Lebanon

The beautiful country of Lebanon is wedged between Syria and Israel on the eastern Mediterranean coast. Its twin, snow-capped mountain ranges, comprising the Lebanon range on the coast and the Anti-Lebanon inland against the Syrian border, surround and envelop the green expanses of the Bekaa Valley through which the indigenous Litani River flows. The scenic coast, buffeted by the cool, green Mediterranean waves, creates an aura of relaxed, easy living made even more inviting by the generous and hospitable nature of the Lebanese people.

This idyllic environment, however, hides a very unpleasant, murderous and blood-strewn history. A violent civil war engulfed the country almost thirty years ago, fed by religious hatred between the Christian Maronite sect, once the predominant group in Lebanon, and various Islamic groups including the Palestinian camp people, the PLO after booted from nearby Jordan, the local Islamic groups and, later, the Shiite group, Hezbollah, introduced by Iranian sponsors. In the intervening years, Israel invaded to prevent the PLO from taking over the country. The civil war raged on for nearly fifteen years before an uneasy truce was installed, abetted by Syrian military intervention to enforce the peace. The presence of Islamic militance in the country invited numerous terrorist organizations to establish a base there or receive clandestine financing via Lebanese banks.

Emerging from the shadows of Lebanon's past and into the forefront of The Gambit comes one Michel Antoun, a wealthy Lebanese banker and Christian Maronite, who has had to make terrible compromises in his homeland in order to survive. Still bitter over the alleged U.S. role in preventing his father from assuming the Lebanese presidency in 1958, when Eisenhower ordered Marines to intervene in the country, and forced by the Syrians and Iranians alike to launder money via his banking system into the coffers of various terrorist groups, his life and its once bright promise are in ruins. He must, however, accommodate the terrorist agenda for reasons other than personal security; his wife and small son are also threatened even though he has kept them in Paris.

Still, Antoun holds several important keys to a possible escape from his predicament. He is privy to an audacious scheme to spike global oil markets by engineering terrorist events. And, he is aware of a dark secret that the American president would prefer not revealed during an election campaign. As an expert chessplayer, seizing an opportune moment to play his gambit, the banker aligns with a shadowy group terrorizing oil markets and, indeed, holds himself out as the ringleader threatening the global economy in order to force the U.S. government to eliminate his enemies and grant personal freedom and safety. Instead, the President pulls out the stops to terminate Antoun first before any disclosures leak to the American public.

The Gambit lurches from one critical scene to another as the Lebanese banker stays one step ahead of various schemes to eliminate him, including those from the real ringleader of the group intent on bankrupting a Western economic system hinged on oil prices. Along the way, Antoun manages to settle a few scores and, over time, forges a strange bond with Hastings, the Director of National Intelligence of the U.S., who desperately attempts to keep him alive long enough to understand the full dimensions of the conspiracy and coverup underway.

Back to Themes