The Heist (31 page)

A tear spilled onto her cheek and left a trail that stretched to her chin. It was her first. She brushed it away abruptly, as though she were afraid of showing emotion in front of strangers, and then straightened the hem of her sundress.

“And your family?” asked Gabriel, intruding on her silence. “What happened to them?”

“My father and brothers were killed during the fighting.”

“And your mother?”

“She was killed a few days later. She had given birth to four enemies of the regime. She could not be allowed to live.”

Another tear escaped her eye. This time she ignored it.

“And you, Jihan? What was your fate?”

“I was sent to a camp along with the other children of Hama. It was somewhere in the desert, I’m not sure where. A few months later, the Mukhabarat allowed me to go to Damascus to live with a distant cousin. He never liked me much, so he packed me off to Germany to live with his brother.”

“In Hamburg?”

She nodded slowly. “We lived on the Marienstrasse. Number Fifty-Seven.” She paused, then asked, “Have you ever heard of this street? The Marienstrasse?”

Gabriel said he hadn’t. It was yet another lie.

“There were some boys who lived across the street at Number Fifty-Four. Muslim boys. Arabs. I thought one of the boys was quite handsome. He was quiet, intense. He never looked me in the eye when we passed in the street because I didn’t wear the veil.” Her gaze moved from face to face. “And do you know who that boy turned out to be? He was Mohamed Atta.” She shook her head slowly. “It was almost as if I’d never left Barudi. I’d traded one Muslim Brotherhood neighborhood for another.”

“But you weren’t interested in Middle East politics?”

“Never,” she said, shaking her head resolutely. “I tried my best to be a good German girl, even if the Germans didn’t like me very much. I went to school, I went to university, and then I got a job at a German bank.”

“And then you came to Linz,” said Gabriel. “And you took a job working for a man who was related to the people who murdered your family.”

She was silent.

“Why?” asked Gabriel. “Why did you go to work for a man like Waleed al-Siddiqi?”

“I don’t know.” She looked at the faces gathered around her. The client who was not a client. The neighbor who was not a neighbor. The three tax officials who were not tax officials. “But I’m glad I did.”

Gabriel smiled. “So am I.”

B
Y THEN, IT WAS LATE
afternoon. Outside, the wind had died and the surface of the lake looked like a sheet of tinted glass. Jihan appeared suddenly exhausted; she was staring through the open French doors with the blank eyes of a refugee. Gabriel quietly packed away his files and removed his bureaucrat’s suit coat. Then, alone, he led Jihan across the garden to the wooden motorboat tied to the end of the long dock. He boarded first and, taking Jihan’s hand, helped her into the aft seating area. She slipped on her movie-starlet sunglasses and arranged herself carefully, as though she were about to have her photograph taken. Gabriel started the engine, untied the lines, and set them adrift. He eased away from the dock slowly, so as to leave no wake, and turned the boat to the south. The sky was still clear, but the mountain peaks at the end of the lake had snared a few strands of a passing cloud. The Austrians called the mountains the Höllengebirge: the Mountains of Hell.

“You handle a boat very well,” Jihan said to his back.

“I used to do a bit of sailing when I was younger.”

“Where?”

“The Baltic,” he answered. “I spent my summers there when I was a boy.”

“Yes,” said Jihan distantly. “And I hear Ingrid used to spend her summers here on the Attersee.”

They were alone in the center of the lake. Gabriel killed the engine and swiveled his chair round to face her.

“You know everything about me now,” she said, “and yet I know nothing about you. Not even your name.”

“It’s for your own protection.”

“Or maybe it’s for yours.” She lifted her dark glasses so he could see her eyes. The late-afternoon sun lightened them. “Do you know what will happen to me if Mr. al-Siddiqi ever learns that I’ve told you these things?”

“He’ll kill you,” replied Gabriel flatly. “Which is why we’ll make certain he never knows.”

“Maybe he already knows.” She regarded him seriously for a moment. “Or maybe you work for Mr. al-Siddiqi. Maybe I’m already dead.”

“Do I look like I work for Mr. al-Siddiqi?”

“No,” she admitted. “But you don’t look much like a German tax collector, either.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“So can German tax collectors.”

A breath of wind blew across the boat and made ripples on the surface of the lake.

“Do you smell that?” asked Jihan. “The air smells of flowers.”

“They call it the Rosenwind.”

“Really?”

He nodded. Jihan closed her eyes and inhaled the scent.

“My mother always wore a bit of rose oil on the side of her neck and on the hem of her hijab. When the Syrians were shelling Hama, she would hold me tightly so I wouldn’t be afraid. I used to press my face against the side of her neck so I could smell roses instead of the smoke from the fires.”

She opened her eyes and looked at Gabriel. “Who are you?” she asked.

“I’m the man who’s going to help you finish what you started.”

“What does that mean?”

“You stayed at Bank Weber for a reason, Jihan. You wanted to know what Mr. al-Siddiqi was doing. And now you know that he’s been hiding money for the regime. Billions of dollars that should have been spent to educate and care for the Syrian people. Billions of dollars now sitting in a network of bank accounts scattered around the world.”

“What do you intend to do about it?”

“I’m going to turn the Syrian ruling family into peasants from the Ansariya Mountains again.” He paused, then added, “And you’re going to help me.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I can’t get the information you’re looking for.”

“Where is it?”

“Some of it is on the computer in Mr. al-Siddiqi’s office. It’s very secure.”

“Computer security is a myth, Jihan.”

“Which is why he doesn’t keep the truly important information stored there. He knows better than to trust it to any electronic device.”

“Are you telling me it’s all in his head?”

“No,” she replied. “It’s here.”

She placed her hand over her heart.

“He carries it with him?”

“In a small leather notebook,” she answered, nodding. “It’s either in the breast pocket of his jacket or in his briefcase, but he
never
lets it out of his sight.”

“What’s in the book?”

“A list of account numbers, institutions, and current balances. Very simple. Very straightforward.”

“You’ve seen it?”

She nodded. “It was on his desk once when he called me into his office. It’s written in his own hand. Accounts that have been terminated or changed are crossed out by a single line.”

“Are there any other copies?”

She shook her head.

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely,” she answered. “He keeps only one copy so he’ll know if anyone has had access to it.”

“And if he suspects that someone has seen it?”

“I suppose he has a way to lock down the accounts.”

A faint breeze made it seem as though a bouquet of roses had been laid between them. She slipped on her sunglasses and trailed a fingertip over the surface of the water.

“There is one other problem,” she said after a moment. “If several billion dollars in Syrian assets disappears, Mr. al-Siddiqi and his friends in Damascus are going to start looking for it.” She paused, then added, “Which means you’re going to have to make me disappear, too.” She withdrew her hand from the water and looked at Gabriel. “Can you do that?”

“In the blink of an eye.”

“Will I be safe?”

“Yes, Jihan. You’ll be safe.”

“Where will I live?”

“Wherever you want—within reason, of course.”

“I like it here,” she said, looking around at the mountains. “But it might be too close to Linz.”

“So we’ll find somewhere like it.”

“I’ll need a house. And a bit of money. Not much,” she added quickly. “Just enough to live.”

“Something tells me money isn’t going to be a problem.”

“Make sure it isn’t the ruler’s money.” She dipped her fingertip into the lake again. “It’s covered in blood.”

She seemed to be writing something on the surface of the water. Gabriel was tempted to ask her what it was, but he left her in peace. A strand of cloud had broken free of the Mountains of Hell. It floated over their heads, so close, it seemed, that Gabriel had to resist the urge to reach out and grasp it.

“You never explained how you found me,” Jihan said suddenly.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

“Is it a good story?”

“I hope so.”

“Maybe Ingrid will write it instead of the story she’s working on now. I’ve never liked stories about Vienna during the war. They’re too much like Hama.”

She lifted her gaze from the water and settled it on Gabriel. “Are you ever going to tell me who you are?”

“When it’s over.”

“Are you telling me the truth?”

“Yes, Jihan. I’m telling you the truth.”

“Tell me your name,” she insisted. “Tell it to me now and I’ll write it on the lake. And when it’s gone, I’ll forget it.”

“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way.”

“Will you at least let me drive the boat back to the house?”

“Do you know how?”

“No.”

“Come here,” he said. “I’ll show you.”

She remained at the villa on the Attersee long after dark; then, with Dina at her side, she drove her fickle Volvo back to Linz. She spent much of the trip trying to learn the name and affiliation of the man who was going to steal the ill-gotten fortune of the Syrian ruling family, but Dina was having none of it. She spoke only of the party they had not attended, of a handsome young architect who had seemed particularly fond of Jihan, and of the beguiling smell of roses that arrived on the night wind. By the time they reached the outskirts of the city, even Jihan seemed to have temporarily purged the events of the afternoon from her memory. “Do you think he’ll really call me?” she asked of Dina’s imaginary architect. “Yes,” said Dina, as the guilt settled once more on her shoulders. “I think he will.”

It was a few minutes after midnight when they turned into their quiet little street near the Innere Stadt. They parted with formal kisses on the cheek and headed upstairs to their apartments. As Dina entered hers, she saw the silhouette of a powerfully built man seated rigidly in the window. He was peering through a slit in the blinds. Lying on the floor at his feet was an HK 9mm.

“Anything?” she asked.

“No,” replied Christopher Keller. “She’s clean.”

“Can I make you some coffee?”

“I’m good.”

“Something to eat?”

“I brought my own.”

“Who’s going to relieve you?”

“I’m flying solo for the foreseeable future.”

“But you have to sleep sometime.”

“I’m Regiment,” said Keller as he stared into the darkness. “I don’t need sleep.”

B
UT HOW TO TAKE POSSESSION
of the notebook long enough to steal its contents? And how to do it in a way that Waleed al-Siddiqi would never realize the notebook was missing? Those were the questions the team wrestled with in the hours after Jihan’s departure from the Attersee safe house. The most obvious solution was the Office equivalent of a smash and grab, but Gabriel rejected the proposal outright. He insisted the operation be conducted without bloodshed and in a way that would not alert the Syrian ruling clan that something was amiss with their money. Nor did he rise to Yaakov’s tepid suggestion of a honey trap. By all appearances, Mr. al-Siddiqi was a man without personal vice, other than the fact he managed the plundered wealth of a mass murderer.

There was an Office maxim, conceived by Shamron and chiseled into stone, that a simple problem sometimes had a simple solution. And the solution to their problem, said Gabriel, had but two components. They had to compel Waleed al-Siddiqi to get on an airplane, and they had to force him to cross a friendly border. What’s more, he added, the team had to have advance warning of both occurrences.

Which explained why early the following morning, having slept fitfully if at all, Gabriel hauled himself into his rented Audi and departed Austria along the same route by which he had entered it. Germany had never seemed so beautiful to him. The green farmland of Bavaria was his Eden; Munich, with the spire of the Olympic Tower floating above the summer haze like a minaret, was his Jerusalem. He left the car in the long-term parking lot at Munich’s airport and hurried aboard the ten thirty British Airways flight to London. His seatmate was a morning alcoholic from Birmingham; and Gabriel, just a few hours removed from Jihan’s presence, was once again Jonathan Albright of Markham Capital Advisers. He had come to Munich, he explained, to explore the possibility of acquiring a German tech firm. And yes, he added sheepishly, it promised to be highly lucrative.

It was raining in London, a low, black gale of a storm that had cast Heathrow Airport into a state of permanent evening. Gabriel shot through passport control and followed the yellow signs to the arrivals hall, where Nigel Whitcombe stood in a drenched mackintosh, looking like a colonial governor in a distant corner of the Empire. “Mr. Baker,” he said as he shook Gabriel’s hand limply. “So good to see you again. Welcome back to England.”

Whitcombe owned a Vauxhall Astra, which he drove very fast and with an indolent skill. He headed into London along the M4. Then, at Gabriel’s request, he took a few countersurveillance laps through Earl’s Court and West Kensington before finally making his way to a mews cottage in Maida Vale. It had a front door the color of a lemon rind and a welcome mat that read
BLESS ALL THOSE WHO ENTER THIS HOUSE
. Graham Seymour sat in the library, a volume of Trollope open on his knee. As Gabriel entered alone, the MI6 chief closed the book slowly and, rising, returned it to its place on the shelf.