He slipped the Walther into his pocket and handed the phone to Rashid who said, “He’s coming, then?”

“Of course he is.” Dillon smiled. “Now let’s you and me go inside and have ourselves a drink in comfort.”

In the sitting room on the first floor of the house in Avenue Victor Hugo overlooking the Bois de Boulogne, Josef Makeev put down the phone and moved to the couch where his overcoat was.

“Was that Rashid?” Aroun demanded.

“Yes. He’s with Dillon now at a place on the river. I’m going to get them.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Makeev pulled on his coat. “No need, Michael. You hold the fort. We won’t be long.”

He went out. Aroun took a cigarette from a silver box and lit it, then he turned on the television. He was halfway into the news. There was direct coverage from Baghdad, Tornado fighter bombers of the British Royal Air Force attacking at low level. It made him bitterly angry. He switched off, poured himself a brandy and went and sat by the window.

Michael Aroun was forty years of age and a remarkable man by any standards. Born in Baghdad of a French mother and an Iraqi father who was an army officer, he’d had a maternal grandmother who was American. Through her, his mother had inherited ten million dollars and a number of oil leases in Texas.

She had died the year Aroun had graduated from Harvard law school leaving everything to her son because his father, retired as a general from the Iraqi army, was happy to spend his later years at the old family house in Baghdad with his books.

Like most great businessmen, Aroun had no academic training in the field. He knew nothing of financial planning or business administration. His favorite saying, one much quoted, was: When I need a new accountant, I buy a new accountant.

His friendship with Saddam Hussein had been a natural development from the fact that the Iraqi President had been greatly supported in his early days in politics by Aroun’s father, who was also an important member of the Baath Party. It had placed Aroun in a privileged position as regards the development of his country’s oilfields, brought him riches beyond calculation.