“Pretty damn good.”
Tarullo looked at his watch. If he wasn’t in the cab and on the way to Heathrow in thirty minutes, he would miss his flight. He spoke quietly, even in the hush of the wooded glen.
“Level with me. I’m running out of time. Who’s Anthony Cronin? You said on the phone that you knew about him. Where can I find him?”
“You can’t. He doesn’t exist. His real name is Jeffrey Gertz. He’s the one who contacted Tom in the beginning and arranged to use Alphabet Capital as a front company. He’s the one who’s taking it apart now, to cover his tracks.”
“Shit! No wonder nobody had heard of him. Can I use his name when I talk with people in D.C.? It’s G-E-R-T-Z, right?”
“Yes, but be careful. This man is toxic. I mean it. Don’t use his name with people unless you trust them.”
They were moving west now, out of the trees and across the grass toward the Serpentine. Tarullo looked at his watch again.
“Listen, I have to head back now or I won’t get out of here tonight. What can I do for you before I go? What do you need?”
“I want to see Tom. Can you put me on the visitors’ list and get me into the prison?”
“Sure, why not? It’s too late today. Tomorrow morning. Remind me your name, and not one of those bullshit spook names, please.”
She repeated her name, Sophie Marx, the one that Perkins knew her by, not the one on her new diplomatic passport.
Tarullo popped open his cell phone and called the warden’s office at Pentonville. He gave the clerk Marx’s name and asked that she be allowed to meet with Thomas Perkins the next morning, at the special and urgent request of his attorney. He was put on hold for a moment, and then the warden himself came on the line and quizzed Tarullo to make sure this was indeed his special and urgent request. They haggled over dates and times, and then Tarullo ended the call.
“You can see him the day after tomorrow,” he told Sophie. “It’s too late for tomorrow. The list is already set. Sorry. Best I could do. In the meantime, I’ll be chumming the water in D.C. See if we can make some people nervous.”
Tarullo was walking faster now, gesticulating as he spoke on the phone and nervously checking his watch every twenty seconds.
Sophie strode along with him, determined to get him to the airport on time. Rather than take the tunnel, they bolted across Park Lane, waving down the traffic so that the big man could make his way across the busy thoroughfare. He lumbered into the hotel as quickly as he could, retrieved his bag and had the doorman hail a black taxi from the queue.
Tarullo gave the cabbie a forty-pound tip, in advance, and said he had to—had to—make the eight o’clock British Airways flight from Terminal Five. Marx watched him go and then walked the hundred yards up Park Lane to her own hotel.
At the entrance to the Dorchester was a concrete island that served as a turnaround for vehicles approaching the front door. A neat wrought-iron fence protected a fountain in the middle, where passersby liked to sit in the sun in the late afternoon and watch the famous people go through the revolving door of the hotel across the way.
Sitting by the fountain as Sophie Marx approached, scanning the entrance with the eye of a man trained in surveillance, was Jeffrey Gertz. He was wearing sunglasses, and he had a full beard now, but he was unmistakable.
When Gertz saw Sophie, he sprang to his feet and walked toward her. She thought of running away, but that would attract the attention of the police who were parked in a squad car on Mount Street, just to the right, and Marx wanted to deal with the London police at that point even less than she did with Gertz.
He was smiling as he walked toward her, with his hand extended in greeting.
“You’ve been ignoring me,” he said, still smiling. “I don’t like that.”
“Get over it,” she answered. “As you said, I’m a ‘former employee.’ And I don’t feel safe around you. I wonder why that is.”
“Don’t be melodramatic, Sophie. It doesn’t suit you. We need to talk. Let’s go someplace quiet.”
“The only place I’m going is into my hotel. How did you find out I was still here?”
“You’re noisy. You move like an elephant. Come on, buy me a drink.”
Gertz walked toward the revolving door. Sophie followed along behind. She was curious what Gertz would have to say for himself after his imaginary world had come crashing down.
The doorman gave Sophie a concerned look as Gertz entered the hotel lobby, as if to ask whether this bearded roustabout was really a guest of Miss Marx, a member of the hotel family. She nodded that he was okay.
Sophie led the way to the bar, which flanked Park Lane. It was just beginning to fill with drinkers in the late afternoon. She found two chairs at the end of the long, curved counter. The martini glasses and bottles of liquor were lined up against the mirrored glass like an army at sunset. Sophie took her seat and told the bartender she wanted a kir.
“Don’t we want somewhere a little more private?” asked Gertz. “We have a lot to talk about.”
“Privacy is the opposite of what I want with you,” she answered. “I want a public place, in my hotel, where everyone knows me. It’s the only way I would feel remotely safe in your company.”
“Suit yourself,” said Gertz. He ordered a gin martini and began popping pistachio nuts into his mouth from the silver-plated dish.
“Nice spot, the Dorchester. A rich guy must have set you up here. But I guess he isn’t so rich anymore. From what I’m hearing, his hedge fund is about to go bankrupt. Let’s see how nice people are to him now that he’s an ex-rich guy trying to stay out of prison.”
“It won’t work, Jeff. Maybe you think you can hang it all on him, but it’s going to come out.”
“It doesn’t matter to me either way. My fingerprints aren’t on anything. I’m invisible. But you need to be careful, sweetie. You’re still a target. And a very bad person is coming your way. That’s why I tracked you down. I wanted to give you a warning. He knows where you are. He has all your aliases.”
“The Pakistani? We’re shutting him down. Mr. Hoffman told me so. We’re rolling up him and his people. His network wouldn’t exist, as near as I can tell, without your help.”
Gertz laughed and knocked the bar with his fist.
“That’s rich. ‘Mr. Hoffman told me so.’ I love that.”
She was angry now, at his arrogance and the dismissive tone. She had forgotten how compact and self-assured Gertz was.
“How could you do it, Jeff? This man was your ‘consultant.’ You let him see into your operations. How could you be so stupid?”
Gertz ran his index finger along the edge of his glass until it began to hum. He took a swig, and then another.
“What do you know?” he said. “Nothing.”
“I know his name. Omar al-Wazir. I know you used him in 2005, and that you stayed in contact with him. I know…” She paused, trying to think of the word that would sting him the most. “I know that you are a fuckup.”
Gertz muttered a curse of his own in response, but that wasn’t enough. He was a man whose inner balance required that he be needed and respected by others. That was his vulnerability. He had to prove he was right.
“You don’t get it. This isn’t ‘Tradecraft for Tots’ like they teach at the Farm. This is the real world. He was my asset. He helped me pick my targets for recruitment. He knew the pressure points in Pakistan. He helped me move money to them. He helped set up the network. The operation wouldn’t have been possible without him. He did a lot of good. It turned out he had flipped. He became dangerous. That wasn’t my fault.”
“Are you crazy? You got your own people killed, Jeff. How could there be anything worse than that?”
He took a sip of his martini, liquid ice on his tongue. He shook his head.
“I feel sorry for you. You’re a sucker, and you’re about to walk off a cliff.”
He stood up from his stool and dropped twenty pounds on the mirrored co
unter of the bar.
She stared at him, her eyes angry and defiant, but with just a flicker of uncertainty.
“Piece of advice,” he said. “Parting shot. Don’t trust Cyril Hoffman. Who do you think told me about the Pakistani professor in the first place? How do you think I know he’s on his way to London? From Hoffman, that’s how. You’re getting played.”
He turned and walked away, back toward the hotel lobby.
“You’re lying,” she muttered. But she wasn’t sure that she knew where the truth lay anymore. Sometimes it was indeterminate; the closer you got to it, the more you disrupted its pieces, so that it changed its shape and position. The truth wasn’t straight. It had bends and curves.
41
ISLAMABAD
How do wars end? That was the question that had vexed Omar al-Wazir since he was a boy, when the time of the big wars was beginning in his part of the world. He could see well enough how they started, but how did they ever stop? He thought about it now as he sat in an air terminal waiting to board his Pakistan Airlines flight to London. It was a jumbo jet, and the waiting room was hot and crowded with Pakistanis of every age, old grandmas off to see their children in Manchester and young families going home to Neasden or Wandsworth, all tired and sweaty in the gritty seats of the boarding lounge.
The professor’s face was clean-shaven, as always. He was wearing a gray suit of light summer wool and a white shirt. His glasses rested on the top of his big nose. It was the face of a doctor of computer science, a modern man, as he always insisted. In the simplicity of his demeanor, there was an invitation to trust. That was why he had been so adept at recruiting others: They wanted to believe that he was their ally; they felt more confident in battle if someone like him was on their side.
A part of the answer to this question of ending wars, the professor thought, was that the fighters on both sides got tired. They were exhausted by battle, bled white from their wounds. They had run out of troops and money, and so it was time to go home. That was what had happened to the Russians, certainly. Their Afghan war ended because the nation was bankrupt, economically and ideologically. A regime fell because of an unwinnable war, just as had been the case in 1917. Other wars ended because of political exhaustion or simply impatience; a nation still had the money and the weapons to fight on, but its will was gone. That was the story of America in Vietnam, the books all said. The war had been lost back home; events on the battlefield were of secondary importance.
But wars that ended in such ways did not bring a good peace; the professor knew that from his study of history. They brought dishonor, shame, a simmering desire for revenge. The Germans had gone from the humiliation of Versailles to the brazen assaults of the Nazis in less than two decades. The start of the second war was contained in the end of the first. That was what people in the professor’s part of the world understood better than more “civilized” people: The victor in war must find a way to salve the dignity of the vanquished; otherwise, there would just be another war.
An old grandfather sitting next to the professor in the waiting lounge had fallen asleep. He was snoring loudly, and some of the children nearby were pointing at him and laughing. It was undignified. The professor gently nudged the old man until he was awake and the loud nasal percussion ceased. He went back to his reverie about war and peace, which helped him to forget about the unpleasantness of the airport waiting room.
The tribal code for restoring harmony was called nanawatay in the Pashto language. That was how wars ended among honorable men. The vanquished party would go to the house of the victor, into the very heart of his enemy, and look that man in the eye and request forgiveness and peace. The defeated man was seeking asylum, and the victor could not but grant him this request. To refuse would be dishonorable and unmanly. When a man is asked to be generous, he can unburden himself of his rage toward his enemy. He can be patient in forgiveness and let go of the past. The defeated man will have brought a buffalo, or some lambs and goats for slaughter. In this gift is his dignity. A feast is held. The war is over.
There were shouts in the terminal suddenly, and a frantic rush. They were calling the flight now, and people were crowding toward the door, pushing and shoving. The professor sat where he was. He had his ticket in his hand, with the seat number printed on it clearly. The plane would not leave without him. It was a sign of the immaturity of people in the East to jostle like this every time there was a queue. A Pashtun man would never do this. Better to miss the flight than to act like a woman.
The professor thought again of his problem: In the old days, it was said, the defeated man would come to the house of the victor with grass in his mouth and a rope around his neck as a sign of his humbleness. He was as meek before the victor as an animal of the field. Other times, the supplicant would attend a funeral for someone in his enemy’s family. He would come to his rival’s village and somberly enter his house, to share the grief. And once inside the house, he could ask for asylum and forgiveness. It was unthinkable to refuse such a plea; only a coward would do so.
The professor thought of the Americans. This culture of asylum was what they had never understood: They had made war in the years after 2001 because the Pashtuns would not refuse the asylum request from the Arabs fleeing across the mountains. The Americans demanded something the people of these mountains could not grant without great shame. You could say that it was a war about hospitality.
Even smart people could be stupid in this way. It was true of the British. The professor had at home somewhere a history of a terrible war the British had fought in the 1870s with the Jowaki clan, which was part of the Afridi tribe. The Jowakis had given asylum to two fearsome outlaws. The British demanded their return, but that was impossible for the tribesmen; better that they all should die. So they fought a bloody war, and it was reported by a British historian of the time, George Batley Scott: “Every glen and valley of the clan was occupied, every tower destroyed, many cattle died, the families suffered in the wintry cold, only then did the chiefs come into camp and ask for terms.”
But the British hadn’t understood how wars end. They had proposed what they thought was a proper settlement—payment of a fine, giving over weapons and, of course, return of the outlaws. The Jowaki chief answered in the only way that was consistent with tribal honor: “We will pay the fine, we will surrender our arms, but those two men who have taken refuge with us, we will not give them up. You are in possession of our country. Keep it, we will seek a home elsewhere, but those men we will not give up. Why will you blacken our faces?”
History was a recording that played continuously, so that you did not realize it was the same song, over and over.
The waiting lounge was nearly empty now. It was possible to board the airplane in a dignified way. Professor Omar collected his computer bag and the book he had been reading and walked to the gate, where a frazzled attendant collected his ticket. When he thanked her for this service, the woman looked astonished.
On the plane, there were families with young children in front of the professor and behind him. He put the buds of his music player into his ears so that the world would disappear and he could listen to Kinan Azmeh, a Syrian clarinetist who played in the classical way of the traveling musicians who had visited his town when he was a boy, who could make their instruments sound like human voices, but sweeter.
The professor was not flying to London with grass in his mouth or a yoke about his neck, it was true. And it could not be said that he had been defeated. But in traveling to Britain, he was entering the house of his enemy, certainly, or his enemy’s best friend. He was seeking the balance, as he had come finally to understand it. He was giving his counterpart the opportunity to forgive—and thereby regain a measure of honor. Surely that would be understood: Just as it was necessary to fight, to avenge the insult, so it was also necessary to forgive. Otherwise the wars continued until there was no one left.
The plane was taking off. The professor could hear the roar of the
engines against the sinuous notes of the clarinet. He fell asleep thinking of his favorite word in the Pashto language, melmastia, which meant “hospitality.” That was the way wars ended.
Another plane was waiting to take off to the north, in Islamabad, heading for the same destination of London. This one was a military jet carrying Lieutenant General Mohammed Malik, the director general of Inter-Services Intelligence. It was an unlikely journey, in some respects. The general normally did not like to travel to foreign countries unless he had official business with their intelligence service chiefs. He was not a mere case officer or a brigadier; there were questions of protocol and status. But in this case he felt he had no choice.
General Malik had a private cabin on the military plane. It was a small compartment, with a portrait of the president on one wall and one of the chief of army staff on another, but it had a bed and a desk, and a door you could close, so that you did not have to make conversation when you had nothing to say.
The general was a fastidious man. His orderly had packed his uniforms in the hanging locker, protected in their zippered suit bags. His dress shoes were already polished to a high shine, but they would be buffed again before the plane landed. The orderly had laid out his pajamas, too, on the bed, along with his felt slippers and his dressing gown. The general would change after the plane had taken off. It would be undignified to be dressed in bedclothes if the steward knocked before takeoff to offer tea or a cold drink.
General Malik had been contacted by his old friend Cyril Hoffman the day before. Usually there was a roundabout indirection to Hoffman’s manner; he could be as Oriental in his ways as a pasha. But this time he was more direct. When the phone rang, the general had been in the garden adjoining his headquarters in Aabpara, sitting in his Adirondack chair, having his tea in the late afternoon and reading his cables, and trying to sort out the tangle of operations that was knotted too tightly now to be easily undone. The duty officer said that Langley was on the line, and that was a call he could never refuse.
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