Chapter V

CHAPTER 5

London

2002

AL FAYIDI MOHD. AKHATARI, known to many as Sir Fayid, for he was a Knight of the Realm, enjoyed the prime of his life. In two different ways, he mused.

At one of these, he lived an ascetic existence together with several wives in a network of caves somewhere in the Mediterranean.

On the other occasion, he lived the life befitting royalty in an 80-room villa in the suburbs of London. As well, a part of this was vacationing in his 200-room castle in Austria and in his other properties around the world.

As the son of a former factory mechanic, but the ascendant head warmonger among his peers in the secret fraternal society called the Order of the Scions of Horus, Fayidi rose above his circumstances by wisely investing the funds from Switzerland held in trust by the secret society through its numerous subalterns in the banking sector.

Fayidi flicked the mouthpiece of the houkkah, the water pipe used by opium users. His eyes scanned the sky and the effect of the drug lent a sensation of mirth to his face.

He had every reason to be happy. From his family’s humble beginnings, his father made a killing in becoming the King Saud’s master mechanic. From then he amassed a fortune from contracts awarded by his employer, the King. Fayidi’s father was then recruited by the Order and him as well when he was thirteen years old. Fayidi’s uncle, Wadn Hassan was the elder who took the elder Akhtari into the Order.

As of the moment, his own personal assets amounted to 980 million pounds sterling – which made him a billionaire in terms of dollars. While the Trust Fund of the Order had grown steadily under his watch from UK£12 Billion to nearly 100 billion. On the other hand, a huge number of his fellow rich Arabs succumbed, one after the other, to his ruthless machinations and had effectively made the society much richer by almost 200 percent.

He seduced them in lavish and garish parties in the Excalibur Estate, in his villas, castles and mansions in France, Austria, Switzerland and the monumental palace he built in Karachi, Pakistan.

Last night, for instance, was a night of nights for a lot of the old and noveau rich, the blue bloods, social climbers of various types, business middlemen, bankers, moneymarket and commodities traders and so many others who would pay a high price to be in his parties.

Each time he organized a party, a lot of them made killings in the stock market. His simple and highly subtle get-togethers had always been a hit. It was always mentioned in the Fortune Magazine’s pages, in the London dailies’ and magazines columns.

He gifted editors and network owners abundantly for them to never mention his name, but merely cite the occasion, the venue, the significance and the theme of each party so that people will know it was his own.

Not a few gained money from his mysterious mergers, passive takeovers, partnerships in single or clusters of transactions --- mostly involving transnational commerce. There were buy and sell deals involving oil, gold, silver and all other commodities except diamonds which Fayidi loathed because it was nearly one hundred percent controlled or influenced by Israeli and European Jews. These were the only people in the world aside from the Americans that Fayidi secretly hated deep down to his very bones. However, he kept these feelings extremely close to his chest.

Not a few had wished they would lay give their life away just to be in his social gatherings, even his perceived mortal enemies, the Americans and the Jews.

There were also the very royal villa that he built in Papua New Guinea, a hillside residential palace in Malaysia, near Brunei and a number of hotels that dotted the globe. His parties never discriminated among his residences and hotels. He held them in each of every one of them at one occasion and then another and another.

The revelries did not seem to stop. And the business kept flowing. In the process, Fayidi kept accummulating wealth, like his own partygoers did. In some of the occasions, he made better killings than his guests; on many of them, he deliberately just took a little for himself. Like the bank in a casino, he kept his subjects addicted to the winnings, the profits and the hunger for money. Easy money in most of them. No mind that he dished out illegal trading, gave unauthorized insider information as tips during his parties. Just as long as he kept it all within control and his guests pursued him like gambling junkies --- which they all were anyway.

His Royal Highness, Prince Heffere -- wayward brother to a Sultan in Southeast Asia, nearly caused the collapse of his brother’s empire when he allowed Fayidi to extract billions of dollars worth of loans, securities and bonds from the Sultan’s investment agency called the BIA. His Majesty, The Sultan’s brother after all, was one of the new recruits of the Order.

All Fayidi had to do was write off the debts and leave the Sultan’s financial wizards with a long string of collaterals scattered around the globe to sort out and foreclose. This was easier said than done since some of the alleged collaterals were either bought, or were actual original real estates or else expensive items such as yachts, jet aeroplanes, luxury cars among others, registered in the name of women – wives of the Sultan’s brother.

There were a large number of them since the Sultan’s brother never appeared to have a waning taste and love for women from as many parts of the world as possible. Aside from naming the properties after women, Fayidi also ingeniously placed some of the larger properties in the names of his seventeen brothers.

This, notwithstanding that other people who were ‘distant relatives’ of the Sultan were also designated as owners of some of the properties. Such people had real blood ties to the Sultan and were mere commoners, just like the Sultan himself before the British made him King.

They were selected long before and their friendship had been cultivated by Fayidi and his lieutenants that they would do everything to please the Chairman. After 30 years of loyalty and dedication to the society, he had also finally arrived at the turning point of his and the Order’s existence. He was about to become its leader, provided that he proves his worth. And he will. “I will!” he said in his native Arabic tongue over and over.

He had just finished his morning prayers, downed some sweet Turkish coffee and sipped some of the life-enhancing opium that became his habit for the last thirty years since his father initiated him into it.

This home of his here in the London suburbs was well-guarded by his loyal man, Commander Mallaghey, a son of another friend – a Rajah, Gen. Guillaume Mallaghey. It was also equipped with the British SHIELD – a super powerful detection and surveillance system used by the British Army and Secret Services.

He ordered SHIELD to be to protect him from any attack, physical or electronic or any other non-conventional assault. Even laser deflectors were continuously rotating among his plants and trees in his beautiful, well-trimmed gardens.

From his fence outward, a jangle of electronic wizardry provided every imaginable form of detection, counter- or counter-countermeasure, as well as giving the one at their controls the opportunity to offensively strike at intruders.

This was established by Luzivro Technologies – a firm he partly owns and even profitably promoted to make it attain its present ranking in the Top 500 of Fortune Magazine. He sold at a fat profit to the Sultan in South Asia, the Saudi King and his relatives, the leaders of other Arab countries that had enjoyed his fat bribes and their skims from the locals whom Fayidi had appointed as local counterparts.

This property was the one known in many quarters of consequence as The Excalibur Estate and was purchased from a wealthy Greek don.

The estate had been in Fayidi’s name for the past ten years now. There was nothing within it that appealed to him except that everything within the huge house served a utilitarian purpose.

His bodyguards under Commander Mallaghey were all of Arabic stock but many or almost all were also of mixed Indian stock. The Commander’s father, General Mallaghey was a British SAS officer. The guards were mostly former SAS but were part of a distinct unit called the Rajput Regiment.

Their old unit was that of the fightingest soldiers in the entire world. It was a fortunate incident that trader Arabs wandered as far as India and begot sons and daughters in the Rajasthan region of that country. Now Fayidi Akhatri could rely on the best of the best for his personal safety. For this simple reason, among many other considerations, he thanked Al’lah each time that he can sleep like a baby.

Even in his cavern hideaway, none could keep him from his regimen of good, fitful rest.

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Fayidi Akhatari slipped into Western garments after removing his keffiyeh. He often would prefer to be in his native Arab’s robes. But he had studied in England’s universities and took up courses in the U.S. He knew how important it was to blend with the Westerners -- British, the French, Greek and the Americans.

The air-conditioning system was in full power. Unlike in other parts of the house however, the cold was the only thing he had to endure here.

He lifted a remote control device as big as a one-dollar coin and the wall came to life with a multiple screen display. A good number of events showed on the screens. He switched from one screen to another, looking intently. Then he turned his attention to the map on the farthest right of the wall monitor.

Akhtari traced his finger along a red pencilled section of the map running form a point in Asia to the United States. Then he traced another pencilled part form the Mediterranean running along to the portion supposed to be at the opposite side of the globe.

He took two small magnetic pins from a stubby table beside where he was, and placed them on three points on the electronic map. The first pin was planted on the screen over Japan. The second pin over California. The third pin went to the tiny drawing of a diminutive country in the map - The Philippines. His face beamed and he said, "Sorry Philipinese."

Then he walked to the left side of the room laughing aloud imitating the sound of a hyena and pushed a nearly invisible button that he memorized the location of. The left wall opened into a massive curtain parted by a small opening near the middle. As soon as he parted the heavy drapery, the wall near the door from where he entered into his high technology war room illuminated automatically revealing a completely digital display of controls almost as common the modern stereo or stereophonic video components.

This side adjacent to his highly computer driven command, control, communications and intelligence system was 17th century England. Thus the music coming from his secret work room was not circa 21st century.

Inside the spacious ‘period room,’ signs of being lived-in were visible everywhere. Pieces of tablet paper here, a book there, a crochette kit on the sofa and other bric-a-bracs wherever one turned his eyes.

The expansive perfectly designed living room led to a bedroom ahead and to the right, the huge terrazzo – again laid out with selected flowering plants and bonzai trees.

She was there, wearing only a flimsy g-string bikini bottom and nothing on her top. Fayidi Akhtari felt his irritation over what happened to the Collander wing of his massive organization. The invalid Collander’s inadequacy somehow rolled back to the inner recess of his brain. A different effusive mood filled him.

Princess Laine, like the goddesses of his dreams, continued to sleep like a baby. He pulled over a sunbathing chair and lay down beside her. He could stare at his Princess for hours and hours on end, but he never got tired of her. Soon he found himself kissing strands of her hair gently, careful not to awaken her. Then he was breathing in, the musky scent of her perspiring back.

They had just had the most pleasant sex ever, the night before, since they arrived from Greece.

“Do you think anyone saw you? Did you take care in coming here?”

“No one, I believe,” said Princess Laine. She had been careful in being seen with him in public.

“I tried hard to keep anyone from seeing you with me in Athens, my love.”

Princess Laine giggled like a little girl. “And all the other places where we went, don’t you... won’t you think that all those people I met wouldn’t somehow imagine that I was with someone? Those who know me believe I am never without company.”

“That you crave for balance, for harmony and that includes always having someone you must partner with.” Akhtari said with a smile. “That you feel inadequate, that there is something missing when you are all alone. Is that it?”

“You’re right!” Princess Laine had always been surprised at how well Yody, – as she affectionately called him – he could read her.

Akhtari shook his head to assure her that they were neither been seen nor that their presence would be associated with each other. He knew that he had always been completely incognito and had not allowed himself to be seen except by the people themselves with whom he was having meetings. Being beholden to the Order, they would never betray his presence in any particular place at any given time.

He and Laine lived on and off together. And he relished the sobriquet she had for him.

“You’re my Casper, my forever friendly ghost.” He reminded himself of those endearing words that she used to say. She still remembered to say them to him.

That memory made him chuckle and every time he would remember her saying it, sometimes it tickled him somewhat.

Princess Laine was born of the Wynstons, also royal clan domiciled in Canada. She was merely 32 now and had two sons, Wayne and Richard, of her now-estranged husband Prince and former heir-apparent to the throne of the Danish Royalty. They now lived separately, she in both England and France while the Prince sought to remain in Denmark after the sister of the late King took over from the Prince’s mother due to scandals over the Prince’s marital break-up with Princess Laine.

Princess Laine settled in England through the graciousness of the British Royalty and was entitled to a £200,000 allowance per annum.

Her trysts with Fayidi were all very hush-hush since even after her divorce with the Prince, she still had to abide by the rules governing subjects and kin of Her Majesty, particularly those of the Royal Family. She even had to be conscious more so of the monarchy in England under whose favors she was allowed to take up residence in London. There was no telling however if the security apparatus of their governments and the Royal Palaces of the monarchies were not yet onto them. They seemed to be everywhere.

Fayidi knew. He also could not tell Laine since she would be upset. Fayidi’s Rajputs had access to nearly everywhere in Copenhagen and London.

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