It could scarcely have gone more smoothly. Except for one certain Moshe Benson, air traffic controller at the small regional airport near the village of Mions, which stood eight miles southwest of Lyon’s main Saint-Exupéry Airport, and thus considerably closer to the flight path of the Marine Commando helicopter.
Benson picked the helicopter up on the airport radar as it clattered ten thousand feet above the vineyards of Beaujolais. He realized instantly that it was military, not transmitting, and not offering any call sign to this particular control point. This was slightly unusual, even though the military in France were apt to operate with a degree of independence.
Moshe Benson made a routine call to the control tower in Marseille to report formally that a fast, unidentified helicopter had just come charging through his air space, and that they might keep a watch for it. He told them he assumed it was French military.
Meanwhile, Simon Baum was awakened by one of his agents to learn that a Marine Commando Dauphin 2 helicopter had taken off one hour ago from the Taverny complex and appeared to be headed south. The Mossad chief immediately called four sayanim at various airports—Dijon, Limoges, Lyon, and Grenoble. The only one who could help was Moshe Benson.
Simon Baum knew that the range of the Dauphin was less than 500 miles and he knew that Marseille was 425 miles south of Paris. Unless it was going sightseeing along the Riviera, that particular helicopter was going into Marseille or, more likely, to the military base at Aubagne.
For some reason he was not quite able to explain, Baum badly wanted to know who was onboard that Dauphin. He had a gut feeling it might be the elusive terrorist commander Ravi Rashood. And his country wanted that man dead at any cost.
He called two of his top agents in Marseille and told them to get out to Aubagne on the double. He checked his man in the main city airport, Marseille-Provence, and put him on full alert, though he did not expect the Dauphin to fly in there.
Thus, by the time Generals Michel Jobert and Ravi Rashood touched down in Aubagne in the gathering dusk, there was a black Peugeot discreetly parked along the main road to Marseille, 200 yards beyond the main gates to the Foreign Legion garrison. Through powerful binoculars, Simon Baum’s men had watched the Dauphin land, and now they were watching for an army staff car to exit the garrison bearing at least one and possibly two passengers.
They had only four minutes to wait. And when General Jobert’s Citroën began its fifteen-mile journey into the city, there was a Mossad tail right behind, with two of Simon Baum’s most lethal operators in the two front seats. They were not so much agents as hit men.
They drove directly into Marseille, and ran west down the wide, main boulevard of La Canebiere, toward the Old Port. With the busy harbor in front of them, they turned right and made their way to the north side, to the Quai du Port, and immediately turned away from the water, into the labyrinth of streets that housed some of the best restaurants in Marseille.
The army staff car came to a sudden halt outside the world-renowned fish restaurant L’Union, and both General Jobert and General Rashood disembarked and hurried up the two front steps. They were inside, with the big mahogany doors closed behind them, before the Mossad trackers had turned the corner.
But Simon Baum’s men saw the car backing into a parking space not twenty yards from L’Union’s main entrance, and they guessed that the passengers had already made an exit. Agent David Schwab jumped out and waited outside the restaurant, while his colleague, Agent Robert Jazy, parked the car and returned on foot.
Five minutes later both men went into the paneled bar area of the big, noisy restaurant and identified General Rashood from Jacob Fabre’s photographs, which they had received from Paris via the Internet. Neither of them could identify General Jobert, and the third man, now speaking to the two new arrivals from Paris, was unknown to them.
The Mossad agents did not know it, but they were watching a minor piece of secret history. This was the first meeting between General Rashood and Col. Jacques Gamoudi, the two men who would command the military assault on Saudi Arabia.
In two separate places, twenty-five feet apart at the long, polished wooden bar, the five men sipped glasses of wine from the vineyards of the Pyrenees, until, shortly after 7:30 P.M., General Jobert and his men walked out of the bar into the main restaurant and were led to a wide, heavy oak table covered with a bright red-and-white checkered tablecloth in the corner of the room. Two flickering candles were jammed jauntily into the necks of empty bottles of Chateau Petrus, the most expensive Bordeaux in France.
The three men occupied three sides of the table; no one’s back was turned to the arched entrance across the room. Colonel Gamoudi and General Rashood had already established a mutual respect and were locked in conversation, mostly involving the armored vehicles necessary to storm Riyadh’s main royal palace from the front. General Rashood favored a quiet, fraudulent entry against unsuspecting guards, who could then be taken by surprise, with an armored vehicle jamming the main gates open.
Jacques Gamoudi was inclined to hit those main gates with a tank, and have his infantry charge from behind that heavier armored vehicle, moving straight ahead, firing from the hip.
“My method is less likely to cause us casualties,” said Rashood. “Because that way we’ll call all the shots, with a huge element of surprise. A tank’s damned noisy and likely to alert the entire place.”
“It’s also very scary,” replied Colonel Gamoudi. “And may even cause a quick surrender of the palace guards.”
At this point the waiter came, and all three of them decided to order the local speciality, bouillabaisse, a seafood stew with onion, white wine, and tomatoes flavored with fennel and saffron. One big steaming bowl for three. They ordered a bottle of white wine from Jurançon, and some Italian antipasto to start.
“I think one of our main problems will be getting the guys in for the hit on the King Khalid Air Base,” said Rashood.
“Bouillabaisse—air base—it’s all the same to us, heh?” laughed Gamoudi. “And the sea’s the key to both operations.”
Michel Jobert chuckled, and the conversation continued in a light-hearted manner until the main course arrived. The principal decisions had been made. Both Rashood and Gamoudi had accepted the money. The plan was to be executed as masterminded by Prince Nasir.
But they all understood that the sticking point was the entry into southwestern Saudi Arabia. “It’s all very well for you, Jacques Gamoudi,” said Rashood. “Your guys are in and ready, as soon as you arrive. I have to get my squad into the country, and it’s not going to be easy. I don’t know if the Saudis can fight, but there’s a lot of them. And we have to be extremely careful.”
“That’s true, General,” replied Colonel Gamoudi. “Because my operation depends entirely on the news from Khamis Mushayt. It’s critical that the Saudi Army in Riyadh understand there has been a major surrender in the south. And critical that they know it before my opening attack.”
Rashood nodded in agreement. At which point, agents David Schwab and Robert Jazy suddenly appeared in the waiting area of the main dining room. Now they each wore long, black leather coats, which they had not been wearing in the bar. They were standing in the slightly raised entranceway at the top of the two wooden steps that led down into the dining area, facing Jacques Gamoudi head-on, from a distance of around 100 feet. They stood to Rashood’s left and General Jobert’s right. Colonel Gamoudi was staring back at them, when, amazingly, he saw each of them swiftly drawing AK-47s from inside the front flaps of their coats. He watched the unmistakable shape of the short barrels being raised to shoulder height.
With the instincts of the lifetime combat soldier, he grasped the heavy table and hurled it forward, wine, bouillabaisse and God knows what else crashing to the floor. With his left hand he grabbed Rashood by the throat and with his right he grabbed the General, hurling them both down.
The opening burst from the AK-47s smashed a line of bullets clean down the middle of t
he hefty table top, which now acted as a barrier between Rashood, Gamoudi, and Jobert, and the flying lead from the Kalashnikovs. All three of them could hear the bullets whining around the room. Behind them, two waiters had gone down with blood pumping from their chests.
Crockery was shattered, bottles of wine were smashed, women were screaming, everyone was rushing for cover. Another ferocious burst of fire confirmed that the hit men were making their way across the restaurant. Jacques Gamoudi drew the only weapon he had, his big bear-hunting knife, and Ravi Rashood pulled his Browning 9mm from the wide leather belt near the small of his back.
Colonel Gamoudi snapped to Rashood, “It’s you they’re after, mon ami. I’ll take one, and you shoot the other soon as you can see him. General Jobert, stay right there behind the table.”
And with that, the iron-souled mountain guide crashed under the adjoining tables until he reached a heavy white column in the center of the room. The precise path of Jacques Gamoudi was obvious by the sheer volume of destruction he left behind him on the floor of the restaurant, overturned tables and chairs, magnificently cooked seafood, burning candles mostly extinguished by wine and the contents of ice buckets.
But it was impossible to shoot him as he dived beneath the tables, staying low, hammering his way forward. However, the Mossad men gave it their best shot, and bullets ricocheted in all directions.
Agent Jazy now hung back, at once looking for the charging Gamoudi and trying to provide cover for his partner, as David Schwab moved forward for the kill, advancing toward the upturned table, behind which his quarry was crouching.
But somehow Jacques Gamoudi got around behind Jazy. He leaped at him with a bound that would have made a mountain lion gasp, and plunged his knife right into the man’s throat, ripping the windpipe and jugular. Jazy had no time to scream. He dropped his rifle and fell back, dying, in the mighty arms of Le Chasseur.
Agent Schwab turned around and swung his rifle straight at Gamoudi, who was using Jazy as a human shield. He hesitated for one split second, and Ravi Rashood, moving even faster than Gamoudi, dived horizontally out from behind the table and shot Schwab clean through the back of the head, twice. A line of bullets, hopelessly ripping across the timbered ceiling, was the Mossad man’s only reply.
The entire room was now a bloodbath—or at least a blood-and-wine bath. Fifteen diners were injured, five of them seriously, four staff were dead, including the headwaiter, who had been caught in the opening crossfire. Such was the speed of the battle that no one had yet called either an ambulance or the police. Surviving staff members were either in shock or still taking cover.
Colonel Gamoudi and General Rashood hauled Michel Jobert back to his feet. They grabbed for the two fallen AK-47s, all three of them running for the exit.
Outside they could see a black Peugeot with a driver plainly awaiting the two hit men. To the amazement of his two companions General Jobert cut the driver down in cold blood, right behind the wheel, with a burst of fire that obliterated the windshield and riddled the driver’s-side door, and the driver’s left temple.
They piled into the backseat of their own car, and General Jobert snapped to their driver, “Aubagne! And step on it! Back roads. Stay off the highway.”
And at high speed they headed out of Marseille; they were men who were above suspicion, two decorated French Army officers, one of them serving at the highest possible level, and an Arabian General called in to assist France in a highly classified operation, by presidential edict.
“Trouble, sir?” asked the driver.
“Not really, Maurice. Couple of amateurs made a rather silly misjudgment,” said Michel Jobert. “Not a word, of course. We were nowhere near Marseille.”
“Certainly not, sir. I know the rules.”
CHAPTER THREE
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 19, 2009
NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY
FORT MEADE, MARYLAND
Lt. Cdr. Jimmy Ramshawe, personal assistant to the director of the world’s most sophisticated intelligence agency, was looking for the third time that fall at a sudden, sharply upward spike in the world’s oil prices. He had noticed one in September, another in October, and here were West Texas Intermediate trading futures today at almost fifty-three dollars a barrel on Wall Street’s NYMEX exchange.
It was the same story on the International Petroleum Exchange in London. Brent Crude had actually hit $55 there earlier that morning, before New York opened for trading. In mid-afternoon it fell back to $48.95. The pattern was not drastic, but it was steady.
Somewhere in the world, perhaps shielding behind international brokers and traders, there was a new player in the market. And as Jimmy Ramshawe put it, the bastard’s buying a whole lot of oil. And he’s doing it on a damn regular basis…I wonder who the hell that is.
Gas was now four dollars a gallon at the pumps in the United States, which was pleasing no one, especially the President. In England it had hit almost nine dollars. And so far as Jimmy could see, it was all caused by just one big player in the futures market, on both side of the Atlantic—buying, buying, buying, driving up the prices.
Lt. Commander Ramshawe could not fathom how the buyer had managed to keep it all so secret. The sheer volume of oil futures being purchased was of mammoth proportions. Someone who thought he needed an extra 1.5 million barrels a day, or almost 40 million barrels a month.
“Multiply that bastard by forty-two,” muttered Ramshawe, “and you’ve got some bloody mongrel out there trying to buy one and a half billion gallons of gas every month. Christ! He must have a lot of cars.”
The initial suspect, in the young Lt. Commander’s opinion, had to be China. A billion bloody cars and no oil resources. But then, he thought, they wouldn’t do it like that. Not out there on the open market, buying high-priced futures. They’d cut some kind of a deal with Siberia or Russia or the Central Asians around the Baku fields. It can’t be them.
And it could scarcely be Russia, which now had all kinds of oil resources from the Baku fields. Great Britain? No, they still have their own North Sea fields. Japan? No. They had very cozy long-term contracts with the Saudis for both gasoline and propane. So who? Germany? France? Unlikely. Especially France, who for years has been reducing its oil requirements in favor of nuclear-powered electricity plants.
Nonetheless Lt. Commander Ramshawe reckoned it had to be one of them, because no one else could play on that scale. He keyed into the Internet and checked the energy status of France, which was not only the fifth largest economy in the world but also one of the largest producers of nuclear power.
Ramshawe read a pocket summary of the recent history of the French oil giant Total, merged with the Belgian company Petrofina in 1999. Then it merged again, with Elf Aquitaine, to create, unimaginatively, TotalFinaElf, the fourth largest publicly listed oil company in the world—right after ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, and BP.
The company had proven reserves of 10.8 billion barrels, and production of 2.1 million barrels a day. It owned more than 50 percent of all the refining capacity in France. TotalFinaElf was the seventh largest refiner on earth. It was a major shareholder in the 1,100-mile pipeline out of Baku, through Georgia to Turkey’s Mediterranean port of Ceyhan.
Christ! thought Jimmy. They’re big enough, but why? France uses only 1.9 million barrels a day, and if push came to shove their own oil company produces more than that. Beats the hell out of me, unless they’re closing down their nuclear power plants and switching back to oil.
So far as Ramshawe could see, this was a hugely unlikely scenario. France had reduced her oil usage in the past thirty years, from 68 percent of gross energy consumption to around 40 percent. But she still imported 1.85 million barrels a day, mostly for road, rail, and air transportation. As a nation she was totally reliant on imported oil, the vast bulk of it coming from Saudi Arabia, with some from Norway and a very small amount from other producers.
France generated 77 percent of her electricity from nuclear power, and sh
e was the second largest exporter of electricity in Europe. They’re not going to close down the bloody nuclear plants, are they?
The young Lieutenant Commander actually had other things to do right now, but he put in two routine calls, to the International Petroleum Exchange in London and to NYMEX in New York, leaving messages at both numbers to call back the National Security Agency in Fort Meade.
Ramshawe knew both men at those numbers, having talked with them during various oil crises before. He did not want this to be official. He just wanted someone to mark his card on who was the unexpected major buyer in the world oil market right now, the guy driving up the prices not to earth-shaking levels, but enough to cost a lot of people a great deal of money.
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