The Fallen Angel

hundred thousand.” Another smile. “Not bad for the price of a long-distance call to Riyadh or Dubai.”
    The dealer lapsed into a contemplative silence, thus surrendering any pretense that he was unwilling to handle the hydria. “Fifty thousand,” he countered, “payable on completion of the sale.”
    Gabriel returned the fragment to its baize blanket. “If you want the hydria, Herr Girard, you will pay me the money up front. The price is not negotiable.”
    “I need some time.”
    “You have twenty-four hours.”
    “How do I reach you?”
    “You don’t. I’ll call you tomorrow at five for your answer. If it is yes, I will deliver the fragments at six and expect payment in full. If the answer is no, I will hang up, and you will never hear from me again.”
     
     
    For their safe house, they had rented a handsome, timbered chalet on a snow-covered mountainside above the village, a bargain at five thousand Swiss francs a night. When Gabriel arrived, the entire team greeted him with a standing ovation. Then they played a recording of a phone call David Girard had just placed to a colleague in Hamburg, looking for information about a bottom feeder named Anton Drexler. “I could be mistaken,” Eli Lavon said, smiling, “but it sounds as if we are most definitely in play.”
     
     
    It seemed no one had ever heard of him. Not a rumor in Zurich. Not a whisper in Geneva. Not so much as a peep in Basel or New York. In fact, the closest thing David Girard found to an actual sighting of a creature called Anton Drexler was a blurry story about someone matching his description trying to sell a couple of forged Greek goddesses to Sotheby’s a few years back. “Or did he call himself Dresden? Sorry I can’t be of more help, David. Lunch next time you’re in town?”
    Finding nothing to discourage him from moving forward, Girard began making inquires of a different kind, namely, trying to locate a potential buyer for his potential new acquisition. As Gabriel had predicted, it took but a single phone call to Riyadh, where a lowly prince immediately threw his ghutra into the ring for three hundred thousand Swiss francs. Not content to rest there, Girard then rang a collector in Abu Dhabi who said he was in for three-twenty. A subsequent call to Moscow brought in a Russian oil trader at three-forty, at which point the real bidding began. It ended a few hours later with the Saudi prince reigning supreme at four and a quarter, payable on delivery.
    It was then Girard phoned his man at the St. Moritz branch of Bank Julius Baer to request one hundred thousand Swiss francs in cash. He collected the money at four and by four-fifteen was back at the gallery, tapping the tip of Mikhail’s expensive gold pen nervously against the surface of his desk. In the garret room of the Jägerhof Hotel, it sounded like a jackhammer.
    “How long do you think he’s going to do that?” Mikhail groaned.
    “I suppose until I call him at five o’clock,” answered Gabriel.
    “Why don’t you just get it over with?”
    “Because Herr Drexler is a man of his word. And he said he would call at five.”
    And so they sat together, Mikhail propped on the bed, Gabriel perched in the arrow slit window, David Girard banging away at his desk in anticipation of Herr Drexler’s call. Finally, at the stroke of five, Gabriel dialed the gallery on a disposable cell phone and in terse German posed a simple question.
    “Yes or no?” After hearing Girard’s answer, he said, “I’ll be there in an hour. Make sure no one is around when I arrive.”
    Gabriel severed the connection and removed the SIM card from the phone. For a moment, there was silence in the room. Then the staccato tapping started up again, even louder than before.
    “If he doesn’t stop,” Mikhail said, “I’m going to walk over there and shoot him.”
    “We need him to get inside Hezbollah’s funding network,” said Gabriel. “Then you can shoot him.”
     
     
    During the next sixty minutes, Gabriel and Mikhail would be granted two reprieves from the tapping. The first occurred at 5:10, when Girard’s Swiss wife dropped by unexpectedly for a glass of champagne to celebrate the sale of the hydria. The second came at 5:40, when a guest from the adjacent hotel, apparently having nothing better to do, asked whether he might have a look at the merchandise. He was tall, French speaking, and deeply tanned, and dangling on his arm like a piece of jewelry was a ravishing