Dazzle The Complete Unabridged Trilogy (138 page)

At the still relatively young age of forty-two, Najib had
become that twentieth-century phenomenon, a pirate of the
international financial world, with billions of petrodollars at
his disposal at any given time. Consequently he had to change
time zones with the ease that other men commuted four miles to work. This he could do as swiftly or as leisurely as he liked,
with an arrogant disregard for airline schedules. Not for
nothing did he own a private Boeing 727-100, equipped with
long-range fuel tanks, which functioned as his business com
mand centre. This cross between a flying palace and a multi
media discotheque was so full of luxuries that Aladdin would
have blushed. It boasted a huge bedroom complete with a king-size bed (equipped with seat belts in case of a bumpy
flight), a compact gourmet kitchen, a living room which could
seat twenty in comfort, as well as a carefully ballasted Jacuzzi
which sat three; cruising along at thirty-five thousand feet with
the Jacuzzi jets blasting, while the view out the Perspex win
dows was of a sea of clouds, was the ultimate way to travel. And then, of course, there were the two Lear jets, the fleet of
helicopters, and the two-hundred-and-sixty-foot yacht com
plete with swimming pool and helipad, which he kept in the
Mediterranean.

There was his country house high in the cool flower-fragrant
hills of Lebanon, the Moorish palace in Tangier, his twenty thousand-acre game reserve in Kenya, his private island off
the coast of Turkey, two adjoining villas in the South of
France, the mansion in Beverly Hills which had once belonged
to Tamara and which, out of a sense of perverseness, he had
bought for himself, and the apartments in Tokyo and on Maui.
And then there was his city palace: the quadruplex atop the Trump Tower, where he was ensconced at the moment, one of Manhattan's, and perhaps the world's, most ostentatious,
prestigious, and unabashedly luxurious addresses—with all of
New York City glittering at his feet on all four floors and all
four sides. If the in-flight Jacuzzi would have made Aladdin
blush, then the indoor swimming pool, high above Central Park, would have made him choke with envy.

In the beginning, these visible perks of wealth had been
slow in coming, but after Najib had made his first million he
soon discovered the magic of money and its dizzying geometric
progression. One million easily became ten million, and ten
million almost effortlessly mushroomed into a hundred
million. And though he was gifted with the Midas touch, luck
had had more than a little to do with it. Never before in history
had the time been so ripe for building a fortune as during the
late 1950s to the mid-1970s. The silicon-chip, state-of-the-art
communications systems, and the world's ravenous demand
for ever more oil had opened up a plethora of international
trading opportunities. Men were hurtling through space every
few weeks, and science was undergoing giant leaps. And sud
denly, the world was within reach: the jet plane had shrunk a
transcontinental flight down to five hours, and a single ordi
nary telephone could dial any other telephone anywhere in the world, so that multimillion-dollar deals could be negotiated by
simply letting one's fingers do the walking.

Nothing seemed impossible for Najib al-Ameer.

Gifted with extraordinary foresight and an uncanny ability to pick winners, he was the acknowledged highest roller in the
high-stakes game of making megabucks. He was among the
first to invest in aerospace and Silicon Valley; he foresaw the
Japanese high-tech industries before they came into being; he
seemed to know precisely when to buy oil tankers and when
to sell them. No matter what he did, his timing was always
impeccable.

It was in 1963 when he made the first of the deals which
would become his trademark and enable him to leapfrog his
way to his first hundred million dollars. After arranging to
control exclusive oil-export rights for two minor but oil-rich
emirates, he then flew to New York and approached the staid
WASP bankers for a loan. Armed with his oil contracts, he
easily borrowed forty million dollars and used it to purchase
a fleet of oil tankers; two years later, he was building the
world's largest-ever supertanker in a shipyard—of which he was part owner—in Japan. And then he hit the real jackpot.

The oil sheiks were a withdrawn lot, suspicious of foreigners
who came to curry favour and pump their oil. Ever cunning,
Najib placed himself between the sheiks and the corporate
representatives. When Great Britain and America's most
powerful oil companies wanted to arrange business deals with
the Arab nations, they found they had to come to him. Thus, he found the largest single source of his income, and his true
calling. Simply by arranging these deals—without investing a
single cent of his own capital—his commissions amounted to countless millions every year and earned him the nickname
'Mr. Five Percent.' And those millions he invested, and then reinvested. Money begat more money. And enough money
made for true power. Soon his power was such that he was
wooed by the ultimate power brokers, and he hobnobbed with
leaders of the Kremlin as easily as he brushed shoulders with
the VIPs of Washington, D.C. At one point he owned no
fewer than forty small to mid-size companies, all carefully diversified, and then he began to shape them into a single
powerful conglomerate.

By 1965 he had made his first quarter-billion and was well
on his way to the half-billion-dollar mark. By 1970 he was
the world's most-celebrated Arab, and was constantly written
about in the columns. His smiling visage became as familiar a
face as the shah's or the Saudi king's. His flying palace with
its gold-plated faucets, Lucite shower, and priceless Persian
carpets became famous for swooping down at a different air
port every few hours while he consummated one business deal
or another, after which he would take off for halfway around
the world and celebrate his successes on board his luxurious yacht. His life seemed to be an open book. When he divorced Yasmin, his wife of twelve years, her fifty-million-dollar div
orce settlement made the headlines in New York, Sydney,
London, and, as if to prove non-Soviet decadence, even
Moscow. So did his affairs with some of the world's most
glamorous and desirable women.

But there was an awesome price to pay for all this wealth
and position, and his life, in reality, was open only to the pages
he wanted the world to see. Those who came into contact with
him saw only the suave charm of the high-living hedonist or the cold efficiency of the ruthless corporate raider. But there
was a third side to him, the dark one, the part he had worked
as hard to keep hidden as he had slaved to amass his riches.
Despite his own staggering fortune and the billions of dollars
at his disposal, he was not his own man.

Around the globe, millions of people envied him his power and fortune, but no one knew that he was merely a puppet. Najib al-Ameer, the womanizer who seemingly answered to
no one, who billed himself as one of the five richest men in
the world, was in fact completely under the control of
Abdullah, the most feared authority of them all. More and more, Najib had become only too aware that in the shark-
infested waters of big business, he, one of the biggest sharks
of them all, could all too easily be harpooned. All it would
take was a single public proclamation from Abdullah. If ever he incurred Abdullah's wrath, his entire empire would crum
ble and everything he had worked for would become but a
heap of ashes.

It was a shaky foundation for any empire, especially one
where half a billion dollars was at stake, and he had grown to curse the devil's bargain he had made with Abdullah, from
which he saw no way to extricate himself. The blood oath he had sworn so eagerly in his youth was binding.

Admittedly, his secret association with Abdullah had served
him well. It had provided the seeds he'd needed to get started,
and the business training and contacts he had made at Har
vard, thanks again to Abdullah, had opened all the right
doors, just as his half-uncle had foreseen. But Abdullah had not only sown the seeds for financing a dark empire; he also
reaped part of the harvest, and a grimmer reaper did not exist.
More and more often lately, Abdullah's hunger for creating
senseless violence and chaos frightened Najib. It was almost
as if the terrorist leader's power had gone to his head.
Abdullah had begun to revel in bloodshed and in taking stupid
chances. Small though it was, Abdullah's PLF was a powerful,
monstrous instrument, and Abdullah a force to be reckoned
with.

Najib steepled his elongated lingers and tapped them
thoughtfully against his lips. His mind had been wandering for
a full ten minutes now, and he had become oblivious of the
scenes unfolding on the television screen. With a jerk, he
pulled himself together and made himself concentrate.

The twilight of the Boralevis and ben Yaacovs was at hand.

Finally everything was falling into place. After three
decades of waiting to fulfil his long-ago vow of vengeance
against the family of Schmarya Boralevi, the time to do so
had come. Just as he had begun to believe that Abdullah had
forgotten all about it, the message to proceed had arrived.

One by one, the family of Schmarya Boralevi was to be
picked off and destroyed.

And, as though fate had conspired to bring it about, the
telephone had rung just a few hours ago. He had been in
the big dressing room off the master bedroom, dressing for a
dinner party. Looking at the flashing light on the multiline
telephone, he had immediately noticed that it was his most
private line. Only a handful of people had that particular num
ber, and it was the best-kept secret in an empire replete with
them.

He punched the flashing button, switched on the scrambler,
and lifted the receiver to his ear. 'Yes?' he answered curtly.

'I've got news,' a familiar Brooklynese voice said.

He felt the sudden dizzying rush of adrenaline and quickly
looked out into the bedroom to make sure none of the servants
was about; the special scrambler system he had had hooked
up would keep anyone who happened to pick up an extension
elsewhere in the apartment from listening in. All an eaves
dropper would hear was garbled gibberish. 'Is your scrambler
activated?' he asked softly.