In all these tasks Ali Aziz was a master. He regarded himself as the Lazard Frères of corruption. Suppose a French state-owned company was selling tanks to one of the oil kingdoms of the Persian Gulf. A complex set of transactions was necessary to provide funds to the local participants in the deal—say, the senior princes who headed the key ministries and, of course, the representatives of the king himself. But that was only the beginning. The more complex aspects involved the return of some of those funds to France—to the defense minister and other senior representatives of his political party. There were perhaps ten men in France who were capable of handling deals on this scale, and of those, Ali Aziz was among the very best. He had only one failing, for a man in his line of work, and that was his friendship with me.

I had first met Ali in Beirut in 1983, while I was writing a profile of his village in southern Lebanon. It was called Jouaya, and it had come to be known in Beirut as “the village of the millionaires” because so many of its sons had gone off to Africa and become rich. West Africa in those days was a kind of apprentice school for young Lebanese Shiite businessman who wanted to make their way in the world. Ali himself had recently returned from Abidjan with a small fortune. His first big score had been a scheme to sell uniforms to the Nigerian army through a company he had created for the benefit of the man who was purchasing the uniforms, the Nigerian chief of staff.

Ali was articulate and friendly, and I had quoted him at length about the Arab businessman’s special knack for “making business.” Somehow, the article came to the attention of a Saudi prince, who had known the Aziz family and decided that young Ali was the right sort of chap to invest a small amount of his capital.

That Saudi connection, Ali said, was the beginning of his real success, and he always attributed his subsequent vast wealth to my article about “the village of the millionaires.” He had even offered to buy me a car—a red Mercedes convertible—as a token of his thanks. I refused, but we had stayed in touch over the years, even when I was in Hong Kong and Ali was starting to do business in Asia. My only compensation—the only one I wanted—was the opportunity to ask Ali’s help when I needed a particular kind of information.

I took my swim in Ali’s perfect pool, shimmering with the intense sunlight of the Côte d’Azur, while he finished up his business on the telephone. Eventually he joined me in the water. He swam a few laps and then relaxed in the shallow end, calling to one of his servants to bring us glasses of fresh lemonade.