The Devil's Banker (4 page)

The first whispers had reached her at her desk in London, though by wildly different routes. A field officer had buried a mention in his report of some rumors he’d picked up at a party at the Indian consul’s in Kabul, the kind of boozy affair frequented by aid workers, diplomats, and the local gentry, in this case a few of the tamer regional warlords. Then there were the firsthand snippets delivered over a tepid lunch at Fortnum’s by a wallah from agriculture just back from a tour of the area: something vague about a new poppy farmer in the southeast taking control of the large fields near Jalalabad. With the Taliban gone, the Afghanis were hell-bent on reclaiming their place as the world’s largest suppliers of raw opium. Word was, however, that the seller wasn’t a local, but an Arab-Afghan like bin Laden, a devout Muslim from the Gulf who had fought as a Mujahadeen during the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. There were rumors of an important sale. Several tons of product coming to market.

Both times the word “Hijira” came up.

“Hijira,” as in the journey from Mecca to Medinah undertaken by the Prophet Muhammad in the year
A.D.
622 to escape persecution. Or more important, “Hijira,” as in the date from which the new Muslim calendar began.

To Sarah’s seasoned ears, it could not be a coincidence.

Marshaling her evidence, she’d marched downstairs to Peter Callan’s office and demanded an immediate posting in country. When he demurred, she blew her stack. Wasn’t CT what it was all about these days? Counterterrorism. Intelligence’s desperately needed raison d’être borne on silver wings in what everybody had to agree was the barest nick of time. When he hesitated still, she built his argument for him. Arabic speakers were in demand. Those who spoke Pashtun were particularly prized. Sarah, who’d taken a first in Oriental languages at Cambridge, trumped them all, with Urdu, French, and German under her belt as well. The question wasn’t why she should go to Afghanistan. It was why she wasn’t already there! Callan had grunted something about a budget and called Langley.

Four days later, she was packed aboard a commercial flight to Dulles for a one month’s crash course in the culture of the American intelligence community. From there, it was on to Karachi, and by overland route to Kabul.

Her brief was simple: Keep an ear to the ground for the bad guys. “Players,” the Yanks called them. She was to cultivate sources, debrief agents in place, and establish her own network.

“Follow the money” was her maxim, and it led to the gold souks of Gilgit, the vaults of the Afghani central bank, and Kabul’s bustling black market for medical supplies.

While she never found the Arab-Afghan, she did run across one Abu Mohammed Sayeed, wanted by nearly every Western intelligence agency for barbarous acts too numerous to mention, as he scurried to and fro across her radar arranging to sell his mother lode of opium.

Follow the money,
she repeated silently, staring at the gold chain in her hand. She had, and the money had led her here, to Faisan Bhatia’s jewelry store in the heart of the Smugglers’ Bazaar.

“No, no,” she remonstrated the clerk. “The quality of the links is terrible. Look: this is not solid gold. It is electroplated.”

“Yes. Twenty microns.”

“Ten at most,” she countered. “I can scratch it off with my fingernail.”

She’d been in the store for twenty minutes, and her every sensor was telling her to get the hell out. One of the surveillance cameras was pointed directly at her, and she could imagine Sayeed in the back room, glancing up at the monitor and asking, “Is she still there? That’s a bit long, isn’t it?”

She dropped the chain on the counter and pretended to spot a bracelet that captured her fancy.

“There’s been a delay,” said a voice in her ear. “A traffic jam.” It was Ranger and he no longer sounded so calm and authoritative. “The A-team will be there in five minutes. If Omar comes out, you need to stop him. Once he’s in the bazaar, he’s got the advantage. We need him penned in.”

Stop him?
The reply choked deep in her throat. Damn it! She knew they wouldn’t make it in time.

“Are you with me?” asked Ranger. “Just nod.”

So, it had come to this, thought Sarah. With all their satellites and uplinks and GPS, it had come back to the same old thing. Put your body in front of the bullet.

She would do it. She never considered saying no. Not with a daddy who’d gone ashore with 2 Para at Goose Green in the Falklands and a brother who’d done thirty missions over Baghdad. The Churchills were bred to fight. And they had the coat of arms and the professional soldier’s proud penury to prove it.

She just hadn’t thought it would be hers to do alone.

Swallowing, she found her throat dry as a chalkboard. It was the heat, she told herself.

She nodded.

“I’d like to see the red one.” To her surprise, Sarah realized that she was asking the salesman a second time to see the bracelet and that he wasn’t responding. She heard a rustle behind her, the creak of a door opening, hushed voices. The salesman’s eyes were pinned to the men emerging from the back room. Against her every instinct, she turned so that Langley could see what she was seeing, so that they would know that their vaunted A-team, their bare-chested macho superstars, were too late, and that Omar was going to get away unless she tackled him right then and there.

Sayeed was talking on a cell phone, his words rushed, urgent. She caught a string of numbers, a pause, saw his mouth widen to utter an arrogant laugh. As he slid past her, she caught his ripe scent.

Stop him,
Glendenning had said.

Sarah took a step back. The collision was stilted and orchestrated. Sayeed grunted and spun, immediately on the defensive. And even as she turned to apologize, and the futility of her cause overcame her, she knew that, at least for a moment, she’d accomplished what she’d been told, and that her father, the general himself, would be proud.

Abu Sayeed lifted his arm to brush away the woman, his eyes drawn into a distasteful grimace. Until she had backed into him like a clumsy ox, he thought he’d been wrong to suspect her. Her
burqa
was immaculate. Her posture at once respectful, yet with the right amount of pride. She revealed no part of herself. She was a righteous woman, not a street whore eager to prey on a man with a little money in his pocket.

Abu Sayeed believed in the law of
Hijaab,
or “concealment.” He believed that women had no place in public. They belonged at home, caring for children, tending to their household. Only in this way could their dignity be upheld, their purity protected. Should they have to venture out, they must cover their figure in deference to the Prophet. The smallest piece of exposed flesh was as provocative as a woman’s pudenda.

Now he knew it was a sham. Her adherence to
Hijaab,
a lie; a ploy to rid an unsuspecting male of a few dollars. It was common enough practice. You could barely pass a diamond merchant without spotting the women waiting outside like jackals. After all, if a man had a few hundred dollars to spend on a precious stone, he might be willing to part with a good deal less to sate his baser desires. He’d been mistaken. The cloudy reception on Bhatia’s TV was from her pager, no doubt. They all carried them, anxious to meet their customers’ beck and call. Carrion birds, they were. Vultures. And laden with as many diseases.

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.”