Behind God's Back Read Online Free Page B

when I had been almost envious of my brother, who, along with a good wife, had two sharp kids, a swanky apartment in Eira, a German luxury vehicle, a summer villa the size of a manor and a position of respect in the Jewish congregation. I had none of the above. On the other hand, my brother was four years older and three inches shorter than me, and ran to fat. Plus there was a bald spot on his head where his hair had just begun to thin.
    I knew from before that Eli and Max’s law office brokered their clients’ loans from an Estonian company, Baltic Invest. Baltic Invest was owned by an Israeli businessman named Benjamin Hararin. I had heard all of this from my childhood friend Dan just before his death. According to Dan, who had worked for the Mossad, Hararin’s affairs were being investigated in Israel because he was suspected of laundering money for the Russian mafia. Dan had also hinted that Hararin was in possession of sensitive video material starring Eli and Max.
    I had reported my intelligence to the financial crimes division of the National Bureau of Investigation. The NBI hadrequested further information from the Israeli police, but received no response – not even confirmation of the investigation’s existence.
    I had looked into the matter myself using my own sources and the Internet. I discovered that Hararin, himself a millionaire, was considered a frontman for a businessman named Amos Jakov. Jakov was among those 140,000 Jews who had emigrated to Israel from the Soviet Union in the ’70s. Upon his arrival in 1973, at the age of twenty-two, Jakov initially enlisted in the Israeli army and then the Mossad, where he gained a tough reputation and rose to the middle ranks. Through contacts he apparently acquired during his stint with the Mossad and money that came from Russia, he got into real estate and then expanded into energy. He had particularly good connections in Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, both of which were rich in oil, gas and minerals. He was considered a good friend of the president of Kazakhstan, and when he acquired a Kazakh chromium mine in the 1990s, it was rumoured that the deal coincided with the transfer of 100 million dollars into the president’s Swiss bank accounts. Plenty had been written about Jakov in the international financial press.
    In contrast, information on Jakov’s mafia contacts was scarce, but some anonymous sources indicated that he had belonged to a local criminal gang in his birth city of Minsk and had been sentenced to prison for assault and robbery. When the Soviet Union collapsed and Minsk became the capital of Belarus, Jakov was able to exploit his old contacts, some of whom later moved to Israel, others to the United States. I found a New York Times article that linked FBI investigations of money laundering to Jakov.
    Time passed and nothing happened; I had already forgotten about both Eli and Max’s business dealings as well as Jakov and Hararin. Now I was faced with the whole mess again. It felt like I had been slapped in the face with a wet rag, and for good reason.
    When I stepped out of the Jacobsons’ house, Simolin was talking with one of the CSIs in the yard. I joined them.
    â€œThree shells were recovered, and so were two bullets, one in pretty good shape. Dug out of a porch pillar; .22 calibre,” Simolin reported.
    â€œWhat else?” I asked the investigator.
    â€œThe shooter must have stayed on the paving, because there aren’t any footprints. The shots were fired from within three feet, so there aren’t even any traces of contact. We’ve combed over the entire property but haven’t found a thing. There are no tyre marks, either. So basically what we have is a whole lot of nothing. The bullets and shells will tell us the manufacturer and make of the weapon, assuming we find it.”
    Simolin was doubtful. “Not likely.”
    â€œWe’ll have to talk to the people living along the