by Steve Berry
“That wasn’t much of a bomb,” he said. “More flash in the pan.”
Sirens blared in the distance. Fire and police were headed this way. Heat from the smoldering van warmed the chilly midday air.
“Could have been a malfunction?” she said.
“I don’t think so.”
Sirens grew louder.
Stephanie’s radio came to life. She answered the call, and Malone heard what the man on the other end reported.
“We have a live bomber in the Court of Honor.”
THORVALDSEN LISTENED AS LAROCQUE FINISHED HER EGYPTIAN tale, explained Napoleon’s original concept of a Paris Club, and provided an overview of the four papyri. He noticed she hadn’t mentioned that he, too, had been previously told much of the information. Clearly, she wanted their conversations private. Her reading of the newspaper clipping had surely affected her.
How could it not?
Her reaction also told him something else. Ashby had not reported that, thanks to Stephanie and Cotton, he now possessed the book.
But what was the Magellan Billet doing in this business?
He’d tried to make contact with Malone during the night and all morning, but his friend had not answered his phone. He’d left messages, and none had been returned. Malone’s room at the Ritz went unused last night. And though his investigators had not spied the title of the book Stephanie gave to Ashby, he knew that it was the one from the Invalides.
What else could it be?
There had to be a good reason why Malone handed the book over to Stephanie, but he could not conceive of one.
Ashby sat calmly across the table, watching Larocque with attentive eyes. Thorvaldsen wondered if the other men and women sitting in this room realized what they’d actually signed on for. He doubted Eliza Larocque was solely interested in illicit profits. He sensed from their two meetings that she was a woman on a mission—determined to prove something, perhaps justify her family’s denied heritage. Or maybe rewrite history? Whatever it may be, it was more than simply making money. She’d assembled this group here, at the Eiffel Tower, on Christmas Day, for a reason.
So he told himself, for the moment, to forget about Malone and concentrate on the problem at hand.
MALONE AND STEPHANIE RACED INTO THE COURT OF HONOR and stared out into the elegant square. In the center stood a young woman. Maybe early thirties, long dark hair, wearing corduroy trousers and a faded red shirt beneath a black coat. One hand held an object.
Two security men, guns aimed, were positioned in the shadows of the opposite arcade, near the scaffolding where Malone had entered the museum yesterday. Another armed man stood to the left, at the archway that led out through the Invalides’ north façade, the iron gates closed.
“What the hell?” Stephanie muttered.
A man appeared behind them, entering the arcade from glass doors that led into the museum. He wore the protective vest and uniform of the French police.
“She appeared a few moments ago,” the man informed them.
“I thought you searched these buildings,” Stephanie said.
“Madame, there are hundreds of thousands of square meters of buildings here. We have been going as fast as we can, without drawing attention, per your instructions. If someone wanted to evade us, it would not be hard.”
He was right.
“What does she want?” Stephanie asked.
“She told the men she controlled a bomb and told them to stand their ground. I radioed you.”
Malone wanted to know, “Did she appear before or after the van exploded in front of the church.”
“Just after.”
“What are you thinking?” Stephanie asked him.
He stared at the woman. She swung around, looking at the various men who continued to train their weapons on her. Wisely, she kept the hand with the controller moving, too.
“Gardez vos distances et baissez les armes,” she screamed.
Malone silently translated. Keep your distance and lower your weapons.
None of the men complied.
“Il se pourrait que la bombe soit à l’hôpital. Ou à l’hospice. Fautil prendre le risque?” she yelled, displaying the controller. The bomb could well be in the hospital. Or the pensioners’ home. Do you risk it?
The policeman standing beside them whispered, “We searched both of those buildings first. Carefully. There is nothing there.”
“Je ne le redirai pas,” the woman called out. I shall not say it again.
Malone realized that it was Stephanie’s call on what the French would do, and she was not one to be bluffed.
Still.
“Lower the weapons,” she ordered.
FIFTY-ONE
ELIZA STROLLED TOWARD THE STAGE AT ONE END OF THE HALL. A quick glance at her watch confirmed the time. 11:35 AM.
Twenty-five minutes left.
“We will take our trip to the top soon. First, though, I want to explain what I am proposing for our near future.”
She faced the group.
“Over the past decade we’ve seen a great deal of change in world financial markets. Futures, once a way for producers to hedge their products, are now simply a game of chance, where commodities that don’t exist are traded at prices that bear no relation to reality. We saw this a few years ago when oil topped off at more than $150 a barrel. That price had no relation to supply, which was, at the time, at an all-time high. Eventually, that market imploded and prices plummeted.”
She saw that many in the room agreed with her assessment.
“America is mainly to blame for this,” she made clear. “In 1999 and 2000 legislation was passed that paved the way for a speculative onslaught. That legislation actually repealed older statutes, passed in the 1930s, designed to prevent another stock market crash. With the safeguards gone, the same problems from the 1930s recurred. The global stock market devaluations that ensued should have been no surprise.”
She caught the curious expressions of a few faces.
“It’s elementary. Laws that place greed and irresponsibility before hard work and sacrifice come with a price.” She paused. “But they also create opportunities.”
The room was silent.
“Between August 26 and September 11, 2001, a group of covert speculators sold short a list of thirty-eight stocks that could reasonably be expected to fall in value as the result of any attack on America. They operated out of the Canadian and German stock exchanges. The companies included United Airlines, American Airlines, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, Merrill Lynch. In Europe, they targeted insurance companies. Munich Re, Swiss Re, and AXA. On the Friday before the attacks, ten million shares of Merrill Lynch were sold. No more than four million are sold on a normal day. Both United and American Airlines saw an unusual amount of speculative activity in the days prior to the attack. No other airline company experienced this.”
“What are you suggesting?” one of the group asked.
“Only what an Israeli counterterrorism think tank concluded when it studied Osama bin Laden’s financial portfolio. Nearly twenty million U.S. dollars in profits were realized by bin Laden from the September 11 attacks.”
MALONE HEARD THE ROAR OF A HELICOPTER OVERHEAD AND glanced up to see a Royal Navy Westland Lynx sweep past at low altitude.
“NATO,” Stephanie said to him.
At Stephanie’s instruction, the men encircling the woman in the courtyard had lowered their weapons.
“I did as you wanted,” Stephanie called out in French.
The bomber did not reply. She stood fifty feet away and kept her gaze on the arcades that surrounded the Court of Honor. She remained edgy, unsteady, keeping her hands in constant movement.
“What do you want?” Stephanie asked her.
Malone kept his eyes locked on the woman and used the few seconds when her gaze drifted away to ease his hand beneath his jacket, his fingers finding the Beretta that Stephanie had provided a few hours ago.
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“I came to prove a point,” the woman yelled in French. “To all those who want to treat us with hate.”
He clamped his hand tight on the gun.
Her hands kept moving, the bomb controller in constant flight, her head flitting from one point to another.
“Who is us?” Stephanie asked.
Malone knew his former boss was playing the scenario by the manual. Keep the attacker occupied. Be patient. Play for a fumble.
The woman’s eyes met Stephanie’s. “France must know that we are not to be ignored.”
Malone waited for her to resume her visual reconnoiter of the cobbled pavement, just as she’d done before.
“Who is—” Stephanie said
The hand with the controller swung left.
As her head pivoted toward the opposite arcade, Malone freed his gun and leveled his aim.
SAM HAD SECRETED HIMSELF JUST BEYOND THE MEETING room’s stage, out of sight. He’d managed to remain inside the room, undetected, as the rest of the staff vacated. The idea had been to maneuver one of them within earshot. He’d watched as Meagan had tried, but was corralled by the other servers to help remove some serving carts. Her frustrated eyes had told him that it was up to him, and he’d made his move.
No security personnel remained inside. All of them had been stationed outside. No danger existed of anyone entering from the doors that led out to the observation balcony, since it was nearly two hundred feet above the ground.
He’d listened to Eliza Larocque’s speech and understood exactly what she was describing. Short selling happened when someone sold a stock they did not own in the hope of repurchasing it later, at a lower price. The idea was to profit from an expected decline in price.
A risky venture in a multitude of ways.
First, the potentially shorted securities have to be borrowed from their owner, then sold for the current price. Once the price dropped, they would be repurchased at the lower value, returned to the owner, the profit kept by the short seller. If the price climbed, as opposed to falling, the stocks would have to be repurchased at the higher price, generating a loss. Of course, if the short seller knew that the price of a given security would drop, and even the exact moment when that would happen, any risk of loss would be nonexistent.
And the profit potential would be enormous.
One of the financial manipulations his and Meagan’s websites had warned about.
He’d heard rumors within the Secret Service about bin Laden’s possible manipulation, but those investigations were classified, handled many levels above him. Perhaps his postings on the subject were what had caused his superiors to apply pressure. Hearing Eliza Larocque say many of the same things he’d publicly speculated about only confirmed what he’d long suspected.
He’d been closer to the truth than he’d ever realized.
ASHBY LISTENED WITH GREAT INTEREST TO WHAT LAROCQUE was saying, beginning to piece together what she may be planning. Though he’d been charged with arranging for Peter Lyon, she hadn’t shared the substance of her entire plan.
“The problem with what bin Laden set in motion,” she said, “was that he failed to anticipate two things. First, the American stock market was completely closed for four full days after the attacks. And second, there are automatic procedures in place to detect short selling. One of those, ‘blue sheeting,’ analyzes trade volumes and identifies potential threats. Those four down days gave market authorities time to notice. At least in America. But overseas the markets continued to function, and profits were quickly extracted before anyone could detect the manipulation.”
Ashby’s mind recalled the aftermath of September 11, 2001. Larocque was right. Munich Re, Europe’s second largest reinsurer, lost nearly two billion dollars from the destruction of the World Trade Center, and its stock plummeted after the attacks. A knowledgeable short seller could have made millions.
He also recalled what happened to other markets.
Dow Jones down 14%, Standard & Poor’s 500 Index reduced 12%, NASDAQ Composite down 16%—those same results mirrored in nearly every overseas market for weeks after the attacks. His own portfolio had taken a beating—actually the beginning of a downturn that progressively worsened.
And what she said about derivatives. All true. Nothing more than wild bets placed with borrowed money. Interest rates, foreign currencies, stocks, corporate failures—all of them were gambled upon by investors, banks, and brokerages. His financial analysts once told him that more than 800 trillion euros, worldwide, stayed at risk on any given day.
Now he was learning that there may be a way to profit from all that risk.
If he’d only known.
MALONE WATCHED AS THE WOMAN SPOTTED HIS GUN. HER eyes locked on his.
“Go ahead,” he yelled in French. “Do it.”
She pressed the controller.
Nothing happened.
Again.
No explosion.
Bewilderment swept across her face.
FIFTY-TWO
THORVALDSEN SAT RIGID IN HIS CHAIR BUT HE WAS FINDING IT hard to maintain his composure. Here was a woman calmly discussing how a terrorist profited from murdering thousands of innocent people. No outrage, no disgust. Instead, Eliza Larocque was clearly in awe of the achievement.
Likewise, Graham Ashby seemed impressed. No surprise there. His amoral personality would have no problem profiting from other people’s misery. He wondered if Ashby had ever given a thought to those seven dead in Mexico City. Or had he simply heaved a sigh of relief that his troubles were finally resolved? He clearly did not know the names of the dead. If he had, Ashby would have reacted when they were introduced earlier. But not a hint of recognition. Why would he know the victims? Or care? Amando Cabral had been charged with cleaning up the mess, and the less Ashby knew of the details, the better.
“Why have we never heard of this before?” Ashby asked.
“The Internet has been alive with rumors for years,” Larocque said. “Les Echos, a quite reputable French financial periodical, published an article on the subject in 2007. Several American newspapers have hinted at the story. People whom I know close to the U.S. government tell me that the entire matter has been stamped classified. I don’t imagine the Americans want those rumors confirmed. Officially, the Securities and Exchange Commission has stated that there was no insider trading.”
Ashby chuckled. “Typical Yanks. Slam a lid on things and hope it goes away.”
“Which this did,” another in the group said.
“But we can learn from that effort,” Larocque said. “In fact, I’ve been studying it for some time.”
MALONE LOWERED HIS WEAPON AS THE SECURITY MEN SWARMED over the woman. Her arms and hands were restrained and she was hauled from the Court of Honor.
“How did you know to call her bluff?” Stephanie asked.
“That bomb out front was nothing. They could have blown the entire church away. Lyon was counting on a loose net and took advantage of it.” He motioned with the Beretta at the controller on the pavement. “That thing activates nothing.”
“And what if you’d been wrong?”
“I wasn’t.”
Stephanie shook her head.
“Lyon didn’t lead us here to kill us,” he said. “He knew Ashby was playing both sides. He led us here because he wanted us here.”
“That woman had no idea. The look on her face said it all. She was ready to blow something up.”
“There’s a fool for every job. Lyon used her to buy more time. He wants us busy, at least until he’s ready for us.”
Inside the courtyard, surrounded by the Invalides’ four-story buildings, they could not see the Eiffel Tower. What was happening there with Sam and Henrik. He thought back to the dome and the transponder. “My guess is, when we shut that homing device off we signaled for the show to begin.”
Stephanie’s radio sprang to life.
“Are you there?” The voice was a deep baritone and instantly recognizable. P
resident Danny Daniels.
Surprise filled her face.
“Yes, sir. I’m here,” she answered.
“Cotton there, too?”
“He is.”
“Staff wanted to handle this communication, but I thought it better that I speak to you myself. We don’t have time for translations and interpretations. We’ve been monitoring things here and you’ve got one squirrelly mess over there. Here’s a new wrinkle. Six minutes ago a small plane diverted off its flight path and bypassed a scheduled landing at Aéroport de Paris—Le Bourget.”
Malone knew the field, located about seven miles northeast. For decades it was Paris’ only airport, famous as the landing site for Charles Lindbergh’s transatlantic crossing in 1927.
“That plane is now headed your way,” Daniels said.
All of the dots connected in Malone’s brain and he said, “That’s what Lyon had been buying time for.”
“What do you want us to do?” Stephanie asked.
“There’s a NATO helicopter landing, as we speak, to the north of the Invalides. Climb aboard. I’ll contact you there.”
ELIZA WAS ENJOYING THE MOMENT. THE EXPRESSIONS HER words inspired on the faces of her audience confirmed that she’d chosen this group correctly. Each one was a bold, intrepid entrepreneur.
“Bin Laden failed because he allowed fanaticism to overtake good judgment. He wasn’t careful. He wanted to make a statement and he wanted the world to know he made it.” She shook her head. “You can’t generate long-term profits from such foolishness.”
“I’m not interested in killing people,” Robert Mastroianni said.
“Neither am I. And it’s not necessary. All you need is a credible threat that the public fears. Within that fear is where we will operate.”
“Isn’t the world scared enough?” one of the others asked.
