Still, Sayeed was unable to look away. The sun shone through the window, silhouetting her breasts. He imagined that beneath the full-length garment she possessed an exquisite form. He was tempted to take her to his safe house and have his way with her, but the current of lust was swept aside by waves of self-righteousness. Years of education demanded to be heard. He was talking before he knew it, speaking as if the Prophet himself commanded his tongue.
“Harlot,” he said. “Do you think every man is corruptible? Do you think you tempt me even for a moment? You are a disgrace to Islam and to the Prophet. Do you not follow the holy teachings?”
The woman did not respond.
“Speak when you are addressed!” he bellowed.
“Excuse me,” came the voice, timid and repentant. “I did not mean to run into you. It was an accident. I did not realize I was of offense.”
“Of course you did. How else can your actions be taken? Why else have you been waiting so long in the store? Do you think I do not know what you wish of me?”
Sayeed grasped the woman’s arm and pulled her along with him. “Stay on the street, where you belong. Or better yet, inside your house of ill-repute.”
Her upper arm was muscular. She was strong. He had known women like this, in the camps, and in America.
He pushed her through the doorway and into the street.
“Away,” she cried, struggling. “You have no right.”
“I am a man. I have every right.”
He heard her exhale, and then she was upon him, striking him with the ferocity of a wildcat. A fist swung at his face. Stepping away, he deflected the blow, keeping a grip on her arm.
“A fighter, eh? Is that where you built your muscles? Hitting men and stealing their wealth when they are weak and sated?”
A dozen men had stopped to gawk at the struggle. Quickly, a circle formed around Sayeed and the woman. Voices offered all manner of advice, a precious few even calling for Sayeed to let her go.
“Away,” she yelled repeatedly, the fear of retribution pinching her voice. “Let me go. I shall call the police.”
“Call them,” he seconded. “Be my guest. Here, the Lord God is judge. We require no other authority.”
He tried to swing her around and get her arm locked behind her, but suddenly she slid inside his reach. His jaw rocked. His mouth filled with a warm, salty fluid that he knew was blood. It surprised him, nonetheless. She had hit him. The whore had hit him. Clenching his fist, he swung at the veiled face, holding back nothing. A cry escaped as she collapsed to a knee.
A cheer erupted from the crowd. The spectators closed in, fifty of them at least, more rushing in every second. Their voices were raucous and hungry, the confrontation awakening an ancient taste for savagery.
Sayeed lifted the woman to her feet. Dust coated her burqa. Rivets of blood dotted the ground beneath her, some black, some violently red. Yet, as she rose, he felt something hard and angular rub against him. Something that felt very much like a gun.
“Who are you?” he asked, raising his machine gun to port arms, pulling the firing pin, and slipping a finger inside the trigger guard.
“I know who she is,” came a cracked and rusted voice. “I have seen her watching.”
Sayeed spun to face an old man, dressed entirely in black, emerging from the ring of spectators. “;Yes, Imam,” he addressed the mullah. “Tell me. Tell us all.”
The Islamic cleric raised a gnarled finger, his voice shrill with the fury of a thousand years. “A crusader!”
Chapter 4
With two fingers, Adam Chapel inched back the Flemish lace curtains and peeked at the Place Vendôme. A steady stream of vehicular traffic flowed clockwise around the square. Flocks of tourists strolled its perimeter. Some window-shopped arm in arm. Others kept a businesslike pace. Raising a pair of binoculars to his eyes, he spotted Carmine Santini strolling past the Armani boutique. Rucksack hanging from one shoulder, camera and document holder strung around his neck, he looked every inch the gawky American tourist, right down to his cargo shorts, sickly white legs, and scuffed basketball shoes. A hundred yards along, Ray Gomez, dressed more conservatively in blazer and slacks, queued up to withdraw some cash from an ATM.
Chapel’s eyes skipped back and forth across the cityscape, selecting, evaluating, analyzing. Is it the pretty blond woman in the flower print dress? The taxi driver loitering too long after dropping his fare? The harried executive with his mouth glued to his cell phone? Chapel had no idea who would be sent to pick up the transfer or when they might arrive. One fact kept his nerves from fraying. Unlike other stores housed in the seventeenth-century arcade, the jewelry shop boasted a single point of entry, and it was right in front of his eyes.
Next to him, Leclerc sat on the carpet with his legs crossed, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, as he meticulously assembled a sleek rifle.
“You know it?” he said, without looking up. “The FR-F2. Seven-point-six-two millimeter, semiautomatic.”
“Sure,” he answered, lying. “It’s a nice piece. Real nice weapon. Real solid.” He watched the Frenchman ram a cartridge into the stock, then work the bolt back and forth.
“What do you carry?” Leclerc asked, bringing the rifle to his cheek, sighting along the barrel.
“Me?”
“Yes, you.” Leclerc dropped the rifle into his lap and stared at him.
Chapel blinked repeatedly, needing a second to answer. The truth was that guns unsettled him. A pistol’s cold, dead weight, the seductive curve of its trigger, left him queasy with dread and apprehension. Shooting for score on the range at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, he’d managed an eighteen out of fifty, with two bullets missing the target altogether. He argued that this ineptness grew from his being an accountant, not only by trade, but by nature. He preferred the precision of a balanced ledger, its promise of fiscal transparency, its devotion to a world defined by generally accepted accounting principles, to the wild, terminal justice of a hollow-tipped bullet. Chapel knew the cardinal rule about guns. You couldn’t own one without wanting to use it. He’d learned that fact firsthand. Alone among his team, he didn’t carry a weapon.
“I guess I like my MBA four-point-oh from HBS the best,” he said. “But I also keep a CPA and a CFA handy, you know, just in case. And, oh, yeah, in my sock I got a nifty little MPA-that’s a master’s degree in public accounting. Absolutely essential when you’re in close and things get a little hairy.”
Leclerc swung the rifle up to the windowsill and took aim on a provisional target. “You’re a funny guy.”
Chapel laid a hand on the barrel. “We want him alive, Mr. Leclerc. He doesn’t do anyone any good dead. You’re just here for emergencies.”
“Bang!” said Leclerc, pulling the trigger on an empty chamber, watching Chapel jump from the corner of his eye. “See, I am funny, too.”
“Yeah, a barrel full of monkeys.”
Chapel walked to the center of the suite where Keck had set up the video monitors on a lacquered mahogany table. One of the six-by-six-inch screens showed the façade of Royal Joailliers. The other two offered wide-angle views of the east and west halves of the square.
“So far so good,” said Keck. “Transmit A-OK. FaceIt is online. We are operational.”
A wireless relay transmitted all three video feeds to the Foreign Terrorist Asset Tracking Center at Langley. There, FaceIt, a sophisticated and rapidly evolving biometric software program manufactured by the Identix Corporation, would pick out all visible faces, digitally enhance them, and compare each on the basis of fifty-three distinct characteristics with an FBI database containing photographs and artists’ composites of several thousand known and suspected terrorists.