The Messenger

over your bones.”

21.

London

    T HE 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.
    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.

    S HE BEGAN to think of them as friends. They rode with her in the Tube. They strolled in Mason’s Yard and loitered in Duke Street. They followed her to lunch and there was always one waiting in Green’s each evening when she stopped at the bar for a quick one with Oliver and the boys. They went with her to an auction at Sotheby’s and watched her pick over the dreary contents of a saleroom in Hull. They even made a long trip with her down to Devon, where she sweet-talked a dusty minor aristocrat into parting with a lovely Venetian Madonna and Child that Isherwood had coveted for years. “Zizi’s coming for you,” Gabriel told her in a brief telephone call on the Monday afternoon. “It’s only a matter of time. And don’t be alarmed if your things seem a bit out of place when you go home tonight. Sharuki broke into your flat and searched it this morning.”
    The next day the first gift arrived, a Harry Winston diamond watch. Attached to the gift-wrapped box was a