The Bancroft Strategy

by Robert Ludlum

  “More money for those goddamn savages?” Culp asked between gritted teeth.

  “We’re looking at a document composed on October seventeen, another series of e-mail exchanges from that afternoon, another internal document from October twenty-one, and a confidential communication sent to Rexell Computing, Ltd. Shall we forward copies to the S.E.C.? In addition, we have documentation relating to the formation of an offshore business entity called WLD Enterprises, and—”

  “Stop,” Culp croaked. “You had me at hello.” Any hint of rebellion or defiance had been crushed. Each one of those documents by itself could spur the S.E.C. and the Justice Department into a fresh investigation of antitrust activities, and a legal morass that could cost billions to deal with and dent the company’s market capitalization for a long time. There was even the looming danger that the company would be broken up, spun off into parts—which would be the greatest disaster, because the parts were decidedly less valuable than the whole. Nobody needed to belabor the consequences. They were crystal-clear.

  That was why he had already been forced to give away vast sums, through the William and Jennifer Culp Charitable Trust, toward the treatment of tropical diseases. If the whole goddamn continent of Africa just sank beneath the waves one day, Culp wouldn’t give a good goddamn. But he was running an empire here: He had responsibilities to it. And his enemies were formidable and intelligent and unsympathetic. Culp had spent a shitload of cash trying to track them down, and with nothing to show for it save a few denial-of-service attacks on the corporate Web sites.

  People thought he was the master of his domain. Nonsense. He was a goddamn victim. What did he really control, after all? He glanced through the glass at his COO. Donnelly had a whitehead on the side of his nose, a small pustule, and Culp felt a sudden urge to pop it, or poke it with a needle. A twisted grin appeared on his face. Imagine what would happen if I did that. He caught Millie Lodge’s eyes; Millie Lodge who knew so many of his secrets and was every inch a loyalist, he had no doubt. But that goddamn reeking perfume she always wore. He’d meant to say something to her about it, but somehow it never seemed appropriate—he could never figure out a sufficiently offhand way to bring it up, without devastating her, and now, all these years later, it would be just too goddamn awkward to broach the subject. So there! William Culp, a prisoner of her Jean Tatou cologne or whatever the hell it was.

  But maybe—maybe Millie herself was somehow behind the shakedown! He looked at her again, tried to size her up as a potential conspirator. It didn’t make sense, somehow; she just wasn’t that crafty. He continued to steam, silently. Here I sit, William Culp, No. 3 on the Forbes Four Hundred, and these bastards have my goddamn sack in their fist! Where’s the justice in that?

  “The European Commission would look askance at your proposed acquisition of Logiciel Lilles,” the voice from hell prompted, “if it was made aware of your draft marketing scheme for—”

  “Just tell me what you want from me, for the love of God,” Culp said with bitter resignation. It was the snarling of a defeated animal. “Just tell me!” He took another sip of his cooling brew and made a face. The flavor was actively unpleasant. Who was he kidding, anyway? It tasted like shit.

  Oman

  The horizon line was serrated with crags and swales and the occasional stunted acacia tree. Half-shrouded in the distance, to the north, was the irregular crest of the distant Hajar Mountains. The one-lane road was often powdered over with the reddish sand, so that it blended into the surrounding desert. Finally, the road lurched through a rocky pass and into a green arroyo. There were date palms along the ravine, desert oleander, and scrubby grasses.

  For intervals, he allowed himself to be dazed by the beauty of the landscape, his mind emptying out into the barren majesty of his surroundings. Then thoughts of Jared Rinehart began to intrude.

  He was failing a man—he could not shake the feeling—who had never failed him. A man who had not only saved his life on more than one occasion, but who had stepped in on occasion to keep him from harm’s way. He remembered the time when Jared had warned him that a woman he had been getting close to—a Bulgarian émigrée who worked at Walter Reed—was a suspected mole, the subject of a clandestine FBI probe. The dossier Rinehart showed him had been devastating to Belknap. Yet how much more devastating would it have been if Belknap hadn’t learned the truth? The FBI generally guarded its domestic investigations from the other agencies; Belknap’s own career could have been destroyed, and perhaps, given his carelessness, it should have been. But Rinehart would not hear of it. Through every kind of travail, he always kept an eye out for Belknap, as much a guardian angel as a friend, Belknap sometimes thought. When a close friend of Belknap’s—a friend from childhood—died in a car accident, Rinehart had traveled all the way to Vermont to attend the funeral, simply to keep Belknap company, and make it clear he was not alone, that when he grieved Rinehart grieved as well. When a girlfriend of Belknap’s was killed during an operation in Belfast, Rinehart had insisted that he be the one to break the terrible news to him. He remembered how he struggled not to fall apart, how he struggled not to weep, until he looked up and saw that Rinehart’s own eyes were moist.

  Thank God I still have you, Belknap had told him. Because you’re all I’ve got.

  And now? What did Belknap have?

  He was failing the one true friend he had. Failing, yes, the one man who had never failed him.

  The SUV juddered as he drove over a crested ridge of fissured road, and his gaze drifted away from the crenulated mountains in the distance, the shades of ochre and yellow in the earth and stones. He had filled the tank two hours earlier, and now he gave the gas gauge an occasional glance. Up ahead, a cluster of mud-brick houses was sheltered by a cliff. A few birds circled overhead.

  “Falcons!” Baz said, pointing.

  “Like you, Baz,” Belknap said, to show that he understood. The boy had been chatty at the onset of the journey, and then subdued, and Belknap wanted to be sure that he would hold together if there were troubles ahead. As soon as they were out of Dubai, he had peered at himself in the mirror on the reverse side of the sunshade, and started rubbing at the kohl around his eyelids. Belknap gave him his handkerchief for the job. Now that it was almost gone, it was easier to see who the boy had been before being dragooned into the services of Habib Almani. Baz told him that his father wanted him to be an imam, that his grandfather had taught him to memorize scripture from a young age. The grandfather, once a trader from the coast, was also the one who had taught him English. Baz was fascinated by the radio in the dashboard, and during the first half hour of the trip he had avidly, marvelingly, switched between stations.

  At the base of an escarpment, across from the wasp-nest village of mud houses on a wadi, was a large tentlike structure. The fabric—a cream-colored silk, it seemed—rustled in the faint breeze.

  “This the place?”

  “Yes,” Baz confirmed. There was tension in his voice.

  The Omani princeling would be inside, holding court. Outside was a loose line of six or seven men in turbans and dishdashas, some sun-wizened, all lean, nearly to the point of emaciation. Baz had said that Almani would be on one of his regular visits to his region of tribal origin, and plainly he was—doling out gifts to the local chiefs and village elders. That was how the essentially feudal social order worked in places like Oman.

  Belknap pushed his way into the tent and found himself walking on silk carpets. An attendant looked dismayed and heckled him in Arabic, gesturing excitedly. Belknap realized that the man was upset because he had not removed his shoes. The least of your problems, he thought.

  Baz told him that the princeling was a man of considerable girth, but that was an understatement. He was corpulent. He was perhaps five-eight and must have weighed three hundred pounds. All of which made it easy to recognize him. He sat on a woven-cane seat, as if it were a throne. On a rug beside him was a heap of gaudy trinkets, obviously for bestowing upon the visit
ing elders. One of them, clad in dusty muslin, was walking away on bare feet as he clutched some bauble of gold foil.

  “You’re Habib Almani,” Belknap said.

  “My dear sir,” the man replied with an elegant sweep of a hand, his eyes widening. On his fingers were jewel-encrusted rings that glinted and flashed. A diamond-studded khandjar, a small L-shaped ceremonial scabbard, drooped from a sash around his waist. He spoke in the plummiest of British accents; Belknap could have been at the Athenaeum Club. “We come across so few Americans here. You must excuse the humble and temporary nature of my establishment. This is not exactly Muscat! And to what do we owe the pleasure of your company?” His small hard eyes belied his elaborate courtesies.

  “I’m here for information.”

  “You come to this humble Omani princeling for information? Driving directions, perhaps? How to get to the nearest…discotheque?” He started to guffaw, the very image of debauchery, and stole a leering side glance at a girl, perhaps thirteen, who silently huddled in the corner. “You’d enjoy a night at a discotheque, wouldn’t you, my little rosebud,” he cooed to her. Then he turned to Belknap again. “I’m sure you know about Arab hospitality. Everywhere we are renowned for it. I must ply you with goodies, and take pleasure in doing so. But, well, you see, I am curious.”

  “I’m with the U.S. Department of State. A researcher, shall we say.”

  A small twitch was visible on the man’s porridgy face. “A spy. Lovely. The Great Game. Just like in the old days of the Ottomans.” The self-described princeling took another sip from a silver teacup. Belknap was close enough to smell liquor—Scotch, in fact. Probably the expensive stuff. The princeling was plainly the worse for drink. He did not slur his words; he enunciated them with the emphatic precision of someone determined not to, which was no less of a giveaway.

  “An Italian girl came into your possession recently,” Belknap said.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “She was employed by an escort service you own.”

  “By the beard of the Prophet, you shock me to the core, you cut me to the quick, you rock me to the foundations, you shiver my timbers and—”

  “Don’t try my patience,” Belknap said in a low, menacing voice.

  “Oh, hell, if you’re looking for an Italian putta, you’ve really gone out of your way. I can offer you other satisfactions. I can and I will. What’s your speed? Name your poison? You want—yes, my little rosebud?” He gestured toward the cowering girl. “You can have her. Not for keeps. But you can take her for a test drive, shall we say—a test drive to paradise!”

  “You disgust me,” Belknap said.

  “A thousand apologies. I understand. You steer the other course. You drive on the other side. No need to explain. You see, I went to Eton, where buggery was practically a school sport, like the Wall Game. You know about the Wall Game? Only played at Eton. You must go to the St. Andrew’s Day game one year, watch the Collegers and the Oppidans have it out. Rather like football. Rather. But rather different, too. I believe the last time a goal was scored on a St. Andrew’s Day match was in 1909, if you can believe it.”

  “Believe this, you bastard,” Belknap growled in a voice only loud enough for Almani to hear. “I’ll rip your arm out of its socket if you don’t come clean.”

  “Ah, a taste for rough trade!” The voice was jeering beneath its obliging tone. “We can accommodate that as well. Whatever lights your torch! Whatever charges your battery! Now, if you’ll just turn around and head to Dubai, I’ll be able to provide you exactly—”

  “With one phone call I can scramble a couple of helicopters that will take you and your goddamn entourage to a very dark place from which you may never emerge. With one phone call I can—”

  “Oh, poo!” The bejeweled Omani downed the contents of his goblet and exhaled boozily. “You know something? You’re the sort of person Dr. Spooner would have called a shining wit.”

  “I warned you.”

  “The wop wench—what about her? It was a favor, that was all. Not my cuppa, I’ll tell you that for nothing. Someone wanted to get her out of the way.”

  “Someone connected with the Khalil Ansari group.”

  Suddenly the princeling looked uncomfortable. With a sloppy sweep of his arm and a few words of guttural Omani Arabic, he ordered the others away, including two glowering burly men who had stood to either side of him and whose khandjars looked more than merely ornamental. Only the silent, cowering girl remained.

  “Loose lips sink ships!” Almani scowled.

  “Who?” Belknap pressed. “Tell me who.”

  “Khalil Ansari’s dead,” the man said sullenly. Wariness had entered his voice; a man like him did not dismiss his guards cavalierly. He must have placed great weight on the risk of untoward revelation.

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “Not that it’ll make a goddamn bit of difference now, will it?” the drunken Omani went on. “He wasn’t really in control of the business anyway, not toward the end. New management. New maestro.” He pretended to be an orchestra conductor. “Tum-tee-tum, tum-tumity-tumity-tum,” he burbled, a snatch of some tune Belknap didn’t recognize. “Anyway, it wasn’t like I had any choice. You CIA types never understand that. You’re always picking on us pawns and leaving the kings, queens, bishops, and rooks to their own devices!” Abruptly, he had turned maudlin and self-pitying. “What did I ever do to you?”

  Belknap took a menacing step closer. Almani, he inferred, had been on the CIA payroll at one time or another. It affected the way he dealt with the American: made him desperate to buy him off, lest evidence of his past associates compromise his standing with his current associates. In the Gulf, it was not an uncommon situation among middlemen like this glorified princeling.

  “It wasn’t just the Italian girl,” Belknap said. “Tell me about the tall American. Tell me about Jared Rinehart.”

  Habib Almani’s eyes widened, his cheeks puffed out as if he was about to be sick. Finally he blurted, “I had no bloody choice, did I? There are some people and some powers to whom you just can’t say, ‘Sod off!’ I had no bloody choice.”

  Belknap grabbed hold of the man’s pudgy soft hand and began to squeeze hard, then harder. Pain was visible in the princeling’s contorted face.

  “Where is he?” Belknap asked. Then he put his face inches from the Omani’s and bellowed the question: “Where is he?”

  “You’re too late, aren’t you?” Almani sneered. “He’s not here. Not in the Emirates at all. Not any longer. He had been in Dubai, yes. They wanted to put him in my safekeeping and all that. But next thing you know, they put the long fellow on a private bird, you see. Your friend has flown away.”

  “Where, goddammit?”

  “Somewhere in Europe, I’d guess. But you know how it is with private jets. They file flight plans—but then they don’t always stick to them, do they?”

  “I said where?” Belknap lashed out with an open hand and struck the Omani across the face.

  The man reeled drunkenly, and then settled into a half-crouch, breathing hard. He was obviously debating whether to summon his guards, and then, just as obviously, thought better of it. Almani was debauched and vainglorious; he was not rash. His temper quickly cooled to a wounded dignity.

  “I told you,” Almani said, “I don’t know, you son of a dog and a camel. It’s not the sort of thing you ask, now is it?”

  “Bullshit.” Belknap placed both his hands around Almani’s fat, pulpy throat. “You don’t seem to know who you’re dealing with. You want to know what I’ll do if you don’t talk? You want a taste? Do you?”

  The Omani’s face colored deeply. “You’re out of your league,” he coughed. “You’ve had your twenty questions. But if you think I would cross—”

  Belknap punched him hard. Knuckles met cheekbones through an inch of adipose.

  “You’re insane if you think I would tangle with Genesis,” Almani said in
a low voice, hushed with intensity. A spark of lucidity glinted through his drunkenness and affectation, like a voice at the bottom of a well. “You’re insane if you’re thinking of tangling with Genesis.”

  Genesis? Belknap threw out an arm and slammed his elbow into the Omani’s jaw.

  Blood appeared in a small rivulet from the corner of the man’s mouth, dripping from his thick lips, as if someone had tried to draw a lopsided frown on his face. “You are wasting your energies,” the man gasped. Not his words but the finality on his face made Belknap stop. The finality, and the fear.

  “Genesis?”

  Breathing heavily, Almani managed a twisted smile despite the pain, the blows. “He’s everywhere, don’t you know?”

  “He?”

  “He. She. It. They. The hell of it is, nobody knows for sure, except for a few unfortunates who have reason to wish to Allah that they didn’t. I say ‘he’ for convenience. He has his fingers everywhere. His confederates always among us. Perhaps even you.”

  “Oh, you think?” Belknap grunted.

  “No, not really. You’re too bloody obvious in your moves. You’re a two-plus-two-equals-four guy. Not a connoisseur of complexity. No match for Genesis. But then who is?”

  “I don’t understand you. You live in holy terror of a person you’ve never seen?”

  “As have men throughout the millennia. But seldom for such good reason. The princeling will take pity on you. The princeling will tell you the facts of life, you silly ignorant naïf. Call it Arab hospitality. Or don’t. But never say I didn’t warn you. There are those who say that Genesis is a woman, the daughter of a German industrialist who fell in with the radicals of the nineteen-seventies—Baader-Meinhof, the June Two Movement—and then out the other side. Some say Genesis has a public profile as an orchestra conductor, a maestro, who travels around the world from one engagement to another, while stealthily maintaining discipline among those who have no idea of his true identity. Some say he’s a giant of a man, others, that he’s a midget, literally. I’ve heard that she’s a ravishing beauty, and I’ve also heard she’s a wizened crone. I’ve heard it said that Genesis was born in Corsica, Malta, Mauritius, and various points east, west, north, and south. Some say he’s descended from a family of samurai, and spends more of his time in a Zen monastery. Some say his father was a poor ranch hand in South Africa, and that he was adopted by a rich Boer family with mining interests, which he then inherited. Some say he’s Chinese, a onetime intimate of Deng. Some say he is a professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, but nobody knows which. Yet others—”