Graham ignored the comment. "She was last seen in Jordan two weeks ago. However, one of our analysts recently made a startling connection. As you all know, we've been trying for some time to track flows of money from the sovereign wealth funds of certain oil-rich states. As petrodollars accumulate, the controllers of these funds are diversifying their holdings into a great number of businesses and investments. They are building companies, universities, even entire cities from scratch."
"Not such a bad idea, if you ask me," said Spector. "Sooner or later the oil wells are going to run dry."
"Yes," Graham agreed. "But we suspect that some of this largesse is being funneled to terrorist groups. And in the course of our watch, we found this—" Graham put one more photo on the screen.
"It's her!" the president said.
The image was high quality, and there was no mistaking Fatima Adara. She was sitting at a table at an outdoor cafe. With her was a middle-aged man — thin hair, pale skin, high Slavic cheekbones.
Someone blurted the obvious question. "Who is he?"
"His name," Graham said, "is Luca Medved. He was actually the target of the surveillance. It was taken two months ago in Marseille, France."
"She was in France?" Spector remarked.
"Yes. It's the first time we've spotted her outside the Middle East."
The president cut in. "So why were you watching this guy Medved? Is he some kind of terrorist?"
"Actually, anything but. I told you we were tracking companies created with oil wealth. Luca Medved is a Russian national. And, among other things, he is the current chairman of the board of CargoAir, the new aircraft manufacturer based in France."
"The chairman of CargoAir?" the president said, clearly taken aback. "He's got an association with Caliph?"
"That's not clear yet," Graham said. "We're trying to find out."
General Banks asked, "Wasn't it a CargoAir airplane that crashed recently?"
"Yes," Graham said, "one went down in France two days ago." She quickly headed off the next question. "Right away we considered a link between this crash and the cache of explosives found by the Dutch authorities. Our experts in that kind of thing don't see any connection — the evidence found in the Netherlands was not what anybody would use against an airliner. You'd never get it past airport security, even as cargo. And early evidence from the crash points away from any type of terrorist involvement."
President Townsend looked at his watch. He had the Indian prime minister in fifteen minutes. Central Asia was a whole new set of troubles— Tibet, Pakistan, free-trade agreements. "All right," he said, sensing Graham was at an end. "Suggestions?"
The CIA director said, "We have to put the word out all over the Middle East and Europe to find Fatima Adara."
The nods of agreement were unanimous.
Graham added, "And once we find her, we can't lose her."
Townsend took this as a measure of self-critique, one of the things he had grown to like about this DNI he'd inherited from the previous administration. "All right," the president said, "see to it."
"What about this link with CargoAir?" Spector asked. "Shouldn't we be watching it?"
President Townsend nodded thoughtfully and looked at Graham. He said, "Someone to take a look at the company? Maybe follow this crash investigation?"
Graham smiled, "I'll take care of it, Mr. President."
Townsend got up to leave. "All right everyone, carry on."
When he got to the hallway, Townsend's secretary handed him a piece of paper listing the names of the wife and children of the prime minister of India. The guy had seven kids. Townsend sighed and began to memorize.
Back in the conference room, DNI Graham edged over for a word with CIA Director Thomas Drexler. "And are we keeping an eye on this crash investigation, Thomas?"
The CIA man gave Graham a coy grin, like a magician anticipating the oohs and aahs that would come from his next trick. "I've already got a man on the job. He just doesn't know it yet."
Chapter TEN
Dr. Hans Sprecht sat calmly, his slight frame supported by a plush leather chair, his feet resting on an expensive cherry desk. He admired his surroundings. The fine wood trim was first class, not the imitation rubbish that had found its way into so many physicians' offices. The decorations and artwork were tasteful, no diplomas or tacky before-and-after photographs of successful facelifts. He leaned back. Yes, the chair was his favorite part. It not only did its job of keeping one upright, but the soft leather coddled and caressed. It was almost sexual.
He let out a heavy sigh. If only it were mine.
It was the kind of place he would have liked. By his own account, the kind of place he deserved. Unfortunately, lacking a license to practice medicine in Switzerland for at least the next twenty years, it would never come to be. His career had first gone adrift over a handful of superfluous prescriptions, an unfortunate misunderstanding that had swelled completely out of hand. Then, with the professional board circling overhead, one mistake had become his rocky coastline. The case involved a young man who had requested breast implants. In the preoperative conference, Sprecht had asked few questions, naturally assuming his patient to be a homosexual. The generosity of Sprecht's nature was lost on the man — who was, in fact, a hopeful bodybuilder — when he awakened to find himself sporting a new D-cup bustline.
The licensing board was swift. It took Sprecht's future. The bodybuilder's lawyers took the rest. In the period of professional limbo that followed, Sprecht had considered going elsewhere, practicing under the radar. South America, perhaps, or the Far East. Buy the right permits, pay the right fees. But just as visions of a boutique practice in Brazil or Thailand had begun to float regularly through his dreams, Dr. Hans Sprecht stumbled onto a very good living.
His first case had been a Russian mobster in desperate search of a "new look." The work was a great success, and six months later Sprecht connected with an Italian pedophile, a man wanted keenly by Interpol. The third, an ousted Balkan general, was one step ahead of a war crimes tribunal. All of his patients had two things in common — a need for extensive work, and the means to pay handsomely for discretion.
Yet it was the fourth procedure that had proven his most daring. The work itself had been straightforward, however the logistics had been a nightmare. Sprecht had demanded a premium for that job. A premium delivered. And that admirable performance, under supremely primitive conditions, had led to this new patient — an undertaking that would prove his most lucrative yet.
Sprecht looked around the room with a renewed sense of satisfaction. The plastic surgeon whose office he had quietly sublet was in Peru on a five-week mountain climbing expedition. The rest of the year, the man toiled here, injecting neurotoxins, vacuuming flab, embellishing bustlines. Sprecht, by comparison, only worked a few days each year, enjoying a highly profitable niche in his line of work. It was as though he had become a satellite to his profession — occasionally coming in close contact, then parting for long periods in an extreme orbit. Yet, as agreeable as it all was, Hans Sprecht was forced to deal with separate issues. Issues that the man climbing a mountain in Peru could never imagine.
He looked at the Swiza clock on the wall. It read one minute before four o'clock. Sprecht pulled his feet from the desk, took out a handkerchief, and wiped the dampness from his forehead. He tried to think about the massive advance that had yesterday been credited to his Cayman account — a sum that easily counterbalanced the indignity of yet another withdrawal from his moral slush fund.
The second hand hit twelve. Right on cue, he heard the outer door open, then close. A tumbler locked into place. Sprecht straightened in his seat. The patient came in, closed the inner office door, and looked carefully around the room without speaking. The two had met once before to make preliminary arrangements.