‘There must be some way to make these mines safe,’ said Elleck. ‘If your bluff was called and you had to put 400 mines in the Gulf, and then your demands were met, how would you make them safe? Or would you leave them? Umm Al Amnah has a coast on the Gulf — surely it would suffer as much as anyone if these mines did go off?’
‘There is a way to make them safe. These mines have been fitted with a detonating system that is primed automatically by six hours’ immersion in water. They can be defused only by a coded radio signal. The eight mines we put in the dhow which was captured had no such defusing system. We did not want anyone else to learn about the detonating system — I am sure you can understand?’
‘Naturally,’ said Elleck. He was pushing his mind forward, trying to anticipate what was at the end of all this, and he was finding it difficult; there were too many options.
‘What,’ said Elleck, ‘did Sheik Quozzohok, Emir of Amnah, have to say about all this?’
‘He never knew about it. It was felt in the Oman that it would be better to keep quiet — and keep watching Amnah to try and find out more about what might be going on. Amnah has no intelligence agents in Oman — nor anywhere else — for that matter,’ said Lasserre. ‘Now we come to the key part. Our aim is to push up the price of gold and, to do this, we need a major international conflict, preferably lasting several days, and worsening each day. You will probably not know yet, but the Sheik Quozzohok has abdicated, and the new Emir is his son, Abr Qu’Ih Missh.’
‘Very interesting,’ said Elleck. ‘He happens to be one of my company’s major private clients.’
‘Indeed?’ said Lasserre. ‘This is a complete coincidence, I can assure you. Now this man Missh is sitting on a very rocky seat — and I understand he is totally dependent on Jimmy Culundis for his personal security, and the security of his government. He will go along with anything that Jimmy instructs him, because he has no option.’ Lasserre turned to Culundis. ‘I am correct?’
‘We’ve got him by the balls.’
Elleck looked at Culundis and decided that if it had only been his balls that he had got him by, then the Sheik had got off very lightly.
‘Now,’ said Lasserre, ‘what we are proposing to do is as follows: Amnah is being watched very closely indeed by many intelligence networks; any information that is let out will immediately be passed onto the governments of the world. We intend to let it slip out that Umm Al Amnah, supported by Libya, is planning to mine the Persian Gulf, and will not remove the mines until Israel agrees to relinquish all the territories it has gained since the Six Day War in 1967.’
Elleck frowned. Israel was an obsession with him; he had poured hundreds of thousands of pounds into charities supporting the country, although he did admit secretly, to himself, that the reason was probably as much, if not more, his desire to keep his clients happy and to cultivate new clients as any particular passionate desire to help the homeland of his race.
‘Israel,’ said Lasserre, ‘will then, we hope, launch straight into war against Libya and Umm Al Amnah. Within a very short space of time, one half of the world will be supporting one side or the other, whilst the other half will be trying to pull them apart. Whatever the eventual outcome may be, for a period of time the price of gold must surely go through the roof?’
‘Israel has suffered a lot of criticism in the past for striking too quickly. Begin only pushed Israel into the first Osirak raid because he felt it would gain him votes in the forthcoming election. The second raid was also similarly inspired — two days before an election. Without those elections immediately in front, I am not sure Israel would have attacked on either occasion. So how can you be so sure this time?’ said Elleck.
Lasserre got up from his chair, left the dining room, and came back a few moments later holding an RCA video-cassette in his hand. He put it on the table in front of Elleck. ‘I have a little home movie; if you like, after dinner we can see it. It is a tape of an Israeli, General Isser Ephraim, who is the Head of the Mossad — the Israelis’ overseas Intelligence Agency. He is one of the most powerful men in Israel, and a man whose advice, on military matters, is almost invariably acted upon. Wouldn’t you agree, Jimmy?’
Culundis nodded. ‘He is more powerful than the Israeli Minister of Defence. What he says, goes.’
Lasserre continued. ‘This tape was made at the Tel Aviv morgue. It would seem that General Isser Ephraim has an unusual pastime: he likes making love to dead boys.’
There was a long silence, punctuated only by the sound of an English commodity broking tycoon choking on vintage brandy.
‘Isser Ephraim?’ said Elleck.
‘Yes,’ said Lasserre. ‘Would you like to see the tape?’
‘No,’ said Elleck. ‘I would not. That man is a friend of mine, a very old friend. I cannot believe this.’
‘If you look at the tape, you will believe it. The keeper of the morgue said he had been coming there for ten years. Dead Arab boys. The keeper is paid a large sum to telephone him and let him know whenever they have a new one in.’
‘He must be lying,’ said Elleck.
‘We sent Ephraim a copy of the tape, asked him to come to a meeting at L’Hermitage Hotel in La Baule. He does not know who we are, and we intend to keep it that way. With a man like Ephraim, that is the most sensible. The Mossad is not known for its inefficiency — we do not wish to have a surprise visit from any of Ephraim’s friends in the middle of the night. The report that I have had back from my courier is that Ephraim made no attempt to deny his activities. He is desperate that the news of this hideous perversion does not leak out — it would of course destroy his career, quite apart from putting him in a mental institution, at best, or a jail, at worst, for very many years.’
Elleck shook his head. ‘Ephraim is a friend, a good friend of mine.’
‘You seem to have a lot of friends in high places,’ said Lasserre. ‘You must be very selective.’
‘What do you mean by that, Claude?’ Elleck’s face flushed.
‘You know what I mean, Monty; don’t get on your high horse. You and Jimmy — you both came from nothing. You have made your ways up in the world, you have succeeded; but you have not done this by cultivating the friendships of only those people that you really like. You don’t have the time in life to do that when you are ambitious. No — the friends you have and the friends Jimmy has are only there because they are useful to you.’
‘That is a very arrogant statement,’ said Elleck, almost petulantly.
‘Arrogant, Monty, yes, but true.’
‘And the same doesn’t apply to you?’
‘Of course — if I had friends. I don’t particularly like to have just “friends.” I like to work always; I like to have employees and colleagues. Sure, I become friendly with colleagues — I am friendly with you and friendly with Jimmy — but if we did not do business — would we see each other? I doubt it very much. You do business with Ephraim, do you not? You must do — he must be your source of information on Osirak. If he was not helpful, would you still see him?’
‘He saved my life in Auschwitz in the war.’
‘The war was a long time ago, Monty. If you haven’t paid him back by now, then you probably aren’t going to.’
Elleck went red; he knew he had never paid Ephraim back and, equally, he knew he never would. He’d even ripped him off on the advance information he had on Osirak; he could have given him a cheque for half a million dollars and not felt the pinch, such was the profit he had made on the two Osirak attacks, but it wasn’t in his nature to give a penny away that he didn’t absolutely have to. He remained silent.