The guard made an impression.
The man looked like one of those Turkish wrestlers you saw in the summer Olympics when they’re broadcasting at 3 AM: coffee complexion, broad, balding, about 220 pounds, height five foot eight, and 100 percent solid beef. He wore his sidearm on a web belt. The rest of his outfit was like a hospital’s physical therapist—white sneakers, white pants, white T-shirt. Puffs of black hair from his back sprouted about his neck, melding into the smooth skin of the densest, closely shaved five o’clock shadow in the world.
“He’s right out of central casting in
Midnight Express
,” Johnson quipped. No one responded. The Guard stared at him; Wallets stared at him. While Banquo elegantly crossed his legs and flicked some invisible lint from his trouser leg.
“Actually, his name is Yossi, and he says he’s an Iranian Jew, but it would probably take an army of spooks and genealogists to determine his true origins,” Banquo explained. “We found him working in a Yemeni prison, masquerading as a common guard under an assumed name. He was pretending to conspire with some Al Qaeda lads who were plotting a breakout, hoping to eventually blow up something or other when they got over the wall. Typical Yemeni/Israeli security
service pony express operation. Send someone in, make nice through the bars, then after the breakout ride hell for leather to cut them off at the pass. At our request the Israelis urged the Yemenis to behead him in public, which they faked on TV, and we spirited him out. Now he’s ostensibly dead and can pass under the radar. For various common professional courtesies, I allow him to operate as Mossad’s mole in my house. He speaks Hebrew, Arabic, Berber, and Farsi. His English is so-so. He’s a very useful man to have around. Banquo & Duncan never opposes hiring men of dual loyalties; it’s dual results we abhor. Which brings us to the object of our lesson.”
Here he directed Johnson’s attention to the little man at the desk, still writing away, as if he were alone.
“Allow me to introduce Dr. Ramses Pahlevi Yahdzi of the University of Isfahan. Physicist and nuclear scientist.” The little man didn’t look up from his papers. Johnson repressed the urge to say, “How do you do?” to the little bent head. He was one of Banquo’s ghosts, an unobtrusive man willing to perform the mundane tasks without which the grandest operation couldn’t come off, from driving a car to playacting. Banquo’s silk-stocking voice kept on, to Johnson’s ear a rich blend of Boston Brahmin and Jean Pierre Robie in Hitchcock’s
To Catch a Thief
:
“Pahlevi Yahdzi, born April 23, 1945. Graduated Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vienna Mathematics Institute. Married, father of two. The Persian Robert Oppenheimer, the mullahs’ greatest living hope to acquire nuclear weapons, the single most important man in Iran. Not the imams, not the president who sees holy auras around himself—this gentleman. The man you’re going to interview, your nuclear tour guide on the Al Jazeera Fairytale Express. Peter, do you know what happens when Iran succeeds in testing its first atomic bomb?”
Without waiting for a reply, Banquo answered his own question:
“Here’s one scenario. Extreme, I admit, but within the range of plausibility. Oil goes to $500 a barrel. Iran becomes the hegemonic power in the Middle East region, using the Straits of Hormuz like the tollbooths on the Tri-Boro Bridge. The Mahdi Army of the shitty Shiite Sheik al Sadr reconstitutes itself and takes over most of Iraq. The U.S. forces in the entire region are ‘redeployed’ to Okinawa by an act of Congress.
Afghanistan returns to its natural troglodyte state. A long period of retreat sets in. Across Europe, the socialist democracies that presently suffer 14 to 18 percent unemployment, reach 20 to 25 percent unemployment in a single month, with spikes of 80 percent in their Muslim ghettos, and default on their national financial obligations. The nice parts of Paris are burned to the ground. The London Tube stops operating. Anonymous gangs murder a thousand Pakistanis in Berlin. Switzerland expels all nonwhites from its Cantons. Italy tries the same thing and fails. Vatican City is beset by immigrant riots. Nobody bothers noticing anymore the millions who perish in the pestilent sewer that is Africa, the Indian subcontinent, or other Southeast Asian cesspools.
“Closer to home, unemployment in the United States goes from 5 percent, close to statistical ‘full employment,’ to 19 percent overnight. Current officeholders are impeached or thrown out on their asses. People in the northern half of the Republic have trouble heating their homes in winter or getting fresh produce, while a new strain of pneumonia infects 25 to 35 percent of the population between October and May in the Rust Belt cities. Below the Mason Dixon line air conditioning becomes a luxury, is rationed, and for the first time in seventy years cities such as Atlanta and Houston, Vicksburg and Charleston, get a taste of what it was really like living in a Margaret Mitchell novel. Needless to say no one goes to the mall anymore. The only place you stop sweating is in a hospital emergency room and next to your Food Lion’s frozen food case. Death from heat stroke brought on by obesity becomes commonplace. Rats within city limits multiply. When Mr. Rat crawls out of his sewer into the sun to die in places like Orlando and Los Angeles, Disney World and Disneyland close their doors during the summer. Americans’ average life expectancy drops from seventy-nine years of age to sixty-five in five years. There are 10 million more deaths than expected; life insurance companies pay off on their policies, but rates skyrocket. Only millionaires can afford health insurance now, and they don’t need it. Predictably, the Social Security system and Medicare system
do
fail. Many U.S. cities are effectively governed by the National Guard. Or worse, semi-organized crime.”
Banquo took a breath. “That’s what happens if we’re lucky. If we’re not so lucky things could be much, much worse. President Ahmadinejad ushers in The End of Days. His promise to ‘wipe Israel off the map’ is kept. Several technologically enhanced dirty bombs are detonated in the cities of Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa, their population centers poisoned. No one claims responsibility, but Arab populations across the Middle East erupt in spontaneous celebration. The United Nations in New York issues a strongly worded statement condemning the violence and asks Israel to refrain from ‘disproportionate’ retaliation.”
Banquo paused again. “Contrary to expectations due to internal miscommunications and a strong peace contingent in the Knesset—the IDF does not immediately retaliate against any Arab or Persian country. Casualties, dead and wounded, in the Jewish cities reach a hundred thousand. First five thousand initial deaths, then lingering radiation sickness from a contaminated water supply. As the country staggers toward collapse, rogue elements of the Israeli Air Force execute their own action, code named Down from Sinai—simultaneously bombing Qom, Tehran, Riyadh, Mecca, Cairo, and Damascus with thermonuclear weapons. Arab and Persian casualties are estimated at 60 to 70 million—”
Banquo’s refined and assured voice floated across the room. The little man at the desk did not look up. Peter Johnson found his hands sweating despite himself, and he rubbed them on his trousers.
“At this moment, various Jihadi sleeper cells in the United States are activated. Even as a resolution in the United Nations is unanimously passed by all countries—and quietly supported by a Democratic administration—which demands that the surviving Jews in the United States pay ‘reparations’ to the afflicted countries. To no one’s surprise and to little avail, many of America’s richest Jews willingly offer to comply. One of the few who doesn’t is George Soros—who emigrates to New Zealand, and just in the nick of time.”
Banquo wasn’t even looking at Johnson but examining his trimmed and clean fingernails. “You see, the five steamer-trunk sized ‘suitcase’ nukes placed here by the KGB during the Cold War, and which we’ve been looking high and low for, lo these many years, are suddenly
discovered in various storage facilities and locked water closets in the subterranean basements of various urban skyscrapers.
But not by us.
By guys named Vronksy and Karenin and Karamazov, who want to kick us while we’re down. Four of them don’t go off, given that they are Soviet engineering at its most reliable—but one
does
. Along with a few of those dirty bombs that proved so useful in Israel. Well, they’re useful here too. Miami, Chicago, New York, Seattle, almost every major city gets one. Casualties of more than one million U.S. citizens. And no one claims responsibility. All property and casualty insurance of any nature whatsoever defaults. The United Nations relocates to parts of Westchester County in order to issue another strongly worded statement. Five million people attempt to flee the tri-state New York City area. Later generations will call it, ‘The Great March to Nowhere.’ ”
Banquo stared at nothing in particular for a moment or two, then snapped back and looked at Johnson with a little smile.
“How did Cyril Connolly put it, Peter, although prematurely?”
“‘Closing time in the gardens of the West.’”
“Precisely. Call me an alarmist; argue with some of it. Fill in your own details if you like. They don’t matter; the trajectory on which we are headed matters. Nothing else.”
“There are ways to stop this,” Banquo continued, after a breath. “The United States can for the second time—the Iraq war of course being the first—launch a pre-emptive war based on shaky intelligence. Intelligence that is not going to be accepted by the collective tyrants, crooks, bed wetters, and pantywaists of the so-called ‘international community.’ But take it from me—we will
never
do it. Even if we did, we wouldn’t be able to destroy Iran’s physical assets, short of using bunker-busters or mini-nukes. What American president wants to have a couple little Nagasakis to his name? Eh, Peter? You’re the political writer.”
Banquo kept driving nails into the coffin of current delusions:
“So we continue to squeeze the Iranians with economic sanctions and hope something comes from it. The triumph of hope over experience, right, Peter? You’ve been married how many times? We will never be able to levy enough sanctions to convince the Iranians to abandon dreams of the strategic doomsday weapon they nearly have within their
grasp. Never. The Russians and Chinese have opened the toy soldier store seven days a week, selling on credit. Did you notice any dirty bombs going off in Moscow or Beijing in my scenario?
“They know which side looks like a winner. And it’s not us. Oil at a couple hundred dollars a barrel means Mr. Putin or his nearest henchman can dream of endless Soviet Summers. Can shut down the press at will by friendly persuasion, hostile takeover, or murder most foul in London Sushi bars, leaving them free to slaughter whomever they like in any former Soviet so-called republics. As for the Celestials, Beijing has been cushioning itself against this kind of oil shock for years: employing side deals with grubby Third World greaseballs the world over. Pardon my French. When the shock hits, China will likely move in to directly administer these areas, finally securing its share of colonial spoils a mere century late, with names like The Caribbean Kowloon Oil Company or Hong Kong Energy—and again, who is going to stop them from walking into Taiwan or even Indochina? Beg your pardon, I mean Vietnam. A nuclear-free
Japan
? We’ll all be the Castratos of the Straits of Hormuz.”
Banquo looked right at him. The always glib Johnson had nothing to say, feeling slightly stupid standing in the middle of the room on that fine Persian rug in front of everyone. He didn’t even shrug or meet the sophisticated man’s eyes. He looked down.
“There is one way out,” Banquo continued at length, “that could avert all these terrible consequences.” He paused, weighing his words. “But such a way out would take a very unusual fellow. A loose cannon. Someone flagrantly on record opposing the U.S. government. Someone so unreliable that no one in their right mind could possibly think we’d entrust him with even the simplest of errands. An amateur, a simpleton, a naïf, a cad with a history of heavy drinking and erratic behavior. A corrupt letch so utterly unaccountable he’d go off half-cocked at the first opportunity like the jack-in-the-box
everyone knows
he is.”
Banquo stopped again. Wallets, hunched over in his chair with his elbows on his knees, looked up from the carpet, arched his eyebrows at Johnson.
Banquo picked up his thread again. “Human capital matters more than anything else in this world. There are such things as indispensable men, Peter. The Dr. Yahdzi whose simulacrum you see here is one. All those centrifuges, all the nuclear infrastructure, the countless millions spent—none of it matters without the man who knows the physics and the engineering: the one man capable of bringing a 7
th
century Islamic tyranny into the nuclear 21
st
century, without the slightest moderating influence of the Renaissance, the Reformation, or the Age of Reason. That single man is on the verge of delivering to crazed monkeys high on Apocalyptic crack a supply of radioactive handguns, matches, and gasoline—then sending them into a kindergarten with unsupervised children and hoping for the best. That’s why I introduced you two just now. You see, you could be an indispensable man too.”
Now Banquo leaned toward Johnson, almost in a posture of pleading: “You can stop all of this, Peter, perhaps delay it enough that other events will intervene. Cooler heads. The tectonic plates of world politics will eventually pause, adjust,
relax
. Then we can avoid the earthquakes, the next tsunami, the next volcanic eruption. We just need a little time.”
For all this elaborate Greatest Game gumbo, most of which made Johnson want to sneer, he knew enough not to laugh this time. Laid starkly in front of him was a real bit of derring-do: the place where all the jokes came to die in the face of a single mission.
His
mission. Not some document drop, shady banking, or some cheesy bribe. But something much darker. Something irrevocable.