start up the company again. “I know you’re hurting,” he said. “Keep in mind, everyone is fucking hurting right now, you see what I’m saying? But there is light at the end of the tunnel. I have arranged your cash.” He just needed to see Oz in person to finalize the transfer. He first proposed they meet in Panama, but Oz de- clined. When Le Roux suggested Romania, he agreed.

With the benefit of hindsight, it seemed absurd that Oz had fallen for it. Berkman didn’t, electing to ignore Le Roux’s entreat- ies and stay in Israel. Was it greed that blinded Oz, or gullibility? His emails made him appear enthusiastic to restart the business with Le Roux, but later he would assert that the only reason he’d gone along with the meeting was in the hopes of getting the em- ployees’ severance back. “I didn’t go to Romania to get my own salary,” he said. In another sense, though, it was a testament to the alternate reality, mythology even, that Le Roux had created around himself. He could have an employee thrown off a boat and shot at, show up in a U.N. report funding a militia in Somalia, get written up in a major newspaper as having been busted for drug running, and an employee would still believe him enough to get on a plane and meet him in a foreign country.

A few weeks later, Oz landed in Bucharest along with a friend he’d invited on the trip. They had an Israeli expat friend in Romania, and the three of them spent two days hanging out and gambling in the local casinos. Oz won a few thousand Euros at his preferred game, roulette.

The meeting with Le Roux was scheduled for the third day, but as the time approached Oz grew nervous. His chief concern was not that Le Roux might be setting him up, but that he might be planning to kill him. He asked the friend from Bucharest to ar- range some hired security, “just to make sure that there are no surprises.” The friend found a couple of bodyguards he could pay by the hour.

Le Roux had set the meeting for March 13 at the Pullman Hotel,