thing, too, whatever that was. He was inside an instant later, taking the stairs two at a time, his eyes trained above him.

“Arrêtez! Police!”
Babtiste’s voice echoed through the stairwell.

The abrasive sound of wood splintering crashed through the hall, then a tremendous thud. The door was down. Chapel crested the stairs and took off down the hallway.

“Arrêtez! Bouge pas!”

Christ, they had him,
thought Chapel.

“Jesus, man, shoot him! Kill the fucker!” said Ray Gomez.

“Ne fais pas cela, mec.”
Babtiste’s resonant baritone. Don’t do it.

Reaching the door, Chapel had a clear view down the abbreviated hallway. Mohammed al-Taleel stood in the center of a neatly kept living room. A desktop PC sat on a laminate table. A window was open and a gentle wind caressed the curtains. On a far table, a television was on, broadcasting a bicycle race, and he thought,
Who keeps the television on when he goes out?
His eyes ticked to the right, taking in a poster of Madonna and the French singer Jean-Jacques Goldman.

All this he saw in the blink of an eye, before he fixed on the curlicue wire running from the briefcase Taleel held in one hand to the pistol grip he held in the other.

They were all around him. Babtiste, Santini, Gomez, and Keck.

“Du calme,”
pleaded Santos Babtiste, hands patting the air, teeth bared in an excruciating grin.

Santini turned and saw Chapel. “Get back, Kreskin. Get the hell out!”

Taleel looked past him and met Chapel’s eye. His expression registered nothing. Not fear, not surprise, not anger. He was already dead.

Adam Chapel stepped back.

Then there was light, more light than he had ever seen, or knew could exist, and he was hurtling through the air, the searing wallop of a gargantuan’s punch striking him squarely in the chest. He was aware of being upside down, of smashing his head, of a tremendous weight falling upon him.

Then darkness.

Chapter 6

Trails of dust scattered from the Fiat’s tires as it sped through the back alleys of Tel Aviv. The driver hunched over the wheel, hands at eleven and one o’clock, not so much steering the car as willing it with his body language. He was fifty-seven but looked ten years older, a hunted, gray figure with close-cropped white hair and beard, and mournful brown eyes that had seen too much for one lifetime. Too much hate. Too much sorrow. Too much death.

The day was hot even by the taxing standards of an Israeli summer. The car possessed no air-conditioning, so he drove with the windows rolled down. The wind rushing in smelled of dried fish and lamb on a spit and billowed his pale blue shirt like a jib in a changing sea. Even so, he was sweating profusely. The perspiration ran down his cheeks and pooled in his beard. He had lived in Israel his entire life. He was used to sweltering summers. It was not the heat that provoked his sweat.

He checked the rearview mirror.

The taxi was still there, maintaining the watcher’s distance. “A hundred meters or half a city block,” read the manual. The Sayeret were good boys, he thought appreciatively. Nothing if not studious. He was used to being followed. It was procedure; a safeguard for a man in his profession. His eyes fell to the infantryman’s rucksack sitting on the floor by the passenger seat. The pack was empty but for one item. It was not procedure today.

He had chosen the back route because he wanted to lull them. He could have reached the old port by any of a dozen quicker routes. He might have stayed on the Derech Petach Tikva until it fed into Jaffa Road, or driven down to the coast and taken Hayarkon Street past all the tourist hotels—past the Hilton and the Carlton and the Sheraton—Israel’s own Croisette. But the familiar anarchy of the old town ensured their pursuit. There would be no traffic jams, no detours, just a slow, methodical game of cat and mouse.

He had forgotten how lamentable the roads had become inside the city. Even when driving carefully, he was unable to avoid all the potholes. The Fiat lurched into a crater and he swore. It was beyond him why a technological and industrial powerhouse like Israel was unable to keep its roads better maintained. Or, for that matter, bury their telephone wires underground next to the miles of fiberoptic cable the telecom companies had insisted everyone needed, and now did beautifully without. He stared too long out the windows, as if taking a last look at the place and making his farewells.

Tel Aviv was a seething, vibrant, violent contradiction. Skyscrapers and shanties, discos and delicatessens,
shwarma
and
slivovitz,
synagogues and mosques. The old and the new shoved into an urban blender, stirred and spilled onto a sun-bleached cityscape with a joyless and seemingly random abandon.

Crossing an intersection, he entered the Shalma Road and began the short climb to the old town. He checked his watch. It was nearly four. He had begun his run three hours and twenty-seven minutes ago. By now, the theft had been confirmed. The border patrol, the airports, the militia, had all been put on alert. The prime minister had been informed and a war council convened. It would be put forward that Mordecai Kahn was their man. No one else had the access. No one else the means. Only the motive would baffle them. Kahn was, after all, a patriot, a staunch member of the Likud Party, a decorated veteran of Mitla Pass who had lost a son and a daughter to the country’s defense. Finally, they would decide that it made no difference. The order would be given.

Kahn smiled ruefully. It was all a dance. A wonderfully choreographed pas de deux whose principals had rehearsed their steps a thousand times.

A left turn conducted him past Clock Tower Square. The elegant spire of Mahmoudiyeh Mosque pierced the sky. Beside him, the sidewalks pulsed with humanity. Old men sat around iron-legged tables playing chess, drinking coffee, dreaming of peace. Jaffa counted as one of the oldest functioning ports in the world, and in its time, had been ruled by Greeks, Romans, Turks, Christians, and Arabs. Today, it was the Jews’ turn.

Peter had raised Tabitha from the dead here and gone to live with Simon the Tanner. Richard the Lionheart had raised the Crusaders’ banner fifty yards to sea on Andromeda Rock. But Kahn found the city’s modern history more compelling. Throughout the first half of the last century, Jaffa’s docks had welcomed the worn and sturdy multitude that had sworn to remake the Holy Land in its own image. As a boy in 1946, he himself had trod the wooden piers, a refugee from Hitler’s malice.

Today, he would make use of the pier again. He had come to the country by sea, and by sea he would leave it.

Reaching a stop sign, he put the car into first gear and glanced out his window. Nearby, two men, an Arab and a Jew, turned their faces to the sky. One shielded his eyes, while the other shook his head and looked away.

Kahn knew the helicopter was shadowing him. He had caught the rotor wash twice already. The bird was an Apache, and flying low today. When the order came to fire its Hellfire missiles, the pilots did not want to miss. A military radio tuned to their frequency was jammed into the glove compartment. Kahn believed in precautions.

The radio squawked as the men from Central Command issued their impotent instructions.

“Now,” a voice crackled amid a haze of white noise.

Kahn sat straighter, seized by doubt. Years had passed since he’d donned a soldier’s uniform. He had certainly never been trained for something like this. He had no business embarking on such a dangerous and doubtful enterprise.