by Allan Topol
She tossed the barely smoked Cohiba into the water to illustrate her point.
Victor knew it was hopeless. Stubbornly, he persisted. “It won’t be easy to get him to work with us. You know that?”
“That’s why I pay you so much money. To do the hard things. If you can’t do this for me, I’ll have to find somebody else who will, and rethink our relationship.” She paused for a moment, letting her words sink in. “Now,” she added, “how quickly can you get him to join us?”
Victor frowned. “One of the pieces is already in place, the Israeli dental records. I can move up on the other one right now.”
“Then do it!”
“Do you want to know the details?”
“That’s your job. Just get it done, and as soon as possible.”
Victor gave a deep sigh of resignation. Having anticipated her decision, he pulled the cell phone from his jacket pocket and punched in the Washington telephone number he had memorized. “You may proceed with the transaction,” he said in English for the tape on the telephone answering machine.
“And one other thing,” Madame Blanc said to Victor in a threatening voice.
“What’s that?” he asked nervously.
“I’ll be very unhappy if anything happens to Greg Nielsen before our operation takes place.” She reached over and grabbed the front of Victor’s shirt just below his neck, pulling it tightly. “I’ll hold you personally responsible. Do you understand?”
“Clearly,” Victor replied, gripping his deck chair with white knuckles.
He wondered if she had learned that he had attempted to arrange Greg’s execution at Maria Clermont’s house. This Greg Nielsen was clever. He had somehow managed to escape and kill Maurice, an experienced hit man, in the process. Victor knew that he had been taking a risk, trying to kill Greg Nielsen, but from the minute he had learned about Khalid’s request to include Greg Nielsen, he had been worried about the success of their operation. All of his instincts told him that this Nielsen would somehow wreck their plan, although he wasn’t sure how. In view of what Greg Nielsen had done to Maurice, Victor was even more worried. But he didn’t dare try again Not after what Madame Blanc had just said. He would have to follow orders and get Greg Nielsen on their team. No matter how much he detested the idea.
* * *
Clint Merrifield drove cautiously across the 14th Street Bridge from Washington to Alexandria, Virginia, constantly watching the headlights in the rearview mirror. Tonight’s job was simple enough, and yet something about it bothered him. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but after five years of doing burglaries and murders for hire, he had developed a sixth sense that told him which jobs shouldn’t be taken because they could go south on him. Tonight’s was like that.
The trouble was, the money was so good: $100,000 all in cash. The bald-headed man with the bushy brown beard had already given him twenty this afternoon. And he was looking to get out of the business, to go back home, on down to Durham, and start being a father and a husband again. With this hundred thousand clams, he wouldn’t have to work again for a while, and that would suit Dee just right.
Following a gray van, he drove past National Airport and entered Old Town. At Queen Street he turned left, parked about two blocks away from Dr. Walter’s office and climbed out of his car. It was a few minutes before midnight, and the street, filled with small redbrick three-story town houses, a combination of private homes and small professional offices, was deserted. It had rained about an hour ago and would rain again soon. The air was damp and heavy. Police cars routinely cruised the area, and, fearful he would stand out in this rich shiny-ass district, he told himself, “Walk fast but not too fast.” He wanted to get off the street as soon as possible.
The next building on his left had a sign in front that said “Dr. Frederick Walter D.D.S.” Merrifield knew a little about real estate prices in the Washington area, and he concluded this was a high-rent area for a dentist’s office. That fucker must have a lot of rich patients, Merrifield decided.
At their meeting this afternoon the bald-headed man had told him about the layout of the building and even provided a drawing. Merrifield had quickly decided to go in through a ground-floor window in the back. He slipped on a pair of thin black leather gloves and tested the window. The lock would give way with just a moderate degree of pressure. Before going in, he studied the security system through the uncovered windows. He saw nothing on the windows, but there were floor motion sensors. He went in quickly through the window, stood still and took out an electronic neutralizing device with a laser beam. He aimed it at the motion sensor, deactivating the entire security system.
The building was deserted, but from habit, he moved stealthily, on the toes of his rubber-soled shoes. The bald-headed man had told him that the dental records would be up front behind the receptionist’s desk just inside the front door of the town house. Merrifield took a flashlight from his pocket as he walked in that direction.
The information was accurate. Behind the receptionist’s desk, he found three rows of gunmetal gray file cabinets. None of them was locked. He found a drawer labeled N-O. Inside that drawer, he scanned the dental records of patients until he found what he was looking for: Gregory Nielsen. It contained an entire manila folder, with Xrays and everything. Merrifield folded it up and stuffed it into the pocket of his leather jacket. In a matter of seconds, he was out of the building and back onto the deserted sidewalk.
From Alexandria, he drove across the bridge and into Washington, then north and west through Rock Creek Park. It was raining hard, with bursts of thunder and lightning. As he drove cautiously, he decided that he had been wrong about this job. It was a piece of cake. Easiest big money he’d made in a long time. Just past the Broad Brand Road cutoff, he saw a sign that said picnic grove number 16. He pulled off the road and drove toward a small parking lot in a clump of trees. The rain had tapered off to a light drizzle. He turned off his head lamps and parked.
The bald-headed man with the bushy brown beard was wearing a bulky black raincoat. Standing next to his own car, holding a large black umbrella over his head, he looked at his watch.
“You’re late,” he said. “I expected you half an hour ago.”
“The weather. Traffic.”
The man grunted. “Do you have what I want?”
“You bet.”
Merrifield handed the man the manila folder and watched while he put down the umbrella and examined the records with a flashlight. As he looked, he nodded with approval.
“Now my money,” Merrifield said softly. His hand moved close to his jacket pocket, where he had a small pistol concealed. Once, about three years ago, somebody had stiffed him after he completed a job. He had shot the man. It never happened again. Maybe people in the market for his services had their own network.
The man opened his car door, reached in and extracted a brown envelope from the front seat, which he tossed to Merrifield. “There’s 80K in the envelope. Count it if you’d like.”
“I will,” Merrifield said. He took out his flashlight and set it in place on the hood of his car. Then he began running his hands over the bills—all hundreds. As he counted, he kept looking up at the other man. But for a split second, Merrifield’s eyes rested longingly on the money.
The man reached into the pocket of his raincoat and pulled out a black gun with a silencer. Instinctively, Merrifield dropped the money and dove for cover behind his car, going for his own gun. But he was too late. The first shot caught him in the back between his shoulder blades. Merrifield bounced off the car and hit the ground. The bearded man calmly walked over and put a bullet in the side of Merrifield’s head.
He checked to make sure Merrifield was dead, retrieved the money, and then he drove away. He had no fear that Merrifield’s murder would be tied to the theft of Greg Nielsen’s dental records. The two had occurred in separate jurisdictions, and Virginia and D.C. rarely coordinated on law enforcement even if a crime obviously involved both. Bes
ides, the Merrifield murder would just be one more unsolved homicide in the District of Columbia, where there had been 356 last year, and only the easiest ones had been solved. Merrifield’s death certainly wouldn’t fit into that category.
Chapter 6
David was pleased to see that his tuxedo had been left hanging in a closet of the house in Montreaux. He had last worn it two years ago when he had brought Yael for a short holiday along Lake Geneva. He knew that Bruno liked to dress formally for these evenings of dinner followed by the casino, and he didn’t want to embarrass his host.
On the way to the restaurant, where he would meet Bruno, David thought about the first time he had met the Swiss financier. By January 1979, the final days of the rule of the Shah of Iran, David, as CIA station chief in Tehran, had become quite close with the Shah. Up to the end, the Shah stubbornly refused to leave his country, mistakenly believing that the people would back him against the Ayatollah. He was already quite ill and frail as a result of leukemia, but he loved his country so much that he took a container filled with Iranian soil with him. David had cut through all of the American government red tape to get a U.S. air force plane and crew just in the nick of time for the Shah to escape with cash and jewels while State Department officials fiddled in Foggy Bottom. As the CIA station chief in Tehran, he thought the Shah deserved at least that much for his many years of being a loyal American ally. Doing it earned David a spot at the top of the new Iranian government’s hit list.
David flew with the Shah to Geneva—the first stop in what would become the former Iranian leader’s agonizing and humiliating odyssey of exile, rejection and death. Waiting for the plane to land at the airport was Bruno, the Shah’s friend of many years and personal financial advise. That evening, at a quiet dinner at Bruno’s house in Lausanne, the Shah introduced David to his host and said, “Bruno, this young man saved my life. If he ever needs anything, please give it to him.”
David had been touched by the Shah’s words and the sentiment they conveyed. He filed them in the back of his mind, never conceiving that years later, when his own odyssey of exile and rejection began after his fight with General Chambers, he would turn to Bruno because he had nowhere else to go.
As the car sped along the shore of Lake Geneva, David closed his eyes and relaxed. He had no reason to see if he was being tailed. He was confident that he had thoroughly lost the Mossad and anyone else who was following him.
At the restaurant, Bruno was waiting for David at a table with a bottle of Taittinger Comtes de Champagne 1990, chilling on ice. It had been two years since they had been together, a year since Bruno had sent David a note after Yael’s death.
When he saw David enter the room, Bruno rose quickly and gave David a huge hug for a greeting. My God, the man doesn’t age, David thought. He has to be seventy, and he looks like fifty, with the same tall, thin, wiry frame, sandy brown hair and ruddy complexion. It’s all in the genes.
“I should have answered your note last year,” David said, “but it was too painful.”
“That wasn’t necessary. I’m only glad you brought her here a year earlier, so I got the chance to know Yael, and what a special person she was.”
The waiter poured champagne into two Baccarat flutes.
As Bruno raised his glass, he tapped it against David’s and said, “to better times.”
“To friendship.” David responded.
“Okay, so how are you now, my young friend?” Bruno asked.
“I had it tough for a while after Yael’s death, but I’m doing better—or at least I was until my life started imploding. That’s why I wanted to see you, to get your advice.”
The maitre’d approached, and Bruno said, “Let’s order first.”
When he had gone, and as food and more wine arrived, David described in detail for Bruno everything that had happened since Detective Goldberg showed up at the kibbutz, including his meeting with Bill Fox in London. He was excited, and he began talking rapidly, moving his hands as he did. Several times Bruno asked him to repeat what he had said, because it was all coming out too fast in David’s barely passable French. With Bruno, he held nothing back. He felt better being able to talk to someone. When he was finished, he said “So, what do you make of all this?”
“Somebody wants you badly. That somebody has plenty of money and brains, but absolutely no scruples.”
“Sounds like a great combination. What do I do about it?”
“You could take the easy way out. Go back to Dr. Wilhelm, the plastic surgeon, let him make a few more changes, and I could help resettle you in Venezuela, where the oil business is booming.”
David was disappointed by Bruno’s words. This wasn’t what he came so far to hear. “That’s not an option. My God, Bruno, as Bill Fox was rattling on about his personal traumas, he managed to drop that Nasser blew up Bus eighteen in Jerusalem. Yael was on that bus. That means Nasser killed Yael.”
Bruno shook his head in disagreement. A decision like this had to be made with the mind and not the heart. “You still might be better not to continue.”
“Look, Bruno, I hear you, and I respect your judgment more than anyone’s, but this is something I have to do.”
“It won’t be easy.”
“I know that, but I’ll find a way to get into Saudi Arabia.”
Bruno gave a weary sigh of resignation. “Let me make a suggestion, then. If you won’t run, at least sit tight for a while. Chances are the whole dental records business has a Saudi Arabian connection somewhere. Fox already told you that balls are in play over there. Somebody’s going to come to you very soon. See what they’re offering. It may be a way to get at Nasser.”
David weighed Bruno’s words carefully. “I won’t wait too long,” he responded.
Bruno smiled. “I wouldn’t have expected you to. Patience was never your strong suit. It’s amazing I was able to teach you to play chemin de fer so well.”
Laughing, David replied, “You didn’t teach me. You introduced the game to me. It’s all numbers. I had an instinct for it. You said so yourself. That’s why we made our deal.”
Bruno didn’t argue. When he had first seen how good David was at chemin de fer, he proposed a lifetime deal. He would finance David, and they would split the winnings. That little deal had resulted in David now having over a million dollars in a numbered account at a Geneva bank.
“All right, let’s go play. We’ll test your instincts.”
* * *
It was a Friday evening, and the casino in Evian-les-Baines, the French spa on the lake’s southern shore, was crowded in the main public rooms in front. In the back was a private salon for high rollers, and there was never a crowd at any of those tables. All the men were dressed in evening clothes. The women, heavily jeweled, were smartly dressed in the latest fashions of Paris and Milan.
As they entered the private salon, several players looked up. A couple came over to shake Bruno’s hand.
Bruno usually took a seat next to David at the chemin de fer table. Tonight he said, “You play yourself,” and he walked over to the blackjack table to sit next to a tall, strikingly beautiful brunette in a black silk dress with a plunging neckline that showed much more than just cleavage beneath a heavily encrusted diamond choker. She was about forty, David guessed, and he was surprised. Bruno, a widower, had a female friend his age whom he saw from time to time, and David had never seen him with a younger woman. From his greeting, he obviously knew this woman well. Good for him, David thought.
He took one more look, then forgot Bruno and the brunette. The key to success at chemin de fer, he had learned long ago, as with many other things in life, was total concentration. The room could be on fire, and he wouldn’t know it.
He was watching the cards and counting, hoping for that ideal combination of two or three cards that added up to nine, which was the optimum total. Three other men were sitting at the table—a young American who had lots of money and knew little about the game, a heavy red-faced Ge
rman, puffing on a cigar with a tall stack of chips in front of him, and a grim-looking Frenchman who was cursing his luck.
After an hour, David looked down at the pile of chips on the table in front of him. It totaled $10,200, a mere $200 more than he had started with. But David was patient at this game. He had learned that the secret for successful gambling lay in the Bible—in the story of Josef and Pharaoh—the seven good years and the seven lean years. Gambling, like sports, runs in streaks. Dale Long, a journeyman first baseman for the Pittsburgh Pirates, David remembered, once hit home runs in eight straight games—a record. And an ordinary quarterback will sometimes complete pass after pass on a long drive. So too in chemin de fer. In some runs the bank’s hand will win round after round; and in others the player’s hand keeps rolling up the wins. The secret to playing chemin de fer successfully, David believed, was to bet relatively small amounts and wait until one of those streaks started and then bid aggressively, following the momentum, while siphoning off a percentage of winnings along the way, thereby avoiding the greed factor. In that way, when the streak came to an end, as it must inevitably, because what goes up must come down, David took home a substantial profit.
So far tonight there hadn’t been any streaks of that type. Yet he began to get a feeling—a tingling in his fingers—that told him the time was coming. The Frenchman on his left had the bank and had just lost, so the shoe moved to David, who tossed $8,000 of his chips into the center of the table to buy the bank. On his right, the American bought another $20,000 worth of chips. The German across the table relit his cigar and tapped his chubby fingers lightly on the green tabletop. The American tossed in a bet of $3,000 against the bank, and the German followed suit. The Frenchman picked up the remaining $2,000.
