7

The hush of big, serious money filled the room. Whether crowded around the roulette tables, perched on stools playing blackjack, watching or being watched, no one spoke much above a whisper.

It was the nearly religious reverence for the arrogant and ostentatious wealth that made the scene possible. The holy devotion to smart looks, large diamonds, expensive clothes, and the exhilaration of winning or being able to afford to lose. The self-fascination of the beautiful people at play. The smoky, alcoholic atmosphere was further stimulated by the distinct presence of fear. Or, perhaps more accurately, the electric tension generated by the imminent loss or possible gain of thousands of dollars on a single turn of a wheel or a card over which only fate had control. At best there could be misplaced and often desperate hope, or in some cases, foolish but nearly mystical faith.

Above the general murmur, plastic chips clicked gently on the padded green tables. Mechanical voices of the stonefaced croupiers could be heard sorting out winnings and losings, preparing for the next suspenseful journey of the little metal ball around the edges of the large red-and-black wheel.

Men in billiard-green jackets scurried about emptying ashtrays, dusting away imaginary flecks of dust, occasionally picking up fallen chips from the plush red carpet and handing out scoring cards for those who took an orderly or pseudo-scientific approach to the mysteries of roulette-table numbers.

Gambling has been widely regarded as a form of pleasure, a game of chance in the name of sport, relaxation, or good fun. Few here showed it. Most of the casino guests affected grave expressions, particularly those with money at stake.

Drifting through the crowd of Pierre Cardin-suited men and Dior-dressed women was the evening’s prize show-off. Her hair was dyed nearly white to match her floor-length gown, which was molded over her breasts and slit down the front as far as her navel. Obviously conscious of the attention she attracted even among such a sophisticated gathering, she wore an artificially bored expression and puffed continuously on thin plastic-tipped cigars.

As usual on Friday nights, one end of the elegant casino hall was roped off for a backgammon tournament. The players, mostly men, huddled over expensive leather boards, tossing dice onto them to provide firepower for opposing small armies of polished marble stones.

Elias Khoury swore, first in Arabic, then in Greek. The dark-eyed man opposite him pretended not to notice. He had just rolled a double four, permitting him not only to knock a key Khoury stone off the board but to block the return of the stone to the board. The game was the tie-breaker in their match, and Khoury, muttering quietly to himself about evil luck and certain parts of the anatomy of the man’s sister, had almost certainly lost. Like many men of the Middle East, Khoury considered himself one of the best backgammon players in the world. That self-centered belief reflected as much about the game of backgammon as about the mentality of Khoury’s joint Greek and Lebanese heritage.

Backgammon, often known as “the cruellest game,” is largely a matter of chance. Rolls of the dice primarily determine the outcome. But it also is a game of odds, and an experienced player with an intimate knowledge of those odds has a strong edge over a lesser player. The cruel hazard for any experienced player is that a novice, with the help of cooperative dice, can in a given situation overcome even the best player. Intellectually, all good players understand this. Emotionally, it is impossible to accept.

The dark-eyed man, an Egyptian reputed to once have been a high-class procurer for King Farouk, was in a winning position and obviously enjoying it. He said nothing, but with every roll of the dice he puffed triumphantly on a Cuban cigar. The match between him and Khoury had been close, as is common between evenly matched players. But a series of good rolls in the last and deciding game had put the Egyptian in an unbeatable position.

Khoury glanced across at the woman sitting behind the Egyptian. She wore a black brassiere under a sheer yellow see-through blouse. The brassiere was tightly wrapped around a fleshy, overweight frame that might have once been regarded as attractive, but now too many nights of overeating, overdrinking, and general indulgence had taken their toll. Khoury wondered whether years ago she might have been one of Farouk’s favorites and a big earner for the Egyptian across from him. The Egyptian rolled the dice again, spilling them out of a heavy leather playing cup onto the board. A four-six. Khoury had lost for certain. The roll permitted the Egyptian to begin lifting his stones off the board while still blocking Khoury from playing.

Typical of my luck these days, Khoury thought. In the past year or so things had certainly not gone well. In the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, Turkish bombs hit a dry-goods store he owned in downtown Nicosia, wiping it out. The insurance company refused to honor the policy, saying it did not cover war damage and thus the stock as well as the business was a total loss. Just over a year later at the height of the Lebanese civil war, a group of Palestinians looted a jewelry store he owned with his brother George. Losses again were heavy. On top of these two setbacks came yet another, the most expensive and unexpected of the three.

During a lull in the fighting in the banking district of Beirut, members of the Syrian-controlled Palestinian Saiqa group broke into the burning branch of the British Bank of the Middle East and looted it. Among the millions of dollars in cash and valuables scooped out of the vault and safe-deposit boxes was $650,000 worth of cut diamonds Khoury had stored to cool off. The diamonds were the haul from the robbery of a Belgian diamond merchant the year before. As an investment, Khoury bought the stones through a French intermediary at a cost far below their market value. Because the stones were cut and thus possible to trace, they were purchased with the knowledge that they’d have to be stored for at least five years before they could be gradually released back into the market through Khoury’s own jewelry store.

The combined setbacks cost Khoury well over a million dollars in little more than a year.

The imminent hundred-dollar loss to the Egyptian, of course, was relatively minor. For Khoury was not exactly broke. But his current fortune was not endless, and the series of reverses had shaken him.

Over the past decade his fortunes had ebbed and peaked like the tides. A nightclub he bought attracted the beautiful people for a season, then fell out of vogue and folded.

An investment in a publishing house seemed promising until a couple of nonsellers reversed his fortune, putting the company in the red. After a few years Khoury had sold out.

At one point he backed a treasure hunt for a cousin who brought up a modest fortune from the wreckage of a Spanish merchantman off the coast of Bermuda. His cousin cheated him out of what he was due, he was sure, but did repay the original loan plus ten percent. So Elias Khoury was not able to complain loudly.

Khoury’s fortunes had taken another of their turns in Paris when he met Dr. Hermann Straussmann, who had achieved an unwelcome degree of notoriety in World War II as a top official of the Nazi Sicherheitsdienst, or SD, in Yugoslavia. The SD was the sadistic security arm of the dreaded Gestapo, the front-line unit in Hitler’s campaign to eliminate the Jews. At the end of the war Straussmann escaped to Italy and with the help of friends in the Vatican made his way to the safety of Egypt, where he became a friend of Prince Abbas Halim, King Farouk’s pro-Nazi cousin. In the years that followed, he became one of Europe’s most notorious gun-runners, selling to anyone who could pay, cash up front. Among his customers were the Muslim Brotherhood of North Africa; a number of black African underground groups, including the Mau Mau in Kenya and the Biafran rebels in the Nigerian civil war; Kurdish nationals in Iraq; the IRA; various Palestinian groups; and both Christian and Muslim private armies in Lebanon. On a more limited basis, Straussmann also sold small arms to the EOKA Greek Cypriot terrorist organization. The link between Straussmann and EOKA was Elias Khoury.

Working through contacts of his mother’s family in Greece, Elias Khoury arranged over the years a number of small shipments purchased through Straussmann. A typical shipment included submachine guns and hand grenades shipped to the Greek-controlled port of Famagusta in crates labeled “engine parts.”

EOKA sympathizers in the customs service assured the shipments reached their destination unmolested.

Initially, of course, EOKA activity was directed against the British colonial government. When the Union Jack was hauled down and Cyprus became independent, the new EOKA-B group led by Colonel George Grivas targeted itself against the regime of Greek Cypriot President Archbishop Makarios. The churchman was accused of being too soft on the volatile Turkish issue and dragging his feet on joining Cyprus politically to the Greek mainland.

In the wake of the 1974 overthrow of Makarios and the resulting Turkish invasion, the EOKA-B organization was badly damaged. Many were killed battling first Makarios supporters and only a few days later the Turkish Army. The EOKA-B groups also used up large amounts of their military supplies, and with the Turks having captured Famagusta and effectively closing Nicosia airport, normal resupply channels were badly disrupted.

When Makarios finally returned triumphant to the badly bruised island, the remaining EOKA-B elements were forced further underground. Shortly after, one of the leading EOKA-B cells regrouped, and with financing from a well-to-do Greek businessman, decided to institute a cross-the-border guerrilla operations against Turkish occupation forces firmly entrenched on the northern half of the island.

A mainland Greek, Dimitri Metaxas, whose cousin was a key leader in the cell, was asked to make contact with Khoury to acquire automatic weapons and explosives.

At the moment, Metaxas was playing backgammon at the table next to Khoury. Earlier, he had given the agreed recognition signal by pulling a red silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of his gray suit jacket at an appointed time. Khoury caught the move and answered by coughing loudly across the room and then pulling out his own handkerchief to wipe his mouth.

The Egyptian, oblivious of any of this, in fact oblivious of anything except the board and the dice, grunted with satisfaction as he rolled a final double six. With his pudgy hand he reached down and picked his last four stones off the board.

On the previous roll Khoury had managed to get one stone off the board, thus preventing a humiliating loss of a double game. The Egyptian forced a smile, his yellowed teeth showing through his liquid lips.

Khoury extended his hand across the board. “Congratulations,” he said in Arabic. “You played well.” He really meant the Egyptian had been damned lucky.

“Thank you, my friend,” responded the Egyptian. “I was fortunate.” He meant, of course, there was no question his superior skill had showed itself.

Khoury excused himself politely, and still muttering to himself about the Egyptian’s luck and sexual deviations of the man’s sister, drifted downstairs to the bar.

He waited only about half a scotch and water before Metaxas entered, nodded in recognition, walked to his table, and sat down. “The gods were unkind to me tonight,” Metaxas said in Greek. Khoury answered, also in Greek, with the expected reply to the verbal identification signal. “That is sad, brother, but one cannot expect to win all the time.”

They quietly introduced themselves, and Khoury signaled for a waiter. “What will it be?” he asked as the man approached. “Double scotch,” Metaxas said, looking up as the waiter reached them. The order was acknowledged and the man quietly disappeared.

“How was your luck tonight?” asked Metaxas politely. “I gather the Egyptian had the dice with him.”

“Acch,” muttered Khoury.

The younger Greek, sensing he had touched a tender nerve, quickly tried to change the conversation. “Well, win some, lose some,” he said with a casual wave of his right hand. “Who was the woman with him?”

“One of the whores he used to provide for Farouk,” said Khoury unpleasantly. His anger over losing was subsiding slowly. The waiter arrived with the drink for Metaxas. Khoury ordered another for himself. He looked again at Metaxas. He saw a rugged man, probably in his mid-thirties. Perhaps he was a sportsman or managed to spend a lot of time outdoors. There was healthy color in his face, and his eyes were attentive. They were the eyes of a man in the prime of life, filled with confidence in himself. Khoury was not unimpressed.

There was a moment of silence as each man sipped his drink, carefully, like two wrestlers sizing each other up.

Metaxas looked closely at Khoury. Khoury’s premature double chin indicated he was not in top physical shape. Probably does little exercise, thought Metaxas, and doesn’t push himself away from the dinner table quickly enough. On the other hand, Khoury was very much at home in the elegance of the casino. He wore the surroundings as easily as his expensive white suit. Despite Khoury’s temperamental outburst about the backgammon game, there was an obvious sophistication to him that could not be lightly dismissed.

Khoury, sensing he had gone far enough, broke the silence. “Well,”—he laughed artifically—“it was not a major loss. I’ll have another crack at him. And then we shall play for real money and I shall show him how the game is played. But enough of that. Tell me, what brings you to the Riviera?”

Metaxas relaxed slightly, although his instincts cautioned him against letting his guard down too far. There were times even a jackal might seem harmless. “I assume our mutual friend told you something about the purpose of my trip?”

Khoury nodded. Metaxas’ cousin, with whom Khoury had dealt years ago, had written saying friends were interested in buying some land. A further exchange of letters had established the meeting arrangements.

“I understand you are interested in real estate.”

Metaxas laughed. “Yes, if you are talking about plots,” he quipped. “We have need of some items I think you could provide.”

“It is possible,” countered Khoury, still fencing with Metaxas, cautiously feeling him out, avoiding the first move.

“Can you provide Sterlings?” Metaxas referred to the British-made 9-mm submachine guns introduced in the mid-1950’s to replace the Sten gun in the British armed forces.

“Depends. What model?”

“We need the kind with built-in silencers. Folding stocks. Thirty-four-round magazines. The usual.”

“What quantity did you have in mind?”

“At least fifty. We would take delivery of sixty, with ammunition of course. Fifty magazines with each item. We also need one hundred hand grenades. U.S. military specs.”

“Hmmm. Could be expensive. What’s the delivery point?” Khoury was now doing what he loved most, dealing. The words slipped out of his mouth as smoothly as the patter of a Persian-rug salesman.

“Larnaca.”

Khoury thought quickly. It was a small order, but a potentially profitable one. He tried to calculate his profits against the cost of each item and the cost of getting them safely to Cyprus. He scratched his chin, trying not to show he was already adding up the money involved. “How soon would the order be needed?”

“How soon could you deliver?”

Khoury did not want to lose the initiative. He parried the question with yet another. “Would forty-five days be suitable?”

Metaxas nodded.

Sensing the right moment, Khoury made his move on the key point. “Each Sterling will cost three hundred U.S. dollars paid in advance. In addition, it will cost you thirty dollars for each magazine and fifty for each hand grenade. Delivery in Larnaca port guaranteed.”

Metaxas grunted. The order was going to cost even more than they had allowed for. “Your price is high,” he said softly, a slight tone of accusation in his voice. He looked straight at Khoury.

The older man had expected a strong response and was ready for it. “This equipment is not cheap. It is also the best available. There are many expenses involved in addition to the purchase price of the weapons. Customs officials must be looked after. Documents must be purchased. They also are not cheap.” There was another factor he did not have to mention. It was virtually impossible for EOKA-B to obtain weapons in the quantity they needed in any other fashion. Since the collapse of the junta in Athens, supplies from mainland Greece had dried up.

Metaxas picked up his drink and sipped again. He did not speak for a few minutes. He needed time to consider his next words. Khoury was in no hurry. He knew there would be no serious argument.

Looking for a way to avoid showing the obvious, Metaxas decided a further stall was necessary. “I shall have to consult my friends of course on a matter involving so much money and so far over our budget. You are asking perhaps more than we can afford. We have had many troubles. Our funds are limited.”

Khoury smiled in a condescending manner. “I understand,” he said. “But I hope you also will appreciate my problems. Things are not as simple as they used to be. Palestinian terrorist operations have made it more difficult than ever for us. Authorities have tightened up everywhere. Checks that once were routine are no longer so. In trying to cut off the Palestinians, the German Baader-Meinhof gang, and others like the bandit Carlos, many have been hurt. Expenses have gone up all around.”

There was another strained pause.

“Inflation also has taken its toll,” said Khoury, speaking sooner than he wanted to. He caught himself. “Let’s have another drink.” He didn’t want to seem anxious, to spoil the deal. It was nearly $100,000 and his profit would be over $50,000. It was not a large amount of money, but it would not take a great deal of work, and he could well use a new injection of capital, even such a small amount.