“No, I don’t mean afraid of the bomb. You’re afraid of the responsibility. You can’t stand it that the buck has stopped, and it’s pointing at you and me.”
“It’s too damn big, Adam,” she blurted. “I’m a spy. Great title, but it’s still just a job. Point me toward the bad guys, I’ll go. Tell me look and listen, I’m your gal. Tell me to shoot, you’re getting on tougher ground. But I draw the line at taking personal responsibility for a hundred thousand innocent lives. No, thank you. That’s the general’s job.”
The general. Sarah’s all-knowing father, R.I.P.
“The general’s dead.”
“Kahn could be headed anywhere,” she protested. “Madrid, Tripoli, Helsinki, the South Pole… who knows?”
“Oh, I think we know where he’s headed. You said it yourself at the embassy. There’s a reason the money was sent to Paris. Now we know what it is. It’s a payoff. Daudin or François, or whatever he calls himself, doesn’t like to stray far from the city. I’m thinking he’s got a business there, something that requires him to stay close to home. In Paris, he’s invisible. Part of the city’s fabric. On foreign turf, he sticks out. This guy’s got a serious comfort factor. He’s got his boys around him, his safe houses, his bank accounts spread around the city. Hundred to one, if Mordecai Kahn does have a bomb-if, in fact, he’s selling it to Hijira for three million dollars-the deal is going down in Paris. You can bet on it.”
Sarah was nodding. He’d won her over, yet he still needed to explain himself. Skimming a hand along the back of her head, he said, “I don’t want this gig any more than you do. You know what I want? I want to go back to my desk in Virginia, put my feet up, crack open a can of diet Coke, and get lost in my computer. I want my numbers. My sterile, safe numbers.”
The tram turned off the Limmat Quai at Centralplatz. Sarah floored the rental Mercedes, taking it around the large tram stop, through a series of tight streets, following the blue placards that showed the way to the Flughafen. They left the river and entered a tunnel.
“And so?” she asked. “Where now?”
“Find Mr. Claude François and we find Kahn,” he said.
“That simple?”
Chapel shrugged his shoulders. It wasn’t simple at all, but there it was. “Who do you trust?”
Sarah extended her hand and he took it. “I trust you,” she said, squeezing it tightly.
They left the car in the Terminal A parking lot with the keys tucked beneath the visor. At the ticket counter, they purchased three seats on the twelve o’clock flight to Paris. One for Chapel. One for Sarah. And one for the three boxes of files they’d taken from the Deutsche International Bank.
Once through passport control, they walked the length of the terminal to their gate and bought coffee and a pair of sausages. “Can’t visit Switzerland without trying the bratwurst,” said Chapel, taking a seat on a leather banquette.
“What about the chocolate?”
“I’ll get a bar to bring to Glen. A peace offering.”
“Sugar?” Sarah asked.
“No, I take it black.”
“Suit yourself.” She opened three bags of Equal and dumped them into her paper cup.
“Nasty,” commented Chapel, grimacing.
“Terrible sweet tooth. Don’t even get me started on toffee.”
“Bangers and mash?”
“Adore them.”
“Steak and kidney pie.”
“Lovely.”
“Fish and chips?”
“Yumm.”
“The Spice Girls?”
“Make me gag, but Robbie Williams is a cutie.”
“You are England’s rose.”
“I take that as a compliment, sir.”
A minute passed as the two ate in silence. Their flight was called and they traded looks to say, let everyone else get on board first. Chapel felt that something had grown between them, something more than just a night together. It was a pleasant sensation. They watched the last stragglers disappear into the jetway.
“Shall we, Miss Churchill?”
“By all means, Mr. Chapel.”
She stood, hefting the overnight bag onto her shoulder. Taking a step, she pressed her body against him and pecked him on the lips. “So how do we find him?”
“I’ve got to sit down with all this info, run the account numbers and the beneficiaries, through our database. Somewhere in here, we’ll find a hint, a trail to follow. We’ll start at the beginning. Daudin, or François back then, opened that account twenty years ago. He listed his date of birth as 1961. I’ll wager he was a damn sight less cautious back then than he is now. There’s a learning curve for terrorism, too.”
“What’s your guess? Who is he?”
“François? He’s a money man. A banker. A broker. Maybe a trader of some kind. Someone who knows the ins and outs of international finance. He’s got to be a pro, the way he juggles those accounts.”
Sarah walked toward the gate. “Takes one to know one, eh?”
“Something like-” Chapel’s cell phone chirped. “Hello.”
“Allo, mon ami,” said Leclerc. “And where might I ask are you?”
Chapel stopped in his tracks. “On the way to Paris.”
“I hope so. There’s someone here I think you’ll greatly enjoy meeting.”
“Who’s that?”
“Right now, I’m calling him Charles François. Ring a bell? You two know each other already. I understand you bumped into him at the hospital the other day.”
It couldn’t be, he thought. Not so quickly. “How?”
“Poor guy needed some cash. We nabbed him at the ATM in Neuilly. The one with three dots on it. Blue, black, and red. Felicitations.” The map. Leclerc was talking about the map of the BLP’s ATM locations.
“Where are you?”
“La Sante.”
La Sante. France’s most notorious maximum security prison.
“Leclerc, do not lay a hand on him.” He exchanged the strident tone for one of dead earnestness. “Please.”
“It’s too late for that. This is my town. We do things my way.”
“We’ll be there in two hours.”
Chapter 42
At the same time as Swiss International Airlines flight 765 touched down in Paris, Marc Gabriel was standing in the center of his office, surveying the naked space. The last boxes had left a few minutes earlier. The desk, the computer hardware, the phones, the photos: everything was a memory. Gabriel was left alone with his view.
To his mind the last three days had stretched into one. Taleel’s death. Ciudad del Este. George’s treason. By all accounts, he should be exhausted, both physically and mentally. Instead, he felt refreshed, invigorated, and alive to the challenges that waited. Catching his reflection in the glass, he smoothed his white shirt and flirted with his Hermès cravat. If his expression did not convey the direness of his situation, it was because he had won. The footrace was as good as over. A single call had put his worries to rest.
“The city is more beautiful than I had expected,” Mordecai Kahn had said when he’d phoned an hour earlier.
“Summer is a kind season.”
“I take it you are free this evening?”
“Of course.”
“Say, eleven o’clock?”
“Eleven would be wonderful.”
Kahn gave Gabriel the name of the establishment where he proposed they meet.
“You’re certain?” Gabriel asked, peeved at the choice.
“Neither of us can take any chances.”
Marc Gabriel had no intention of it. “Very good, then. Till eleven.”
“Bilitis’s Vineyard. It is on the third floor.”
“Bilitis’s Vineyard,” Gabriel repeated.
The package had arrived.
Chapter 43
Narrow, dank, and dripping with limestone sweat, the corridors of La Sante maximum security prison stretched before Chapel like the decaying passages of an ancient tomb. Five steps inside the place, he’d felt the walls close in on him and a grim weight fall on his shoulders. It was his first time inside a prison. He was a visitor, one of the good guys. Still, the place scared the hell out of him.