“I see you’re monitoring my phone.”
“Not yours, al-Madani’s. And five minutes after he called you, he sent an encrypted message to someone else. Because we were seeing his keystrokes, we had no problem reading it.”
“What does it say?”
“Enough to make it clear he knows where your daughter is.”
“May I see the message?”
Gabriel handed over his phone.
The Saudi swore softly in Arabic. “I’m going to kill him.”
“Perhaps you should find out where your daughter is first.”
“That’s your job.”
“My role in this affair is officially over. I’m not going to get myself into the middle of a Saudi family fight.”
“You know what they say about family, don’t you?”
“What’s that?”
“It’s the other F-word.”
Gabriel smiled in spite of himself.
Khalid returned the BlackBerry. “Perhaps we can come to some sort of business arrangement.”
“Save your money, Khalid.”
“Will you at least help me?”
“You’d like me to interrogate one of your government officials?”
“Of course not. I’ll question him myself. It shouldn’t take long.” Khalid lowered his voice. “After all, I have something of a reputation.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“Where shall we interrogate him?” asked Khalid.
“It has to be somewhere isolated. Somewhere the police won’t find us.” Gabriel paused. “Somewhere the neighbors won’t hear a bit of noise.”
“I have just the place.”
“Can you get him there without making him suspicious?”
Khalid smiled. “All I need is my phone.”
26
Haute-Savoie, France
Khalid had a Gulfstream waiting at London City Airport. They stopped at Paris–Le Bourget long enough to collect Mikhail and Sarah and then flew on to Annecy, where a caravan of black Range Rovers waited on the darkened tarmac. It was a drive of twenty minutes to Khalid’s private Versailles. The household staff, a mixture of French and Saudi nationals, stood like a choir in the soaring entrance hall. Khalid greeted them curtly before escorting Gabriel and the others into the château’s main public room—the great hall, as he referred to it. It was long and rectangular, like a basilica, and hung with a portion of Khalid’s collection, including Salvator Mundi, his dubious Leonardo. Gabriel studied the panel carefully, a hand to his chin, his head tilted slightly to one side. Then he crouched and examined the brushstrokes in raked lighting.
“Well?” asked Sarah.
“How could you let him buy this thing?”
“Is it a Leonardo?”
“Maybe a small portion of it, a long time ago. But it isn’t a Leonardo anymore.”
Khalid joined them. “Magnificent, is it not?”
“I don’t know what was dumber,” answered Gabriel. “Killing Omar Nawwaf or wasting a half billion dollars on an overrestored workshop devotional piece.”
“Workshop? Miss Bancroft assured me it was an authentic Leonardo.”
“Miss Bancroft studied art history at the Courtauld and Harvard. I’m confident she did no such thing.” Gabriel watched despairingly as one of the servants entered the hall bearing a tray of drinks. “This isn’t a party, Khalid.”
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have refreshment after our journey.”
“How many staff are there?”
“Twenty-two, I believe.”
“How do you possibly manage?”
The irony bounced harmlessly off Khalid. “The senior staff are Saudis,” he explained, “but most of my employees are French.”
“Most?”
“The gardeners are Moroccans and West Africans.” His tone was derogatory. “The Saudis live in a separate house at the northern end of the property. The others live in Annecy or nearby villages.”
“Give them all the night off. The drivers, too.”
“But—”
“And switch off the security cameras,” interjected Gabriel. “The way you did in Istanbul.”
“I’m not sure I know how.”
“Flip the little switch from on to off. That should do the trick.”
Khalid had instructed Rafiq al-Madani to come to the château alone. Al-Madani, however, had promptly disobeyed his future king by requesting a car and driver from the embassy motor pool. They left the eighth arrondissement of Paris at six p.m. and, followed by a team of Office watchers, headed for the A6. Based on their conversation, which Gabriel and Khalid monitored via the compromised phone, it was clear the two men were well acquainted. It was also clear that both were armed.
When they reached the town of Mâcon, Gabriel commandeered one of Khalid’s Range Rovers and drove with Sarah into the countryside. The night was cold and clear. He parked on a rise overlooking the intersection of the D14 and the D38, doused the headlamps, and switched off the engine.
“What do we do if a gendarme happens upon us?”
“Office doctrine dictates we pretend to be lovers.”
Sarah smiled. “My wildest dream come true.”
Gabriel’s BlackBerry lay on the console between them. It was emitting the audio feed from al-Madani’s phone. At present, it was limited to the drone of a German-made engine and a rhythmic rattling that sounded like the clicking of chess pieces.
“What is that?”
“Prayer beads.”
“He sounds worried.”
“Wouldn’t you be if Khalid sent for you in the middle of the night?”
“He did it all the time.”
“And you never suspected he wasn’t the great reformer he was made out to be?”
“The Khalid I knew wouldn’t have countenanced the murder of Omar Nawwaf. I suppose having all that power changed him. It was thrust upon him too quickly, and it brought out the hamartia in his character. The fatal flaw,” added Sarah.
“I know what it means, Dr. Bancroft. Thanks to the Office, I never finished my formal education, but I’m not an idiot.”
“You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met.”
“If I’m so smart, why am I sitting by the side of a French road in the middle of the night?”
“Trying to prevent our tragic hero from destroying himself.”
“Maybe I should let it happen.”
“You’re a restorer, Gabriel. You fix things.” From the BlackBerry came the clicking of the prayer beads. “Khalid always told me something like this would happen. He knew they would try to destroy him. He said it would be someone close to him. Someone from inside his family.”
“It’s not a family, it’s a business. And the spoils go to those in power.”
“Is that what this is about? Money?”
“We’ll find out soon enough.”
Al-Madani’s phone pinged with an incoming text message. The clicking of the beads fell silent.
“Who do you suppose it’s from?”
A moment later Gabriel’s phone vibrated. The message was from the operations desk at Unit 8200. “It was Khalid. He was wondering when Rafiq might arrive.”