“Will you at least help me?”
“You’d likemeto interrogate one of your government officials?”
“Of course not. I’ll question him myself. It shouldn’t take long.” Khalid lowered his voice. “After all, I have something of a reputation.”
“That’s putting it mildly.”
“Where shall we interrogate him?” asked Khalid.
“It has to be somewhere isolated. Somewhere the police won’t find us.” Gabriel paused. “Somewhere the neighbors won’t hear a bit of noise.”
“I have just the place.”
“Can you get him there without making him suspicious?”
Khalid smiled. “All I need is my phone.”
26
Haute-Savoie, France
Khalid had aGulfstream waiting at London City Airport. They stopped at Paris–Le Bourget long enough to collect Mikhail and Sarah and then flew on to Annecy, where a caravan of black Range Rovers waited on the darkened tarmac. It was a drive of twenty minutes to Khalid’s private Versailles. The household staff, a mixture of French and Saudi nationals, stood like a choir in the soaring entrance hall. Khalid greeted them curtly before escorting Gabriel and the others into the château’s main public room—the great hall, as he referred to it. It was long and rectangular, like a basilica, and hung with a portion of Khalid’s collection, includingSalvator Mundi, his dubious Leonardo. Gabriel studied the panel carefully, a hand to his chin, his head tilted slightly to one side. Then he crouched and examined the brushstrokes in raked lighting.
“Well?” asked Sarah.
“How could you let him buy this thing?”
“Is it a Leonardo?”
“Maybe a small portion of it, a long time ago. But it isn’t a Leonardo anymore.”
Khalid joined them. “Magnificent, is it not?”
“I don’t know what was dumber,” answered Gabriel. “Killing Omar Nawwaf or wasting a half billion dollars on an overrestored workshop devotional piece.”
“Workshop? Miss Bancroft assured me it was an authentic Leonardo.”
“Miss Bancroft studied art history at the Courtauld and Harvard. I’m confident she did no such thing.” Gabriel watched despairingly as one of the servants entered the hall bearing a tray of drinks. “This isn’t a party, Khalid.”
“That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have refreshment after our journey.”
“How many staff are there?”
“Twenty-two, I believe.”
“How do you possibly manage?”
The irony bounced harmlessly off Khalid. “The senior staff are Saudis,” he explained, “but most of my employees are French.”
“Most?”
“The gardeners are Moroccans and West Africans.” His tone was derogatory. “The Saudis live in a separate house at the northern end of the property. The others live in Annecy or nearby villages.”
“Give them all the night off. The drivers, too.”
“But—”
“And switch off the security cameras,” interjected Gabriel. “The way you did in Istanbul.”
