Bloodmoney

by David Ignatius

  “Welcome to the Anvil,” said Hoffman grandly, gesturing to the nearly empty restaurant. “To an anvil, everything looks like a hammer, to coin a phrase. Are you an anvil, Jeffrey, or a hammer?”

  “I am definitely a hammer, sir.”

  “Not a very effective one of late, I’m afraid. You keep hitting your thumb, or someone does.”

  “We’ve had some bad luck these last couple weeks, for sure. But we’ll get our mojo back.”

  “What in the Sam J. Hill is going on out there? If you don’t mind my asking, or even if you do.”

  “We’re working it, but obviously we have a problem.”

  “Yes, I think that would be a fair statement. Losing one officer is unlucky. Losing two is, well…you tell me: What is it?”

  “It’s a mess. But like I told you on the phone, maybe the two aren’t related. Maybe one is an operational problem, and the other is gangster stuff: Moscow rules. That’s what I told my people.”

  “Well, it’s preposterous. Don’t insult my intelligence by saying it again.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Hoffman wagged a fat index finger at his guest.

  “You seem to think you can bluff your way through this, my boy. That is a big mistake. You have a serious problem. Your officers are supposed to be invisible, but evidently they are not. Someone knew their movements. That is dangerous, my friend. What if you have a serious leak? What if all your operations are insecure? Then you are bleeding, hemorrhaging. Are you not?”

  “That’s not going to happen. I have someone working it. We’re doing an investigation. We’re going to find the leak, if there is one, and close it.”

  “Oh, good. There should always be an investigation. That way, if it blows up and people get the willies, you can say, ‘Sorry, but we can’t discuss it. It’s under investigation.’ And who is conducting this no-holds-barred inquiry for you, please?”

  “My chief of counterintelligence. Her name is Sophie Marx.”

  Hoffman took from his pocket a white index card and a fountain pen, and wrote her name in neat script.

  “Is she the cute one, with the ponytail, who was in Beirut, with the hippie parents?”

  “Correct. She’s very good. And she knows how to keep a secret.”

  Hoffman peered at him, his eyes narrowing almost to a squint.

  “Are you ‘doing’ her?”

  “No such luck.”

  Hoffman brandished the barrel of his silver and gold S. T. Dupont and wagged it at Gertz.

  “Don’t dip your pen in the company inkwell, my boy. Those days are over.”

  “Don’t worry. I’m using a ballpoint. Never needs ink.”

  “Has Miss Marx discovered anything that would shed light on what happened in Pakistan?”

  “Not yet. She just went to Dubai and fluttered the access agent, who was the last man to see my officer before he disappeared. She thinks he’s clean. We’re still trying to understand how the bad guys knew our man was in Karachi.”

  Hoffman tapped his nose with his index finger, as he habitually did when he was thinking about something.

  “I am worried about our Pakistani friends, the ISI,” said Hoffman eventually. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see you. I am worried that they are being less than completely honest with us. No, I will be more explicit than that: I think they are lying to us.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I paid a visit last week to one of my old friends. Rather high up. It did not inspire confidence. He claimed they were innocent: white as snow. But I’m afraid I did not believe him. I think they are on to you, my boy. They hear your footsteps. They see you in the shadows. You need to be very careful.”

  “Have you got anything I can use? Anything I can give to Marx?”

  “Nothing but intuition, I’m afraid. The Pakistanis, in my experience, are habitual liars. They are so aggrieved by past slights that they think that any sort of behavior is acceptable. But I am perplexed. I will tell you that.”

  “Why, Mr. Hoffman?”

  “Because I’ve had our stations put a watch on ISI officers in all major posts, including Moscow. I tasked the NSA, too, and the NRO and all the other behemoth agencies that you no doubt find tedious now that you are so lean and mean. They’ve been at it for nearly a week. And to my surprise, they have come up with nothing unusual. I am fairly certain that ISI officers in Moscow, declared and undeclared, had nothing to do with the killing of poor Mr. Frankel. That is why I am perplexed.”

  “What should we do?”

  Hoffman wagged his finger, once, twice, three times.

  “Be…very…careful.”

  They ordered dinner. Hoffman, though a big man, ate sparingly, just picking at his steak. He ordered a bottle of wine, too, but only sipped occasionally from his glass. It was as if eating and drinking were private pursuits that couldn’t be enjoyed fully while someone was watching. Hoffman talked over dinner about his rare-book collection, and about the opera, in a pleasant, singsong monologue. When the dinner dishes were cleared, he got serious again.

  “How are things going out there? I mean, besides all this messy business. Are you getting it done? I know this is between you and your friends at the White House, but I thought you might give your Uncle Cyril a peek.”

  Gertz smiled broadly, for the first time that evening.

  “Things are going great, actually. We are pushing everywhere we can. The things that can’t be done—well, we’re doing them.”

  “And you have enough money for all your operations? Don’t tell me what they are, because I didn’t ask.”

  “We’re rolling in money. We have some, let us say, ‘novel’ funding mechanisms. You would love them, frankly.”

  “I don’t want to know. Not now, anyway, when I can be subpoenaed and sued and publicly castrated on the George Washington Parkway. No, thank you. That’s why you are there: To think the unthinkable. And do it, too.”

  “Heard, understood, acknowledged.”

  “Can we tell Congress anything?”

  “Don’t even consider that. That would undermine everything we’ve been trying to do.”

  “Gadzooks, boy! Don’t go telling me what to do. I’ve already informed the director. He didn’t understand what I told him, fortunately. But he’s an ex-senator himself, for goodness’ sake, and he doesn’t like it when things get messy. If he understood that someone has been killing our deep-cover officers, he would say that we need to share the news—merely for reasons of self-protection.”

  “It’s too risky. If it leaked that these men were U.S. intelligence officers, then people would ask what part of the agency they were working for. Then you would have to admit to your friends in Congress that you’ve built a whole new capability the public doesn’t know anything about. And at that point you can kiss the new clandestine service goodbye.”

  “You are preaching to the choir here, Reverend.” Hoffman held up his hand, but Gertz continued.

  “And then people would ask what we’ve been doing. What operations have we been running? Was the president aware? How would the White House like to answer that one? ‘Deaf and dumb’ won’t work if this hits Capitol Hill.”

  “Yes, yes, I know all that. But there is this pesky matter of the law. The director read me the executive order on intelligence the other day. He helped write it, as a matter of fact. It gave me indigestion.”

  “People talk too much.”

  “Ah, that they do. I am afraid that God was not an intelligence officer.”

  “With all due respect, that’s your problem, Mr. Hoffman. Read the director the National Security Act of 1947. It says the NSC will authorize ‘such other intelligence activities as may be required,’ and it doesn’t say how, which is good enough for me. But just don’t leave me hanging, if you decide to do a striptease. You and the director would regret that. I promise you.”

  Hoffman’s eyes brightened.

  “Oh, a threat! I like that. Yes, I do. I can’t tel
l you how that warms an old bureaucrat’s soul. You would lose in such a fight, my friend, quite disastrously. You would be blown into so many pieces that people would not know where to find them.”

  “Don’t screw me, Mr. Hoffman. That’s all I’m asking. You’ll take a lot of other people down with you.”

  “This is becoming tedious,” said Hoffman. “I need another drink.”

  He scooted away from the table, with a big man’s delicate, small steps. It was almost a dance the way Hoffman walked, with something of the cadence of the old-time comedian Jackie Gleason. He returned from the bar with a shot of tequila for Gertz and, for himself, a mai tai with a tiny paper umbrella floating on the surface.

  19

  LONDON

  Thomas Perkins invited Sophie Marx to join him for dinner the night she arrived in London. He proposed that they meet at nine-thirty, his preferred dinner hour because it was after the New York markets had closed. He provided an address on South Audley Street and, when she asked if the place was formal, he laughed and said it was annoyingly stylish. She chose a simple black dress and a string of pearls. As she was about to leave her London hotel room, she decided to take her hair out of the ponytail and let it fall against her neck.

  When Marx arrived at the appointed address, she found an unmarked door and, inside, a black velvet curtain. There was a hum of noise, more like the sound of a private party than a normal restaurant. There were no markings in the entryway to suggest that the establishment had a name. “What is this restaurant called?” she asked the hostess, who eyed her skeptically.

  “It is a dining club, madam. It is called Edward’s.” The hostess softened when Marx said that she was a guest of Thomas Perkins and asked to be shown to his table.

  Heads turned as she made her way down the long aisle toward Perkins’s table in the back of the room. It wasn’t just that she was attractive—that was true of most of the women here—but that she had a physical bearing and authority. The men and women scanning her lithe body might have guessed that it came from show-jumping or tennis. They would not have imagined that she had been trained to shoot automatic weapons and jump from airplanes.

  There was a buzz in the place, everyone talking as they pounded down their drinks. It had the energy of a trading floor, which was where most of them had been an hour before, closing out that day’s bets of fifty million or a hundred million dollars, or in a few cases far more. Mayfair had found its legs again; even the people who had been wrecked pretended that they hadn’t, and nobody really knew, except from the size of their order flow. The one thing that everyone in the room thought they knew was that Thomas Perkins was on top of the world, especially as the elegant woman in the black sheath sat down at his table.

  Perkins was reading a summary of that day’s trading, so he didn’t see her approach. When she reached his table, he looked up with surprise. It was like a blind date. When Anthony Cronin had called and asked him to meet a woman who was a colleague of Howard Egan’s, he had not imagined that she would arrive in quite this package. And she, in her own way, was also pleased: She had expected someone with a hard edge, but Perkins just looked intelligent. He was dressed in the clothes that rich men wear, hand-tailored and of finer fabric than is found on any rack. He looked studious in his glasses and also youthful, with that unlikely curl of blond hair.

  People were still watching. This was too much attention. She leaned toward him and said that her name was Sophie.

  “I read once that a spy should have a face that a waiter forgets,” Perkins said. “I think you flunk.”

  “Thank you, if that’s a compliment.” She smiled, but it vanished in an instant. She leaned toward him and spoke in his ear.

  “We are sorry about Howard Egan’s disappearance. It must be a shock for your people. We are grateful that you have been so helpful.”

  “I didn’t realize that his work was so dangerous.”

  “Neither did we. That’s why I’m here.”

  Perkins pulled his chair closer. This was a noisy place, with more traders bursting in the door every few minutes from South Audley Street. They were pumped with testosterone—loud and vulgar, boasting of their big trades. They tried to hide their anxiety, but this was a world where people got destroyed in a day: A trader made bets that went sour, borrowed money to cover yesterday’s mistakes, and then more for today’s, and then, pow—the risk manager walked over to his screen and closed him down. And then he went to Edward’s to pretend it hadn’t happened.

  “Are these people all billionaires?” asked Marx, looking around the room.

  Perkins shook his head. “They all want to be, and some of them will be, but nobody knows which ones will get lucky. That’s what keeps the juice flowing.”

  They drank some wine, making small talk, and then ordered food. She asked what “dressed crab” was, and he answered that it was the opposite of undressed crab. She ordered that, and risotto with white truffles. He ordered the same thing, to make it simple, and bottle of a 1990 Cheval Blanc, a first growth from Saint-Émilion, which at over five thousand dollars was the most expensive wine on the list.

  Eventually they got around to business. He asked why she had wanted to see him. She told him the truth, more or less: She worked for the same part of the CIA as Howard Egan, and had been asked to conduct an investigation into his disappearance. She hoped she could spend some time at Alphabet Capital, reviewing Egan’s trading files and communications, and spending time with his colleagues.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Perkins.

  “I don’t know yet. But somehow Howard’s cover was blown. The people who kidnapped him knew he wasn’t just working for a hedge fund. I need to find out whether there was a leak.”

  “There’s always a leak,” said Perkins, taking off his glasses and looking into her eyes, a few inches away. “Half the people in this room are trying to get inside my computer system right now, trying to figure out whether I am long Argentine government debt or short, or buying Hong Kong equities or selling.”

  “This leak is dangerous, Mr. Perkins. We need help. We have to find it and turn it off.”

  Perkins nodded, trying to match her seriousness. His forelock fell across his forehead, making him look improbably young.

  “I’m game. What am I going to tell my people about you? I mean, if you’re going to spend time on our trading floor, they’re going to wonder what the hell is going on.”

  “Tell them I’m a tryout,” said Marx perkily. “Tell them you’re thinking of hiring me as an analyst. I couldn’t pass as a trader, but anyone can be an analyst, right?”

  “What are you going to analyze? This work isn’t completely mindless, you know.”

  “I used to work in Beirut. I know about oil. So tell people that’s what I’m doing. I’m on a tryout as an energy analyst. Then you can fire me when I’m done.”

  “Well, you can’t have too many energy analysts, right? What did you do in Beirut?”

  “I don’t know you well enough to answer that,” she said, with a look halfway between shy and sly. “Let’s just say you would have found me entertaining. Spectator sport, except you wouldn’t have understood the game.”

  “That’s tantalizing.”

  “It’s all you’re going to get.”

  Sophie Marx couldn’t have explained why she was flirting with him. Perhaps it was the wine, or the fact that he was better-looking than she had expected. Maybe it was that he was so rich. Sophie had grown up poor with her screwball parents, moving from beach shanty to boat to day hotel, one of them always running off with someone else. There was something inescapably pleasurable about money.

  As they were eating dessert, a big, drunken Irishman stumbled toward the table. Sophie had seen him at the bar when she arrived, already inebriated and making too much noise. As he neared Perkins’s chair, he plopped his large bottom on Perkins’s lap and began to moan.

  “Oh, it feels so good. Oh, it’s getting hard.” He was trying to be funny
.

  “Hello, Seamus. Get off my fucking lap.” Perkins gave him a shove.

  The big man stood up and bowed unsteadily in Sophie’s direction.

  “Sorry, miss. Inside joke.”

  “Get lost, Seamus, now. Don’t embarrass yourself any more than you already have.”

  “You know, Perkins, you really are an ungrateful cunt. Did you know that?”

  Perkins stood up. The bartender and a burly waiter had arrived by now, to escort the loudmouth to the door.

  “Go home, Seamus. Stop making an ass of yourself. Come back tomorrow and try to make some money.”

  The Irishman wobbled off, flanked by the bouncers. “You are a cunt,” he said again loudly. “A selfish, ungrateful cunt.”

  Perkins shook his head. “I’m sorry about that.”

  Sophie leaned toward him and put her hand on his arm.

  “What was that all about?” she said. “Why did he use that language?”

  “He’s just a loser, that’s all. He’s ruined. His fund is shutting down. Nobody will lend him any more money. He thinks it’s my fault.”

  “Why does he think that?”

  “Who knows? Because I’m still solvent and he isn’t. We were on opposing sides in some trades. I won and he lost. He asked for a loan, and I said no. His problem is that he is untalented and unlucky, in that order.”

  “Well, I must say, that was entertaining: a floor show. You didn’t really get hard when he sat on you, did you?”

  Perkins laughed out loud, to Sophie’s relief. He ordered a bottle of Château d’Yquem to drink with dessert.

  Toward the end of the evening, she got serious. She didn’t want to break the mood, but she had to give him some news so that he could begin making plans.

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” she said.

  “Something nice?”

  She shook her head.

  “Howard Egan is dead,” she said quietly. “The Pakistani police are issuing a statement. They’re saying he died in a hiking accident. They will send the coffin here, and we’ll take care of the rest. You’ll want to tell your people. There will be stories in the newspapers, probably. We need to get ready for that.”