In the Light of What We Know (48 page)

That’s a little unfair, I interjected.

What do you mean?

He’s orientalist
because
he traveled across half of Asia? You haven’t advanced anything approaching an argument, unless you’re saying that everyone who writes a book should describe all his experiences. Is that right? I asked him, a little facetiously.

You like him? the colonel asked me, intervening. Of course you do. You have a soft spot for Etonians. What is the American expression?
Get over it.

He then did something that caught me totally off guard. He winked at me. The wink did more than take the edge off the admonishment contained in
Get over it
; it acknowledged my embarrassment—the general was on the mark—but it also made me feel that my embarrassment was safe with him.

Bloody British. Bloody perfidious Albion, said Hassan, now quite hammered. One swallow does not a summer make, I tell you.

Definitely more whisky, said the general.

No two ways about it, added the colonel.

*   *   *

The following morning, I was taken to the airport for my flight to Kabul. We drove in a Land Cruiser with dark windows, the colonel and I sitting together in the back.

You’re staying at AfDARI, aren’t you? the colonel asked.

I don’t know where but I believe the UN rapporteur has made arrangements.

I’ll have you picked up at the airport. In Kabul, I mean. And in future, when you come to Pakistan, I’ll have you picked up at the airport here also. As a matter of fact, fly PIA and use your credit card. We’ll have you reimbursed.

Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.

Nonsense, he replied.

You know that I have an employer, I pointed out.

Keep it that way. It is your company I enjoy.

I think you may be mistaking me for someone else.

Not at all. That, I think, is what you’re doing.

I know you’re in the Pakistani army, someone senior, and I suspect with a little more authority than your rank confers.

I mean that you are mistaking yourself for someone else.

I see. You’re a Zen Buddhist after all.

I think you are a little secretive.

Not very effectively. You and your friends seem to know enough.

What is strange to me is that although I know a fair deal about you, I’m still puzzled as to who you really are.

Anonymity is my middle name.

The colonel chuckled. I should have liked a son like you, he said.

Do you think I’m involved in some kind of subterfuge? A masquerade?

No, no, no! You’re not a pretender. You’re much further on. No, my boy, you are so unsure of your bearings that you wonder if you’re pretending to be the person you actually are. How can I tell? I see it in your face. I see the searching assessment, which you hide well but unsuccessfully, at least to me. You have never had doors opened for you, and so you learned how to pick locks, as did I. I have survived every administration. We are a dangerous breed, you and I. We are lock pickers. We are dangerous to others and to ourselves. It is always a great risk to open a door if you don’t know what’s behind it. You didn’t talk much last night.

Should I have spoken more?

We also have that in common.

What?

We both like to watch.

Only you make a living from it.

Everyone who watches has their living made from it.

There’s the Zen again.

Your anger is misdirected.

What anger?

Hate them. You’re angry with them.

Now you sound like Darth Vader.

Excellent films. What? You thought the reference would elude me? We get films here, too. As far as I could see, those films were about gunslinging Americans. That man Harrison Ford looked like a cowboy.

Hate isn’t healthy, I said.

Don’t tell me: Hate the sin but love the sinner. I believe that if hate doesn’t find its rightful place, there’s only one place left for it to go.

Where’s that?

Inward.

*   *   *

At the airport, the colonel was brisk with his valediction. When a plane roared overhead, he leaned forward and spoke.

Find out what’s in the envelopes. And be careful with Crane, he said.

What envelopes? I replied. I had no idea what he was referring to.

The colonel glanced at the driver.

You don’t
have to
share it, he said. Find out and then decide.

As I walked into the building, I realized that he had used the sound of the jet engines for cover.

15

Where Credit Is Due

Rating agencies continue to create and [
sic
] even bigger monster—the CDO market. Let’s hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters. :o)

—Senior S&P executive Chris Meyer, email to colleagues Nicole Billick and Belinda Ghetti, December 15, 2006

SHAH: btw [by the way]: that deal is ridiculous.

MOONEY: I know, right … model def [definition] does not capture half of the risk.

SHAH: We should not be rating it.

MOONEY: We rate every deal. It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.

—S&P analysts Rahul Dilip Shah and Shannon Mooney, IM conversation, April 5, 2007

One common misperception is that Moody’s credit ratings are statements of fact or solely the output of mathematical models. This is not the case. The process is, importantly, subjective in nature and involves the exercise of independent judgment by the participating analysts … Importantly, the rating reflects Moody’s opinion and not an individual analyst’s opinion of the relative creditworthiness of the issuer or obligation.

—Raymond W. McDaniel, chairman and chief executive officer, Moody’s Corporation,
Testimony Before the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
, October 22, 2008

Probabilistic propositions constitute a little world unto themselves. What is stated in probabilistic terms can be interpreted only in probabilistic terms. If you do not already think in probabilistic terms, predictions emerging out of the probabilistic world seem vacuous. Can one imagine the Sphinx foretelling that Oedipus will probably kill his father and marry his mother? Can one imagine Jesus saying that he will probably come again?

—J. M. Coetzee,
Diary of a Bad Year

I don’t think Crane ever considered going into his father’s business. There was too much of the outward-bound about him, certainly in the boy I knew. The fact that he attended law school is, I can only imagine, down to some sort of coercion from his father, the kind of man who would try to mold his son into the image of his legacy.

In 1998 Forrester senior (in fact Forrester II), was a United States senator and a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. As I’ve mentioned, I met him first when my parents and I lived in Princeton when I was a boy. The Forresters had a home there, where he, then a prominent figure in New York’s financial community, had installed his family, at safe remove from the mad metropolis.

As any reference to him in the press was bound to include in those days, Forrester had built a fortune in the eponymous ratings agency he founded. In more recent times, the business diversified into other sectors of finance, attracting concerns in some quarters about potential conflicts of interest, but the core of the business remains providing credit ratings for financial instruments before issue.

In the spring of 1996, at his invitation, I met Forrester for lunch at the Yale Club in New York. Forrester was a Yalie, said to be a member of Skull and Bones, the Yale secret society, and was a patron of the club in New York, where, I understood, he often stayed when visiting that city. A lifelong Democrat in the patrician mold, Forrester had gained the office of senator from New Jersey. It was a matter of public record that he had spent more of his own money on financing his first election campaign than had any other politician in any election,
east of the Mississippi
, I’d read, though I expect that that rather hackneyed qualification was in this case superfluous.

I’d known the Forresters for many years, but though I counted Crane, the junior, among my closest friends, that closeness owed more, I’ll concede, to the special quality of friendships forged in childhood than to any coincidence of spirit. Nevertheless, I was surprised to receive an email from the father, whom I hadn’t seen since my wedding, asking me to lunch when I was next in New York or Washington. Crane had been talking with his friends about joining the Marines, which apparently the father was opposed to, and having otherwise no notion what might have prompted the surprise invitation, I rather wondered if the father was hoping to enlist me in a campaign to dissuade his son.

When did you get in? asked Forrester.

I flew in yesterday.

How are you? How is Meena?

All going well, I replied. Of course Forrester remembered my wife’s name. It rolled off his tongue with the familiarity that belongs to the shrewd politician. She’s fine, I said. Thank you for asking. How is D.C.?

The waiter appeared, and Forrester, taking charge, ordered a bottle of white wine, pausing briefly to let me nod my assent. The Roof Dining Room, set out in rather feminine elegance, evidently attracted an older generation of silver-haired suited men and a smattering of young men, bankers and lawyers seeking to impress clients, no doubt. The round tables were elaborately laid, cutlery placed perfectly as if marking the hours on a clockface, opulent flower arrangements, and plenty of space on and between tables. There was a certain New England charm in its aesthetics, unself-conscious and without irony. Americans know what they like, more so than most of humanity, which leaves me skeptical of the claim, made usually by Europeans, that the American is insecure in the face of European history. It may be that at some time, as the story goes, Yale did age the appearance of certain of its buildings by spraying the exteriors with acid. But the fact that such a thing would be done when it could hardly escape public knowledge shows, in my view, the readiness of America to go it alone. I imagine now what Zafar, to whom America meant so much, might say to this and I’m minded to think he would agree. America is not short on energy, and its citizens believe quite heroically that things can be made to happen quickly, as only the freedom of the market permits. And history for the American is but one such thing. It, too, can be accelerated to meet demand.

D.C., replied Forrester, is D.C., a cesspit of egos and small minds. Not enough good people. Have you thought of politics?

Not for me, I replied quickly.

You should, said Forrester, but without much conviction.

As a matter of fact, I think Crane ought to think about going into politics, he added.

Here it is, I thought, what he really wanted to discuss: his son’s future, which men like Forrester believe to be their own. Forrester was near enough to my father’s age, but his body seemed to have been reduced to an instrument of iron will. When later he rose to visit the bathroom, I could not but regard his physique. His slim figure seemed conditioned to bring out the best in a perfectly tailored suit, while my father held off the worst of a good appetite with a weekly game of squash. Forrester’s hair, combed back with a dash of some glistening product, had turned white and silver, and his face, ravaged by years of tough business, must now bear, I thought, the blows of American politics. His fortune might have secured him a degree of independence, but in the byways of Capitol Hill, the lobbyists and potential funders also peddled access, influence, and prefab constituencies, without which no American politician has any more voice than a mumbling vagrant on the street.

I suppose you know Crane’s talking about the Marines.

I nodded.

What do
you
think about that? he asked.

I don’t imagine Crane’s short of advice. He’ll make an informed decision.

Forrester smiled at me.

Something you learn pretty damn quick on the Hill, he explained, is that journalists don’t care a dime if you do or don’t answer their question. What they want is for you to kick the other side and, added Forrester, fixing my eye, they only come knocking on your door when they think you’ll deliver that. As a matter of fact, they want you to make it personal.

Sounds unpleasant, I said, but immediately regretting that I might appear to be passing judgment on him for taking part in it.

It’s not about pleasant or unpleasant. Business teaches you that. It doesn’t matter a hoot what you think of what the customers want or what you think of the customers, for that matter. The only thing that counts is delivery. You got to deliver.

The senator leaned forward. I think Crane’s a damn fool.

Has he signed up?

Not yet. I want you to talk to him. He’ll listen to you. He likes you—I like you—we go back a long way.

I’m not sure my advice would count for much.

Forrester glanced at me.

Let’s order lunch, he suggested.

What’s good?

Our focus shifted. Forrester made some recommendations, and, with the waiter dispatched, resumed talking.

I have a great deal of admiration for your grandfather. That man was born for business. And I mean real business, manufacturing, oil refining, shipping, not finance, like mine—you know what I mean. No, he actually made things. He must be getting on?

In his eighties but still works a full day.

I’d have been surprised to hear anything else. Your grandfather made me a lot of money once.

He’s a good businessman.

A great businessman. And he knows a thing or two. BCCI is before your time.

I’ve read about BCCI. The Arab bank that collapsed.