Find something, Naomi. Find something! It’s here…
Within hours, British government agents would be plowing through every inch of this room. Every sliver of RAM on his computers. She got up and walked around. It’s here. I feel it. Her blood was hot with blame. This was her case. She had felt the whole thing from the start. Now she had screwed up. She didn’t want to lose it. Not now.
She spotted a kid’s Transformer on the carpet. Sadly, Naomi picked it up. She held the toy in her hand, her mind flashing through a hundred scenarios. Out of answers, she sank back on al-Bashir’s couch.
She put the toy on the glass coffee table.
Something met her eye.
It hit home immediately, a spark of hope, recognition, firing up inside. Can’t be.
She reached forward. There was a stack of art and coffee table books on the glass tabletop. One was from the New Tate Museum. Another was on the Gauguin and Picasso exhibition from a couple of years ago. Naomi had seen it in DC.
But it was the third book, underneath, that, like some kind of superconducting magnet, held her stare.
Yes, it can.
Naomi removed it from the pile. It was a travel book, about a destination the al-Bashirs might have once visited.
The thing was, she had seen the very same destination just two days before.
On the ski-lift ticket at Dani Thibault’s farmhouse. In Serbia.
She fixed on the cover. A snowcapped mountain rising from a valley bathed in amber light. It couldn’t be a coincidence. At this stage, there were no coincidences. Her heart started to beat like crazy. She had found it. She had found the link that bound them together.
Gstaad.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Naomi motioned Hauck inside with a concealed wave, closing the door behind him. She showed him what she had found.
“Two days ago,” she explained. Her voice was hushed yet driven with renewed emotion. “In Thibault’s farmhouse. I didn’t think it meant anything. Just one of the things I found searching through his possessions. A ski-lift ticket.” Naomi’s eyes twinkled. “To Gstaad.”
“Okay.” Hauck nodded, picking up the book and staring at the cover.
“It’s a ski resort,” Naomi said. “In Switzerland.”
“I know it’s a ski resort,” Hauck replied.
“Sorry. Just check out what’s inside.”
He leafed through the glossy pages. It was filled with scenic photos of ski runs, the snow-covered mountains in winter, and in summer, the picturesque village. He found a bookmark inside. On the highlighted page, one side had a description of one of the resort’s most treacherous runs, the Chute; the other had a shot of beautiful people in expensive ski clothes sunning themselves on a deck at lunch. At a fashionable restaurant, high on the mountain.
Christina’s.
In the margin, someone had scrawled some words. Maybe al-Bashir. Hauck tried to make it out.
“It says, ‘The Gstaad Gang,’” said Naomi, who already had.
“The Gstaad Gang?”
“Something took place there.” Naomi’s eyes were bright. “This isn’t just some tourist book. Thibault and al-Bashir, both there. It can’t just be a coincidence. What do you want to bet Hassani’s been to Gstaad too?”
Hauck looked at the book. He felt it too. The throbbing in his chest. “What we have to find out is when al-Bashir might have been there and see if Hassani was there at the same time.”
“We can do better than that,” Naomi said. “Lift tickets have dates on them.”
“If we happened to have it,” Hauck agreed.
“We do. It’s in my camera.” She lit up in a grin. “I photographed everything there.”
Her face now shone with renewed purpose. If they could connect everyone there at the same time, they might have a reason to go at Hassani. He’d be a slippery one to latch on to, maybe protected by the Bahraini or Emirates government, but this was the best they had.
“We can track his movements through immigration,” Naomi said. “Through credit card records.”
She was right. No way this was just a coincidence. Something had happened there. Between Thibault and al-Bashir. And maybe Hassani. He stared at the hand-scrawled margin note. Underlined. A surge of optimism coursed through Hauck as well.
The Gstaad Gang.
“Who knew about this?” he asked Naomi. “I’m talking about the arrangements around al-Bashir.”
She shrugged. “Gavin Toller of MI5. Linda Maxwell, my counterpart at the office of the Exchequer.” Britain’s treasury department. “Obviously, it was passed along to the police.”
“Who else?” Hauck asked, his gaze fixed on her. He meant back home.
“Rob Whyte, my boss. I’m sure he ran it up the line. Just what are you saying, Ty?”
“I don’t know what I’m saying. Except that someone knew Thibault was Kostavic and in Novi Pazar, which was something we fell upon only by accident. Now al-Bashir…I have a suggestion, Naomi. Actually, it’s not so much a suggestion as it is something that would be really, really smart and might end up keeping us alive.”
“What’s that?” Naomi asked, her look darkening.
“Until we find out where this goes”-Hauck held the Gstaad book in his hand-“don’t call this in.”
PART V
CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE
Hassan ibn Hassani passed through customs at JFK and found the private limo driver waiting for him in the terminal.
His private security man followed a step behind.
The driver took Hassani’s expensive Hermès carry-on, exchanging the usual pleasantries about the trip with him. Hassani had used the man before. He led them quickly to the custom BMW 750i, which was permitted to wait for him at the curb, the security man hopping in front. They drove into the city.
As the car navigated the bumper-to-bumper traffic along the Van Wyck Expressway, Hassani got on the phone. He was here, principally, as a representative of the Bahraini royal family’s interests, for the annual meeting and the preceding board meeting of Reynolds Reid. A year ago the sultan had made a six-billion-dollar mezzanine investment in the ailing firm, which converted, if needed, to almost 7 percent of the company. That was eighteen points ago on the stock. The sultan’s six billion was now worth less than half that.
But Hassani knew that was about to change.
It would change because Reynolds Reid was clearly going to be one of the survivors in the world financial collapse. Not simply a survivor but a clear winner. When the world calmed, it would be more powerful than ever. And now, with a place at the table, who would be better set to represent their country’s vested interests?
One just had to have patience, Hassani knew. As well as take the long view.
This was a twenty-first-century kind of jihad.
Apart from Reynolds, Hassani also had other affairs to attend to in the States. He had legitimate business interests there and in Canada. And various other matters not so transparent. There were Islamic cultural organizations, religious freedom groups that funneled money from back home into mosques and Islamic communities in upstate New York.
That reflected the other side of his causes as well.
He found his mind wandering and he stroked his goatee, his thoughts flashing back to Sera, his new treasure back in Dubai. How sad he was to have to leave her behind. But he had to focus on other things here.
The car went through the tunnel into Manhattan and then wound its way up Park Avenue to the Waldorf Astoria, where Hassani had the six-room Roosevelt Suite, which was sometimes home to visiting heads of state. He told the driver and the security man to wait while he was shown around his quarters, quickly showered and changed, put on his Brioni pinstripe suit, custom-made Turn-bull and Asser shirt, and a yellow Alan Flusser tie. In half an hour he was back downstairs, totally refreshed.
He decided he would walk and told the driver he could pick him up again in two hours’ time. He was heading to 457 Park, on Fifty-fourth Street. The tall glass headquarters of Reynolds Reid, only five blocks away.