“The prospect of killing does not frighten you?”
“Yes-I mean, no. I’ve taught myself to block that part of my heart. It scares me, but I’ll be all right.” He thought a moment longer. “This means I’m leaving-I mean, this is it-all that you’ve worked toward these years.”
“We are all leaving.”
George shook his head in amazement. “It’s really happening. I mean, it’s happening now?”
“This weekend.”
“So soon?”
Gabriel wondered if he’d said too much. Reluctantly, he explained. “Abu Sayeed has been killed. It is not known whether he spoke before dying. This is our time. The time for our family to act.” He rose from the chair, and when his son rose, too, he hugged him. “You have made me proud in so many ways. I wanted to give you the chance to make your name, to show your commitment so that all will recognize what you have done for our cause.”
“Thank you, Father. I’m grateful.”
“As for the Bac, I’ve made arrangements for you to take it at home. You’ll sit for the exam at the French school in Jidda next May. Same day as in Paris, I’ve been made to understand. Just a different location.”
George Gabriel flipped open the ticket jacket and studied the flight details. A shudder passed through his sturdy shoulders, followed by a sigh that frightened his father. “Tomorrow?” he asked.
“Yes,” said Gabriel. “I am sorry that it must be so. Understand, son, that I would do this myself if it were at all possible. Unfortunately, I have a problem of my own abroad. I must leave this evening. At such a decisive moment, we can only trust our own.” He reached for his son’s hands. “Am I right to put the trust in you?”
“Yes, Father.”
He kissed his son on the cheeks, and when he embraced the boy, he was pleased to feel the muscled arms hug him in return. He put the sudden tremor, the uneasy sigh, down to nerves. He was, after all, asking a lot of the boy.
Gabriel gave him the details of what needed to be done, the location of the hospital, the name of the attending doctor, a layout of the burn unit. “You’ll be finished by noon. Your flight will depart at nine-fifteen. Someone will meet you at the airport in Dubai and drive you into the desert.” He patted his son’s shoulders. “Your grandfather will be more than proud.”
“Father, may I ask one question?”
“Of course, my son.”
George Gabriel narrowed his eyes, and his father knew he was already steeling himself for the task. “From near or far?”
Gabriel clasped his son’s neck and drew him close. “From near. You will have the pleasure of seeing the kuffar’s soul depart his body.”
Chapter 22
By eleven o’clock, the sky had darkened to night and pressed down on the rooftops, a purple velvet cape fringed with a subtropical breeze. The wind was too warm for Paris, thought Chapel, as he strolled tiredly down the Boulevard St.-Germain, the air humid, layered with garlic, exhaust, and cigarette smoke. It pricked an unease deep inside him, a presentiment of violence, the threat of the unknown. Or maybe it was just the certainty that he was one step closer to his foe.
Taleel had slipped big-time: three withdrawals from the same branch in an hour’s time. What had driven him to assume such a reckless course of action? What had convinced him that he had no other choice? Chapel doubted he would ever find out, but at this point, it was the act that mattered, not the motivation.
“It’s the golden thread,” he’d said to Sarah during dinner. “If he withdrew twelve thousand euros in a day, there’s no telling how much money he has socked away. The account at BLP never held more than seven thousand euros. He was religious about it.”
She’d chosen the restaurant, a sidewalk pizzeria she’d frequented during her year as an exchange student at the Sorbonne. She’d insisted he try the pizza puttanesca topped with Italian sausage, bell peppers, and onions. It was decent enough, but she wolfed it down as if she hadn’t eaten for days. He wasn’t going to say it didn’t hold a candle to Patsy’s in New York, not after her gibes about him being the boorish American.
“We’ve moved up the ladder a rung, I’ll grant you that.” Sarah sat smoking a cigarette that she’d bummed from the next table, an arm slung over the back of her chair, eyeing him from behind her veil of smoke. “Everyone smokes in Paris, Adam,” she’d offered, though he hadn’t asked for an explanation. He already knew why. She was a chameleon. She couldn’t help but change with her surroundings.
“Up a rung? This is a whole new ball game, lady. He wired in the money. Don’t you see? Bonnard didn’t pick up any cash transaction reports for the account. Any cash deposits over five thousand euros would have set off the alarms. Unless Taleel squirreled in the funds, he had to have transferred it in from another bank.”
“Or banks.”
“Just one will do for now. Let’s not get greedy.” But to Chapel the discovery of a trail was only the half of it. “We weren’t supposed to see this account. The one at BLP was too clean. Sanitized. He ran that thing as if he expected someone to find it. But this one… this one’s different. Too much money, for one. This one was his private stash.”
Stubbing out her cigarette, Sarah leaned across the table and laid a hand on his outstretched arm, settling him with a fond, sisterly gaze. “Easy, Adam. Easy. You have that look in your eye like you’re ready to storm a machine gun nest. Remember, it’s not who wins the battle that counts but who wins the war.”
“It’s just my way,” he said, feeling defensive, tied to his chair when he wanted to be jumping out of it.
“I can’t do it, myself. It’s not wise to invest so much in every up and down. I’m just saying you have to take a step back.”
A step back. Impossible. Even if he could, he would refuse. Obligation. Duty. Friendship. Revenge. Love. He would carry the weight of these words with him every step of every day until Taleel’s band of conspirators-until Hijira-was wiped from the face of the planet.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I won’t get burned out.”
“You have staying power, do you?”
“Yeah.”
“Endurance?” The sisterly look was long gone. Her eyes had narrowed, the brows raised in scrutiny, her lips puckered saucily.
“Absolutely.”
“Well then, Mr. Chapel…”
It was then that he realized she was teasing him. “Get outta here,” he said, sliding back his chair, freeing his arm from her touch as she broke up laughing.
An hour later, he was still embarrassed.
Fifty yards ahead, he spotted the awning for his hotel. “Hôtel Splendide” read the merry, cursive writing. Three stars and living on its glory. He imagined his room. Tile floors, a bed that sagged, and a shower you could water a houseplant with. The minibar, though, was first-class, and offered Jack Daniel’s, Coke, M &M’s, and Pringles, all for the exorbitant prices its clientele would complain about but nevertheless pay. No one got homesick like Americans. He imagined the door closing behind him, the dead bolt sliding home, the miserable single bed staring at him.
Sarah walked next to him, arms crossed over her chest, her eyes distant, wandering. A couple passed between them, hand in hand, delighting at the boisterous voices that spilled from the nearest bistro, their smiles reflecting the restaurant’s festooned fairy lights, and Chapel was struck by a desire to stand closer to Sarah, emboldened by a picture of them strolling arm in arm. Cover, she’d call it. He’d have to find his own word.