NiMH battery charging by MAX712 IC
The chip takes the battery voltage as an input and regulates it to 5V with an internal shunt regulator.  It uses this voltage internally as its own power rail, also exposing it externally on the V+ pin, where it acts as a voltage reference for the program pin(s) e.g. PGM3 which sets the trickle charge rate.  Looking at the circuit diagram on page 1 of the data sheet, current will flow from the wall cube DC IN through R1 into the chip.  Choose R1 resistance value such that the current through R1 is between 5-20mA, as indicated in item 6) on page 6 of the data sheet.  

You do not need to "make" V+ as 5V, the chip will do it for you.  The 1.5V minimum overhead between wall cube voltage and maximum battery voltage is to cover the voltage drop across transistor Q1 &amp; diode D1 in the part of the circuit which regulates current flow into the battery during charging.  

You mention 9.6V, but NiCd/NiMH will go higher than 1.2V during charging, so you need a wall cube voltage more like (1.8V x 8 cells) + 1.5V = 15.9V.  The chip maximum input voltage is 20V so a wall cube output something like 16-18V should be ok.

  

http://datasheets.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/MAX712-MAX713.pdf