Banquo's Ghosts (9 page)

Climbing onto a stage draped over with a giant yellow cloth, Sheik Nasrallah, the Hezbollah warlord, appeared in his usual black turban, followed by his retinue and security men. Three of his retinue’s turbans flashed yellow “here we are!” as they headed onto the stage, then disappeared against the bright yellow cloth. Yellow on yellow didn’t show up, a glitch—the color of the marker should automatically change. He’d have to talk to Bryce about that. Another
damn
glitch. But what troubled Deputy Director Andover was the great man himself. Nasrallah’s turban was
not
yellow. The carefully marked turbans were getting spread around to the
wrong
heads. And Nasrallah’s headgear wasn’t blinking.

Andover went back to the window, disgusted. He’d have to talk to Bryce about that too. See if they could plant a blinking turban on the great man’s head. What was the bloody point if the turban didn’t blink? Ahhh—the young lad himself knocked and entered without waiting.

“You wished to see me, sir?”

“Yes, Bryce, take a chair.” His assistant sat. Bryce was of slender build. He wore wire-rimmed glasses under short curly hair that he tried to keep under control with a prodigious amount of mousse making the top of his head shiny and seemingly impregnable. Andover looked back out his window.

“You know, Bryce, I brought you over, and
up
, I might add, from the State Department’s backwater Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the office of nobodies, because I know your father. The Attorney General of the United States. And your father, the Attorney General of the United States, told me you were a smart kid and a fast learner. Smart and fast. Smart and fast. I’d like you to be one of those things. Either will do.”

Bryce sat back in his chair prepared to listen, staring calmly at Deputy Director Andover’s back. The patrician always started out this way. First came the tongue-lashing, then came the lecture in which DEADKEY showed how impressively learned he was, then came the requests for action. Nothing new here.

The deputy director took a deep breath, “I’ve directed the Action Center to unplug our assets in Turdistan at the request of State. The striped-pants know-it-alls think they’re going to referee the spoiled brats at Turtle Bay to force the turbans to lift their nuclear skirts for us. Okay, so we’ll play nice for a month or two.”

Bryce blinked at all the name-calling, but Trevor Andover always had an adder’s tongue.

Translation: The State Department has requested any pathetic vestiges of our human intelligence personnel in Iran to lay low or withdraw to Kurdistan, while they took their bloody good time dancing a minuet at the United Nations with the president of Iran, he of the nuclear skirts, in hopes of forcing him to do something stupid, either show us his hand, castrate himself into a political eunuch, or bluff himself into a war. Any of the above would do. But it would probably turn out to be Russian roulette, with neither set of diplomats knowing which way the gun really pointed.

Andover turned and picked up a paper on his desk. “Now I’ve got a red flag from DOS that they’ve processed
three
—get that? three—Green Books, plus visas, and confirmed plane tickets for Tehran International, and sent the blank Green Books to Banquo & Duncan in New York. Photos TBS.”

Translation: The Directorate of Support notified the Deputy Executive Director that they processed three Green Books, i.e., Passports—color green for the Middle East—in this case Iranian Passports, with photos TBS—To Be Supplied later by Banquo & Duncan. Therefore Banquo’s gang in New York was planning on sending three of their people into Iran, on some sort of look-see, cloak-and-dagger op. Despite the Deputy Executive Director’s direct orders, orders from DEADKEY stating to all departments and agencies: Stand Down.

Andover sat behind the desk, flipping the red flag notification into the wastebasket.

“I want you to go to New York. Tonight.”

“All right. But why didn’t we simply email the old fart and request his presence for dressing down?”

“On what pretext, pray tell?”

“Cut off his funds. He’ll come down.”

Andover’s mild blue eyes grew exasperated. He rose from his place, went to a bookshelf, and took out a bound folder the size of the Manhattan yellow pages, then tossed it into Bryce’s lap. His aide jumped as it hit his thighs.

“Young man, sitting on your prep-school pecker is the
$30 billion
Central Intelligence Agency Budget for the year 2006, several years out of date. In it you may indeed find the $5 million our Agency spends on our old friend Banquo. Actually it’s only $2.5 million, as we share it with some clowns with the White House’s NSA guys, or the National Intelligence Director’s office. I can’t remember which, and they don’t even know.”

What came next was a rebuke:

“Banquo’s shop actually runs on about $35 million a year. He has four expert Exchange Traders working the street 24/7/365 who last year alone beat the S&P by seven points. You think our crummy $2 million is going to get him down to this office? Have a Pimm’s Cup on me. That ‘old fart’ as you call him is actually ‘old school.’ He pays his way. A government operation that turns a profit every year, even in down markets—
imagine
that. Just because the director doesn’t take him seriously doesn’t mean he doesn’t rightly take
himself
seriously.”

Without a touch of embarrassment Bryce reversed himself completely. “What should I do in New York?”

“Thank you for asking. I want you to dig up the son of Banquo’s old associate—Fanon, O’Bannon—”

“
O’Hanlon
. Deputy U.S. Attorney, Southern District. His
dad
was Banquo’s partner?”

“I’d stick to ‘associate.’ And you march right into that cheap Mick’s office and get us wiretaps. Brain whatever judge you have to. Home and office.”

“You want it official then?”

“Clearly. I want a record.”

“So you want Banquo & Duncan’s phone and personal computers tapped? Do you also want surveillance to include the physical office space too?”

“No, no point. That boy scout of his sweeps the suite twice a week. But I do want roving taps on street-side conversations.”

“If he’s old school like you say, he’s very careful.”

“True enough,” Andover admitted. “But everyone slips up once in a while.”

Without saying farewell, Bryce rose and left DEADKEY’s office. The plasma screen had frozen in pixilated fragments, how nice . . . electronic modern art. Put it in a museum. Director Andover realized he’d forgotten to tell Bryce about the turbans and the software color glitch. The screen cleared, but only to a pleasant blue field this time with the caption:
sorry, temporarily out of service
. . .

The United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York kept his offices at 86 Chambers Street in lower Manhattan. But Bryce didn’t go there; instead he went to O’Hanlon’s house in the Westchester suburb of Hastings-on-Hudson just as the commuters were leaving for the city. What used to be called a “bedroom” community was really Manhattan North, with houses starting at $600,000 up from $200,000 not ten years ago, three- and four-bedroom Tudors with a half an acre’s lawn and swell backyards, on roads named Maple Street, Oak Lane, and Shady Dell. Places the lower-middle class clawed their way to from ugly Bronx streets, way back in the dark ages of the 1950s and 1960s, and thought themselves damn lucky. Now the sons and daughters of those early Westchester pioneers clung on with their fingernails, Mom taking that extra job just to pay the property taxes.

Bryce watched from the sedan’s window, as O’Hanlon’s family got ready for the day. First the two girls came out the front door, hovered over by the Missus and packed into the school bus with their Pokemon knapsacks. Then O’Hanlon himself, carrying a briefcase and large stainless steel coffee mug. The Missus would drive him to the Hudson branch of Metro-North in the white Ford minivan. Bryce got out of the sedan, leaving the door open.

He walked toward the couple: “Mr. O’Hanlon? Can I give you a lift?” And then drifted back toward the other side of the street again.

The Deputy U.S. Attorney looked up sharply, then at the sedan under the shade of the trees. A worried look crossed the Missus’ face, but he reassured her. “It’s okay.” Getting her to focus on Bryce standing across the suburban street. “He’s got ‘DC’ written all over him. Get a load of that paisley bow tie for Chrissakes. Look up the word ‘Poindexter’ in Webster’s, and his friggin’ picture’s there.”

The Missus laughed hard. She was a handsome woman, and you could see she liked her husband. “Hey, watch your mouth, mister. I got some soap inside,” she chastised him. “Or you’ll be talking to Father Meeks through the little screen.”

O’Hanlon chuckled and walked across the street.

“See ya later, Angel.”

Somewhere on the Henry Hudson Parkway southbound, below the George Washington Bridge’s bumper-to-bumper ramp traffic, O’Hanlon was still holding Bryce’s government ID. The cute picture, the Eagle Shield Badge with the red compass star. He had glanced at the Coach leather ID case when Bryce handed it to him and kept glancing at the thing without returning it. Clearly it annoyed Bryce, but he didn’t own the onions to ask for his property back. And the geek had pissed O’Hanlon off. Instead of just saying what he needed from the Department of Justice, he was doing some smart-aleck routine, either just to show off or because he thought he was being intimidating. From the wheel, Bryce repeated facts he had remembered on the flight up, adding his commentary as he went:

“Patrick O’Hanlon, forty-seven, U.S. Attorney, Criminal Division, Southern District of New York. Married, Angela Sandolini, Italian, two daughters, nine and twelve. Votes Democratic—”

Then as an aside, “We have to fix that, eh?” When O’Hanlon didn’t respond, the dossier went on: “Grew up on Grand Avenue in the Bronx, then Riverdale, Fordham Law, top of your class. So you moved out of the neighborhood, north a little, into your late father- and mother-in-law’s split-level colonial—but Angela still gets you to buy mozzarella and homemade cannelloni on Arthur Avenue, just like her folks did,
right? You both go to that little pastry shop, Il Dolce, where you used to take Angela way back when her name was Italian, when you were courting, when the two little girls were but a gleam in your—”

Which is when O’Hanlon pressed the window button and nonchalantly tossed Bryce’s Very Important CIA identification card and badge in its chichi Coach leather holder out the window. The thing landed in a grimy puddle with a black splash, and the sedan was a quarter mile away before Bryce could even get his breath. The cheap Mick had given him a wedgy, and there was nothing he could do about it. Thank you, sir, may I have another?

“Sorry,” O’Hanlon said softly. “It slipped out of my hand. I’m sure they’ll replace the Coach case too, if you kept a receipt and promise not to lose it again.” Bryce, clearly overmatched, looked over at the Irish lawyer with a mixture of loathing and now respect.

Fear.

“I’ll come directly to the point, then.”

Bryce followed O’Hanlon into the lobby at 86 Chambers Street, but without his fancy CIA identification. Bryce pulled out his wallet and went digging for his Maryland driver’s license. The DOJ lawyer merely said to the guard at the desk, “It’s okay—he’s with me. He’ll sign in on the way out.”

In the elevator on the way up, O’Hanlon told his guest, “If we decide to pass on your little proposal, I’m not sure I even
want
you signing in on the way out. I think I’d like you better if you were never here.”

The elevator doors opened, and they both exited, through more double glass. The lawyer waved at the sharp girl at the receptionist desk, who said, “Fix your tie, Paddy.” Then as they walked past open cubicle doors, O’Hanlon stuck his head into two offices in succession, saying, “Hey, got a minute? Hey, got a minute?”

The two men arrived at a door that said: