The Devil's Banker (19 page)

The two minutes passed in agonizing silence, all of them too keyed up to say a word.

“Nothing,” Bonnard announced to a chorus of groans. He printed out a copy of the suspicious activity report and handed it to Chapel. “This helps?”

Chapel eyed the sheet, committing to memory the name of Albert Daudin and account number 788-87677G at the Bank Montparnasse. Was it another dead end? Another of Taleel’s elaborately constructed Chinese boxes? Chapel didn’t think so. This was the one no one was supposed to find. A mistake born of desperation. They had their golden thread. Now all they had to do was pull and watch Hijira unravel. “Yeah, Giles,” he said. “It helps. Big-time.”

Chapter 20

The doors to Mortier Caserne slammed behind Leclerc, and he swore audibly.
“Merde.”
He kicked the toe of his boot into the rutted concrete drive once, very hard.
“Merde,”
he said again, turning his head to direct the epithet at the massive oak doors.

Rafi Boubilas would not talk. The owner of Royal Joailliers had a lawyer, and the leftist bitch was promising to stay at her client’s side until either he was charged or he was released. When Leclerc had told her to sod off, that she would stay with Boubilas as long they allowed her and not a minute longer, she’d laid into him with a torrent of abuse. It was a screaming match, and as usual, the woman involved won.
“J’accuse!”
she wailed, a latter-day Zola with her red beret, Chanel bag, and cell phone at the ready.

It was nearly seven o’clock. Leclerc walked along the sidewalk beneath a row of century-old elms. The evening sunshine warmed the leafy canopy and dusted the air with a comforting, soporific hue, but did little to brighten his mood. If he had his way, they’d jail the loudmouthed broad with her client in La Sante and let her get a taste of real prison life. A six-by-nine-foot cell with dripping walls, a metal toilet that backed up every time you took a crap, and food that would sicken a cockroach. Leclerc would be free to speak with Boubilas as he saw fit, and that would be that.

His motorcycle sat parked a few yards away. Zipping up his leather jacket, he threw a leg over the black Ducati Monster. He checked the choke and his hand came away greasy. The bike needed a wash. Just then, a thought came to him, and he was surprised he hadn’t had it earlier. “Shoot first, ask questions later,” Admiral Owen Glendenning had said. Fine. It was agreed. Leclerc would take him up on the offer. Target number one would be Monsieur Rafi Boubilas, owner of Royal Joailliers, drug dealer, conspirator of terrorists, and world-class scumbag. The bitch wanted him released.
Tant mieux.
Leclerc pulled out his cell phone.

“Edmond,” he said. “Release our guest.”

“Boubilas?” asked Colonel Edmond Courtois, commandant of Mortier Caserne. “You’re joking. Let me work on him tonight. The lawyer won’t stay much longer. She was just saying she’d sleep here to piss you off.”

“Trust me,
mon vieux.
Release him. I guarantee you that tomorrow he will wish that he were still your guest.”

“It is all right?”

“Call Gadbois if you want.”

Courtois laughed gruffly. The mention of the spy chief’s name was enough. “Need any help?”

“Have Schmid and Guillo meet me here at midnight at the Casern.”

“Should they bring any kit?”

“Their hands will do.”

Leclerc slipped on his helmet, lowered the mirrored visor, and started the engine. The Ducati growled magnificently. Goosing the bike, he turned toward downtown and headed into the city. Traffic was already thinning, and he needed only a quarter of an hour to reach Sûréte headquarters on the Rue Lamartine.

“What do you mean, I can’t get into the bank?” Adam Chapel sat on the edge of Giles Bonnard’s desk, arms raised in exasperation. “It’s barely nine o’clock. Someone has to be there.”

“It’s not a question of time,” Bonnard explained. “Their computers are down for the night. The ISM manager told me their central database is backed up each evening between eight and three. During that time, no queries can be entered. He can interrupt the backup, but it will take him longer to reset the system than if you just waited it out.”

An hour ago, Chapel had called Leclerc, and he imagined Leclerc had called Gadbois, and Gadbois, the minister of defense, and so on up the line until someone had called the president of Bank Montparnasse and informed him that his bank had given comfort and solace to a known terrorist who the day before had killed three American law enforcement agents and a member of his own country’s espionage service. The bank president had thereupon pledged his immediate and total cooperation. The chain of command, precarious as it was in international investigations, had functioned perfectly. And now, all of it was being foiled by the very technology they were relying on to succeed.

“You’re to go to the bank’s admin center at six tomorrow morning,” Bonnard went on. “They’ve promised to have all of Mr. Daudin’s records waiting for you then.” When Chapel didn’t budge, Bonnard grew angry. “Christ, man, be happy with what you’ve got. You picked up an important lead, and God knows, it’s a miracle Montparnasse is cooperating with you. Adam, they are literally opening the doors for you. Three hours early, I might add!” He rolled back his chair and stood up. “Sarah, I’ll let you tell him that he looks like shit. Get some sleep, Adam.”

Bonnard stalked from the office.

Chapel shook his head at his colleague’s behavior. “We’re the ones who should be ticked off.”

“He did his best and you didn’t even say thanks.”

“Thanks? I’m supposed to say thanks? Oh, that’s right, I’m in Europe. Excuse me, I best mind my manners.”

Sarah ambled toward the door. “It’s not just a question of manners; it’s a question of class. Now come on, let’s get something to eat. I’m famished.” In the hallway, she looked over her shoulder. “You coming?”

Chapel hadn’t budged from his perch on Bonnard’s desk. “Yeah.”

Sarah raised a finger and shot him a cautionary glance. “This is Paris. Don’t say you want a hamburger or I’ll kill you.”

On the third floor of Sûreté headquarters, Leclerc ran straight into Franc Burckhardt, the beer-bellied Alsatian whose sworn duty was to misplace, falsely tag, or steal every valuable piece of evidence the police collected. He’d known Burckhardt for ten years, but he flashed his military identification all the same. It was procedure, and cunning pricks like Burckhardt thrived on it. “I need to see the items from the Cité Universitaire.”

“Already taken to the labs for analysis.”

“I know, but I heard they’d left behind the computer.”

“A wreck. A husk. Half of it is melted. Worthless.” Burckhardt spat out his words like pistachio shells, with a little spit, to boot.

The Sûreté had one set of computer technicians, the prefecture of police another, and the DGSE, a third. Each thought its own group the most competent. Leclerc thought they were all a bunch of amateurs. He had his own resources and knew just the man to have a look at the PC. He offered Burckhardt a cigarette, but Burckhardt turned it away, as if he couldn’t be bought by such cheap favors.

“Do you mind if I take it with me? The boys at the Caserne are drooling to have a go at it.”

“No problem,” said Burckhardt. “Give me a four-oh-three and it’s yours.” That was the official document number affixed to a transfer of evidence form.

“I’ll go you one better.” Leclerc handed Burckhardt a sheet issued by the chief of the Paris police calling for all members of the force to offer their complete and unremitting support to all those investigating the bombing at Cité Universitaire.

“Impressive.” Burckhardt picked at his teeth as he read. “Just missing one thing—a four-oh-three. Sorry, my friend. Nothing leaves without a paper.”

“Call Gadbois.”

“You call him. I’ll call Mr. Chirac, the President of the republic, and you still won’t be any closer to taking the computer out of here. Four-oh-three. That’s the magic number. I refuse to be busted in rank because a hotshot from the Action Service needs a favor. I’m sorry, Captain.”

Leclerc knew better than to be angry. The infighting and bureaucratic wrangling that went on inside the country’s varied law enforcement agencies was old news, but something no one discussed aloud. If the public ever learned about all the fraternal competition, they’d fire the lot of them—the cops, the detectives, the spies—
all of them,
and start over from scratch. There was, of course, the option of actually obtaining a 403. First he’d have to find a form, then have the chief investigative officer sign off on it, then have the form countersigned by the chief of police, whose office was across town, before bringing it back to Burckhardt no less than twenty-four hours from now. Leclerc had other ideas.

“Mind if I take a look at it, at least?”

“You?” Burckhardt seemed to find this amusing. Shrugging, he opened the mesh gate and walked into the bowels of the evidence locker.

What remained of Mohammed al-Taleel’s personal computer rested on a silver trolley cart. It was a Dell desktop. Besides being charred and warped, it looked like someone very strong and very angry had taken a sledgehammer and beaten the living shit out of it. Leclerc circled it, as if eyeing roadkill. The CD-ROM drive protruded from the casing like an impetuous teenager’s tongue. The housing was cracked, chunks missing helter-skelter, like one of the skulls the Leakeys had found at Olduvai Gorge. The motherboard was broken into a hundred pieces, much of it pulverized into a fine green dust. Maybe tech services had gotten it right for once.

“May I?” he asked Burckhardt, indicating he wanted to pick it up and look at it. The effort at politeness nearly killed him.

“Be my guest.” A buzzer rang, signaling the arrival of another client. Throwing his elbows around, Burckhardt saddled up his pants and offered an admonishing glance. “But leave it here, eh? I’ll be back to check.”

Leclerc nodded, suitably cowed. Finding a screwdriver, he opened the back of the computer, wrenched the casing off, and set it on the floor. The hard drive was destroyed, bent in two, chips of the silicon memory disk falling into his hand, skittering onto the floor. He dropped them into his pocket, then tried slipping the rectangular disk housing into his jacket, seeing if it was noticeable. Right side. Left side. Either way, the bulge was too noticeable.

Leclerc made a note of the serial number. Odds were the unit was stolen or secondhand. All the same, he would have someone in intelligence phone Dell Europe and get the sales info on the unit. Dell computers were purchased online or over the phone, credit card only, and he wanted to know just whose had done the trick. Setting down the computer, he left the evidence locker, waving Burckhardt a disgruntled good-bye.

But to himself, he whispered, “I’ll be back.”

He needed a beer.

Leclerc trotted down the steps of Sûreté headquarters and crossed the street to the Café St.-Martin. He hated the place, if only because its only customers were cops, whom Leclerc did not generally care for, but there wasn’t another café nearby and his head was killing him.

“Pression,”
he said, taking a seat at the bar, lighting a cigarette.

The bartender set down a beer. Leclerc drank half in a single draft. He called Gadbois and spoke to the general’s assistant, asking him to get onto Dell and get the sales information. Yes, Leclerc said, he knew Dell was based out of Ireland. Weren’t they all one big happy family now? The vaunted EC? Leclerc stifled a laugh. The lousy micks should be happy to help out their French compatriots. If not, he’d phone the FBI and have them roust Michael Dell out of his bed in Austin, Texas. One way or the other, he meant to learn who had purchased that computer. And within twelve hours. No excuses.

“Another beer,” Leclerc signaled. “And a Calvados, too.” Anything for his head.

It was Gadbois who was bothering him. Not the blast. Not the lack of sleep. Leaving the American Embassy, the old general had cornered him and forced him into one of the police service buses parked in front of the Chancery.

“A big case for us,” he’d said.

Leclerc knew enough to keep quiet. When Gadbois had something to say, he always did it where there were no witnesses.

“Terrible what happened yesterday. You’re lucky to be alive. You know that, don’t you?” A pat on the shoulder. An appreciative glance. “I like you, Leclerc. You’re hard. Iron. Hmm? A tough son of a bitch. We could have used a few more like you in Algeria, more bastards ready to jump into the fire instead of running from it. We almost had it, you know. This close. This close, it was.” Fucking dinosaur had never gotten over having his ass kicked out of North Africa. Forty years later he was still getting fuzzy over it. “Still, you were lucky. A bomb like that. Babtiste, the Americans. What a mess.” It was all bullshit, thought Leclerc. Preliminaries. Gadbois leaned close and he could smell the garlic on his breath. Gadbois was always taking garlic and ginseng and Gingkoba, chasing down the supplements with his morning tonic of brandy and black coffee. “You’re my eyes and ears, Leclerc. You do as I say and everything’s okay. I want you to help the Americans. Whatever they need, you get it. Glendenning’s a friend. One of us. Understood?”

Leclerc nodded, unable to keep a smirk from his face.

“Don’t piss them off,” Gadbois continued. “It’s their show.
Our country.
But their show.” Gadbois’s rock-hard gut pressed into Leclerc, his eyes narrowing, and for a moment Leclerc saw that, yes, once he’d been a real son of a bitch. “You’re to help,” Gadbois whispered. “But only so much.”

“Pardon?”

“When I say stop, you stop. And don’t you do one thing without telling me. Understood? Now get out of here. Find the bastards who killed Santos Babtiste.”

Tired and disenchanted, Leclerc caught a reflection of himself in the mirror as he sipped his beer. He looked lousy, even for his own low standards. What did he expect after twenty years in his country’s service? Twenty years skulking in the shadows, dreaming up dirty tricks to keep the socialists from succeeding in their plan to make France a second-rate country. Katanga, Senegal, Ivory Coast. How many strongmen had he helped prop up? How many had he knocked down? And why? Oil. Diamonds. Natural gas. National security. Realpolitik. There was always a reason, but lately, he’d stopped caring. He had no say in it, either way. He was a soldier-cum-spy. A dagger to stick into someone’s gut. He wondered if the eyes staring back at him had always been so vacant, and if it was time to start asking why.