Bloodmoney

18

It would be wrong to say that Cyril Hoffman was a dandy. He was too big and substantial a man for that. But he dressed in a way that suggested another time, the 1950s perhaps, when CIA officers wore suits with vests, and hats that were not baseball caps, and senior agency officials acted like members of the very best club that ever was. On this evening, the man had a straw boater banded with a regimental stripe. He flourished the hat when he saw Jeffrey Gertz enter the restaurant.

Hoffman was a master of the details that other people forgot. That had been his secret when he ran Support. He organized a small army of covert logisticians who would find safe houses in a hundred cities around the world, and put reliably discreet renters in them so they didn’t have the telltale empty look. He organized what amounted to a string of private airlines, and schemed to find ways to keep them flying when other nations got pissy after the scandals about rendition and torture.

Hoffman kept the balls in the air, as best he could, but even he had understood that the old days, in which the Hoffman clan and their mates were a law unto themselves, were over. Real life had caught up. Sensing the hurricane that menaced the family business, Hoffman had wanted a safe place where he could ride out the storm, a “lily pad,” as they liked to say in the agency. He was rewarded with the position of associate deputy director-formerly known as executive director, until it was sullied by a predecessor-which was reckoned to be the third most powerful job at Headquarters.

Hoffman had used that position to fight for the agency’s self-preservation at a time when most of official Washington wanted it neutered. Sometimes that meant acceding to ideas he wouldn’t have chosen himself. Indeed, that was how he had come to be Jeff Gertz’s point of contact and seeming patron: Hoffman had understood that the new administration wanted to conduct this experiment with a new clandestine service far from Langley and the old culture. He would never intercede. But he wanted to keep an eye on this new creation and its headstrong, charismatic boss. Gertz was the sort of man, in truth, who embodied everything that Hoffman was not.

Despite Hoffman’s genial, flaccid exterior, he disliked such “hot-shots” more than anyone realized. He was reassured by the knowledge that they always made mistakes. He had the deep, abiding anger that a man feels when he watches others take the credit and win the glory, over many years, for things they couldn’t have accomplished without his help. But he had mastered the art of containing this rage in the most genial possible package-making himself appear an object of mirth rather than of envy or threat.

Hoffman had proposed that they meet at a modest restaurant called the Anvil, just past Harpers Ferry, West Virginia, and about ninety minutes from Washington. It was an eccentric choice, and Gertz assumed that Hoffman had selected it for security. But that was only part of the reason, as it turned out.

Before coming to dinner, Hoffman had visited the racetrack in Charles Town, a few miles farther down the road. He had won more than a thousand dollars, thanks to tips from a former agency officer who had bought a stable in the vicinity and claimed to know, for a certainty, which horses were reliable bets and which ones were clunkers. Hoffman was still glowing from his winnings, and his smile initially suggested to Gertz that this would be an easy conversation.

“Welcome to the Anvil,” said Hoffman grandly, gesturing to the nearly empty restaurant. “To an anvil, everything looks like a hammer, to coin a phrase. Are you an anvil, Jeffrey, or a hammer?”

“I am definitely a hammer, sir.”

“Not a very effective one of late, I’m afraid. You keep hitting your thumb, or someone does.”

“We’ve had some bad luck these last couple weeks, for sure. But we’ll get our mojo back.”

“What in the Sam J. Hill is going on out there? If you don’t mind my asking, or even if you do.”

“We’re working it, but obviously we have a problem.”

“Yes, I think that would be a fair statement. Losing one officer is unlucky. Losing two is, well…you tell me: What is it?”

“It’s a mess. But like I told you on the phone, maybe the two aren’t related. Maybe one is an operational problem, and the other is gangster stuff: Moscow rules. That’s what I told my people.”

“Well, it’s preposterous. Don’t insult my intelligence by saying it again.”

“Yes, sir.”

Hoffman wagged a fat index finger at his guest.

“You seem to think you can bluff your way through this, my boy. That is a big mistake. You have a serious problem. Your officers are supposed to be invisible, but evidently they are not. Someone knew their movements. That is dangerous, my friend. What if you have a serious leak? What if all your operations are insecure? Then you are bleeding, hemorrhaging. Are you not?”

“That’s not going to happen. I have someone working it. We’re doing an investigation. We’re going to find the leak, if there is one, and close it.”

“Oh, good. There should always be an investigation. That way, if it blows up and people get the willies, you can say, ‘Sorry, but we can’t discuss it. It’s under investigation. ’ And who is conducting this no-holds-barred inquiry for you, please?”

“My chief of counterintelligence. Her name is Sophie Marx.”

Hoffman took from his pocket a white index card and a fountain pen, and wrote her name in neat script.

“Is she the cute one, with the ponytail, who was in Beirut, with the hippie parents?”

“Correct. She’s very good. And she knows how to keep a secret.”

Hoffman peered at him, his eyes narrowing almost to a squint.

“Are you ‘doing’ her?”

“No such luck.”

Hoffman brandished the barrel of his silver and gold S. T. Dupont and wagged it at Gertz.

“Don’t dip your pen in the company inkwell, my boy. Those days are over.”

“Don’t worry. I’m using a ballpoint. Never needs ink.”

“Has Miss Marx discovered anything that would shed light on what happened in Pakistan?”

“Not yet. She just went to Dubai and fluttered the access agent, who was the last man to see my officer before he disappeared. She thinks he’s clean. We’re still trying to understand how the bad guys knew our man was in Karachi.”

Hoffman tapped his nose with his index finger, as he habitually did when he was thinking about something.

“I am worried about our Pakistani friends, the ISI,” said Hoffman eventually. “That’s one of the reasons I wanted to see you. I am worried that they are being less than completely honest with us. No, I will be more explicit than that: I think they are lying to us.”

“What makes you think that?”

“I paid a visit last week to one of my old friends. Rather high up. It did not inspire confidence. He claimed they were innocent: white as snow. But I’m afraid I did not believe him. I think they are on to you, my boy. They hear your footsteps. They see you in the shadows. You need to be very careful.”

“Have you got anything I can use? Anything I can give to Marx?”

“Nothing but intuition, I’m afraid. The Pakistanis, in my experience, are habitual liars. They are so aggrieved by past slights that they think that any sort of behavior is acceptable. But I am perplexed. I will tell you that.”

“Why, Mr. Hoffman?”

“Because I’ve had our stations put a watch on ISI officers in all major posts, including Moscow. I tasked the NSA, too, and the NRO and all the other behemoth agencies that you no doubt find tedious now that you are so lean and mean. They’ve been at it for nearly a week. And to my surprise, they have come up with nothing unusual. I am fairly certain that ISI officers in Moscow, declared and undeclared, had nothing to do with the killing of poor Mr. Frankel. That is why I am perplexed.”

“What should we do?”

Hoffman wagged his finger, once, twice, three times.

“Be…very…careful.”

They ordered dinner. Hoffman, though a big man, ate sparingly, just picking at his steak. He ordered a bottle of wine, too, but only sipped occasionally from his glass. It was as if eating and drinking were private pursuits that couldn’t be enjoyed fully while someone was watching. Hoffman talked over dinner about his rare-book collection, and about the opera, in a pleasant, singsong monologue. When the dinner dishes were cleared, he got serious again.

“How are things going out there? I mean, besides all this messy business. Are you getting it done? I know this is between you and your friends at the White House, but I thought you might give your Uncle Cyril a peek.”

Gertz smiled broadly, for the first time that evening.

“Things are going great, actually. We are pushing everywhere we can. The things that can’t be done-well, we’re doing them.”

“And you have enough money for all your operations? Don’t tell me what they are, because I didn’t ask.”

“We’re rolling in money. We have some, let us say, ‘novel’ funding mechanisms. You would love them, frankly.”

“I don’t want to know. Not now, anyway, when I can be subpoenaed and sued and publicly castrated on the George Washington Parkway. No, thank you. That’s why you are there: To think the unthinkable. And do it, too.”

“Heard, understood, acknowledged.”

“Can we tell Congress anything?”

“Don’t even consider that. That would undermine everything we’ve been trying to do.”

“Gadzooks, boy! Don’t go telling me what to do. I’ve already informed the director. He didn’t understand what I told him, fortunately. But he’s an ex-senator himself, for goodness’ sake, and he doesn’t like it when things get messy. If he understood that someone has been killing our deep-cover officers, he would say that we need to share the news-merely for reasons of self-protection.”

“It’s too risky. If it leaked that these men were U.S. intelligence officers, then people would ask what part of the agency they were working for. Then you would have to admit to your friends in Congress that you’ve built a whole new capability the public doesn’t know anything about. And at that point you can kiss the new clandestine service goodbye.”

“You are preaching to the choir here, Reverend.” Hoffman held up his hand, but Gertz continued.

“And then people would ask what we’ve been doing. What operations have we been running? Was the president aware? How would the White House like to answer that one? ‘Deaf and dumb’ won’t work if this hits Capitol Hill.”

“Yes, yes, I know all that. But there is this pesky matter of the law. The director read me the executive order on intelligence the other day. He helped write it, as a matter of fact. It gave me indigestion.”

“People talk too much.”

“Ah, that they do. I am afraid that God was not an intelligence officer.”

“With all due respect, that’s your problem, Mr. Hoffman. Read the director the National Security Act of 1947. It says the NSC will authorize ‘such other intelligence activities as may be required,’ and it doesn’t say how, which is good enough for me. But just don’t leave me hanging, if you decide to do a striptease. You and the director would regret that. I promise you.”

Hoffman’s eyes brightened.

“Oh, a threat! I like that. Yes, I do. I can’t tell you how that warms an old bureaucrat’s soul. You would lose in such a fight, my friend, quite disastrously. You would be blown into so many pieces that people would not know where to find them.”

“Don’t screw me, Mr. Hoffman. That’s all I’m asking. You’ll take a lot of other people down with you.”

“This is becoming tedious,” said Hoffman. “I need another drink.”

He scooted away from the table, with a big man’s delicate, small steps. It was almost a dance the way Hoffman walked, with something of the cadence of the old-time comedian Jackie Gleason. He returned from the bar with a shot of tequila for Gertz and, for himself, a mai tai with a tiny paper umbrella floating on the surface.