The Heist (35 page)

The Dutch came next, followed by the French, and the Italians, and the Spaniards, and a group of Norwegians who looked as though they had come to London for a funeral. Then it was German steel, followed by German auto, and German home appliances. The delegation from the Italian fashion industry made the splashiest arrival, and the quietest went to the Swiss bankers, who somehow managed to slip into town unnoticed. The Greeks sent a single deputy minister whose job it was to ask for money. Orlov referred to him as Minister Cap in Hand.

The next to arrive was the delegation from Maersk, the Danish shipping and energy conglomerate. Then, on a midafternoon British Airways flight from Vienna, there came a man named Waleed al-Siddiqi, formerly of Damascus, lately of Linz, where he had a stake in a small private bank. Curiously, he was the only invitee who arrived with bodyguards other than the Italian prime minister, whom no one wanted dead. The girl at the kiosk struggled for a moment to find him on her list, for his name was missing the definite article
al
. It was a small mistake, quite intentional, that the Office regarded as the hallmark of any well-planned operation.

Looking mildly annoyed, al-Siddiqi and his bodyguards headed outside, where a courtesy Mercedes limousine idled curbside. The car belonged to MI6, as did its driver. Some fifty meters behind the limousine was a red Vauxhall Astra. Nigel Whitcombe sat behind the wheel; Gabriel sat in the passenger seat, wearing a miniature earpiece. The earpiece, along with the concealed transmitter to which it was connected, proved to be unnecessary, for Waleed al-Siddiqi passed the entire journey into London in complete and utter silence. It was, thought Gabriel, an otherwise fine beginning.

They followed him to the Dorchester; then Whitcombe dropped Gabriel at a not-so-safe Office safe flat on Bayswater Road. Its sitting room overlooked Lancaster Gate and Hyde Park, and it was there he established his modest command post. He had a secure telephone and two laptop computers, one tied into MI6’s network, the other connected to the team in Linz. The MI6 computer allowed him to monitor the feed from the transmitter that had been placed in al-Siddiqi’s hotel room; the feed from Jihan’s compromised mobile phone played on the other. At that moment, she was walking along the Mozartstrasse, humming softly to herself. According to the accompanying watch report, Mikhail Abramov was walking behind her, and Yaakov Rossman was walking along the opposite pavement. No sign of the opposition. No sign of trouble.

And so it was that Gabriel passed that long night, listening to other lives, reading the terse stream of watch reports, wandering through operations past. He paced the floor of the sitting room, he fretted over a hundred details, he thought about his wife and his unborn children. And at two a.m., when Jihan woke herself with a scream of terror, he briefly considered making her disappear. But it wasn’t possible, not yet. He needed more than Waleed al-Siddiqi’s notebook; he needed the contents of his private computer as well. And for that he needed the child of Hama.

Finally, as the sky was beginning to lighten in the east, he lay on the couch and slept. He woke three hours later to an Al Jazeera report on the latest atrocity in Syria, followed by the splash of water in Waleed al-Siddiqi’s luxury Jacuzzi bath. The private banker emerged from his room at half past eight and, accompanied by his bodyguards, partook of the Dorchester’s lavish buffet. While he was reading the morning papers, an MI6 team checked his room to see if, by any chance, he’d forgotten his notebook. He hadn’t.

He emerged from the hotel’s entrance without his bodyguards at twenty minutes past nine, a set of credentials suspended from his neck by a blue-and-gold ribbon. Gabriel knew this because an MI6 surveillance photo appeared on his computer screen two minutes later. The next photo showed al-Siddiqi giving his name to the same Russian girl who had met him at the airport. And in the next he was stepping aboard a luxury coach that bore him eastward across London, to the entrance of Somerset House. Another MI6 operative snapped his photo as he stepped from the bus and walked wordlessly past a small knot of reporters. His eyes blazed with arrogance—and perhaps, thought Gabriel, a trace of mislaid pride. It seemed that Waleed al-Siddiqi had reached the summit of Europe’s business world. His stay there would not be long, thought Gabriel. And his fall would be harder than most.

When next Gabriel saw the private banker, he was crossing the cobbled expanse of the Fountain Courtyard. Then, two minutes after that, he was settling into his seat in a glorious, high-ceilinged event room overlooking the Thames. To his left, dressed in varying shades of gray, was Martin Landesmann, the Swiss private equity billionaire. Their greeting—which Gabriel was able to overhear, thanks to a concealed MI6 transmitter—was restrained but cordial. Landesmann quickly fell into conversation with one of the executives from Maersk, leaving al-Siddiqi with a moment to review the stack of printed material that had been left at his place. Bored, he made a quick phone call, to whom Gabriel could not tell. Then there came a sharp pounding that sounded like nails being hammered into a coffin. But it wasn’t a coffin; it was only Viktor Orlov, gaveling the European Business Initiative to order.

It was at times like these that Gabriel was glad he had been born into a family of artists and not businessmen. Because for the next four hours he was made to endure a mind-numbing discussion of European consumer confidence, before-tax profit margins, standardized value, debt-to-income ratio, Eurobonds, Eurodollar bonds, and Euroequity issues. He was grateful for the midday break; he spent it listening to Jihan and Dina, who lunched in the Hauptplatz under the watchful gaze of Oded and Eli Lavon.

The afternoon session of the conference commenced at two and was promptly hijacked by Martin Landesmann, who made an impassioned speech about global warming and fossil fuels that caused much eye rolling and head shaking among the men from Maersk. At four, a hastily drafted statement of policy recommendations passed by a unanimous voice vote, as did a secondary motion calling for another gathering in London the following year. Afterward, Viktor Orlov appeared before the press in the Fountain Courtyard and declared the conference an overwhelming success. Alone in the safe flat, Gabriel withheld judgment.

With that, the delegates returned to the Dorchester for a bit of downtime. Al-Siddiqi made two telephone calls from his room, one to his wife, and the other to Jihan. Then he boarded a coach for dinner in the Turbine Hall of the Tate Modern. He was seated between a pair of Swiss bankers who spent most of the evening complaining about new European banking regulations that were threatening their business model. Al-Siddiqi blamed it on the Americans. Then, beneath his breath, he said something about Jews that caused the Swiss bankers to chortle with laughter. “Listen, Waleed,” said one of the gnomes, “you really should come see us the next time you’re in Zurich. I’m sure we can be of help to you and your clients.”

The Swiss bankers claimed to have an early call and departed before dessert was served. Al-Siddiqi spent a few minutes chatting with a man from Lloyds about the risk of doing business with Russians and then called it an evening himself. He slept well that night, as did Gabriel, and they woke together the next morning to the news that Syrian government forces had won an important victory over the rebels in the city of Homs. Al-Siddiqi bathed and breakfasted in luxury; Gabriel showered quickly and swallowed a cup of double-strength Nescafé. Then he headed down to Bayswater Road and climbed into the passenger seat of a waiting Vauxhall Astra. Behind the wheel, dressed in the blue uniform of an airport security officer, was Nigel Whitcombe. He eased into the morning traffic and they headed for Heathrow.

A gentle rain was falling at 8:32 a.m. as Waleed al-Siddiqi stepped from the grand entrance of the Dorchester Hotel, a bodyguard at each shoulder. His MI6 courtesy limousine waited in the drive, along with his MI6 driver, who was standing next to the open boot, hands clasped behind his back, bouncing slightly on the balls of his feet. “Mr. Siddiqi,” he called, deliberately removing the definite article from his client’s name. “Let me help you, gentlemen.” And he did just that, placing the bags in the boot and their owners in the car: one bodyguard in the front passenger seat, the other in the rear driver’s side, and “Mr. Siddiqi” in the rear passenger seat. At 8:34 the car turned into Park Lane.
SUBJECT UNDER WAY
read the message that appeared on the MI6 communications net.
PHOTOS UPON REQUEST
.

The drive to Heathrow Airport took forty-five minutes and was made easier by the fact that al-Siddiqi’s car was part of a clandestine MI6 motorcade consisting of six vehicles. His flight, British Airways 700 bound for Vienna, departed from Terminal 3. The driver removed the bags from the boot, wished his client a pleasant journey, and received a blank stare in return. Because the Syrian banker was flying first class, the check-in process consumed just ten minutes. The girl at the counter circled the gate number on his boarding pass and pointed him to the appropriate security area. “Just there,” she said. “You’re in luck, Mr. al-Siddiqi. The lines aren’t too horrific this morning.”

It was impossible to tell whether Waleed al-Siddiqi considered himself lucky, because the expression he wore as he crossed the glittering hall of lights and flight-status boards was that of a man wrestling with weightier matters. Trailed by his bodyguards, he presented his passport and boarding document to the security screener for one final inspection and then joined the shortest of the three lines. An experienced traveler, he disrobed without haste and removed the required electronics and liquids from his briefcase and carry-on. Shoeless and in shirtsleeves, he watched the conveyor belt suck his possessions into the belly of the X-ray machine. Then, when instructed, he stepped into the millimeter wave scanner and wearily raised his arms as though he were surrendering after a long siege.

Having been found to be in possession of nothing restricted or remotely dangerous, he was invited to take his place at the end of the conveyor belt. An American couple, young and prosperous looking, waited in front of him. When their bins came trundling off the belt, they collected their things in a rush and hurried into the concourse. Waleed al-Siddiqi gave a superior frown and stepped forward. Absently, he patted the front of his shirt. Then he looked down at the motionless conveyor belt, and he waited.

For thirty long seconds, three security officers frowned at the screen of the X-ray machine as though they feared the patient did not have long to live. Finally, one of the officers detached himself and, plastic bin in hand, walked over to the spot where al-Siddiqi stood. The nameplate on the officer’s breast pocket read
CHARLES DAVIES
. His real name was Nigel Whitcombe.

“Are these your things?” inquired Whitcombe.

“Yes, they are,” replied al-Siddiqi curtly.

“We need to do a bit of additional screening. It won’t be but a minute,” Whitcombe added genially, “and then we’ll have you on your way.”

“Would it be possible for me to have my suit jacket?”

“Sorry,” said Whitcombe, shaking his head. “Is there a problem?”

“No,” said Waleed al-Siddiqi, smiling in spite of himself. “No problem at all.”

Whitcombe invited the banker and his bodyguards to have a seat in the waiting area. Then he carried the plastic bin behind a barrier and placed it on the inspection table, next to al-Siddiqi’s briefcase and carry-on garment bag. The small leather notebook was exactly where Jihan Nawaz had said it would be, in the left breast pocket of his suit jacket. Whitcombe quickly handed it to a young MI6 operative called Clarissa, who carried it a short distance to a door that opened as she approached. On the other side of the door was a small room with blank white walls occupied by two men. One of the men was her director-general. The other was a man with brilliant green eyes and gray temples whose exploits she had read about in the newspapers. Something made her hand the notebook to the man with green eyes instead of her DG. Accepting it without a word, he opened it to the first page and placed it beneath the lens of a high-resolution document camera. Then he pressed his eye to the viewfinder and snapped the first photo.

“Turn the page,” he said quietly, and when the director-general of MI6 turned the page, he took another photo.

“Again, Graham.”

Click
. . .

“Next.”

Click
. . .

“Faster, Graham.”

Click
. . .

“Again.”

Click
. . .

T
HE TEXT MESSAGE APPEARED ON
Jihan’s mobile phone at half past ten Austrian time:
I
’
M FREE FOR LUNCH. FEEL LIKE FRANZESCO
? The subject matter was innocuous. The choice of restaurants, however, was not. It was a prearranged signal. For a few seconds, Jihan felt as though she were incapable of drawing a breath; Hama, it seemed, had taken hold of her heart. It took several attempts before she was able to successfully type a three-word response:
ARE YOU SURE
? The reply came back with the speed of a rifle shot:
ABSOLUTELY! CAN
’
T WAIT
.

Her hand shaking, Jihan placed the mobile device on her desk and then lifted the receiver of her multiline office phone. Several numbers were programmed into her speed-dial buttons, including one that was labeled
MR. AL-SIDDIQI MOBILE.
She rehearsed her scripted lines one final time. Then she reached out and pressed the button. The call received no answer, and for that Jihan was momentarily relieved. She hung up without leaving a message. Then she drew another breath and dialed the number again.

Jihan’s first call to Waleed al-Siddiqi received no response because at that moment his mobile phone was still in the possession of a Heathrow Airport security officer named Charles Davies, otherwise known as Nigel Whitcombe. By the time the second call came through, he had regained control of his device but was too preoccupied to answer; he was checking to see if his leather notebook was still in the left breast pocket of his suit jacket, which it was. The third call found him in the duty-free area of the terminal and in a foul mood. He answered with little more than a grunt. “Mr. al-Siddiqi,” exclaimed Jihan, as though she were pleased to hear the sound of his voice. “I’m so glad I was able to reach you before you boarded your flight. I’m afraid we have a small problem in the Cayman Islands. May I have a moment of your time?”