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inched back the Flemish lace curtains and peeked at the Place Vendôme. A steady stream of vehicular traffic flowed clockwise around the square. Flocks of tourists strolled its perimeter. Some window-shopped arm in arm. Others kept a businesslike pace. Raising a pair of binoculars to his eyes, he spotted Carmine Santini strolling past the Armani boutique. Rucksack hanging from one shoulder, camera and document holder strung around his neck, he looked every inch the gawky American tourist, right down to his cargo shorts, sickly white legs, and scuffed basketball shoes. A hundred yards along, Ray Gomez, dressed more conservatively in blazer and slacks, queued up to withdraw some cash from an ATM.
    Chapel’s eyes skipped back and forth across the cityscape, selecting, evaluating, analyzing. Is it the pretty blond woman in the flower print dress? The taxi driver loitering too long after dropping his fare? The harried executive with his mouth glued to his cell phone? Chapel had no idea who would be sent to pick up the transfer or when they might arrive. One fact kept his nerves from fraying. Unlike other stores housed in the seventeenth-century arcade, the jewelry shop boasted a single point of entry, and it was right in front of his eyes.
    Next to him, Leclerc sat on the carpet with his legs crossed, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, as he meticulously assembled a sleek rifle.
    “You know it?” he said, without looking up. “The FR-F2. Seven-point-six-two millimeter, semiautomatic.”
    “Sure,” he answered, lying. “It’s a nice piece. Real nice weapon. Real solid.” He watched the Frenchman ram a cartridge into the stock, then work the bolt back and forth.
    “What do you carry?” Leclerc asked, bringing the rifle to his cheek, sighting along the barrel.
    “Me?”
    “Yes, you.” Leclerc dropped the rifle into his lap and stared at him.
    Chapel blinked repeatedly, needing a second to answer. The truth was that guns unsettled him. A pistol’s cold, dead weight, the seductive curve of its trigger, left him queasy with dread and apprehension. Shooting for score on the range at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, he’d managed an eighteen out of fifty, with two bullets missing the target altogether. He argued that this ineptness grew from his being an accountant, not only by trade, but by nature. He preferred the precision of a balanced ledger, its promise of fiscal transparency, its devotion to a world defined by generally accepted accounting principles, to the wild, terminal justice of a hollow-tipped bullet. Chapel knew the cardinal rule about guns. You couldn’t own one without wanting to use it. He’d learned that fact firsthand. Alone among his team, he didn’t carry a weapon.
    “I guess I like my MBA four-point-oh from HBS the best,” he said. “But I also keep a CPA and a CFA handy, you know, just in case. And, oh, yeah, in my sock I got a nifty little MPA—that’s a master’s degree in public accounting. Absolutely essential when you’re in close and things get a little hairy.”
    Leclerc swung the rifle up to the windowsill and took aim on a provisional target. “You’re a funny guy.”
    Chapel laid a hand on the barrel. “We want him alive, Mr. Leclerc. He doesn’t do anyone any good dead. You’re just here for emergencies.”
    “Bang!” said Leclerc, pulling the trigger on an empty chamber, watching Chapel jump from the corner of his eye. “See, I am funny, too.”
    “Yeah, a barrel full of monkeys.”
    Chapel walked to the center of the suite where Keck had set up the video monitors on a lacquered mahogany table. One of the six-by-six-inch screens showed the façade of Royal Joailliers. The other two offered wide-angle views of the east and west halves of the square.
    “So far so good,” said Keck. “Transmit A-OK. FaceIt is online. We are operational.”
    A wireless relay transmitted all three video feeds to the Foreign Terrorist Asset