He quickly switched his attention to the east side of 7th Street, where Andy was explaining to the crowd that it had not been the President but simply a rehearsal for a movie, nothing more. Most of the onlookers showed their obvious disappointment and quickly began to disperse.
Then he thought he saw him again.
As Cavalli’s car sped down Constitution Avenue, the lead police car was already turning right into 14th Street, accompanied by two of the outriders. The sirens had been turned off, and the rest of the motorcade peeled off one by one as they reached their allotted intersections.
The first car swung right on 9th Street and right again back onto Pennsylvania Avenue before heading away in the direction of the Capitol. The third continued on down Constitution Avenue, keeping to the center lane, while the fourth turned left onto 12th Street and the sixth right at 13th.
The fifth turned left on 23rd Street, crossing Memorial Bridge and following the signs to Old Town, while the second car turned left at 14th Street and headed towards the Jefferson Memorial and onto the George Washington Memorial Parkway.
Cavalli, who was seated in the back of the second car, dialed the director. When Johnny answered the phone, the only words he heard were, “It’s a wrap.”
Chapter Fifteen
Scott prayed that the Ambassador’s wife would be unable to get away on Thursday, or might still be in Geneva. He remembered Dexter Hutchins saying, “Patience is not a virtue when you work for the CIA, it’s nine-tenths of the job.”
When he stopped at the end of the pool Hannah told him that the Ambassador’s wife hadn’t returned from Switzerland. They didn’t bother to swim another length, and agreed to meet later at the amusement park in the boi de Vincennes.
The moment he saw her walking across the road he wanted to touch her. There were no instructions in any of the CIA handbooks on how to deal with such a situation, and no agent had ever raised the problem with him during the past nine years.
Hannah briefed him on everything that was happening at the embassy, including “something big” taking place in Geneva that she didn’t yet know the details of. Scott told her in reply to her question that he had reported back to Kratz, and that it wouldn’t be long before she was taken out. She seemed pleased.
Once they began to talk of other things, Scott’s training warned him that he ought to insist she return to the embassy. But this time he left Hannah to make the decision as to when she should leave. She seemed to relax for the first time, and even laughed at Scott’s stories about the macho Parisians he met up with in the gym every evening.
As they strolled around the amusement park, Scott discovered it was Hannah who won the teddy bears at the shooting gallery and didn’t feel sick on the Big Dipper.
“Why are you buying cotton candy?” he asked.
“Because then no one will think we’re agents,” she replied. “They’ll assume we’re lovers.”
When they parted two hours later he kissed her on the cheek. Two professionals behaving like amateurs. He apologized. She laughed and disappeared.
Shortly after ten o’clock, Hamid Al Obaydi joined a small crowd that had formed on the sidewalk opposite a back entrance of the National Archives. He had to wait some twenty minutes before the door opened again and Cavalli came running up the ramp just as the motorcade reappeared on the corner of 7th Street. Cavalli gave a signal and they all came rushing out to the waiting cars. Al Obaydi couldn’t believe his eyes. The deception completely fooled the small crowd, who began waving and cheering.
As the first car disappeared around the corner, a man who had been there all the time explained that it was not the President but simply the rehearsal for a film.
Al Obaydi smiled at this double deception while the disappointed crowd drifted away. He crossed 7th Street and joined a long line of tourists, schoolchildren and the simply curious who had formed a line to see the Declaration of Independence.
The thirty-nine steps of the National Archives took as many minutes to ascend, and by the time the Deputy Ambassador entered the rotunda the river of people had thinned to a tributary which flowed on across the marble hall to a single line up a further nine steps, ending in a trickle under the gaze of Thomas Jefferson and John Hancock. Before him stood the massive brass frame that housed the Declaration of Independence.
Al Obaydi noted that when a person reached the parchment he was only able to spend a few moments gazing at the historic document. As his foot touched the first of the steps his heart started beating faster, but for a different reason from everyone else waiting in the line. He removed from his inside pocket a pair of spectacles whose glass could magnify the smallest writing by a degree of four.
The Deputy Ambassador walked across to the center of the top step and stared at the Declaration of Independence. His immediate reaction was one of horror. The document was so perfect it must surely be the original. Cavalli had fooled him. Worse, he had succeeded in stealing ten million dollars by a clever deception. Al Obaydi checked that the guards on each side of the encasement were showing no particular interest in him before putting on the spectacles.
He leaned over so that his nose was only an inch from the glass as he searched for the one word that had to be spelled correctly if they expected to be paid another cent.
His eyes widened in disbelief when he came to the sentence: “Nor have we been wanting in attentions to our British brethren.”
* * *
The Ambassador’s wife returned from Geneva with her husband the following Friday. Hannah and Scott had managed to steal a few hours together that morning.
It had been less than three weeks since he had first seen her in the public baths in the boulevard Lannes. Just over a week since that first hastily arranged meeting at the little café on the avenue Bugeaud. That was when the lies had begun; little ones to start with, that grew larger until they had spun themselves into an intricate web of deceit. Now Scott longed to tell her the truth, but as each day passed it became more and more impossible.
Langley had been delighted with the coded messages, and Dexter had congratulated him on doing such a first-class job. “As good a junior field officer as I can remember,” Dexter admitted. But Scott had discovered no code to let the Deputy Director know he was falling in love.
He had read Hannah’s file from cover to cover, but it gave no clue as to her real character. The way she laughed—a smile that could make you smile however sad or angry you were. A mind that was always fascinating and fascinated by what was happening around her. But most of all a warmth and gentleness that made their time apart seem like an eternity.
And whenever he was with her, he was suddenly no more mature than his students. Their clandestine meetings had rarely been for more than an hour, perhaps two, but it made each occasion all the more intense.
She continued to tell him everything about herself with a frankness and honesty that belied his deceit, while he told her nothing but a string of lies about being a Mossad agent whose front, while he was stationed in Paris, was writing a book, a travel book, which would never be published. That was the trouble with lies—each one created the next in a never-ending spiral. And that was the trouble with trust; she believed his every word.
When he returned home that evening, he made a decision he knew Langley would not approve of.
As the car edged its way into the left lane of the George Washington Memorial Parkway bound for the airport the driver checked the rearview mirror and confirmed no one was following them. Cavalli breathed a deep sigh of relief, though he had two alternative plans worked out if they were caught with the Declaration. He’d realized early on that it would be necessary to get as far away from the scene of the crime as quickly as possible. It had always been a crucial part of the plan that he would hand over the document to Nick Vicente within two hours of its leaving the National Archives.
“So let’s get on with it,” said Cavalli, turning his attention to Angelo, who was seated opposite him. Angelo unbuckled the s
word that hung from the belt around his waist. The two men then faced each other like Japanese sumo wrestlers, each waiting for the other to make the first move. Angelo placed the sword firmly between his legs, the handle pointing towards his boss. Cavalli leaned over and snapped the top back. Then, with the nail of his right thumb and forefinger, he extracted the thin black cylinder from its casing. Angelo pressed the handle back in place and hitched the sword onto his belt.
Cavalli held the twenty-six-inch-long slim plastic cylinder in his hands.
“It must be tempting to have a look,” said Angelo.
“There are more important things to do at the moment,” said Cavalli, placing the cylinder on the seat next to him. He picked up the carphone, pressed a single digit followed by “Send” and then waited for a response.
“Yes?” said a recognizable voice.
“I’m on my way, and I’ll have something to declare when I arrive.” There was a long silence, and Cavalli wondered if he had lost the connection.
“You’ve done well,” came back the eventual reply. “But are you running on schedule?”
Cavalli looked out of the window. The exit sign for Route 395 South flashed past. “I’d say we’re about a couple of minutes from the airport. As long as we make our allocated time slot, I still hope to be with you around one o’clock.”
“Good, then I’ll have Nick join us so that the contract can be picked up and sent on to our client. We’ll expect you around one.”
Cavalli replaced the phone and was amused to find Angelo was dressed only in a vest and underpants. He smiled and was about to comment when the phone rang. Cavalli picked it up.
“Yes,” he said.
“It’s Andy. I thought you’d like to know it’s back on display to the general public and the lines are as long as ever. By the way, an Arab stood around in the crowd the whole time you were in the building, and then joined the line to see the Declaration.”
“Well done, Andy. Get yourself back to New York. You can fill me in on the details tomorrow.”
Cavalli put the phone down and considered Andy’s new piece of information as Angelo was completing a Windsor knot on a tie no lieutenant would have been seen dead in. He still didn’t have his trousers on.
The smoked glass between the driver and the passengers slid down.
“We’re just coming up to the terminal, sir. No one has followed us at any point.”
“Good,” said Cavalli as Angelo hurriedly pulled on his trousers. “Once you’ve changed your license plates, drive back to New York.”
The driver nodded as the limousine came to a halt outside Signature Flight Support.
Cavalli grabbed the plastic tube, jumped out of the car, ran through the terminal and out onto the tarmac. His eyes searched for the white Learjet. When he spotted it, a door opened and the steps were lowered to the ground. Cavalli ran towards them as Angelo followed him, trying to pull on his jacket in the high wind.
The Captain was waiting for them on the top step. “You’ve just made it in time for us to keep our slot,” he told them. Cavalli smiled, and once they had both clicked on their seatbelts, the Captain pressed a button to allow the steps to swing back into place.
The plane lifted off seventeen minutes later, banking over the Kennedy Center, but not before the steward had served them each a glass of champagne. Cavalli rejected the offer of a second glass as he concentrated on what still needed to be done before he could consider his role in the operation completed. His thoughts turned once again to Al Obaydi, and he began to wonder if he’d underestimated him.
When the Learjet landed at La Guardia fifty-seven minutes later, Cavalli’s driver was waiting by his car, ready to whisk them into the city.
As the driver continually switched lanes and changed direction on the highway that would eventually take them west over the Triborough Bridge, Cavalli checked his watch. They were now lost in a sea of traffic heading into Manhattan, only eighty-seven minutes after leaving Calder Marshall outside the delivery entrance of the National Archives. Roughly the time it would take a Wall Street banker to have lunch, Cavalli thought.
Cavalli was dropped outside his father’s 75th Street brownstone just before one, leaving Angelo to go on to the Wall Street office and monitor the checking-in calls as each member of the team filed his report.
The butler held open the front door of number 23 as Tony stepped out of the car.
“Can I take that for you, sir?” he asked, eyeing the plastic tube.
“No, thank you, Martin,” said Tony. “I’ll hold on to it for the moment. Where’s my father?”
“He’s in the boardroom with Mr. Vicente, who arrived a few minutes ago.”
Tony jogged down the staircase that led to the basement and continued across the corridor. He strode into the boardroom to find his father sitting at the head of the table, deep in conversation with Nick Vicente. The chairman stood up to greet his son, and Tony passed him the plastic tube.
“Hail, conquering hero,” were his father’s first words. “If you’d pulled off the same trick for George III, he would have made you a knight. ‘Arise, Sir Antonio.’ But as it is, you’ll have to be satisfied with a hundred million dollars’ compensation. Is it permissible for an old man to see the original before Nick whisks it away?”
Cavalli laughed and removed the cap from the top of the cylinder before slowly extracting the parchment and placing it gently on the boardroom table. He then unrolled two hundred years of history. The three men stared down at the Declaration of Independence and quickly checked the spelling of “British.”
“Magnificent,” was all Tony’s father said as he began licking his lips.
“Interesting how the names on the bottom were left with so little space for their signatures,” observed Nick Vicente after he had studied the document for several minutes.
“If they’d all signed their names the same size as John Hancock, we would have needed a Declaration of twice the length,” added the chairman as the phone on the boardroom table started to ring.
The chairman flicked a button on his intercom. “Yes, Martin?”
“There’s a Mr. Al Obaydi on the private line, says he would like to have a word with Mr. Tony.”
“Thank you, Martin,” said the chairman, as Tony leaned over to pick up the call. “Why don’t you take it in my office, then I can listen in on the extension.”
Tony nodded and left the room to go next door, where he picked up the receiver on his father’s desk. “Antonio Cavalli,” he said.
“Hamid Al Obaydi here. Your father suggested I call back around this time.”
“We are in possession of the document you require,” was all Cavalli said.
“I congratulate you, Mr. Cavalli.”
“Are you ready to complete the payment as agreed?”
“All in good time, but not until you have delivered the document to the place of our choosing, Mr. Cavalli, as I’m sure you will recall was also part of the bargain.”
“And where might that be?” asked Cavalli.
“I shall come to your office at twelve o’clock tomorrow, when you will receive your instructions.” He paused. “Among other things.” The line went dead.
Cavalli put the phone down and tried to think what Al Obaydi could possibly mean by “Among other things.” He walked slowly back to the boardroom to find his father and Nick poring over the Declaration. Tony noticed that the parchment had been turned around.
“What do you think he meant by ‘Among other things’?” Tony asked.
“I’ve no idea,” replied his father as he gave the parchment one last look and then began slowly to roll it up.
“No doubt I’ll find out tomorrow,” said Tony as the chairman handed the document to his son, who carefully slipped it back into its plastic container.
“So where’s its final destination to be?” asked Nick.
“I’ll be given the details at twelve o’clock tomorrow,” said Tony, a little surprised that his fat
her hadn’t reported the phone conversation with Al Obaydi to his oldest friend.
Chapter Sixteen
He lay watching her, his head propped up in the palm of his hand, as the first sunlight of the morning crept into the room. She stirred but didn’t wake as Scott began to run a solitary finger down her spine. He couldn’t wait for her to open her eyes and revive his memories of the previous night.
When Scott had, in those early days, watched Hannah walking from the Jordanian Embassy, dressed in those drab clothes so obviously selected with Karima Saib’s tastes in mind, he thought she still looked stunning. Some packages, when you remove the brightly colored wrapping, fail to live up to expectation. When Hannah had first taken off the dowdy little two-piece suit she had been wearing that day, he had stood there in disbelief that anyone could be so beautiful.
He pulled back the single sheet that covered her and admired the sight that had taken his breath away the night before. Her short-cropped hair; he wondered how the long flowing strands would look when they fell on her shoulders as she wanted them to. The nape of her neck, the smooth olive skin of her back and the long, shapely legs.
His hands were like a child’s that had opened a stocking full of presents and wanted to touch everything at once. He ran his fingers down her shoulders to the arch of her back, hoping she would turn over. He moved a little closer, leaned across and began to circle her firm breasts with a single finger. The circles became smaller and smaller until he reached her soft nipple. He heard her sigh, and this time she did turn and fall into his arms, her fingers clinging to his shoulders as he pulled her closer.
“It’s not fair, you’re taking advantage of me,” she said drowsily as his hand moved up the inside of her thigh.
“I’m sorry,” he said, removing his hand and kissing her cheek.
“Don’t be sorry. For heaven’s sake, Simon, I want you to take advantage of me,” she said, pulling his body closer to her. He continued to stroke her skin, all the time discovering new treasures.