Banquo's Ghosts (23 page)

Silence settled on the room, and she stared at him hard, seeming to feel her nation’s ascendance in her youth and her dominance at that table. Her adversary was crumpled and puke-flecked, pathetic. Looking at him seemed to make up for decades, for centuries of backwardness
and decline. She could see he felt the humiliation sinking into every bit of him and that he couldn’t say anything, couldn’t think anything, couldn’t even think of thinking something without the hot influence of a perverse, person-twisting pang of shame. Good.

“The green ink?” Johnson asked faintly.

“Bait.”

“If you knew I was a spy, why did—”

“Because the ideal result was to have you incriminate yourself. The truth is the most powerful propaganda. Mr. Peter Johnson,
clumsy assassin
. Can you deny it?”

He couldn’t.

“We discovered your mission when we turned the driver. But not with 100 percent accuracy. So we couldn’t arrest you without risking an embarrassing incident:
Mad Mullahs Arrest Daring Journalist.
Of course, the BBC or CNN International would never run with that story, but other outlets might. Now we know with certainty.” Her face seemed to shine at him, with an eagerness he’d forgotten since childhood. This scrap of a man wasn’t worth speaking to anymore, and she sat in a chair across from him in silence.

Sheik Kutmar completed the thought for her. “Your foolish act has provided us with a great opportunity, Peter. This war will not be won with bullets and tanks, but on the pages of newspapers and on the flat plasma TV screens shining over every soft, overstuffed American couch. And you’re going to help us win it.”

He didn’t look up. The razor blades were coming. And with a sick pit of recognition in his stomach, Johnson suddenly realized, she
knew
all about the razor blades. And didn’t care. Wanted him to piss himself. Cry and beg. And yes, in front of the predatory Sheik Kutmar. And suddenly
he
knew—yes, he would cry and beg. And there was nothing he could do about it.

She wriggled forward in her chair and leaned toward him, her pretty olive finger pointing at him like a weapon: “Now tell me exactly who sent you. Give us everything.”

And Peter Johnson,
clumsy assassin
, tried his best.

Josephine Parker von Hildebrand ran the media operation, working with Giselle and her fellow Johnson exes, Françoise Ducat and Elizabeth Richards. She knew all the cable news producers and made a point of doing them favors that made them beholden to her at times like these—not that they all weren’t eager to get a piece of the story anyway. Jo von H flew the second of the Mrs. Johnsons, Françoise Ducat, Giselle’s mother, in from Paris that very morning. There were statements that had to be made, pleas if you will, and Peter’s family gathered in one city to make them the following day.

For the 8 AM group news conference, Josephine used her own apartment—nowhere better. The four women sat together on one couch, expanding on their collective statement: “We appeal to the government of Iran, and the president of Iran, to please let us have him home safe. To all who know Peter, who know his passion for the truth and for international understanding, keep him in your prayers for a safe return home.”

Then Jo von H covered her bases, sending each of the three women to three different outlets and reserving the evening news—should the networks get interested—for herself. First Giselle to Fox with hostess Megyn Kelly at the top of the 9 AM hour. Quick-witted, likable, and loved with a passion by the camera, if Kelly couldn’t make Giselle look smart and sympathetic, nobody could.

“You look like you’re handling this pretty well. If it was my father, my husband, I’m not sure I’d be able to cope.”

Giselle looked like she was dealing, just barely. “I’d be lying if I told you I’m not terrified. If he can hear me, just know I love you, Dad. And we’re doing everything we can to bring you home. Everything. I swear.”

Then Giselle’s mom, Françoise Ducat, over at
The View
, where Joy Behar pounced on what she considered the most consequential aspect of the story:

“So do you think that this administration is going to try to make use of this . . . ?”

Elisabeth Hasselbeck began to try to interrupt. Behar didn’t relent: “Please, please. Now do you think this administration is going to try to exploit this tragedy to say that there’s something
wrong
with the Iranians?”

Applause and appreciative nods from the audience.

“Deeze Government
Americain
is the most arrogant in the world,” Françoise said, perched on the couch between Behar and Barbara Walters. “At war wiz everyone, lying to everyone, acting bad bully every chance. And when ze world become mad at
les États Unis
, misunderstandings are made to happen. Made, do you understand? Not accident.”

“What do you say to the Iranians?” Walters asked.

“I can say, you make mistake. Peter is good man. He love Iran; he love the people and always wanted to tell their story. It’s better if your story comes to us by him.”

“And to the administration here?”

“Peter’s life in your hands. What you do and what you do not do. If ze world, if Iran know it have nossing to fear from ze U.S., Peter will come home. Every day he stay, we know who to blame.”

That night, the urbane Elizabeth Richards headed to CNN so Anderson Cooper could give her the furrowed-brow treatment.

“Welcome, Beth. Now even though you’re divorced, both of you are close, you especially with his daughter, Giselle. As you know, we had him on CNN not ten days ago. I’m going to play a clip of that interview on
Larry King Live
, where Peter Johnson says the Iranian nuke is nowhere near complete, or even planned for that matter. But first, is there anything you’d like to say to the president, to the administration, to the secretary of state?”

And here the smart Metropolitan Curator got her whammy in: “Of course, I’d like to know why the United States can’t have diplomatic relations with Iran? Not one office in Tehran, not one desk, not one telephone? Why not? What’s wrong with talking? Can someone tell me that?”

Giving Cooper the chance to smack the ball back over the net:

“Which makes me want to ask, has anyone from the administration, anyone at all been in contact with you?”

Scandalized, “
This
administration? First they promise to talk. Then when something comes up, something real, they do nothing. Nothing’s changed—nothing!”

Cooper looked very, very concerned.

Days later. Two? Three? Johnson lost track. The interrogation room had become his world. He heard the sound of traffic beyond the blinded window, now much dimmer with long spaces between batches of cars. He wasn’t sure of the time, but it felt like night.

While time divided into long periods—first endless spells before the light, the table, the video, question after question; then much shorter periods of sleep on a mattress in a windowless empty holding cell. A little plate of unmentionable food, plastic bottles of water that tasted of copper and chlorine, a shallow pot to relieve himself. The razors passed, leaving him weak and shaky but not yelling every time he pissed. And two out of the four intervals between interrogations, they beat him. Mostly about the soles of his naked feet with a sharp reed that bloodied them. Then the hood came back on, and they marched him to the interrogation room with the sound of traffic beyond—on the fifth day shuffling slower and slower as his feet refused to hold him.

He answered every question the Sheik and Yasmine put to him, so the beatings couldn’t be about that. Just something to amuse the guards. From what he could tell none of them spoke English, but it didn’t matter. When the door cracked open, he’d jump from the mattress as if stung, then huddle in the corner. And when the first hand touched him, he yelled—without even the first blow. Sometimes one of them would just flick his ear with a thumb and forefinger.

Then their laughter, mocking his cowardice. Yes, they did beat him for fun.

Now in the interrogation room the sound of footsteps reached his chair, coming from behind. And the sack came off. They didn’t bother tying him any more. What would be the point?

Sheik Kutmar sat behind the table with the video recording light shining into his face.
Thanks for having me on, Larry.

“Let’s talk about Robert Wallets, again.” This, from Sheik Kutmar.

“He works for Banquo, late thirties, some kind of soldier, maybe Special Forces. Took me into the field for extra training. He was my primary interrogator at the firm.”

“What kind of training?”

“Survival camping and some small arms. But not in a desert—in the mountains of North Carolina, the woods. About a mile or two from a supplemental training area for the 10
^th
Mountain Division. He might have been part of them, but I can’t say for sure.”

Yasmine rose from the desk and thrust some photos into Johnson’s lap. “Which one?” she demanded thickly.

He flipped quickly through them, but none of them looked like Wallets.

“Sorry.”

“And the woman?” Kutmar asked.

“Marjorie Morningstar. An assumed name. Again late thirties, sort of butch.”

“Butch?” Kutmar asked.

“Not feminine,” Yasmine explained.

“Strong, like a peasant woman.” Johnson added.

“Any of these?”

Kutmar showed him more photos. A femme French masseuse. A stolid Spanish factory worker with meaty hands. A tough-looking prison guard from some Eastern European bastion with her hair in a severe bun. Johnson shook his head.

“No, sorry. She was American, raised in the area. Some kind of local mountain girl—but with education, college, master’s, maybe even a PhD.”

“Can you identify the Jew?” Yasmine loved the word Jew; you could see how well it tasted on her tongue.

“Nobody’s quite sure about his pedigree.” Johnson said dryly. More photos in his lap. Johnson flipped through them, discarding the thin faces, concentrating on the heavy-set balding ones. There were three
possibles that looked like the Turk; then he narrowed them down to two. He showed those two.

“Could be one of these. Can’t say for sure. These men have beards. He didn’t have a beard when I saw him. Maybe. Hard to tell—”

Yasmine took the photos back. Discarded one as irrelevant; the other man in the second photo she knew. From his place in the chair Johnson couldn’t see which photo was discarded.

“And the fourth man in the little play they put on for you?” Yasmine asked.

Johnson shrugged. “Might be one of their office workers, one of their stock traders.”

More questions that fell under the capacious penumbra of his ignorance: Who were his contacts in Iran? He had none. Who did Robert Wallets know in Iran? He had no idea. What was his plan for escape? None that he knew of. What was he supposed to do upon capture? Never really been told. Johnson now realized the brilliant foresight of these lacunae in his training. The Iranian couldn’t believe he was so ill-informed about his own circumstances and said they’d come back to it. Not a pleasant prospect.