House of Spies Read online

  “Still . . .” Rousseau nibbled thoughtfully on the end of his pipe. “How sure are you about the gallery?”

  “I should know more by the end of the day.”

  “Because if you can prove the gallery is dirty . . .”

  “That’s the idea, Paul.”

  “How soon do you intend to go operational?”

  “As soon as I’ve acquired the necessary funding,” said Gabriel.

  “Is there anything else you require of us?”

  “A property near Saint-Tropez.”

  “There’s plenty to rent, especially at this time of year.”

  “Actually, I’m not in the market for a rental.”

  “You wish to buy?”

  Gabriel nodded. “In fact,” he said, “I already have a property in mind.”

  “Which one?”

  Gabriel answered. Rousseau appeared incredulous.

  “The one that was owned by—”

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  “It’s frozen.”

  “So unfreeze it. Trust me, I’ll make it well worth your while. The taxpayers of France will be grateful.”

  “How much are you prepared to offer?”

  Gabriel lifted his eyes toward the ceiling. “Twelve million feels about right.”

  “Apparently, it’s fallen into quite a state of disrepair.”

  “We intend to renovate.”

  “In Provence?” Rousseau shook his head. “I wish you the best of luck.”

  Five minutes later, having checked a few more mundane operational boxes, Gabriel was once more in the passenger seat of Bouchard’s Citroën. This time they drove from the twentieth arrondissement to the twelfth and stopped on the boulevard Diderot outside the Gare de Lyon. It looked as though it were under military occupation. It was the same at every train station in France.

  “Sure you want to go in there?” asked Bouchard. “I can arrange a car if you prefer.”

  “I’ll manage.”

  Long lines stretched from the station’s entrance, where heavily armed police were searching handbags and suitcases and questioning anyone, especially young men, remotely Arab in appearance. The new normal, thought Gabriel as he was admitted into the soaring departure hall. The famous clock read five minutes past three, his train was boarding on Track D. Track Dalet, he thought. Why did it have to be that one? Couldn’t they have chosen another?

  He made his way along the platform, entered one of the first-class carriages, and settled into his assigned seat. Only when the memories had subsided did he draw his mobile. The number he dialed was in Bern. A man answered in Swiss German. Gabriel addressed him in the Berlin-accented German of his mother.

  “I’m on my way to your beautiful country, and I was wondering whether you might show me a good time.”

  There was a silence, followed by a lengthy exhalation of breath.

  “When are you getting in?”

  “Six fifteen.”

  “How?”

  “The TGV from Paris.”

  “What is it this time?”

  “Same as the last. A quick peek, that’s all.”

  “Nothing is going to explode, is it?”

  Gabriel killed the connection and watched the platform sliding slowly past his window. Once again the memories arose. He saw a woman, scarred and prematurely gray, sitting in a wheelchair, and a man running wildly toward her, a gun in his hand. He closed his eyes and gripped the armrest to stop his hand from shaking. I’ll manage, he thought.

  The NDB, like Switzerland itself, was small but efficient. Headquartered in a drab office block in Bern, the service was responsible for keeping the many problems of a disorderly world from crossing the borders of the Swiss Confederation. It spied on the spies who plied their trade on Swiss soil, watched over the foreigners who hid their money in Swiss banks, and monitored the activities of the growing number of Muslims who made Switzerland their home. Thus far, the country had been spared a major terrorist attack by the likes of al-Qaeda or ISIS. It was no accident. Christoph Bittel, the chief of the NDB’s counterterrorism division, was very good at his job.

  He was also punctual as a Swiss watch. Tall and thin, he was leaning against the hood of a German sedan when Gabriel emerged from the Gare de Cornavin in Geneva at half past six. The Swiss secret policeman frowned. In Switzerland, six fifteen meant six fifteen.

  “Do you know the address for the vault?”

  “Building Three, Corridor Eight, Vault Nineteen.”

  “Who’s renting it?”

  “Something called TXM Capital. But I suspect the real owner is JLM.”

  “Jean-Luc Martel?”

  “One and the same.”

  Bittel swore softly. “I don’t want any trouble with the French. I need the DGSI to protect my western flank.”

  “Don’t worry about the French. As for your western flank, I’d be very afraid.”

  “Is it true what they say about Martel? That his real business is drugs?”

  “We’ll know in a few minutes.”

  They crossed the Rhône and then, a moment later, the mucus-green waters of the Arne. To the south lay a quartier of Geneva where tourists and diplomats rarely ventured. It was a land of tidy warehouses and low-slung office blocks. It was also the home of the secretive Geneva Freeport, a secure tax-free repository where the global superrich stashed away treasures of every kind: gold bars, jewelry, vintage wine, automobiles, and, of course, art. It was not art to be viewed and cherished. It was art as a commodity, art as a hedge against uncertain times.

  “The place has changed since we were here,” Bittel said. “The last straw was that scandal involving the Modigliani, the one that had been stolen by the Nazis. A lot of the collectors pulled out after that and moved their holdings to places like Delaware and London. The cantonal authorities have brought in a new man to run the place. He’s a former Swiss finance minister, a real stickler for the letter of the law.”

  “Perhaps there’s hope for your country after all.”

  “Let’s skip this part,” said Bittel. “I like it better when we’re on the same side.”

  A row of featureless white structures appeared on their right, surrounded by an opaque green fence topped with concertina wire and security cameras. It might have been mistaken for a prison were it not for the red-and-white sign that read ports francs. Bittel turned into the entrance and waited for the security gate to open. Then he pulled forward a few feet and slipped the car into park.

  “Building Three, Corridor Eight, Vault Nineteen.”

  “Very good,” said Gabriel.

  “We’re not going to find drugs in there, are we?”

  “No.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because drug dealers don’t lock away their product in secure tax-free storage facilities. They sell it to idiots who smoke it, snort it, and inject it into their veins. That’s how they make their money.”

  Bittel entered the security office. Through the half-open blinds of the window, Gabriel could see him in close conversation with an attractive brunette. It was obvious they were speaking in French rather than Swiss German. Finally, there were a few nods and assurances, and then a key changed hands. Bittel carried it back to the car and slid behind the wheel again.

  “You’re sure there’s nothing between you two?” asked Gabriel.

  “Don’t start with that again.”

  “Maybe you can introduce me. It would save you the trouble of having to make the drive down from Bern every time I need to look inside some criminal’s vault.”

  “I prefer our current system.”

  Bittel parked outside Building 3 and led Gabriel inside. From the entrance stretched a seemingly endless hall of doors. They climbed a flight of stairs to the second level and made their way to Corridor 8. The door to Vault 19 was gray metal. Bittel inserted the key into the lock and, entering, switched on the light. The vault contained two chambers. Both were filled with flat rectangular wooden crates of the s
ort used to transport valuable art. All were identical in size, about six feet by four.

  “Not again,” said Bittel.

  “No,” said Gabriel. “Not again.”

  He examined one of the crates. Attached to it was a shipping waybill bearing the name Galerie Olivia Watson of Saint-Tropez. He pulled at the lid, but it wouldn’t budge. It was nailed tightly into place.

  “You wouldn’t happen to have a claw hammer in your back pocket, would you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “How about a tire tool?”

  “I might have one in the trunk.”

  Gabriel scrutinized the remaining crates while Bittel went downstairs. There were forty-eight. All had come from Galerie Olivia Watson. TXM Capital was the recipient of record for twenty-seven of the crates. The rest bore equally vague names—the kind of names, thought Gabriel, invented by clever lawyers and private bankers.

  Bittel returned with the tire tool. Gabriel used it to pry open the first crate. He worked slowly, gently, so as to leave as few marks in the wood as possible. Inside he found a canvas wrapped in glassine paper, resting in a protective frame of polyurethane. It was all very professional looking, with the exception of the canvas itself.

  “How contemporary,” said Bittel.

  “There’s no accounting for taste,” replied Gabriel.

  He opened another crate. The contents were identical to the first. The same was true of the third crate. And the fourth. A canvas wrapped in glassine paper, a protective frame of polyurethane. All very professional, except for the canvases themselves.

  They were blank.

  “Mind telling me what this means?” asked Bittel.

  “It means that Jean-Luc Martel’s real business is drugs, and he’s using his girlfriend’s art gallery to launder some of the profits.”

  “Just what the Freeport needs. Another scandal.”

  “Don’t worry, Christoph. It will be our little secret.”

  26

  Tel Aviv—Saint-Tropez

  Which left only the money. The money necessary to take Gabriel’s operation from development to the stage. The two or three hundred million to acquire a flashy art collection. The twelve million for a lavish villa on France’s Côte d’Azur, and the five million, give or take, to make it presentable. And then there was the money for all of life’s little extras. The cars, the clothes, the jewelry, the restaurants, the trips by private plane, the lavish parties. Gabriel had a figure in mind, to which he added another twenty million, just in case. Operations, like life itself, were uncertain.

  “That’s a lot of cash,” said the prime minister.

  “A half billion doesn’t go as far as it used to.”

  “Where’s the bank?”

  “We have several to choose from, but the National Bank of Panama is our best option. One-stop shopping,” explained Gabriel, “and little threat of retaliation, not after the Panama Papers scandal. Even so, we’ll plant a few false flags to cover our tracks.”

  “Who are you going to hang it on?”

  “The North Koreans.”

  “Why not the Iranians?”

  “Next time,” promised Gabriel.

  The targeted funds were spread over eight separate accounts, all bearing the name of the same shell investment corporation. They were part of a vast fortune of looted money controlled by the ruler of Syria and his closest friends and relatives. Shortly before becoming chief, Gabriel had tracked down and then seized the lion’s share of the fortune in a bid to moderate the ruler’s murderous conduct in the Syrian civil war. But he had been compelled to return the money, more than eight billion dollars, in exchange for a single human life. He had paid the ransom without regret—it was, he always said, the best deal he had ever made. Even so, he had been looking for an excuse, any excuse, to have the final say. Finding Saladin was as good a reason as any.

  Gabriel had not returned the eight billion directly to the Syrian ruler. He had deposited it, as instructed, in Gazprombank in Moscow, thus effectively placing it in the hands of the tsar, the Syrian ruler’s closest friend and benefactor. The tsar had taken half of the money for himself—service charges, carrying costs, shipping and handling. The remaining funds, slightly more than four billion dollars, had been deposited in a string of secret accounts in Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Dubai, Hong Kong, and, of course, the National Bank of Panama.

  Gabriel knew this because, with the help of a highly secretive unit of Office computer hackers, he had been watching the money’s every move. The unit had no official name because, officially, it did not exist. Those who had been briefed on its work referred to it only as the Minyan, for the unit was ten in number and exclusively male in gender. With but a few keystrokes, they could darken a city, blind an air traffic control network, or make the centrifuges of an Iranian nuclear-enrichment plant spin wildly out of control. In short, they had the ability to turn machines against their masters. Privately, Uzi Navot referred to the Minyan as ten good reasons why no one in his right mind would ever use a computer or a mobile phone.

  The Minyan worked in a room just down the hall from the one where Gabriel’s team was putting the final touches on the preoperational planning. Its nominal leader was a kid named Ilan. He was the cyber equivalent of Mozart. First computer code at five, first hack at eight, first covert op against the Iranians at twenty-one. He was thin as a pauper and had the pasty white pallor of someone who didn’t get outside much.

  “All I have to do is push a button,” he said with an impish smile, “and poof—the money is gone.”

  “And no fingerprints?”

  “Only North Korean.”

  “And there’s no way they’ll be able to trace the money from the Bank of Panama to HSBC in Paris?”

  “Not a chance.”

  “Remind me,” said Gabriel, “to keep my money under the mattress.”

  “Keep your money under the mattress.”

  “It was a rhetorical point, Ilan. I didn’t want you to actually remind me.”

  “Oh.”

  “You have to get out into the real world once in a while.”

  “This is the real world.”

  Gabriel stared at the computer screen. Ilan stared at it, too.

  “Well?” asked Gabriel.

  “Well what?”

  “What are you waiting for?”

  “Authorization to steal a half billion dollars.”

  “It’s not stealing.”

  “I doubt the Syrians will see it that way. Or the Panamanians.”

  “Push the button, Ilan.”

  “I’d feel better if you did it.”

  “Which one?”

  Ilan indicated the enter key. Gabriel tapped it once. Then he walked down the hall and informed his team of the news. The necessary funding had come through. They were open for business.

  He was spotted for the first time the following week, on the Wednesday, coming out of Bonhams on New Bond Street with Julian Isherwood at his heels. As luck would have it—or perhaps, with the benefit of hindsight, it wasn’t luck at all—Amelia March of ARTnews happened to be standing on the pavement at the time, killing a few minutes before her two o’clock with the chairman of Bonhams’ postwar and contemporary department. She was an art journalist, not a real one, but she had a nose for a story and an eye for detail. “Tall, trim, quite blond, rather pale, no color in the eyes at all. His suit and overcoat were perfect, his cologne smelled of money.” She thought it odd he was in the company of a fossil like Julian. He looked as though his tastes ran to Modern rather than angels and saints and martyrs. Isherwood gave a hurried introduction before ducking with his accomplice into the back of a waiting Jaguar limo. Dmitri Something-or-Other. But of course.

  Inside Bonhams, Amelia was able to determine that Isherwood and his tall, pale friend had spent several hours with Jeremy Crabbe, the auction house’s maestro of Old Masters. She tracked down Jeremy at Wilton’s later that evening. They spoke like a couple of spies in a Vienna coffeeh
ouse after the war.

  “Name’s Antonov. Dmitri Antonov. Russian, I suppose, but it didn’t come up in casual conversation. He’s absolutely made of money. Does something with natural resources. Don’t they all,” drawled Jeremy. “Julian’s attached himself like a barnacle to the hull of a ship. Apparently, he’s acting as both dealer and adviser. Quite a cozy relationship, financially speaking. It seems Dmitri has taken several paintings off Julian’s hands, and now they’re hunting big game. But don’t quote me on that. In fact, don’t quote me on anything. This is all off the record. Strictly entre nous, darling.”

  Amelia agreed to keep the information confidential, but Jeremy wasn’t so discreet. In fact, he told everyone in the bar, including Oliver Dimbleby. By evening’s end it was all anyone was talking about.

  In mid-March they were spotted at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s. They also paid a visit to Oliver’s gallery in Bury Street, where after an hour of benign negotiation they committed to acquire a hilly dunescape by the Dutch painter Jacob van Ruisdael, two Venetian canal scenes by Francesco Guardi, and an entombment by Zelotti. Roddy Hutchinson sold him five paintings in all, including a still life with fruit and a lizard by Ambrosius Bosschaert II. The next day Amelia March published a small piece about a young Russian who was making waves in the London art market. Julian Isherwood, acting as the young Russian’s spokesman, declined comment. “Any purchases made by my client were private,” he said, “and they will remain so.”

  Early April saw Isherwood and his Russian friend across the Atlantic in New York, where their arrival was eagerly anticipated. They toured the auction houses and the galleries, dined in all the right restaurants, and even took in a Broadway musical. A gossip columnist from the Post reported they acquired several Old Master paintings from Otto Naumann Ltd. on East Eightieth Street, but once again Isherwood mumbled something about his client’s desire for privacy. By all accounts, it went only so far. Those who met him were left with the impression he was a man who liked to be seen. The same was true of the beautiful young woman—apparently she was the wife, but this was never proven irrefutably—who accompanied him to America. She was trim, dark, French, and deeply unfriendly. “Never missed an opportunity to have a look at herself,” said the manager of an exclusive Fifth Avenue jeweler. “A real piece of work.”