Billionaire

32

Ephraim felt relaxed; it was the first time in many days that he had done so. Lasserre was dead and Culundis was dead. He hadn’t yet had the report from Baenhaker about the two in England, but he was no longer concerned about them. He unlocked the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a white envelope, and removed the sheet of paper containing his instructions from his blackmailers. He had already sent a coded message to Joseph Brilej, commander of the 100 sailors he had despatched to Umm Al Amnah, ordering their immediate return. He took out the message he was supposed to have telexed to the leaders of the world’s nations this morning and lit it with the cigarette lighter on his desk. He then carefully mushed to pieces the charred remains. At that moment, the yellow telephone on his desk rang.

The yellow phone linked him directly to certain key members of the Knesset, together with key members of the armed forces. Very few people called him on this phone, as it was kept clear only for use in crises.

‘Ephraim,’ he said.

‘Good morning, General,’ said the unusually grim voice of Commander Yitzak Mehne, Chief of Naval Security.

‘Morning, Yitzi,’ said Ephraim, bullishly. ‘How are you keeping?’

‘Could be better,’ he replied, tersely.

‘What’s your problem?’

‘I don’t know that I have a problem — yet — but there’s something I think you ought to know about just happened in the Persian Gulf — Strait of Hormuz.’

Ephraim’s good cheer drained out of him, like air from a burst tyre. ‘Go on,’ he said.

‘An oil tanker — the Arctic Sundance, on its way up to pick up a cargo — four miles off Goat Island, just blew to smithereens. An incredible explosion — no one ever saw anything like it.’

‘Empty oil tankers often blow up, Yitzi — they get a build-up of gas — they don’t pump it out enough, get an electrical short or something — and bang. I wouldn’t worry about it.’ Ephraim was sweating profusely; he could hardly hold the telephone, his hand was so wet.

‘I agree with you about tankers, Isser, but apparently this explosion was just unbelievable.’

‘I’m not with you.’

‘No one ever saw an explosion like it.’

‘How many of them ever saw a tanker blow up before?’

‘None of them, I shouldn’t think.’

‘So what are they getting so excited about?’

‘There’s a bit of speculation it might have hit a mine, Isser — that’s what they’re getting excited about.’

‘Ridiculous.’

‘That dhow with the four Israeli sailors on it a few weeks ago — the four Israeli sailors and the eight nuclear mines? Remember? Now a tanker suddenly blows up. A lot of people are trying to put two and two together. What are those sailors you got in Amnah up to, Isser?’

‘Nothing — they’re on their way home — now come on, Yitzi, you don’t think they’ve been out laying mines?’

‘Look you old devil, knowing the way you operate, nothing would surprise me — okay?’

‘Well I can assure you that whatever blew that tanker up is not my doing. Okay?’

‘Sure okay — just thought you’d better know about it. Talk to you soon.’

‘Sure. ’Bye.’ Ephraim replaced the receiver; he was drenched in sweat. He telephoned Haifa; the sailors had not arrived back yet. No sooner had he hung up, than his green international secure telephone rang: it was Ellie Katz, chief of London operations, calling to inform him that Baenhaker was currently being scraped off the walls of the Lower Thames Street multi-storey car park. The loss of Baenhaker did not please him at all. He thought hard about Elleck, whom he knew, and the man Rocq, whom he didn’t; there was still a fury deep inside him over Elleck, but professionally, he knew his death would be too late now, as would Rocq’s. He could still order Elleck’s death, but now it would be personal, not in the cause of business. One day, he vowed, he would get even with Elleck, face to face: that was how he would like it, but now was not the time. He thanked Katz, weakly, for the call, and hung up. He had a distinct feeling this was not going to be his morning.

Half an hour later, the feeling was proved right. The yellow telephone rang again; it was the Prime Minister and he wanted to see him — in Jerusalem — immediately.

When Isser Ephraim left the Prime Minister’s office, the security guard on the front door of the Knesset building was remarkably well informed. ‘Good morning, Mr Ephraim,’ he said. For the first time in all the years he could remember, Ephraim left the Knesset building unsaluted. It was also the first time that there had not been a chauffeur-driven car waiting for him. There was, in fact, no car waiting at all: the car and driver that had been at his disposal for the past fifteen years, that had become as natural a mode of transport to him as putting on his shoes in the morning, had quietly and discreetly vanished.

Humiliated, he turned right and walked along the road, in search of a taxi to take him the twenty miles back to Tel Aviv. The Prime Minister had, in the last hour, stripped him of his rank and his job, effective immediately. His passport was cancelled, and he was to face an in-camera court martial for, in the words of the Prime Minister, ‘Performing traitorous acts calculated to bring the state of Israel into international disrepute.’

Ephraim reflected on the last hour and a half, which was the most unpleasant hour and a half he had ever spent in his life, concentration camps included. The United States Armed Forces in Oman had detected a concentrated mass of radioactive fallout, compatible with the fallout resulting from the exploding of a nuclear weapon, spreading downwind from where the Arctic Sundance had exploded. Their only possible conclusions were that either the Arctic Sundance was carrying in its cargo a nuclear explosive, which was detonated when the oil tank exploded, or that the ship was blown up by a nuclear device either placed in it or in the water, such as a mine.

The mine theory was lent not a little weight when an American frigate went to the rescue of a coaster which had run out of fuel, to discover it was carrying 100 sailors from the Israeli Navy, with its decks and cargo hold piled high with nuclear mines.

There was, as Ephraim had said to the Prime Minister, and thought, puzzled, to himself now, no immediate answer he could give to that.