I took a nap and woke up in the early evening. Then I re-showered and shaved so as to be Pardew-like and presentable. I was all set for an enjoyable evening: after the morning’s search and rescue debacle, I felt I deserved it. I stepped into the elevator and ran into Mrs. Ted Wilson.
I could have not been more shocked if it had been Dracula. I think I let out a small yelp of fright. The doors shut quickly. There was no getting out. It was me and her and the decorative mock hieroglyphs. I must believe that she found it as terrifying as I did, for she turned toward the corner of the car and stood with her face almost touching the stainless steel. Not a word was spoken. When the elevator reached the lobby, she ran away as if from a danger.
My companion that night was a merry Kyrgyz. She had a sweet Chinese face and was very talkative, even though she spoke no English. I saw that she’d already finished most of a bottle of room service Veuve Clicquot, which, in the live-and-let-live, do-unto-others, let’s-not-sweat-the-small-stuff spirit of these occasions, was absolutely fine by me. It was certainly no fault of hers that I was not able to relax. I was too shaken up by the encounter in the elevator. I found it intolerable that I could no longer go about in my own building without fear or favor, that I had to watch my step, duck and dive, keep myself to myself, accept a fate as a Quasimodo. I had to take action. Dear Mrs. Wilson, I conceptually wrote while the Kyrgyz sucked my cock,
Allow me to communicate my regret about the unfortunate outcome of your recent visit to my apartment. Please understand that it was an exceptional and most uncharacteristic occurrence. I am most assuredly a non-violent person. I cannot offer you an explanation of my conduct without burdening you with the long story of my personal history and the idiosyncratic sensitivities that are mine to bear. I would merely ask you to accept that I am aware that things got the better of me, and that you suffered as a consequence. Also, with great tentativeness and with a view only to your edification, I would humbly suggest that you inquire into your own possible contribution to what happened. It is not my place to say anything about this, and in any case I have nothing to say. Yours etc.
Not for the first time, I felt the lack, in English, of letter closings available to the French. How fitting it would have been to end with
Je reste à votre disposition pour toute précision complémentaire et je vous prie d’agréer toute l’expression de ma très haute considération.
I pulled away from the Kyrgyz. “Please excuse me for a moment,” I said. I got out my phone and e-mailed Mrs. Ted Wilson,
Nice running into you today. May I buy you a coffee? I have information regarding Ted that may be of interest to you.
MRS. TED WILSON DID NOT get back to me. I sent her a follow-up e-mail (which also got no reply) letting her know that in any case I would be at Al Nassma café, on Level One of the Mall of the Emirates, at 11:00 a.m. on Friday. Dubai Mall, which is newer, has more buzz and glitz than the Mall of the Emirates, but I have a soft spot for the latter’s staid, almost déclassé vibe, which is most pronounced in the textiles and home furnishings section, where Al Nassma is to be found. Al Nassma specializes in chocolate made with camel’s milk. Camel-milk chocolate not only tastes good but works as an icebreaker and talking point.
I arrived early, carrying a copy of Philanthropy, the magazine for philanthropists. I am not strictly a philanthropist, but I am an officer of the Batros Foundation and try to keep up with what’s going on in the giving industry. It must be confessed, I was hoping the publication would make me look good, or at least philanthropic, in the eyes of Mrs. Ted Wilson.
I don’t think it’s very wrong of me to dwell with a little pride on my part in the founding of the Batros Foundation.
Very early into my new job, I noticed that my e-mail inbox was the terminus of chaotic requests for alms, handouts, loans, donations, etc., received by the family. Sandro was the chief forwarder of these requests. He might add,
pls do something for this man his mother was my mother’s friend
or
$3,000????
or
tell him to screw himself.
I had (and have) no authority to make ad hoc payouts from the Batros Family Office (Dubai) Ltd. account. When I formally requested, on Sandro’s behalf, the consent of Eddie and Georges to the withdrawal of small charitable sums from the GEAs, I got no reply. No doubt they figured Sandro could easily make the payments from his own funds. Yet it seemed to me that there had to be a way lawfully and conveniently to give effect to the Batroses’ benevolent intentions. I advised that the family consider setting up a private foundation, with clearly defined purposes and powers and criteria, as an effective and potentially tax-efficient vehicle for their giving. There was no answer. Some weeks later, I got a call from le père Batros.
This was a surprise and a big deal. It was Georges Batros who’d transformed the family business, a venerable if smallish shipping agency with offices in Beirut, Tripoli, and Latakia, into the vast international concern known and trading as Entreprises Batros. The story of his commercial adventures was told in his self-published ghostwritten memoir, La vie est belle, in which he described as a series of very lucky breaks his successful forays into one market after another (marine insurance agenting; automobile insurance for developing countries; exportation and distribution of generic pharmaceutical products to French-speaking Africa). Perhaps his biggest coup was Banque Batros S.A.L., a specialist in custodian services for Middle Eastern and West African clients founded in 1984: in 1996, he sold the bank (Batros interest: 32 percent) hook, line, and sinker to an American consortium for 440 million USD. The memoir did not mention it, but the family’s real estate portfolio has grown in value (if my back-of-an-envelope calculations are correct) by at least 160 million USD since the mid-eighties; and now Eddie is making new fortunes, notably by betting big on agricultural holding companies in Argentina and Brazil. I have no reliable way to estimate the total value of Batros assets, but I would guess that it’s not less than half a billion USD. (If the financial crisis had a negative effect on the family’s wealth, I have not heard about it.) I cannot be any more specific. I’m not really sure where all the money comes from and what it all comes to.
Georges, a little fellow who looks like Charles Aznavour, gave me a signed copy of La vie est belle at our very brief first meeting. This took place on his fuck-off yacht, the Giselle. Named for his deceased mother, it was moored in Beirut harbor most of the year and, according to Eddie, was where Georges now spent most of his time, playing cards and shooting the shit with his crew and old pals. My dedication read, Bonne chance, fiston.
“Fiston, écoute bien,” he said when he called me in Dubai.
I did as instructed. The next morning I packed a bag, got into the Batros Gulfstream 100 (“l’autobus,” in the family slang), and flew to Antalya, Turkey. From there I took a two-hour taxi ride to Finike, a small coastal town. The Giselle, too big for the marina, was anchored well offshore. A crew member collected me in a rubber dinghy, incidentally trying to break the world water-speed record. Waiting at the top of the boarding ladder was Georges Batros. He wore a naval peaked cap, shorts, and no shirt. “OK, yallah,” he said to the captain. To me he said, “Welcome aboard,” and he kissed me on both cheeks.
Somebody took my bag, somebody took me to the dining deck, somebody made me a gin and tonic. I didn’t want a gin and tonic, but what the hell. It was good to have got out of the desert, and I’d never been on a private cruise or visited this part of the ancient world. The yacht, or ship, slipped past aquamarine inlets and between small islands where wild olive trees grew out of gray and white rocks. The littoral mountains, precipitous and forested, were beautiful. A cool breeze blew. I inhabited the World of Rolex.
And yet I was jumpy. Why? Because I am not a total dope. I wasn’t going to fall into the trap of equating beautiful surroundings with a beautiful state of affairs. When, in Beirut, Eddie introduced me to his father, he said, “You’re going to like him. He’s mellowed a lot
since the old days.” People who are said to have “mellowed” always make me nervous. Meanwhile I had already figured out that to even begin to understand the Batros family you had to understand the money. The Batros sons are highly remunerated (salaries, bonuses, stock options, employment benefits), but many of their largest capital assets—houses, boats, lump sums from the GEAs, interest-free loans, etc.—have essentially remained in the gift of their father, who is the majority shareholder of Batros Holdings Ltd. (incorporated in the DIFC), which in turn wholly owns the Batros subsidiaries, of which there are more than fifty, which in turn own who knows how many sub-subsidiaries. Georges still controls most of the money, is what it comes down to.
He joined me. He had undressed and wore only a white towel, around his waist. He unknotted the towel and draped it over the seat of his chair. Now he was naked. A pharmacologistical young woman (“Une lesbienne,” Georges later whispered) began to shampoo his hair. Most of the ultra-HNW individuals I’ve met are idiosyncratically demanding, and everyone is familiar with the larger-than-life, I-make-my-own-rules display of power, and I understand from Ollie that gratuitous domestic nudity is prevalent among the rich and famous as a kind of very authoritative informality. But even though I had willingly entered into the company of Georges Batros and maybe “on some level” had sought him out, I began to feel that my situation was objectionable as well as precarious. I had no idea how long I was expected to stay on this boat or why I’d been summoned. The Giselle, I knew, was making its annual odyssey from Beirut to Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, where Mme. Batros (née Alice Rourke, in Mullingar, Ireland) was already summering in the Villa Batros, a magnificent cliff-top mansion with a private jetty. Where was I supposed to get off? Piraeus? Portofino? Surely there is more than a trace of false imprisonment about hospitality from which there is no escape.
Georges got to his feet and took a shower. The female crew-member trained a high-powered hose on him as though he were on fire. He thoroughly lathered himself, dick and balls especially, and rinsed his hair and hopped around in the water jet. He kept chatting to me, even as the crew-member toweled him down. There was something faintly villainous about his showiness. He reminded me of those clever murderers who for a while run rings around Lieutenant Columbo.
“And how is your old friend Mr. Trompe?” Georges, taking his seat, said. He was still in the buff, though now he wore his commodore’s cap.
“Fine—I guess,” I said. “I don’t really know him.”
“Come, you’re being modest,” Georges said. “Weren’t you invited to his wedding? At Palm Beach?”
This was correct—up to a point. Godfrey Pardew was the invitee, on account of the good work he had done for Donald Trump and especially Donald’s father, Fred, in the realm of wills, trusts, divorces, prenuptial agreements, and other sensitive matters. But Godfrey had declared himself “regrettably unable” to fly down to Florida, and at the last minute he notified the Trump people that I (plus one, Jenn) would be attending on behalf of the firm in the stead of Mr. and Mrs. Pardew. The wedding was a lot of fun, as it happens, and I shared certain amusing details with Eddie on the night of our reunion at Asia de Cuba. That was a highly consequential anecdote, as things turned out, because it was my connection to Donald Trump that prompted Sandro to approve my appointment.
I’m not sure what Eddie told him, but out of the blue Sandro flew to New York, bought me dinner at the Rainbow Room, and (making zero mention of the London fiasco) questioned me for over an hour about that magical night at Mar-a-Lago. I was able to tell him what it was like to stand next to Shaquille O’Neal, and to listen to Billy Joel playing the piano six feet away, and to take a leak with the great Trump in the adjoining urinal. Sandro was deeply moved. He confided that it was his dream to take part in The Apprentice, the Trump TV show in which job-seeking contestants compete for the approval of the magnate and are each “fired” by him, save one—the apprentice. Sandro was in his late forties and presumably more qualified for the role of master than apprentice, so I was a little surprised. I began to understand his ambition to earn Trump’s blessing only after it became clear that Georges neither trusted nor esteemed Sandro and restricted his role to that of running the Dubai holding company—a titular job—and chiefly expected of him, his older son, that he spend enough time in Dubai so as to serve as a human data point for technical legal purposes. When Sandro asked me about getting on Trump’s TV show, I told him I would see what I could do. This I duly did. I could do nothing.
“I went as a representative of my law firm,” I said to Georges. “I’m not close to the Trump family.”
“Ah, this was not my impression,” Georges said. Then he was telling me all about the crewing arrangements—two Norwegians (captain, chief engineer), a Greek chef, and five others from ethnically prestigious parts of Western Europe. Their uniform consisted of white Lacoste shirts, white sailing shorts with the Giselle monogram, and classic blue-and-white boat shoes. They all wore the same sunglasses. Uniformity aside, they might have been gung-ho young bankers on holiday. Georges said, “These people are the best in the world.”
I said something like “Yeah, they look like they’re really stoked.”
He called out to one of deckhands. “Giancarlo!” The fellow came bounding over. Georges said something to him in Italian. Presently the boat dropped anchor. I heard splashes: Giancarlo and two others had plunged into the sea. They swam to the shore, climbed over the tricky rocks, and made their way up the hill to where a herd of goats was feeding on bushes. There was no sign of a goatherd. Giancarlo turned toward us and waved. He gestured at a black goat, and Georges gave him a double thumbs-up. The three men jumped on the black goat and wrestled it to the ground and instantly roped its legs. I might have been watching a rodeo. Giancarlo slit the animal’s throat. They held it down while it kicked and bled out. This lasted for some time. Giancarlo towed the carcass back, trailing a messy red stream. The three men stood on the deck wet and bloody. They held up the dead goat. “Bravo, bravo,” Georges Batros said, applauding. Everyone applauded, me included.
“You see?” he said to me. “This is the quality of these men.”
“Unbelievable. Wow,” I said. There seemed no point in raising the issue of compensation for the owner of the goat.
A short while later, the chef arrived with a serving dish. “The liver,” Georges said. “Fresh, fresh.” He cut a piece off the red mass, squeezed lemon juice over it, and began to eat. “Fantastic,” he said. “Take some. There is nothing healthier.” I accepted a piece, against my will. I did not want to put a part of the goat inside me.
Georges said, “This idea you have, to have a foundation, this is a good idea.”
It took a second or two to figure out what he was talking about.
“Tell me,” Georges said. He was very fastidious with his white napkin and was taking a long time to clean his mouth and wipe his hands. His huge helping of raw liver was suddenly gone, as if by prestidigitation. “Who do you think we should help?”
“Whoever you want to help,” I said. “It’s your money.” I added, for some stupid reason, “You have the honor of deciding.”
“Honor?” He laughed. “This is not my area of expertise. I would like you to decide.”
“Uh, I’m no expert, either,” I said. “It was just a suggestion. I just thought it might be a good idea. From the Batros standpoint. I mean, it’s my impression that you get a lot of requests for help.”
“This is very true,” Georges said. “A lot of people ask us for money.” He pointed at my chest. “Tigers. Maybe we should help the tigers. They are very noble. I remember seeing them in Las Vegas. Poor Mr. Roy, that was the tragedy of tragedies. Or was it Mr. Siegfried? My question is, do you think we can save the tigers? How would we do it? How much money would it take? The problem is the Chinese,” he said. “They eat tigers. I believe they will eat anything. Dogs, of course. They love the meat of the dog. It is not just the Chinese. The Indonesians, too. Let me tell you a
story. I was in Indonesia once, in Sumatra. A savage place. I had to go up into the hills to speak to a big man. On the way up there, my driver is looking, looking, like this.” Georges gripped an invisible steering wheel and peered from side to side. “Then”—he turned the wheel—“boum. We hit something. The driver gets out. He goes into the street. He picks up the dead dog by the legs and throws it in the back of the truck, like this. He says to me, We will give the dog to the big man. And this is what happened. The big man cooked the dog, and we ate it. Eating dogs isn’t so stupid, in my opinion. In Switzerland they eat dog sausages, and I cannot say the Swiss are stupid. Cold, yes. Avaricious, yes. Stupid, no. But eating tigers for medicine? Very stupid. Maybe this should be our focus, the fight against stupidity. It’s a very serious problem. There is a lot of stupidity in the world. It does much harm. You must understand this very well, coming from the United States.”
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