The Devil's Banker (20 page)

Forget it,
he said, twirling on his bar stool, staring out at the early evening assembly of notables. The usual gaggle of overweight, ill-shaven plainclothes cops crowded the walls and packed the corner tables. Someone dropped a euro into the jukebox and Jacques Brel sang,
“Ne me quitte pas, il faut oublier, tout peut s’oublier. . . .”
A few cops joined in, not half-bad, actually, but Leclerc was captivated by other words.

You’re to help. But only so much.

He lit a second cigarette from the end of the first. A small, insistent hammer was tap-tap-tapping at the back of his eyes, driving him crazy. The Calvados arrived. He picked up the snifter, swirled around the burnished liquid, sniffed it, then poured it down the gullet. The burn was to savor.

And if he had helped more yesterday? If he’d been a little quicker, as quick as Chapel, the glorified accountant still wet behind the ears? Leclerc had nothing to blame for his indecision. Not the jitters of a new command or an illness that garlic, Gingkoba, or a half bottle of Rémy Martin between sunset and sundown might cure. Leclerc had a curse. A stain.

Just then, the plump, disheveled form of Sergeant Franc Burckhardt, twenty-two-year veteran of the force, indispensable cog in the fight against crime, waddled down the stairs of Sûreté headquarters and disappeared along the street.

Leclerc paid for his drinks and left.

The length of duct tape was still stretched tight across the lock where he’d left it. Leclerc peeled it off, let the gate to the evidence locker close behind him, then walked through the maze of shelves to the trolley where Taleel’s computer sat like a broken toy. You want courage? Drink a couple beers, down a Calvados, and you’ll have all the courage you need. Need a volunteer? Captain Leclerc is your man.

The hard disk didn’t fit any better this time than it had an hour ago. Opening his jacket, he stuffed it inside, then yanked up the zipper. If anyone asked him what he was hiding, he’d pull a face and say a fuckin’ Uzi, did they want to see it?

It didn’t come to that. By nine o’clock the headquarters of the Sûreté was as empty as any other office—government or otherwise—in a country where thirty-five-hour workweeks were considered the norm. Even if Burckhardt discovered that the hard drive was missing, Leclerc doubted he would say anything. Burckhardt was a survivor. He could be counted on to avoid initiating any actions that might steer trouble his way.

Leclerc stopped at the counter and pulled the evidence log out from the top drawer. Licking a thumb, he reviewed everything that had been accepted into safekeeping during the last twenty-four hours. He stopped when he saw René Montbusson’s name. Montbusson, the evidence man at the Cité Universitaire. Sliding his fingernail across the page, he stopped beneath the word “map.”
Zut!
No one had told him anything about any map being found in Taleel’s apartment.

It only took a minute to find the shelf where Burckhardt had laid the evidence. The spot was bare. Leclerc looked above and below, to the left and right. The map would be in either a sealed envelope or a plastic slipcover. He saw nothing that fit the bill. Rushing back to the counter, he double-checked to see if someone had signed out the map, but the ledger bore no mark.

Someone had beat Leclerc to the punch.

It was a short ride to Clichy and a run-down apartment house. Leclerc rang the bell next to the name marked “Dupuy, Etienne.”

“Who is it?” a whiskey-soaked voice asked.

“A servant of your government. We need to call you back to the service in the name of the nation’s security.”

“Fuck off.” The buzzer sounded and Leclerc entered the building.

Dupuy stared at the ruined disk. “
Mon Dieu.
What happened to it? Grenade go off near it?”

Leclerc didn’t bat an eye. “Can you put it together?”

“Put what together? There’s fuckall of it left.”

“Humor me,” said Leclerc, though he wasn’t smiling. “You’ll do it or I’ll tell the general you’re on the sauce again. You know how he feels about loose lips. For starters, you can count on your pension being cut. I should tell you, he’s in a pissy mood these days. He never did exactly like you. A drunken queen fifty pounds overweight. Not the type he saw in the service. He might very well send someone like me over to effect a more permanent remedy.”

Dupuy scratched at his three-day stubble. “I see you haven’t lost your charm.”

“You bring out the gentleman in me.”

Dupuy lifted the housing with a finger, peeking inside. “Can’t tell you what I’ll find. Don’t expect anything.”

“If there’s so much as a lick of information on that disk, I want to know it,” said Leclerc.

“Jawohl, mein Commandant.”
Dupuy threw off a
Führer gruss.
“How long do I have?”

Leclerc thought what might be reasonable, then subtracted a day. “Twenty-four hours.”

“Good,” breathed Dupuy. “For a moment there I thought you wanted me to hurry.”

Chapter 21

In the gloom of his private study, Marc Gabriel sat on the edge of his glass desk and waited for his son to join him. His hands flitted to his chin, adjusted the knot of his Hermès tie (a habit he violently combated, as it darkened the fine silk with grease), and patted down his hair. It had been a tumultuous two days, but Gabriel had known the death of close ones and the terror of imminent discovery before. On balance, the day’s news should have eased, rather than provoked, his concerns. The professor had made contact. In forty-eight hours he would be in Paris. Rafi Boubilas had been released from custody without divulging news of their relationship. A decision had been taken about Gregorio. Gabriel had yet to pack his bags, sort out his passports, and place a few calls to Ciudad del Este in advance of his flight to South America later that evening, but these were trivial duties. The fact was that when the sun set this evening, the family’s dream would be closer to fruition than any of them might have dared imagine even a year ago.

At six o’clock, the two-story town house buzzed with the frenetic activity of his three bright and active children, his French family. Upstairs in the living room, Geneviève could be heard practicing a Chopin nocturne. The melancholy strains grew in intensity, then softened, not a note misplayed. Just twelve, she was uncommonly gifted, and though she was afraid to tell him, he knew she hoped for a career in music. In two weeks, she was scheduled to play a recital for the city’s most talented young pianists at the Salle Pleyel. It was a shame she would not be in Paris to attend.

From the kitchen issued the sound of his seven-year-old, Arthur, demanding a sweet before dinner. Silently, Gabriel urged his wife to be firm, knowing all the same that she was powerless against him, as a proper mother should be toward her sons. Amina’s singsong voice was barely audible above the merry clamor of pots and pans. Lamb was on the menu, if his nose did not deceive him. One sound was pleasantly absent. The incessant jabber of TV. Television was not permitted in the Gabriel household.

“Amina said you wanted to see me.”

Gabriel rose from the desk, an arm extended in welcome. “Ah, George, come in, come in.”

George Gabriel entered the room hesitantly, hands jammed in the back pockets of his Levi’s, eyes black as a well staring out of a strong, handsome face. He was a big boy, six feet two inches tall, with shoulders that put Atlas to shame and a forthright, uncomplicated manner. As usual, he wore the navy jersey of the French national soccer team. What wasn’t usual was the newly razored scalp. “Like Zidane,” his wife had forewarned him. “It’s important to him that you like it.”

“Come here, then. Let me have a look at you,” said Gabriel, swallowing his anger. “Makes you look older. Responsible.” What it really made him look like was a muscle-bound hooligan. Brooding, angry, and a little too dangerous. “Sit down. I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages. How are your studies progressing? Finally getting the hang of derivatives? You’ll have to master math if you want to become a doctor.”

“I’m past those. It’s binomials that are tripping me up now. I have plenty of time to get the hang of them. The Bac’s in June.” “Bac” meant the baccalaureate, the national examination that determined which children would go on to university. In his final year at gymnasium, George Gabriel was an honor student as well as captain of the soccer team. He played center forward with a joyous ferocity that thrilled his father.

“I’m sure you’ll do splendidly. Me, I was a poor student. You’ve already outshone me ten times.”

Gabriel ushered his son into the room, closing the door behind him. The study was a private enclave—no trespassing allowed—and George checked out the surroundings with a burglar’s admiring glower. The décor was French minimalist: sleek bookshelves and lacquered Roche Bobois credenzas done in neutral tones. “Have you got a game this weekend?”

“Just practice. Coach is sick. I’m taking over.”

“I hope you’re not neglecting your other studies.” Gabriel regretted the words the moment they’d left his mouth. It wasn’t like him to preach. No
dawah
from Daddy. That was the rule. He did not drink alcohol. He did not use foul language. He did not stay out late and carouse. He lived as he hoped his children would live and expected his example to suffice.

“No,” said George, sinking into a chair in front of the desk, balancing his muscled frame on the edge, a none-too-subtle indication he hoped the meeting would be brief. Small talk had never come easily between father and son. Gabriel didn’t usually arrive home from work until eight
P.M.
By then, the children were either doing their homework or getting ready for bed. It might be a mother’s job to tend the children, but the fact did little to ease his sadness at not knowing them well enough. He could not lie to himself that things would change anytime soon. If anything, he would soon be even busier.

Sliding into the chair opposite his son, Gabriel appraised him a last time. It wasn’t a question of whether he was up to the task. He was. He’d spent six weeks at a camp in the Bekaa last summer learning the rudiments of a soldier’s trade. Prior to graduation, he’d broken the arm and jaw of his hand-to-hand combat instructor. The boy was strong and capable. Still, camp was only a rehearsal.

And there was the other matter. The reason, he could now admit, for his anxiety. A subtle, but unmistakable, resistance had cropped up since the boy’s return from the Middle East. Not rebellion so much as a guarded criticism of all around him. Gabriel could see it in his eyes, and in the reticent way his son carried himself inside the house, and in the newly acquired habit of taking Amina’s side in disputes. The rot was seeping in.

“I am worried about one of the Americans,” he said. “Someone who may hurt us. There is a question of his interfering with our plans.”

“Is he here in Paris?”

“Yes. One of those responsible for Taleel. We must take measures. So close, we can leave nothing to chance.”

Reaching into his pocket, Gabriel took out a ticket jacket bearing the Air France logo and placed it on the table in front of his son. George opened it, and studied the details. Round trip, economy class Paris–Dubai. His eyes flickered. “By we . . . you mean me?”

“You’re no longer a child. It’s time you shared the family’s responsibilities.”

George nodded, his eyes keenly focused as a new alertness came over him. “I’m ready,” he said, and Gabriel noted that his son had tilted his head slightly to one side, and that he wore the vaguely self-satisfied air he put on after scoring a goal.
“Never cocky, just confident,”
his son liked to say.

“The prospect of killing does not frighten you?”

“Yes—I mean, no. I’ve taught myself to block that part of my heart. It scares me, but I’ll be all right.” He thought a moment longer. “This means I’m leaving—I mean, this is it—all that you’ve worked toward these years.”

“We are all leaving.”

George shook his head in amazement. “It’s really happening. I mean, it’s happening now?”

“This weekend.”

“So soon?”

Gabriel wondered if he’d said too much. Reluctantly, he explained. “Abu Sayeed has been killed. It is not known whether he spoke before dying. This is our time. The time for our family to act.” He rose from the chair, and when his son rose, too, he hugged him. “You have made me proud in so many ways. I wanted to give you the chance to make your name, to show your commitment so that all will recognize what you have done for our cause.”

“Thank you, Father. I’m grateful.”

“As for the Bac, I’ve made arrangements for you to take it at home. You’ll sit for the exam at the French school in Jidda next May. Same day as in Paris, I’ve been made to understand. Just a different location.”

George Gabriel flipped open the ticket jacket and studied the flight details. A shudder passed through his sturdy shoulders, followed by a sigh that frightened his father. “Tomorrow?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Gabriel. “I am sorry that it must be so. Understand, son, that I would do this myself if it were at all possible. Unfortunately, I have a problem of my own abroad. I must leave this evening. At such a decisive moment, we can only trust our own.” He reached for his son’s hands. “Am I right to put the trust in you?”

“Yes, Father.”

He kissed his son on the cheeks, and when he embraced the boy, he was pleased to feel the muscled arms hug him in return. He put the sudden tremor, the uneasy sigh, down to nerves. He was, after all, asking a lot of the boy.

Gabriel gave him the details of what needed to be done, the location of the hospital, the name of the attending doctor, a layout of the burn unit. “You’ll be finished by noon. Your flight will depart at nine-fifteen. Someone will meet you at the airport in Dubai and drive you into the desert.” He patted his son’s shoulders. “Your grandfather will be more than proud.”

“Father, may I ask one question?”

“Of course, my son.”

George Gabriel narrowed his eyes, and his father knew he was already steeling himself for the task. “From near or far?”