As Sarah finished her words, the door quietly opened. Entering the client room with a martial stride, Madame Puidoux handed Chapel a single paper. “I’m afraid we show no accounts with the details you’d provided. However, we were able to come up with the times Mr. Roux used the ATMs. Only for a year, but I hope you will agree that it is better than nothing. Go ahead. Look.” She waited, her shoulders pinned back, her chin held at attention, not so much a victorious smile etched on her face as an arrogant smirk, which in France probably qualified as the same thing.
Scanning the paper, he was pleased to find a listing of the exact times that Taleel had visited the automatic teller machines during the preceding twelve months. A pattern was immediately discernible.
“He made his deposits in the afternoons between and five and six,” said Chapel. “And his withdrawals in the morning between seven and eight. Both are peak traffic periods. People mostly use ATMs on their way to work and on their way home. Looks like Taleel had a nine-to-five job.”
Again, however, Taleel’s record was imperfect. Chapel pointed to the notation citing a withdrawal of a thousand euros at two A.M. on the thirteenth of June of that year. “Madame Puidoux, can you tell me where this ATM is located?”
“La Goutte d’Or. Near Montmartre.”
“And this one?” The second of the thousand euro withdrawals.
“Also in La Goutte d’Or.”
Chapel knew the name vaguely as a haven for money-transmitting businesses. “Hawala heaven,” Babtiste had called it.
“Hardly the kind of place I’d want to be caught at two in the morning,” commented Sarah. “It’s a working-class area, mostly West Africans and Arabs. A lot of garment shops, jewelry stores. Head there at noon, it’s like walking around downtown Lagos.”
Chapel massaged his temple. “Lagos,” he said. “Two of our guys were killed there in June. It was a diamond buy. We still have no idea what exactly happened.”
“We know this: The orders came from here.”
“So this is where they’re based,” he said.
“It appears so.”
“No coincidences?”
“No coincidences, Adam. Not in this game.” She was staring at him and her gaze was forceful and inquiring. Was she challenging him? Appraising him? For a crazy moment, he thought she was seducing him, but then he knew it was himself, his own weakness.
Thanks were given. Documents collected. A few minutes later, he and Sarah were standing on the curb, surveying the parking lot that was Paris traffic at rush hour. They walked to the end of the street. In both directions, cars lolled in endless rows, bumper-to-bumper, engines conjoined in a miserable rumble, exhaust rising in the narrow urban canyons and forming a mustard-tinted cloud.
“It’s like they saw us coming a mile away and covered their tracks,” said Sarah when they’d reached their car.
“What did you expect to find? A neon sign pointing the way to his accounts?”
“Call me an optimist, but I wouldn’t have minded one nine-digit account number at a bona fide banking institution on any one of seven continents. At least we’d have a trail to follow.”
But instead of being put off, Chapel found himself seized by a prickly anticipation. He was basking in the glow of unfettered access to a suspect’s banking records. He could forget the rigamarole of subpoenas and writs, the constant wrangling with magistrates and judges. He could kiss the dreaded MLAT good-bye-the Mutual Lateral Assistance Treaty used to request information from a friendly government under which responses never, ever came back in less than ten days, and in most cases three times that long. Not only had the French government promised their cooperation, they were delivering.
“We know Taleel was making weekly payments to someone,” he said, “most probably the other members of his cell. We have a map of the ATMs he was using. You said there were between six and eight principal members of Hijira.”
“Of which two are dead.”
“Maybe so, but someone picked up the money from Royal Joailliers. I’m betting it was the person who was sharing Taleel’s apartment. Damn it, Sarah, someone was watching TV before he came in. Tell Leclerc to have his boys set up round-the-clock surveillance on the ATMs inside that circle and to put a man here at the bank. If anyone tries to access those accounts, we’ll know in real time. We can take him down.”
“Do you really think so? They’re smarter than that. Smart enough to figure out that your jump team was on to them. If they can outwit you, they certainly aren’t going to access a compromised account. That would be tantamount to turning themselves in.”
“Look,” he went on. “They’re here, Sarah. They’re operating in this city. We can hazard a guess that their paymaster’s holed up somewhere in Neuilly, and that the guy’s a wee bit complacent.”
“He sure as hell isn’t going to be complacent anymore. Not after losing two of his lieutenants and learning that the CIA had practically crawled up his posterior and infiltrated his organization. No, Adam, he will not be the least bit complacent.”
“Even so,” Chapel went on. “Taleel had to have opened more than one account in Paris. Ask me, I’d say he was working at least ten accounts at ten different banks. Maybe more. There’s no way he had ten aliases, ten different addresses, and ten driver’s licenses. I’ve never seen it. We’ve got the guy’s address, his driver’s license, his home phone. Somewhere he’s left behind his mark.”
“He knew better than that.”
“I’m betting otherwise.”
“And then?” Sarah threw her arms up, exasperated. “All this information about his moving money from place will take us only so far without someone to tell us why he’s doing it. We need flesh and blood, Adam. Someone to lean on. The numbers are fine for establishing a pattern of behavior, maybe even to construct a predictive model. But we’re past that. We’re into the endgame. They’ve made the tape. They’re not planning any longer. They’re doing.”
“People lie,” said Chapel. “They deceive, they mislead. I’d take numbers any day.”
“Then you’re a fool.”
The words stung more than a slap across the face. “I’ll prove you wrong.”
Sarah hid her disbelief poorly. Playing toss with the car keys, she shot him a loser’s glance. “What odds are you offering?”
“Odds?” He nodded toward the sea of traffic a block away. “ ‘Bout the same that you can find a way around this mess and get us to the Finance Ministry in, say, an hour.”
“Address?”
“Twenty-three bis rue de l’Université.”
She chewed her lip. “You’re on.”
Chapter 19
The trip took them fifty-seven minutes.
Sarah drove with furious concentration, her lips issuing a string of silent commands. Twice they barreled down one-way streets. Once they mounted the sidewalk to go around a stalled Citroën, scattering pigeons but no pedestrians. No fewer than six times did she disobey a red light. Chapel refused to protest, and for her part, Sarah was too absorbed to explain. Time was not the only matter being contested.
“Call Leclerc,” she’d said as they crossed the Pont-Neuf. “He’s got to have found someone who knows Taleel by now. Between the FBI and the Sûreté, they’ve a hundred bodies canvassing the neighborhood.”
“I’m sure we’d be the first to know,” said Chapel, surprised at her anger.
“Why are you fighting me?” Sarah snapped. “Don’t you want to put the finger on Taleel’s friends? Or does it have to be your way? By the numbers?” She tossed him the cell phone. “Just call him.”
She’d put her hair up into a bun, mumbling something about her neck being bloody hot. Her cheeks glowed with a dark warmth, but her eyes were cold and impossibly alert. At some point, a veil had descended around her, and Chapel felt as if part of her had left the car. He’d known her barely half a day, but a few minutes was all he’d needed to feel the power of her presence. When she was there, she was there. A force that would make any compass spin.