Banquo's Ghosts

by Richard Lowry

  O’Hanlon got up from his spot and threw a legal pad down on the table with a harsh slap. The noise brought the group to a sudden pause. For a long moment, he held each person’s eyes in his own. Then graciously gave his seat to Banquo, introducing him as an intelligence official who had been on the case from the beginning, adding two harsh words: “Pay attention.”

  Whatever uncharacteristic reticence that Banquo exhibited on their call together had now vanished. He pulled his chair up to the table and announced, unbidden, “We have a nuclear insurgency right here in New York City. As we speak, the populace is being poisoned by roaming Jihadis with radioactive material. Now, quite obviously, we’ve got to stop it.”

  The Mayor leaned over to mutter something to his Deputy Mayor—from the look on his face it was something like, Who is this guy?

  Banquo’s words weren’t an invitation for ideas but a prelude to his own plan, now that he was fully briefed by Wallets on the street and O’Hanlon in the conference room. “The Iranians picked up in the Garment District raid must be interrogated. Literally right here. And right now. There’s no time for crossed lines of communication.”

  “In this room?” someone asked.

  “Of course not. We’ll have the hotel secure this entire floor, and a couple of the other conference rooms will be our interrogation cells.” Eyes drifted over to the Mayor, who, with his arms crossed, nodded wordlessly. An aide began relaying the order to the hotel.

  “Every Workbench Boy we’ve already identified has to be rolled up, along with any close friends or associates, and anyone identified in our ongoing intelligence operation.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “We need every Farsi speaker that the NYPD or the FBI has in the tri-state area up here on this floor.”

  “Done,” said O’Hanlon. “Done,” said the Police Commissioner. O’Hanlon and the Commish’s aide fired up their cell phones.

  “We need every member of the Iranian UN delegation detained for questioning, and one Farah Nasir arrested immediately.”

  “Whoa!” The Mayor held up his hands.

  Another voice: “I think international incidents are above everyone’s pay grade here,” the city’s Corporation Counsel, a lawyer in tortoiseshell Tojo glasses. Uber-dweeb.

  “Well, you’ve got an international incident already, like it or not,” Banquo told him. “Who do you need to hear from?”

  “I don’t know,” the Corporation Counsel said meekly. “How about the Attorney General of the United States?”

  “Is Washington informed and ready to act?” Banquo asked, and Bryce—his cell phone to his ear—nodded tightly.

  “You’re talking to your contact at Justice?” Banquo asked, a hint of a smile on his lips, knowing full well the exalted identity at the other end of the line. Bryce nodded tightly again, keeping it to himself, but quietly relishing the moment. Speaking professionally into the phone, “Yes, sir. Yes, I understand. We’ll be careful.” Only Banquo heard the word “Dad” at the end.

  O’Hanlon elaborated, “Main Justice knows everything, and they’re briefing the White House. When the Oval Office realizes the gravity and long-term repercussions of this, we’re going to get big-footed, but for now we’re supposed to handle it as we see fit.”

  Bryce approached the Mayor and handed him his cell phone, which Hizzoner looked at querulously. “The attorney general,” Bryce explained. The Mayor said hello, listened, and a few moments later closed and handed the phone back to Bryce. “We’re OK on the Iranian Dips,” he said to everyone.

  “Now,” said Banquo, “we need to fix the procedures for interrogation.”

  “The hotel is clearing the floor now.” This from the Chief of Police again. “It’s all ours in about four minutes, and the Iranians from the Garment District haul are waiting behind a cordon in the limousine drive-thru. Still in the vans. Say the word, and we’ll bring them to the lockdown elevators. I’ve assigned us a full set of suites and conference rooms on the other side of the floor.”

  O’Hanlon waved a piece of paper that had mysteriously emerged from a fax machine in one corner. “I’ve got the Department of Justice waiver authorizing us to stop this attack right here. And by authorization, we mean by any means necessary.” He paused looking from face to face around the conference table.

  “So who signs it?” The men in the room started to look from one to the other, measuring the question.

  Somebody made the stupid remark, “You mean torture, don’t you?” saying what wasn’t supposed to be said. Everyone looked at the speaker, playing Spot the Idiot.

  The Mayor.

  Banquo sighed. “We mean, by any means.”

  The Mayor looked over to the city’s Corporation Counsel, who said, “We’ll need time to review the document, and we’ll need it in triplicate.”

  “You’ve got to be friggin’ kiddin’ me,” O’Hanlon said, dropping all his Gs, as he always did when he was upset.

  Banquo looked down at the table, as if gathering himself. He didn’t look at the Corporation Counsel or the Mayor, but straight ahead above everyone’s heads at the wall in front of him: “We’ve all heard of a ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario, the most extreme circumstance in which a detained subject may have information to stop an imminent attack. It is widely agreed that such a context changes what questioning techniques can be used, whether or not they—‘shock the conscience.’ All by way of saying,” and here Banquo lowered his eyes and looked straight at the Mayor, slowing down his words, “this . . . isn’t . . . a ticking-bomb scenario . . . but a bombs-going-off scenario. Do you understand the difference?”

  The Corporation Counsel stood up and walked over to the Mayor, leaning down above him to have a whispered conversation.

  They both stopped and looked up when Banquo added:

  “Anyone standing in the way of getting information now, in this situation, should feel obliged to personally explain to the family of every single person killed or sickened why they let it happen.”

  Johnson thought again back to that long-ago NYU panel: If they didn’t kill you or someone you love, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

  The Mayor was back to whispering. But Banquo wouldn’t let him hide in plain sight. “Are you prepared to do that, Mr. Mayor?”

  The Mayor, a finely tailored bachelor known for dating actresses and models and knowing—and prizing the approval of—all the right people, looked flabbergasted. Nobody talked to him this way. Nobody.

  “Or will you have your lawyer do it for you, Mr. Mayor?” The room went totally still, fixated on this quiet confrontation, this test of wills across the conference table.

  “There’s no need for this kind of ad hominem personal . . . ” the Mayor started to say.

  “Or how about your scribbler of a publicist here? Think he should do it, Mr. Mayor?”

  Banquo looked away in disgust and started to give orders in preparation for the interrogations. More whispering, now furious between the Mayor and his lawyer, and the Mayor piped up to interrupt Banquo: “I can’t be a party to this.”

  “Fine, leave,” Banquo said, and kept giving instructions to those around him. The city officials in the room pretended not to be watching the Mayor’s every move, but they all were. Would he actually leave? Had the man ever been talked to in this way in his life? They watched him shrink before their eyes, a political pygmy in a blue pinpoint Oxford shirt with a white collar and starched cuffs. Nervously fiddling with one gold link. He wasn’t heard from for another few minutes, until the Corporation Counsel piped up on his behalf, saying, “Yes, we’ll sign.”

  By then, no one seemed to care. The Mayor had become an irrelevancy. There was a city to save.

  Information poured in from all over New York, hurriedly whispered by one aide or another around the large conference table. And orders were issued by one of the principals, the Police Commissioner, O’Hanlon, the Fire Commissioner—often by Banquo, even though he ran no department or agency. Every person looked to him; ev
ery ego in the room willingly accepted his naturally assumed authority. When in doubt, go to the Answer Man.

  “We’ve got reports of dogs dying in Union Square.”

  “Chief, I suggest you cordon off Union Square from 18th Street down to 12th and from Irving Place to Fifth.”

  “We’ve got a playground—hold on. Yeah, we’ve got a school playground on the Upper East Side, where a young Middle Eastern man was hanging around, acting weird. Don’t know if it’s anything, but . . . ”

  “Don’t assume. Bring the school principal or whoever saw him down here. If the weirdo’s still there, arrest him. Find all the children who went home from school; say it’s a gas leak. Take names and addresses. And get a hazmat team over there.”

  “Gentlemen, this is a call from Brooklyn, the King’s County Medical Center. A guy showed up in the emergency room, dizzy and disoriented in a crazy getup. He had painted pants and shoes. They thought he was suffering from fumes, but they think it might be radiation poisoning.”

  At this Banquo’s eyes flashed. “That’s our first guy. Whatever they do, don’t let the bastard die. Get agents out there now, plus the best radiation specialist in the city we can find.” The Medical Examiner said, “Yessir!” and left the table.

  From a nameless aide down the table: “This seems improbable, but we’ve got reports of an attempted suicide in the city’s reservoir. Someone jumping in and out of a rowboat. Homeowners up there are suspicious.”

  “Which reservoir?”

  “Titicus, in North Salem, Westchester.”

  “So what are you saying? Someone trying to suicide-bomb the water supply? Doubtful. Does the Coast Guard have a dive team for the Croton Reservoir System?”

  “The North Salem Sheriff has him in holding. And yes, he’s got a backpack.”

  “Send another hazmat team. They may have one in White Plains. If not, use the NYPD helicopter.”

  “Good news, they caught some guy napping. Literally napping at the Queens row . . . what should we call it? Safe house?”

  “Well, that’s good news and bad news. Good news, because we can pump him on site, then drag him here. Bad news: he had three room-mates. And who knows how many houses like this we’re talking about?”

  “There’s something bizarre. All the sinks were clogged with hair.”

  “It’s not bizarre. It’s ritualistic shaving—in case they die.”

  Silence.

  The breathless, nameless reservoir aide looked up from his cell phone, hurriedly whispering so everyone could hear:

  “Forget the reservoir. The Sheriff called—a domestic dispute. Husband leaves the house in fury, steals a rowboat, and rows off, no backpack—an ‘asthma attack’ in the middle of the lake. Cell-phoned 911. We’ve recalled the chopper.”

  The look from Banquo’s eyes could have turned Medusa herself to stone. The aide wisely vanished.

  Farah Nasir—Junior Service Officer, Iranian Mission to the United Nations—lived in a prewar building on Second Avenue and 48th Street, within walking distance of the UN. Wallets, together with Smith and Wesson fresh from the Garment District raid, double-parked the pistachio-shelled sedan by a hydrant. Wallets brushed down the seat and remarked, “When we’re done, Banquo & Duncan is getting you two a housekeeper.”

  Four police cars trailed them, splitting off on either side of the street, doused their lights, and waited. A Manhattan street at night, street lamps shining down—easy to miss the curtain move at the window of Nasir’s seventh-floor apartment. From the trunk of the pistachio sedan Wallets and the two federal women slapped on tactical Kevlar vests, Velcroing the cinch tabs tight. “God, I hate these things,” one of the women said. Smith. Wesson made no remark. And Wallets knew what she meant; wearing the vest could save your life, but it was a clunky, movement-constricting extra ten pounds.

  The three of them walked into the dark low-ceilinged lobby, where a part-time doorman asked who they were there to see. They waved him off with their badges and headed straight to the elevator. The box was old-school Otis Elevator Model B circa 1930. They had to wait three minutes—an age—for it to come down, then pull open the door and push aside the metal accordion-style gate to step inside. Only four of them could fit: the three Feds plus a cop, whose name was Carmine. The cab inched upward with groaning and whirring sounds. They watched the floors descend to meet them and disappear beneath their feet through the gate, as Wallets tapped his knuckle against metal: clack-clack-clack. Finally, the seventh floor, and they headed right down the hallway toward 7F. The cop lagged behind them watching their backs down the length of the hallway. Wesson knocked on the door, “Federal agents. Open up!”

  They all heard an insistent beeping. A smoke alarm. Wesson pounded on the door again with the bottom of her clenched fist, then took a step back. She kicked the door with all her might. It was a thick dead-bolted door that didn’t budge. She glanced at Wallets, who tried his luck. Nope, just a thump and a bang. Then they all looked to Carmine the Cop.

  “No way. I got a Mity Mouse down in the squad car.”

  “Get it. And use the stairs.”

  Carmine talked into his radio, “Bring the Mouse. Take the stairs.”

  After two minutes Carmine the Cop’s partner, Doleful Duane, appeared, huffing and puffing after his seven-story workout. He handed the tactical entry device, the breaching ram, off to Wallets. Who slammed it into the door, releasing its internal thumper, and blew the door open. The acrid smell of burning plastic assaulted their nostrils. The smoke alarm kept on shrieking at them and then just as suddenly died. The silence rang in their ears.

  Two steps in, the sound of a pistol cocking, the hammer clicking back cut through the smoke—an unmistakable sound—and everyone pasted themselves against the wall in the foyer. “Shit,” Wallets said to the others, “stay back. No matter what.” Clearly, Farah Nasir was no use to them dead.

  He waited a beat and swung around into the main room, his gun in front of him. Black-burned plastic filaments floating in the air like dark snow. Light came in from the kitchen and that nauseating burning plastic smell. He inched his way around the barren room and into the kitchen. A kitchen devoid of food or cooking utensils. A kitchen nobody used. The burner on the gas stove blew full blast under the smoldering ruin of a laptop. The computer’s fire retardant plastic shell was refusing to ignite into a fireball but still put out a ton of smoke and a cloud of charred filaments floated across the kitchen. Something went bang! against his chest and knocked him to the floor.

  Slumped up against the kitchen wall, it hurt to breathe, and Wallets could feel something really hot smoldering away in the Kevlar of his vest—his only thought, the supremely obvious, Shit, I’ve been shot. Hard to think about anything else, but anything else was about to intrude. Farah Nasir appeared around the edge of the refrigerator, a severe little woman with short, cropped hair and a mousey face. She still pointed the gun at him. Not a very big firearm, but did it matter? Wallets tried to lift his gun hand to point back, but it seemed a very futile gesture. And besides, neither of his arms felt like moving just then. He managed to croak, “Stay back!” Out the corner of his eye he caught the shapes of his backup moving through the smoke in the living room. He tried, Stay back again, but didn’t really have the breath for it. All he saw now were Farah Nasir’s face and her eyes. Eyes that stared at him with dead hate. The gun no longer pointed at his chest but under her own chin. He tried to tell her something, anything—to stop, wait. The eyes widened suddenly and once again—

  Bang. As Farah Nasir blew her brains out.

  The body fell to the floor. Now both G-women were in the kitchen. “Shit,” Wesson said and kneeled over Wallets with a look of deep concern in her eyes. Smith reached over the dead body to turn off the stove. Neither FBI agent bothered touching the woman splayed across the floor.

  Smith glanced down at the dead woman’s leaking head but used a pair of oven mitts to lift the smoldering laptop and dump it on the kitchen table. The oven grate ca
me along with the melted plastic. And it started to scorch the tabletop. “Shit,” she said, very annoyed.

  Last of all Carmine the Cop and Doleful Duane. The two policemen glanced silently at each other, masterfully controlling the urge to say, “Shit”; then Officer Duane spoke into the mike box attached to his shoulder.

  “EMT! EMT! We got one man down and one black tag. And don’t wait for the elevator—use the friggin’ stairs.”

  New York City’s Finest sealed off the two street openings to the Waldorf Limousine Entrance with blue wooden police barricades, stenciled over in white with the words “Police Line Do Not Cross,” then added some stretchy yellow barricade tape about chest high across the entrance for good measure. Wallets approached very gingerly, like he hurt all over, as though suddenly very fragile. Then with great effort he took a deep painful breath and straightened his gait. Three cops guarding the South Entrance were in the midst of an altercation with an entourage, apparently headed there for some sort of a party. A couple of tall glamorous women, but it was the comb-over he recognized immediately. “Do you know who I am?” he was badgering the cop. “I could have you fired. Do you hear me? You’re fired. You’re fired!” The cop was having none of it. Wallets pulled his ID, missed once, and winced—then got it. The policeman said, “Okay,” and lifted the yellow tape. Everyone had heard about the gunfight. And there were some long looks at Wallets on the order, oh man, were you lucky.

  “Try another entrance,” Wallets suggested to the comb-over and his beautiful ladies. Then past the barrier, to the cordon of policemen surrounding the paddy wagon, “Okay, let’s go.”

  He walked deeper into the limo corridor, where the wagon was already backed into the internal delivery bay. The paddy doors slammed open. The cops yanked the Garment District suspects over the rubber-lipped transom onto the loading dock, then immediately surrounded them before the service elevator. The metal service door had seen better days: bumped and scratched, banged to hell by countless hand trucks and dollies, unloading food, flowers, laundered bedding, everything imaginable, except—until now—Iranian agents. Wallets climbed a set of worn concrete steps with steel edges to the side of the delivery bay, joining the prisoners on the loading dock. Suddenly the dented metal door slammed open with a rattling cry, and the cops prodded the Garment District haul inside. The whole event taking less than eight seconds from paddy wagon to elevator.