The Devil's Banker (48 page)

“You’re most kind, Mr. Fitzgerald.”

Fitzgerald watched her until she’d disappeared into the crowd.
Quick recovery,
he thought. She barely had a limp.

Chapter 61

The White House shone like an ornament against the burnt orange dusk. Lights blazed beneath the massive portico and beamed from the lawn. The mansion was as magisterial as a democracy would allow.

“How long?” asked Chapel as he and Sarah walked past St. John’s Church. Across the street, a steady stream of elegantly attired men and women passed through the wrought iron gates along Pennsylvania Avenue and strolled purposefully up the wide, curving driveway toward the modest door that offered entry to the presidential mansion.

“Does it matter?” asked Sarah, and when she saw his jaw set firmly, his eye blazing with hurt, she added, “Since the beginning. I didn’t change horses midstream.”

“But they’re our allies.”

“Allies are for wartime. In peacetime, it’s every man for himself. National interest comes first. Has to, really. It’s a country’s job to protect itself. America’s the number-one practitioner of that policy. Why is it that you’re always so convinced that what’s good for you is good for the rest of us? France is the only country trying to go it alone these days. For God’s sake, look at Britain. A hundred years ago we ruled the seas. Now we can’t even commit a soldier anywhere outside our borders without America’s consent. All in the name of the special relationship. Nelson must be turning over in his grave.

“You can’t believe that?”

“Can’t I? I’d say I voted with my feet.”

“What did it?”

Sarah stopped walking and confronted him with a disdainful smirk. “Something had to do it?”

Chapel refused to be cowed. He’d had it with her sidestepping the truth, her polite silences and clever delays. “Yes,” he answered emphatically. “The daughter of a British general doesn’t just go trotting across the lines because the cuisine is better.”

Sarah shrugged, but the defiant tone remained. “You already know. It was Daddy.”

“What about him?”

“They abandoned him. Left him to die like a soldier, I suppose they might say. I sat by his side watching the cancer consume him, holding his hand as he grew weaker every day. What did the army do? Put him in a ward with ten others and refused to try every experimental drug I brought to their attention—including Gleevec, which turned out to have an eighty percent survival rate over five years—because the drugs were too expensive or not proven.” Sarah put her hands on her hips, her cheeks taut with anger. “They did nothing to help a man who’d given his country forty-four years of his life. Put me in a bad mood at the right time.”

“When you were a student at the Sorbonne?”

“So you were listening.”

Of course he’d been listening. He hadn’t forgotten a word she’d said to him.

“Gadbois found me. Asked if I might lend a hand. I asked how. He said he thought MI6 would like to have a look at me. Told me to join up. Keep an eye open, an ear to the ground. I signed on.” She added lightly, “I’ve always been a sucker for French culture.”

But Chapel was in no mood for her whimsy. “You’re a spy.” He meant it in the old-fashioned sense. A traitor. Against us. Against the good guys. Someone they take out and shoot at dawn.

“I am a double, Adam,” she said coldly. “A double agent. I don’t hurt Mother England. I just do what I can to help France. And if one day I find someone else who I think could use a hand, I hope I have the courage to help them, too.”

Chapel had nothing to say.

“You think I could go to my controller at MI6 with this?” Sarah demanded, and it hurt him more that she was trying to explain. “He’d have had Glendenning on the phone lickety-split. ‘What’s this about you tipping off the French police? I told Sarah it was nonsense, you know the girl, she’s got a mind of her own. And, oh, yes, she mentioned you’d arrested one of your own men before hearing him out, seen to it the French gave him a good beating, too.’ It would have been us back there on the floor instead of Glendenning and poor Mr. Spencer. Right now, you should be counting your blessings the French
don’t
trust us implicitly.”

She pursed her lips, and a great shudder passed over her body. As she closed her eyes, he could sense her shame, though if it was for her actions, or her need to confess them, Chapel couldn’t tell. When she opened them, he could see she was done with her confession. A smile stretched her lips, and she spent a few seconds arranging his bow tie, brushing a few specks of lint off the lapels of his tuxedo. “By the way, you look smashing for a man who’s slept five hours in the last four days and had a rather unpleasant course in ‘torture lite.’ ” She leaned over and pecked him on the cheek. “I’m sorry for that. General Gadbois had to know for himself that I was telling the truth.”

“He didn’t trust you?”

“Darling,” she said, giving his hand a squeeze. “It doesn’t do to trust a double.”

Chapel knew the advice was directed at him, not Gadbois.

He took her in, this new Sarah, his fairy-tale princess dressed for the ball. She wore a black satin gown that hugged her bosom and fell to the knee. Her hair was arranged in a chignon, and pinned high. At the French Embassy, one of her unnamed associates offered a plastic composite stiletto as an accessory to hold the elegant bun in place, something that wouldn’t set off the metal detectors. Sarah had turned him down with a cryptic smile. She didn’t need a weapon, the smile had said. She was capable of handling things herself. Midnight eyeliner and mascara amplified the depth of her eyes. To catch her gaze was to lose your breath.

Looking at her, he felt a stab of desperation. She was in another league altogether. Essentially another man’s woman.

Slipping the invitation out of his pocket, he took Sarah’s hand and they crossed Pennsylvania Avenue and joined the partygoers on their promenade past the cordon of Secret Service agents, up the driveway to the brightly lit portico, where they both nodded to the Marine guards bracketing the front door.

“The Honorable Mr. Dominique Villefort and Mrs. Villefort,” said a blond woman in a white gown who accepted their invitation. Villefort was the second secretary at the French Embassy. A name, but not a face. “We’re so pleased you could attend.”

“It is our pleasure,” answered Sarah, a Gallic demiglaze sweetening her words.

A Secret Service agent approached and asked Sarah if she had a handbag. Sarah said she did not, and the agent directed them to an elevator that would carry them to the Blue Room where, he informed them, the cocktail hour was drawing to a conclusion. Upstairs, the crowd was a hundred strong, and by the sound of the raised, convivial voices, in rare spirits. Chapel recognized the secretary of state, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, and the attorney general. It was an A-list affair. The Marine Band played Sinatra and they were very good.

“She’ll be alone,” Sarah said. “She has to have the device on her body.”

“What am I looking for?”

“Something small. Eight inches long, four inches wide. It might not be visible. Let’s split up. If you sense something suspicious, you’re probably right.”

Sarah disappeared into the crowd, leaving Chapel on his own. A bar was set up on a table in the far corner. Liveried waiters circulated, taking orders. He was struck by how familiar it all was. Hardly different from a “do” at the Four Seasons. His eye wandered from face to face, appraising but not lingering. Was he supposed to rule out every white-haired woman over fifty? Every African-American? Every Asian? It was a dinner for the Saudi King. Every other person in the room fit at least half the profile, that is, a woman of Middle Eastern extraction.

A waiter spotted his empty hands and asked what he would like. “Water,” answered Chapel, but thinking of what Sarah called “cover,” he changed his order to a Jack Daniel’s on the rocks. Right about now, a rebel’s courage would do him right.

The band stopped playing. A hush spread over the crowd. Double doors that he had not previously noticed swung open. A stout, silver-haired man threw out his chest and bellowed, “Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States and His Royal Highness, the King of Saudi Arabia.”

The two men entered in deep discussion. The First Lady followed with one of the King’s older wives. Behind them trailed the King’s retinue, ten men clad, like the King, in traditional Saudi garb—
dishdashas, khaffiyehs,
and the male’s requisite mustache and goatee.

Everyone’s here,
thought Chapel nervously.
Now’s the time. If you’re going to do it, do it while your blood’s running hot, before your doubts get the better of you.

His own palms were moist and he felt flushed, jittery. He searched for Sarah and couldn’t find her. Discreetly, he pushed his way to the edge of the crowd. The guests had formed a crescent and the President and the King were working their ways to opposite ends of the line, doing their mandatory “meet and greet.”

By now, Chapel had developed a routine for examining each person. He would start at the shoes and move north to the head. There wasn’t an American cobbler represented in the room. It was Blahniks, Ferragamos, and Chanels all around. The woman rubbing his elbow was red-haired and Irish. Next to her stood the commandant of the Marine Corps. Count those two out. A chubby Arabian woman gazed adoringly at the President, her smile stretched to cracking, but dripping with such obvious goodwill that Chapel dismissed her, too. Next to her stood a svelte, severe brunette in a fluted black ball gown, and if the diamonds were real, a million-dollar belt.
Definite donor material there,
thought Chapel.

The King was approaching him, shaking hands with all the guests, looking decidedly bored. Chapel looked at the slim woman again. She was standing stiffly, her eyes locked on the King. Chapel gave her the once-over. She wore low black pumps with white toe caps. Hardly enough heel for the gown. A dot of blood graced the piping at her heel. Chapel stepped closer. It was then that he got a better look at her eyes, the unflinching stare directed at the King. It was Taleel’s gaze, the otherworldly view of a soul already departed. She was trembling. He noticed that her hands were fiddling with the belt buckle, her fingers pressing at either end.

Something small,
Sarah had said.
Eight inches long, four inches wide.

By then, he was moving, imagining how he would grab her—if he should throw her to the floor, or pinion her arms behind her back. It was her turn to greet the King. She took a step forward, her hands locked on the belt. But even as Chapel shoved the Marine commandant aside, there came the crash of a porcelain vase splintering on the wooden floor. As one, the guests craned their heads behind them to look. Chapel reached for the woman, rising on his tiptoes. He diverted his gaze for a second—less, even. He felt rather than saw her. A rustle of black silk, a shadow out of the corner of his eye. He heard a second crack, this one crisper, muted but distinct, like the snapping of a brittle twig. And Sarah was cradling the woman in her arms as the King ignored the two and passed down the line, as if causing women to faint was an everyday occurrence.

Everything happened very quickly then, so it was only later, when Adam Chapel was alone and his world had changed forever, that he was able to play it back and set the events in their proper order. A flurry of Secret Service agents appeared, as they so often do, as if out of thin air. Chapel tried to help, but Sarah warned him off with her eyes. The woman was dead. No head could loll at such an unnatural angle. A trickle of blood rolled from her mouth, but one of the agents dabbed it off before it could drip onto the carpet.

And then they were gone. Sarah still supporting the woman, being led with the help of five or six agents through the double doors.

The President guided the King into the dining room. The crowd followed. In a minute, the Blue Room was empty. Chapel kept expecting something else to happen, but he didn’t know what. Everyone acted as if nothing had occurred, and he realized that, of course, nothing had. No mention of the event would reach the papers. No bomb had been stolen from the Israeli arsenal. Hijira was simply one more ill-planned, ill-funded assembly of crackpots who wanted the world to conform to their demands or else! Gabriel was still out there, but as a threat, he was neutralized. The intelligence authorities knew his name, had by now dug up several photographs of him. His son was cooperating fully to assemble a complete picture of his activities. The Saudi monarchy was as stable, or unstable, as ever.

Chapel waited until dinner was served for Sarah to return, then asked to speak with the agent in charge, the tall, white-haired man with a ruddy drinker’s complexion he’d seen usher Sarah out of the Blue Room. Not possible, came the answer. Perhaps the gentleman would care to take his seat and enjoy his dinner. The chef had prepared a fine meal: potato galettes, roasted squab, a medley of summer squash. And for dessert, at the King’s request, a hot fudge sundae. He even let slip that the Saudi potentate had asked for vodka in his water glass. If the gentleman would care for the same, it would be a pleasure.

Chapel waited outside the White House until the last of the guests had filed past him. They had done it. Together, he and Sarah had stopped Marc Gabriel’s plan. They had thwarted Hijira. Yet why did he feel so empty? Slowly, he made his way through the silent streets to the car. It was parked where he’d left it, but he realized that Sarah had the keys. He looked around, eyes darting up and down the street. Searching. Wondering. Hoping. He caught sight of a shadow and raised himself onto his toes. But it was only a homeless man adjusting a blanket around his shoulders. He knew then that she wasn’t coming and that he would never see her again.

Still, he would not go. Eyes locked on the White House, he stood by the car until the exterior lights had dimmed, and night cloaked the portico in its forgiving shade, and he heard a bell toll midnight.

Chapter 62

A soft, steady wind swept across the sand, driving the gnarled strands of dried acacia before it, singing the tremulous song of a coming storm. Omar al-Utaybi wrapped the tail of his
khaffiyeh
over his nose and mouth and hiked the last few steps to the crest of the southernmost dune. The sky was still dark, an effervescent canopy of stars. As he stared to the east, the sun’s first rays fired the horizon. A reaper’s blade sliced the world into two. Another day had begun. He shivered at the drama.