Eye of the Storm

‘Not at all,’ Makeev said. ‘A strange one this, believe me.’ He turned to Rashid. ‘You have your portable phone?’

‘Yes, Colonel.’

‘Good. Get after him. Stick to him like glue. When he settles, phone me. We’ll be at the Avenue Victor Hugo.’

Rashid didn’t say a word, simply went. Aroun took out his wallet and extracted a thousand-franc note which he placed on the bar. He said to the barman who was looking totally bewildered, ‘We’re very grateful,’ then turned and followed Makeev out.

As he slid behind the wheel of the black Mercedes saloon, he said to the Russian, ‘He never even hesitated back there.’

‘A remarkable man, Sean Dillon,’ Makeev said as they drove away. ‘He first picked up a gun for the IRA in nineteen seventy-one. Twenty years, Michael, twenty years and he hasn’t seen the inside of a cell once. He was involved in the Mountbatten business. Then he became too hot for his own people to handle so he moved to Europe. As I told you, he’s worked for everyone. The PLO, the Red Brigade in Germany in the old days. The Basque national movement, ETA. He killed a Spanish general for them.’

‘And the KGB?’

‘But of course. He’s worked for us on many occasions. We always use the best and Sean Dillon is exactly that. He speaks English and Irish, not that that bothers you, fluent French and German, reasonable Arabic, Italian and Russian.’

‘And no one has ever caught him in twenty years. How could anyone be that lucky?’

‘Because he has the most extraordinary gift for acting, my friend. A genius, you might say. As a young boy his father took him from Belfast to London to live, where he was awarded a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He even worked for the National Theatre when he was nineteen or twenty. I have never known anyone who can change personality and appearance so much just by body language. Make-up seldom enters into it, although I admit that it helps when he wants. He’s a legend that the security services of most countries keep quiet about because they can’t put a face to him so they don’t know what they’re looking for.’

‘What about the British? After all, they must be the experts where the IRA are concerned.’

‘No, not even the British. As I said, he’s never been arrested, not once, and unlike many of his IRA friends, he never courted media publicity. I doubt if there’s a photo of him anywhere except for the odd boyhood snap.’

‘What about when he was an actor?’

‘Perhaps, but that was twenty years ago, Michael.’

‘And you think he might undertake this business if I offer him enough money?’

‘No, money alone has never been enough for this man. It always has to be the job itself where Dillon is concerned. How can I put it? How interesting it is. This is a man to whom acting was everything. What we are offering him is a new part. The theatre of the street perhaps, but still acting.’ He smiled as the Mercedes joined the traffic moving around the Arc de Triomphe. ‘Let’s wait and see. Wait until we hear from Rashid.’

At that moment, Captain Ali Rashid was by the Seine at the end of a small pier jutting out into the river. The rain was falling very heavily, still plenty of sleet in it. The floodlights were on at Notre Dame and the effect was of something seen partially through a net curtain. He watched Dillon turn along the narrow pier to the building on stilts at the far end, waited until he went in and followed him.

The place was quite old and built of wood, barges and boats of various kinds moored all around. The sign over the door said Le Chat Noir. He peered through the window cautiously. There was a bar and several tables just like the other place. The only difference was that people were eating. There was even a man sitting on a stool against the wall playing an accordion. All very Parisian. Dillon was standing at the bar speaking to a young woman.

Rashid moved back, walked to the end of the pier, paused by the rail in the shelter of a small terrace and dialled the number of Aroun’s house in the Avenue Victor Hugo on his portable phone.

There was a slight click as the Walther was cocked and Dillon rammed the muzzle rather painfully into his right ear. ‘Now then, son, a few answers,’ he demanded. ‘Who are you?’

‘My name is Rashid,’ the young man said. ‘Ali Rashid.’

‘What are you then? PLO?’

‘No, Mr Dillon. I’m a captain in the Iraqi Army, assigned to protect Mr Aroun.’

‘And Makeev and the KGB?’

‘Let’s just say he’s on our side.’

‘The way things are going in the Gulf you need somebody on your side, my old son.’ There was the faint sound of a voice from the portable phone. ‘Go on, answer him.’

Makeev said, ‘Rashid, where is he?’

‘Right here, outside a café on the river near Notre Dame,’ Rashid told him. ‘With the muzzle of his Walther well into my ear.’

‘Put him on,’ Makeev ordered.

Rashid handed the phone to Dillon who said, ‘Now then, you old sod.’

‘A million, Sean. Pounds if you prefer that currency.’

‘And what would I have to be doing for all that money?’

‘The job of a lifetime. Let Rashid bring you round here and we’ll discuss it.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Dillon said. ‘I think what I’d really like is for you to get your arse into gear and come and pick us up yourself.’

‘Of course,’ Makeev said. ‘Where are you?’

‘The Left Bank opposite Notre Dame. A little pub on a pier called Le Chat Noir. We’ll be waiting.’

He slipped the Walther into his pocket and handed the phone to Rashid who said, ‘He’s coming then?’

‘Of course he is.’ Dillon smiled. ‘Now let’s you and me go inside and have ourselves a drink in comfort.’

In the sitting room on the first floor of the house in the Avenue Victor Hugo overlooking the Bois de Boulogne, Josef Makeev put down the phone and moved to the couch where his overcoat was.

‘Was that Rashid?’ Aroun demanded.

‘Yes. He’s with Dillon now at a place on the river. I’m going to get them.’

‘I’ll come with you.’

Makeev pulled on his coat. ‘No need, Michael. You hold the fort. We won’t be long.’

He went out. Aroun took a cigarette from a silver box and lit it, then he turned on the television. He was halfway into the news. There was direct coverage from Baghdad, Tornado fighter bombers of the British Royal Air Force attacking at low level. It made him bitterly angry. He switched off, poured himself a brandy and went and sat by the window.

Michael Aroun was forty years of age and a remarkable man by any standards. Born in Baghdad of a French mother and an Iraqi father who was an army officer, he’d had a maternal grandmother who was American. Through her, his mother had inherited ten million dollars and a number of oil leases in Texas.

She had died the year Aroun had graduated from Harvard Law School leaving everything to her son because his father, retired as a general from the Iraqi Army, was happy to spend his later years at the old family house in Baghdad with his books.

Like most great businessmen, Aroun had no academic training in the field. He knew nothing of financial planning or business administration. His favourite saying, one much quoted, was: When I need a new accountant, I buy a new accountant.

His friendship with Saddam Hussein had been a natural development from the fact that the Iraqi President had been greatly supported in his early days in politics by Aroun’s father, who was also an important member of the Baath Party. It had placed Aroun in a privileged position as regards the development of his country’s oilfields, brought him riches beyond calculation.

After the first billion you stopped counting, another favourite saying. And now he was faced with disaster. Not only the promised riches of the Kuwait oilfields snatched from him, but that portion of his wealth which stemmed from Iraq dried up, finished as a result of the Coalition’s massive airstrikes which had devastated his country since 17 January.

He was no fool. He knew that the game was over; should probably have never started, and that Saddam Hussein’s dream was already finished. As a businessman he played the percentages and that didn’t offer Iraq too much of a chance in the ground war that must eventually come.