Already, his brushes with BAST had proved they were a ruthless and determined organisation. What nobody knew was their size, true efficiency in a critical situation, and the final aims of their possible assault on invincible.
Bassam Baradj, most recently in the guise of the smooth Toby Lellenberg, station chief of Northanger, was the only person who could have told Bond, or anyone else, the real truth about BAST: its strength, and, more particularly, its true aims.
Baradj was certainly all the things the many dossiers said about him - and they all said the same thing: immense wealth, former close friend of Arafat, ex-member of the PLO; no photographs; could not be tied into any known terrorist operation in the past twenty years.
Indeed that was the sum total of the man, apart from the varied number of descriptions taken from a variety of sources.
True, he was, as they suspected, the Viper of BAST, on the Win, Lose or Die Monarchs of the Sea back of which rode the Snake, the N‘4an and the Cat. If it had been possible to ask any, or all, of these last three, each would have given slightly different answers to the questions, what is BAST? what are its true aims?
Only the short, sleek man known as Bassam Baradj was in a position to give the correct answers; though it was unlikely he would do so, for they were locked tightly in his head.
In a couple of words, the answers were Bassam Baradj and Bassam Baradj. He was BAST and he was its true aim. If you asked the further question, how did Baradj gain his truly immense wealth? it was plain to see, but only if you had the eyes to see it.
It was not strictly true that there were no available photographs of Bassam Baradj. There were many. The New York Police Department had several, as did the Los Angeles Police Department, and Seattle, Washington, New Orleans, Paris and Scotland Yard, London. Most were filed under F - for Fraud; and they carried varied names: Bennie Benjamin aka Ben Brostov, Vince Phillips and Conrad Decca: and those were only for starters in the files of the NYPD.
Over the past twenty years Baradj had gained quite a reputation, but under many different guises and modus operandi.
Bassam Baradj had been born plain Robert Besavitsky, in the old Hell’s Kitchen area of New York. His father, Roman Besavitsky, was of mongrel immigrant stock, part-Russian, part Rumanian, with a strange dash of Scottish via his great-great grandfather on his mother’s side.
Eva Besavitsky, Robert’s mother, was of a similar mixture: part Irish, part French, with a tincture of Arab - not that you would have guessed it from her maiden name, which was Evangeline Shottwood.
Robert Besavitsky was, therefore, the product of half a dozen other mongrels, and, as such, was born with two great talents: ambition and the ability to sense when it was time to move on.
As a growing boy, Robert was well and truly streetwise by the age of ten. By the time he reached fourteen he knew exactly what one needed to survive in this world - money; for money was the direct route to power. If he could make money, the power would come later. He made his first million by the age of twenty-one.
It started with the seemingly accidental find of an automatic pistol, shoved into a garbage can in a back alley off Mulberry Street in the Italian area. It was a Luger and had a full magazine, but for one bullet. Twenty-four hours after finding this weapon, Robert had carried out four quick stick-up jobs on Liquor Stores, which netted him six hundred dollars. The following day he sold the weapon for a further one hundred dollars. Then he set about spending wisely. He bought clothes: two good suits, four shirts, three ties, underwear and two pairs of shoes.
While on the buying spree, he also lifted a silver cigarette case and lighter, a pigskin briefcase and matching wallet. This left him with one hundred and fifty dollars. Fifty went into his pocket, the remaining hundred opened his first bank account. What followed would have been legend if the cops and the Feds had ever managed to interconnect him with all the fiddles, some of which were not just fiddles, but fully orchestrated capital crimes.
During the past two decades, Robert had been married twice, under different names. Both women were obscenely wealthy, and both apparently died accidentally within a year of the marriage.
The first was a widow. Robert, under the name of William Deeds, had managed to ingratiate himself with a stockbroker called Finestone.Jerry Finestone knew all the tricks of the stock market, and took a liking to young Bill Deeds, who proved to be an apt pupil.
After six months poor old Jerry walked into an elevator that was not there, but thirty floors down. Later the coroner heard there had been a wiring fault which had allowed the doors to open. It just so happened that Robert, or Bill or whatever you chose to call him, was by way of being an electrical expert, but who knew? Good old Jerry left three and a half million to his widow, Ruth, who, after an appropriate period of mourning married Bill Deeds. Sadly, she followed her first husband within the year: a nasty business which involved a Cadillac and an unmarked road which led to a sheer drop. The contractors, who swore this cul-de-cliff had been well marked, lost the case when Bill Deeds sued them for one and a quarter million.
Thus set up, Bill Deeds moved on - to Los Angeles, where he made the money work for him, and married a movie star. By this time his name had changed to Vince Phillips. The movie star was a big name and the headlines were even bigger when they found her accidentally electrocuted in her Malibu beach house.
Another one and a half million passed to Vince Phillips formerly Bill Deeds, in reality Robert Besavitsky.
Two out of two was enough of that game. Robert altered his name yearly from then on, and was involved in several dozen stock-market frauds - hence the name changes - before he turned his hand to buying and selling. He would sell anything as long as he could buy cheap and sell at a profit, and he certainly never asked questions about the things he purchased. That was how he became a good friend to Yasser Arafat, and even a member of the PLO.
It was at the time when the PLO needed a regular supply of arms and, as it turned out, Bennie Benjamin tka (truly known as) Robert Besavitsky had made a good friend of an unscrupulous Quartermaster with an Infantry regiment. This was how Bennie got hold of hundreds of assault rifles and automatic pistols, together with thousands of rounds of ammunition and four large drums of Composition C-4 disguised as drilling mud. Ninety percent of C-4 is RDX, the most powerful plastique explosive in the world, the rest was a binding material. It is known by various names these days, including its Czechoslovak clone, Semtex. All the arms and explosives ended up with the PLO during the time when that organisation was branded as a terrorist army.
It was then that Besavitsky saw there could be a possible future in terrorism. He spent time with the PLO and learned a few tips, then went back to buying and selling-world-wide, under dozens of aliases, dealing in anything from stolen paintings to rare collectors’ motor cars. For many years he stayed well ahead of the law. But he was no fool. He liked a luxurious lifestyle and knew that it was possible the time might eventually come when they could catch up with him. Just as he knew that one really major killing could set him up for life and allow him to retire in exceptional luxury, and never have to look over his shoulder again.
This was in 1985: the year he decided to make international terrorism work in his favour. It was also the year when his name changed to Bassam Baradj, and it was as Baradj that he went out into the streets and hiding-holes of Europe and the Middle East in search of converts. He had links with a number of disenchanted terrorists and, in turn, they had other links.
Baradj had always had an unhealthy interest in demonology.