The Bancroft Strategy

  “No, it’s not.”

  “Thing is, at first, I thought threats would be enough.”

  “Threats to expose the Theta Group to the Kirk Commission.”

  “Right. But they weren’t. So I started to compile a detailed record—a digital dossier, like—of the group’s operations. It hasn’t been easy. But I’ve completed it. The file exposes every last root and branch.”

  “You’ve completed the dossier, you say.”

  The boy nodded.

  “Meaning that with a few keystrokes and clicks, you can send it to every member of the Kirk Commission. And a thing of darkness will come to light.”

  Brandon nodded. “It’s time to do it, isn’t it?”

  Genesis: a thirteen-year-old boy. Belknap fought to reel in his mind, to concentrate. “Then Jared Rinehart was working with your father. He never had anything to do with Genesis.”

  “Rinehart? Gosh, no. From what I hear, that’s one scary dude. Glad we’ve never crossed paths.”

  A voice from the doorway, silky, cold, and commanding. “Until now.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Belknap whirled around and saw the tall, lanky figure of the man who had been his best friend. Pollux to his Castor. Silhouetted in the doorway, his limbs looked especially slim, and the .45 pistol in his hand especially enormous.

  “Times like this, I wish I wore a hat,” the lanky operative told Belknap. “So I could take it off to you.”

  “Jared…” Belknap husked.

  “You have truly outdone yourself,” said Rinehart “You’ve been amazing. Stupendous. Just as I knew you would. And so your labors are over. I’ll take over now.” He glanced at the boy. “Your father will be here momentarily,” he said with an icy grin.

  “What have I done?” said Belknap, his heart pummeling. “Christ almighty—what have I done?”

  “What nobody else could have. Bravo—I mean that, Todd. The hard work was all yours. As for me, well, I’m just the old gent in the jodhpurs again. It’s what all hunters learn. To catch the fox, follow the hound. I must say, we’d never have guessed where the fox was hidden. Not in a million years. But it makes sense of everything.”

  “You used me. All this time, you—”

  “Knew you’d never let me down, old friend. I’ve always had an eye for talent. And right from the start, I knew you were something extraordinary. The bureaucrats in Foggy Bottom were jealous of you. A lot of them didn’t know what to make of you. But I did. I always admired you.”

  Cultivated from the beginning. East Berlin, 1987.

  Again, Belknap tried to choke out the words. “All along, you—”

  “Knew what you were made of. Knew what you were capable of. Better than anybody else. Together, we were always undefeatable. Nothing we couldn’t do when I set my mind to it. I’d like to think of this as our greatest triumph, not simply our final one.”

  “You loosed me. Set the bait, and sent me after it.” The sickening realization ravaged Belknap like a cyclone in his soul. “You sent me off in pursuit of Genesis because it was the only way you could ever find him.”

  The bait. The air itself has turned to a viscous, smothering substance, so it seemed to Belknap, as that realization was followed by others, each blasting at his very identity. The Italian girl. The Omani princeling. How many others? Each, unknowingly, had been enlisted in the service of Rinehart’s gambit. The illusion could be maintained only if vouchsafed by reality—the participants had to be oblivious to the game master’s strategy. None more so than Castor himself.

  Comprehension seemed to vise Belknap’s skull. When, in Tallinn, Belknap discovered the truth about Lugner, traitor turned arms dealer, the Pollux illusion was compromised. So a simple adjustment was made to keep the Hound on the trail of Genesis: The bait became Andrea instead. Oh, Christ!

  Rinehart’s plan had made use of everything that had kept Belknap human—his affection, loyalty, devotion.

  If thine eye offends thee, pluck it out.

  As rage and hatred pulsed through Belknap’s being, Rinehart’s betrayal made him wish he could root out his very capacity to care. But no! He would not become a monster: To turn into a man like Rinehart would cede his nemesis a kind of victory.

  “When I look at you now,” Belknap said quietly, “it’s as if I’m seeing you for the first time.”

  “And with such disapproval in your eyes. Are you mad at me?” Rinehart sounded almost hurt. The heavy pistol gleamed in the operative’s hand. “Don’t you see that the Theta Group had no choice in the matter? Our very existence was in jeopardy, and, needless to say, our own efforts to track down the identity of the threat had proved futile.”

  “You were Theta’s inside ace,” Belknap said. He could almost hear the fluttering of dominos, a vast, twisty row collapsing in order. “An American intel agent with top-level security clearance, able to feed them all the information the United States government possessed. Meanwhile, if Theta needed someone found, you’d—what, manufacture some plausible rationale that turned it into a Cons Ops mission? All this time I thought you had my back.” Fury pushed at his voice, like a substance held under enormous pressure. “What you had was a knife in my back. You’d crossed over to the other side, you goddamn traitor.”

  “It’s naïve to speak of sides. My hope was really to bring the new establishments together. To merge them, in a manner of speaking. Why work at cross-purposes? Theta, Consular Operations—Paul and I agreed that in a rational world they should work together like two arms of the same body.” His eyes flickered toward the boy. “Speaking of which, I won’t lie to you. I couldn’t be more shocked to learn the true identity of Genesis. Not just a child prodigy, but a prodigal son. The traitor at the breakfast table. The stranger beside you. Who could possibly have imagined?”

  The stranger beside you. Belknap stared at Rinehart. A master of deception. A virtuoso of manipulation. How much of Belknap’s own life had been orchestrated by Rinehart? Yet he could not allow himself to be distracted by personal drama. The stakes were too immense. He glanced back toward the pistol he left at the demilune table, and cursed himself. It was out of his reach, closer to Rinehart than to him. He could not move toward it without arousing suspicion.

  “Over here,” Rinehart called out to an unseen figure in the hall, and Paul Bancroft appeared. He looked as if he had been roused from bed, as he must have been, and thrown on a sweatshirt hastily over a pair of khakis. He held a small gun in his own right hand. His knuckles were white.

  “Meet your nemesis,” said Rinehart. “And ours.”

  The aging philosopher stared, slack-jawed. “My son,” he breathed.

  “I’m sorry,” Rinehart said almost tenderly. “The scriptures begin with Genesis, but they end in Revelations. This is ours.”

  Wild-eyed, the old man turned to Rinehart. “There must be some mistake. It can’t be!”

  “And yet,” Rinehart pressed, “it makes sense of everything, don’t you see? It explains how he got access to so many files of yours. It explains why—”

  “Is this true, Brandon?” Bancroft burst out. “Brandon, tell me, is this true?”

  The boy nodded.

  “How could you do this to me?” The words came from his father in a howl of outrage. “How could you try to destroy my life’s work? After all the toil we’ve put in to make the world a better place—the organization, the planning, the care—you would sit here and undo it? In order to set the world back? Do you hate humanity that much? Do you hate me that much?”

  “Dad, I love you,” Brandon said softly. “It’s not like that.”

  Jared Rinehart cleared his throat. “This isn’t the time for the mushy stuff. What must be done is very clear.”

  “Please, Jared!” The words exploded from the silver-haired savant. “Please give us a moment.”

  “No,” said the operative implacably. “In just a few keystrokes, your son could send the Kirk Commission enough information to destroy us, permanently and irrevocabl
y. To destroy everything you spent your life creating. Your own precepts must guide your actions now.”

  “But—”

  A chill entered Rinehart’s voice. “If your own precepts don’t guide your actions now, your life has been a fraud. The greatest good for the greatest number—that’s an objective that can’t be compromised, as you’ve always said. Remember what you taught us? ‘What is the magic of this pronoun “my”?’ Genesis is your son, yes, but this is just one life. For the sake of your life’s project—for the sake of the entire world—you must take it.”

  Paul Bancroft raised the small revolver in his hand. It was visibly trembling.

  “Or, if you prefer, I will,” Rinehart said.

  Brandon, still seated, turned and looked into his father’s eyes. There was love in Brandon’s gaze, and resolve, and disappointment.

  “Thy way, not mine, oh Lord, however dark it be.” The boy began to sing in a reedy, faltering alto. A tear rolled down his cheek. Yet Belknap somehow knew that he was crying for his father, not for himself.

  Belknap spoke. “He means that nobody has the right to play God.” He stared at the philosopher. Arrogance and self-regard had perverted his idealism, had made it monstrous. He was, ultimately, no god but a man—and a man who, it was obvious, loved his son more than anything in the world.

  Visibly wracked, stricken, almost paralyzed with grief, Paul Bancroft turned to Rinehart. “Listen to me. He’ll see reason. At long last, he will see reason.” To his son he began to speak with ardor and panicked eloquence. “My child, you say that every life is sacred. But that’s the language of religion, not of reason. What we can say, instead, is that every life has value. Each life counts. And to make sense of that, we cannot be afraid to engage in counting. Counting the lives that we can save. The positive consequences of painful actions. You can see this, can’t you?” He spoke fluently, frantically, defending a worldview against the powerful skepticism of the child’s clear gaze. “I’ve devoted my life to the service of mankind. To make the world a better place. To make your world a better place. Because you, my son, are the future.”

  Brandon just shook his head slowly.

  “Sometimes people say they don’t want to bring a child into a world that’s so troubled. In my own lifetime, there’s been global warfare, genocide, gulags, man-made famines, massacres, terrorism—the destruction of tens of millions of lives because of human irrationality. The twentieth century should have been the greatest ever, and yet it was the century of the worst atrocities in our history. That’s not a world I wanted to bequeath to you, my dear, dear child. Is that wrong of me?”

  “Please, Father,” the boy began.

  “Surely you can understand that,” Bancroft went on, his eyes starting to mist. “My son, my beautiful son. Everything we’ve done has been logically, morally, justified. Our aim has never been power or aggrandizement. Our aim has only been the benefit of everyone. Don’t look at the Theta Group’s acts in isolation. Look at them as part of a larger program. Once you do, you’ll come to understand the altruism that fuels it. The Theta Group is altruism in action.” Bancroft took a breath. “Yes, sometimes there must be blood, and pain. Just as in surgery. Would you forbid surgeons from practicing their trade simply to avoid the short-term damage they must inflict? Then why—”

  “This is a waste of time,” Rinehart snapped. “With all due respect, we’re not conducting a seminar here tonight.”

  “Father,” Brandon said softly. “Would you really justify one person’s pain by another’s pleasure?”

  “Listen to me—”

  “The truth matters. You manipulate people and lie to them because you decide it’s in their interest. Only it shouldn’t be up to you. When you lie to people, you take something away from them. You treat them as means to some other end. Nobody gave you that right, Dad. Unless you’re God, you need to consider that you could be mistaken. That your theories could be wrong. ‘Not what I will, but what Thou wilt.’” Christ’s words on the cross.

  Rinehart cleared his throat.

  “Every life is sacred,” Brandon repeated.

  “Please, my child,” Paul Bancroft tried to begin again.

  “I do love you, Dad,” Brandon said. His apple cheeks and bright eyes conveyed an odd sort of serenity. “But there are choices no human being has the right to make. Actions no human being has the right to take.”

  The aging philosopher spoke in a rush. “Brandon, you’re not listening to me—”

  “All I’m saying is, What if you’re wrong?”

  Paul Bancroft’s eyes were glistening. “Brandon, please.”

  But the boy’s voice was clear and calm. “What if you’ve always been wrong?”

  “My darling son, please—”

  “Do it,” Rinehart broke in, turning a steely gaze toward Bancroft and gesturing with his own gun. He was dry-eyed, resolute, practical. His own survival depended upon the removal of Genesis. “It’s what your own logic demands, Paul. Shoot the boy. Or I will. Do you understand me?”

  “I understand you,” Dr. Bancroft said in a small, ragged voice. He blinked away his tears, leveled his small revolver, swiveled his gun arm twenty degrees to his right, and fired.

  A splotch of red blossomed on Rinehart’s white shirt, a few inches below his sternum.

  Rinehart’s eyes widened, and, in one fluid motion, he raised his own gun and returned fire. Rinehart was a professional; the round entered Paul Bancroft’s forehead, killing him instantly. The elderly sage slumped to the carpet.

  A strangled cry came from the boy. He was white as a sheet, his features drawn in anguish. Rinehart now turned toward him, as a small wisp of smoke seeped from the chamber of his .45.

  “I hated doing that,” the tall man said. “And I don’t often feel that way.” There was something wet in his voice, a faint gargling sound, and Belknap realized that fluid was slowly filling Rinehart’s lungs. Perhaps fifteen or twenty seconds remained before asphyxiation overcame him. “I took his life to honor his thought. He would have understood. And now I must do what he could not.”

  Even as Rinehart spoke, Belknap leaped over to Brandon and placed his own body between him and Rinehart. “It’s over, dammit!” Belknap shouted. He heard footsteps in the hall outside.

  Rinehart shook his head. “You think I wouldn’t kill you, Todd? You got to roll the dice or you’re not in the game.” His eyes glassy and unfocused, his movements stiff and automaton-like, Rinehart fired in Belknap’s direction. Belknap felt a searing kick in his own upper torso, just below the clavicle. The sheer Kevlar vest he wore beneath his shirt prevented puncture, but did little to defuse the impact of the round. A few inches higher and the bullet could have been fatal. Every instinct told him to duck or run. Yet he could not do so without exposing the boy to harm.

  “Good, Todd. Be Prepared. My Boy Scout.”

  Belknap reached behind him, keeping the boy in place and shielded by his body. “You’re dying, Jared. You know this. It’s over.” He stared into the other man’s eyes, trying to reach him on some unspoken level, one mind to another, maintaining the gaze like a grappler’s hold.

  “They say everyone who sees Genesis’s face dies,” Jared said unevenly, his pistol still leveled at Belknap. “So I guess I’ve been warned. You and me both.”

  “You’re a dead man, Jared,” said Belknap.

  “Yeah? Well, keep ’em guessing, I always say.”

  Belknap sensed that Brandon had darted away somewhere, that Rinehart had to decide which target to take out first.

  A woman’s voice. Andrea’s. “Rinehart!” she shouted hoarsely.

  She was standing in the doorway, had snatched Belknap’s pistol from the table and aimed it at the tall operative. The safety was off; she had only to depress the trigger.

  Jared craned his head. “You,” he said. The word came out like a groan, the sound of a nail pried from a board.

  “What’s your blood type, Rinehart?” Andrea’s question was punctuated
by a loud retort as the gun jerked in her hand. A round struck the tall man high in the chest, where a crimson freshet appeared moments later.

  Now Belknap’s eyes darted around the room wildly. Would you just die? he silently implored Jared Rinehart. Would you please just die?

  He noticed that Brandon had retreated to a corner of the room, where he sat on the floor, his arms around his knees, his face cast down and hidden in the shadows. Only the rocking of his shoulders revealed that he was silently weeping.

  Rinehart, incredibly, remained standing. “You shoot like a girl.” He sneered, and turned back to Belknap. “She’s all wrong for you,” he told him confidingly, breath forced through fluid, half growl, half gurgle. “They all were.”

  Andrea squeezed the trigger again, and then again. A spray of blood and viscera spattered onto the computer screen.

  Rinehart, his eyes still intently on Belknap’s, began to raise his gun yet again, but it slipped from his hand. A rivulet of blood wept from the corner of his mouth. He coughed twice, and gulped at the air, swaying on his feet as he progressively lost control of his muscles. Belknap recognized the look: It was that of a man slowly drowning in his own blood.

  “Castor,” Rinehart wheezed. Then, moments before he collapsed, he managed to reach out sightlessly with his hands and take a stumbling step forward, as if to strangle the other man or to embrace him.

  Epilogue

  It was a year later, and, Andrea had to admit, a great deal had changed. Maybe the world wasn’t different, but her world certainly was. She made decisions that surprised her—decisions that surprised them both—but in retrospect they seemed both right and inevitable. Not that she had as much time to ponder these things as she would have preferred. Being the director of the Bancroft Foundation, she found, wasn’t something you could do on the side. It was an all-consuming endeavor, at least if you wanted to do it the way it should be done.

  The enormities committed by the Theta Group could never be set right. But, as she and her husband had agreed, the foundation proper had played a genuinely valuable role in the world, and, once the malignity had been cut out, it could be of even greater service. Another decision had emerged from a series of meetings that she and Todd had had with Senator Kirk before his death. It was to keep the existence of this terrible aberration a closely guarded secret. The revelations would otherwise have tarred every NGO and philanthropic institution in the world; in geopolitical terms, they would have been destabilizing in thousands of unforeseeable ways. The result could have been years, perhaps decades, of bitterness, enmity, and recrimination. The remaining Theta principals—those who had not managed to disappear—had been turned over to clandestine judicial proceedings organized by the Department of Justice’s Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, all of which were classified and sealed as a matter of national security.