“We getting this on tape?”
“Not tape,” Keck said testily. “On disk.”
“I don’t care if it’s super-eight film, as long as it records.” Chapel slipped on a communications headset. “You there, Mr. Babtiste?” he asked, pulling the slim microphone close to his mouth.
“Ch’uis la.” Babtiste had accepted a temporary position as a hotel doorman. He stood downstairs at the hotel portico clad in one of the Ritz’s trademark blue topcoats, greeting arriving guests with a tip of his cap and the flash of his dazzling smile. “I’m making some decent tips. If our man does not show till afternoon, I’m paying for dinner at Maxim’s for nous tous.”
“If he doesn’t show, I’ll hold you to it,” said Chapel, but even as he permitted himself a smile, a new voice barked in his ear. It was Halsey, and the strident edge to his voice made him shiver. “Adam, we’ve intercepted a second communication. It was a little garbled, but we’re betting it was Omar sending the code to his correspondent on your side. The number dialed had a Paris area code. Looks like this thing is going down now. Your team in place?”
“Affirmative,” Chapel answered, rolling on the balls of his feet.
“Good. We’ll be watching with you.”
Hawala.
Two years ago, Adam Chapel had never even heard the word, let alone known that it constituted an underground banking network that transferred more than fifty billion dollars a year around the world. The Chinese had called it “Fei Qian,” or “flying money,” but, in fact, the money never went anywhere. Today, a broker in New York asks his counterpart in Delhi to deliver five hundred dollars. Tomorrow, it would be the other way around. If, and when, accounts between the two needed balancing, some gold might change hands. But no one kept any papers. No chits, no receipts, no nothing. In the event of a dispute, hawaladars consulted human “memorizers,” trained and kept on staff to mediate.
Hawala, however, was far more than a simple means of sending cash from one person to another. It was also a convenient mechanism to evade taxes and duties. Vendors provided importers with lower prices on their invoices and got the difference via hawala. In the late sixties, the first large hawala networks emerged to circumvent official restrictions on gold imports in Southeast Asia. Once the gold smugglers had perfected the system, it wasn’t long before other criminals followed suit: drug traffickers, money launderers, and more recently, terrorists.
“Bachelor number one, come on down,” said Carmine Santini from his position at yet another fashion boutique. “Male, twenty-five to thirty-five, approaching Royal. Navy blazer, tan slacks, and oh, look at that shirt. Could be Italian. Definitely Mediterranean. Enjoys dinner, dancing, and moonlight walks on the beach. Got him, Kreskin? Signor Romeo with his nose to the window.”
Santini the joker. Always ready with a name for everyone. Chapel had earned the nickname “Kreskin” (after the famous mentalist) when five minutes after sitting down with a slippery Lebanese businessman to discuss his company’s balance sheet, he’d figured out the guy was scraping ten percent off his pretax profits and sending the cash to the bad guys. Chapel had explained that it was an accounting issue entirely, the man listing the cash as a charitable donation but not taking the write-off. Three hundred grand a year was too much to forget about. But there was more to it than that. The truth was that a balance sheet was like a glimpse into a person’s soul. The way someone kept their books-if they padded expenses, front-loaded revenues, took advances on salary… or didn’t-told you everything you needed to know about him. Chapel was no mentalist. He was just good at finding the man inside the numbers.
“Yeah, I got him.” Chapel nudged Keck. “Let’s get up close and personal.”
The camera zoomed in and the back of the man’s head filled the monitor. Black hair cut short, a little greasy kid stuff in it to give it some pizzazz. Pink checked shirt. Turn around, Chapel ordered the image. Let me get a look at you. The head turned, but only for a second, then it was back to studying the rings in the window.
“Did he give you enough of a profile?”
“Sorry,” said Keck. “I need a full frontal shot.”
“Stay clear,” Chapel ordered Santini and Gomez. “Carmine, take a minute at Boucheron, and a minute at Facconable. Ray, ditch that line and move to twenty yards.”
“Yo, Kreskin,” said Santini. “You’re getting good at this. Pretty soon you’re going to ditch that desk and come into the field full-time with us.”
“Doubtful,” said Chapel, but for the first time the idea appealed to him.
Santini moved on to the next boutique, his eyes glued to the window in front of him. Gomez made a show of checking his watch, then shaking his head in frustration as he set off toward the jewelry store. Both had woven themselves into the human fabric of the square and were invisible to the watcher’s eye.
Leclerc had slipped the barrel of his rifle through the curtain and laid it on the windowsill. Still as a cat, he crouched, cheek pressed to the gun’s wooden stock.
“Well,” said Keck as he stared at the figure on the monitor. “Either the price of the ring’s too high or he’s having second thoughts about the girl. Come on, buddy, make up your mind. Go inside or move along.”
Romeo broke off from the window and continued down the street.
“False alarm,” said Santini.
“Patience,” said Babtiste.
“Damn,” said Chapel.
“Crusader! Crusader!”
Sarah Churchill peered in horror at the seething crowd encircling her, reading hatred and blood lust in their eyes. “Crusader” was the spiteful label slapped on any Westerner, civilian or combatant, who defiled the land of Islam. The voices grew louder and she sensed an evil animus rising among them. No longer were they just a bunch of curious onlookers. They were a force. Willful. Intent. United in unholy purpose.
“Crusader! Crusader!”
It’s medieval, she told herself. Any minute, they’re going to send out the Imam himself. He’s going to declare me a heretic, and they’re going to put me to the stake. Saint Joan, redux.
No, she corrected herself, this is Pakistan. The Hindu Kush. They do worse things to you than burn you at the stake. They stone you. They chop off your hands and legs and tar the stumps. They run bulldozers up and down your body, and if that doesn’t do the trick, they topple a stone wall onto you. They hadn’t given her the cyanide so she wouldn’t talk. They’d given it to her to avoid this. Zionist crusaders merited the most gruesome of deaths.
Dirt fell from her fingers as she struggled to remain standing. The punch had caught her squarely on the cheek, knocking the sunglasses from her face. Blood pooled in her mouth. Her vision was a mess. She was dizzy. Either the bruising or the heat made the world dip and twirl, even as she fought to stand still.
God, the heat.
“Bit of a mess here, boys,” she spoke into her mike. “Wondering if that A-team you mentioned is due anytime soon.”
With a start, she noticed the microphone was no longer there. White noise hissed in her earpiece. A hand fell to the transmitter, got tangled in the burqa, then found it. She pressed the reset button, but nothing happened. Damned thing must have broken when Sayeed knocked her to the ground.