by Noel Hynd
“Do the Swiss know you have this capability?”
“Some of the banks do,” he said. “Sometimes they ask us for some help figuring out what their depositors are up to. One dirty hand washes the other.”
She shook her head in amazement. Tens of thousands of depositors with numbered accounts wouldn’t have found Peter’s tale anywhere nearly as amusing.
“Anyway,” Chang continued, “the money was dispersed to other accounts within minutes after it had cleared. One of the accounts was in Spain, two were in Saudi Arabia. We followed the international routing numbers and sent our Trojan Horse after it.”
“So that would link the people who were fencing The Pieta of Malta to people in the Middle East as well as Spain,” she said.
“It would appear that way,” Peter Chang said. “But the first deposit was closely followed by another deposit and a similar transfer,” he said. “For the same amount of money. And then the second transfer dispersed the money almost in the same manner, except there was fifty thousand dollars siphoned off, which went to a bank in Athens that specializes in trade with the Mideast.”
“Did you get names off the accounts?”
“Not real ones. No surprise there. The trail dead-ends into fake passports and IDs. Very professional stuff, by the way.”
Thinking it backward, she said, “Athens, huh?”
“Athens. Yes. Why is that significant?”
“When my Italian buddy had a needle stuck in his butt the other night,” she said, “he said the people who did it were speaking Greek. Maybe that’s nothing. Maybe it suggests we’re on the right track.”
“Maybe. And maybe not,” Peter Chang said. “Look, my brief only addresses the sale to China, my government’s displeasure on how the transaction was handled, and the fate of the gentleman who was murdered in Switzerland. But as long as I’m in this, I don’t mind assisting you with your own investigation. Don’t get me wrong-I’m being paid to do this. Paid very well. And I, on behalf of my government, don’t personally like our opponents here either. So now you know pretty much everything that I know. If you’d like me to stay with you on this, I’m here. If not, I’ll walk.”
“I’d be honored if you stayed with me on this,” she said.
“So I’ll cover your back, and, if necessary, you cover mine,” he said.
“It’s a deal.”
She reached across the table. They shook hands. His hand was intense and strong. It almost gave her a shudder. She finished her plate, and the last few sips of wine with it. She was feeling slightly buzzed, a safe but pleasant level.
A busboy arrived and cleared the table. The waiter arrived with a dessert menu. Alex maintained her will power for almost a quarter minute until the waiter talked them into taking some coffee accompanied by a plate to share of bunelos de viento, puffs of choux pastry stuffed with sweet vanilla or chocolate cream.
“Death from gunfire is one thing,” she said with a shrug. “Death from triglycerides and cholesterol is something else. What’s on your agenda for tomorrow?”
“I need to do some banking,” he answered. “Accompany me when I do it. There are some things you should see.”
“Can we do it in the morning?” she asked. “First thing?”
“That would be best,” he said. “Did you have a conflict?”
“I was going to go out to the Escorial,” she said, “and perhaps the Valley of the Fallen where the big monument stands to the Civil War dead. It’s about an hour outside the city. Ever been out there?”
“No.”
“Interested?”
“I am,” he said. “I have a car. I can drive.”
She considered it. “Okay,” she said. “On a professional level, right?”
“Completely,” he said.
“It’s a deal.”
THIRTY-NINE
MARSEILLES, SEPTEMBER 10, LATE EVENING
A s soon as Lazzari was out of Jean-Claude’s view, the Frenchman was on his feet, moving down the same pathway between the tables. No shot rang out from across the street, no backup leaped forward with a pistol.
Jean-Claude arrived on the sidewalk. Perfect timing. Split second, but perfect. He looked in Lazzari’s direction, about ten meters down the sidewalk.
“Monsieur!” he yelled. “Monsieur Lazzari!” He shouted as if it was an afterthought, as if he had forgotten something.
The Turk turned quickly, one hand clutching the tote bag, the other on his weapon within his outer shirt.
“You forgot something!” Jean-Claude yelled.
What the Turk had forgotten was to keep his guard up until he was out of the country. The distraction was just enough.
From an alley beyond the curb stepped a masked figure-Jean-Claude’s accomplice-with something in his hands. Quickly, professionally, as efficiently as someone flipping a ribbon around a gift-wrapped box, the masked man looped a piano-wire garrote around Lazzari’s neck. And then with the force of two powerful arms yanking at full strength, he pulled the wire in on itself closed. It zipped like a razor through the flesh, veins, and cartilage of the neck until it closed onto the spinal column.
Lazzari, a strong man himself, fought for no more than the final few seconds of his life. The gun flew from his left hand and the tote bag dropped from his right. His neck spurted like a broken water pipe, blood squirting and flowing from the deep sharp incisions left by the wire.
His assassin boldly dropped him, wire still in place, turned, and disappeared into the alley. Closely behind him followed Jean-Claude, who stopped only to retrieve the bag of money. Then he too disappeared into the alleys and darkness of Marseilles along a carefully planned route of escape, as minutes later, horrified residents surrounded the dead body and local police began to converge on the scene.
FORTY
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 11, LA MADRUGADA, 12:34 A.M.
A lex was back in the Ritz in another hour, in her suite by herself, the door bolted.
She opened her laptop and went to email messages.
On the top of the list, Joseph Collins, her Venezuelan mentor, wrote back to wish her well. He said he had some new developments, but they could wait. She fielded the email, answered it, and went on.
Colonel Pendraza of the National Police had made good on his pledge. He had transferred one hundred thirty-eight files to her by attachment, each of them having to do with some antiterror operation in Spain, large or small, but mostly large.
Alex dug into them for an hour.
Item: Three people in Malaga had been arrested in connection with a plot to plant car bombs around that Spanish city. The conspirators had been trained at a camp in Pakistan linked to the Islamic Jihad Union. Eight others were under investigation and had fled Spain. Spanish authorities said those arrested shared a “profound hatred of Americans.”
Item: In early June, eight men of Somali citizenship had been arrested in Portugal while seeking to make connecting flights into Barcelona. Portuguese police maintained that one of the men was a senior al-Qaeda leader. All had been turned over to “covert American operations” for “further inquiry.”
Item: Noted in passing: al-Qaeda leaders have frequently threatened to strike again in Europe in audio and video warnings. Antiterror experts within the Policia Nacional said recently that the pace of the warnings has picked up in recent weeks.
Associated item: Intercepted al-Qaeda documents have indicated activities of small sleeper cells within Spain, intent on acting independently but with major force.
Item: Analysts in Madrid were alarmed over the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad deemed offensive by many Muslims, as well as a lack of opportunities and sense of marginalization in Muslim communities. These social currents have put Europe squarely in the crosshairs of radicals. Porous borders and years of open immigration policies have added to the problem, they say.
Item: Police in northwest Spain had arrested seven people in connection with a terrorist plot to blow up aircraft flying from Spain
to the United Kingdom. The plot involved hiding liquid explosives in carry-on luggage, and six to ten flights would have been targeted. A senior Spanish counterterror source said she believed the plotters were to carry a “Spanish version of Gatorade” onto the planes and then mix it with a gel-like substance. The explosives were to be triggered by an iPod or a cell phone, the source said… [NB: Cross/ref: US. doj. gvt. 4543b-0-09] The intelligence that uncovered the plot “makes very strong links to al-Qaeda,” a senior US administration official remarked in telephone message with Policia Nacional. The official said it was believed the plot had been close to being operational.
Lord, what a world, she thought to herself. More examples of man’s inhumanity to man, the violence and moral vacuity of the modern world. And how, on top of her personal feelings, was she ever going to make sense of all these reports, much less spot any link to the disappearance of The Pieta of Malta?
Good question. She didn’t have an answer. Not tonight, anyway.
Her eyelids flagged. She was confused, afraid, paranoid, and tired. She scanned the list of messages.
Anything of interest?
No. Nothing.
She shut down the laptop and crashed into bed.
She worked Peter Chang over in her mind. She wondered if he was somehow playing both sides of the street, having sold his credibility to the CIA in Rome. Was he now serving up peanuts in return for a chubby annual stipend on the tab of the American taxpayers? Had he successfully hustled Mark McKinnon, who was looking increasingly burned out and unprofessional?
And was Peter now hustling her? For business reasons? Personal reasons? Something about him set off alarms.
After a few unsettled minutes, Alex drifted off to sleep. She slept surprisingly soundly, more out of fatigue than peace of mind.
FORTY-ONE
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 11, 7:45 A.M.
A lex rose the next morning at 7:00 a.m.
There was a health club nearby affiliated with the hotel. She pulled on a sweatshirt, shorts, and sneakers and was out of her room by 7:15, walking quickly though the streets of the waking Spanish capital. She was in the pool by 7:35. Without stopping, she did thirty laps before returning to the Ritz.
She felt good.
She ordered breakfast from room service and opened her computer. She threw off her gym clothes and donned a hotel robe. When breakfast arrived, she took both her breakfast and her laptop on the balcony. She loved the view of the city in the morning, even with its dull smoggy haze filtering sunlight onto the old buildings, modern apartment houses, trees, and busy streets.
She opened her laptop and set to work.
Email. Messages. A bunch from home. One from Ben that made her laugh. His first term at law school was about to begin. He was anxious to get started.
She thought of phoning him but remembered it was the middle of the night. He might not have minded, but she didn’t anyway.
Another email from Joseph Collins. He said one of his employees would be in Spain during the week of September 18. Could the employee come by for a conversation, he asked. Things in Venezuela were heating up.
Alex wrote back and said that was fine, but she didn’t know when the current assignment would end. She would most likely be at the Ritz in Madrid, and Collin’s rep should look for her there.
Then business. She switched into her secure email account, the one she used for work. There was some stuff from Treasury pertaining to her current assignment. Synopses of other ongoing investigations in the United States that might have links to her own. She scanned them and found nothing that fixed her attention. There was one from her boss, Mike Gamburian, in DC asking for a few sentences of an update on the case. A small progress report.
Well, she could give him a small progress report because the progress was small. How’s that, Mike? She sent him an update, but made it politer than she might have wished.
Then there were a few emails from the others who had been at the meeting at the embassy, the one in which she had been introduced to The Pieta of Malta. The black bird, as everyone now had taken to calling it.
LeMaitre, the Frenchman, had sent her a few links having to do with terror cases in France. Then there was something from Essen at Interpol, which she read. His stuff seemed to be consistently closest to the mark, but still there was nothing that she pegged as important.
Then she sighed.
There was another email from Floyd Connelly at US Customs.
Mr. Empty message, she now thought of him as. How the heck did the man keep his job in this day of mandatory computer literacy? She wondered what political hack had given him his job and was still protecting him.
She opened the message and looked at it.
Subject:
Pieta of Malta
Date:
Fri, 10 September 2009 12:47:01-0400
From:
“Connelly_F” ‹Floyd_Connelly@USACustoms. org› Add Mobile Alert
To:
“A_LaDuca” ‹A_Laduca@usdt. prv. org›
Once again, the text was jaybird naked. What was he trying to communicate?
Anything?
This was the third blank she had drawn from him. She sighed again. She clicked on Reply and wrote as diplomatically as possible.
Subject:
Pieta of Malta
Date:
Fri, 10 September 2009 12:47:01-0400
From:
“A_LaDuca” ‹A_Laduca@usdt. prv. org
To:
“Connelly_F” ‹Floyd_Connelly@USACustoms. org› Add Mobile Alert
Hey, Floyd…I don’t mind communication, but empty messages are not my thing.;-) Nothing’s coming though, my friend. Do you have anything interesting? If so, please be sure to attach properly or if it’s easier, call me on my cell phone. Okay? I’m always happy to hear from you if you have something. Alex LaDuca
Then she hit Send and off into cyberspace went her message.
This Connelly guy was a piece of work, no?
Floyd, Floyd, a message in a void.
She needed a nickname for him, she mused, as she sipped her morning coffee and spread some delicious Spanish marmalade on toast. What would it be, the nickname?
“Pretty Boy” or “Pink”?
Well, not to be mean, but certainly not the former.
The latter? Pink?
Then she had it. The perfect nickname for him in her mind: Gutman . As in the Sidney Greenstreet character in The Maltese Falcon.
Connelly was Gutman. She laughed. Who was she? Samanatha Spade? Well, she’d been called worse. In fact, she liked the notion. She laughed again. Might as well have some small measure of fun with this nerve-racking pressure. She realized she was getting a little punch drunk with all this terror stuff, with the mounting demands to connect with The Pieta of Malta.
She went to Colonel Pendraza’s attachments. More vile stuff. More attempted terror in Spain. She speed-read six files. Again, nothing.
She clicked out of email. She glanced at her watch. It was almost 9:00 a.m. She finished breakfast. Enough nonsense, she told herself. Keep moving.
She went to various websites and studied her options for getting from Madrid to Geneva without using airplanes. Yes, she could rent a car, but she didn’t feel like driving. She went to a site for the European rail system and figured her next move. She would take an overnight train from Madrid. She could book a sleeping compartment and at least have a comfortable night. Well, that might be perfect. Or as close to perfect as she could hope for.
The train offered her anonymity plus a little bit of adventure. Strangers on a Train, Murder on the Orient Express. Why not? She thought of a couple of old European gems. Closely Watched Trains. The Sleeping Car Murders. She laughed.
She looked at the schedule. The train she wanted would depart from Madrid the next night and get her just north of Barcelona to the Spanish city Figueras by the following morning.
Then she could transfer to Montpellier in the south of France near Mars
eilles and follow that with another transfer to one of the zippy French TGV’s, trains de grande vitesse. She would be in Geneva by the next afternoon and, she reasoned, would be able to check into the hotel by four.
She knew Geneva reasonably well from previous visits.
Okay, perfect. Traveling with a firearm was a pain, but this way she could make the best of it. She used a credit card to secure a reservation. She had a prepaid card in pseudonym for just such purposes. She would buy the hard copy of the ticket from a machine. No passport or ID checks. Perfect, again.
This was what traveling soft was all about. It frightened her that she had become so good at it. She went back to email.
Nothing new.
She finished with the laptop and closed it. She dressed in comfortable clothes for the day. Snug blue jeans of a very light cotton. A yellow T-shirt and a navy blue windbreaker. Just enough upper body coverage to conceal her weapon if she chose to carry it, which she did.
By 10:00 she was downstairs at the front entrance to the Ritz, bringing her laptop with her.
Peter Chang was already there, standing beside a maroon Jaguar. He was in a sharp Hugo Boss suit and open-collared shirt with wraparound shades. A Cantonese James Bond. Peter was chatting amiably in Spanish with the doormen. The doormen had allowed him to park in a Prohibido Estacionar zone to wait for her. Alex wondered what the maroon Jag had to do with Chinese socialism but lodged no questions or complaints. It was a beauty of a car.
Peter spotted her immediately but didn’t even break a smile. He opened the car door for her, politely waving the doormen away from the assignment. Moments later they were out into traffic and on their way to the bank.
FORTY-TWO
MADRID, SEPTEMBER 11, 11:00 A.M.