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    The contract gave Fayed the exclusive right to collect all fees for docking, piloting, loading and unloading vessels, as well as supplying them with whatever provisions they needed.  This contract alone was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.  But the clause that was to cause the most problems was one that made Fayed the exclusive agent for all the shipping companies that did business in Haiti.  To the layman, it was an innocuous sounding concession.  But in financial terms it would have been an almost unimaginable windfall: agents routinely earn five per cent of the freight charges of all merchandise in and out of port.  In Haiti, in 1964, it was worth between $200,000 and $250,000 per annum.

    Prato recalls his boss as distant but professional.  On signing the contract Fayed applied himself to his new job, he says.  'He came every day to the office.  He worked very seriously at the port.'
    Fayed bought a station wagon and moved a stone's throw from the National Palace, in a building which also became the centre of operations for Clémard Joseph Charles's bank.  Rich red carpeting was laid throughout the building.  'He always bought the best.  He played the millionaire even if he wasn't,' says Prato, adding that he didn't question the expenditures or challenge any of the decisions Fayed took.  Fayed was very close to Papa Doc.  'He was an enigma in Haiti.  No one knew where Duvalier found him.'
    Inevitably there were rumours.  Some involved a possible relationship between Fayed and Duvalier's daughter, Marie-Denise.  Being made president-for-life had given Duvalier the right to appoint his own successor.  Marie-Denise was Papa Doc's eldest child and by the mid-Sixties it was clear that she - and not her dopey little brother Jean-Claude - was the one who had inherited their father's steel.  But she would need an appropriate husband.

    Fayed, divorced from Samira Khashoggi since 1958, would certainly have been considered eligible.  The gossip among those on the periphery of power was that the flowers Fayed sent daily to the National Palace were really for Marie-Denise and many believed the two were actually engaged, even if no official announcement was ever made.  The news had reached the American embassy by mid-November.
    'There are persistent rumours that Mohamed Fayed is romantically involved with one or Duvalier's daughters, Denise, and one variant has it that they are to be married,' read a confidential telegram from Ambassador Benson E. Timmons III to Washington.  The cable went on, 'While Fayed may say this to all the girls, there nevertheless remains possibility that for his part Fayed is in earnest re: his alleged plans for investment in Haiti and is seeking [to] strengthen his ties with Duvalier by dynastic marriage.'
    The Haitian journalist Leo Paul Joseph says the driving force behind the relationship was Mama Doc.  'Mrs Duvalier became obsessed by him...  she was crazy about Fayed.  She was constantly prodding Papa Doc to get closer and closer to Fayed and to give him everything he wanted.  And she was the one pushing Fayed to get closer and closer to Marie-Denise.  She was very keen on a marriage and people in palace circles were telling everyone that it was really going to happen.'
    Marie-Denise, now living in Miami, does not return repeated phone calls.  But the person who should have known of any secret trysts and midnight passions - Fayed's bodyguard - says he knew nothing about the relationship.  Meanwhile, Calixte Delatour, one of the Haiti's most senior lawyers disagrees.  'M. Francois Duvalier incarcerated the notion of Haitian-ness.  If one of his children were to get engaged to a foreigner he would have shot him with his own hand.'
    The Americans were concerned enough about Fayed to talk to their embassy in Kuwait to try to find out more about him and the company named on his business card.  'Neither General Commerce and Navigation Company Kuwait [the company Fayed started up before his arrival in Haiti], nor Mohamed Fayed registered with or known to Kuwait Chamber of Commerce,' read one message back to the State Department.  A later cable reported that the company was registered 'but not known to have undertaken any type activity to date.  Fayed personally unknown [in] local business circles.'
    It was CIA counter-intelligence that nailed down Fayed as a citizen of the United Arab Republic - the name President Gamal Nasser gave Egypt for the second half or his rule.  'Visa files show Mohamed Abdel Moneim Ali Fayed, DPOB 27 Jan 1929, Alexandria Egypt, was UAR citijin (sic) June 1964,' read a memo that was part of the CIA investigation into de Mohrenschildt.  So he was neither Kuwaiti, nor sheikh.
    No matter, in November 1964, Fayed became Haitian.  The country's law required that anyone not born in the country or of Haitian parents had to live there 10 years before gaining citizenship.  The president just had to rewrite history.  A decree, signed by Duvalier in the November 5 issue of Le Moniteur did just that.
    'Whereas...  he has, among other things, more than 10 years of residency in Haiti and the report of the Department of the Interior on his moral standing is favourable,' Le Moniteur read, 'it is ordered that Mohamed Fayed acquire the quality of being Haitian with the rights, prerogatives and responsibilities attached to this quality'.  In a confidential airgram to Washington, Ambassador Timmons noted that Fayed's instant citizenship caused a scandal and prompted what in Duvalier's Haiti was reckless protest.  'Two judges successively refused to be a party to the naturalisation proceedings on grounds of their blatant illegality but a third judge saw the light after feeling the heat.'
    Citizenship gave Fayed more than just 'the quality of being Haitian.'  He also received a diplomatic passport numbered 1067 to make his comings and goings that much easier.  Fayed first used it about three weeks afterwards, in late November, when he went on a business trip to Europe and the Middle East, one which was closely monitored by CIA's chief of counter-intelligence, James Jesus Angleton.  He was using secret memos to keep in constant touch with his agency and FBI director J. Edgar Hoover over the movements of de Mohrenschildt and by connection, Fayed.  In one memo, he claimed, 'It was reported from Saudi Arabia by a friendly Western service that Subject was a representative of the al-NASR Trading Company...  which was believed to be cover firm for the Egyptian Intelligence Service.  Fayed was described as a senior Egyptian Intelligence officer.'
    'Friendly Western service' is often considered a CIA euphemism for M15, but in the CIA documents released under the Freedom of Information Act the source is not pinned down.

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