Benchley, Peter - Novel 06 (28 page)

 
          
 
Burnham pointed to a prominent lump beneath
the trouser leg on the man's right calf. "Either you've got a compound
fracture of the tibia, or else you're wearing an ankle holster."

 
          
 
The man stopped breathing.

 
          
 
"Don't worry," Burnham said.
"My lips are sealed."

 
          
 
The man left quickly. Dyanna looked at Burnham
and said, " 'Pack heat'?"

 
          
 
"This Q Clearance is great." Burnham
grinned. "Whole new perceptions flood my brain. I feel . . . cosmic."

 
          
 
Dyanna's eyes were as big as golf balls.

 
          
 
Burnham opened the CIA envelope and turned
toward his desk. He expected to hear Dyanna leave, and when he didn't, he
stopped and looked at her.

 
          
 
The siren song of secrecy had captivated her.
Her hands fluttered, trying to appear busy, and her mouth worked, trying to
form words.

 
          
 
Burnham went to her and took her by the elbow
and gently led her to the door, saying, "Sorry."

 
          
 
Dyanna mumbled something apologetic.

 
          
 
Burnham sat behind his desk. The CIA document
was three pages long, single-spaced. It was described as "A Psychiatric
Profile of Babar Sumba Emir, Pasha of Banda."

 
          
 
Amazing, Burnham thought. Everybody thinks
that the CIA has been emasculated—look at Iran, look at Nicaragua, look at
Jamaica—but they keep on truckin'. They've got shrinks in the bedrooms of the
palace in Banda. How do you con a pasha into lying on a couch and telling you
about his mother and his dreams and his terror of spiders?

 
          
 
The answer was, Burnham discovered, you don't:
What the paper didn't admit, but what was quickly clear, was that the paper was
a long-distance psychiatric analysis of the pasha, conducted by two Freudians
in a room in
Langley
,
Virginia
. They had never spoken to the pasha, never
met him, never even seen him. The grist for their analytical mill came from
field reports, newspaper accounts, rumors and top-secret cables from American
Embassy personnel desperate for guidance about dealing with a head of state of
an emerging nation that promised to provide America with a significant
percentage of its oil needs well into the twenty-first century, whose behavior
could be described by the most charitable of Pollyannas as "disturbingly
eccentric."

 
          
 
Burnham knew nothing about psychiatry, but he
supposed that long-distance shrinkage, when applied to a person of intelligence
and subtle character, would be useless.

 
          
 
In this case, however, it was probably quite
effective, for very little actual analysis was necessary. The mass of
intelligence about the pasha pointed to a conclusion for which a Ph.D. was
wholly unnecessary: The pasha was a certifiable madman.

 
          
 
The man claimed to be a direct descendant of
Buddha. His documented youth as a banana-picker had, he said, been lived by
someone else. He had been jailed for stealing a box of ballpoint pens, had
escaped by setting fire to the jail and hiding in a cistern while the building
(and twenty-four other prisoners) burned to charcoal around him. Emerging from
the ashes, he was dubbed a phoenix by a rum-soaked English missionary who saw
the hand of God in everything from kwashiorkor to pink gin, and Babar Sumba
took the opportunity to discard his mortal past and to declare himself a
creature born of the fire. People flocked to him, first out of boredom and
curiosity, then for amusement, then for excitement, for his answer to all
problems was to set them afire. ("Pyromania has been a compelling force in
the pasha since early childhood," the report read.)

 
          
 
When Banda became independent, Babar Sumba was
one of three candidates for the presidency of the new Republic. He disposed of
one of his opponents by dousing him with gasoline and setting him afire. The
other withdrew.

 
          
 
Then an Amoco team discovered oil, which Babar
Sumba interpreted as divine affirmation of his leadership. Being president was
no longer enough. Nor did he want to be a king or a sheik or a sultan; the
world was full of them. So he decided that he was pasha—not a pasha, but the
pasha.

 
          
 
He hired a chic American architect to begin
work on a
palace
of
Carrara
marble and gold leaf. He decreed a
"Miss Banda" contest and took all twelve finalists as his wives. (One
rebelled, so he had her smeared with jellied gas and touched off in front of
the other eleven.)

 
          
 
He had no opponents. Somehow, though, the goon
squads he dispatched into the highlands always unearthed a dissident or two for
him to bum. The fact that the goon squads had been told that if they didn't
locate a dissident, one of their number would be sacrificed undoubtedly sparked
their zeal.

 
          
 
A year ago, the pasha's wives had begun to bear
children. (As he read on, Burnham's eyes bugged and he couldn't suppress a gasp
and a bubble of nausea.) As luck had it, of the first eight children born, five
were female. The pasha was displeased. Male children were prized. One male
could service a dozen females. A surfeit of females was worse than a
redundancy: It was a burden on the economy and on the social structure of
Banda. Worst of all, a majority of female children in a litter of eight might
reflect badly on the genetic divinity of the pasha.

 
          
 
By blind lottery, the pasha selected four of
the five female children and ordered that they be burned alive.

 
          
 
Burnham put down the paper without reading the
medical jargon diagnosing the pasha's psychosis. Who cared what they called it?

 
          
 
The President shouldn't have him in the house.

 
          
 
He called four-four-nine-one at the CIA.
"A punk!" he shouted. "You call that man a punk? He is a fucking
maniac!"

 
          
 
"To each his own. We can't run the
world."

 
          
 
"We've got to advise the President not to
see him."

 
          
 
"What's this 'we' stuff? You tell him
what you want. I'm not in the principle business."

 
          
 
"All right, I will." Burnham paused.
Principles. What would Sarah say? Was this a question of principles? Deciding
not to entertain a psychopath? It was basic morality. Morality and principles
weren't necessarily the same thing.

 
          
 
Were they?

 
          
 
Four-four-nine-one spoke up. "It's none
of my affair, but you're walking in a mine field here. Banda's a strategic
bonanza for us. It's not only the oil, even though that's 3ie big-ticket item.
The pasha's gonna let us put in a deep-water terminal, and if it should happen
to have all the capabilities of a naval base, well, he let us know he's not one
to criticize. It'll be a backup for
Subic Bay
until the
Philippines
cave in and go radical red—and that is
going to happen, Mr. Burnham, believe me—and then, overnight, it'll replace
Subic Bay
. Now, what d'you think the pasha's gonna do
if the President boots him out? He may be nuts, but he's not stupid. He knows
what he's got. He'll get back in his gold-plated seven-forty-seven and go
straight to the Ivans."

 
          
 
"But ..." Burnham sputtered.
"Suppose some reporter gets hold of this? The man cooks children.”

 
          
 
"Who cares? I mean ..."
Four-four-nine-one cleared his throat. "That's a rhetorical question.
First of all, most of the public doesn't believe the press any more, unless it
reinforces something they already know or want to believe. Oh sure, some of
those knee-jerk groups like Amnesty International will raise a stink, but
they're always yelling about something. Most of the public has a selective
memory: They remember what they want to remember. At the moment, they don't
remember who Somoza was or what he was like. Where's the public uproar about
our great and good friend Stroessner in
Paraguay
? Zip. They don't even care that we hired
Klaus Barbie after the war. I tell you, everybody over here was walking on eggs
when that one broke. But it lasted two days, and then pffft! Gone."

 
          
 
Burnham insisted. "I don't think you
appreciate what a good reporter could do with a monster like this."

 
          
 
“And I don't think you appreciate the public's
capacity for not giving a damn. The next time the Arabs stop fighting long
enough to kick up the price of oil, or the Ayatollah gets really pissed and
closes down the Persian Gulf, and we're back to two-hour waits in line to buy
two-dollar-a-gallon gasoline, do you really think Joe Sixpack and Betsy Buick
are gonna thank the President for kicking out the little brown oil man—just
because he likes to set fire to other little brown people?"

 
          
 
"But . . . I . . ." Burnham felt a
stammer coming on. Then he said, "I see."

 
          
 
Four-four-nine-one was silent, and Burnham
thought that he could feel the man smiling.

 
          
 
"Principles are expensive," said
four-four-nine-one.

 
          
 
"Why didn't the NSC tell the
President?"

 
          
 
"How long have you been at the White
House?"

 
          
 
"Why?" Burnham saw no reason to
confide in a stranger the fact that while he had been at the White House for
years, he had been alone with the President exactly once, yesterday, and had
never been in a position of advising him to do or not do, say or not say,
anything.

 
          
 
"The NSC doesn't want to clutter his
head. The decision has been made, by them and State—which means by Mario
Epstein—and facts will just confuse him. Look: Put principles aside for a
second and consider two practical issues. One, will the President listen to
you?"

 
          
 
Burnham spoke before he had time to consider
his words. "I doubt it."

 
          
 
"Me too. So all you'll do is start a
fight that you're bound to lose. Two, it's too late to stop it now. The pasha's
already in the air, and unless you've got the clout to deny him landing rights
at Andrews, the visit's gonna happen. It strikes me that all you can do is cut
your losses. Give the President a draft that will keep him from looking like a
complete ass."

 
          
 
Burnham smiled to himself. "Yes. I think
he'd appreciate that."

 
          
 
"Send me a copy if you want."

 
          
 
"If there's time."

 
          
 
"No. On second thought, forget it. I
don't want to know." Four-four-nine-one paused. "I think you're a dangerous
person to be involved with."

 
          
 
Burnham laughed and hung up. He felt good,
almost elated, and he had no idea why. His mind was a conflicted mess. For the
first time in his months at the White House, he was faced with an issue of
right and wrong—and not just with the absolutes, but with their many subtle
shadings. Right would be to turn the pasha away at the gate, but it would
probably also be wrong for the country. Besides, he had no power to enforce a
right decision. Epstein would slice him up like liverwurst and feed his pieces
to the pasha on a plate. So he would have to seek a compromise between his own
feelings and the NSC draft and Epstein's militancy and the President's ... the
President's what? He had no way of knowing what the President wanted to say.
All he knew was that the President had detected an unsavory odor about the
pasha's visit.