The Devil's Banker (39 page)

“Bullshit!”

“I am his son,” Gabriel shouted back. “It was a test. I failed it.”

“What’s your father planning?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me!”

“I don’t know.”

Chapel reddened. Somehow he managed to guard his calm. “You’d better know or you’re going to jail for the rest of your life. You may never leave this building again except for a ride to and from the courthouse for what I promise you will be a very short trial. Look around you. This is your life. You ‘get real.’ Let’s try it again. What is he planning?”

“We’re going home.”

“Where’s home?”

“The desert. Saudi Arabia. Where do you think? We’re Utaybis.”

“And that’s his plan? To go home. I don’t buy it. What’s his plan?”

“I don’t know.”

“Tell me!” Chapel slammed his fist on the table.

“Don’t you see?” asked Gabriel, angry tears staining his cheeks. “To get even! The plan is to get even!”

Chapter 44

Once in a while, even Bobby Freedman got tired. It wasn’t something he liked to admit. Freedman was a former Marine, a four-year team leader of Force Recon, who’d seen action in Panama and the secret war in Guatemala. He prided himself on his disdain for sleep, his ability to go hour after hour doing quality work while keeping his wits about him. But thirty-six hours at a desk was pushing the envelope.

Looking out the window of his third-floor office at the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, Freedman admired the sun as it crept over the horizon and lit the rolling hills of northern Virginia. It was his second sunrise of the shift. Since Adam Chapel had called from Paris with the information about the Holy Land Charitable Trust, Freedman had only left his chair to shit, shower, and shave. The only thing keeping him going was the knowledge that Chapel was doing the same thing on his end.

Chapel.
The man was a maniac.

Rubbing the fatigue from his eyes, Freedman turned back to the monitor. He was “walking out” the accounts to whom the Holy Land Charitable Trust had sent money over the last twenty-four months. “Walking out” simply meant feeding the numbers into the witches’ cauldron—his pet name for the family of databases he regularly queried—and following each and every lead to its bitter end. He’d presorted the accounts by monetary value, investigating those that had received the most money first. In total, the Holy Land Charitable Trust had sent seven million dollars to fifty-six different accounts. So far, Freedman had looked at twelve of them.

Cracking the mini-fridge tucked beneath his desk, he retrieved an ice-cold diet Coke and guzzled half of it in a go. “Gentlemen, start your engines,” he said aloud, before burping monstrously. “Bring on lucky thirteen.”

Freedman placed his ruler beneath the next account number on his list and banged the numbers into his computer. A quick jaunt through the Currency and Banking Retrieval System identified the account as belonging to the Beirut National Bank and nothing else. Beirut meant terrorism, drugs, and mayhem. On to NADDIS, the Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Information System, and a reference to a joint FBI–Treasury CT investigation. But it was left to TECS, the Treasury Department’s proprietary database, to spit out the name of the account holder as Yassir Ibrahim a financial capo who specialized in raising funds for several well-known Pakistani
madrasas
—Islamic schools that advertised a virulently anti-Western curriculum.

Hijira was turning out to be a regular “Terror, Inc.” They weren’t so much a bunch of terrorists as they were financiers for nearly every radical Islamic cause within the Ummah. So far, he’d tracked monies flowing from the Holy Land Charitable Trust to the likes of Islamic Jihad, Resla Islaminiya, Hamas, Freedom Fighters of Palestine, FARC in Colombia, and the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

As Freedman scrolled down the computer screen, ready to start walking out the next account, his eye caught an especially large transfer.

“Sixty-five thousand bucks,” he said aloud. “No way!”

He couldn’t have missed something as big as that. As if that weren’t enough, he recognized the bank locator number as belonging to Hunts National Bank, a longtime D.C. institution. Looking back through the account history, he spotted four transfers over the past months to the account at Hunts totaling two hundred and sixty thousand dollars. He was mystified. It was as if the account information from the Gemeinschaft Bank of Dresden had updated itself.

Freedman shifted in his chair, fueled by an adrenaline rush. Two hundred and sixty grand to Hunts was some shot in the arm. The money constituted the first trace of Hijira’s activity in the States. Halsey would shit his pants when he saw this. Glendenning would probably give him a friggin’ medal.

Thirty minutes later, Freedman was decidedly less upbeat. After shepherding the account through all three tiers of databases—CBRS, all seven enforcement computer systems, including the IRS, INS, and even the Post Office, and LexisNexis, he had nada.

It was impossible. The account was dirty by default.

Snatching the phone to his ear, he hit the speed dial for Hunts.

“Hello, Jerry, this is Bobby Freedman over at FinCEN.”

“Oh, no,” complained Jerry Oglethorpe, the bank’s government liaison officer, only half in jest. “What’s up now? One of your subpoena hounds about to walk through my doors?”

“Give me more credit than that. You know I’d give you a heads-up if that were the case. This is different. Frankly, it’s something that scares the heck out of me. I need a favor.”

Oglethorpe’s mellow baritone regained its composure. “What can Hunts do for its government today?”

“Got an account with you boys that looks mighty suspicious.”

“Can’t say I like to hear that, but go ahead. What’s bothering you?”

“It’s got to do with the bombing in Paris on Monday. I’ve traced some of the money from the sponsor group to your bank.”

There was a lengthy silence, and Freedman could feel Oglethorpe’s angst. For the last two years, American banks tasked with scrutinizing their accounts had been on the lookout for the slightest indications of surreptitious activity. “Know thy client” was the industry’s clarion call. The discovery of a link to a murderous terrorist organization at this late date didn’t portend well for the bank’s reputation.

“Go on,” said Oglethorpe. “I can’t hold my breath forever.”

“It has to do with several transfers from the Gemeinschaft Bank of Dresden to your Georgetown branch.” Freedman read off the account number, the dates, and the values of each transfer.

Waiting for Oglethorpe to answer, he glanced out the window. Originally, he’d taken the job at FinCEN as a passport to bigger and better things—namely, a slot at one of the nation’s elite enforcement agencies: FBI, Customs, Treasury. Somewhere along the way, though, he decided he liked being the custodian of so much information. He was in a unique position to assist the FBI, the CIA, and the Secret Service, as well as state and local law enforcement agencies with their investigations. After six years, though, it was time for him to move up a level, to take possession of an assistant director’s corner office and see what that Special Executive Service pay scale might buy.

A long, low whistle sounded in Freedman’s ear. “Hey, Bobby, if this stuff’s right, it’s not Hunts who’s going to be in trouble. It’s you guys.”

“Us?” Freedman rose from his chair, twisting the phone cord around his finger. “What do you mean, us?”

“This guy’s a federal employee. Worse than that, Bobby, he’s one of your own. A Treasury agent.”

“Give me a name, Jerry. All I need is a name.”

“Got a pen?”

“Yeah,” said Freedman, scrambling to find a ballpoint. It was hardly necessary. Whatever the name, it would be indelibly engraved on his mind. “Who is it?”

“Chapel,” came the response. “Adam A.”

Chapter 45

The satchel contained fifty packets of one hundred dollar bills still bound by the bank’s pink and white bands. Each packet was worth ten thousand dollars. Five hundred thousand dollars in all. Marc Gabriel set the satchel on his bed and removed the trim bundles, laying them side by side on the naked mattress. He derived a tactile satisfaction from handling the money. He brought a packet to his nose and fanned the bills with his thumb. The notes smelled clean and useful. He shook his head. It was a pity to destroy so much cash.

Once the satchel was empty, Gabriel placed both hands inside it and removed the false bottom. He had a space six inches wide and twenty-two inches long to work with. Carefully, he laid five rectangular bricks of Semtex across the bottom. Each brick weighed two hundred and fifty grams. It had taken less than half that amount to bring down Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The plastic explosive fit neatly, as if it had been measured and manufactured expressly for the task. A wad of tissue paper at either end ensured a snug fit.

Stepping away from the bed, he rolled up his sleeves and made sure to take a breath. He had not come to bomb-making easily. He was not by nature mechanically oriented. His hands were clumsy. His inclination to hurry posed a constant hazard. In truth, explosives made him uncommonly nervous. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. Irritated, he wiped it away. Handling Semtex posed no problem at all. The stuff was as safe as modeling clay. You could step on it, drop it, even shoot it without risking its detonation. Attaching a Skoda detonator was another thing entirely, and could pose a very large, very loud, and very messy problem if not done correctly.

Wiping his palms on the seat of his pants, he picked up the detonator and affixed the pressure plate to the false bottom he’d removed earlier. Using a small screwdriver, he calibrated the device to deliver its electrical charge if the weight upon it varied by more than five hundred grams, the equivalent of two bundles of notes. Uncrimping the red and green wires that led from the pressure plate to the det cord, he inserted the slim firing baton into the last slab of Semtex, which he then taped to the false bottom. Finally, he activated the device and replaced the false bottom into the satchel.

Then, one by one, he laid the packets inside the satchel, until the mattress was bare and the satchel nearly full.

When the device was armed, he closed the satchel and left its combination at “000.”

In the bathroom, he wiped his forehead with a washcloth. His shirt was soaked through. He would have to change it.

Just then, the house shuddered, as somewhere below him a piece of furniture collided with a wall. Rushing to the doorway, he sought the satchel. It stood on the bed, rocking slightly.

Gabriel ran down the stairs. He had a thing or two to say to the movers.

Chapter 46

“You are a member?” the woman inside the booth asked.

“Unfortunately not,” said Marc Gabriel. “But I’ve been told I may join.”

Gabriel stood inside the entry of a neatly maintained
maison de ville
in the third arrondissement. The third wasn’t a part of the city he favored. It was where Paris earned its keep, a sprawling, colorless array of factories, warehouses, and rail yards. Here and there, quaint residential neighborhoods somehow managed to survive like grass sprouting in the cracks of the sidewalk.

“Perhaps,” she said. “You are alone?”

“Yes.”

The woman rose from her seat and extended her head beyond the narrow transom that separated them. She was old and battle-weary, her hair dyed black, her cheeks fleshy and veined. She wore a twenty-year-old’s silk dress that showcased a mottled, generous bosom. “But, you are very handsome,” she sang, her eyes dancing over him. “
Très BCBG.
You prefer women? Tell me now. If you favor boys, I will be happy to suggest an alternate location.”

Gabriel warmed her cold claw in his palm, raising it to his mouth and conferring upon it a kiss. “I hope that serves as an answer.” He allowed his eyes to linger on hers. “Surely, you do not work the entire evening?”

“Monsieur is too kind,” she admitted. “Membership is one hundred euros. No smoking in the pleasure chambers. If you carry a cocktail with you—wine, champagne, whiskey—please bring a coaster. We’ve just had the furniture redone. When you’ve enjoyed yourself, please dispose of your protection in the receptacles. We are a respectable establishment.”

“Of that I have no doubt.”

The establishment in question was called “Cléopatre,” and it was a come-one, come-all sex club dressed up as an Egyptian bordello. Gabriel paid his fee and passed through a beaded curtain into a salon decorated with an abundance of crimson velvet and smoked mirrors. Framed prints of Tutankhamen, Ramses, and Cleopatra decorated the walls, along with a poster of the pyramids at Giza. A corridor to his left led to a restaurant. The dining room was largely empty. A few couples dined lugubriously at their tables as a disco beat spilled from tinny speakers.
Dancing queen. Dancing queen. You are the dancing queen.
He walked back into the main salon as a statuesque African woman emerged from a doorway.

“Good evening,” she said, swinging her broad hips. “I am Véronique. You are familiar with Cléopatre?”

Véronique wore a gold lamé dress and looked like she weighed a hundred sixty pounds. Standing still, she teetered on her stiletto heels.

“Not entirely,” said Gabriel.

“We have several entertainment areas. There is the boutique upstairs, where you may buy something to wear this evening. Something to excite you. A ring. A collar. The boutique is also for watching. You may admire a lady from a two-way mirror. Don’t be ashamed. Naturally, she knows you are enjoying her striptease. Maybe you would like to visit the piano bar? Anyone may play. And it is a fine place to meet a companion for the night while you enjoy a cocktail—wine, champagne, whiskey.”

“I’m interested in seeing Bilitis’s Vineyard.”

Véronique’s eyes narrowed as a sly smile entertained her lips. “An adventurous gentleman,” she said. “Follow me.”

She led the way up a flight of stairs and pointed to a door marked with a pharaoh’s headdress. “Attire is forbidden in Bilitis’s Vineyard. You may remove your clothing and place it in a locker inside. Wear the key around your ankle or your wrist, as you please. I’ll wait for you here.”