Though his stomach groaned with hunger, Marc Gabriel paid no attention to the enticing smells wafting from the generous buffet. Stopping only to pour himself a glass of water, he continued to a vacant desk where a small card advertised Internet connectivity. Sitting, he removed his cell phone and checked his voice mail. He’d asked George to leave a coded message to confirm that Adam Chapel was dead. Four words to seal the bond between father and son, and to ensure Hijira’s success. “I love you, Father.” He had checked several times during the day, only to find his mailbox empty. Once again, the operator’s mechanical voice informed him that he had no messages.
Unzipping his overnight bag, Gabriel took out his Apple Powerbook and set it on the desk. In less than sixty seconds he was online. A check of the latest news headlines did nothing to ease his unrest. Nowhere could he find any mention of a murdered United States Treasury officer, a second terrorist attack in Paris. He checked AP, Reuters, then Le Monde and Le Figaro. Nothing. It was six P.M. in Buenos Aires. Eleven o’clock at home. Gabriel phoned his wife.
“He is out,” replied Amina.
“With the girl?”
“I don’t know. He has been gone all day long. He looked very presentable when he left. Will you be home soon? Perhaps I can prepare somethi-”
Gabriel hung up. What business was it of hers when he would be home?
Returning his attention to his laptop, he typed in the address of his private server, and accessed his portfolio to mark-to-market the stocks he had shorted three days earlier. The Dow Jones was down three percent on the day; the London “footsie” three and a half. It had been a bad day for markets around the world. Lingering recessions. Political unrest in the Middle East. Rising oil prices. Continued epidemic in Asia. In general, a poor time to be long.
Over the past days, his stocks had lost an average of five percent of their value, leaving Gabriel a paper gain of forty million dollars. A tidy sum, but hardly what Hijira required. Switching over to financial modeling software, he ran through the scenarios projecting the gains in his portfolio accruing from a twenty, thirty, or forty percent decline in the value of the world’s major financial markets. His best-case scenario left him a profit of four hundred million dollars. The worst-case, two hundred forty million, would barely meet his minimums.
The money was already allocated. Wire transfers were drafted and ready to be sent at the push of a button. One hundred million to the Bank of Riyadh. Sixty million to Emirates International. Fifty-five million to the Jordani Bank of Commerce. Each sum would be further broken down, earmarked for urgent purposes.
The list went on. The beneficiaries of Hijira’s endowment.
Closing the programs, he logged on to to a prominent American investment bank. He punched in the account number and the password. A moment later, the portfolio flashed onto the screen. Though the account did not belong to him, it showed a surprising similarity to his own. The same stocks had been shorted, if a day later, and in vastly smaller quantities. It was no coincidence. He’d known for years that someone was “piggybacking” his accounts-copying his every trade. In fact, he’d encouraged it.
Western intelligence had initiated surveillance on him shortly after he’d arrived in Paris twenty years earlier. He had tracked the surveillance to its source and laid his trap as surely as a fisherman sets his net. Spies were smart, ambitious, and underpaid. Gabriel had reasoned that if they were clever enough to keep tabs on him, they were clever enough to make some money from what they saw. When he felt the first tentative nibbles, he gave his prey ample line. Tips on shorting the British pound, buying AOL and Yahoo! Tips so good, they could not be ignored. The prey bit hard and Gabriel let him run deep, all the while keeping records of his every trade. When the time came, he reeled him in. Evidence was presented. An agreement made.
It was blackmail of an enlightened variety. Marc Gabriel conducted his business as he pleased. Richemond prospered. The victim rose through the ranks and grew wealthy. All he had to do was turn a blind eye and supply the occasional snippet of information. Of late, he had been particularly helpful.
“This is a first call for Air France, Flight 382 to Paris. All passengers are requested to proceed to Gate 66 for immediate boarding.”
Gabriel disconnected his laptop and slipped it into his case. Leaving the lounge, he accessed his voice mail one last time. Again there was no message. He was disappointed.
“George,” he whispered with silent anger. “Have you failed me?”
But already he was planning his revenge.
They drove.
Chapel surveyed Sarah from behind half-closed lids, secretly mapping every inch of her face, from the careless swell of her lower lip to the tense set of her eyes, from the sculpted chin to the warrior’s scar that traced a jagged crescent on her cheekbone.
He’d never been able to get women right. He was no ladies’ man, but he’d had his share of girlfriends. Somehow, though, they never turned out to be the people he thought they were when he met them. The shy ones turned into blurters. The loud ones suddenly shut up. The athletes were self-absorbed. The bookworms as nosy as a pew of spinsters. Did the women actually change, or was he just terrible at figuring them out?
The car passed beneath a streetlight. The halogen glow slashed Sarah’s face and he was left with a vivid image of her.
Who are you? he wondered silently. Beneath the uniform? Beneath the cocksureness and the call to duty? Who are you when you take a bath and wash off the day’s reality? Are you so deep inside your secret world that you’ve lost all trace of yourself and that you look for your job to tell you how to act, what you should feel, and who you ought to love?
But in the end only one question mattered. Are you the one? Is this the way I’m supposed to feel when I’m in love?
“Look, Adam, it’s late. Let’s find a place to pull over and get some rest.”
“Keep going. I don’t want to miss that meeting.”
She pulled off the road forty minutes later at an AGIP truck stop on the other side of the border from Basel. Guiding the car down the off ramp, Sarah threw her eyes to the Autobahn. A BMW 535i painted the green and white of the German police slid past, languid as a shark.
“Our escort?” said Chapel.
“You knew?”
“So much for keeping our destination hidden. The Swiss are probably waiting on the other side of the border. Glen’s been keeping an eye on us all the way.”
“If he is, it’s for our own safety. That’s part of his job-to look after his own.”
If it is, in fact, Glen, Sarah added silently. She doubted it. Excusing herself from the conference room in the Deutsche International Bank, she’d phoned Owen Glendenning herself to let him know the extent, if not the details, of their discovery, and their plan to drive to Zurich. He had no need to follow them. Someone else had been keen to learn their destination. Who had alerted the police? The FBI? Judge Wiesel? Gadbois? She’d spotted the eyes, but she had no idea as to their ultimate allegiance.
The parking lot was half-full with big rigs, eighteen-wheel juggernauts, and RVs. Sarah pointed the car to a far corner of the lot, pushing the car over the curb and keeping the speed low as she crossed a wide meadow of waist-high grass.
“Where are we-”
“Patience, Mr. Chapel. Patience… unless, that is, you’d like to wake up in an hour, when every one of those trucks hits the road.”
The headlights played across a wide bank of trees fifty yards ahead. Rolling down the window, Sarah breathed in the cooling rush of fresh water. She killed the engine, and for a while they sat in silence, listening to the muted roar of a fast-flowing river.