Banquo's Ghosts (31 page)

O’Hanlon looked at Banquo quizzically. “Doesn’t this mean you’re going to feel a lot of heat?”

“That,” Banquo said, waving his hand toward the mute screen, “is the least of our worries. Bryce, do you want to do the deed?” He nodded to the shelf where the Armagnac sat. Bryce rose to get it. There was plenty for everyone.

Banquo rolled the brandy about in the glass, not a snifter but a rocks glass with bold straight edges, no soft bulbous curves. He raised his glass and looked at each of them in turn. “Ladies, gentlemen, we have not yet begun to fight.” And then, much softer, and graver, “It’s abundantly clear what we have to do now.”

O’Hanlon’s FBI babes’ doe eyes came back at him without comprehension. They let their boss speak for them: “I’m just a Fordham criminal attorney, and you’re going to have to make yourself abundantly clearer.”

Banquo stared at the liquor in his glass. “According to Wallets, nuclear material is moving westward. Toward where, we don’t know. Could be Paris, could be L.A. We live in the target of choice, facing people who will never relent until they’ve hit us again. And it’s clear that a top Iranian nuclear scientist was nearly killed, which might make the mullahs very restless. So I would think, Mr. Fordham law school—don’t be so humble; you’re in the top twenty-five—it’s clear that if
you-we-us
have to toss every crappy apartment in Brooklyn or Brookline looking for our lost weapons,
we will
. The mules in the mountains went somewhere. Let’s make sure their cargo isn’t coming here to our Workbench Boys in Brooklyn. As for Johnson, leave him to me.”

O’Hanlon shook his head in disbelief. “We don’t have the resources for that.
Nobody
does.”

Banquo placed the brandy glass on the desk, unfinished. “Better
find
them.”

Wallets’ car from JFK didn’t take very long even at rush hour. He found Banquo alone at his computer and the bottle of Armagnac back on the shelf, the glasses rinsed and put away. The office was totally dark, except for the CIA-SPAN showing matters of no consequence. Assad of Syria marching along a red carpet with Ahmadinejad of Iran—the former six foot one at least, the other nearly a dwarf. Everyone now videotaped or photographed the Iranian president from below, making him look tall.

Robert Wallets didn’t bother to acknowledge his boss’s presence, who wheeled around in his chair to look at him. Just went to the special place on the shelf, found a glass, and uncorked the bottle. He sat on the other side of Banquo’s desk and drank.

“Marjorie?” Banquo asked.

The grim soldier didn’t say anything. Last Wallets saw her in the Critical Care Unit of Mannheim AFB Hospital, the woman looked more dead than alive. Her head shaved along one side, a two-inch finger of skull missing, bandages, blood seepage, and with a tube in her mouth. A plug of cotton stuck in her ear canal, but no other marks. The Colonel
in charge of the hospital just looked at Wallets with blank eyes and shook his head. No prognosis.

“We can’t tell anything now.”

“What about Yossi?”

Again, Wallets did not reply. Banquo looked out over Fifth Avenue. His voice floated in the room. “We have to assume, of course, that the lucky mules caught their ship in Marseille or someplace and got through.”

“What does Dubai Ports World say?” Wallets asked.

Banquo shook his head slowly from side to side. “Nothing. Your lost devices might not have gone through their hands at all.”

Wallets’ shoulders hunched, and he bent over his glass, staring at the desk right in front of it. Banquo knew how Wallets’ brain must be going into overdrive, not in thought, but in pure replay—over and over again, the sight of the looming, implacable Apache attack chopper, every tiny choice sifted from every possible angle. What he did do and what he didn’t. How it all turned out. Yossi clutching his face. The mules, their deadly drums and canisters braying off into the hills. Cradling Marjorie’s head. Again. And again. The images and thoughts crowding out constructive thought.

Unless he shook free of such second-guessing one day, they’d become utterly intolerable, until the only recourse was drink, drugs, or madness. Banquo thought of what he could say, what words of sympathy or wisdom. But he knew he had none, and simply sat there in silent solidarity.

Wallets took another slug of brandy. “Then we have to assume the weapons are here,” he said.

“Exactly.”

S
omething told Giselle her father didn’t like Anton. His eyes seemed like drawn curtains darkening the room of his mind. When she flat-out asked him, he denied it. But she sensed he had to make an effort to be nice to her beau. When she told him she was going out with Anton, he’d usually respond with a flat “Ah,” and sometimes offered an alternate diversion: “I’m having dinner tonight with the Estimable Person du Jour. You’re both welcome.” As if wanting to keep her close. Or keep an eye on him. Or both.

And she noticed how since his return her dad seemed at loose ends. He didn’t want to write but didn’t want to be alone either. Anton obliged by forever telephoning, inviting her father to gallery openings, cocktail parties, and such, basking in his celebrity and even asking his advice on random matters. Almost as though Anton wanted to be around the Man from Iran as much as his daughter.

For his part, Peter Johnson kept his own counsel. And at times seemed to enjoy Giselle’s beau; there was a lot to like about the boy. The kid was smart, polished, sophisticated, but even with all that, Johnson’s skin crawled every time the young man held Giselle’s hand, put his arm around her waist, kissed her hello or good-bye. The little shit had seduced his baby on false pretenses so someone could take pictures of her—duly relayed to Iranian intelligence.

First chance he could, he wanted to force the issue with Wallets.

Johnson had tried to get in touch several times since their return, but somehow Banquo’s man never answered his phone, and speaking into the “leave a message” voice mail was wearing thin. In the end, Johnson stalked him, catching him in the lobby of 30 Rockefeller Plaza as Wallets got off the elevator around lunchtime.

“Don’t you like me anymore?”

That brought Wallets up short. And he seemed annoyed at being caught off guard. It had been two weeks since that night on the frontier and the friendly fire “incident” in the mountains. Johnson immediately noticed a change in Wallets. There had always been an edge of menace to him, but it had broadened out, coloring his entire disposition. Johnson could tell: he had grown colder, colder even than Banquo. His soul filled with a terrible resolve. He glanced at Johnson, unsurprised and unimpressed. Without missing a beat, they fell into step together. “It’s been
busy
since we got back. Having fun at the parties?” Before Johnson could answer he offered, “Eaten lunch yet?”

They found one of those glass-walled sandwich places on the lower concourse level, where they sat at a tiny table and watched the crowds of subterranean office dwellers stream by on a thousand private errands—none of which meant life or death, but all the same seemed to weigh like a burden on every worker bee. The tuna fish was a trifle sour, the lettuce limp, and rye bread an hour away from stale. The air down below, filtered, thick, and heavy.

“Can you tell me about Marjorie?”

Wallets stared gravely at him, with nothing forthcoming. He finally answered, “Nothing I’d care to say. You can imagine the worst yourself.”

Johnson looked away.

“It’s not that we don’t love you anymore, Peter,” Wallets continued. “It’s just since the last time we were together, a couple of mules carrying god-knows-what vanished over the horizon, and it’s everything we can do to find them again.”

“Bad break.”

Wallets took a deep draw on a Dr. Pepper, the straw gurgling.

“Yeah. Very.” He sucked the rest of the soda dry.

“Not angry at the news conference?”

Wallets smiled for the first time. “Of course not. Meant to tell you Banquo said, ‘Bravo,’ ‘encore.’ ”

Now Johnson prodded, not sure if he believed the man. “You shutting me out?”

Wallets became exasperated, tossing a greasy ten on their plastic plates.

“No, Peter—we’re cooling you off. What do you want, your own desk at the office?”

Johnson bristled at the sarcasm. He’d put his ass on the line for Banquo & Duncan and Wallets in particular. He’d jumped into the shit and managed to crawl out. This was the first week he could actually put on his own shoes and socks and not hobble.

He snapped back. “I want to know who the hell Anton Anjou is—every little crummy thing. I want to know why he’s still with Giselle, why you don’t have him upside down hanging from a meat hook in a warehouse, asking him questions. Is that too much to want?”

“It’s too early for that, Peter. Anton needs more rope. And wouldn’t you rather be in play, right alongside him, looking available?” To that Johnson had no reply. So he kept his mouth shut.

Wallets looked down at their Styrofoam plates, with their stray pieces of lettuce or crust. “You know,” he said, still looking down. “We’re not his ghosts.”

The back of Johnson’s neck tingled with alarm. He’d never known Wallets to employ illusive allusions. Something was wrong.

If Wallets noticed the look of incomprehension, he didn’t register it, now gazing past Johnson over his shoulder. “Banquo sometimes calls us his ‘ghosts,’ because we’d haunt people in places unseen and so much of what we do is never,
never
acknowledged—operating on another plain, between the normal world and one much darker.”

Johnson’s sense of alarm left him, but not his confusion. Now Wallets fixed him with his eyes. “But the real ghosts live in the Old Man’s past, claiming him forever. It’s what drives him and by extension, us. I understand that now. Finally. And in a way I wish I didn’t.”

Johnson didn’t know what to say. Wallets got up, and Johnson threw some of his own cash on the plates, splitting the bill. They walked out
together in silence, and when they stood outside the door, Wallets’ reverie had passed. “We’ll be in touch,” he said. “You’re not cashiered; you’re just in the change drawer. Soon we may slide you onto the counter.”

Johnson nodded. His impatience with Wallets had vanished. He watched the man exit through a revolving door and disappear into the street. Somehow, even with the coldest eyes he’d ever seen, Wallets could still turn the moment. Graveyard eyes, Johnson thought. Looking at his watch, he realized that he’d better get a move on or he’d be late for a gallery opening with Giselle and the Little Twerp. Mustn’t miss that.

A Soho gallery—how original. The artist—one of those with a single name, Blaire—specialized in American flags. The stars and stripes plastered on every available wall and in every imaginable condition: some torn, some burned, some upside-down, one on the floor that everyone walked on as they entered, another over a casket, another choking a toilet as a constant flushing sound emanated from the tank.

The first thing Johnson heard as the three of them—Giselle, Anton, and he—entered was the gallery owner holding forth to a group of admirers about his foray into Scientology: “I took my first stress test. Buddhism just isn’t doing it for me anymore.”

Johnson glanced at the man: short, paunchy, in wealthy middle age, wearing $500 horn-rimmed spectacles; a guy who’d never missed a meal and knew the proper wine for every occasion. What was it, Peter wondered, that Buddhism was
supposed
to do for a gentleman like that?

Then he heard a familiar voice. “Peter,
dah
ling!” Jo von H emerged from the crowd like a queen from her courtiers in a little black strapless cocktail dress, a second skin that seemed to move without moving. She zeroed in on Giselle and linked arms, then glanced conspiratorially at the handsome Anton. “Well done, Ms. Johnson. So you’ve been holding out on me. Does Beau Brummell have brains too?”