The Bancroft Strategy

“And the bastard gets all the glory,” Tracy remarked wryly. “It’s so unfair.”

  “Glory is not why we’re here,” Bancroft replied with asperity. Still, he knew not to make too much of the occasional cynical crack; the men and women of Theta were idealists through and through.

  He turned to Liebman. “Regarding the soccer team—do you think I made the wrong decision?”

  Liebman said nothing for a moment, then shook his head. “On the contrary, I know you made the right one. The best decisions—the smartest ones, the ones that really change things for the better—are often the ones that hurt most. You taught me that. You taught me a lot of things. And I’m still learning.”

  “As am I,” Dr. Bancroft said. “You know, Plato claimed that all learning was really remembering. Which certainly feels true in my case. Because it’s so easy to forget how morally blinkered humanity can be. Governments will pursue policies that result in tens of thousands of deaths—foreseeably, as with misconceived public-health policies. Yet they will spend millions to investigate a single assassination.” He looked off. “Worldwide mortality from AIDS is the equivalent of twenty fully loaded jumbo jets crashing every day, and leaders barely lift a finger. Yet the death of a single silly archduke can mobilize entire nations for war. One baby is trapped in a well, and the attention of the world is riveted for days on end. Yet mass starvation can decimate entire regions and the news is crowded out by celebrity misbehavior.”

  “It’s amazing.” Tracy nodded.

  “It’s monstrous, actually,” Bancroft said, his cheeks coloring.

  “What’s pathetic is that the Theta Group should have to do its good deeds in secret,” said Collingwood, “instead of being heralded by a grateful world. I mean it.” He turned to Dr. Bancroft. “Has humanity ever had a benefactor like you? That’s not flattery, just fact. The Cray cluster downstairs would confirm it. I mean, really and truly, has any organization ever done more good than the Theta Group?”

  Burgess spread his hands on the Bennett Kirk file. “Which is exactly what makes self-protection so important. To do what we do, we need to be left alone. And let’s face it. There are a lot of people who would like to put us out of business.”

  “In some cases,” Dr. Bancroft replied in a voice that was both calm and relentless, “our obligation to the greater good means putting them out of business.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Washington, D.C.

  The Hart Senate Office Building, between Constitution Avenue and Second Street, provided a million square feet of office space, all nine stories of which were devoted to the United States Senate and its staff. The number of senators was fixed when the republic was founded, at two per state; but the number of staffers was not, and would come to exceed ten thousand. A gratelike marble facade shielded the building’s windows from the mid-Atlantic sun; inside, a large skylit atrium featured Alexander Calder’s mobile Mountains and Clouds, a monumental work of black steel and aluminum. The atrium was surrounded by elevators and circular stairs, and bridged by walkways.

  The duplex suite belonging to Senator Bennett Kirk occupied space on the seventh and eight floors. The offices were handsome but short of luxurious—the Oriental carpets were of the standard elephant’s-foot variety, the paneling in the reception area was of stained oak, not walnut—but they had a certain solidity that lent itself to the hush of power. The senator’s own office was grander, and darker, but also vaguely impersonal: Its furnishings somehow announced that they had been passed down to the senator from his predecessors, and would be passed down, in turn, to his successors.

  Philip Sutton, the senator’s chief of staff for more than a decade, watched a C-SPAN broadcast of proceedings in the building’s Central Hearing Facility, five floors below him. He sometimes found it easiest to track down his boss by watching television, especially these days. Sutton glanced at his watch; the senator had left the hearing a minute ago, would probably reappear in his suite in a couple of minutes more. He turned off the small television set, caught a glimpse of himself in the dead screen: short, pudgy, balding—not exactly ready for prime time. His nails were bitten close to the quick. Men like him couldn’t get elected dogcatcher. He was a natural lieutenant, not a leader, and it was a fact he accepted with neither bitterness nor regret. If he wanted to know what it was that he lacked, he just had to take a look at Bennett Kirk, and it was all on display. He could see the senator now, in fact, entering the suite with his distinctive loose-limbed lope, broad shoulders, the narrow, almost delicate nose, the head of silver hair that seemed to come with its own key light.

  Senator Kirk was smart, earthy, and short-tempered, and he wasn’t devoid of vanity, either. Sutton knew the man’s every flaw and foible, but they detracted not at all from his admiration. What Bennett Kirk had going for him wasn’t just the senatorial looks; he also had something like clarity of purpose, integrity. Pretentious words that would make Senator Kirk cringe, but it was hard to find another way to put it.

  “Phil, you look tired,” Senator Kirk said gruffly, putting an arm around his shoulders. “Actually, you look like you’ve been getting your meals out of the vending machines. When you gonna learn that Lunchables are not the fifth food group?”

  Sutton studied the older man’s face carefully, but, he hoped, discreetly. He didn’t want the senator to be self-conscious about the state of his health, and so far the illness was scarcely detectable. Sutton had helped him manage the ambitious investigation for many weeks now, but the senator himself was doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Too much of the heavy lifting. It would take a toll even on a healthy man.

  “Want to hear about your latest opportunities?” Sutton asked. “You’ve never had so many people aching to do you favors.”

  “Lead me not into temptation, boy.” The senator eased himself onto a leather wing chair that faced away from the windows. He took a small brown plastic bottle from a trousers pocket, palmed it open, and dry-swallowed an oval yellow pill.

  “Let’s see, now. This morning, a call came from Arch Gleeson—you know, former congressman, now a registered lobbyist for the National Aerospace Industries Association. They’ve developed a sudden interest in helping you raise funds for future campaigns.”

  “Ah, those defense-industry lobbyists. About as shy as a coon in a Dumpster.”

  “Oh, he delicately mentioned the caveat that, if you weren’t interested, they’d make the same offer to any plausible opponent. ‘We just want to be helpful,’ he kept saying. Help me help you—or else. That’s what it came down to.”

  “They’re worried about what the committee probe might rumble onto. Or how big a stink we’ll raise once we do. Can’t blame ’em for looking after their interests.”

  “Mighty Christian of you,” Sutton shot back with a sardonic grin. “Another firm has offered to hire Amanda as a vice president for corporate communications.” The senator’s wife was a high-school English teacher; it was another transparent attempt at reaching the man leading the Senate probe.

  “I can guess what Amanda’s likely to say,” he chuckled. “I guess they’re not aiming at subtlety.”

  “A big salary, too. They actually mentioned a range.”

  “See if they’d take me instead,” the senator said waggishly. Ever since the Kirk Commission was established, such veiled threats and bribes had been arriving every day.

  Kirk was no kind of saint; Sutton wrinkled his nose at the senator’s support for ethanol programs, a political favor for a major agribusiness supporter, though, like any Senate staffer, he also recognized the political exigencies involved. But the senator had generally kept his nose clean.

  And now he had his eyes on the prize. What none of the influence-peddlers realized was that he was beyond deterring or swaying at this point. Aside from his closest aides and his wife, Bennett Kirk had kept the diagnosis to himself.

  Nobody needed to know that Bennett Kirk had been diagnosed with an aggressive and treatment-resistant variety of lymphoma. It had
already reached stage four at the time of diagnosis. He was not going to be alive to run again. All he cared about now was his legacy; and the kind of legacy Senator Kirk cared about was the kind of legacy a man could not buy.

  Sutton only occasionally got inklings of the chronic pain the senator was in, as when a subtle facial twitch or not-wholly-concealed wince made a fleeting appearance. For the most part, however, Bennett Kirk was determined to ignore or overcome any and all symptoms of the disease, until the disease burst the floodgates of stoicism.

  “There’s something else, isn’t there?” Kirk said, his eyes meeting Sutton’s. He rearranged himself on his chair, crossing and uncrossing his legs, trying to get comfortable. But no position was comfortable. The bone metastases made sure of that. “I can tell. You got another one of those message thingies.”

  Sutton paused, then nodded. “Another communication from Genesis, yes. Via e-mail.”

  “And you take this bogeyman seriously?”

  Solemnly, his chief of staff nodded. “We’ve been through this. From the earlier messages we’ve received, it’s clear that Genesis is privy to all sorts of buried secrets. I grant we’re dealing with a pretty vaporous figure, but we’ve got to take Genesis very seriously indeed.”

  “So what’s this bit of ectoplasm saying now?”

  Sutton handed the senator a printout of the latest e-mail. “Genesis is promising to supply us with information—including names, dates, possible witnesses and perpetrators. Quite a gift.”

  “Remember my philosophy: Always look a gift horse in the mouth. But if the horse is invisible, you can’t give it a dental exam, can you?”

  “We can’t walk away from this. It’s too good. Too valuable. Stuff we’d never be able to get on our own, no matter how many investigators we threw at it. We’ll be able to unveil and dismantle a conspiracy that’s been under way, it appears, for longer than you’ve been in the Senate.”

  “Or we’ll be left holding our breeches in a rainstorm. I mean, this could be the mother of all practical jokes.”

  “There’s too much knowledge here. Too many verifiable—and verified—details.”

  “In politics, you know, there’s a saying: Consider the source. I don’t like communicating with spirits. This thing unsettles my stomach.” Senator Kirk gave Sutton a level stare. “I need to know who Genesis is. Have we made any progress toward finding out?”

  Sutton shrugged uneasily. “We’re in an awkward position. Normally it would be a problem to be kicked over to the investigative and espionage services. Except, of course, those are the agencies you’re investigating.”

  Kirk grunted. “I bet some of those bastards would love to get their hands on this Genesis before I did.”

  “Word has it,” his chief of staff put in, “that he’ll let people see him…if they’ll let him kill them afterward. Most folks just aren’t that curious.”

  “Kee-rist, I hope you’re just yanking my chain.” The senator’s mouth was smiling, but his eyes were not. “And I hope Genesis isn’t.”

  Eastern Uruguay

  Javier Solanas patted his full belly, drained the last of his mug of beer, gazed around the table, and decided that he was probably as happy as he had ever been, and perhaps as happy as a man should be.

  His modest ranch outside Paysandú was nothing special; there were thousands bigger and more prosperous in Uruguay. But he had built it all, had pieced it together from three small plots of land—he, the son of a goatherd! The party wasn’t even for him; it was for his wife of forty years, Elena, whose birthday it was. But that made it all the better. It meant that his pride was not inviting a visit from the evil eye. And nobody, not even the evil eye, could begrudge Elena anyway. Five children—three girls, two boys—Elena had borne him, and all full-grown, all with children of their own. He had three sons-in-law, and he actually liked two of them! Who was so lucky?

  The table was filled with plates and platters, half empty. Slabs of fine Uruguayan beef had been grilled in the parilla, slathered with chimichurri sauce. Javier had made his own specialty, morcilla dulce, or blood sausage made with walnuts and raisins. Then there was Elena’s special stuffed sweet peppers. All ravenously consumed. Along with a fair amount of Javier’s beer.

  And how about the face of his pretty dark-eyed Elena when he presented her with the pair of plane tickets! She had always dreamed of visiting Paris, and now they would. They would leave tomorrow.

  “You shouldn’t have!” Elena had cried out, her beaming countenance saying, Thank God you did.

  This was what it was to be a man: to be surrounded by children of all ages, children and grandchildren, to be in a position to feed them all so well that they could not swallow another bite! No, not bad for a goatherd’s son!

  “A toast!” Javier called out.

  “You’ve already proposed seven toasts,” his daughter Evita said.

  “Papi!” her older sister Marie said. She was nursing her infant while keeping an eye on her toddler. “We’ve run out of baby food. Pedro loves the strained carrots.”

  “We’ve run out of beer,” said Evita’s husband, Juan.

  “No more Pepsi!” called Evita.

  “I’ll go to the store,” Juan offered.

  “In whose car?” Javier demanded.

  “Yours?” The response was a sheepish interrogative.

  Javier gestured toward the three empty bottles of lager by Juan’s dinner plate. “I go,” Javier said.

  “Don’t go,” said his wife.

  “I’m back in five minutes. You won’t notice.” He raised himself to his feet and walked over to the back door. When he and Elena were married, he had a flat belly, flat like the pampas; now he couldn’t see his own feet without making an effort. Elena told him, “More of you to love,” but Javier wondered whether he should take more exercise. A paterfamilias had an obligation to his family. He had to set a good example.

  When he reached the green-painted garage—a converted chicken-coop, not that anybody could tell—he closed the narrow side door behind him and turned on the lights. Then he jabbed at the button that would raise the rolling door.

  Nothing happened. He tried again. Still nothing. He would have to lift up the rolling door himself. He took a step and felt odd. He took another deep breath, and another. But no matter how much he breathed, he could not catch his breath.

  The lights flickered and went out. Javier thought it odd. He was aware of himself blacking out, losing muscle control, slumping gently to the concrete floor. He was aware of himself lying there, flesh, food, blood, bones. Aware that a fly had settled on his forehead, that others were coming to feed on him. Aware that soon he would not be aware at all. It had to have been a heart attack, yes? Or a stroke? But it wasn’t the way he thought such things would be. Not that he had given the eventuality of death a great deal of thought.

  His mind drifted, eddied. So this is what it’s like, he thought. I wish I could go back and tell the others. It’s not so bad, really. The main thing is not to be afraid of the dark.

  Then consciousness began to evaporate like morning dew, and the flies gathered in a thick cloud.

  From just behind the berm line of a wheatfield across the road, two men peered with binoculars.

  “Do you think he felt much pain?” one of them asked.

  “Nitrogen asphyxiation is about the kindest way you can take a life,” the other, who was more experienced, said. He called himself Mr. Smith, at least when he was on assignment. “You don’t feel breathless, because there’s no carbon dioxide buildup in the blood. You run out of oxygen, but you don’t know what’s happening to you. It’s like someone has turned out the lights.”

  “I think you always know when you’re dying,” said the other, a tall man with sandy hair, who went by the name Mr. Jones.

  “Marco Brodz didn’t.”

  “No,” his companion agreed. “A large-caliber bullet to the head. He never had time. I think that’s the kindest way.”

  “The
y’re both kind. Even fast-acting poisons are kind compared to what nature has in store for us. Cancer, with its jaws munching away at your gut. That’s how my mom went, and it was rotten. Even the horrible crushing sensation of a heart attack—my dad told me about how it felt, the first time he had a coronary. Natural death is a bitch. Really, it’s much better this way. Our way.”

  “How did you know that Javier would go to the garage, not anybody else?”

  “What, and let another person drive his brand-new sedan? A man like that? You obviously don’t know these parts very well.” He pressed the button of an augmented radio-frequency transmitter; two hundred yards away, a garage door rolled up.

  Replacing the air in the garage with a pure nitrogen from the tank of liquid gas had taken nearly half an hour. Now the atmosphere would equilibrate in less than a minute.

  Mr. Jones looked through the binoculars, adjusting the focus until he saw the stricken man on the concrete, an area of urine darkening his crotch, a fog of flies darkening his face. “There’s never any real dignity in death,” he observed. “But he does look peaceful, don’t you think?”

  The second man, Mr. Smith, took the binoculars and peered carefully. “Does he look peaceful? It’s hard to tell. He certainly looks dead.”

  Raleigh, North Carolina

  The images kept cycling through his head as Belknap returned to the hotel. Ruth’s sightless, staring eyes, the rivulet of blood glistening from the corner of her slack mouth. One moment she was talking, breathing, reasoning; the next moment she had simply ceased to exist, leaving behind only insentient tissue. No, she had left behind more than that. There were her two young boys, now orphaned, and there were the memories that others had of the woman’s unique and precious existence. An existence that blinked out when someone had squeezed off a carefully aimed bullet.

  A sniper’s bullet, obviously from a considerable distance, given its soundless arrival, and therefore demonstrating considerable marksmanship. Belknap himself might have been next, had he not dived into the brush as soon as he realized what had happened. Why was the sniper dispatched? Who had done so? How had they been shadowed? Belknap tried to be analytical, but he felt the rage grow within him, wrapping tendrils around his stony heart. How many of his friends had he seen die? And then there was his beloved Yvette: a memory he had tried to bury as deep as he could, like nuclear waste canistered and interred in a desert salt mine. Part of him—a dream of the man he might have been—had been struck down along with his bride. Where there is beauty, one finds death.