That, in the end, was what he decided to bet on.
Bunker happened to know why Taylor hated Broz. Griff had told him about it. It was one of Griff’s favorite stories. Joe had won a lot of credit with C. H. by getting Griff home. Who would have thought that Preston Griffith would have been that weak. Turned into a goddamn sniveling junkie. That wasn’t quite true either. Griff had turned into a cynical, charming, smart junkie. With a lot of baggage, too few illusions, and in a conspiracy with his pain to utilize opium and its derivatives.
Goddamn Vietnam. Next time they have a war, they better run it right. Nobody that came back from that goddamn place had a good war. Except maybe Joe Broz. Not even him. Joe would never admit to it, but it took him some years after he came back to handle it.
They came back heroes from C. H.’s war. American Heroes, saviors of the world, ready to run the world, for its own good, and they’d done a damn good job of it. If Griff had come back the way they all expected him back, he would have made a goddamn good son-in-law. The best. Been the heir apparent. Given C. H. grandsons. Goddamn, he knew the boy had good seed in him. Seed enough to plant grandsons, C. H. knew that for a fact. There was a little bastard boy running around somewhere, he’d heard about it before Griff left for Vietnam. Everyone hushed it up. C. H.’s daughter had cried for a month over that. College-kid stuff. A little wild oats. They’d made it up, the girl and Griff, before he left. But the way he’d come back . . .
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 Hall107as 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).
Chapter
FORTY-NINE
The object in war is a better state of peace. Hence it is essential to conduct war with constant regard to the peace you desire.
Victory in the true sense implies that the state of peace, and of one’s people, is better after the war than before. Victory in this sense is only possible if a quick result can be gained or if a long effort can be economically proportioned to the national resources. The end must be adjusted to the means.
—B. H. Liddell Hart, Strategy
THE 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 t
oo. 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.
Chapter
FIFTY
TWO 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.
A third vehicle cruised restlessly the nine miles between the two. Partly to check on the others. Partly because Mel Taylor was sure that Broz was going to make a move and he wanted to be there. He knew about Hawk and Steve Weston and Steve’s son, and there was a white guy too. He didn’t know the white guy’s name yet. But he would. Soon. He didn’t know what, exactly, they were up to, but he figured he would know that soon too. If Broz somehow did pull something, Taylor had some countermoves.
Chapter
FIFTY-ONE
THE CORNERSTONE OF the White House was laid on October 13, 1792. It was completed in 1800, the first public building in the new capital of the new country. It was built to reflect the spirit of the great experiment upon which the country was embarking. The leaders of this new creation were adamant about avoiding even the trappings of monarchy and so it was definitely not to be a palace. Yet they wanted something fine and noble and expressive of their ideals.
In spite of time and weather, fire and smoke, additions and reconstructions, the mortal flaws and human frailties of its occupants, the White House remains an elegant expression of the aspirations that motivated the age of revolution and rationalism.
The cab that inconspicuously carried David Hartman in from Dulles International Airport offered the passenger a series of views of the White House before it brought him to the entrance gate. He’d seen them all, as we all have, countless times, in movies and on television, on the news, in newspapers, in magazines, in cartoons and comics. Still, it had an impact. Hartman didn’t know if that was a result of some aesthetic that infused the setting or it was because he was about to enter the seat of the Imperium as a player.
It was one of those days when the president had a lot of meetings. Nothing earth-shattering or especially newsworthy but very busy. They slipped David in a little before 9:00 A.M. The president’s appointment calendar would show “Sec. of Com. & D. Hartman.” There would be memos that the subject discussed was the importance of entertainment software as the number-two export of the nation, just after aviation. There was nothing in the memos to indicate that the commerce secretary left almost immediately and that Hartman stayed.
When he was alone with the president, Hartman explained what Saddam Hussein wanted. He wanted access to Western arms and arms technology. He wanted money. Up front, even before they had a deal. Neither of those, Hartman suggested, should be a deal breaker. It wasn’t a lot of money. At least not yet. A few billion dollars. And it didn’t have to appear in the budget.
Bush was relieved by that. The whole budget fantasy was out of hand. It was a fictoid or factoid ten times the size of a balloon in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. There was nothing that anyone said about it that seemed to actually connect with reality, yet every time it went up, everyone made a lot of noise.
The money would go to Saddam as a loan. “We don’t even have to make the loan,” Hartman said. He’d already lined up several Swiss and Italian bankers happy to do that. “We just have to guarantee it.” David was going to get a couple of points from both sides. Banking was an exciting new vista. “I would suggest the Department of Agriculture,” Hartman said. He was virtually quoting Pandar’s screenplay. “Guarantee the loans for agricultural credits. That looks like the money goes to our farmers—which it very well might—Iraq does have to buy butter as well as guns. It’s obscure and wholesome at the same time.”
Then he got to the main items. Win, lose, or draw, Saddam wanted a guarantee of his personal survival; his country intact, at least to its current borders; sufficient military force to
maintain those borders as well as to suppress any attempt at a coup or any attempt at rebellion by dissident minorities. Actually, Saddam had compared his need for armed forces to keep the Kurds in line to the way America used its armed forces to keep blacks in line. He had said it in a buddies kind of way, a remark designed to engender camaraderie, one put-upon head of state to another. It was an unfortunate correlation, but understandable, since an Iraqi would see the police, the Army, the national police, and the National Guard as single facets of one force, not as distinct entities in the way that Americans do. Nonetheless, Hartman didn’t think the insight would help and didn’t pass the comparison on.
There were, finally, some smaller points. One—the worldwide price of oil should rise. It didn’t have to be abrupt, but it had to be certain. Two—Saddam wanted direct access to the media—world media means American media—right through the whole war. He wanted to be able to get on TV at prime time and deliver his message to the American people, to the Arab people, to the world.
Hartman had already consulted with Beagle about the second item on a scrambled line from the U. Sec. office in Rome.
Beagle had fallen in love with the idea. “It’s totally Capraesque,” Beagle said. Frank Capra had been in charge of creating America’s propaganda films during World War II. His sources for the footage with which he created images of the Japanese and the Germans as monsters were their own films. Both people had been proud of their blitzkriegs and swift conquests, their sense of racial pride and purity. They worked very hard and with great success, especially the Germans, to get those feelings on film. Capra was delighted by the idea of using their own tools against them.108
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