Wag the Dog (55 page)

Next time they have a war, they better run it right.

But he kept Taylor.

He knew that Taylor wasn't going to change. He would be neither better nor worse. But Bunker figured that this little
universe, the one that orbited around this particular secret was going to change, and when it did, those things that Taylor was would turn out to be the right things, just as they appeared to have been the wrong things yesterday. Taylor was dogged and persistent and he hated Joe Broz enough that Joe couldn't fool him.

C. H. liked Joe. Owed him for that matter. But he had a suspicion that Joe was throwing sand in their eyes. Ballsy move walking in. It was exactly what an innocent man would do. If he wasn't throwing sand, then more power to him, hope he had a good ride on that randy woman with her good breasts and long flanks. Certainly as prime as prime could get.

What C. H. did was put Sheehan in charge of the L.A. office, temporarily, with Taylor under him, a serious loss of face, so that Taylor would feel the pain and the goad.

He told Taylor, “Let Broz run if he's running. He's a damn fine ferret. If there's something there, let him find it. Then snatch it from him.
Then
shut him down.”

According to David Hartman's passport, he was Episcopalian. It was a small deception and made everyone more comfortable when he entered Iraq. Apparently, no one at Passport Control or among the intimates of the country's ruler was a regular reader of
Premiere
magazine or of “Sherie” or “Suzi” in any of the many places that they're syndicated, because nobody said to him, “Hey, I read about the mega-bar mitzvah you had for your son. How come he had a bar mitzvah if you're Episcopalian? Huh?”

If James Baker had met with Hussein, or George Bush had made contact, someone would have taken note. But the world's “serious” media paid no attention when David Hartman arrived in Baghdad. Hartman had a letter of introduction from the president that said, in appropriately flowery Arabic, that the bearer brought greetings and was acting on the president's behalf. Hartman destroyed this letter as soon as possible after meeting Hussein. Unlike the Atwater memo, which still rested in his safe.

Although Saddam is a naturally cautious and deeply
suspicious person, the offer did not appear to shock him or disturb him at all. He had certain conditions, of course. Also, because some of his needs were very pressing, there were things he wanted from the United States
immediately
—as a gesture, gifts of goodwill, even, Allah willing, a first exchange in the bargain that they would soon strike.

Hartman said that sounded reasonable.

It would have been ungracious to refuse the tour of Baghdad that his host offered him. As a result, he stayed the night. The next morning he flew to Rome, where he met with several old acquaintances involved in finance and film. They were part of that labyrinth of personal connections that runs Italy. Hartman was looking, he said, for a bank that could handle large sums with great discretion. Preferably, one with an American subsidiary or branch because, if the funds came out of the States, at least on paper, they could be guaranteed by the United States. His friends knew of several.

Hartman wished he could stay. There was something wonderful about Rome. It was the mother of cities and had defined so much of civilization. Empire. Wealth. Corruption. Opportunity. When he was there, as in few other places, the stones of the centuries, layered in ruin and glory, spoke to him that Hollywood was nothing new. It reassured him that that much insanity had existed, in exuberant splendor, somewhere else, that it had not fallen apart in minutes, as it ought, but lasted, growing ever more grandiloquent, for generations.

From there he went to Geneva. Another banking conference. The banker shook his hand when they were done. “Just don't hire Fawn Hall
¹⁰⁷
as your secretary,” he said, “and all will be well.” He chuckled mightily. Swiss bankers are aware of their image and take great care to live up to it. So by Swiss banking standards, chortling was high hilarity.

 

 

 

¹⁰⁷
Ollie North set up a secret Swiss bank account—he'd seen them in the movies or read about them in thrillers—to transfer funds to the contras. He received $10 million from the sultan of Brunei. He directed Fawn to have it sent to the numbered account. She transposed two digits and had the money sent to someone else's account. It was missing from August to December 1986 (
Los Angeles Times
6/3/87).

T
HE DISC TURNS
out to be written in UNIX. It is, I am told, an incredibly complex and ingenious program for editing on multiple screens at once. Probably ten screens. It is similar to Edit-Droid, which is the Lucasfilm editing system, but a lot more powerful. The disc is not the actual command program; it is the plain text printout of the commands. It's interesting to film people because it actually gives the names of the sources, where in the film, by time code, the clips are, and how long they last. There doesn't seem to be any particular reason for Teddy to have it. Or not have it. All it shows is that someone with a sophisticated editing system is making a montage of war movies. If you get all those movies together, you could figure
out what the montage might have looked like. At least a few minutes' worth, anyway.

So that does nothing for us. Which brings me back to the joke about Sergeant Kim's dojo and ROK.

When Kim first opens up, it's right after Vietnam and there are a lot of crazies around who are into martial arts. On the edge, over the edge, out of control. Because Kim is who he is—he has this military reputation—these types gravitate toward his dojo. Koreans are hardworking, business-oriented people. They figure out what customers want and give it to them.

Most civilians, most normal people, who want to learn martial arts, they don't want to be practicing with some gonzo vet who might snap into a combat flashback. At the same time, Kim does not want to lose any part of the market. You can see that—he's got that section where he sells all the martial-arts equipment, and he's always telling his students they'll do better if they eat Korean food, and he sends them next door to his nephew's fish store and Korean grocery, and whenever he hears about some way that another dojo is getting more customers, Kim does it too. Like the self-defense-for-women thing. So what Kim does, to keep the crazies who see martial arts more as unarmed combat than as a future Olympic sport, but to get them out of the way, he opens a special room upstairs.

Let me explain it this way. ROK is sort of a pun. You don't expect Sergeant Kim to have much of a sense of humor, but he does. ROK is Republic of Killers. That's what you have to be to be a member. You have to have killed somebody. Preferably hand-to-hand.

It's not as intense as it sounds. Though it's intense enough. Killing someone in the war, that counts. That's where most of us did it. In combat. It's a club of killers, not of murderers.

This, of course, is what Kim is telling me when he puts me on the mat with Hawk. Here are people outside the loop of U. Sec. and RepCo who will do anything. It is from ROK that I can recruit backup. I have been expecting this time to come and I have, in fact, picked out some guys who I think will be good and will help. There is Hawk, who I have told you about. Paul Dressier is an accountant and ex-Green Beret, working on a
divorce, so he is full of rage and a need to commit justice and if he can't, injustice will do. Dennis O'Leary, a one-eyed gaffer who gets less work than he should because he once argued about a pair of seats at a screening that had been held for guests of David Geffen. Bruno, the plumber, and Jorge, the grocer. Depending on what happens, maybe more. Plus, there is Steve and his son. Also, if we end up going up against Sakuro Juzo and his Ninja, I think Kim will come out. Behind the money making and the drinking and the grousing is the best soldier that I have ever known. Including the best of the VC and the NVA.

Steve and his son travel with us. Hawk and O'Leary, who just got off a nonunion picture, travel separately and meet us at Maggie's house in Napa. Not far from John Lincoln Beagle's vineyard, where, as all Hollywood knows, he is attempting a reconciliation with Jacqueline Conroy in the hopes of being able to live a family life and keep his son.

Maggie has acres and acres. The vines, staked out in rows, travel in lines over the hills and follow the contours. It makes me realize a whole other level of her wealth and the wealth of the world that I have entered into. The master bedroom, which is on the second floor, has a large window. There's a fat white moon that shines into our room. In the middle of the night I say to her, “Do you have a father or a brother around somewhere?”

“Why's that?”

“Doing what we're doing, the way we're doing it, you're going to get fat and round one day soon. Then someone, like a father or brother, they're supposed to come round with a shotgun, make me marry you.”

“That's the only way you'd marry me?”

“It wouldn't look like I was marrying you for your money.”

“Umm, that's nice,” she says. She holds me tight.

Later I unwrap her arms from around me and slip out of bed. I go downstairs to the other end of the house, where the guest rooms are. Hawk and O'Leary are waiting for me. They're dressed in camouflage khaki and brown. We darken our faces and go out.

T
WO MEN SAT
in a van on the side of the road. One poured a cup of coffee from a thermos, then unwrapped a ham sandwich covered in Saran Wrap. It had Grey Poupon mustard on it because his wife believed the things she saw on television. The other man got out of the car to take a leak in the bushes.

They were out of the Sacramento office of Universal Security. It was too bad that someone had found every single LD in Magdalena Lazlo's house, ripped them out or neutralized them. They hadn't a clue what was going on inside. They made rude speculations what with her being in there with white and black men, but they didn't believe what they suggested, they were just passing the time. They were on the midnight-to-eight shift; time moved slow.

They could see the driveway and in both directions along the road that led to it. Nobody was going to go in or out that way without being seen. They had night-viewing devices. But they didn't need them. The moon was fat and bright.

A man and a woman sat in a car on the side of the road. Both of their spouses were certain they were having an affair. Whenever she went on surveillance with a guy, any guy, the wife was always certain they were doing it. They weren't.

They had John Lincoln Beagle's house in view. They had night-viewing devices but didn't need them. It was the kind of
moon that was so bright that it threw shadows and even let you see what color things were.