“Why?” demanded Leclerc, bolting to attention. “They might have boarded the plane this morning. For all we know, they could be in Manhattan as we speak. How do we know they are not already there? Just because the tape was made in Paris, doesn’t mean that the people who will execute the plan are also here.”
“Doubtful,” said Sarah. “They needed the money for a reason. And they needed it in Paris. They took a chance by sending so much through a hawala. If it cost them one of their men, you can bet it was bloody important. You can also bet they made sure they got the money here in plenty of time, and that the operation isn’t going to take place until they’ve spent it.”
Only the three of them remained, and they’d gathered at one end of the table, alternately shaking their heads, smiling disconsolately at the ceiling, and silently ruing their luck, like a group of students who’d just been given a murderous assignment. Despite Sarah Churchill’s protests and an illuminated sign on the wall to the contrary, Leclerc was smoking, lobbing a parade of smoke rings toward the ceiling. He was their “baby-sitter,” Glendenning had told them. There to watch their backs, shine a light down the dimmer passageways, and provide the oil necessary to grease some of the rustier wheels in the French law enforcement community.
It was a tall order, thought Chapel. Asking them to put an identity to an unknown face, to track down and apprehend a culprit who no one confessed to knowing the first thing about, other than that he was an associate of Mohammed al-Taleel, and thus a member of Hijira.
A minute ago, Guy Gadbois had left the room in urgent conversation with Glendenning. Together the DGSE, the Sûreté, and the FBI promised to shake as many trees as possible, to call in their favors from the street, in Paris and in the States. To help them with their task, they had a single photo of Taleel five years out-of-date that didn’t look a damned thing like the man Chapel had followed across the Parisian cityscape. And that was all.
Leclerc leaned across the table, sweeping a strand of hair out of his eyes. “I have an appointment to see Mr. Boubilas later today. Perhaps he can shed some light on the situation.”
“I understand he’s not talking,” said Chapel.
“He will talk to Captain Leclerc.”
Sarah rolled her eyes, and Chapel said, “Just leave a piece of him for the next guy, if you’re not as successful as you hope. In the meantime, if we want to start building a trail on our man, I need to know who Taleel was renting the apartment from.”
“Azema Immobilier,” answered Leclerc. “One eighty-five Avenue George V. He was using the alias Bertrand Roux. There are seven other men in Paris with that name. We are checking if Taleel acquired any types of government identification under that name: driver’s license, passport, national employment card.”
“Try credit cards, too,” Chapel added. “The more places we know he frequented, the easier it will be for us to get a picture of who his associates might have been.”
“It is being done.”
“What about his apartment?” asked Sarah. “Have they turned up any of his personal effects? Anything at all?”
“There was very little to find,” explained Leclerc. “No food. No clothes. No books. The place was either deserted or he was moving out soon.”
“Not totally, it wasn’t,” complained Chapel. “I saw a TV in there and a PC sitting on his desk.”
“Ruined, I’m afraid. Maybe we can recover something from the hard disk. There is still a team over there, sifting through the rubble. It will take weeks to figure out what exactly we have. After talking to Rafi Boubilas, I’m going over to Sûreté headquarters to see what they’ve turned up.”
Every criminal left a particular scent; every organization, its own signature; and this one, Chapel realized, was sophisticated, wily, and expert. For two years, he had been investigating all manner of groups and organizations suspected of even the remotest involvement in the financing of terrorists and terrorist activities. He’d cut his teeth on the hawalas sending money to Iraq in violation of the U.S. embargo, and from there moved to charities funneling contributions to Hamas and Hezbollah, and then to legitimate businesses cutting checks from their bottom line to rebels in the Philippines and in Indonesia. Earlier in the summer, he’d taken down a sixteen-year-old Saudi prince who was secretly selling his father’s American equities and wiring the proceeds to a bank in Grozny to support the Muslim Chechen freedom fighters. But that was as close as he’d gotten to the enemy.
Increasingly, he was frustrated by the feeling that he had been confined to the periphery of the fight against terrorism. His was a bureaucrat’s game involving endless court appearances, demands for subpoenas and search warrants, uncounted hours studying balance sheets, P &L’s, and the tedious minutiae of monthly bank statements.
In law enforcement, there is an intoxicating myth that one man can make a difference, and that it is through effort alone that he does or does not. At some point, Chapel had decided to be that man. Like a snake molting its skin, he’d shed layer after layer of his personal life to devote more time to the job. He’d given up the weekend bike rides to Annapolis and afternoon swims at the Y. He’d cut his morning runs from six days to four, then to two, and now was lucky to hit the road even one day a week. He’d forsaken his addiction to Monday Night Football, his terminal rereading of John le Carré, and his love of five-alarm curry. His relationships with women, never his strong suit to begin with, had dwindled to monthly dinners with coworkers before stopping altogether. He took his shirts to the dry cleaners regardless of the cost. He gave up making his bed. He traded oatmeal and fresh orange juice at breakfast for a cup of coffee and a day-old Danish on the drive to Langley. Nutritious sit-down dinners of diced chicken breast and steamed garlic broccoli gave way to orgies of stuffed crust pizza and Coca-Cola at his desk.
All in the name of the myth.
Adam Chapel would make a difference.
Lately, though, he had begun to doubt the result of his efforts. Too often, after a twenty-hour stretch logged on to a computer terminal, he’d look at his bloodshot eyes in the mirror and ask “Why?” and wonder whether he would ever actually stop a man from committing an act, whether he was a soldier in the line or a reserve trying to fight a rainstorm with an umbrella. Selfishly, he wondered if he’d given too much of himself for an elusive cause, if he had to find the answers to his questioning heart somewhere else.
And then, in the space of a day, everything had changed. The enemy was no longer a mirage taunting him from the end of the highway. The enemy was here. He was in Paris. Chapel had stared him in the eye and by the grace of God escaped his terrible commitment. Stung by the death of four friends and a man he was only beginning to know, he realized that his efforts had not been trivial and that his ethic was rewarded in the form of a greater challenge.
“Azema Immobilier,” repeated Leclerc as he wrote down the address and slipped the paper to Sarah. “It is near the Champs-Elysées,” he said pleasantly to her, as if she were the only other person in the room. “Mr. Chapel will be pleased to know there is a Métro station quite nearby. He won’t have to walk far, though there are a few flights of stairs.”
“What did you say?” Chapel asked.
“You won’t have to walk far.”
“No. No. What did you say?” he repeated.
Leclerc’s face remained blank, his dolorous brown eyes darting to Sarah, then back to Chapel. He was guessing how far to push. Chapel could see it in the way his lips trembled, the little stutterstep his fingers danced on the armrest.