Billionaire

26

After General Ephraim had spoken to Baenhaker on the Friday evening, he had stood up and paced around his office without stopping, for half an hour; then he sat down, opened a drawer in his desk, and pulled out a computerized chess set. He played against the machine, set to its toughest level, and beat it in seven minutes; then he snapped off the switch and put the machine back in the drawer. He wished the current real-life game, in which he was an unwilling player, was as simple to win.

This week he had to send 100 Israeli sailors into Umm Al Amnah, quietly, without publicity. They were to be smuggled in, in a container in a cargo plane. It just didn’t make sense. Why sailors? Soldiers he could understand, that would be easy — a coup d’état. But sailors? He thought about the man Bauté, who had spoken to him on the beach at La Baule; and then about Elleck flying in to have dinner with Lasserre, and joined by Culundis, who had already supplied arms and, Ephraim was pretty certain, soldiers, to Umm Al Amnah.

He still smarted over the way Elleck had treated him after the Osirak raid. He had completely ripped him off. He was sure that a second rip-off was under way. Somewhere, at the end of the bizarre line, there had to be a massive profit in all of this for Elleck. But how? What was there with a tiny country like Umm Al Amnah? It did have a coastline on the Persian Gulf, but not much of one. There was the Libya connection, but there was nothing particularly unusual in that; Libya meddled in the affairs of a lot of countries, with and without their leaders’ approval. He remembered the report about the Umm Al Amnah’s registered fishing dhow drifting loose in the Persian Gulf with a cargo of nuclear mines, and a chill went through his body. Was that the connection? Was he going to be forced to order the sailors to commit some act of aggression — some massive terrorist act of sabotage?

He went to the window and looked out; it was dark, with the lights of the traffic moving down below him. He should call the Prime Minister and level with him, he knew, that was his best bet. He had a repugnant obsession, and it had finally caught up with him. It was not right that he should put his country at risk to protect himself. His time was nearly over in any event; a year or two more, and he would be expected to retire. He had no further ambitions for himself. He was tired; he wouldn’t mind stepping down now. He needed a rest. A long, long rest.

He tried to think how the Prime Minister might react, and each time he drew a blank. He had no idea. A fear suddenly struck him that the Prime Minister would go for the complete hard line, call his blackmailer’s bluff, and he shuddered. He thought about his wife and children, going through the rest of their lives, his children with their brilliant careers ahead of them, tarnished forever with the fact that they came from a man who liked to make love to dead boys. Necrophiliac. He shuddered. They would be destroyed; there was no doubt. Ami, his eldest son, already a captain in the army: Nathan, who had passed through law school with a first and had joined the top law firm in Israel; Helene, his daughter, engaged to the son of the Chief Rabbi.

While parents around the world despaired so often of their children, he and his wife Moya could sit in the evenings, when they were alone together, and reflect on their fortune that their children not only were healthy but were intelligent and successful. It was the careers of his children and, one day, the arrival of grandchildren, that he and Moya had to look forward to. He turned away from the window; not for his country, not for anything, did he want to give that up; not for anything would he destroy their lives. Ephraim clenched his fists in anger. It was the greed of Elleck, the man whose life he had saved in Auschwitz, that had put him in this position, he was certain of that. This was Elleck’s way, forty years later, of showing his gratitude.

Ephraim marched back over to his desk, stood beside it, and dialled the number of Eisenbar-Goldschmidt in London. Being a major control centre, the switchboard was manned through the night. The girl who answered informed him that Baenhaker had left over an hour ago. He tried Baenhaker’s home number: it rang several times, without answer; he hung up. He then dialled Chaim Weisz’s number in Paris; to his mixed relief, his chief of French operatives answered.

‘Good evening, Montclair!’ said Ephraim, using Weisz’s identifying code.

‘Good evening,’ said Weisz.

‘I have a job for you. Viscomte Claude Lasserre — can you buy him out?’

Weisz paused, surprised, the other end. ‘When?’

‘As soon as you can?’

‘I’ll do my best for you.’

‘Good. Let me have a progress report.’ Ephraim hung up the receiver. He had just instructed the chief of the Mossad’s French operations to kill Viscomte Lasserre.

Ephraim next dialled Athens, and had a similar conversation with the chief of Athens operations regarding Jimmy Culundis. Then he tried Baenhaker’s number again; still no answer. He telephoned Moya to say he would not be home until very late, then pulled out his chess set again; he would try Baenhaker at half hour intervals, right through the night, if necessary, until he got hold of him.

At half past three he succeeded.

‘Hallo?’ Baenhaker’s voice sounded breathless.

‘Have you been running?’

‘I just got in — heard the phone ringing, so I had to run up the stairs.’

‘Your friends, Elleck and Rocq. I don’t think you should associate with them any more; they are not good company for you.’

‘No, Sir,’ said Baenhaker, ‘I understand.’

‘Good. Give me a call and let me know how things are going.’

Again, Ephraim replaced the receiver; this time, he slid the chess back in the drawer, put on his jacket, and went home to sleep.

It was some time before Baenhaker slept. He sat reflecting on General Ephraim’s words, which had instructed him to kill Rocq and Elleck. If he carried out the General’s orders, London was going to get a bit too hot for his liking. It wouldn’t take the police too long to connect Rocq and Elleck’s deaths with the murder of the security man, and the break-in; multiple murders tended to interest policemen more than almost anything. He would almost certainly be pulled from London, and probably from England. He would have loved to be pulled from London, except for one thing: with Rocq out of the way, he wondered if he might have another chance with Amanda. She was still under his skin, as deep as ever, probably even more so after his night in the cupboard. Then he smiled to himself. There was a way he could keep a low profile on one of the murders. He picked up the telephone, and dialled a number in Geneva. There were occasions, he reflected, when he could pass the buck along with the best of them.