Banquo's Ghosts (19 page)

Pause, while taking a question.

“Assassination? Attempted assassination? I don’t use such words.”

Again he paused, while taking a question.

“A spy? Of course, he’s a spy. We let many spies into our country; we have nothing to hide. He may well be tried; he may well be executed, but that decision is not up to me.”

Again, another pause, while he listened to the next question.

“Retaliation?” And here Sheik Kutmar stroked his finely chiseled beard. “If a trust is broken between one nation and another, if legitimate journalism and the free exchange of information are sabotaged by one power at the expense of another, there are . . . there are always consequences.”

Deputy Director Andover used a small, thin remote to lower the sound on the picture. He turned his gimlet eyes on Banquo, who seemed to have ignored the whole thing. Infuriating. His old colleague steadily thrummed his fingers
one-two-three-one-two-three
on his chair’s armrest as though annoyed at having to wait. DEADKEY’s voice came out pure acid:

“Pleased with yourself?”

Calmly, Banquo measured the man across the desk. “Are you accusing me of something?”

Deputy Executive Director Andover at first bristled, then with every ounce of self-control managed: “Do I have to? You’ve brought disrespect to the U.S. government, made a mess of our position, and put innocent lives at risk. Deny it.”

Banquo sighed, then spoke quietly and methodically, as if explaining to an adolescent, “First of all, Deputy Director, no one respects the U.S. government, not the one you represent anyway. Secondly, our position is already a mess; you and others put us there. And thirdly, outside of your mother’s belly there’s no such thing as an innocent life.

“Let’s be frank,” Banquo continued. “You and I are in the business of betting lives, occasionally saving them, but generally spending them on an infinite board, with an infinite number of moves, in an endless game. If you can’t bet those lives, then don’t you dare sit in that chair and lecture me. I’d bet
yours
, if I thought it would help.”

“Oh, spare me the Cooper Union lecture,” Andover said. “You’ve handed the Iranians a tremendous propaganda victory. I can’t imagine a bigger one. You might as well have the president of the United States
announce that we’ve discovered, yes, the mullahs
are
in communication with Twelfth Imam after all, down in the well—just like the little Turbans say. Besides the fact, you’ve violated the law. It’s worse than a blunder; it’s a crime.”

“Trevor, please tell me you have a copy of
Bartlett’s
somewhere in here.” Banquo had decided if they were to have a sarcastic bitch-fest, why not go all the way?

“What?” Andover asked, incredulous.

“You mangled the phrase. The Talleyrand remark goes, ‘It’s
worse
than a crime, it’s a
blunder
.’ The phrase doesn’t work turned around. You robbed Talleyrand of all his surprise and cleverness.” Banquo wagged his head, amazed that a man such as DEADKEY could arrive at such an exalted position under the nose of the gods. “Trevor, you’ve got the mind of a cutpurse with the blade of a butter knife.”

“Sneer at me all you want, Stewart,” Andover said, calling him by the name he knew him by when they both got their start decades ago. “You still have to answer to Executive Order 12333. Just like everyone else.”

“Ah . . . the prohibition against assassination. Issued when the country scraped bottom in its prestige and power in the world? The one you cheered on as we staffed the upper echelons of our intelligence services with geldings and their attorneys at law?”

Banquo paused for a moment, thinking, then remarked, “I imagine you think all that legalese somehow protects
you
. Well, line your pants with national archives if you think it helps. But you’ll wet yourself when they slap on the handcuffs like everyone else.”

There was nothing about Banquo DEADKEY didn’t hate. Where could he even start with him?

“Look, Stewart. This office is not the Harvard Debate Society. One of your clowns, in effect, an agent of the U.S. government, was captured in an assassination scheme. The London Litvinenko sushi hit played big in the international press, but this could be bigger, and we’re not even Russians, not yet anyway. You own this fool, Peter Johnson, and now you’re going to have to pay for the privilege.”

“Make me.”

DEADKEY was flustered for a second. He expected at least a shimmer of regret and instead he got 110-proof insolence.

“Just for the record,” Banquo continued, “Banquo & Duncan believes the Litvinenko assassination was a
warning
. To all and sundry that the Russians will do anything they want, anywhere they want, and we’ll just say, ‘Such a pity Mr. So-and-So ate bad sushi.’ However, if you think B & D had a hand in this Yahdzi nonsense,
prove
it.”

Trevor Andover sighed. Now it was his turn to explain matters to the village idiot:

“Prove it? I don’t have to. That’s a U.S. attorney’s job. You met with Peter Johnson. You sent him to Iran. I have copies of passport requests for your team. Airline tickets. There’s no coincidence here. Johnson will last about forty-five minutes under mildly stressful interrogation. Tomorrow they’ll have him in front of cameras confessing he was put up by
you
. Every Donkey in this capital will be braying for your head, as soon as my friends in the press tell them who to bray for. And every Elephant will be hiding under his bed, pretending they’ve never heard of you before. You’re a pathetic relic, Stewart.”

DEADKEY paused to let that sink in. Then finally, “I pilot this ship. So when I see a drunken sailor, the Director doesn’t get involved. It’s slap the drunk in irons, throw him in the longboat, or man
overboard
. Able Seaman, you’re walking the plank at dawn. Every news account is going to start with the words ‘rogue operation.’ Remember this number: 202 371 7000. The law firm of Skadden, Arps. Ask for Bob Bennett’s assistant. And pray for a pardon when the legal bills approach twenty-five mil.”

Banquo looked at Andover for a beat, with his brow raised, as if to say,
Are you quite done?

“Consider the following, Trevor. I didn’t think I’d actually have to explain:

“One. Peter Johnson is a well-known crank, a toiler with a long history of attacking the U.S. government. Nobody’s going to believe him when he suddenly claims he’s
my spy
.

“Two. Johnson has a string of felonious financial transactions, documented by Banquo & Duncan and certainly worth the time of the IRS.

“Three. The one name he knows to cough up under mild interrogation is Trevor Andover.”

At that, Andover blanched, and Banquo suddenly wished that one of his people thought of it before the scribbler left for Iran, that the bluff was true.

“Deputy Director, not only are you going to run interference for Banquo & Duncan, keep the bats out of my hair, but, actively help me.”

“Why, in heaven’s name?”

Banquo thrummed the armrest again, but went on, his assured voice seeming to enclose DEADKEY’s head in a vice. “Because you’ve been sloppy and foolish. Your predilection for certain ‘art,’ and your ongoing nonsecure and . . . ah-hem,” he paused for a moment, “prurient instant messaging with a nice young lad in Chevy Chase, one of your school chum’s sons, just fresh from his bar mitzvah. Lovely gift by the way. So I come to present you some options. Take them, or not. If not, you know the number of Skadden, Arps as well as anyone.”

Trevor Andover’s face went red, then deadly white as it sank in how thoroughly his colleague had bided his time and laid each chit in his secret strongbox, only to produce the bill when he needed it most.

“
Robert Wallets
helped you with this, didn’t he? That goose-stepping brown shirt. And that fat, sloppy dyke you always use.”

“Of course. Both very reliable. I believe in long-term relationships. Also two of my traders. They get bored. So I set them to tasks. Opposition research, mostly.” Banquo dropped the thrumming and took a cigar from a leather case from inside his jacket. He removed it from the wrapper and inhaled the fragrance.

“There’s no smoking in the building.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Banquo held the cigar between his two first fingers; content to feel it there, then clipped the end, letting the nub drop to the carpet. “First of all, I may require your assistant, Bryce, for a while. It never hurts to have the son of an attorney general on your staff, if only for insurance purposes. I commend you on your choice of aide-de-camp. Also, control of the O’Hanlon investigation, which we have to change from a fishing expedition to a whale hunt.”

The CIA-SPAN plasma screen showed a scene that Banquo paused to watch: a balding Muslim intellectual talking to an interviewer in Arabic. He wore a suit and one of those shiny ties so popular right now with talk show talking heads. The Teletype read: “Interview with Sheik Safwat Higazi, Egyptian preacher, Al-Nas TV, “I Have a Dream” speech, clarifying religious matters and fatwas where Muslims are free to kill Jews . . . .” Underneath the scholar’s smiling talking head the translation: “When I said what I said, I was dreaming a beautiful dream . . . that we were one country called the Arab Islamic States . . . This is the dream I dreamt . . . that the Israeli Jew, not just any Jew . . . in order to kill an Israeli, one must make sure that he is a Jew . . . that he is between twenty-one and fifty-four, the age of the reserves, and if she is a woman, she must be between twenty-one and thirty-four, which is the age of the reserves [for women], and even then [the killer] must be sure that she has no children . . . ”

Banquo turned away from the screen in disgust. “Well, I’m glad he cleared that up. But the point is, I think, that I
do
believe him, and without reservation. Don’t you?” Here, he glanced at Deputy Executive Director Andover. “I see not. Well, that’s why we’re having this discussion. This man we just saw happens to be an Egyptian, but his views are commonly held not only by tens of millions of his countrymen, but also by hundreds of millions across the Islamic world. From country to country, capital to capital, mosque to mosque from Mauritania to Mongolia.”

DEADKEY cleared his throat. “Is there a point?”

Unperturbed, Banquo went on as before, “In a way I admire him. He wants the Jew dead, and he’s honest enough to say it. Which leaves people like us in a rather awkward position. Should we stand aside? Or stop him? And if we’re going to stop him, perhaps things have to change—so that it’s no longer simply reformers, moderates, and pro-Western politicians in the Middle East who wind up shot in the head or blown to pieces in their cars along with their wives and children. Ponder the question at your leisure.

“Anyway, I will need from you real-time updated Long Eye satellite information over Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East
on demand
. We
are going to turn our Peter Johnson problem into a Peter Johnson solution. Congratulations, Trevor, you’ve been promoted. You are now part of the big Us. That being:
us versus them
. As such you will string the Director along and maintain the story that this is a rogue operation—your favorite phrase—by a
rogue journalist
. You will feed that line to your friend Walter Pincus of the
Post
, among others. Meantime, I think the Iranians will want to know what they’ve really got in Johnson, and even if he starts implicating us immediately, it will take them a while to believe him. We have some time to play with.”

“So we are going to lie to everyone we know,” Andover said. “Cover up an assassination scheme. And then what? Send in the Marines to rescue your clown? Or better yet, suicide him? And remind me, what do we—sorry,
Us
—get out of all this?”

Banquo looked gravely at the pale slice of white bread across the desk. “We’re going to get him out, and if we don’t get him out, we’re going to minimize the damage of not getting him out,” and here Banquo dropped his voice, “one way or the other.”

“Just so I’m perfectly clear. What’s stopping them from squeezing your newest employee like a lemon?”

“Nothing. Let them. What’s he got to say? Not much. The twenty-four-hour hold-out rule doesn’t even apply to him.”

Andover looked away and shook his head, muttering to himself in horror at the entire business, “The
risk
.”

“There’s a word!” Banquo responded, as if Andover had been addressing him. “I have another for you: ‘Prevail.’ You know that one, right? Look it up on the thesaurus feature on your computer if you don’t. We’re going to try to disrupt the Iranian program again and again, until it’s clear that other means are necessary. We’re playing to win, Trevor. Add the word ‘victory’ to your vocabulary.”

DEADKEY snorted in contempt. “OK, let’s see where your man is.” He turned to the laptop on his desk and hit a few keys. The image on the CIA-SPAN plasma screen shuddered for a second, then crystallized to clarity. A satellite shot of the earth from a hundred miles up. In one corner of the screen the word “Asset” appeared, then a blinking cursor, awaiting an answer.