Bloodmoney

26

Cyril Hoffman did not make the mistake of believing propaganda, least of all when it came from his own government. After the videoconference about Al-Tawhid with Gertz, the president and his chief of staff, the State Department had issued its statement, which Hoffman knew to be a bald lie. The claims by Al-Tawhid were essentially correct: The United States was running a covert-action campaign against Pakistan aimed at bribing key leaders and perhaps, over time, halting actions against America and gaining control of that country’s nuclear weapons.

It wasn’t that Hoffman thought these were bad ideas, necessarily, but he didn’t like the fact that the project had been assigned to a jury-rigged start-up agency behind the CIA’s back. It worried Hoffman, too, that Al-Tawhid had somehow penetrated the supposedly perfect security of The Hit Parade and was killing its operatives. That had to be stopped, but the magnificent Gertz seemed unable to find the leak.

Hoffman had been keeping tabs on Gertz for years, and more so since he had set up shop in Los Angeles for The Hit Parade. But despite Hoffman’s efforts to contain the experiment, it had morphed and grown to the point that it posed a risk to the U.S. government as a whole, including the CIA, which Hoffman was sworn to protect. American agents were getting killed; jihadist groups were issuing statements; the spill was widening.

One of Hoffman’s vanities was the idea that, when the Gertzes of the world had made a mess, people like him would have to clean it up. He had a favorite poem by Rudyard Kipling, which had been given to him years ago by his Uncle Frank, another cleaner-upper of other people’s disasters. It was called “The Gods of the Copybook Headings,” and Hoffman kept it in his desk drawer, to reread whenever he encountered something particularly stupid. He turned to the poem now and reminded himself of the power of these gods to outlast the ambitious do-gooders: As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man- There are only four things certain since Social Progress began: That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

How to stop the terror and slaughter? That was becoming Hoffman’s responsibility now, too. If Gertz could not stanch the flow, then Hoffman would have to help. He thought back over his conversations with Lieutenant General Mohammed Malik. The ISI director had been trying to tell him something when he had visited Islamabad. But Hoffman had been so intent on delivering his own message that he hadn’t listened as carefully as he might have.

The Pakistani general had protested about the operation in Karachi. Well, fair enough, of course he would. Countries never liked it when other countries conducted unilateral intelligence operations on their territory. But there had been something else that the general had wanted Hoffman to understand. There was a leak of information; the kidnapping of Howard Egan wasn’t an accidental bit of good luck for the “bad guys,” but something more fundamental.

Hoffman had done the obvious things after he returned from Islamabad. He had talked with the top Pakistan analyst at Langley, and contacted his own most sensitive private sources, but he had come away with nothing. He wondered now why had he not listened more carefully to what the Pakistani general was trying to tell him.

It is never too late to apply good sense as a corrective to stupidity. The call to arms, as it were, came to Hoffman late on the night after Meredith Rockwell’s death. It was early morning in Islamabad, the time when Mohammed Malik would be having his morning tea in the office, and reading his cables, and planning what to do next. So often, Hoffman’s prescription was: When in doubt, do nothing. But he had a different instinct now, and he knew there wasn’t any more time to waste.

Hoffman picked up the phone and called Malik’s private number at ISI headquarters. The general himself answered, on the first ring, with a starchy hello.

“This is your friend Cyril Hoffman,” he began. “I think we need to talk. What do you say to that?”

“Talk or shoot, it must be one of the two. Your boys have been very naughty, Cyril. The Tawhid statement has set the cat among the pigeons. We are angry, I must tell you that, sir.”

“Let’s try talking. And they’re not my boys, or girls, either. That’s part of what I want to talk about. It will be worth your time, Mohammed, I promise you. And just for the record, it’s your boys who have been doing the shooting, not mine.”

“Where do you suggest that we have this talk, Cyril? The telephone would not be a good idea, for either of us. And I regret to say that I am not able to welcome you here in Islamabad at present. The mood is a bit sour, as you can imagine.”

“Let’s meet tomorrow in the Gulf, neutral territory. I’ll fly over to wherever you like. Just name it.”

“Not Dubai. Your service owns Dubai. I would suggest Doha, if I were prepared to say yes.”

“Come on, old boy. Don’t play games. We need to do this. People are getting killed, and it’s going to get worse unless sensible people get involved. This situation is dangerous, my esteemed brother.”

“I am glad that I am still included in your club of ‘sensible people,’ Cyril. And I am amused that you choose to call me ‘brother’ at such a time. It is either a sign that you are sincere, or that you are an unprincipled rascal.”

“You know very well that I’m a rascal. That’s why we get along. Now, say yes. Meet me in Doha tomorrow night. I’ll be staying at the Four Seasons. We’ll have dinner, my treat. Do we have a date? Come on, now, don’t make me beg.”

The phone was silent for several moments, as General Malik considered the situation, both the aspects that Cyril Hoffman understood and those that he didn’t.

“Yes,” said the Pakistani. “I will meet you tomorrow night in Doha. Please come alone. I will do the same. This is not a meeting that I am prepared to acknowledge in any way.”

“Don’t you worry. Uncle Cyril is going to use a clean plane, with virgin tail numbers. And I would be most grateful, dear friend, since we are talking about discretion here, if you didn’t share my itinerary with the gentlemen in Al-Tawhid, should you chance to encounter any of them. I’m not saying that to pick a fight, just being honest.”

General Malik was going to protest, but with three American intelligence officers dead, it was not an unreasonable request.

Hoffman made a second call that evening, to Jeff Gertz. He asked for a summary of the investigation that Gertz’s shop was conducting into the leak of information that had led to the attacks on Howard Egan and the others. Hoffman recalled that the probe was being conducted by that nice young woman, Gertz’s chief of counterintelligence, the one who’d been stationed in Beirut, with the peculiar family. How was she getting along?

“Sophie Marx is the officer’s name,” answered Gertz. His voice was clipped. He didn’t want to be answering questions from Headquarters now.

“And where is Miss Marx, pray tell?”

“She’s in London, investigating the hedge fund where Egan worked. She’s headstrong, and she hasn’t found the magic bullet yet. If she doesn’t figure it out soon, I’ll get someone else who will.”

“A bit hard to manage, is she? Knocking on too many doors?”

“Yes,” answered Gertz. “Something like that. Plus, she isn’t getting me any answers. Just more questions. She keeps asking about the big picture. This is a detective job.”

“I take it you mean Pakistan, when you speak of the big picture.”

“I mean the big picture. Things she isn’t cleared for, but wants to know anyway. We need to get to closure here. People are getting killed and we don’t know why. I need to put more people on it, maybe next week. Right now, nobody is moving.”

“How do I reach this difficult woman? I might like a progress report of my own.”

“Sorry, Cyril. You can’t. She works for me. I’m not ready to declare open season yet. We’ll call you when we have something, and you can talk to her all you want then. But not now.”

Hoffman rang off a few minutes later, cheery as always. The moment he ended the call, he initiated another one to Steve Rossetti, who gave Hoffman a cell phone number for Sophie Marx and her secure email address.

Hoffman thought about calling her, but it was the middle of the night in London, and he didn’t need to speak with her now. He had already ascertained the only thing that mattered to him, which was that Marx was independent and restless enough to make Jeff Gertz nervous. He didn’t know if she was trustworthy, but you never really knew that about anyone until you took the risk and found out.

The two intelligence barons arrived in Doha the following afternoon in their unmarked private jets and went to the Four Seasons on the Corniche in West Bay. The hotel was an example of the instant luxury that had enveloped the tiny, absurdly rich nation of Qatar. It was a modern high-rise, sprinkled with bits of Islamic kitsch to reassure the locals: mirrored domes atop the two hotel towers, and an ersatz desert fort out front to house the parking attendants.

In the heat of high summer, a vaporous shimmer rose from the waters of the Gulf. The palms that ringed the hotel were drooping, despite the perpetual irrigation. The hotel lobby had the grand, empty look of a showroom: Any Qatari with sufficient money had fled the summer heat of the Gulf for the mountains of Lebanon or the Cote d’Azur.

Cyril Hoffman took the cheapest room they had. He didn’t have the director’s approval for the trip, and he didn’t intend to tell him about it. He had commandeered the plane on his own authority, but he might have to eat the hotel bill.

Hoffman sat in his room waiting for dinner, watching Arab girls in bikinis play in the pools below before returning home in their formless black cloaks and veils. What an odd part of the world this was: Hoffman reminded himself to be tolerant that night if the Pakistani general said something that he knew to be a lie; it was a matter of cultural dissonance.

They met in the private dining room of an Italian restaurant called La Fortuna, on the ground floor. Hoffman went down early and gave the waiter a hundred dollars and a credit card in the alias in which he had registered at the hotel. He told the waiter not to enter the private room unless he was summoned.

General Malik arrived at eight o’clock on the dot, dressed in a blue blazer, white shirt and a red-and-black, regimental-striped tie. He looked like a military officer even when he was in mufti. Hoffman was already there, luxuriating in a summer suit of white linen, with baggy trousers and a blousy double-breasted jacket. In place of a tie, he was wearing a paisley ascot. He looked like an art-history professor at Sarah Lawrence College.

Hoffman had ordered a fancy bottle of wine and an array of appetizers. They were on the table when General Malik entered the room. Hoffman told the waiter to go away and leave them alone. He poured his Pakistani friend a glass of the Brunello.

“Ain’t life grand?” said Hoffman, clicking his glass against that of his guest.

“No,” said Malik. “It isn’t grand at all. It is rather a mess. Chin chin.”

“No small talk, then? No foreplay? No ‘how’s the family?’”

“I think not. I am flying back to Rawalpindi tonight.” Malik looked at his watch. “In three hours, to be precise.”

Hoffman took a long sip of his wine and put down the glass.

“Let me get to the point, then. I came out here to tell you one big thing. I could get arrested for what I am going to tell you, put in jail for passing secrets to the enemy. So I want you to listen carefully. Will you do that?”

“Of course, Cyril. Why do you think I have come, if not to listen, and perhaps also to talk?”

“The operations that you and your Al-Tawhid friends have uncovered are not run by the CIA. They are being run by a new organization that has gone haywire. They are conducting a covert-action campaign against Pakistan without any legal authority, and it will fail. I say that because I am going to make it my personal business to take it down. This new organization has gotten the White House to play along, but that’s just because they’re inexperienced. I’m working on that, too.”

Malik shook his head. “This is poppycock. I know your tricks, Cyril. This is another cover story.”

“I thought you might say that, so I brought you a little something to establish my bona fides.” He took several sheets of paper from the pocket of his white suit and handed the document across the table to the Pakistani.

“What is this?”

“It’s a letter to the general counsel of the CIA from the White House counsel’s office. It’s dated two days ago. When you boil down all the legal verbiage, it says that the White House takes responsibility for all statements that will be made about the Al-Tawhid accusations. The agency will be ‘held harmless,’ as the lawyers say. It’s not their baby.”

“What does that prove? I am a military man, not a lawyer.”

“It proves what I just said. This is not a CIA operation. There is no official agency campaign to do anything to Pakistan. There is a crazy-ass operation run by some drugstore cowboys who have figured out a way to finance their activities without going to Congress, and who temporarily have gotten some hotheads in the White House to go along. But like I said, they are going down. I guarantee it.”

“Why are you telling me this, my dear? It is most unlike you to volunteer anything. I cannot ever recall a similar moment of generosity, with you or any of your famous cousins and uncles. What’s the ‘catch,’ so to speak?”

“I need your help, pure and simple. We have a nasty little war on our hands. Three people have gotten killed. Any more, and people will start to panic. They will take action to protect themselves. That gets ugly, real fast.”

“What can I do about it?” asked General Malik, with a shrug. “I am not a member of the Ikwan Al-Tawhid. I am not shooting any Americans. I am a victim, not a perpetrator.”

Cyril Hoffman wagged his finger at the man across the table. “But you know. Of course you do. That’s your job, and you’re good at it. You know the people who are doing the killing, and I have a feeling that you even know how they are doing it. They are getting information that helps them track the movements of people in this new organization that I was talking about. We’ve been looking for the leak, and we haven’t found it yet. But I’ll bet that you have.”

“You give us far too much credit, my friend. We are the ISI, not MI6 or the Mossad. And if you say that we are running the Tawhid, that is a lie, sir. A most despicable lie.” He pounded the table.

General Malik was protesting more heatedly than was necessary, or wise. For in the silence that followed his retort, Cyril Hoffman was able to look into his eyes and, in the uncanny way that Hoffman had, to read from his expressions a narrative.

“You can’t fool me, brother. I see that little smile under your mustache, Mohammed. I see that twinkle in your eye. You’ve got something. Yes, you do. And we need it. I will be frank with you, even though that’s not my nature. This could get dangerous if we don’t find a way to work together. I need you to help me out. Tell me what you know.”

The Pakistani did not answer at first. He was never a man to rush.

“Let us eat something, shall we?” he said.

General Malik reached for the plate of beef carpaccio, and slowly ate one of the paper-thin slices of meat, savoring the taste while he contemplated the situation. He helped himself to some foie gras, too, putting a generous lump on a piece of toast and chewing it, bite by bite.

Hoffman buttered his bread. He tried not to let his impatience show.

The Pakistani finished his little snack and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin.

“You’re right, of course. We do know a bit about the Tawhid, as you would expect. And you are also correct that we know something of how they are doing their targeting.”

“That’s my man. Come on, now. Tell me. You came here to say it. You know you did.”

“It involves banks. We just obtained some computer material that we took off a Tawhid courier. But I will be honest, I do not understand it. I have been trying to find the computer genius who put it together, but frankly, I have failed. I have been nervous about the material. It could be misused. So I have been sitting on it. But perhaps I could have one of my analysts take another look.”

Hoffman buttered his bread some more and then put it aside. He took a sip of the fine red wine. He was searching for different possibilities, but he kept coming back to the thought of Sophie Marx at the hedge fund in London. She was the one working this problem, and she was the most likely to crack the code that Malik had described.

“What if I sent someone to help you?” asked Hoffman. “She’s one of our best counterintelligence officers, and she is the person on our end who has been trying to understand the leak of information about our man in Karachi, and now the others. She’s smart, and she knows how to keep her mouth shut.”

“What is the name of this wonder woman, please?”

“Sophie Marx.”

General Malik took out his fountain pen and wrote her name in small, precise script in a black notebook he kept in the pocket of his blazer.

“You won’t find a whole lot about her in your files, or anyone else’s,” said Hoffman. “But if you asked the right people, you would discover that this young woman ran a very professional operation in Beirut that opened up to us Hezbollah’s communications network. She recruited a woman in one of the Lebanese telecommunications companies, and a man in the Ministry of Telecommunications. It was quite dangerous. We think very highly of her.”

“What would be the understanding, in the event that I were to receive her?”

“She would help you analyze this targeting information. She would investigate it. And then she would use the information to protect our people from further attacks.”

“She would uncover Al-Tawhid’s network of informants, in other words.”

“Well, sure, if that’s what it is. She would help you take them down. Or we’d take them down ourselves, if that’s easier.”

The general helped himself to another tasty glob of foie gras. He had barely touched his wine, up until now, but he took a healthy drink.

“What is in it for us, Cyril? I am sorry to be crass. But this is a human business, after all. In exchange for giving you this very important piece of intelligence, what do I get in return?”

“Well, now, fair question, entirely legitimate. First, you avert an open break with the United States of America, which despite its puny political leadership is still the strongest country on earth and can make life very difficult for countries it doesn’t like. Second, you have my promise that I will stop the covert action that has been undertaken against Pakistan. Stop it, cold. And if I don’t, you are free to go public with whatever the hell you want, and take me down, along with a lot of other people.”

“That’s very nice, but not tangible, Cyril. There are people in Pakistan who would argue that I am betraying an ally, which is Al-Tawhid, to assist an enemy, which is the United States. As you know, I am a moderate man, and I find that sort of thinking abhorrent, but there we are.”

“Look, my friend, if Al-Tawhid is in a position to kill our officers, they can kill China’s and Russia’s-and even your own ISI men. I don’t know what this secret surveillance capability is, but if they can use it against us, they can use it against anybody. That’s dangerous-but especially to you, brother, dear. So we will be doing you a big favor.”

“I am warming to this idea. But I still do not see a benefit for us commensurate with what we are giving up.”

“Hey, Mohammed, we’re talking about the fate of the world, and you’re haggling as if we’re in the spice bazaar. But that’s okay, because I love you. So let me say this about that: America would be very grateful for this help. I know that you would never ask me for any personal reward. But I would feel compelled to offer you one, in the quietest way possible. This rogue operation has been generating billions of dollars. And when we shut it down, some of it is going to fall off the truck. Do you follow me?”

General Malik smoothed the hairs of his mustache and patted his lips with his napkin, even though he had eaten little.

“I have no idea what you are talking about,” he said.

Cyril Hoffman smiled. “Forgive me, even for mentioning it.”

“Why don’t you send this woman, Miss Marx, to me in Islamabad? Have her contact me on my personal phone when she arrives. We will see what is possible. More than that, I cannot promise.”

They finished the appetizers and the wine. Hoffman was going to order the main course, but General Malik said that he needed to get back to his plane and go home. People would ask questions if he were late in returning. So Hoffman ordered a jolly dinner and instructed the waiter that it should be sent up to his room, where he ate it while watching Fashion TV.