The Bancroft Strategy (27 page)

“But what do you mean exactly? What are you saying?”

“Small interventions can have big consequences. We're trying to plot out those event cascades so that we can gauge such intervention. Forgive me, this is still too abstract, isn't it?”

“You could say that.”

The look he gave her was kindly but firm. “I'll have to trust your discretion. The program couldn't work if its activities were made public.”

“Its activities. You're still speaking in code.”

“And you no doubt suspect the secrecy,” Paul Bancroft observed. “You would be right to, as a general rule. You're wondering why I've
hived off this group, kept it all below radar—quite literally off the map. You're wondering what I've got to hide.”

Andrea nodded. Questions teemed in her mind, but she knew that for the moment she would do best by saying least.

“It's a delicate matter,” he said. “But when I tell you how it all started, I think you'll understand why it was necessary.”

Paul Bancroft led her to a quiet alcove overlooking a lushly verdant garden. Through the filtered glass, she saw a bubbling creek running through bushes and banks of flowers.

“Necessary,” she repeated. “A fraught word.”

“Sometimes the only way for benevolent projects to succeed in corrupt regimes is to identify malefactors, obstructionists, and persuade them to step aside, perhaps by the threat of public exposure. That's how it started, you see.” His burnished, mellifluous voice was soothing, almost hypnotic. He leaned back in the chrome-and-leather chair, looking off into the middle distance. “It was many years ago. The foundation had just completed work on a costly waterworks project in the Zamora-Chinchipe province of Ecuador, a project that was going to provide sanitary drinking water for tens of thousands of poor villagers, Quechuas for the most part. Then, out of the blue, we found out that a notoriously venal government minister had decided to commandeer the land. It quickly emerged that he wanted to sell it to a mining company that had been a reliable source of kickbacks to him.”

“That's lousy.”

“Andrea, I had been there personally. I had walked through clinics filled with children—four, five, six years of age—who were dying, needlessly, because of contaminated drinking water. I looked upon the tear-stained faces of a mother who had lost all five of her children to waterborne parasites and pathogens. And there were thousands and thousands of mothers like her. Thousands and thousands of children who were regularly stricken, debilitated, killed. All needlessly. All
preventably
. You just had to give a damn. Which, apparently, was
too much to ask.” His eyes were moist as he looked directly at Andrea. “A program officer on the ground, based in Zamora, happened to have personally damaging information about the minister. She took the information to me. And, Andrea, I took a deep breath, and I made a decision.” His brown eyes were intent, warm, steady, unabashed. “I decided to use it as she had hoped I would. We neutralized the corrupt minister.”

“I don't understand. What did you do?”

He waved a hand vaguely. “A whispered aside. A word to the right intermediary. We took a step forward. He took a step back. And thousands of lives were saved that very year.” He paused. “Would you have done something different?”

Andrea's response was unhesitating. “What choice was there?”

He nodded approvingly. “Then you understand. To change the world—to increase the sum of human well-being—philanthropy must be worldly. It must be strategic, not just well-intentioned. Gathering that sort of strategic information—and, when necessary, acting on it—is beyond the competence of the traditional program officers. That's why this special facility had to be created, housing a special division.”

“And nobody knows.”

“Nobody can know. It would interfere with the results we've been trying to achieve. People would try to predict and anticipate our interventions—and then to predict what others were likely to predict, and then to predict what others were likely to predict others were likely to predict. And then we would indeed have computational explosion. The hazy horizons of causality would be completely opaque.”

“But what is this division, exactly? You still haven't said.”

“The Theta Group.” Paul Bancroft's gaze was watchful but warm. “And welcome to it.” He stood up. “You remember what you were saying about perverse consequences. About the well-intended deed with malign results. That's the problem that my task force here has
devoted itself to. But on a level of granularity—of detail and precision—never before attempted. You're a tough-minded young woman, Andrea, but not because you don't have a heart. On the contrary, it's because you do have a heart, and a head, and you know that each is useless without the other.” There was something saintlike about his visage, serenity combined with an acute sensitivity to the suffering of others.
The man is for real
—every instinct she had told her so. Yet something Belknap said returned to her:
You've been duped.

Andrea stared at him hard and made a decision. A reckless one, perhaps, but a calculated one all the same. “You talked about interventions. Would this be related to contacts between the Bancroft Foundation and a paramilitary-squad leader in the U.A.E.?” She tried to keep her tone cool, though she could feel a hammering in her chest.

Paul Bancoft looked bemused. “I don't think I'm following.”

Andrea handed Bancroft a photocopy of the last page of the phone list. She indicated the number that was prefixed by 011 971 4, the Dubai calling code. “Don't ask me how I came to have this. Just explain this call. Because I called the number, and I think it went to the cell phone of…what I said. Some sort of paramilitary type.” Her words were deliberately vague, but involuntarily faltering. She did not want to tell him about Todd Belknap. Not yet. She was haunted by too many uncertainties. If Paul Bancroft were complicit, he would probably concoct some story about a misdialed number. If he were not, he would be as determined to learn more as she was.

He squinted at the number and then at his cousin. “I won't ask how you know that, Andrea. I trust you and I trust your instincts.” He rose, looked around, and with a gesture summoned a dark-suited man.

Not one of those who sat around the U-shaped table, but someone else, someone Andrea hadn't even noticed before. Wheat-colored hair, a tanned face, a broken nose, and a gait that was close to a glide.

Bancroft handed him the page with the international telephone number on it. “Scanlon, I'd like you to do a database search of that Dubai number. Let me know what you come up with.”

The man nodded mutely and glided off.

Bancroft returned to his chair and gave his cousin a questioning look.

“That's it?” Andrea asked.

“For now.” He directed another measuring gaze toward her. “Someone mentioned to me that you'd taken an interest in the foundation's archives. I think we both know why.” There was no reproach in his voice, not even a display of disappointment.

Andrea said nothing.

“It's about your mother, isn't it?”

She looked away. “There's so much about her I never really knew. So much I'm just starting to find out. Her role at the foundation.” She paused, watched his expression as she spoke the next words. “The circumstances of her death.”

“So you've learned what happened,” Paul Bancroft said, and he lowered his head sorrowfully.

How to play this?
She hoped that she wasn't flushing as she responded with careful ambiguity. “It's been pretty upsetting.”

Paul Bancroft now placed a hand on her wrist, gave it a pastoral squeeze. “Please, Andrea. You mustn't blame her.”

Blame her? What was he talking about?
Emotions churned inside her, scraping one another like rocks in a tumbler. She remained silent, hoping her silence would serve as a prod.

“The truth is,” the aging savant said, “we're responsible for what happened.”

Andrea felt dizzy and more than a little sick. “When she resigned from the board…” she began.

“Exactly. When the board voted to ask for her resignation, nobody had any idea that she would respond the way she did. But they
should
have. It breaks me up when I think back to it. During a weekend retreat of the trustees, she went on a bender. Fell off the wagon. I wasn't there, but I heard the accounts. I'm sorry. This kind of thing must be so hard to hear.”

“It's important to hear
you
say it,” Andrea choked out. “I need this.”

“And so the vote was taken. Precipitously, in my view. Laura was an incredibly vibrant and insightful human being. She brought so much to the board. And if she had a weakness, well, who among us does not? But the request for her resignation must have seemed punitive to her. She was angry and upset, and who could blame her? She responded just the way they should have anticipated. We don't keep the liquor under lock and key at Katonah. She drank herself into a state of advanced intoxication.”

Andrea's head was throbbing.
The Balm of Gilead
was what her mother had jokingly called it once upon a time. All those tumblers filled with ice cubes and vodka. But she had quit. She was clean and sober. She had put it behind her. Hadn't she?

“As soon as someone discovered that she'd taken her car keys and had driven off, we sent a member of our security staff after her. To try to stop her, bring her back safe.” He looked stricken as he spoke. “But it was too late.”

The two sat together in silence for a while. Paul Bancroft seemed
to understand that she could not be rushed, that she would need some time to regain her composure.

The tanned man with the wheat-colored hair—Scanlon—returned with the sheet of telephone numbers.

“Registered to a Thomas Hill Green, Jr., sir,” he told Bancroft briskly. “Public-affairs officer of the U.S. Consulate General in Dubai. We'll work up a bio on him.”

Bancroft turned to his cousin. “Does that seem possible?” Taking in her quizzical expression, he said, “Let's call it now, why don't we?” He gestured toward a compact black telephone console on a low table nearby.

Andrea pressed the
SPEAKER
button and then pressed the digits carefully. After a few seconds of fuzz and burbling came the purring tones of a ringing phone.

A friendly, almost chipper voice. “Tommy Green here.”

“I'm calling from the Bancroft Foundation,” Andrea said. “We're trying to reach the public-affairs officer of the Consulate General.”

“You're in luck,” said the voice. “How can I help? This about the education conference tonight?”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Green,” Andrea said. “Mix-up on my end. I'm actually going to have to call you back.” She ended the phone call.

“The foundation does support some educational work in the Gulf,” Bancroft said cautiously. “If he'd been called, I assume it was to do with coordinating our Emirati programs. But I can look into it further if you like. We do hear reports about cellular numbers being ‘cloned' by lawbreakers of various sorts. A way to stick other people with their phone bill.”

Andrea's gaze drifted over to the bubbling creek. “Please don't bother,” she said. She had been planning to ask him about the nameless man. Yet in the clear light of day, she was at a loss to say exactly what that man had done or said that was so troubling. When she even tried to frame the complaint in her head, it all seemed so hysterical, even to herself. The words died in her mouth.

“You know you can always ask me anything,” he said. “Whatever questions you have.”

“Thank you,” she said mechanically.

“You're feeling foolish. Don't. You did what I would have done. Someone hands you a gold coin, you grip it between your teeth, see if it's real. You came across things that puzzled you. You needed to find out more. And you wouldn't be put off. If this was a test, Andrea, you passed with flying colors.”

“A test. Is that what this was?” Despite herself, she spoke with a flare of heat.

“I didn't say that.” The philosopher pressed his lips together, hesitated. “But we
are
tested—every day, every week, every year. Decisions confront us. Judgments must be made. And there are no answers in the back of the book. That's why stupidity, like incuriousness, is a vice. A form of sloth. In the real world, decisions are always made under conditions of uncertainty. Knowledge is always partial. You act, there are consequences. You don't act, there are consequences.”

“Like with that runaway trolley car of yours.”

“Ten years ago I
failed
to act, and we lost somebody I cared for very much.”

“My mother.” Andrea swallowed hard. “Did she know about…?”

“Theta? No. But we could have used someone like her.” His eyes were bright. “I know how much you must wonder about this part of her life. But you mustn't be disappointed by what's in the official record. You mother's contributions were very real and very significant, more so than those sorts of documents could ever capture. Please know this.” He took a deep breath. “Laura. I think I loved her, in a way. I don't mean that there was anything between us, anything romantic. It's just that she was so alive, so vital, so
good
. Forgive me, I shouldn't be troubling you with this.”

“I'm not her,” Andrea said in a small voice.

“Of course. And yet the first time I saw you, I knew who you were, because I could see her in you.” His voice cracked, and he paused
before continuing. “And when we had dinner, at first it was like a ghostly afterimage on an old television set. I somehow felt her presence. Then it faded, and I was able to see you for who you were.”

Andrea felt that she was about to cry, and was determined not to. What to believe? Who to trust?
I trust your instincts,
Paul Bancroft had said. But could she?

“Andrea, I'd like to make a proposal to you. I want you to join my inner council as an adviser. With your knowledge and insights—with your background in economic history—you're perfectly equipped for the challenge. You could be useful to us. To the world.”

“I doubt that.”

“You've discovered I have feelings.
Mirabile dictu
.” A wan smile. “But I reverence reason. Make no mistake: My proposal is a rational one. Besides, I'm not exactly a spring chicken, as the boffins here regularly remind me. You see me here the host at an estate where I will soon no longer be the master. The ranks have to be replenished with those of the next generation. And we can't simply take out an ad in the newspaper, can we? As I say, nobody must know what we do here. Even in the foundation proper, very few officers would fully appreciate the exigencies we deal with here.”

“
Exigencies.
I need to know more about what really happens here.”

“Soon you will. At least, that's my hope. It's a stepwise process. You can't throw algebraic topology at a student before he's done geometry. Education is about sequence. We can't make sense of information if it comes out of order. Knowledge builds on knowledge. But I have no worries. As I've had reason to remark, you're a fast learner.”

“Then shouldn't you start by explaining your worldview?” Andrea said, allowing herself a hint of sarcasm.

“No, Andrea. Because it's already your worldview. The Bancroft strategy—you've already articulated it about as well as anyone ever has.”

“I feel like I've wandered someplace far away. We are definitely not in Kansas anymore.”

“Listen to me, Andrea. Listen to your own arguments, the voice of reason in your own head and heart.
You've come home.
”

“Home?” She focused now. “You know, I listen to you and everything sounds right as rain. Everything has the rightness of two plus two equals four. But I have to wonder.”

“I
want
you to wonder. We need people who wonder and who ask hard questions.”

“A secret organization that does secret acts. What I want to know is, where are the boundaries? What is it that you
won't
do?”

“In pursuit of the good? Trust me, these are issues we constantly wrestle with. As I say, each of us is tested, all the time.”

“That's an awfully abstract reply.”

“To an awfully abstract question.”

“So give me some details.”

The response was gentle but unyielding. “When you're ready.”

Andrea stared at the flowing water through the sheltered glade, saw the sun sieved through the needles of tall pine trees. Their vast branches, she realized, concealed the facility from aerial view.

So much here was concealed from view.

Indeed, much was doubtless still concealed from her.

Exigencies. Activities. Interventions.

Andrea herself had something to conceal. Paul Bancroft's reasoning was plausible, but disturbing to her as well. He was not someone who would shy from the logical conclusions of his own premises. And the steely logic of his doctrines would easily lead to actions that were outright unlawful. Would Paul Bancroft really hesitate to take the law into his own hands? Did he recognize the authority of any rules that did not arise from his own intricate system of morality?

“I'm not going to debate you,” she said finally, making a decision. She was half-persuaded by Bancroft's words; she would pretend to be a good deal more. Her only chance to gain further information—enough to settle her doubts, in one direction or the other—was to be on the inside. Who knew what truths might repose in Paul Bancroft's
hidden empire? “Look, I don't know if I'd really fit in,” she added.
Don't acquiesce too readily. Feign reluctance—let him win you over.

“Then we'll need to learn how to fit in with you. Personal styles will vary. And that's fine—so long as the Bancroft strategy remains constant. Will you at least think about it?”

Part of her felt guilty for deceiving him. Yet if she decided that he was the moral paragon she had first taken him to be, she would have done no real harm. “I'm unlikely not to.”

“Just remember,” the spry savant said, arching an eyebrow. “Doing the right thing isn't always easy.”

She recalled his remarks about bad acts with good consequences.
Ecrasez l'infame!
—Crush the horror! But too often, she knew, the effort to crush the horror became itself another horror.

“I guess my real worry is that I'll disappoint you,” she lied. She tried to keep her voice from trembling. “You have these expectations of me. I don't know that I can live up to them.”

“Are you willing to try?”

She took a deep breath. “Yes,” she said. “I am.” She forced a smile.

Bancroft smiled back, yet there was now something elusive and guarded about his expression. Had he fully accepted her display of enthusiasm? She would have to be careful. She could well find herself under surveillance. Bancroft's team wouldn't trust her yet: She could tell that much. She had been entrusted with a secret. That made her a potential asset—or a potential threat. She could not afford to do anything to alarm them.

The ambiguous admonition of the nameless man in Katonah returned to her, and the words were like a dark cloud passing over the sun:
You of all people should know what can happen.