“Then we have a deal, Mr. Isherwood.” He looked at Sarah and said, “I’ll take her.”

AT 4:53 the neviot team sent word to Gabriel that the proceedings had moved to the lower offices and that Isherwood was now in discussions with Herr Wehrli and Abdul & Abdul over matters of payment and transfer of custody. Said discussions lasted slightly more than an hour, and at 6:05 came the flash that Mr. Baker and his party were traipsing across the darkened yard toward the motorcade parked in Duke Street. Eli Lavon handled the pursuit. For a few minutes it seemed the mansion in Mayfair was their destination, but by 6:15 it was clear that Mr. Baker and party were headed back to Heathrow and destinations unknown. Gabriel ordered Lavon to break off the chase. He didn’t care where Mr. Baker was going now. He knew they would all meet again soon.

The video recording arrived at 7:45. It had been shot by the security camera mounted in the far corner of the exhibition room above the Claude landscape. Gabriel, as he watched it, felt as though he were seated in a box high above the stage.

“…This is Sarah Bancroft, our assistant director. It’s because of Sarah we’re all here tonight….”

“…Then, we have a deal, Mr. Isherwood. I’ll take her….”

Gabriel stopped the recording and looked at Dina.

“You’ve sold him one girl,” she said. “Now you just have to sell him the other.”

Gabriel opened the audio file of Isherwood’s meeting with Andrew Malone and clicked Play.

“It’s not Zizi’s money. It’s my money. And what Zizi doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“And if he finds out? He’ll drop you in the Empty Quarter and let the vultures pick over your bones.”

21. London

London

THE DENUNCIATION of Andrew Malone arrived at the headquarters of AAB Holdings in Geneva at 10:22 A.M. the following Thursday. It was addressed to “Mr. Abdul Aziz al-Bakari, Esq.” and hand-delivered by a motorcycle courier wearing the uniform of a local Geneva messenger service. The sender’s name was a Miss Rebecca Goodheart, Earl’s Court, London, but inspection by an AAB security underling determined that Miss Goodheart was merely a pseudonym for an anonymous snitch. After finding no evidence of radiological, biological, or explosive material, the underling forwarded the parcel to the office of Wazir bin Talal. There it remained until late Friday afternoon, when bin Talal returned to Geneva after a one-day trip to Riyadh.