He and Khalil were sat far enough away from Taziri and the boys so they could discuss business without being overheard. Khalil’s theory was that Hakim had been taken in an act of revenge for Khalil turning down Fawaz Nabil. It was a fair enough assessment, but Grant wanted to get the measure of the man who’d once been held in high esteem by the Dalmani family.
‘How close were you?’ Grant asked.
‘We were like brothers. Our fathers fought together in the streets for the National Liberation Front, against the French. They were forced into the shadows, when the French wouldn’t tolerate our independence, and they became guerrillas. Isn’t it ironic, don’t you think, that only twenty years earlier, the French themselves were doing exactly the same thing against the Gestapo? But they didn’t see it that way.’
‘One man’s guerrilla is another man’s freedom fighter,’ Grant said.
Khalil was a proud man, but some, in Europe, might call his family terrorists. Grant had seen enough during his many tours of duty to know that perspective is irrelevant in war: it was only the winners who got to write about it afterwards. If the Algerians had lost, then Khalil’s father would have rotted in a French prison and Khalil would never have been born, but here he was: one of the wealthiest men in the world, flying his private jet into the city of love to stay at the Ritz. That was the thing with money: it always had a story.
‘So what made you go your separate ways and not speak for, what? Thirty years?’
Khalil looked away and Grant noticed pain in his face. It was a sore point, but it had to be asked. Khalil sighed. ‘After his father died, Fawaz followed the money, no matter what the cost, but my father wouldn’t be a party to anything that challenged his ethical beliefs.’
‘His ethical beliefs?’ Grant didn’t think ethics had much to do with money.
‘He’d worked his way up in the business world through straight and honest commerce. He was old school – he didn’t believe in the new opportunities that the drugs and arms trade offered.’
‘But the arms trade is legitimate,’ Grant said.
‘Yes, it is, but, to my father that was another glaring irony, that a man can sell a bomb to a country who pays in dollars but doesn’t take responsibility for where that bomb lands. Of course, the arms trade is legitimate, but what of the moral cost?’
‘So, he refused to touch arms. Didn’t he lose out on a lot of cash?’
‘I’m sure he did, but he slept well at night knowing that his product wasn’t vaporising women and children.’
‘He sounds like a very noble man, your father,’ Grant said.
‘He was,’ Khalil smiled.
‘And same for the drugs trade?’ Grant asked.
‘Exactly. He cut the business away from the Nabil family, and that was the end of that.’
‘But Jean-Luc’s family remained loyal to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You sure?’ Grant asked.
‘Well, that’s what we’re going to Paris to find out.’
Khalil looked away again and Grant studied him. He couldn’t dismiss the glaring fact that Jean-Luc was one of the most incompetent heads of security he’d ever met. Losing a principal just didn’t happen – unless it’s meant to. Grant had yet to make up his mind.
‘So, Fawaz made contact out of the blue by telephone? You must have been surprised after all this time,’ Grant asked. ‘Did he think that, with your father dead, you’d be more open to the business that your father found distasteful?’
‘I doubt it. He knew me well enough. He said he missed our friendship, and that’s when I knew he was lying,’ Khalil said.
‘Why?’
‘Fawaz is the kind of man who never does anything without personal gain. Even as a child he would give you sweets, then days later expect to be repaid in some way. It’s a character trait that defines him and his business.’
‘So, he wanted your ships between Algiers and Marseilles – did he offer anything in return? It seems to me that this would be a favour from you to him, not the other way around,’ Grant said.
‘Like I said, he was offering friendship, reunion, a chance to forget the past, but Fawaz forgets nothing. This is the man he is. He once took a woman away from me. She meant everything to me,’ Khalil said. He looked over his shoulder to check that Taziri wasn’t listening. It was a touching gesture from such a powerful man who could sleep with who he wanted, whether Taziri liked it or not. He carried on. ‘He used her for one night, making sure I knew, and then discarded her. He humiliated her. I asked him why he did it. Do you know what he said?’
Grant waited.
‘He said that when we were five, or thereabouts, a girl in our kindergarten favoured me over him, and I’d never acknowledged how much it hurt him. Apparently I used to hold hands with this girl. I can’t even remember her name. He said that he vowed to himself that he would take a girl from me, and he did.’ Khalil smiled and spread his hands. ‘I have harmed him, and this is his revenge, taking my son. I have thought long and hard over what I might have done to provoke such a response in him, but I can find none, though he did lose his eldest son five years ago.’
‘What did that have to do with you?’
‘Nothing. Everything, perhaps? I have thought about it. I was trading with the UK, like I do today, and they were the ones who sent Rafik back to Morocco to be tortured to death.’
Grant shook his head. They were dealing with a very damaged man, and a very powerful one.
‘His son was running drugs into the UK and was found living with suspected terrorists. This is what happens to sons who work for their fathers: they follow their lead. That
