On the journey back to his office on Wall Street, Antonio Cavalli began to think more seriously about Al Obaydi and how they had come to meet. The file on his new client supplied by their London office, and updated by his secretary, Debbie, revealed that although the Deputy Ambassador had been born in Baghdad, he had been educated in England.
When Cavalli leaned back, closed his eyes and recalled the clipped accent and staccato delivery, he felt he might have been in the presence of a British Army officer. The explanation could be found in Al Obaydi’s file under “Education”: The King’s School, Wimbledon, followed by three years at London University studying law. Al Obaydi had also eaten his dinners at Lincoln’s Inn, whatever that meant.
On returning to Baghdad, Al Obaydi had been recruited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He had risen rapidly, despite the self-appointment of Saddam Hussein as President and the regular placement of Ba’ath Party apparatchiks in posts they were patently unqualified to fill.
As Cavalli turned another page of the file, it became obvious that Al Obaydi was a man well capable of adapting himself to unusual circumstances. To be fair, that was something Cavalli also prided himself on. Like Al Obaydi he had studied law, but in his case at Columbia University in New York. When that time of the year came around for graduates to fill out their applications to join leading law firms, Cavalli was always shortlisted when the partners saw his grades, but once they realized who his father was, he was never interviewed.
After working fourteen hours a day for five years in one of Manhattan’s less prestigious legal establishments, the young Cavalli began to realize that it would be at least another ten years before he could hope to see his name embossed on the firm’s masthead, despite having married one of the senior partners’ daughters. Tony Cavalli didn’t have ten years to waste, so he decided to set up his own law practice and divorce his wife.
In January 1982 Cavalli and Co. was incorporated, and ten years later, on April 15, 1992, the company had declared a profit of $157,000, paying its tax demand in full. What the company books did not reveal was that a subsidiary had also been formed in 1982, but not incorporated. A firm that showed no tax returns, and despite its profits mounting each year, could not be checked up on by phoning Dun and Bradstreet and requesting a complete VIP business report. This subsidiary was known to a small group of insiders as “Skills” — a company that specialized in solving problems that could not be taken care of by thumbing through the Yellow Pages.
With his father’s contacts, and Cavalli’s driving ambition, the unlisted company soon made a reputation for handling problems that their unnamed clients had previously considered insoluble. Among Cavalli’s latest assignments had been the recovery of taped conversations between a famous singer and a former first lady that were due to be published in Rolling Stone and the theft of a Vermeer from Ireland for an eccentric South American collector. These coups were discreetly referred to in the company of potential clients.
The clients themselves were vetted as carefully as if they were applying to be members of the New York Yacht Club because, as Tony’s father had often pointed out, it would only take one mistake to ensure that he would spend the rest of his life in less pleasing surroundings than 23 East 75th Street, or their villa in Lyford Cay.
Over the past decade, Tony had built up a small network of representatives across the globe who supplied him with clients requiring a little help with more “imaginative” propositions. It was his Lebanese contact who had been responsible for introducing the man from Baghdad, whose proposal unquestionably fell into this category.
When Tony’s father was first briefed on the outline of Operation “Desert Calm” he recommended that his son demand a fee of one hundred million dollars to compensate for the fact that the whole of Washington would be at liberty to observe him going about his business.
“One mistake,” the old man warned him, licking his lips, “and you’ll make more front pages than the second coming of Elvis.”
Once he had left the lecture theater, Scott Bradley hurried across Grove Street Cemetery, hoping that he might reach his apartment on St. Ronan Street before being accosted by a pursuing student. He loved them all — well, almost all — and he was sure that in time he would allow the more serious among them to stroll back to his rooms in the evenings to have a drink and to talk long into the night. But not until they were well into their second year.
Scott managed to reach the staircase before a single would-be lawyer had caught up with him. But then, few of them knew that he had once covered four hundred meters in 48.1 seconds when he’d anchored the Georgetown varsity relay team. Confident he had escaped, Scott leaped up the staircase, not stopping until he reached his apartment on the third floor.
He pushed open the unlocked door. It was always unlocked. There was nothing in his apartment worth stealing — even the television didn’t work. The one file that would have revealed that the law was not the only field in which he was an expert had been carefully secreted on his bookshelf between “Tax” and “Torts.” He failed to notice the books that were piled up everywhere or the fact that he could have written his name in the dust on the sideboard.
Scott closed the door behind him and glanced, as he always did, at the picture of his mother on the sideboard. He dumped the pile of notes he was carrying by her side and retrieved the mail poking out from under the door. Scott walked across the room and sank into an old leather chair, wondering how many of those bright, attentive faces would still be attending his lectures in two years’ time. Forty percent would be good — thirty percent more likely. Those would be the ones for whom fourteen hours’ work a day became the norm, and not just for the last month before exams. And of them, how many would live up to the standards of the late Dean Thomas W. Swan? Five percent, if he was lucky.
The professor of constitutional law turned his attention to the bundle of mail he held in his lap. One from American Express — a bill with the inevitable hundred free offers which would cost him even more money if he took any of them up — an invitation from Brown to give the Charles Evans Hughes Lecture on the Constitution; a letter from Carol reminding him she hadn’t seen him for some time; a circular from a firm of stockbrokers who didn’t promise to double his money but... and finally a plain buff envelope postmarked Virginia, with a typeface he recognized immediately.
He tore open the buff envelope and extracted the single sheet of paper which gave him his latest instructions.
Al Obaydi strolled onto the floor of the General Assembly and slipped into a chair directly behind his Head of Mission. The Ambassador had his earphones on and was pretending to be deeply interested in a speech being delivered by the Head of the Brazilian Mission. Al Obaydi’s boss always preferred to have confidential talks on the floor of the General Assembly: he suspected it was the only room in the United Nations building that wasn’t bugged by the CIA.
Al Obaydi waited patiently until the older man flicked one of the earpieces aside and leaned slightly back.
“They’ve agreed to our terms,” murmured Al Obaydi, as if it was he who had suggested the figure. The Ambassador’s upper lip protruded over his lower lip, the recognized sign among his colleagues that he required more details.
“One hundred million,” Al Obaydi whispered. Ten million to be paid immediately. The final ninety on delivery.”
“Immediately?” said the Ambassador. “What does ‘immediately’ mean?”
“By midday tomorrow,” whispered Al Obaydi.
“At least Sayedi anticipated that eventuality,” said the Ambassador thoughtfully.