He had other more pressing matters to attend to, and so it was nearly eight o’clock before he got around to opening the envelope. He immediately regretted the delay, for the allegations were quite serious in nature. On no fewer than nine occasions, according to Miss Goodheart, Andrew Malone had taken cash payments in violation of his personal services contract with Abdul Aziz al-Bakari. The allegations were supported by a packet of corroborating evidence, including bank deposit receipts, faxes, and personal e-mails taken from Malone’s home computer. Bin Talal immediately placed a call to his superior’s lakeside Geneva mansion and by nine that evening he was placing the documents on the desk of an irate Zizi al-Bakari.

That same evening, at eleven London time, bin Talal placed a call to Malone’s Knightsbridge residence and ordered him to come to Geneva on the first available flight. When Malone protested that he had a prior commitment—and that it was a weekend, for heaven’s sake—bin Talal made it clear that the summons was mandatory and failure to appear would be regarded as a grave offense. The call was recorded by a neviot team and forwarded immediately to Gabriel at the Surrey safe house, along with the rather shaky call Malone placed to British Airways ten minutes later, reserving a seat on the 8:30 A.M. flight to Geneva.

Eli Lavon booked a seat on the flight as well. Upon arrival in Geneva the two men were met by a pair of incongruous cars, Malone by a black S-Class Mercedes driven by one of Zizi’s chauffeurs, and Lavon by a mud-spattered Opel piloted by a courier from Geneva Station. Lavon ordered the bodel to give the Mercedes wide berth. As a result they arrived at Zizi’s mansion several minutes after Malone. They found a secluded parking space farther down the street but did not have to wait long, because twenty minutes later Malone emerged from the house, looking more ashen than usual.

He proceeded directly back to the airport and booked a seat on the earliest flight back to London, which was at five o’clock. Lavon did the same. At Heathrow the two men went their separate ways, Lavon to Surrey and Malone to Knightsbridge, where he informed his wife that unless he could come up with four million pounds in extremely short order, Zizi al-Bakari was going to personally throw him off an extremely high bridge.

That was Saturday night. By the following Wednesday it was clear to Gabriel and the rest of his team that Zizi was in the market for a new exclusive art consultant. It was also clear he had his eye on someone in particular, because Sarah Bancroft, assistant director of Isherwood Fine Arts of Mason’s Yard, St. James’s, was under surveillance.