The Devil's Banker

Chapter 15

“Roux, Bertrand. Yes, yes. I have it right here. Pays by check the second of every month.” The keyboard clicked as Jules Ricard, office manager of Azema Immobilier, scrolled back in time through Taleel’s rental record. Abruptly, he stopped, and pressed his damp, gray face closer to the monitor. “Incredible, really. Sixteen months and always on the second. ‘Like clockwork,’ you say in English, non?”

“Yeah,” said Chapel, without the verve. “Like clockwork.”

The office was small and cramped and windowless, and like most offices housed in a nineteenth-century building, without the luxury of air-conditioning. In deference to the heat, Ricard had turned off the lights, so that even though it was only three P.M., the room had the fusty, melancholy pallor of an abandoned classroom. Thumbing open the top button of his shirt, Chapel billowed the fabric to get some air.

The place was a pigsty. Strips of paper were taped to every free square inch of Ricard’s monitor, each bearing an abbreviated message punctuated by a quiver of exclamation points. “Appelez P!!” “20:00 Chez FB!!!” “Payez C!!!” Ashtrays filled to overflowing decorated his desk and credenza, while piles of magazines lay toppled and scattered across the floor. Chapel shuddered at the sight. He was a “neatnick” of the first degree, the kind of guy who kept his desk clear of everything but what he was working on at the time and who regularly checked his shelves to make sure the spines of his books were properly aligned. He enjoyed filing. The mere act of organizing calmed him. How anyone could work in such squalor was beyond him.

“Any problems with him?” Sarah asked. “Complaints from neighbors? Parties?”

“None,” said Ricard. Dapper as dapper can be, he was attired in a crisp poplin suit, his thinning ginger hair pasted neatly across his scalp.

“A lot of guests coming and going at odd times?”

“Not that I know of.”

“No roommate?” asked Chapel.

“No.”

“You’re sure?” In his mind, Chapel guarded a clear picture of Taleel’s apartment. He was sure there had been a television set broadcasting a bicycle race. Who in the world walked out of their house with a TV on?

“Absolutely not,” said Ricard gruffly, rolling his chair back an inch and lifting his jaw, as if his dignity had been impugned. “It is a one-bedroom apartment. We are strict. We must be, or else the students would have five or more people in every flat. Especially the Africans. You have no idea! Mr. Roux, never a problem.”

“If only all your tenants were so good,” offered Sarah Churchill.

“I was just going to say the same-” Ricard caught himself, and his voice went as gray as his face. “I am sorry,” he said. “Really, I had no idea who this man was. A terrorist, the paper said. It scares me. An Arab. Taleel?”

“You’ve never met him?” asked Chapel. Pushing aside an enormous hidebound ledger, he cleared a space to lean against a waist-high cabinet.

“Me? No, never.” Ricard consulted the screen, tapping the eraser of his pencil to the appropriate spot. “Antoine Ribaud was the leasing agent. He showed Roux the apartment.”

“Is Mr. Ribaud available?” Sarah asked, fanning herself with a folded copy of Le Monde.

“On vacation. Paris in August… everyone is away. Except the tourists, of course. And me.”

“Where’s he gone?” Chapel was hoping somewhere nearby-Nice, Sardinia, Rome. A phone call from Leclerc, a forty-five-minute flight, and by morning they’d have Ribaud in the hot seat.

“Guatemala,” answered Ricard. “Chichicastenango. To see the Mayan ruins. Or is that in Honduras?”

“Guatemala,” said Sarah, and when she looked across the room at Chapel, he knew they shared the same thought. Ribaud couldn’t have gone farther away if he’d known they were coming. Ricard seemed to sense their frustration and was quick to offer an apology. “Even so, it would make no difference. The company owns thirty-seven buildings in Paris. Over four hundred flats. We only remember the tenants who pay late, or not at all, or those who cause problems. Mr. Roux, he is perfect.” Again, Ricard looked aghast at his choice of words. But Adam thought his reaction justified. He was certain Taleel wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.

“Do you have his banking information?” he asked.

“Yes, yes. Of course. Mr. Crissier telephoned before you came.” Crissier was Leclerc’s work name. A few keystrokes yielded what Adam and Sarah had come for. “His account is with the Banque de Londres et Paris.” Ricard scribbled a nine-digit number on a piece of notepaper and handed it to him. “You are all right, monsieur?” he asked, his face wrinkling with concern. “May I get you a glass of water? You would like to sit, perhaps?”

Chapel caught a glimpse of himself in a gilt-framed mirror. He looked wan and pallid, sickly. One eye drooped lazily. It’s the heat, he told himself. He needed some fresh air. “I’m fine,” he said, rising from the cabinet too quickly, pulling his shoulders back. Too late he remembered his bandaged and blistered skin. The pain was vivid and overwhelming. He sank to his place at the cabinet, his vision bleeding white as if he were staring at a giant sun. “It’s nothing,” he said. “Just a little…” Letting the words drift off, he stood more carefully and swallowed a breath. “Ready to go?”

Sarah took the paper, thanked Jules Ricard, and asked him to call should he remember anything that might be useful about “Bertrand Roux” or his associates. But as they descended the stairway, Chapel wasn’t thinking about Ricard or Taleel, or the investigation at all, for that matter. He was counting the hours until his appointment with Dr. Bac the next morning. He wasn’t sure if he could make it that long.

The Renault sped over the Pont D’Orsay, over the Seine tumbling and sparkling in the afternoon sun like a sea of warring emeralds. Gold-leaf Apollos atop triumphant columns saluted their passage. His window open, Chapel drank in the cooling breeze as the bite of the river’s freshwater brine tickled his nose. He felt better now that they were moving. The sights, the sounds, the smells, of the city distracted him from his own discomfort. More important, the dash through the Parisian streets proved a psychological tonic. To move was to act, and to act was to succeed. However long the odds, however remote the possibility, as long as he was moving, anything was possible.

Upon leaving Ricard’s office, Chapel had called Leclerc and asked him to contact the Banque de Londres et Paris and use his juice to have Roux’s account records ready for examination. Leclerc agreed, and went on to say he had some news of his own. Mohammed al-Taleel had, in fact, obtained a driver’s license in Roux’s name, and given his address as the ruined apartment in the Cité Universitaire. Jotting down the number on his notepad, Chapel enjoyed the first precarious intimation of progress. In addition to a permanent address, government-issued identifications were a must when opening any type of credit account; with banks, utilities, phone, finance companies. It was his experience that money launderers relied on two or three documented aliases to conduct their business. Taleel’s driver’s license number would give them an extra and invaluable tool in spotting his financial footprints.

Ahead, the traffic lights flashed yellow, then green. Maneuvering into the left lane, Sarah guided them in an arcing turn onto the Quai D’Orsay. Shifting into third, she gave the pedal a little muscle and the Renault took off like a jackrabbit.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” she asked, her concern looking a lot like aggravation. She didn’t want Chapel slowing her down. “For a moment back there, you looked like you might keel over.”

“My shoulder was burned pretty badly. I just have to take care when I move it.”

“Maybe you should have stayed in the hospital.”

Chapel looked at her sharply, but kept quiet. And do what? he wanted to ask her. Let someone else go after Taleel. Cede the promise he’d made to his murdered friends to someone they didn’t know. Someone who couldn’t possibly care about nailing their killer as much as he did. Someone who wasn’t as good at his job.

“No way,” he said finally, and sat up straighter to show her that he was okay, that she didn’t have to worry about him, even if it did cause his shoulder to hurt like a sonuvabitch.

They were approaching the cathedral of Notre Dame. Isolated in its own medieval fief between the left and right banks on the Ile de la Cit3;, its blunt towers resisted the summer’s charm, standing gray, stern, and stoic. Someone had come up with the idea of making the Seine into an urban beach. Parasols and lounge chairs lined the concrete walk bordering the river. A sand volleyball court had been set up and two teams played fiercely in front of a bikini-clad throng. A cheer erupted, and its bubbly frivolity lent the day a sense of unreality.

“So you’re the money man?” she asked, without taking her eyes from the road.

“Is that what Admiral Glendenning told you?”

“You don’t call him ‘Glen,’ like everybody else? An American who prefers formality? I don’t know if I should believe you.” She laughed sarcastically, then said, “You’re an accountant, is that right?”

“That’s right. I was at Price Waterhouse.”

“Long time?”

“Six years.”

“How far did you climb?”

Chapel looked at her out of the corner of his eye, not liking the questions, the feeling that she was checking for any inadequacies. “Partner.”

“Impossible!” she cried, and her surprise almost made the years of misplaced effort worthwhile. “You must have worked yourself to the bone. I know, you see. My oldest brother works in the City for one of the snootier investment banks. He’s a partner, too, from what I understand. I haven’t heard from him in ages, except for his dreadful Christmas cards. Sends them unsigned. It’s his wife I feel sorry for: three children and no daddy, to speak of. She makes do with the paycheck, I suppose. He makes loads of money. Practically prints it, I hear. Then again, you can’t cuddle with a pound note, can you? Oh, well, we all choose our sacrifices. Still, I am impressed, Mr. Chapel. And now you’ve gone and traded one eighteen-hour-a-day job for another. Pity about the cut in pay.”

“No pity at all, actually,” said Chapel. “Money-”

“Next thing, you’ll have me believe you’re a patriot.”

When did that become a four-letter word? “And you?”

“Me? Oh, I do it for the travel ops. You know: Voyage to faraway places, meet exotic people, and-”

“And kill them.” Chapel finished it for her, remembering the old bumper sticker that had popped up after the Vietnam War.

“Actually, I just talk to them, try to get them to see things our way, turn them to our side. I like to think I’m a sane advocate of my country’s foreign policy.”

“And a patriot?”

Sarah took a moment to answer. “Once in a while,” she said slowly, deliberately, as if he’d seen a side of her she didn’t like. “And how are things going at FTAT? That’s who you’re with, right? Foreign Terrorist something-or-other?”

“It’s a mouthful,” said Chapel.

“Well,” she said, after a second. “Go on, then.”

“We had some big wins up front: a few major league money-transfer agents and hawalas; some charities ostensibly set up to send money to the Middle East for schools, food, medical care. All told, we froze around a hundred million in assets in those first eighteen months.”

“A hundred million’s not bad.”

“It is and it isn’t. People always talk about how it only cost the hijackers five hundred thousand dollars to mount the operation that resulted in nine-eleven. That might be true, but it takes millions to finance the system that bred those guys. The schools, the camps, the propaganda machines they’ve got turning twenty-four hours a day. Some of the bigger madrasas need a hundred grand a year to keep their doors open. And there are hundreds of those schools in Pakistan alone.”

“Expensive to brainwash an entire generation, isn’t it?”

“What gets me is that when we get inside these organizations and look at their books, we see that a lot of the money-and I’m talking five, ten million dollars-was going to medical supplies, relief funds, to building a hospital here and there. Legitimate works. But the rest was going to the Hamas regional security office or to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade to buy TNT for suicide bombers or AK-47s for the next generation of jihadis. You have no choice but to freeze it all.”

She was looking at him strangely, her head cocked, eyes scrunched up, a determined set to her lips. She was the cat who’d cornered the mouse and was deciding whether to eat it.

“What?” he asked.

“Why, Mr. Chapel, it sounds like you have a conscience.”

“So? That against the law these days?”

“It is in this profession.”

The car was fitted out for undercover work, equipped with a two-way radio, a Heckler and Koch “street sweeper” twenty-gauge racked beneath Adam’s seat, and a dashboard siren hidden inside the glove compartment. Sarah drove confidently, with attention and foresight, as if driving were her job and she was determined to be good at it. She barely took her eyes from the road, and Chapel used her bouts of sustained concentration as an excuse to take a good look at her. In the harsh sunlight, lines of wear spread from her eyes and her mouth, hinting at an inner tension. She was wound tight. Her cool and confident act didn’t fool him a bit. He could see it in the way she sat, too-back barely touching the seat, jaw jutting a half inch too far forward, eyes nailed in front of her. When she’d spoken at the embassy, her voice wasn’t just crisp, it was near military in its inflection. Even in the car, her hand movements belonged to a general delivering a briefing to his commanders. But a while ago, she’d asked him what he did for fun, and when he said train for marathons, she’d burst out laughing. With a supple hand, she’d freed her ponytail and stared at him, for the first time really looking at him, and her eyes had come alive with mischief and merriment and all the qualities she was not allowed to exhibit as an officer of British intelligence.

Only now did he realize that her manner was designed to camouflage what she’d learned to be a professional liability. She was a natural beauty, and she knew, as Chapel had seen firsthand in the business world, that beauty was not equated with smarts, savvy, or any of the positive traits she needed to get ahead in her profession. More than anything, she was competitive, and her diligently veiled ambition frightened him.

“And you?” he asked. “How’d you get him? I mean Sayeed. Or am I allowed to ask?”

Sarah considered his request. “A bit like how you get your bad guys, I suppose. Looked at where the money was going. Problem is, though, in Afghanistan there isn’t any banking system, I mean not like how we know it. It’s still nineteenth century over there-paper ledgers, doing sums on an abacus, the whole works. Audit trails may not lie, but what if there’s no trail to begin with. So you ask questions. You rely on people, even if they are deceitful and untruthful. When you’ve got to find someone in a hurry, I’d take a live source anytime.”

Chapel knew a lecture when he heard it. “And who was yours?”

“Who wasn’t?” she replied, like he’d asked a dumb question. “Information’s the national currency over there. No one’s got any money, but everyone’s got just the story you want to hear. In this case, we came across some reliable information that a lot of field workers were heading to Jalalabad to help harvest poppies for a foreigner, an Arab-Afghan like bin Laden. When ninety-nine percent of the population is destitute, someone who’s throwing money around like confetti sticks out like a sore thumb. Then we got lucky. We learned about a Pakistani banker, a former big shot with BCCI, in from South America, who was heading to the same area. He couldn’t pass through town without letting his old buddies know that he was up to something big. He insulted a lot of Al Qaeda fighters, calling them ill-focused. I heard that he used the word ‘scattershot’ twice, and called their attacks pointless.”

“How did you know he was hooked into Hijira?”

“We tracked him to Sayeed’s village in Jalalabad. No coincidences, Mr. Chapel. Not in this game.”

“Did you pull him in?”

Sarah shook her head and he could see the muscles working in her jaw, a tightening around the eyes. “We lost him at night,” she said with palpable disgust. “Place is like a sieve.”

Bringing the car to a halt at a red light, she thudded a hand against the steering wheel. “Anyway, that’s where we stand. Hijira’s about money. About focus. Of course, we’ve learned something new. They won’t let themselves be captured alive.” She looked at him, and when she spoke, her voice had dropped a note and was stripped clean of artifice. “Tell me, Mr. Chapel, what are they planning that they’d rather die than tell us?”