After the successes and relatively easy profits of the 1960’s and early ’70’s, Elias Khoury never imagined he would ever again have to hustle like a beginner for a relatively small deal. But the setbacks of the past twenty-four months had stung more than he cared to admit. As a result, the moderate profit he stood to make on the EOKA-B deal was most welcome.
An unexpected setback, however, suddenly made the money more than just welcome; it was urgently needed. Khoury flew from London to Nice to collect three months’ rent from an investment company which leased two floors of a small office building he was still paying for. Troubled when he found their offices closed, he was horrified to learn they were bankrupt. All they could offer toward a settlement was the office furniture and appointments. But there were other creditors, lawyers, and it would take months or even years to straighten it all out. Finding a new tenant could take months. In the meantime, Khoury was faced with a hefty mortgage payment on the building. To default would mean the building would become the property of the bank and he would lose his already considerable investment. As a last resort, of course, he could sell the building. But in a city like Nice, word of misfortune spreads fast, like loose dollars in a hurricane. He would never get a price near what it was worth.
Despite the growing pressure, Khoury was calm. The EOKA-B deal, after all, was set. After his meeting with Straussmann, there was little to worry about. For all his idiosyncrasies, Straussman was a proven performer. Khoury had never known or heard of him defaulting on a deal. An agreement with Straussmann was probably not as secure as an investment with AT&T, but profits in percentage terms were always far higher.
A week after their meeting, just as Khoury reached Nice, Straussmann cabled that arrangements were set. As always the cable was brief. “Eloise says all is well. Will arrive as planned on the fourteenth. Asks her ticket reach her no later than the twelfth. Regards. Rachad.”
Trust Straussmann to come up with an Arabic signature. The crates would arrive in Antwerp on the fourteenth. Payment of $52,700 would have to be deposited in Straussman’s account not later than the twelfth. Khoury was ready now to collect the 50-percent down payment from EOKA-B.
If all went well, that money would be received in plenty of time to make a payment to the bank and give him breathing room to find a new tenant for the building. In addition, he would have the capital to finance the Macedonian gold hunt. It was curious, the gold thing. It had come at just the right moment. A half-million dollars would be more than enough to get his business dealings back on a solid footing. Most of his current loans and debts could be paid off, and there would be enough left over to even finance a new venture or two. He would once again be well-fixed.
The idea of the hunt itself excited him. It wasn’t his line, really, lurching off into unknown mountains to look for something they might never find. Roughing it in the mountain villages of northern Greece also had no appeal. It would mean separation from some of the luxuries of modern life he no longer regarded as luxuries, and it would mean temporary separation from Brigit, the secretary who had lived with him for the past year and a half. But the inconvenience would be worth it, if the hoped-for profits were there.
Besides, Ritter amused him. He was open and uncomplicated. A man who never worked too seriously, a man who had devoted his life to the hedonistic pleasures it could provide, a man who, in fact, detested work as most people in the world know it, but a man who could appreciate a chance to make a quick easy hit. Ritter was smart, but not particularly cunning. That would place him at a disadvantage in some situations. But Khoury felt he had enough brains for both of them. Still, Ritter was a hunter by profession. He was making a living at it, and the implications of that could never be underestimated.
Khoury rolled over and looked at the clock. Nearly eight a.m. Brigit was sleeping peacefully beside him. Something last night had really turned her on, and that had turned him on. She was exciting when she got wild like that. He looked at the clock again. He still had more than three hours to get dressed and get to the airport. By early afternoon he would be in Paris. A few hours later he would have the EOKA-B money for the Straussmann payment. There was still plenty of time. He slid his hand under the pale blue sheet onto Brigit’s wonderfully smooth bottom. It was time she woke up anyhow.
* * *
Had it not been for Hermann Straussmann, Emil Berbir probably never would have become an agent for Milli Istihbarat Teskilati (MIT), the Turkish CIA.
He probably would have ended up a moderately successful Middle East correspondent for a number of French and German newspapers, providing them with a steady flow of inflated expense accounts and marked-up telex charges as well as colorful copy chronicling the region’s bloody revolutions and evolutions.
Emil Berbir was an ambitious and aggressive journalist. He was also one of the early members of the Phalangist party of Lebanon, a move prompted by his basic fascist leanings. In 1935 he was approached by a first secretary at the German embassy. Would he be interested in a position with the German Nachrichtendienst? The German term “Nachrichtendienst” is intriguingly ambiguous. In a strictly civilian sense it means and is used for press agency. In military terms it means intelligence service. In the minds of many, the two are often confused.
Without asking which the German meant, Berbir said yes. Thus it neither shocked nor surprised him when he was asked to report privately on certain matters, particularly those regarding French military affairs in Lebanon and Syria.
When war broke out, Berbir was sent to Turkey, where he spent a year learning Turkish as well as filing news stories and intelligence reports. Using his newsman cover, he operated successfully for a number of months before being transferred to the German-occupied Balkans. It was in Yugoslavia he first met the dashing young captain Hermann Straussman. A series of articles about the heroic exploits of Straussmann’s unit was deeply appreciated by Straussmann, who was as vain as he was ambitious.
As the war turned against the Germans in 1943, Berbir was ordered back to Berlin. In 1945, because he was not German and spoke English, he was hired by the American occupiers as a translator. Under the circumstances it was a good thing, until he decided to make it even better and was consequently arrested and jailed for black-market dealings. Berbir was released from detention in 1949 by the new West German government, and he returned to Lebanon to resume his journalistic career.
In August 1952, a few weeks after the overthrow of King Farouk, Berbir was in Damascus on the trail of a story for a Paris paper. In the souk he recognized a familiar face. It was Straussmann, freshly arrived from Egypt. He was accompanied by two swarthy men who were not Arabs. Berbir was certain of this because he knew one of them. They were Turks.
Straussmann was at first startled, then suspicious when Berbir called him by name. After a tense moment, Straussmann recognized the young journalist who had interviewed him years earlier in Yugoslavia. They sat down together for coffee. The Turks, who Straussmann had met while working for Egyptian intelligence under Farouk, were with MIT. Berbir remembered meeting one of the two men casually during his Turkish days. Within a month, Berbir was working for them and on his way to Paris.
For over twenty years Berbir had operated out of Paris, keeping his eye on pro-Communist Turkish students and politicians and Greek intelligence operatives of interest to Ankara. It was not an unpleasant existence. Berbir lived comfortably in the Sixteenth Arrondissement in a five-room apartment with his French wife, Marcelle. The work was not overly demanding and only occasionally even remotely dangerous. Twice, he was asked to eliminate persons the Turks considered threatening. One had been a Turkish Communist who was in a position to blackmail the then newly appointed defense minister. The other was a Greek agent highly regarded by Ankara. In both cases, Berbir dispatched them with relative ease, using a 9-mm Italian-made Beretta automatic pistol. Berbir regarded these acts as potentially hazardous but also as a more or less expected part of his duties and he carried them out with cool efficiency.
Now Berbir, who had managed to put away some money, was thinking of calling an end to it. During two decades in Paris, he had managed to accumulate a modest apartment in Monte Carlo and a bank account in Geneva that would permit him and Marcelle to spend the rest of their years in relative security. Part of this had been made possible by the discovery of some $150,000 in cash in the apartment of the Greek agent he had shot. Berbir never saw any reason to mention the money to Ankara.
“Marcelle,” he said looking out of the kitchen window over the park as they shared morning coffee. “Maybe you are right. Perhaps we should go to Monte Carlo this summer.”
The woman looked at him. Although she had nagged for the past three years about leaving Paris and retiring to the Riviera, she didn’t understand at first. “We are going, dear. What do you mean?”
“I mean it’s time to stay. I’m getting too old for this.”
Berbir was agonizing over his latest assignment, the elimination of a Greek EOKA-B agent, a mam named Dimitri Metaxas. The invasion of Cyprus and Turkish occupation of the northern half of the island had brought a great deal of international criticism of Turkey and the authorities in Ankara wanted to keep things as peaceful as possible. Any kind of incident could bring Cyprus back into international controversy. Berbir’s superior made it clear. The EOKA-B agent was up to no good. Stop him!
Berbir didn’t like it. He hadn’t been given an assignment of this nature for nine years. He was too near retirement to get mixed up in these things. Why didn’t they find a younger man for the job?
* * *
Something was not right. No one except Khoury and Nicosia were supposed to know he was in Paris. And yet, Dimitri Metaxas’ intuition told him he was being stalked. Or was it just a case of nerves?
Metaxas arrived in Paris on the early Swissair flight from Zurich, as scheduled. He carried $56,500 in cash in a brown leather attaché case, half the total payment due Khoury. A security man at Zurich airport gave Metaxas a funny look when he spotted the fat stack of thousand-dollar bills during the routine check. Metaxas smiled at him. There was no law against carrying money on a plane, no matter how much it was. The man shrugged and closed the case. The flight proceeded without incident. There was no customs check at the Paris arrival. Metaxas took a taxi to the hotel with the feeling all was well.
As planned, he checked in at the Hotel Pavilion on the Rue St. Dominique around the corner from the Invalides. The hotel was chosen because it was small and inconspicuous, only twenty rooms in a modest brick building some fifty yards quietly off the street. The hotel was patronized mainly by low-budget travelers in need of something clean and respectable. From the busy street a narrow passageway under a sign that said simply “Hotel” led back to a pleasant brick courtyard. It held a white garden table and four matching white chairs with blue cushions. The hotel had a lazy L-shape formed around the courtyard. The rooms in the front overlooked the yard. Those in the back faced onto an apartment building.
Because the courtyard provided the only entrance to the hotel, anyone with a front room could carefully monitor all comings and goings, thus providing a very basic security arrangement. That is, if one knew whom one was on the lookout for.
Metaxas was scheduled to meet Khoury at six o’clock at the hotel. The room would provide proper security for counting and exchanging the money. After his arrival, Metaxas, on his first trip to Paris, decided that with five hours to spare he would treat himself to a bit of sightseeing. It was an easy stroll, the girl at the desk explained, to the Alexandre III bridge and across onto the Champs Elysées. It was during this excursion that Metaxas first began to get the feeling someone was interested in him. He looked around several times, trying to pin down his suspicions. The streets were filled with jostling pedestrians and traffic. It was virtually impossible to pick out anyone showing him unusual attention. Maybe it was just nerves. Carrying around this much money would make anyone nervous, he reassured himself.
Metaxas cut short the walk and returned to the hotel room. He told the girl at the desk he was expecting a visitor around six o’clock. At first glance everything seemed to be as he had left it. But the pillow on the bed looked as if it had been smoothed out. And the closet door was closed. He was sure he had left it partially open. Ah, of course, he told himself. One of the maids had been in the room to tidy up. He was behaving like a child. He locked the door from the inside, deciding to take a nap and wait for Khoury to arrive.
Metaxas stretched out on top of the bed and dozed off. He was awakened by the sound of someone tapping lightly on the door. He looked at his watch. It was almost six. He had slept longer than he intended. Khoury was a bit early.
“Khoury?” Metaxas called out.
“Oui,” came the reply.
Metaxas unbolted the door and opened it. In the dark, narrow corridor stood a man he had never seen before. He estimated the man to be about fifty or fifty-five years old. It was hard to say what nationality he was. Perhaps northern Italian or French. His tanned face was covered by liver spots from long years in the sun. His suave gray hair was carefully combed and he was conservatively dressed in an unobtrusive brown suit. Only the man’s teeth, yellowed with age and ill care, spoiled the picture of a well-to-do businessman. Oh, yes, there was one other small thing. The man was holding a lethal-looking pistol pointed directly at Metaxas’ stomach.
“May I come in?” Emil Berbir asked gently.
It was not the kind of rhetorical question Mataxas felt he was in a position to argue with. Instinctively he stepped back. With a sad smile, Berbir followed him into the room.
Elias Khoury arrived in Paris on schedule, still thinking of Brigit. As he often did, he took a taxi to the George V Hotel. He couldn’t afford to stay there these days, but it pleased him to at least afford the pleasure of a late lunch, weather permitting, in the garden. The weather was unseasonably warm, in fact springlike, and Khoury was soon lunching in the fashion to which he once had been accustomed and to which he shortly hoped to become accustomed again.
Shortly after four p.m. he finished coffee and decided to take a long walk before meeting Metaxas at the hotel. He was in a relaxed mood as he wandered along the Seine, thinking of last night with Brigit and the gold in Greece. He stopped at a sidewalk café for another coffee, letting the mild afternoon carry him along. Somehow the girls always looked better in spring, fresher and more appealing as they emerged from their heavy winter wraps. He looked at his watch. Almost time to meet the Greek. There was time enough to walk from the café to arrive right on schedule.
He strolled through the hotel courtyard and up the stairs to the reception desk. A young French girl with rich black hair, a light olive complexion, and a quiet voice was at the desk.
“Which room is Mr. Metaxas in?”
The girl did not have to consult her list. “Room seven, monsieur. Up the stairs and second door to the right. The other gentleman just arrived.”
“Thank you,” he said impassively, hiding the minor explosion in his chest. The other gentleman? There was not supposed to be anyone else. Khoury’s heart pounded as he hurried up the stairs. Reaching the top of the landing, he looked down the narrow hall just in time to see a man with what looked like a pistol in his hand step into Metaxas’ room.
Unarmed, Khoury groped frantically through his suit searching for something, anything, that might be useful.
Like a savage cat, he moved swiftly and silently down the dark carpeted hallway. The door was just closing.
Without hesitating, he slammed his shoulder against the wooden frame. There was a sickening thump as he followed the door into the room. The force of the unexpected blow caught Emil Berbir squarely in the back. His breath blew out of him, causing him to drop the automatic. His knees buckled. Metaxas looked on in fascinated terror as Khoury lunged through the door, fell onto the winded man, and drove a plastic ball-point pen into his neck. The man grasped desperately at his throat emitting a nauseated gurgling sound. The pen was protruding from a point just below his Adam’s apple. With a final animallike cry, the man went still. His bloodshot eyes stared blankly, seeing nothing.
Khoury got up, rubbing his bruised shoulder. “Who’s this?”
“Dunno,” said Metaxas breathlessly. “He was going to kill me. Never saw him before. You saved my life.” The young Greek was shaking uncontrollably. He felt he was going to vomit. He began to weep.
“Get a hold of yourself,” snapped Khoury. “Where’s the money?”
Metaxas pointed to the attaché case beside the bed.
Khoury stepped over, opened the case, and counted the bills. It was all there.