Banquo's Ghosts (3 page)

Jo von H was editrix and part owner of the nation’s oldest “progressive” weekly, named after the old abolitionist yellow rag of the 19
^th
century,
The Crusader
. Even the mullahs knew of Jo von H’s famous sway and weren’t
going to let the unfortunate name of the magazine stop them from giving Johnson special access. This was one Crusader they knew was against the cross.

The publication was a multimedia empire, with millions of dollars of Soros backing, a $100,000-an-issue budget, its own book imprint inside a mainstream publishing house, and its very own aged-in-wood genuine Hollywood icon front man selling his brand of Arizona Hot Sauce, called Crusading Fire. Even if they only paid their scribblers $1,000 per article, they had more true believers hitting their website than
The New Yorker
and the Grey Lady combined. That was exposure, raw
power
, a kind of intellectual invincibility that couldn’t be bought for love or money. When Jo Parker von Hildebrand said you were clean, no smear went unpunished, even a smear that was true.

The voice message went on:

“After King trotted out that bribery business—
nonsense on stilts, darling
—our friend from
Newsweek
called—something about a 750-word sidebar to their Radical Right Wing Blogosphere cover. Wanted you especially. And I told him ‘of
course
,’ you’d be
delighted
, just as soon as you got back. But make it
just as soon
, darling; they’re hoping to run it two issues up. Maybe we’ll do it at the apartment. After all, who can resist a von Hildebrand private supper in her exclusive salon?”

Nobody. At least not since Oxford days. Back when a couple of smart, ambitious intellectual climbers thought they could have it all, romance, lust, politics, and life. Youth’s delusion, soon set straight. Life’s struggle casting the lust and romance aside—at least for one another—and leaving the politics, which occasionally still lit them up the way it did when they were twenty-one-year-olds.

Yeah, Jo Parker von H would cover him all right. And yes, it had been alleged—
alleged, mind you
—that some dirty money changed hands. Problem was, a touch of it was traceable, just enough for Banquo to hang him, to keep his man on the straight and narrow. But most of the money was not. Not from the late Hussein at any rate, except by extension. Johnson, like many another, let the late Lion of the Desert cross his palm with silver as Saddam tried to buy Iraq out of a war. A futile attempt, but the Lion’s largesse spread around quite a bit of oil contracts, under some
United Nations criminality called Oil for Food: scores of billions of dollars in graft to ensure French, Russian, and Belgian bureaucrats, even whole governments and NGOs, would always give him the benefit of the diplomatic doubt, no matter how many Kurds he slaughtered or other people’s wives he gave to his voracious sons, or children he fed into the wood chippers of his state security police.

Peter Johnson’s cut, a measly $75,000, came not from the Lion of the Desert but indirectly from a man named Benon Sevan. Whom Johnson had chatted up and admiringly profiled whenever he could. Once the UN’s executive director of the Oil for Food Programme, he was fired from Kofi’s staff at the United Nations when the investigators came sniffing too close to the chump change in Sevan’s own bank accounts. So he stopped running the UN’s Grease for Dough Payola racket. Instead Mr. Benon Sevan fled abroad and was living large in his homeland of Cyprus. Fleeing beyond the reach of extradition, running home to his Aunt in Nicosia, claiming the hundreds of thousands of dollars—mere skim of billions, mind you—were simply his Aunt’s money, his
Aunt’s
, you understand. Of course, that poor bureaucrat’s elderly Aunt curiously fell down an elevator airshaft and took a few inconvenient days to die. But as a Nicosia resident and Cypriot patriot, both Mr. Sevan and his bank accounts cowered under this flag of convenience, safe as Fort Knox. That’s where the crack about Cyprus vineyards came in—but not before the tuition bill for Peter’s daughter’s years at Harvard was somewhat defrayed.

Johnson had read somewhere that the elevator shaft where the poor Auntie met her maker had long ago been repaired. His cell phone blinked: a text message.

Speak of the devil, his own flesh and blood. Fruit of his loins from his
second
ex-wife. Giselle, reacting to his
Larry King
appearance too. He scrolled down:

He smiled: You couldn’t kid the kid. There was some divine justice in that.

The concierge smirked as Johnson reached the desk. That amazing Oriental smile hovering somewhere between sincerity and servility. And where never the twain shall meet. His name was also Kahleed—his English marvelous and his French impeccable.

“Ah, Monsieur Johnson, that was a very fine broadcast. The manager let us watch it in his office. I have one message, the local producer for Al Jazeera—his name is Jazril Mahout. In fact he’s here now, waiting in the tea lounge. Waiting with an emissary from His Eminence.”

The lovely chill from the hotel air-conditioning tingled on the back of Peter’s neck. That promised next step had finally arrived. He shrugged on his suit jacket and tugged at his cuffs. Then with a pang of satisfaction Johnson glanced at his hands—steady as a rock.

The Golden Martyrs of the Revolution May-They-Ever-Be-Blessed Tea Lounge was the official place of unofficial business, of promises that would never be kept and lies that told the truth. But with no gin to cut the tonic. Two men waited for him at a low coffee table surrounded by low, deep couches.

The shill from Al Jazeera, Mr. Jazril Mahout—or the Jazz Man, as Johnson nicknamed him—wore a suit, open shirt, no tie, hand-sewn Ferragamo loafers. The suit was an expensive one, $2,000 at least, the cloth impregnated with threads that made it shimmer slightly.

He stood up to greet Johnson, extending his hand—the grip firm, not the banana handclasp that made you want to wash your hands.

“Mr. Johnson, thank you for coming. I’m sorry we’re so late tonight, but His Eminence, Sheik Kutmar, could only see His Holiness in the interval between prayers and therefore could make time for us only now.”

The more forbidding figure of the two was Sheik Kutmar, little sheik to the big mullah who would decide matters of access. Johnson tried not to stare at the dark prayer callus directly in the middle of the man’s forehead. He was in the presence of the next line of eyes, the next level of ears. Sheik Kutmar sat at right angles to the American, neither looking him directly in the eye, nor getting up to shake his hand, nor even speaking. His presence was enough. A thin, wiry, and arrogant man deigning to appear and listen like some carved stone idol waiting for his due offering.

The Jazz Man went on as if he and Johnson were alone, eyes directly on the westerner, “Our Washington, DC, bureau chief has expressed his desire to do the story as a large special, twenty-five to thirty minutes. He would do the wrap-around, the context. You’d be reporting on the ground.”

“That’s fine, but that doesn’t avoid our primary problem,” Johnson said. “Your network is widely recognized as one-stop shopping for beheading videos, ransom demands, and goons in black hoods sitting beside guys in turbans muttering about Zionist pigs and monkeys. As you know, I’m not under contract to any one news service, but if you want your story to get legs and credibility, if you want the story to go beyond chanting and ranting, I’ve got to be able to draw a Western network into the reportage. Since no one has a bureau here any more, that’s not as difficult as it seems, but that might leave your DC man out of it. Everyone recognizes me as a partisan figure, but the mainstream networks have a way of overlooking such matters when exclusive access is involved.”

The Al Jazeera producer sighed, his liquid brown eyes veiling themselves for a moment. “We were so hoping to make the segment our premier, signature breakthrough.”

“Who says it can’t be?”

The veils went away. “Explain.”

“Rome wasn’t burned in a day, my friend. On this story we start as a western network exclusive, CNN or MSNBC. But since none of the cable or big three networks have bureaus here, Al Jazeera should handle the tactical aspect, getting our road show from point A to point B, filming, and translation. A significant obligation. Now, imagine we do two reports—two separate pieces. The first: ‘The Mullah Bomb: Fact or Fiction?’ And as we know the answer already, this will come as something of a disappointment to those who want to see an underground test sometime soon. Peaceful uses, brilliant scientists, yawning energy needs in a country beset by American sanctions. For the second segment we do a teaser. We call the second piece ‘The Scimitar of Faith.’ We show the military strength of the Republic of Iran, how futile it is to attack or resist it. In this way we actually give the world something to see. Footage of secret military exercises and tests. Top defense officials
talking candidly about their power to slaughter the infidel. Fortress Iran. Invincibility. Certain defeat at the hands of the Mahdi’s Army. And this second piece is all produced, directed, and released through Al Jazeera. With exclusive, breaking news the major networks can’t afford to ignore.” He broke into an anchorman’s standard standby, “ ‘As Al Jazeera is now reporting—’ ” Then clapping his hands to his knees for effect. “You’re at the table whether they like it or not.”

The Jazz Man was silent for a moment.

“That’s larger than anything we anticipated. But I see what you mean.”

Johnson hoped so, because he wasn’t sure what he explained even made sense to him. He took a piece of paper out of his jacket pocket. “I made a tentative list of sites that I’d like to visit. And that, of course, is the bulk of our first effort, regarding your peaceful nuclear program. We can leave the military aspect out of this for now.”

Jazril took the printed list of sites and, without glancing at it, folded and put the paper in his jacket pocket. “Do you have any other concerns?”

“First, that we should start soon for obvious reasons. The U.S. could go either way now. Secondly, I want a free hand. Nothing impresses the West more than a free hand. So obviously a forced or willing conversion of this reporter to Islam would not work in your favor.” He waited for some laugh or smile or even a curling lip from one of his listeners. Nothing. No sign of recognition. “In any event I’m not what they call ... a churchgoing man.”

Johnson extended his hand to the Sheik, rising to leave with these words of farewell: “I seem to recall the word
Kumtar
means ‘Herald’ or ‘Messenger’ in the Albanian language. Why I know this absurd fact can be laid at the feet of a liberal education, as well as some time spent on the Adriatic in the Dardanelles. Perhaps Sheik Kutmar’s name means something similar in Farsi? Herald or Messenger? In any language, an auspicious name.”

The soft, moist cough from Sheik Kutmar stopped him in his tracks. The man spoke, still not looking directly at the American.

“Do you know the Muslim mind, Mr. Johnson?”

After a breath, Johnson said, “I don’t claim to know anyone’s mind, Your Eminence.”

“It’s well that you don’t. Do you know why we are going to win, Mr. Johnson, ‘
daring reporter
’?” Using Larry King’s line with a touch of sarcasm, as though he knew how very little Johnson dared in life. He cleared his throat again.

“I shall tell you. The Jews and weaklings of the West love life. So that is what we shall take away from them. We are going to win because you love life and we love death. The war is as simple as that.” Then with a smile in his voice. “As to the matter of your conversion, forced or willing—I think we can leave that in the hands of Allah. Though the prospect of you kneeling beside me in a mosque has the aspect of a farce even Allah could wish on no one.”

Johnson went silent for a moment. “Right,” he said, standing. “
Inshallah
, I suppose.” He nodded to the Jazz Man and made a small bow to the Sheik, who did not meet his gaze, before retreating across the Golden Martyrs Tea Lounge. Once at a safe distance Johnson felt the urge to mutter some invective, but nothing sprang to mind.

All the same he sensed it was
them
playing him, not the other way round, and his mouth felt dirty as if used in unmentionable ways.

D
inner was a lonely, desultory buffet of chicken, tabouli, and tahini in a nearly empty dining room. The high spot of the buffet table was the large chilled bowl of caviar, surrounded by limp toast, hardboiled egg whites, egg yolks, chopped onions, and sour cream. Iran was the last place on earth still swimming in cheap and plentiful beluga, ossetra, or the even more rare sevruga. Johnson, an unapologetic Roe Ho, loaded up his plate.

A group of four middle-aged upper-class women in full chador ate silently in a far off corner, covering and uncovering their faces as their forks went first to their plates, then to their mouths. They exchanged the occasional word, then quietly went back to their meal, as if at a funeral. Johnson ignored them.

Opposing tables of Chinese and Russian trade-representative types squared off across the room. The Russians were sober and agitated. A Russian-made Tu-154 commercial jetliner of Iran AirTour had crashed at Meshed Airport that very afternoon, with thirty or so dead. After the spectacular crash and burn of Karl Marx, crappy planes doing the same just added insult to injury. One of the Russians was talking nonstop and using his hands as “wings” trying to explain what happened. Russian commercial aircraft had been crashing all over the world since the end of the Cold War, so this wasn’t exactly “news”—but being sober didn’t make it any better.

From his table seat Johnson thought the Chinese, for their part, seemed pleased with themselves. As representatives of the new master race, they had come to conquer and were deep in the process, drunk on power, the true nectar of the gods. Sales of Red Chinese missile parts to the Iranian Ministry of Defense: $1.3 billion. Import guarantees of light crude from a newly renovated Kharg Island: $750 million. A twenty-five-year bargain to develop natural gas: $100 billion.