Honour Among Thieves Read Free

Ambassador had been born in Baghdad, he had
been educated in England.
    When
Cavalli leaned back, closed his eyes and recalled the clipped accent and
staccato delivery, he felt he might have been in the presence of a British Army
officer. The explanation could be found in Al Obaydi’s file under Education:
The King’s School, Wimbledon, followed by three years at London University
reading law. Al Obaydi had also eaten his dinners at Lincoln’s Inn, whatever
that meant.
    On
returning to Baghdad, Al Obaydi had been recruited by the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs. He had risen rapidly, despite the self-appointment of Saddam Hussein
as President and the regular placement of Ba’ath Party apparatchiks in posts
they were patently unqualified to fill.
    As
Cavalli turned another page of the file, it became obvious that Al Obaydi was a
man well capable of adapting himself to unusual circumstances. To be fair, that
was something Cavalli also prided himself on. Like Al Obaydi he had studied
law, but in his case at Columbia University in New York. When that time of the
year came round for graduates to 611 out their applications to join leading law
firms, Cavalli was always shortlisted when the partners saw his grades, but
once they realised who his father was, he was never interviewed.
    After
working fourteen hours a day for five years in one of Manhattan’s less
prestigious legal establishments, the young Cavalli began to realise that it
would be at least another ten years before he could hope to see his name
embossed on the firm’s masthead, despite having married one of the senior
partners’ daughters. Tony Cavalli didn’t have ten years to waste, so he decided
to set up his own law practice and divorce his wife.
    In
January 1982 Cavalli and Co. was incorporated, and ten years later, on April
15th 1992, the company declared a profit of $157,000, paying its tax demand in
full. What the company books did not reveal was that a subsidiary had also been
formed in 1982, but not incorporated. A firm that showed no tax returns, and
despite its profits mounting year on year, could not be checked up on by
phoning Dun & Bradstreet and requesting a complete VIP business report.
This subsidiary was known to a small group of insiders as ‘Skills’ – a company
that specialised in solving problems that could not be taken care of by
thumbing through the Yellow Pages.
    With
his father’s contacts, and Cavalli’s driving ambition, the unlisted company
soon made a reputation for handling problems that their unnamed clients had
previously considered insoluble. Among Cavalli’s latest assignments had been
the recovery of taped conversations between Sinatra and Nancy Reagan that were
due to be published in Rolling Stone and the theft of a Vermeer from Ireland
for an eccentric South American collector. These coups were discreetly referred
to in the company of potential clients.
    The
clients themselves were vetted as carefully as if they were applying to be
members of the New York Yacht Club because, as Tony’s father had often pointed
out, it would only take one mistake to ensure that he would spend the rest of
his life in less pleasing surroundings than 23 East 75th Street, or their villa
in Lyford Cay.
    Over
the past decade, Tony had built up a small network of representatives across
the globe who supplied him with clients requiring a little help with a more
‘imaginative’ proposition. It was his Lebanese contact who had been responsible
for introducing the man from Baghdad, whose proposal unquestionably fell into
this category.
    When
Tony’s father was first briefed on the outline of Operation ‘Desert Calm’ he
recommended that his son demand a fee of one hundred million dollars to
compensate for the fact that the whole of Washington would be at liberty to
observe him going about his business.
    ‘One
mistake,’ the old man warned him, licking his lips, ‘and you’ll make more front
pages than the second coming of Elvis.’
    Once
he