The Devil's Banker (27 page)

“How much this guy steal from you?” Baumgartner asked. He spoke a mix of Spanish, English, and German, with a complete absence of emotion.

“Too much,” said Gabriel.

“Klar.”

The Paraná River had narrowed to the width of a country road. Branches ventured over the muddy water and more than once, Gabriel saw the thin, writhing shape of a snake hanging near the water. He did not like snakes. At a bend far up the river, he made out the figures of two men waiting on a dock. The boat slowed and Baumgartner shouted to them in German.
“Bitte, werfen sie uns die Seilen!”

Two Toyota SUVs waited in a clearing by the river. “We’ve got the house under surveillance,” Baumgartner explained as they climbed into the vehicles. “The Mercedes is there and one of my men said he spotted Gregorio inside. Two women, too. Maybe he stay at home, have himself a fest.” Baumgartner handed him a pistol. A Beretta nine millimeter. Gabriel was surprised it wasn’t a Luger. “In case he’s not so happy to see you. I’m afraid we can’t kill him for you, too.”

Gabriel began to decline the offer, then had second thoughts.

It had been easy to track Gregorio to his country retreat. A note on his dining room table informed someone named “Elena” to meet him at his ranch. The line reminding her to bring a passport tipped Gabriel off as to his employee’s intent.

The road was a dream, a faultless asphalt expressway leading into an infinite nowhere. More evidence of the Germans’ enlightening presence. The jungle had disappeared, and they sped across expanses of dried marshland, scrub, and chaparral. El Chaco, they called it, an area that stretched for hundreds of miles to the north and west. After fifteen minutes, they turned onto an unmarked dirt road and met up with a squadron of Land Cruisers, similar to their own. Gabriel didn’t know how Baumgartner had mustered them so quickly. The police conferred among themselves. Baumgartner reported back a minute later. “You say he’s not a violent man, we’ll take your word. He’s still inside. He has some music playing. Why not we drive to the front door and let you two boys have a word together?
In Ordnung?
”

“In Ordnung,”
said Gabriel.

Gregorio lived in a sprawling ranch-style house at the end of the road. It was an oasis of civilization in an otherwise barren spot. Palms, a rolling lawn, a swimming pool, and oddly, a basketball net, fronted the house. The convoy numbered six vehicles. Baumgartner approached the house slowly, parking near a tiled fountain. Leaving the lead vehicle, he adjusted his hat, then walked to the door and knocked. Gregorio himself answered. All smiles and an unctuous welcome. Gabriel stepped from the car and Gregorio’s eyes opened as if he’d seen a ghost.

“Hello, Pedro,” Gabriel said after Baumgartner had retreated down the walk. “I’m in a bit of a hurry, so let’s keep this quick, shall we? I know you transferred the money to Switzerland. I must say, though, I’ve never heard of the bank. Bank Moor? Maybe you can teach me something, after all. All I need for you to do is to call the bank and transfer it to a more convenient location. It’s only three in Zurich. Plenty of time.”

Gregorio had two choices. Either he could resist and play dumb, in which case after much unpleasantness, he would admit his folly and transfer the money. Or he could pretend it was all some sort of misunderstanding, plead embarrassment, and transfer the money immediately. In both cases, his death was certain.

“Let the girls go,” he said.

“Of course.”

Gregorio disappeared inside the house. A few minutes later, two local women, dressed as if for a day shopping on the Faubourg-St.-Honoré, hunkered out of the house, each lugging a Louis Vuitton suitcase—fakes, like everything else in Ciudad del Este—and continued past the knot of federal officers down the gravel road. Gabriel watched them go. The nearest village was thirty miles away. Where were they headed in their high heels and designer dresses?

Wrapping an arm around Gregorio’s neck, he led him inside the ranch house. “Come now, Achmed, I’m sure this is all a mix-up. Let’s put it off to cold feet and forget about it. I don’t care who or what is responsible. First, we’ll straighten things out. Then we can discuss your plans for our central bank’s policy—the liberalized loan requirements I’d mentioned.”

I’ll be doing him a favor,
Gabriel thought to himself.
Rescuing him from the rot. Saving whatever chance he has left of seeing Paradise.

Gregorio, whose real name was Achmed Haddad, smiled uncertainly. “I’ve drawn up a proposal I think you’ll like.”

“Wonderful.”

The two men made their way to Gregorio’s private office. In a moment, Gregorio had the Bank Moor on the line. “Where do you want the money wired?” he asked.

This question had caused Gabriel a good deal of thought on the boat ride. It was his practice to wire the funds to several different banks, then spread the money out further before moving it to the pooling account. The measures took days, if not a week, and time was no longer his to spend freely. Tomorrow, Gabriel would meet the Professor. The whirlwind would begin. He would be hard-pressed to shepherd the twelve million dollars to a safe account.

“To the Gemeinschaft Bank of Dresden. Leichlingen branch. Account 47-20833S. In favor of the Holy Land Charitable Trust.” The Trust collected donations from around the world. Twelve million dollars from Switzerland would not raise any eyebrows.

Gregorio repeated the information. “Done,” he said, hanging up the phone. And turning, he lifted his hands and began to beg forgiveness. “I can explain,” he began. “Yes, I was gree—”

“Sit,” Gabriel demanded.

Gregorio sat down on the couch.

“For the past two days, I’ve been asking myself how the Americans got wind of our brother in Afghanistan,” said Gabriel. “For years, Sayeed operated there without any problem. A Brit, for God’s sake, and none of the locals breathed a word about him to the authorities. Suddenly, Sayeed is followed and captured. What, I asked myself, had changed in the intervening time? Do you know?”

Gregorio shook his head. He was a slim man with a very large, bald head and unattractive eyes. His underlings called him the “Mantis.”

“I know,” said Gabriel. “Because now I realize it was my mistake. You visited Sayeed. You and your big mouth. You and your greedy ideas. You and your lack of faith in my family’s plans. Somewhere along the line they picked you up. They’ve a woman on their team, I understand. She followed Sayeed for two days. I don’t fault him for failing to realize it. She’s a professional. I fault you.”

“But I said nothing. . . . I—”

Gabriel waved away the excuse. “And now, you are running. What better proof could I have? Where did you think you could go that I would not find you? Under what rock did you plan to hide? In a week, I will have the resources of Croesus at my disposal. Did you think that I would forget you?”

Gregorio took a moment to answer. “I did not think you would succeed.”

Anger was building inside Gabriel, a virulent rage that swelled inside his head like a molten dome. Taking the gun from the waistband beneath his shirt, he threw it at Gregorio. “Do it.”

“I cannot.”

“Do it,” Gabriel repeated, his cheeks burning, lips stretched tightly over his teeth. Moving closer, he slapped Gregorio across the head. “You are one of us. You swore the oath. You know our code. Do it.”

“I cannot.” Gregorio looked at the gun, then at Gabriel. “Please,” he pleaded. “You—”

But Gabriel had no intention of easing the man’s burden. Dropping to a knee, he grabbed Gregorio’s chin and stared into his eyes. “Do it. I command you,” he shouted, so close that his spittle sprayed the man’s cheeks. “Do it!”

With surprising adeptness, Gregorio picked up the pistol and pressed it against Gabriel’s chest. “Leave me. You have your money back. Every last dime. Now go in peace.”

Gabriel laughed. “Kill me, and another will take my place.”

“Leave! I am the one making the decisions. Go now!”

Gabriel pushed his face closer, so that their foreheads almost touched, and he stared into the other man’s soul. “You are already dead,” he whispered.

Gregorio blinked. A defeated breath left his mouth.

The blast of the gunshot deafened Gabriel, the hot, deflected powder stinging his cheek. Standing, he took out a handkerchief and wiped his face. He checked his watch. If he hurried, he would still make his plane to Paris.

Chapter 29

At the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network’s headquarters in Vienna, Virginia, the introduction of the Holy Land Charitable Trust of Germany into their proprietary SQS, or suspicious activity query system, set off a string of alarm bells. The suspicious activity query system drew on a database of more than ten million suspicious activity reports and cash transaction reports filed by American financial institutions over the past ten years, and included all reports filed by banks, savings and loans, brokerage houses, cash-transmitting agencies, and more recently, casinos. Additionally, the SQS combed the Treasury Enforcement Computer System, NADDIS, and the Internal Revenue Department’s proprietary database.

Utilizing an artificial intelligence program, the SQS was able not only to search for precisely defined keywords, such as “Holy Land Charitable Trust” or “Gemeinschaft Bank of Dresden,” but to sift and evaluate the descriptive portion of each report—the two or three paragraphs written by the teller who had actually witnessed the criminal activity—for catchphrases, partial names, and possible references to the account or individual being interrogated.

At .36 seconds, the first hit appeared on Bobby Freedman’s screen. It came from TECS, and stated that during a year 2000 investigation conducted by the United States Customs Department into software piracy, the Holy Land Charitable Trust had been linked to Inteltech, a registered Paraguayan corporation thought to be engaged in the illegal copying and wholesaling of software patented by American software concerns. The Trust’s name was listed as a beneficiary of a German account said to be a conduit for Inteltech’s funds. Due to a lack of cooperation by the Paraguayan government, the investigation had been shelved.

The second hit arrived at .78 seconds. The Trust’s name was found in a suspicious activity report filed by the Gemeinschaft Bank of Dresden stating that the account frequently received multimillion-dollar transfers from high criminal activity points, including Brazil, Colombia, Panama, Dubai, and Pakistan. Again, no action had been taken.

Freedman studied the reports. With Chapel’s words echoing in his ears, he phoned the head of compliance at Thornhill Guaranty at his home in Manhattan at 5:21
A.M.
Stating that the terrorist who two days earlier had blown up three American law enforcement professionals had been discovered to have ties to the Holy Land Charitable Trust’s account at Thornhill’s Gemeinschaft Bank subsidiary, he requested them to supply—of their own volition, naturally—all pertinent account records.

At 7:01, a forty-six-page E-mail chronicling the Holy Land Charitable Trust’s entire banking history at the Gemeinschaft Bank of Dresden arrived in his mailbox. At 7:08, Freedman called Allan Halsey at FTAT and advised him to log on to his computer and to have plenty of paper ready for the download.

It took Allan Halsey one hour to find the connection—the irrefutable link that Chapel had been begging for. When he saw the numbers, and ran them past the ones Chapel had given him five hours earlier, and noted that “yes, they were the same, by God,” he felt as if he’d been hit in the stomach by a line drive.

For the past eighteen months, the Holy Land Charitable Trust of Germany had regularly received money from the same numbered account at the Deutsche International Bank that was funneling money to Albert Daudin at the Bank Montparnasse in Paris.

Immediately, Halsey contacted the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC) and requested that the Trust’s account be frozen pending an IEEPA edict. IEEPA stood for the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. It was the sledgehammer Halsey had promised, a broad, all-controlling measure granted to the executive branch of the United States government to deal with any unusual or extraordinary threats to the country’s national security, foreign policy, or economy.

A flurry of phone calls ensued.

OFAC called the White House. The White House called FTAT to confirm that OFAC’s IEEPA request was legit, then followed up with a call to the undersecretary of the Treasury for Enforcement to double-check. The undersecretary called the secretary of the Treasury and sug- gested he might want to contact the chairman of Thornhill Guaranty to let him know that his bank was about to be put in the same bed as a cele- brated terrorist. He then dialed Admiral Owen Glendenning, and said, “Wasn’t the Patriot Act a great thing? And it was nice working with you, too.”

The chairman of Thornhill Guaranty, however, was not so cheery. A generous donor to the ruling party, he phoned the White House to request that Thornhill’s name be left out of it, and that only the Gemeinschaft Bank of Dresden be mentioned. In soothing tones, he was informed that the President was otherwise engaged, but that his comments would be passed along with all due haste. It was the truth. At that moment, the President was closeted with his press secretary, communications chief, and foreign policy czar, figuring a way to work the news into the day’s public addresses at a UAW rally in Saginaw, Michigan (easy), and a luncheon for the National Midwives Association in Hannibal, Missouri (hard). All were agreed, though, that it would be a marvelous theme on which to base his after-dinner comments at the state dinner honoring King Bandar, the new ruler of Saudi Arabia, being held Saturday evening.

Decision taken, the White House called back OFAC and signaled their accord.

At 8:21, a provisional freeze was put on all assets of the Holy Land Charitable Trust of Germany held by the Gemeinschaft Bank of Dresden.

Chapter 30

A filthy white Peugeot 504 sat parked across the street from his house. It was a ten-year-old sedan, with a dented front fender, a Radio 24 bumper sticker, and Paris plates, identical to thousands of others trawling the French capital. The door was unlocked, the key in the ignition. Climbing into the front seat, George Gabriel adjusted the seat and checked the rear- and sideview mirrors. He was dressed in khaki pants, a white cotton shirt, and a loose-fitting black blazer. His cordovan loafers carried rubber soles that promised stealth as well as comfort should he need to run any kind of distance. Though he had hardly slept, he was more awake than he’d ever been in his life.