The Bancroft Strategy (23 page)

“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—”

“Stop it, you're gibbering.”

“My point is merely that there are many stories and no validated truths. He rules over a shadowland that encompasses the globe, yet he—or she, or it—remains forever out of sight, like the dark side of the moon.”

“What the hell…?”

“You're hopelessly over your head. I suppose we both are. But at least I know it.”

“I'd just as soon kill you as spit on you, you do know that, don't you?” Belknap snarled.

“Sure, you could kill me. But Genesis could do worse. Inconceivably worse. Oh, the stories I've heard. The legend of Genesis is not inconsiderable.”

“Campfire tales!” Belknap scoffed. “Rumors based on superstition—is that what you're talking about?”

“Stories that are passed along on the lower frequencies. Rumors, if you like—but rumors I have good reason to credit. Campfire tales, you say? Genesis knows a thing or two about fire. Let me tell you about another princeling—a member of the Saudi royal family in fact. It was said that an agent of Genesis passed along a request to him. A request from Genesis. The foolish man had the temerity to refuse. He thought he could defy Genesis.” Habib Almani swallowed hard. His forehead gleamed in the sunlight filtered through the layers of silk and muslin. His soft round hands clutched each other. “He disappeared for a week. Then they found his body in a Dumpster in Riyadh.”

“Dead.”

“Worse,” Almani said. “Alive. He remains alive in a Riyadh hospital to this day, I'm told. And in precisely the same condition as when he was discovered.” The Omani leaned forward with a look of horrified intensity. “You see, when they found him, he was paralyzed from the neck down—the cervical spinal cord had been carefully severed. His tongue had been surgically cut out. And then a state of permanent blepharospasm was induced, apparently through the injection of a neurotoxin. Do you follow? His very eyelids were paralyzed, permanently clenched shut. So he cannot even communicate by blinking!”

“The man was otherwise intact?”

“Which is the really horrifying thing. He lives on, perfectly conscious, utterly immobile, locked into his midnight existence, his own body the ultimate crypt…as a warning to the rest of us.”

“Jesus Christ,” Belknap breathed.

“
Allahu Akbar
,” the Omani echoed.

Belknap narrowed his eyes. “If you've never seen him, how do you know
I'm
not Genesis?”

A measuring gaze. “Could
you
do such a thing?”

The look on Belknap's face was answer enough.

“And then there was a famously handsome Kuwaiti. Heir to a petrol fortune. A great ladies' man. So beautiful, it was said, that when he entered a room people would fall silent. Then one day he defied the will of Genesis. When they found him—still alive—his entire face had been flayed. Do you understand? The very skin from his face was—”

“Enough!” the American barked, cutting him off. “Goddammit, I've heard enough. Are you telling me that Pollux is in the clutches of this Genesis?”

Habib Almani shrugged elaborately. “Are we not
all
in his clutches?” Then he lowered his face and cradled it in his hands, retreating into a fugue of fear. A place beyond reach.

“Goddammit, you'll answer my questions or I'll slice your throat
open, rip your balls off, and shove them down your gullet. Nothing fancy, but I find it usually does the trick.” He took a folding blade from his pocket and held it at the man's throat.

Almani just stared off, spent. “I have no more answers,” he said miserably. “About Pollux, about Genesis? I have told you all I know.”

Belknap searched the man's face. He was, Belknap could tell, speaking the truth. The operative would learn no more from him.

The boy was waiting for him in front of the SUV when Belknap emerged, looking solemn. Dust from the desert breeze was already beginning to dull Baz's lustrous black hair.

“Get in,” Belknap grunted.

“There is one more thing you must do,” the boy told him.

Belknap just looked at him, suddenly conscious again of the baking heat, rising in waves from the earth itself.

“In the tent, you saw a girl, thirteen years old, kept by the princeling?”

Belknap nodded. “An Arab girl.”

“You must go back and get her,” Baz instructed. He clasped himself with his slender arms, a pose of resolve. “You must take her with us.” He took a deep breath and looked up at the American. For the first time, his eyes were moist. “She's my sister.”

An hour's drive outside of Buenos Aires, the Casa de Oro was a cross between a classic hacienda and a Renaissance villa, with large arches everywhere and no shortage of gold-flecked marble. This morning, the guests were assembled at the far end of its formal, gently sloping lawns, to watch a polo match that was taking place on an adjacent field, ten fenced-off acres in size. Waiters in morning coats continually circulated with fruit drinks and canapés. A wizened man in an electric wheelchair was attended to by an Asian youth. An older woman with surgically tightened cheeks and bleached teeth that seemed to belong to someone else's mouth, the mouth of someone much younger and much larger, emitted shrill squeals as a white-haired eminence told stories.

Few of the guests paid much attention to the players, with their yellow jackets, white helmets, and long mallets. The ponies snorted as they made tight turns, their breath forming wraiths in the chill morning air.

A man in his early fifties adjusted his summer formal wear—a white swallowtail jacket and a crimson sash—and inhaled deeply. From the field drifted a whiff of sweat, both equine and human. He was an international businessman whose assets included telecom companies that stretched across much of the South American continent, and it was second nature for him to wonder how much the entire property would cost to acquire. The villa, the three hundred verdant acres surrounding it. He had no reason to think that Danny Munoz, their host, was interested in selling, and no real need to add
to his own real-estate holdings. Yet he couldn't help wonder. It was his nature.

One of the waiters—older than the others, but a last-minute replacement had been needed—approached the middle-aged telecommunication mogul. “Refresh your drink, sir?”

The man grunted.

With a smile, the waiter poured some of the lime-and-melon punch into his glass. The light blond hairs on the back of his hand glistened in the morning sun. Then he stepped behind a row of tall Italian cypresses and quietly dumped the rest of the liquid onto the soil. He had almost returned to the villa when the sounds of commotion—first a sudden silence, then random shrieks and hollers—told him that the mogul had been stricken.

“Ataque del corazón!”
someone yelled.

Yes, a very good guess
, mused the man in the waiter's attire. It would have seemed like a heart attack. Even the coroner would come to the same conclusion. He'd make sure that help was summoned. No reason not to. Especially since the target was assuredly beyond helping.

 

Andrea Bancroft unzipped a black nylon carrying case and set the laptop computer it contained on the square, paper-topped table. She and Walter Sachs were sitting together at the back of Greenwich's second-best vegan diner. It was a place Sachs seemed to favor just so he could mock it. The place was nearly empty; the waitress on duty looked over occasionally to make sure she wasn't needed, but mostly had her nose in a paperback copy of
Great Expectations
.

“You just buy this?” he asked. “It's a pretty good model. You could do better for the price, though. Should have asked me first.”

Walter Sachs had taken to wearing his gray-brown hair short on the sides and long on top, which made his long, rectangular face look even more so. His cleft jaw conveyed a sense of strength that was
slightly discordant with his narrow chest. He had—it embarrassed Andrea that she noticed, but there it was—a flat butt. He wore his trousers hitched up almost to his navel, but they bagged a little in the back. As if to combat the stereotype of the bespectacled computer geek, he wore contacts, but he had obviously never quite grown accustomed to them. His eyes were always slightly reddened, slightly irritated. Maybe he had dry eyes, or maybe the curvature of the lenses wasn't quite right. Andrea wasn't going to ask.

“It's not mine.”

“Got it,” Walter said lightly. “Receipt of stolen goods.”

“Sort of,” Andrea said. “As a matter of fact.”

Walter gave her a look. “Andrea…”

“I'm asking you for a favor here. There are files on this computer, and I'd like to read them. Only they're encrypted. That's the situation. How much more do you really want to know?”

Walter stroked his chin and gave her a marveling look. “As little as possible,” he said. “You're not doing something you shouldn't be doing, right?”

“You know me, Walter.” Andrea smiled wanly. “When have I ever done something I shouldn't?”

“Fine. Say no more.”

How could she even begin to explain? She couldn't even explain it to herself.

Maybe her suspicions were groundless. Yet those red ants continued to swarm. She had to do something to get rid of them—or else follow them to their destination. The decision she made was impetuous; the manner of executing it was anything but.

It had been something of a shot in the dark, replacing the Hewlett-Packard laptop belonging to the Bancroft Foundation's comptroller with an identical model whose hard disk she had wiped. The natural assumption would simply be that the disk had crashed; the data would be backed up, and that would be that. Unplugging the machine from the Ethernet and power cord had taken less than ten seconds.
The fellow was eating in a lunchroom on the floor below. It was child's play. Except for the telltale heart hammering in her chest as she made her way back to the parking lot with the stolen object in her knapsack. She wasn't just entering a different world; she was a different Andrea Bancroft. She did not know what she would discover about the foundation. But she had already discovered a great deal about herself, and she wasn't sure it was entirely heartening.

Walter was already rummaging through the computer's root directory. “Lot of stuff here. Data files, mainly.”

“Start with the most recent,” she directed.

“They're uniformly encrypted.”

“As I said.” She poured herself more Tissane of Tranquility—apparently some sort of chamomile tea, except that, this being a vegan diner, everything was given a cute name. Her earthenware mug felt unpleasantly sandy against her lips.

Walter rebooted the computer while holding down a combination of keys—Shift, Option, a couple of others that Andrea didn't catch. Instead of the usual startup screen, a bare command line was visible. Walter was working at the machine-code level. He keyed in a few lines and then nodded sagely. “Pretty standard crypto,” he said. “Commercial-strength RSA.”

“Easy to crack?”

“Like opening a sardine can,” Walter said, blinking furiously. “With your fingernails.”

“Yikes. How long?”

“Hard to say. I'm gonna have to C-plus-plus the sucker. Wire it up to my Big Bertha. There are some pretty decent can openers out there in shareware land. I'll upload a dozen of these files and keep throwing shit at it. Kinda like smashing a window so you can unlock the front door. I mean, we're basically talking about reversing a one-way hash algorithm in order to get an entering wedge that'll pull up the modulus between two 1024-bit primes, which is what makes it a little hairy.”

Andrea tilted her head. “I have no idea what you just said.”

“Then I guess I'm just talking to myself. Wouldn't be the first time.”

“You're a darling.”

“You wouldn't be landing me in hot water, now, would you?”

“Of course not. I'd never do that. Tepid, sure.
Warm
, maybe. Warm's okay, isn't it?”

“You're a deep one, you are, Andrea Bancroft.”

“How do you mean?”

Walter pursed his lips as he peered at the machine code that had started to crowd the screen. “Who said I was talking to you?”

 

He
had
to be dead. Navajo Blue had agreed to what Castor had asked of him, and he had been killed. It was the likeliest explanation for the man's failure to leave a message at the appointed time, let alone his failure to respond to calls on any of his numbers. A combination of nausea and fury welled up in Belknap, and he noticed he was traveling at a dangerous speed. What had he done today? More harm than good? He had—in the plus column, he hoped—dropped off Baz and his sister at their village, which clung to a ledge of rose-colored rock like a gray lichen. He could hear ululations and joyous cries among the villagers as he drove off, and his thoughts returned back to the princeling and his baubles. Such exploitation. Such depravity. Such disrespect for human life in a sun-parched region where any kind of life was a kind of miracle. And what would become of twelve-year-old Baz? Would he grow up to be an imam, as his grandfather hoped? Would his life be claimed in the next round of cholera or typhoid? A round of interclan violence? Would he become a terrorist or a caregiver? Would the evil visited upon him bear malignant fruit in his own later life—or would it increase his resolve to work for good? No guarantees. The boy was clever, well-spoken, clearly better-educated already than most of the villagers among whom he
lived. Perhaps he would escape the obscurity that surrounded him. Perhaps his name would come to be far better known than the names of his kith and kin—but known for ill or for good?

There were some who would say that the answer depended on who you were; they would point out that the most notorious terrorists were frequently heroes among their own people.
There are some who would say that you and I are terrorists
, Jared told him once. Belknap had been indignant:
Because we do violence to evildoers?
Jared had shook his head:
Because they think we are the evildoers.

Not that Jared had never been tempted by easy relativism. There were lies and there were truths. There were facts and there were forgeries.
If someone shows you a penny with two faces, you know you've been given a fake penny
, he once said.
But you know something else, too.

What's that?
Belknap had asked.

Jared gave him a sleepy smile.
You should bet on heads.

His thoughts returned to what the Omani had told him about Genesis—about the fantastic penalties he had exacted from those who crossed him. Could Jared really be in the hands of this monster? Belknap shuddered. And how had someone managed to keep his or her identity so closely guarded, even while wielding so much power?
A shadowland that encompasses the globe.

Acid spurted in the back of Belknap's throat as he pulled his SUV over and tried calling Gomes for the third time in the past hour; the junior agent was evidently in meetings, and Belknap wasn't going to leave a message with anybody else. This time Gomes was in, and, when Belknap had gotten him on the phone and explained the situation—no response on any of his numbers—the junior agent had swiftly confirmed the worst. Navajo Blue—Thomas Mitchell—was indeed deceased. A squad car from the township of Wellington, New Hampshire, had been sent to his house and confirmed it. He was dead. Estimated time of death was seven hours earlier. Cause as yet unknown. No evidence of foul play. No evidence of anything.

Except that Belknap had sent him to his death.

He had sent him to put Andrea Bancroft under surveillance, but he had underestimated her wiles, her ruthlessness—or that of those protecting her.

Because of his mistake, a man was dead.

Gomes, as requested, gave him a fuller report on Andrea Bancroft. The seeming innocence of the public-life details might have only attested to her skill at fabrication. She clearly was highly intelligent, had enormous resources at her disposal.

Could she be Genesis?

Belknap rattled off the names of a dozen federal databases. “Here's what I need to know,” he said to Gomes.

This time, the junior analyst made no protest. Navajo Blue's death would not go unavenged. The woman would be brought to justice.

Or Belknap would visit brutal justice upon her.