Banquo's Ghosts (30 page)

“Stay down!” she hollered at him. Yeah, he’d heard that before.

At the mouth of the valley, two Apache helicopters roared toward them in formation.

Wallets was hollering into his Centcom phone. “Get ’em off, get ’em off us!”

“Ours?” Johnson shouted at Marjorie. She’d pulled him safer behind a boulder as the Mujahadeen mule drivers lay down a long burst. And he cowered, pressed to her back. Rocks flew and skipped all around.

“Yeah ours. But not
ours
. A patrol. Scouting the border for Iranian IEDs.
Our guys
are a couple of miles ahead—” but she never finished.

An explosion went off somewhere very close by. An Apache rocket? The concussion drove the air from his lungs, and Johnson hit his head on the boulder. From then on all he heard was roaring, the loudest roaring he’d ever heard, going on and on.

He saw Marjorie bleeding from her ear, her face ashen. And suddenly Wallets was there. He cradled her in his arms talking seriously to her, as if he loved her—but she didn’t seem to respond to him. Her head lolled around like a rag doll’s while he stroked her face with stiff wooden hands. From the corner of his eye, Johnson caught a glimpse of the drum smugglers’ mules laden with their deadly cargo. The mules heading off down the valley at a brisk trot through chest-high boulders, braying as they went. And yeah, at least two Mujahadeen close behind. The sound of choppers faded into the distance.

—Anonymous, quoted by Winston Churchill, who recalled it from childhood, in a volume of
Punch
cartoons

B
ack up the stream, another copter had arrived to extract them, a large medivac Black Hawk. Before the oxygen mask came over his nose and mouth, Johnson saw Marjorie bleeding from the head. When they snapped the oxygen mask on the woman’s face, he guessed still alive—but for how long? Soldiers called the instant medivac arrival the “magic hour”: that single hour where prompt treatment saved those who otherwise died on the battlefield.

Wallets’ face was as gray as his eyes. And Johnson knew why. Yet how angry could the man get at the wild-flying Apache that roamed these hills? Even after the surge, Iraq was no place for gentlemanliness—even if there were fewer IEDs, suicide belts, and chlorine truck bombs blowing up good soldiers and good people from Mosul to Kirkuk. Specially manufactured copper shape-charges coming off the Iranian defense industry production line could still burn through armored Humvees and shred the men inside. And nobody cared about stopping it as much as the wild Injuns of the U.S. Military. So many people to be angry at—where did you start? A needle slipped into Johnson’s arm, making the flying sky and insistent whine of rotor-blades blur away to nothing.

The teary reunion show started first at Mannheim Air Force Base in Germany, where Johnson landed for a required “medical checkup,” but quickly worked its way to Manhattan, where all the important people lived.

The checkup amounted to an Army doctor taking Johnson’s blood pressure, examining the bump on his head and the soles of his feet. Telling him, “You may feel dizzy and nauseous, but there’s nothing serious here. Whoever treated those abrasions on your feet really knew what they were doing. Somebody told me you bought some rubber shoes in Mahabad and
walked
up a mountain? Good for you.”

Johnson started at the phrase “rubber shoes”; did that mean Yossi still lived? But Johnson was smart enough to keep his trap shut.

As Mannheim was the Army’s center of military policing in Germany, no surprise that two MPs stood at the emergency room door with wooden faces. Their mission: make sure this wreck with the bandaged feet left Mannheim in one piece. And it went off without a hitch. They hustled him through a phalanx of reporters, mostly Germans shouting questions at him as a male nurse pushed his wheelchair to a New York-bound military flight, a darkened and nearly empty Boeing 727. He left the wheelchair on the tarmac and found a seat in First Class a few rows down from Robert Wallets, who glanced once at Johnson before pressing his face into a small flight pillow. Wrapped in a blanket, head covered, Johnson barely recognized him. He’d shaved and washed his face and looked like a ghost.

Once on board, Johnson found the ever-enterprising Ruth Lipsky from the
Washington Post
planted across the aisle, looking at him. As the woman who broke many of the CIA rendition stories, the reporter had a contact or two at Mannheim, and it was no surprise she could find her way onto a plane. She was a cute brunette, short, in her mid-thirties, with a solicitous, girlish manner that made you want to open up to her because she seemed to care about you so much. At least until she had her story. Then you would find out how much she really cared in the next day’s paper.

“Have you called home?” Lipsky offered her Blackberry Pearl. “I won’t eavesdrop. I promise.” She winked, and it struck Johnson as flippant.

Johnson stared at the reporter’s phone. “My daughter called me at the hospital. I’ll see her in six hours.” Then thought for a moment. It’d be advisable to get his spin on events out there so it could travel at least partway around the world before the truth—not that anyone would be telling
that
—got started. Whatever he told Lipsky would precede him to New York.

But what the hell should he tell her? They’d never practiced those things during his sessions at B & D—what to give the press in the event of a botched assassination? Capture, then release? An unforeseen Iranian plot to nail them all? Another narrow escape only to get hit by a U.S. helicopter? How could they have?

He looked over to Lipsky, who was staring at him with a look of tender concern. “Look,” he told her, “I know you didn’t go to all the trouble of getting on this plane just to let me borrow your phone.”

She smiled. “You’re right.”

“So, I’ll tell you this.”

Her micro-digital recorder, thin as a credit card, pointed his way before he’d finished the sentence. He resolved to be as honest as possible without actually being truthful.

“I’m glad to be back. I know there were a lot of people pulling for me, and those were the angels in this story. My daughter, Giselle, especially. One of the good guys. I’ve lost track of the bad guys. But the very worst by far occupy offices in the District of Columbia and New York.”

“What do you mean?”

“I got caught up in something bigger than myself. A game between two powers, with layers I’m not sure I understand.”

“The Iranians have suggested you are a spy.”

“Ruth, do I look like a spy? Besides, who
don’t
the Iranians call a spy?”

She shrugged. “Were you rescued? The Iranians say you were released as a gesture of goodwill.”

“Yes, I was released, and then Americans ushered me out of the country.”

“Then you were never trained by the CIA? Say in . . . North Carolina?”

Johnson wondered if she detected any reaction from him. He searched her shiny brown eyes; someone was talking to her. “Ruth, I
went to Iran on a reporting trip at the invitation of the Iranian Information Ministry, a trip that went bad very quickly. I am a journalist. I’ve always been a journalist. What U.S. spy agency in their right mind would recruit from
The Crusader
? Jo von H wouldn’t hear of it.”

Ruth smiled sympathetically. “You look tired. I have a couple of extra Ambien if you want them.”

Johnson took the pills and her card and curled up in his seat, facing away from her. He thought about the questions he had still to answer, thought about them so much he barely dwelt on the alluring twinkle in the reporter’s eye. It intrigued him for a moment—but only a moment. Which in and of itself was newsworthy. The pills and exhaustion did the rest; Johnson awoke when the plane arrived at the gate in New York, sleeping the whole way without waking up once. Ruth Lipsky shuffled toward the open cabin door. No sign of Wallets—the man had vanished.

The CIA-SPAN in Banquo’s Rockefeller Center office carried the news conference, and the whole New York team gathered to watch it—O’Hanlon, his two FBI babes, and even the preppie Bryce. The old spymaster made no secret of his masterfully reserved delight at the prospect of DEADKEY down in Langley gnashing his teeth and pacing and fretting through the spectacle of this must-see TV. They held the mike show at the JFK International Arrivals gate, upstairs on the concourse.

First, the haggard Johnson emerged from the metal customs swing doors, embracing Giselle, who ducked under the barrier rope, closely followed by his harem of ex-wives, Mama Françoise Ducat, the elegant Elizabeth Richards, and the predatory Josephine von Hildebrand, who held a few steps back, looking down constantly at her Blackberry, from which she Twittered the whole thing for the
Crusader
blog. Beside her, Giselle’s beau, Anton Anjou, Banker/Nobleman, seemed more than content to hold the women’s coats, which he did with great poise.

In two and a half minutes, the teary reunion crowd stood upstairs on the concourse with the local and national media present to lap up every word. Alas, some of the cables were doing a split-screen with another hot story—the arraignment of Jennifer James, the twenty-five-year-old blonde wannabe Maxim model/teacher. Her tryst with a fifteen-year-old boy in a junior high locker room proved irresistible to producers and
had made her one of this week’s most popular Google image searches. So Johnson would have to share his time.

At JFK, the questions at the presser were dense or leading, meant to draw an obvious picture so the dumb newsies could paint by numbers: daring, put-upon journalist (one) caught in an unfortunate clash of civilizations (two) for which the U.S. bears most responsibility (three). Don’t stray too far outside the lines!

“Was I scared? Sure, when the machinations of your own government put you in that kind of situation, of course you’re scared—and, I don’t have to tell you, angry.”

“Of course, something happened when we were out with the scientist, Dr. Yahdzi. His life put in jeopardy. So I don’t blame the Iranians for detaining me.”

“You want me to name an agency? All right. I have reason to believe the Central Intelligence Agency was involved. No, not in Virginia, right here in New York.”

“No, I’m not going to name their offices. Do your own work. Call around.”

“Will I be publishing the story? Only if my editor, Josephine, wants it.”

“Iran’s nuclear program? No threat at all. Only fabulists believe such things.”

“Did
I convert?
Do you see me kneeling in this airport shouting
Allah Akbar
, frightening benighted passengers?”

“Sheik Kutmar’s statement? Didn’t see it. I was being held.”

“Yes, he’s right as far as that goes. Again, I believe the United States government was after their scientist. I’ve met the Sheik. I don’t blame him for being sensitive about it.”

“No, I didn’t kill anyone. Wouldn’t know how.”

“No, I don’t think of myself as the new Joseph Wilson, no—I haven’t the hair.”

“A book? That’s getting ahead of ourselves. But let me say”—and here he was improvising and could barely repress a smile, he was so pleased with himself—“I would donate any proceeds to the Red Crescent.”

“Anything else to say? Yes, I’d like to go home with my daughter. I’m sure you understand. Thank you very much.”

“Someone really needs to give that guy a good kick in the ass,” said Agent Smith, as Banquo hit mute at the end of the presser.

“We volunteer,” said Agent Wesson.

“I appreciate the sentiment, ladies,” Banquo replied, tugging at the shirtsleeves beneath his suit jacket and folding his arms in front of him, “but save the kicking for a more worthy recipient. He did fine.”

“What do you mean?” asked O’Hanlon. “He all but named you.”

“
All but,
” said Banquo. “
All but,
and that’s the key. It’s not easy to dance around those bear traps without losing your foot. But that’s exactly what he did. Didn’t even blow any of his street cred with his fancy friends. Did I say ‘fine’? I revise. Call it brilliant.”

Everyone went quiet, absorbing Banquo’s praise for that weaselly performance.

Banquo broke the silence, chuckling and shaking his head, still not over Johnson’s answers. “This is no surprise, really, but that man is an exceptionally good liar. I don’t think anything he said was technically untrue, except the bit about there being no Iranian nuke program and, oh yes, donating his book proceeds to the Red Crescent. Hah! Don’t believe that for a minute.”