Banquo's Ghosts

by Richard Lowry

  As the caravan left Nantanz at midday, the centrifuges pumped away in Johnson’s mind, jumbled up with the words on those pages. IT ’S UP TO YOU . . . They retraced their trail from the great plateau on the planet of the construction robots. The sky above turned a sickly shade of yellow ochre. And the wind spun dust dervishes along the roadside. They didn’t make it as far as they wanted. Down through the tiled ghost town of Natanz, with its similar-sounding name to the Nantanz facility’s, and back down out of the mountains and into the desert. Only as far as the outskirts of a nameless village. A dozen concrete huts, no café, no Holiday Inn, and no heated swimming pool. The three vans pulled up just outside the town in a circle on the sand like a wagon train. They could clearly see the unpaved town square.

  The Jazz Man said, “These are a very pure people.”

  While Dr. Yahdzi warned, “Here, we must really behave ourselves.”

  They wandered outside the van and thought about scrounging fire-wood for a campfire, but abandoned the idea as the wind picked up, streaming across the sandy ground, blowing yellow dust. They settled for ransacking the coolers for food, bringing bread and olives and hummus into the van to eat.

  The goons went off to pray with the imam, whose ancient ancestor, one of them told Jazril, “converted Alexander the Great to Islam.” This, of course, absurd on the face of it, as Alexander and Darius preceded the Prophet by millennia. Still, many in this part of the world believed the Prophet’s influence reached back into the depths of time as well as forward.

  The storm came like a great ochre wave, blinding any view of the cool, green mountains in the distance. The travelers felt the sun go down in the changing shades outside the car window, the ochre light slowly turning gray, then finally black. They could see houses in the village lit up, blurry lights barely showing through the storm, and hear under the sighing of the wind the chanting and the praying of many voices answering the imam.

  But the voices faded as the wind moaned about the metal panels of the van. They ate a little and drank a little water by the light of a Coleman lantern. When it came time for Yasmine to cloister herself for the night in a tent that the Revolutionary Guards had set up, Johnson wondered out loud. “Is it really necessary? The storm—”

  “Yes, it’s necessary,” she told him. “Especially here, in this village.” But even as she reached for the van door handle, the wind lowed to a near shriek shaking the van. Only a few yards off, Yasmine’s tent tore at its mooring, yanked its stakes from the ground, and took off, first hitting the side of the van with a thunderous clap and then sailing off into oblivion.

  God seemed to have taken a hand. And silent glances were exchanged between Dr. Yahdzi and his assistant. A resignation to fate—she would stay. The storm erased those lights of the village, leaving blackness all around, even though the houses were only fifty yards distant.

  The driver barked something out in Farsi, pointing at Johnson. Now what? Yahdzi translated, smiling: “He says you are a lazy bastard and you got to stretch out last night. He says you should take the front seat so Yasmine gets to be secluded in back.” They didn’t dare open the doors, so Johnson clambered up to the front seat and watched with some amazement as Dr. Yahdzi and the Jazz Man hung a prayer mat from the van’s safety handgrips, using the large paper clips from the briefing material as their hooks. Yasmine vanished behind the hiding cloth.

  Johnson noticed the driver making what he guessed—so hard to see—was his ring-blowing motion. Johnson tried to ignore him, slumping, the van black inside with its lights out and the Coleman turned off. He could hear the others breathing. Over time, even as the temperature dropped outside, inside the air grew stuffy. You could smell the acrid body sweat of the men.

  Johnson’s mind swirled in a riot of conflicting thoughts. It seemed he could feel them pressing against his head, or maybe the storm affected the barometric pressure. In any event, he wasn’t going to sleep. What he would give for a few hours of blessed forgetfulness, a few hours without those green ink letters looming in his mind. Although for all he knew, they would disturb his sleep in grotesque porn-shop neon, flashing, taunting, glaring.

  He stared ahead at the black windshield, listening to the millions of sand particles bouncing off it, faint tic-tacs, like they were in an insistent sleet storm. How precarious he felt inside the swaying van, with the tumult pounding him from without—and from within. Who was he to decide whether to kill a perfectly decent human being, on the slim basis of some inked up words?

  Then, it came to him very clearly, a wave of relief washing over him: sure, he was imagining the whole thing! Why was he worrying himself? He could be here, as he had been so often in his life, literally just along for the ride. Learn something no one else knew, get a guided tour of exotic locales, and dine out on it for months back in Manhattan. Why was he ruining all that? There was even a cute bird along that he could try to charm out of her chador. Relax, Peter, he told himself. Relax, and the whole predicament goes away.

  The very next moment he pondered Banquo’s within-the-range-of-plausibility scenario and how one act could change the world. A Serb assassin. An archduke named Franz Ferdinand. Millions dead. Didn’t the Professor want him to do it? He recalled Banquo’s spiel that if he failed to act, he wouldn’t be able to drink away the consequences.

  But he could try, he gamely thought. He sure as hell could try. He shifted in his seat to turn on his side, facing the driver, and the words loomed again, DO IT.

  As Johnson wrestled with himself, the driver stirred, as if uncomfortable. He reached to his hip, pulled off his holster, and methodically placed it on the dashboard. Johnson stared in horror at what he could barely see. He sat straight up in his seat and pressed against it as hard as he could, trying to get as much distance from himself and that weapon in the dark, away from that talon of fate.

  He imagined he knew what Belshazzar must have felt when those words appeared on the wall during his feast, damning his worship of false gods:

  MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN

  A half dollar, a half dollar, a penny, and two bits. Except Johnson didn’t need a Daniel to interpret this sign for him.

  He wrapped his arms around his queasy belly and sat buffeted in the night, the recesses of his mind calling up somehow that in Aramaic parsin had been a pun on Persian.

  He closed his eyes tight for a long time, like he was in pain. He tried to picture what kind of gun sat in the holster. A small revolver of some kind. Yeah, the Dick Tracy gun straight from the Prop Master back in North Carolina. You pulled back the hammer and squeezed the trigger. Simple as bye-bye bang. Now you know how close you have to be . . .

  He wanted to evade it but couldn’t: This was his sign. The debate over. He wasn’t imagining things. What they told him at Banquo & Duncan had been borne out. And now—and now the only question was tekel, the word for “weight,” interpreted by Daniel as “you have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.” Would he be found wanting?

  And he knew he had decided. He tried to tell himself he hadn’t. He told himself, sure, he could back out any time. But those felt like fake reassurances, like when he was about to go on a bender or cheat and tried to argue himself out of it, knowing all along he’d succumb to temptation. And this too was a temptation, more delicious than he ever imagined. To finally commit an act that mattered. Now only the question of courage remained. Of will. Of somehow arriving at the sticking point.

  For a fleeting moment he worried about Giselle, but he trusted Banquo or Wallets would go to her. Help her through the aftermath. He felt that little twitch of fate, banishing all the doubts and inhibitions. The final rightness of his act. Slowly he reached out from his sitting position, achingly slowly. His fingers touched the dashboard.

  Beside him the driver gently snored.

  He waited a while, no idea how long in the murmuring dark, listening to the driver’s breathing. Finally he leaned forward and reached the holster on the dash, feeling the smooth molded leather. The
holster was a snug grip, no safety clasp. The gun came away into his hand without any fuss. He held the gun up in front of himself, in a kind of homage. What had Banquo said about being in jeopardy the moment he arrived in this awful place? Everything he had always been was about to vanish. Say good-bye, Peter Johnson. And he thought to himself, “See you at the other end.”

  “They’re all dead,” said a soft voice. “That’s why I keep their pictures.” Johnson shifted in his seat, looking aghast at the scientist behind him. Yahdzi looked right back, as if he knew everything passing in Johnson’s mind. “You’d be doing me a favor.”

  Johnson felt an asthma clutching at his windpipe. The muzzle pointed, tremblingly, toward Yahdzi’s chest. The physicist looked passively back at him. Maybe he’d have done it himself long ago, given the chance. Suddenly Johnson was aware that the driver was staring at him too. Wide awake. Daring him to finish.

  For a moment he wished he hadn’t picked up the gun but left it alone on the dash. Like in Banquo’s office. But he was adamant. Nothing personal, Professor. His finger curled around the trigger, surprisingly tight, just a little more pressure, just a little more, one last tug—

  The van rocked, and there was more noise than simply the wind. The goons were back, heads wrapped in keffiyahs, violently slapping the van windows. A sharp crack, and window glass sprayed across Johnson’s face. The sticking point arrived. Now or never. He pulled the trigger and shot. Pulled it again and shot, emptying the chamber, round after round. Until a dozen hands came for him, dragging him into the screaming maelstrom of the night, punched, kicked, face in the dirt, the only way to know if he was facing down or up, gasping for air, shouts, and he went limp, giving in to the chaos.

  As his body hoisted in the air, his mind drifted to Yasmine. Did he hit her by accident? He didn’t know, but he hoped she was okay.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  A Peter Johnson Solution

  Banquo appeared in Trevor Andover’s office in Langley, Virginia, without a summons from DEADKEY to account for his actions. The inevitable plasma CIA-SPAN showed a news conference with the execrable Sheik Kutmar. He stood before the marble front of Parliament, the Majiles, his narrow face over a small microphone. This time the man wore a suit jacket and open collar, no robes. He was making his statement in Farsi for NITV, National Iranian Television, and a single Persian reporter translated immediately into Arabic on a Teletype line, and above the first type line, another real-time translation into English courtesy of CIA-SPAN. The Sheik knew he had somebody in the U.S. Intelligence Community by the balls, so he squeezed them softly and without malice in the smallest venue possible. You couldn’t hear the questions, just his answers: “As I said before, this man, this American journalist, was present at the incident. We’re checking his credentials. I have no information on the condition of the professor, Dr. Ramses Pahlevi Yahdzi, at this time.”

  Pause, while taking a question.

  “Assassination? Attempted assassination? I don’t use such words.”

  Again he paused, while taking a question.

  “A spy? Of course, he’s a spy. We let many spies into our country; we have nothing to hide. He may well be tried; he may well be executed, but that decision is not up to me.”

  Again, another pause, while he listened to the next question.

  “Retaliation?” And here Sheik Kutmar stroked his finely chiseled beard. “If a trust is broken between one nation and another, if legitimate journalism and the free exchange of information are sabotaged by one power at the expense of another, there are . . . there are always consequences.”

  Deputy Director Andover used a small, thin remote to lower the sound on the picture. He turned his gimlet eyes on Banquo, who seemed to have ignored the whole thing. Infuriating. His old colleague steadily thrummed his fingers one-two-three-one-two-three on his chair’s armrest as though annoyed at having to wait. DEADKEY’s voice came out pure acid:

  “Pleased with yourself?”

  Calmly, Banquo measured the man across the desk. “Are you accusing me of something?”

  Deputy Executive Director Andover at first bristled, then with every ounce of self-control managed: “Do I have to? You’ve brought disrespect to the U.S. government, made a mess of our position, and put innocent lives at risk. Deny it.”

  Banquo sighed, then spoke quietly and methodically, as if explaining to an adolescent, “First of all, Deputy Director, no one respects the U.S. government, not the one you represent anyway. Secondly, our position is already a mess; you and others put us there. And thirdly, outside of your mother’s belly there’s no such thing as an innocent life.

  “Let’s be frank,” Banquo continued. “You and I are in the business of betting lives, occasionally saving them, but generally spending them on an infinite board, with an infinite number of moves, in an endless game. If you can’t bet those lives, then don’t you dare sit in that chair and lecture me. I’d bet yours, if I thought it would help.”

  “Oh, spare me the Cooper Union lecture,” Andover said. “You’ve handed the Iranians a tremendous propaganda victory. I can’t imagine a bigger one. You might as well have the president of the United States announce that we’ve discovered, yes, the mullahs are in communication with Twelfth Imam after all, down in the well—just like the little Turbans say. Besides the fact, you’ve violated the law. It’s worse than a blunder; it’s a crime.”

  “Trevor, please tell me you have a copy of Bartlett’s somewhere in here.” Banquo had decided if they were to have a sarcastic bitch-fest, why not go all the way?

  “What?” Andover asked, incredulous.

  “You mangled the phrase. The Talleyrand remark goes, ‘It’s worse than a crime, it’s a blunder.’ The phrase doesn’t work turned around. You robbed Talleyrand of all his surprise and cleverness.” Banquo wagged his head, amazed that a man such as DEADKEY could arrive at such an exalted position under the nose of the gods. “Trevor, you’ve got the mind of a cutpurse with the blade of a butter knife.”

  “Sneer at me all you want, Stewart,” Andover said, calling him by the name he knew him by when they both got their start decades ago. “You still have to answer to Executive Order 12333. Just like everyone else.”

  “Ah . . . the prohibition against assassination. Issued when the country scraped bottom in its prestige and power in the world? The one you cheered on as we staffed the upper echelons of our intelligence services with geldings and their attorneys at law?”

  Banquo paused for a moment, thinking, then remarked, “I imagine you think all that legalese somehow protects you. Well, line your pants with national archives if you think it helps. But you’ll wet yourself when they slap on the handcuffs like everyone else.”

  There was nothing about Banquo DEADKEY didn’t hate. Where could he even start with him?

  “Look, Stewart. This office is not the Harvard Debate Society. One of your clowns, in effect, an agent of the U.S. government, was captured in an assassination scheme. The London Litvinenko sushi hit played big in the international press, but this could be bigger, and we’re not even Russians, not yet anyway. You own this fool, Peter Johnson, and now you’re going to have to pay for the privilege.”

  “Make me.”

  DEADKEY was flustered for a second. He expected at least a shimmer of regret and instead he got 110-proof insolence.

  “Just for the record,” Banquo continued, “Banquo & Duncan believes the Litvinenko assassination was a warning. To all and sundry that the Russians will do anything they want, anywhere they want, and we’ll just say, ‘Such a pity Mr. So-and-So ate bad sushi.’ However, if you think B & D had a hand in this Yahdzi nonsense, prove it.”

  Trevor Andover sighed. Now it was his turn to explain matters to the village idiot:

  “Prove it? I don’t have to. That’s a U.S. attorney’s job. You met with Peter Johnson. You sent him to Iran. I have copies of passport requests for your team. Airline tickets. There’s no coincidence here. Johnson will last about forty-five min
utes under mildly stressful interrogation. Tomorrow they’ll have him in front of cameras confessing he was put up by you. Every Donkey in this capital will be braying for your head, as soon as my friends in the press tell them who to bray for. And every Elephant will be hiding under his bed, pretending they’ve never heard of you before. You’re a pathetic relic, Stewart.”

  DEADKEY paused to let that sink in. Then finally, “I pilot this ship. So when I see a drunken sailor, the Director doesn’t get involved. It’s slap the drunk in irons, throw him in the longboat, or man overboard. Able Seaman, you’re walking the plank at dawn. Every news account is going to start with the words ‘rogue operation.’ Remember this number: 202 371 7000. The law firm of Skadden, Arps. Ask for Bob Bennett’s assistant. And pray for a pardon when the legal bills approach twenty-five mil.”

  Banquo looked at Andover for a beat, with his brow raised, as if to say, Are you quite done?

  “Consider the following, Trevor. I didn’t think I’d actually have to explain:

  “One. Peter Johnson is a well-known crank, a toiler with a long history of attacking the U.S. government. Nobody’s going to believe him when he suddenly claims he’s my spy.

  “Two. Johnson has a string of felonious financial transactions, documented by Banquo & Duncan and certainly worth the time of the IRS.

  “Three. The one name he knows to cough up under mild interrogation is Trevor Andover.”

  At that, Andover blanched, and Banquo suddenly wished that one of his people thought of it before the scribbler left for Iran, that the bluff was true.

  “Deputy Director, not only are you going to run interference for Banquo & Duncan, keep the bats out of my hair, but, actively help me.”