rectly from African mines. Still others—some of whom had served in the Duvdevan alongside Shoshana—were sent to guard stash houses that Le Roux owned in Hong Kong.

Levi Kugel, the blond musician friend of Berkman's who had also transferred to the Philippines, similarly moved beyond the call centers to other duties for Le Roux. Periodically Kugel would re- turn to Israel, and he and Oz began casually discussing the idea of going into business themselves, starting their own wholesale phar- macy in the United States. RX Limited had grown so quickly that it often had trouble finding enough pharmacies to fill its orders. By opening their own, they reasoned, they could making money sell- ing to RX Limited and save Le Roux some in the process.

They hadn't yet broached the idea with Le Roux. But Oz knew that Kugel had earned the trust of the boss. After briefly running a call center in the Philippines, Kugel had moved on to acquiring real estate in Manila for Le Roux, and now bragged that he was traveling the world on mysterious new business under the alias Steve LeBaron.

Ari Ben-Menashe didn't find it terribly surprising when a Steve LeBaron showed up on his doorstep in 2007, asking him to lobby a foreign government on behalf of a wealthy man in the Philip- pines. Ben-Menashe was, after all, the kind of man you seek out if you need a certain type of geopolitical favor. An Iranian-born Israeli who had been an officer in the Israeli Military Intelligence Direc- torate in the late 1970s, Ben-Menashe first came to international prominence—or notoriety, depending on your perspective—as the source of an Israeli government leak that the United States was selling arms to Iran. The information helped spawn the investiga- tion into the Iran-Contra affair. He was later accused, and then acquitted, of selling military planes to Iran himself, and wrote a book claiming Ronald Reagan arranged for Iran's American hos- tages to be held until after his 1980 election to the presidency.

All of which earned Ben-Menashe a reputation as a dubious