The Heist (21 page)

“He’s a man who’s been presiding over a rather messy civil war, a man who’s used systematic torture, indiscriminate artillery barrages, and chemical weapons attacks against his own people. He saw Hosni Mubarak put into a cage and watched Muammar Gaddafi being lynched by a bloodthirsty mob. As a result, he’s concerned about what might happen to him if he falls, which is why he asked Samir Basara to prepare a little nest egg for him and his family.”

“Are you saying Jack Bradshaw was selling stolen paintings to the president of Syria?”

Gabriel looked up at the images flickering across Navot’s video wall. The regime had just shelled a rebel-held neighborhood in Damascus. The number of dead was incalculable.

“The Syrian ruler and his clan are worth billions,” said Navot.

“True,” replied Gabriel. “But the Americans and the EU are freezing his assets and the assets of his closest aides wherever they can find them. Even Switzerland has frozen hundreds of millions in Syrian assets.”

“But most of the fortune is still out there somewhere.”

“For now,” said Gabriel.

“Why not gold bars or vaults filled with cash? Why paintings?”

“I assume he has gold and cash, too. After all, as any investment adviser will tell you, diversity is the key to long-term success. But if I were the one advising the Syrian president,” Gabriel added, “I’d tell him to invest in assets that are easy to conceal and transport.”

“Paintings?” asked Navot.

Gabriel nodded. “If he buys a painting for five million on the black market, he can sell it for roughly the same price, minus commission fees for the middleman, of course. It’s a rather small price to pay for tens of millions in untraceable cash.”

“Ingenious.”

“No one ever accused them of being stupid, just ruthless and brutal.”

“Who killed Samir Basara?”

“If I had to guess, it was someone who knew him.” Gabriel paused, then added, “Someone who was sitting in the backseat of the car when he pulled the trigger.”

“Someone from Syrian intelligence?”

“That’s the way it usually works.”

“Why did they kill him?”

“Maybe he knew too much. Or maybe they were upset with him.”

“For what?”

“Letting Jack Bradshaw find out too much about the personal finances of the ruling family.”

“How much did he know?”

Gabriel held up the letter and said, “A great deal, Uzi.”

W
HAT DO YOU SUPPOSE
B
RADSHAW
did with the Caravaggio?”

“He must have taken it back to his villa on Lake Como,” replied Gabriel. “Then he asked Oliver Dimbleby to come to Italy to have a look at his collection. It was a ruse, a clever operation conceived by a former British spy. What he really wanted was for Oliver to deliver a message to Julian Isherwood, who would in turn deliver it to me. But it didn’t work out as planned. Oliver sent Julian to Como instead. And by the time he arrived, Bradshaw was dead.”

“And the Caravaggio was gone?”

Gabriel nodded.

“Why did Bradshaw want to tell
you
about the connection to the Syrian president?”

“I suppose he thought I would handle the matter with discretion.”

“Meaning?”

“I wouldn’t tell the British or Italian police that he was a smuggler and a fence,” answered Gabriel. “He was hoping to meet with me face-to-face. But he took the added step of putting everything he knew in writing and locking it away in the Freeport.”

“Along with a stash of stolen paintings?”

Gabriel nodded.

“Why the sudden change of heart? Why not take the ruler’s blood money and laugh all the way to the bank?”

“Nicole Devereaux.”

Navot narrowed his eyes thoughtfully. “Why is that name familiar to me?”

“She was the AFP photographer who was kidnapped and killed in Beirut in the eighties,” said Gabriel. Then he told Navot the rest of the story: the love affair, the recruitment by the KGB, the half a million in a Swiss bank account. “Bradshaw never forgave himself for Nicole’s death,” he added. “And he surely never forgave the Syrian regime for killing her.”

Navot was silent for a moment. “Your friend Jack Bradshaw did many foolish things during his lifetime,” he said finally. “But the dumbest thing he ever did was accepting five million euros from Syria’s ruling family for a painting he failed to deliver. There’s only one thing the family hates more than disloyalty, and that’s people who try to take their money.”

Navot watched the images playing out on the video wall. “If you ask me,” he said, “that’s what this entire exercise in human depravity is all about. A hundred and fifty thousand dead and millions left homeless. And for what? Why is the ruling family hanging on for dear life? Why are they murdering on an industrial scale? For their faith? For the Syrian ideal? There is no Syrian ideal. Quite frankly, there is no Syria any longer. And yet the killing goes on for one reason, and one reason only.”

“Money,” said Gabriel.

Navot nodded slowly.

“You sound as though you have special insight into the Syria situation, Uzi.”

“I happen to be married to the country’s preeminent expert on Syria and the Baathist movement.” He paused, then added, “But then, you already knew that.”

Navot rose, walked over to the credenza, and drew a cup of coffee from the pump-action thermos. Gabriel noted the absence of heavy cream or Viennese butter cookies, two things Navot was powerless to resist. He drank his coffee black now, with no accompaniment other than a white pellet of sweetener, which he fired into his cup from a plastic dispenser.

“Since when do you take cyanide in your coffee, Uzi?”

“Bella’s trying to wean me off sugar. Caffeine is next.”

“I can’t imagine trying to do this job without caffeine.”

“You’ll know soon enough.”

Navot smiled in spite of himself and retook his seat. Gabriel was watching the video screen. The body of a child—boy or girl, it was impossible to tell—was being pulled from the rubble. A woman was wailing. A bearded man was screaming for vengeance.

“How much is there?” he asked.

“Money?”

Gabriel nodded.

“Ten billion is the number that gets thrown about in the press,” Navot replied, “but we think the actual number is much higher. And it’s all controlled by Kemel al-Farouk.” Navot gave Gabriel a sidelong glance and asked, “Know the name?”

“Syria isn’t my area of expertise, Uzi.”

“It will be soon.” Navot gave another faint smile before continuing. “Kemel isn’t actually a member of the ruling family, but he’s been working in the family business his entire life. He started out as a bodyguard for the ruler’s father. Kemel took a bullet for the old man back in the late seventies, and the ruler’s father never forgot that. He gave Kemel a big job at the Mukhabarat, where he earned a reputation as a vicious interrogator of political prisoners. He used to nail members of the Muslim Brotherhood to the wall for fun.”

“Where is he now?”

“His official title is deputy minister of state for foreign affairs, but in many respects he’s running the country and the war. The ruler never makes a decision without first talking to Kemel. And, perhaps more important, Kemel is the one who looks after the money. He’s parked some of the fortune in Moscow and Tehran, but there’s no way he’d trust it all to the Russians and the Iranians. We think he’s got someone working for him in Western Europe who’s been busy hiding assets. What we
don’t
know,” said Navot, “is who that person is or where he’s hiding the money.”

“Thanks to Jack Bradshaw, we now know that some of it is in LXR Investments. And we can use LXR as a window into the rest of the family’s holdings.”

“And then what?”

Gabriel was silent. Navot watched another body being pulled from the rubble in Damascus.

“It’s hard for Israelis to watch scenes like this,” he said after a moment. “It makes us uneasy. It brings back bad memories. Our natural instinct is to kill the monster before the monster can do any more harm. But the Office and the IDF have concluded it is better to leave the monster in place, at least for now, because the alternative could be worse. And the Americans and Europeans have reached the same conclusion, despite all the happy talk about a negotiated settlement. No one wants Syria to fall into the hands of al-Qaeda, but that’s what will happen if the ruling family goes.”

“Much of Syria is already controlled by al-Qaeda.”

“True,” agreed Navot. “And the contagion is spreading. A few weeks ago, a delegation of European intelligence chiefs went to Damascus with a list of their Muslim citizens who’ve gone to Syria to join the jihad. I could have given them a few more names, but I wasn’t invited to the party.”

“What a surprise.”

“It’s probably better I didn’t go. The last time I was in Damascus, I traveled under a different name.”

“Who?”

“Vincent Laffont.”

“The travel writer?”

Navot nodded.

“He was always one of my favorites,” Gabriel said.

“Mine, too.” Navot placed his coffee cup on the table. “The Office has never been shy about committing the odd crime in the service of an operation that was moral and just. But if we run roughshod over the international banking system, the repercussions could be disastrous.”

“The Syrian ruling family didn’t come by those assets honestly, Uzi. They’ve been looting the economy for two generations now.”

“That doesn’t mean you can just steal them.”

“No,” said Gabriel with feigned contrition. “That would be wrong.”

“So what are you suggesting?”

“We freeze them.”

“How?”

Gabriel smiled and said, “Office style.”

“What about our friends at Langley?” Navot asked when Gabriel had finished explaining.

“What about them?”

“We can’t launch an operation like this without the support of the Agency.”

“If we tell the Agency, the Agency will tell the White House. And then it will end up on the front page of the
New York Times
.”

Navot smiled. “All we need now is the approval of the prime minister and the money to run the operation.”

“We already have money, Uzi. Lots of money.”

“The twenty-five million you made on the sale of the forged van Gogh?”

Gabriel nodded. “That’s the beauty of this operation,” he said. “It funds itself.”

“Where’s the money now?”

“It might be in the trunk of Christopher Keller’s car.”

“In Corsica.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“I’ll send a
bodel
to pick it up.”

“The great Don Orsati doesn’t deal with couriers, Uzi. He would find it terribly insulting.”

“What are you suggesting?”

“I’ll collect the money as soon as I have the operation up and running, though it’s possible I’ll have to leave behind a small payment of tribute for the don.”

“How small?”

“Two million should keep him happy.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“One hand washes the other, and both hands wash the face.”

“Is that a Jewish proverb?”

“Probably, Uzi.”

Which left only the composition of Gabriel’s operational team. Rimona Stern and Mikhail Abramov were nonnegotiable, he said. So were Dina Sarid, Yossi Gavish, and Yaakov Rossman.

“You can’t possibly have Yaakov at a time like this,” objected Navot.

“Why not?”

“Because Yaakov is the one who’s tracking all the missiles and other deadly goodies that are flowing from the Syrians to their friends in Hezbollah.”

“Yaakov can walk and chew gum at the same time.”

“Who else?”

“I need Eli Lavon.”

“He’s still digging beneath the Western Wall.”

“By tomorrow afternoon, he’s going to be digging into something else.”

“Is that all?”

“No,” said Gabriel. “There’s one other person I need to do an op like this.”

“Who?”

“The country’s preeminent expert on Syria and the Baathist movement.”

Navot smiled. “Maybe you should take a couple of bodyguards, just to be on the safe side.”

T
HE
N
AVOTS LIVED ON THE
eastern fringes of Petah Tikva, on a quiet street where the houses were tucked away behind walls of concrete and bougainvillea. There was a call button next to the metal gate, which buzzed unanswered when pressed by Gabriel. He stared directly into the lens of the security camera and pressed it again. This time, the intercom emitted the sound of a woman’s voice.

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Bella. Open the gate.”

There was another silence, fifteen seconds, maybe longer, before the lock released with a thump. As the gate yielded, the house appeared, a cubist structure with large shatter-resistant windows and a secure communications aerial sprouting from the roof. Bella stood in the shade of the portico, her arms folded defensively. She wore white silk trousers and a yellow blouse belted at her slender waist. Her dark hair looked newly colored and styled. According to the Office rumor mill, she had a standing appointment each morning at Tel Aviv’s most exclusive salon.

“You have a lot of nerve showing your face in this house, Gabriel.”

“Come on, Bella. Let’s try to be civil.”

She held her ground another moment before stepping aside and, with an indifferent movement of her hand, inviting him to enter. She had decorated the rooms of the house as she had decorated her husband: gray, sleek, modern. Gabriel followed her through a kitchen of high-gloss chrome and polished black granite and onto the rear terrace where a light Israeli lunch had been laid. The table was in shadow, but in the garden the sun blazed brightly. It was all pools and gurgling fountains. Gabriel remembered suddenly that Bella had always adored Japan.

“I love what you’ve done with the place, Bella.”

“Sit down,” was all she said in response.

Gabriel lowered himself onto a cushioned garden chair. Bella poured a tall glass of citrus juice and placed it decorously in front of him.

“Have you given any thought to where you and Chiara are going to live when you become chief?” she asked.