The Devil's Banker

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.

Inside the hotel lobby, a wilted chandelier burned too brightly.

“Chambre cinquante-deux,” he told the hotelier, his French passable.

“Soixante-neuf,” Sarah said a moment later, taking a place at his side. The hotelier turned and gathered the keys from their respective boxes. The lady received hers first, along with a friendly “bonne nuit.”

“You must be exhausted,” she said as they headed to the stairs. “How’s the shoulder?”

“It’s there,” he said, defying the insistent, and increasingly uncomfortable, throbbing. His room was on the second floor. “See you in the lobby at five-thirty,” he said as he left the stairwell and walked down the corridor.

“Five forty-five,” Sarah countered. “At that time of morning, we’ll make it to the bank in five minutes.”

As Chapel inserted the key into the lock, he had a portrait of Sarah in his mind. The excited brows, the perky smile, the way she’d raised herself on her tiptoes and had given him the coyest of waves. Spinning on a heel, he looked down the hall, wanting her still to be there. Not to invite her in. Not even to say good night. Just to double-check the expression. He had no idea whether or not it was sincere.

Seated alone in the third row of the first-class cabin, Marc Gabriel sipped at his mineral water and stared out the window into the infinite black sky. Flying relaxed him as nothing else. The gentle, constant throbbing of the MD-11’s Rolls-Royce engines lulled him into a pleasant, soporofic state that allowed his mind to ponder his varied challenges, slipping from one to the other, taking the objective view and analyzing each without fear or rancor or the frenzied immediacy that his current situation demanded.

Closing his eyes, he saw the gritty, mud-coated streets of Ciudad del Este, tasted the infernal damp heat that he adored, sniffed the choking exhaust that was every third world city’s curse. He was not worried about what he would find or that he would not be able to rectify the situation. He knew all the players and what they were capable of. One way or another, he would have his money. Absently, his hand rose to his jacket, feeling for his passport-an authentic Belgian issue listing him as Claude François, a forty-five-year-old resident of Brussels. It was the formalities that caused him concern. His mind ran ahead to the flight home, to the news of the U.S. Treasury agent’s murder, to his own meeting the next day with the Israeli professor and the divine moment when the package would be his.

Beneath his blanket, his fingers had found his cuff links. They were from Boucheron, gold with neat little batons of hematite or onyx or lapis lazuli that one could slip in and out. Delicately, he played with them, realizing how much he’d always loved them. There was no reason for it, other than that they had always seemed to him the pinnacle of Western fashion. In a few days, he’d have no need for them. His father abhorred Western dress. So had Marc Gabriel’s oldest brother, dead these twenty-five years, and the one who had started them all down this road. He had been the fanatic, the pilgrim, the puritan of the family.

So much death. So much sadness.

He allowed himself to mourn Taleel. His death was tragic, yes, but the transfer had been a priority. Withdrawing half a million dollars from a local bank was not a possibility. Notification would have to have been given days in advance; the funds wired in from one of the company’s secure accounts; arrangements made to gather the American currency. Naturally, the manager would have insisted on meeting him. He shuddered, thinking of the trail he would have left. He might as well have sent the Americans a telegram asking them to meet him at the bank and to bring their most comfortable handcuffs.

No, Taleel, he explained to the man’s departed soul. There was no other way. Your death was necessary, crucial even. Your actions have brought us one step closer. To the brink.

A sad smile cracked his lips. He would not mourn. Every soldier knows that one day his name will be called. It is the price of duty, the stamp of honor. If anything, he reminded himself, it was a time for optimism. Twenty years’ preparation was at an end. The day of celebration at hand.

“Sir, is everything all right?” An attractive flight attendant with dusky brown eyes knelt next to his seat, her hand brushing his shoulder. “May I offer you a glass of something?”

Gabriel realized he was crying. Sitting up, he wiped away the tear that had run down his cheek. “Most kind,” he answered, “but I think I will try to sleep a bit. Tomorrow promises to be a busy day.”

He knew he wouldn’t be able to sleep. Still, Chapel moved around the room, going through the motions. He took off his shoes and socks. He washed his hands and brushed his teeth. With a nod to Giles Bonnard, and maybe even to Sarah and her aversion to American “boors,” he took care to mind the crease as he hung up his trousers. His shirt was history-two tomato stains, a freckling of grease, and, yes, even a clip of onion. He didn’t have to worry about being a boor. He was a certified slob. Thou shalt not wear a white shirt to an Italian restaurant. It should be a commandment. Gingerly, he peeled it off, one shoulder at a time. A corner of the gauze bandage came loose, and for a moment he stared at the moonscape of burned flesh. It was another man’s shoulder: ravaged, frighteningly red, and coated with a gelatinous ooze. Averting his eyes, he replaced the bandage and pressed his palm firmly on the gauze. The pain washed over him in waves, and as it crested, he sank to his bed and groaned. The shoulder was his, all right. He had oceans to cross before it would be healed.

His medication sat on the night table, arranged in a row. Dr. Bac had prescribed ampicillin to prevent infections, hydrocortisone to arrest inflammation, and Vicodin to combat the pain. There were stronger painkillers, but not many, he thought as he shook loose a few tablets. He stared at the pills lolling in his palm, then dropped them back into the container.

Five minutes later, he was on the street in his jeans and a T-shirt, the bandage visible, but no one paying it much attention. He walked toward the river, his stride growing until he found his marching rhythm and locked into step. He passed the Café Aux Deux Magots, favorite haunt of a lost generation, tables packed, white-aproned waiters navigating the throng, trays held on high. Across the way, the church of Ste.-Geneviève-du-Mont’s four-square spire stabbed the sky’s soft underbelly. A plaque informed him that René Descartes was buried on the premises. Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am. No, thought Chapel. He had it wrong. I act, therefore I am.

Crossing the square, he stared at the spire, at the narrow refectory windows, at the sturdy wooden doors, built, at least to Chapel’s eyes, to keep people out rather than allow them entry. In the morning, caskets holding the bodies of his fellow jump team members were to be loaded aboard a U.S. Air Force jet and flown to Andrews Air Force Base, from there to be dispatched to each man’s hometown. Keck to Falls Church. Gomez to Trenton. Santini to Buffalo. Which God would their families pray to? The benevolent deity who promised infinite kindness? The watchmaker who’d set the world in motion, then turned his mind to bigger game? Or the murderous mute who demanded belief in the face of extraordinary barbarism?

A glance at the sky, the capture of a single sparkling star, provided Chapel all the comfort he needed. Whoever or whatever made that-and something did, you could bet on it-would take care of him whenever the time came. It seemed to him that man ought to stop counting so much on God to look after him, and start relying a little more on himself.

The streets narrowed, grew quiet, a canyon of silence that suited him. For a block, he was alone, eerily so. A pair of footsteps not his own echoed behind him, and instinctively, he checked over his shoulder. A shadow blended into a doorway. Another late-night wanderer. He passed the commissariat de police, hitting the Quai d’Orsay two blocks later. More noise, but by then he didn’t care. His ear was turned inward, listening to the rumblings of his own troubled conscience. Crosswalks in Paris can be a half-mile apart. Chapel ran across six lanes of traffic, pulled up at the esplanade overlooking the Seine as a bateau-mouche slid past, lights blazing, one of the party boats-he could hear the bubbly chatter over the cars zooming past at his back. Over the thumping of his heart. He dropped a hand to his leg. Strong as ever. “The office is near the Métro. Mr. Chapel won’t have to walk far.” Fuck you, too, Leclerc, he murmured.

He followed the river north, the Eiffel Tower his guide, breathtaking for the hundredth time, lit stem to stern, bathing the night in a warm, celebratory glow. He crossed at the Pont de l’Alma, and continued along the Rive Droite, leaving the Seine at the Palais de Chaillot, moving back into the city. The sixteenth arrondissement was largely a business district, the few restaurants he passed long closed, dark storefronts staring back at him. In their reflections, he saw the faces of his departed colleagues as he remembered them best. Keck configuring a surveillance system; Gomez slamming a fist on his desk and hooting after a judge had granted his motion for a search warrant; Santini cracking wise from behind the Sporting News; and Babtiste, a gentle giant who sought benediction not from God, but from his two children. Boys, Chapel had learned, seven and four, their mother taken from them by cancer the year before, now orphans. Who had told them their father was dead? Who had blotted the hope from their lives?

A wave of hate swept through him. He promised to exact a swift and terrible retribution for the deaths of his friends. He would be merciless. He would kill without compunction. He would avenge. Chapel laughed at himself. He was the only enforcement agent he knew who didn’t carry a gun. He could never be an angel of death. Having grown up in a household where violence was an everyday occurrence, he had a built-in aversion to it. He was physically incapable of it. Yet, part of him knew that someday he might be put to that test. He tried to imagine pulling a trigger, actually shooting to kill. It was no good. He couldn’t put himself in that picture. Then he saw himself stepping in front of a child, and this time, it worked. He could feel the trigger buckle under his finger, his arm reverberate with the weapon’s kick. He told himself that if he had to kill, it would be for a different reason. To make sure that there were fewer boys left without a father, fewer children who spent their lives fruitlessly trying to fill the void left by sudden death.

Scattered lights burned on the upper floors. Sarah had said that Neuilly was a tony area; one of the city’s ritziest neighborhoods. There was little clue to the fact. Few pedestrians were out, though that was to be expected at this hour. Traffic was so light as to be nonexistent. Otherwise, it was just another immaculate street in an immaculate city.

Finally, he stopped, his breath steady, his pulse eager, craving the order to move out. A blue and white lightboard high on the wall read “ATM.” Next to it, a city placard showed the street. “Rue Saint-Paul. XVIeme.” On his city map, he’d inked three red dots and two blue ones at this location. It was the epicenter of Taleel’s activity. Slowly, he turned, looking at the buildings around him.

“You’re here,” he whispered to the mute façades.

“I’m going to find you,” he promised the drawn curtains.

“And then, by God…” and here words failed him. He wasn’t sure what he would do.

Somewhere behind his accusing eyes, a chorus demanded answers to questions he would never dare ask aloud. Would the discovery of Taleel’s trail really lead to his accomplices? Was there time to track them down? Would it be enough to thwart the attack on American soil the man on the videotape had spoken of? And deeper questions still. Was he up to this challenge? Did he have the experience to lead the investigation?

Time and again, the answer came back yes. He was certain Taleel’s account at the Bank Montparnasse would yield information that pointed to Taleel’s accomplices. From them, he would exact information about where and when the attack was to take place. And, yes, he would have adequate time to stop them.

I believe, therefore I can.

To Adam Chapel, belief was an all-conquering force. Hesitation, doubt, ambiguity: these were words that brought a man nothing, worlds that led to failure, defeat, and shame. And tonight, as he stood alone beneath a flickering light in a section of the city he’d never visited before, he knew he must rely on his will alone to find Taleel’s accomplices, to put a stop to their deadly plans, and to rescue his only chance at living a life free of torment.