“Please,” said Bhatia, extending a hand toward the Pakistani delicacy.
But Sayeed was not interested in food. Glancing at the monitor that broadcast the interior of Bhatia’s showroom, he watched as a woman clad in a full-length burqa examined a tray of jewelry. She had been there the entire time he had been with Bhatia. The picture grew fuzzy as if losing reception, then snapped back into focus. A tinge of unease soured his stomach. The clock read 4:45. It would be 12:45 in Paris. He wanted to leave. He wanted to make the call. His brother would be waiting.
Abruptly, he stood. “The monitor,” he said, lifting his finger toward the screen. “It is a closed-circuit system?”
“No,” answered Bhatia proudly. “Wireless. New from Japan.”
Sayeed stalked from the office without another word.
Chapter 3
Admiral Owen Glendenning sat at the rear of the Counterterrorism Command Center on the sixth floor of the Agency’s headquarters in Langley, Virginia, digesting the latest information. It was too soon to hope, but he had no intention of ignoring the first flush of optimism that reddened the back of his neck and had him tapping his cane on the floor.
“Keep on him a little longer, girl, and we’re there,” he said to himself. “Just a little longer.”
Projected onto a ten-foot screen, a live feed from Pakistan broadcast Sarah Churchill’s point of view as she examined a selection of gold chains. She raised her head, and Glendenning came face-to-face with a frantic jewelry salesman blabbing the usual nonsense about high quality and best price. A simultaneous English translation ran across the bottom of the screen.
A second screen broadcast the footprint of the Central Intelligence Agency’s spy satellites on a political map of the globe. A shaded area indicated each satellite’s footprint. Some shadows remained stationary; others crept across the map with the turning of the earth.
The seal of the CIA highlighted against a navy blue background lit up a third screen, currently unused.
At seven A.M., the Counterterrorism Command Center was fully staffed and humming. Three rows of analysts occupied the gallery of the auditorium-sized command room. All enjoyed brand-new workstations, the latest flat-panel displays, and state-of-the-art ergonomic chairs that cost twelve hundred dollars a pop. It had been a long time since the Company had enjoyed such generous funding, but with the war on terrorism running at full bore, the spigots were wide open. To his frequent visitors from Capitol Hill, Glendenning liked to joke that his op center looked like a movie set-the way Hollywood imagined the espionage community operated. Lately, though, his audience had been less enthralled. Briefings that had once been little more than secret check-writing ceremonies had lately taken an adversarial turn. Where were the results Glendenning had promised? the more daring senators demanded. A few hundred million dollars in confiscated accounts was fine and dandy, but what about the terrorists behind it? Warm bodies, not frozen assets, were the order of the day.
They’d get their terrorists, Glendenning promised silently. A little patience would be nice.
Suppressing the grunt that came with the pain of standing, he pushed himself to his feet, then took hold of his twin bamboo canes and shuffled across the back of the op center to the glassed-in enclosure that served as his office. Owen Glendenning was sixty-one years old, thin and balding. People remarked on his resemblance to Franklin Roosevelt. They said he owned the same patrician bearing, the great politician’s indomitable smile and easy charm. He knew they were lying, that his looks made people nervous. As a young SEAL lieutenant in the Vietnam War, he had been gravely wounded leading a nighttime incursion behind enemy lines to capture a suspected VC cadre. The mortar rounds that had mangled his legs had also disfigured his face. His right cheek and jaw were concave, as if someone had hit him very hard with a spading tool. The mission, however, had been a success, and for his part in it, Glendenning had been awarded the Medal of Honor. He might have looked like FDR once, but now the only things he had in common with the great man were a steely self-reliance, a hatred of sympathy, and a refusal to be patronized.
Picking up a phone, he dialed the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center (FTAT) two floors below. “Get me Halsey.”
Strictly speaking, FTAT was a Treasury operation. Treasury funded it. Treasury supervised it. But when the scope of the investigation into worldwide terrorist financing had become clear, all involved had decided to move FTAT’s operations to Langley.
There had been a time not too far back when the very idea of the CIA contacting Treasury to share information had been practically a jailable offense. There was law enforcement and there was intelligence, and never the twain shall meet. But the events of September 11, 2001, had changed all that. With the passage of the Patriot Act, communication between the United States’s varied and multiple law enforcement and intelligence agencies not only was permitted, it was encouraged. The old concept of “stovepiping,” or keeping information inside the particular agency, or, as was the case with the FBI, inside the individual department that had discovered it, was thrown out the door. Concerns about infractions of civil liberties and personal privacy were quickly dismissed. If you weren’t stepping on someone’s rights, you weren’t doing your job, Glendenning liked to say. The threat beyond the country’s borders took preeminence and was far greater than anyone could be told.
“This is Halsey,” answered a deep, gravelly voice.
“Don’t you have a home either?”
Allan Halsey, chief of the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center, gave a shallow laugh. “Not according to my wife.”
“We nabbed the call,” said Glendenning. “The money’s being moved as we speak. Come on up and we’ll run it from here.”
“How much?”
“We’re guessing five hundred grand or five million. Either way, it’s the real deal.”
“I don’t like it,” said Halsey. “Risky to move so much.”
“I couldn’t agree more. Something’s about to pop. Who’s running your team in Paris?
“Adam Chapel.”
“Don’t know him. A new guy?”
“Treasury pulled him in after the WTC.”
“Military?”
“God no,” said Halsey. “A quant jock all the way. Kid was on the fast track at Price Waterhouse. Partner at twenty-nine. National audit manager.”
“Sounds like a real killer,” said Glendenning. “Ought to have ’em quaking in their boots.”
“Come on now, Glen. He’s the new kind of soldier. You know, brains instead of brawn. Different war we’re fighting this time.”
“That’s what they tell me. In the end, though, you still have to shoot the bad guys.”
“Don’t worry about Chapel,” said Halsey, his voice quieter, more confident, as if vouchsafing a secret. “He can hold his own.”
Midmorning traffic was light as the canary yellow postal van accelerated across the Place de la Concorde. Jaw clenched, Adam Chapel leaned close to the windshield, willing the van faster. Finally, an anxious voice pleaded inside his head. Finally.
The tires hit a stretch of cobblestones and Chapel jostled inside the tight cabin. Looking out the driver’s window, he was afforded a clear view up the Champs-Elysées. Rows of oaks lined the boulevard, giving way to wide sidewalks and an array of stores and restaurants. The Arc de Triomphe rose at its head. The sun broke from the clouds, and the monument to France’s fallen warriors glimmered like an ivory tower.