“Here’s our problem,” he’d begun without preamble as they’d cleared the hospital grounds. “Taleel never got the money from Royal Joailliers.”
“How’s that?” asked Chapel. “We had him red-handed entering the jewelry store and exiting two minutes later with a satchel that he didn’t have before.”
“Be that as it may, we did not find a trace of a single U.S. dollar bill, let alone enough to constitute the five hundred thousand or more that was supposed to be in that bag he took from Royal. Now, a bomb will destroy a lot of things. But it will not obliterate a few thousand hundred dollar bills. The greenbacks should have been fluttering around the place like confetti on a New Year’s Eve. The only thing Taleel had in that satchel was a mess of Semtex.”
“I don’t see how-”
“As I recall, there was a minute or two when you had to abandon visual contact.”
The Métro, Chapel thought, when Taleel had stopped short on the passenger platform. He stared at Glendenning longer than he should, trying to figure if the man was apportioning blame. His complexion was gray, his eyes hooded behind the thick lenses of his glasses. He looked owlish and unexceptional, and Adam thought he liked it that way, cultivated it, even, and that it was a uniform that required as much care and attention as his naval dress blues. The blandness coated him with a kind of emotional Teflon. He wasn’t a man in the midst of a nasty divorce, a father with one son a recovering alcoholic and another at Harvard Law. He was an instrument of his government. Objective, dispassionate, and ultimately, Chapel imagined, divorced from the personal repercussions of his decisions.
“What about Boubilas?” Chapel asked. “The owner of the jewelry store-did you pull him in?”
“General Gadbois has him at Mortier Caserne.”
“Gadbois? Isn’t he with the DGSE? I thought we were working with the Sûreté on this thing?”
“The boys you were with yesterday were with the Action Service, part of the DGSE, not the police. Babtiste headed up their counterterrorism squad. Leclerc’s in on the messier side of the business. Gadbois doesn’t like to advertise their involvement in domestic matters if he doesn’t have to.”
“So I wasn’t in charge?”
“Did you really think you were?” Glendenning frowned, as if he didn’t have time for such childish squabbling. “You were in charge as much as anyone is in this type of affair. Babtiste was there to whistle you down if he thought you were making a wrong move. As for Boubilas, he swears he never got the call. ‘Hawala? What’s that?’ he asked. ‘A new dance?’ Claims he’d never seen Taleel before in his life.”
“He’s lying.”
“Of course he is. As far as we know, the transfer from Pakistan was legit. We fell for the three-card monte. We had our eye on Taleel while someone else picked up the dough… either in that store or on the Métro. That’s where you come in. You’re going to find who took that money. You see, Mr. Chapel, we didn’t come up totally empty-handed. We did manage to find something. A digital recording made by Taleel and his buddies.”
“A tape?”
“Yes, a tape. It makes for interesting viewing.”
Glendenning hadn’t whispered another word during the rest of the drive. And thirty minutes later, as Chapel passed through the black iron gates and mounted the stairs to the embassy, he shivered with anticipation as once again, he wondered what could be so important to have brought a deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency across three thousand miles of ocean in the middle of the night.
It was called the “Quiet Room,” and it was located on the embassy’s second floor, deep on an interior corridor as close to the building’s heart as possible. Sheets of lead embedded in the walls locked all sound inside the room. Electronic bafflers provided backup. Twice a day, monitors swept the room for electronic eavesdropping devices. Neither cry nor whisper could escape. France might be America’s oldest ally, but of late, it was to be distrusted like anybody else.
The end of the Cold War had seen the DGSE, France’s espionage service, redirect its efforts toward industrial targets. Its agents traveled the world seeking to purloin trade secrets, hijack intellectual property, and “borrow” proprietary technology. Its “main adversary” was no longer the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, but the United States of America. And no more eloquent testimony could be found than front-page headlines proclaiming the arrest of French spies caught in flagrante attempting to steal trade secrets from Microsoft and Boeing. On this hot, sunny August morning, however, bygones were bygones. Peace, not profit, was once again the utmost priority. With the two countries united by a common foe, all disagreements belonged to the past.
A long, glossy conference table filled the narrow room, pitchers of water, glasses, and bowls of pretzels set out at even intervals. Photo portraits of the sitting U.S. President and the ambassador to France provided the only decoration.
Glendenning lifted his arm toward a squat, barrel-chested man with grizzled hair wearing an ill-fitting blue suit. “Meet Guy Gadbois. Runs things for the DGSE.”
Gadbois grunted a hello, but made no motion to stand or shake hands.
“I believe you know Captain Leclerc,” Glendenning said.
A square of gauze marking the Frenchman’s cheek was all he had to show from the bomb blast. He wore a tailored gray suit, his white shirt open at the collar. His hair was combed neatly and tucked behind his ear. But there was no mistaking the distrustful cast to his eyes. Leclerc looked at everyone as if he were a suspect.
“Yes,” said Chapel. “Glad you’re all right.”
Where had he been when Taleel blew himself up? Chapel wondered. Vaguely, he recalled Leclerc following him up the stairs, shadowing him down the hallway. But after that, he wasn’t sure. The events were all of a piece, melted into one another in some psychedelic, nonlinear way by the trauma of the blast. In his mind’s eye, he conjured up Babtiste, Gomez, Keck, and of course, Santini. The only person he hadn’t seen inside the apartment was Leclerc.
“And you?” asked Leclerc. “You are all right? A quick recovery, is it? Tant mieux.” He averted his gaze, but not before Adam caught the veiled admonition, its hint of duty unfulfilled, or worse.
Before he could respond, Glendenning was motioning past Leclerc toward the sole woman in the room. Standing crisply, she extended a hand along with a sympathetic smile. “Sarah Churchill,” she said, before Glendenning had the chance. “I heard what happened yesterday. I’m dreadfully sorry, Mr. Chapel.”
She was nearly as tall as he was, dressed in dark slacks and an ivory silk tank top that highlighted her tanned arms and face. She kept her black hair pulled off her forehead and bundled into a thick ponytail that fell below her shoulders and shone in the fluorescent light like Chinese lacquer. She wore no makeup-no eyeliner, no lipstick, no mascara. Her eyebrows were thick, her eyes brown flecked with gold and narrowed with suspicion, and for a moment, Chapel wondered if despite the accent, she wasn’t English but Middle Eastern-Egyptian, Lebanese, or even Turkish.
“Miss Churchill’s on loan to us from our British cousins,” said Glendenning, as if in answer to Chapel’s question. “She’s a military brat like me. It was Sarah running the other side of the operation.”
“I guess it was a bad day for both of us,” said Chapel, grasping her hand, finding the grip cool and firm.
“Rather,” she said, the smile souring just long enough for him to question her goodwill.
“Let’s get this show on the road, shall we, folks?” said Glendenning. “All those present are to consider themselves members of joint counterterrorism task force Blood Money. All information discussed in this room is subject to the highest security clearance, classification Whirlwind. Is that enough of the bullshit, or do I have to give it to you in writing? Mr. Chapel, Mr. Leclerc,” he continued. “I want to thank both you gentlemen for making the effort to be with us today. Miss Churchill, likewise. If you’ve got any jet lag, I can guarantee you that the film you are about to see will keep your eyes wide open.”