I wanted to pop in here to let “Big Hollywood” readers know about the just-published spy thriller I wrote with my friend Keith Korman. What is it like? Well, think of an episode of “24” written by Proust. OK, maybe not quite. But it is a thriller with a point of view. We try to keep the plot moving, while satirizing the chattering class and skewering the imbecilities of America’s political/media culture. The basic plot is that a Mahattan-based, dissolute left-wing journalist (Peter Johnson), who writes for a journal edited by a predatory and impossibly shameless editrix (Josephine von Hildebrand), is sent on a rogue mission to assassinate Iran’s top nuclear scientist by an all-but-forgotten CIA spymaster (Stewart Banquo, of the title). Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and Larry King all make cameo appearances, among many others. The book’s approach is that the best way to fight back against the mainstream-media/conventional-wisdom complex is to laugh at it.
CHAPTER ONE
The Drunk
He sat in a ramshackle office chair staring at the little red light in the video camera and let the little red video light stare right back. Sounds trickled into his head from the earpiece, the familiar theme music of the cable news show six thousand miles away and then that raspy voice from the guy who never missed the chance to ask a creampuff question:
“And joining us live from Tehran, the daring journalist Peter Johnson. The same Peter Johnson who has an opinion about everything and now boasts exclusive access to the Iranian government, its officials, its mullahs, its power brokers. Every beard and every turban.” The raspy familiar voice
like its own sound. “So tell us, Peter, how’re they treating you over there?”
“Fine, Larry. Fine.” Johnson smiled. God, he could feel how pasty and blotched he looked. His skin a moist rubber mask. And the strands of hair he tried to comb onto his forehead from his scalp hinted at the merest plausibility of bangs. A suave geek. The perfect intellectualoid. “I think they’re glad to have someone over here listening to them for once.” An awkward pause due to satellite delay, then Larry King’s disembodied voice slid into Johnson’s ear like sand. But it was too late; Johnson had already started to talk again. He couldn’t help it, a natural reflex to fill any dead air. Chat show guestitis. When he finally became disentangled from Larry, the host got out, “I noticed you’re growing a beard-does it help you fit in over there?”
“Not much can help a sophisticated New Yorker fit in over here, Larry.” Johnson looked unshaven, with blue circles beneath his eyes. He could guess what anyone familiar with his reputation must have been thinking-hung over, maybe barely sober. If only they knew how hard it was to get a drink in this crummy town. Dry mouth, dry streets. The dingy studio room at the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance-Foreign Press and Media Department smelled of unwashed feet; a faded cityscape poster of “exotic” Tehran hung on the wall behind him, his backdrop for the CNN setup. An evening shot, streams of cars, the fairy lights of Scheherazade, all frozen. It might have been snatched from an Iran Air tourist office-about the time of the Shah. Along with the table, the chairs, the grime on the walls. Nothing here was new.
A bearded technician crouched behind the camera, impossible to make out from the glaring single spotlight aimed straight at Johnson. He smelled of tobacco and French cologne. A nice enough fellow when he had introduced himself, helping with the earpiece and mike. Soft, gentle hands; clean, manicured nails. Johnson had already forgotten his name. Was it Mohammed-Muhammed, first name and last? The gravelly voice came again. “Now tell us, Peter-nuke or no nuke?” This was easy. He hoped no one thought the moisture tickling his shiny forehead was panic sweat-oh, what he’d give for some powder right now.
“Unequivocally, no nuke, Larry. What can I say, except what everyone else knows? This is another put-on, another confabulation by the same people who always lust after another good war. What people don’t realize is that Iran’s oil reserves aren’t inexhaustible, and that this government is planning for the future by developing an alternative source of energy. I am told by my sources in the Ministry of Energy that by the year 2015 nearly 20 percent of Iran’s domestic power will be nuclear, and this will preserve oil, this country’s most important source of revenue. Larry, some powerful people in America apparently believe they are the only ones who should be allowed to get rich off of oil.”
Huh-han-huh-Larry bleated out his practiced laugh that was something between a chuckle and a smoker’s cough. Now the tough question, or what passed for it: “Okay, you know this is coming. We’ve got those bloggers claiming you took money from the Hussein government in Iraq back before it fell.”
“But who’s paying them to make those accusations? Web loggers? Why don’t we just call them what they are. Web Liars. Let’s see the proof, Larry. Otherwise it’s just a smear.”
“So no Cypriot vineyards in your portfolio? No stock from the Nigerian Parking Garage Corporation in Lagos?”
“I don’t think so, Larry. I don’t even own a car. And . . . to quote Dracula, ‘I never drink-wine.'”
Larry harrumphed again. “We’ll leave it right there, with Peter Johnson, the controversial journalist, live from . . .” The earpiece went dead. The light switched off. Mohammed-Muhammed emerged from behind the camera and gave him thumbs up, then chuckled and shook his head.
Johnson wiped his forehead and looked at the technician with an open-palmed gesture. “What?”
“You don’t take Saddam’s money?” the technician asked, as he walked beside Johnson toward the door. Then, incredulous: “Why not? Everyone take Saddam’s money. But not you? Hah.” Mohammed- Muhammed threw him an easy, gracious smile, before opening the door and stepping aside to usher his journalist out with a broad sweep of the hand. “I don’t believe you.”
Join the club, Johnson thought.
The door shut behind him, and Johnson was out in the stuffy hallway, staring at his bare dry hands. His fingers trembled ever so slightly. From lack of drink? From the daggers of the man’s smile? Or from thoughts of the test to come?
Didn’t matter. He remembered the promise. It seemed long ago and far away, made by a man sitting at a well-appointed desk. We’ll provide a gun when the time is right. When the time is right. Sheesh. He stuffed his dry, shaky hands in his pockets and left the building.
CHAPTER TWO
In the Tar Pool
Stewart Banquo’s office in 30 Rockefeller Plaza overlooked the skating rink and the spill pools of the promenade. The sounds of midtown Manhattan evening traffic, coursing down Fifth Avenue, drifted through the thick glass of the window into his wood-paneled office. The chiseled lettering in gold on the double oaken door read
Banquo & Duncan
Investment Banking
Or so everyone was told. As for Duncan, a pure cutout, dead as Jacob Marley, since no such personage ever existed at all. Tonight Banquo sat at his desk, a man alone. The bare, polished surface gleamed at him from a green-shaded banker’s desk lamp, his own murky reflection featureless, like a face staring up from the vast deep. The rest of the room in shadow.
The large plasma TV screen across his darkened office showed its pretty, high-definition colors, way too effective for the grainy moving images coming through the military satellite broadband feed. Jerky shots as if coming from a small hand-held camera, now posted like YouTube for general dissemination in the intelligence community. A Middle Eastern locale: “Southern Lebanon, town of Bint Jbeil” read the white caption. A daytime street scene: hovels, rubble, apartment buildings. A dozen men marched three prisoners out into the street, the jerky video following them along. The prisoners stumbled toward a bulletriddled wall, wearing knock-off jogging sweats, Michael Jordan wear, an Ice T-shirt-hopelessly out of date. Clumsily, they kneeled. The dozen men-executioners with hoods-let fly with AK-47s into the prisoners’ backs and heads. The closed captioning-style line of type at the bottom of the Langley feed read:
. . . Presumed Hezbo execution, presumed members of Tazloum or Gemayel clan, opponents of Iranian-Nasrallah organization. . . humint ops Lang cnt confirm . . .
So Hezbollah was knocking off some local opposition, while some dung beetle taped it all for posterity and propaganda-“presumably.” Was it a sign of weakness or of strength, of an impending operation or of business as usual? Well, Human Intelligence Operations at Langley “cannot confirm.” In other words, situation normal: nobody knew jack.
The image on the plasma monitor smoothly dissolved and reformed. No more jerky YouTube propaganda but the real deal: a spy satellite enhanced image. A new feed from Langley’s C-SPAN. The military had what it called “happy snaps,” satellite pictures famous for mesmerizing any civilians sitting around a table at a meeting. This stuff put happy snaps to shame. Southern Lebanon again. Though the only way you could tell would be by reading the captions. The satellite’s name: Long Eye; longitude and latitude: 35 28′ E 33 54′ N; time: 0932Z; place: LEBANON Iranian Embassy, Bear Hasan, Beirut. Four men in turbans came out of the Iranian Embassy and got into a waiting Mercedes sedan. The Mercedes drove off. The image jumped again, back to the men walking to the car, and zoomed in closer and closer until it seemed you were standing ten feet over one of the turbans. Now the turban began to turn yellow-green, as though to identify itself. See? This turban. Here I am. The caption on the feed read: “Nasrallah leaves Iranian Embassy: 0932Z.” Ah, so some clever PhD at Langley had figured out how to paint the Shiite’s turban with some low-grade uranium dioxide, once used in ceramic glazes. Then a kind of black-light filter on the satellite teased out its color. You see? We can see him from space.
Banquo pursed his lips and thought: Not bad. Probably bribed the man’s turban-winder. Yes, such men existed, earning their bread in Oriental countries, winding turbans for a living. Countless thousands of such men, as common as barbers in the West, from London to Bangkok. And easily enough bribed if you could find them. Just one problem: if the client was smart, and Nasrallah was smart enough, he’d be bribing his turban-winder too. Ensuring loyalty. Now another fellow could be wearing the turban, maybe his brother-in-law, or some unrelated poor sap, or even the local administrator of a Red Crescent Hospital whose untimely demise at the hands of the geniuses who thought up this turban-dying scheme would give rise to international outrage. Not that Nasrallah even needed to know about Langley’s clever fabric-tagging system. Assassins had been poisoning people’s garments in that part of the world for a thousand years. It paid to be careful. A paranoid might wear a new turban every day.
Or Nasrallah might leave his fidai-his body double-to wear the hand-me-downs in the ancient Oriental practice of employing a lookalike. The Sheik’s 7th century answer to his 21st century problem. All done with a little baksheesh. Six thousand Lebanese pounds to be exact, the princely sum of four whole U.S. dollars in cold cash. It could trump $20 million plus in hardware, software, and satellite time. All so some clown at Langley could write the line in the president’s daily brief tomorrow morning: “Nasrallah Leaves Iranian Embassy, Beirut: 0932Z.” Whether it was true or not.
“We’re losing,” Banquo whispered to the walls.
Had he made the problem even worse? The thought nagged him. Risking disaster by sending a gin-soaked scribbler to do a man’s job?
One of Banquo’s associates knocked on the office door, opened it a crack, and muttered, “Our guy’s on Larry King; we’ve got it on in the conference room. Wanna watch?”
“No, thank you.”
He already knew what Peter Johnson would say. After all, they had deliberately recruited the man for his solid leftist credentials and his easy way with fashionable agitprop. That’s exactly what made him useful. That, and his reputation as a drunk. Banquo had put an extra pair of eyes on Johnson’s Lufthansa flight to watch their man safely through Tehran customs. During the flight Johnson pounded back enough First Class bourbons to embalm a horse. Now, two days incountry the fellow must be feeling pretty shaky. But not so shaky as to miss a TV appearance. Well and good-the firm didn’t pick him for his uprightness.
His associate stood at the door and seemed to be waiting for something more. “Glad he made the show,” Banquo told him. “Means he hasn’t gone off the rails.”
The door closed without reply. And the shadows engulfed him. Banquo & Duncan. Some twenty-five years ago they let him pick his own name for the outfit, back when people had a sense of humor and Stewart Bancroft-his real name, long forgotten-had a little clout. No more. Now it was dog and pony shows for the congressional committees and frightened rabbits out in the field jumping at their shadows. But not much human intelligence. Banquo had watched the technology get smarter and smarter, the results weaker and weaker. With no real-life human eyes to spy.
Instead the powers-that-be gravitated to other priorities. “Voluntary” sexual harassment and racial sensitivity seminars. Bureaucrats wrote memos about memos. And if anything went wrong, they denied it had gone wrong, or blamed someone else for it going wrong, and resolved never ever to actually do anything ever again, lest someone somewhere construe it as having gone wrong.
Crises erupted over family-friendly construction projects. Delays and cost overruns had slowed the Men’s Bathroom renovations–an installation of two hundred quality Care Bear changing tables “for your convenience.” When what–Mr. Mom wet himself? No matter. In case of emergency at a sensitivity seminar, there’d be a changing table for his convenience. And when the brutal workday came to a close at 4:30 PM, the Agency employees lined up in the Langley parking lot, shuffling off to their minivan carpools for their suburban commute home. To travel in herds.
If they ever saw the rare file photo of him in some forgotten file drawer, they might have glanced at it like a curiosity, a faded news picture from the time before bitmaps and jpegs. How quaint. A dinosaur in a tar pool. Oh, that’s what spies used to look like. Every damn one of them smugly oblivious to the fact this dinosaur’s offspring roamed the world at his bidding. He might be stuck in a New York office, but his ghosts- collected over a lifetime-slipped beyond borders and barbed wire into every dark hollow. Last of a vanished breed, an anachronistic rebuke to the self-protective nappies in a nanny’s world.
Well into his mid-fifties, Banquo still owned a full head of hair, with a distinguished touch of gray around the sideburns. His features were handsome and regular, with the kind of strong jaw image-conscious male business types got chin implants to try to duplicate. A harder, lined face that didn’t need to ingratiate itself with anybody or smile all the time. Still, he paid attention to his appearance and was partial to striped suits and shirts with French cuffs. Like a sober, solemn judge in chambers, without his robes. He knew all the staff on the third floor of the 44th Street Brooks Brothers on a first-name basis. A wise old wolf in dandy’s clothes. Stern and unforgiving.
He was conscious of the effect his looks had on others: men either subconsciously deferred to him or succumbed to envy. Yes, the way it should be. His good looks gave him that extra measure of persuasiveness with women. But in dangerous situations, both his allies and his enemies underestimated him as a pretty boy. In the case of the latter, to their mortal peril.
Banquo’s Cold War had been pretty hot, in El Salvador, in Western Pakistan, in Lebanon. Every plot, every betrayal, every death or nearescape never seemed to go away. Each left a vapor trail across his consciousness. His memories the undead, still walking the earth, restless spirits, rattling chains, slamming doors, and touching cold hand to shoulder in lonely moments. Faulkner would have understood. Banquo’s past wasn’t truly past.
It had pointed the way forward, providing an education in everything from the deepest recesses of the human heart to the most profound grasp of the obvious in how the world worked. Or had pointed the way forward until recently.
Until the intellectuals and policymakers called off history about five minutes after the end of the Cold War. Until U.S. intelligence agencies were directed to monitor environmental degradation of the ozone layer and facilitate a nonexistent “peace process.” Until his tradecraft of a lifetime was left to molder away by less talented, less committed, less imaginative people, who didn’t understand that their well-meaning indulgences would bring the most gruesome consequences: the death of innocents and smoky ruins soaked in blood. A vapor trail that wasn’t a ghost of the mind. Thousands obliterated under a smoke-smudged sky falling back to earth the merest three miles from his office, on an innocent September morning.
So very quietly, all alone, Banquo hatched a plan no one else would understand or dare. Send a sodden, fashionable journalist to slay the Monster in his lair-before another September morning came to pass.
All from the comfort of an obscure office. Banquo & Duncan.
Forgotten even to the sublime powers that be. Forgotten to a succession of White House Chiefs of Staff, Special Advisors, heads of the National Security Agency, and a parade of agency directors who could barely organize their pencils on their desk. Same outfit. Same mission. Democrat or Republican administration, corrupt or honest. No matter who was in charge, Banquo & Duncan existed to execute unspoken decisions and deniable intentions. In every administration the same bloody mission:
Win the War.
Didn’t matter which.
Now merely the upstairs maid’s room of a monstrous bureaucratic mansion. Where the technocrats sent forlorn plans to curl up and die. Where they sent missions they had no intention of carrying out, so they could tell some congressional committee a given nettlesome problem was being “handled with all due dispatch.”
Banquo got up from his desk, closed his office door behind him, and went to the conference room to see who was still around. Nobody. Everyone had left for the evening, but Larry King still talked to a lonely conference table, a mess of take-out Chinese food boxes, empty soda cans, and paper plates. The custodial engineers of Synch Office Cleaning, under the command of Mr. Synch, would get it later. A quiet grayish man, who once served previous regimes and administrations and therefore possessed clearance. Officially retired, no doubt-but still needing a job to perform. He glided like a phantom in a gray custodial uniform in and out of the offices when the lights were dark and desks empty, once a kind of spy, now a janitor. An old soldier who Banquo treated with the grave respect and deference due any warrior, a survivor of battles only he remembered.
And if their new man, Johnson, came through all right-he would be entitled to the same respect. For his own battle in Iran, never to be forgotten.
A couple of years back one of Banquo’s staff hung a framed replica of Fox Mulder’s famous Alien Saucer poster on the wall above the bank of televisions. Except this poster showed Saddam’s noble profile superimposed over a mushroom cloud. The caption stayed the same though, a comment on the Agency’s egregiously wrong “slam dunk” insistence that Iraq had WMDs when none could be found:
“I Want To Believe.”
So for the good of the firm and reasons of professional grit the senior and only partner of Banquo & Duncan had left it there.
To hang forever as a warning.
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