Blow the House Down

by Robert Baer

  I heard a car door close outside, then another. The Benz was pulling away as I got to the window, done for the night. Frank’s silver mane was impossible to miss. He must have lost twenty pounds since retiring; he’d even picked back up the spring in his step. Walking next to him was a young woman in a sequined ballgown with a black shawl over her head against what had now eased back to a drizzle. What little castle in the sky did she haunt? She was a stunner by anyone’s measure, and no more than half Frank’s age from what I could see. His life coach? A girlfriend? Wife number three? Whatever role she was playing, she had her arm in Frank’s.

  Simon was mumbling something in the hall as a woman’s footsteps climbed the stairs. A minute later, Frank stuck his head in the library. “Give me five,” he said, but he was already on his cell phone as he turned and started up the stairs himself, two steps at a time.

  “Yes, your highness, of course,” I could hear him saying. “We’ll make sure you have it before noon. No excuses.” I picked up the Financial Times and pretended I wasn’t listening as his voice faded away.

  I was still standing there, paper in hand, five minutes later when India suddenly appeared at the door, wearing a Redskins sweatshirt and Levi’s. My God, I thought, that’s who Frank came in with—his daughter—and I hadn’t recognized her, or as they warned us at the Farm, I wasn’t looking for what she had so quickly become.

  I had seen India maybe half a dozen times since that evening at Frank’s tacky split-level—a lunch or dinner when I happened to be near Berkeley, a visit or two to the new mansion when she was home on vacation, only five months ago for a drink at a café near the Gare du Nord when I was in transit from Marseilles to Amsterdam. I seemed to have fallen into the role of a slightly screw-loose uncle—happily, I should add. My mother considered me mistake enough for one womb: I would never have a blood niece of my own. Nor did India have any family other than her father now that her mother had disappeared from the picture.

  “Going to relive the glory days with Dad? The time you two camped on the Beirut-Damascus highway?”

  It was anything but glory. Frank and I had lived in his car for a solid week on the Syrian border, waiting for the Iranians to deliver David Dodge, the first hostage taken in Lebanon. Instead, they dumped him in Damascus. That was 1983, most of India’s lifetime ago. We must have told the story so often that it became embedded in her brain.

  “Or are you just stopping by on your way home from a wet T-shirt contest?” India’s tone had a definite edge, but her smile was as friendly as ever.

  “You think I’m too old to compete?”

  “Oh, Max, no. Never.”

  I took her hands and gave her a quick peck on the cheek.

  “I thought you were still in Paris.”

  She looked at me, held my hands a beat longer, then pulled me in for a hug. India’s through with being a girl, I thought. Maybe she never really was one. Some people never get the luxury of a youth. I knew something about that.

  “Vacation’s over,” she finally said. “Time to make a living. Just like the old man.”

  “Looks like he’s struggling.”

  The frieze was just over her shoulder.

  Before she could say anything else, Frank was back, wearing corduroys and a cashmere sweater. The air-conditioning was set at Arctic levels. Simon was two steps behind with a pair of straight-up Scotches, no ice. I could see India wondering where her glass was, but her father gave her his own peck on the check and gently pushed her out the door.

  “Good night, dear. I’m sure Max is just stopping by for a minute. You’ve got work tomorrow.”

  The library was set off from the rest of the house by a set of paneled pocket doors. I waited until Frank had pulled them shut before I spoke.

  “Work?”

  “She started last week at the Agency. Can you believe it? Doing traces on the Saudi desk, a whole lifetime ahead of her to ascend to the seventh floor. It wasn’t my idea, I assure you. I tried to dissuade her.”

  He shrugged his shoulders and smiled. It seemed a million years since he had unwrapped the Beretta on his Home Depot deck.

  “You might have told me. I could have—”

  Frank raised his hand to stop me.

  “The stink was on you, Max my boy, the royal whiff. Everyone knew it. My daughter didn’t need that.”

  “You might have told me that, too.”

  Frank laughed. “You need to hang around the water cooler more. That’s where everything happens in an inert bureaucracy.”

  I was sitting back on my towel; Frank, in a matching end chair beside me. He reached in a drawer of the low table in front of us, pulled out a remote, and punched a button. A sheet of the chestnut paneling slid noiselessly back to reveal a huge flat-screen TV.

  “There’s supposed to be a program on Al Jazeera tonight about Yemen. The place is circling the drain again, or so thinks Hunt Oil.”

  Frank surfed up and down the channels looking for it; gave up and flipped through Fox, MSNBC, CNN; then turned the TV off. He sipped his Scotch, frowned, and pushed a button on a side table. Simon must have been waiting on the other side of the library doors.

  “It’s too late for this. Bring us two Armagnacs.”

  “I thought you might show up here sooner rather than later,” he said when Simon was gone. “Just not so soon.”

  Actually, I wasn’t surprised Frank had heard about the investigation. Washington is a company town; news of government scandals travels fast. It travels even faster in Agency circles where it’s such a welcome diversion from the humdrum truth of collective incompetence.

  Frank was right: The Armagnac was a much better choice, and Simon left the decanter. I gave Frank the Reader’s Digest version of Webber’s show trial and the FBI investigation. When I got to the part about the spiral notebooks being gone, he stopped me.

  “What did you keep those for?”

  “Wandering fires.”

  “Knock off the riddles.”

  “We never found out who kidnapped and killed Bill Buckley. It’s been sort of my grail. You know that. You’re not curious?”

  “No. If I’d stopped to solve every mystery there was, I’d still be in Kentucky.”

  “It must have had something to do with the first day I walked in the place and saw those words chiseled in the marble: ‘Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free.’”

  Frank scowled as I said it: Stirring mottoes weren’t his thing, either. I was on to the Norton, the RV, and the guy in the poncho when he stopped me again. “Are you telling me someone’s out to get you? A conspiracy?”

  “Frank, c’mon, no one blow-torches a Kryptonite lock just to push the bike into traffic.”

  “Maybe you didn’t close the lock tight this time. Maybe that kid you pay to watch the bike watched the combination instead. That’s what you get when you live among the savages.”

  I didn’t forget to close the lock, and I didn’t live with savages. If Frank would ever walk the ten blocks to Adams Morgan and have a look around, he would know that. But he wouldn’t, and I wasn’t going to get into any of that with him.

  “How about the RV?” I said instead. “Or the poncho guy calling me paranoid? It doesn’t—”

  “Your famous score-keeping.”

  “Someone’s got to.”

  “I hate to tell you this, old pal, but Smirch and the Black Hand went the way of the Soviet Union, and I don’t really think the Trilateral Commission or the Masons care enough about you to steal your moped.”

  “Norton—it was a goddamn Norton Commando! Vintage.”

  “A thousand apologies. Your Norton. Your Commando. Your vintage. Mea culpa.”

  “I need to know why Webber and this guy Scott or whatever the hell his real name is are after me, Frank. The truth.”

  “Max, the truth never set a table or put a roof over anyone’s head.” Something chirped in the room. An ice-blue light flashed on the phone on the desk. Frank was out of his chair in
a flash. He didn’t turn on the receiver until he was safely on the other side of the library doors.

  “Your highness,” he said again. I had no way of knowing if it was the same one. He was talking softer this time, running off a string of numbers from a sheet he’d snatched off the desk along with the phone. None of it meant a thing to me.

  While I waited for Frank to return, I studied the photos hanging on the wall behind his desk: Frank with George W. Bush, taken at what looked to be the Breakers in Palm Beach. Bush had his arm around Frank’s shoulder. Karl Rove and Jeb Bush were standing off to the side, talking. The White House had changed hands only six months earlier, but a photo of Frank with Bill Clinton and Al Gore that used to fill this spot was already gone, banished with the Florida vote and three-day-old fish. Next to the Bush photo was one of Frank with Saudi King Fahd at the Yamama palace. Fahd had his hand out, backside up, beckoning Frank to kiss it. Below that, Frank was cradling a hunting rifle next to Vladimir Putin, probably somewhere on the Russian steppe. Frank had been in Berlin when Putin was a young KGB officer there. They’d met a couple times at cocktail parties, had dinner once together that I knew of. Clearly, Frank had rewarmed their acquaintance. There were plenty of others: Frank and Musharraf, Frank and Tenet, Frank and on and on.

  I’d seen variations of the same brag wall in dozens upon dozens of Washington offices: ex-secretaries of state; ex–directors of this and that, including the CIA that I was so recently ex-of. The Carlyle Group offices on Pennsylvania Avenue Northwest were wall to wall with them. Frank’s was no different. He’d been chief of station in a half dozen high-profile haunts in the twelve years between Brazzaville and his summons home to the seventh floor, most of them along the crescent of oil that runs from Central Asia down to Iran and back along the Arab side of the Gulf. He knew the people who counted: presidents, intel chiefs, the royals; their corrupt off-spring, too, the grease that keeps the wheels turning. Their home numbers were in his Rolodex. All the walls said the same thing: I know the people you need to know, I can tie up the deal or fuck it. Don’t even think about ignoring me.

  I tried to imagine my own brag wall: terrorists, con artists, pimps, assassins, pedophiles. Don’t ignore me, to be sure, but not exactly the kind of people to cash out on.

  Frank walked back into the library, finished his Armagnac in a quick sip, put his glass down on the desk, and took mine—not quite finished—and set it down beside his.

  “Come with me.”

  We walked across the house, through the living room, until we were standing directly in front of the Modigliani. Like the frieze, it was lit to perfection: a raw, sensual nude recumbent on a daybed, meat-red pillows behind her.

  “You heard about this?” Frank asked. He had a look of absolute contentment on his face.

  “They couldn’t talk about anything else for days out at headquarters.”

  “So I gathered. See anyone you know in that painting?”

  I saw it immediately: the curve of the neck; eyes like little sky-blue diamonds; the button mouth, knowing, ironic, and kind.

  “India.”

  “Amazing, isn’t it? I don’t particularly like Modigliani, but when this came up on the block I had to have it.”

  We stood there a moment in silence. Behind us, Simon was busying himself in the hallway.

  “Listen, Max, here’s what I learned in Brazzaville way back when. You can go for truth, you can go for duty, or you can go for money. I went for the money, and this is what it got me.”

  He swept his hand around the room: the nude, the frieze, the everything.

  “You can, too.”

  He pulled two business cards out of his billfold and handed me one of them: Marc Rousset, Bonnet et Cie, 27 Bahnhoff Strasse, Zurich, Schweiz.

  “He’s looking for someone to hand-hold some Middle Eastern clients. With Arabic and Farsi, you’re a lock.”

  “He’s a slimy fuck, and that’s it. You know it, Frank. Everyone does. Didn’t Rousset come within an inch of being indicted in France? Bangkok, too.”

  “And do you think you’re going to land a job with Northrop or Boeing now that Webber’s lifted your security clearance? Forget it. You’re black-balled from coast to coast.”

  We’d gotten to the heart of the evening. I’d sat through the same thing a dozen times when Frank was on the seventh floor, simultaneously lecturing me and extricating me from some flap. He’d even once hung up on an assistant secretary of state who wanted me fired.

  “It’s an eat-what-you-kill deal,” he continued. “Rousset will carry you initially, but you’ve got to bring in new clients.”

  “Why would anybody want to park his money with me? If someone’s already got it, he’s already got someone to watch it.”

  “Where do you think I got all this?” Frank said. “I used my Rolodex. The day I retired, I called every contact I’d made during the past thirty-two years. And trust me, more than one panned out.”

  “That’s not the way it’s supposed to work.”

  “Cut out the Boy Scout bullshit, Max. I need someone I trust to handle a couple new clients. One’s a Saudi billionaire. He’s needy and will suck out your lifeblood. But it’s a good place for you to start.”

  Frank handed me the other card, engraved with the name Michelle A. Zwanzig. In the bottom corner was a Geneva number.

  “Michelle’s my Swiss fiduciary. Call her in the morning—her morning, not ours. When you get to Zurich, you’ll drop down to Geneva and she’ll arrange for you to meet the Saudi. Pretend to be obsequious and you’ll do just fine.”

  “It’s not going to work. They’ll say I’m running. Bailing to Zurich is all the proof Webber will need to make real whatever they’ve trumped up against me.”

  “For crissake, Max, no one said you couldn’t leave the country. You’re not going to ground. Call Webber every day if you want to, make him your pen pal, send fan mail. He used to work for me. I know what makes him tick. He’ll be thrilled. You’re throwing your hands up in surrender, moving to Zurich. Get off his screen, and this all goes away.”

  “But the Agency—”

  “Don’t you get it? The place is over, done with. It’s not the Agency you and I joined. You might as well be flipping burgers at McDonald’s. Flush every memory of the place you have.”

  Frank paused a moment and continued. “Grow up, Max. Stop trying to belong. They never liked you, anyhow. You’re the lone wolf. The pack hates it when one of their own isn’t running along with it.”

  Frank was picking at scabs, trying to recruit me into his little business empire, whatever that was. He must have seen my face cloud over because he stopped and flicked off the lights on the Modigliani.

  “We’re still on the truth, are we?” he said, switching tactics. “Haven’t you heard the news? People prefer a bad case of the clap to the truth. The polis cut Socrates’s throat because he wouldn’t lay off it.”

  “He was poisoned.”

  “As I was saying.”

  Frank put his arm over my shoulder, backing me out of the living room, edging me toward the front door. He gave my arm one last squeeze and turned back up the hall.

  “It’s a lot easier to make enough money to buy a world-class portrait of your daughter than it is to find an honest man,” he said from the bottom of the staircase. “Just think about it, okay? You’ve got the numbers. And, Max, by the way”—the third time’s the charm—“trot out the paranoia bullshit, your hunt for Buckley’s killer, or your truth in front of the Saudi, and he’ll drop you like a steaming turd. Copy?”

  “Got it.”

  He had his back to me now, heading up the stairs.

  “There are a lot of crazy people out on the streets who look more together than you, Maxie boy.”

  And with that, he rounded the landing and was gone. Simon had run my Levi’s jacket, sneakers, and socks through the drier, my watch cap also. The wool was warm, tight against my scalp. He stood with his hands clasped behind him as I pulled my shoes
on.

  “Cheerio,” I said as I opened the door. He was probably holding a .38 behind his back in case I decided to clarify one more point with his master. He slammed the door behind me and double-locked it before I’d hit the first step. I could hear the camera whirring again above me, recording my exit.

  I crossed the street, walked east for a few houses until I was half hidden by the trunk of an ancient gingko tree, then turned back to have a look at Frank’s house. A light was on in the bedroom above the library. It threw a shadow against the curtain, too thin for Frank, too tall for Simon. I thought I saw a corner of the curtain move, a hand wave. For a moment I had the impression of one of those fairy-tale princesses trapped in the top of a golden tower. Something scuttled in the ivy behind me. I saw a tail darting for cover. When I looked back up at the window over the library, the shadow was gone, the light out.

  The rain was over. Stars had come out. It had turned cool while I was inside. To the north a mile or so, at the zoo, some creature let out a horrible, night-rending bellow. An elephant, maybe. Or a rhino or hippo. Some major quadrapod. It was the weirdest thing about living in this part of D.C.: Africa roared all night just around the corner.

  I checked my watch. I’d asked Willie to call me in two hours. It was a half hour past that now. I found a pay phone that actually worked at Connecticut and Florida avenues and dialed him. The phone rang and rang. I hung up and punched in his number again. He finally answered.

  “You didn’t call.” It wasn’t like Willie.

  “Couldn’t,” he said. “A funny thing happened. I stopped by a place I know on Fifteenth Street on the way home for a piece of pie and a cup of—”

  “Willie.”

  “Bottom line, when I came back out, the front passenger window was smashed and your phone number gone. Who breaks into a cab to steal a goddamn phone number?”

  Now I had to assume two things: I didn’t have a sterile phone and, two, I was still of interest to someone.