The Old Man(48)
Julian shrugged. “That decision would be above my rank.”
“We’re all just a bunch of civil servants, trying to feel our way along. What do you think should happen to him?”
“He offered a deal. If he delivered the money, we would tell the Libyans he was dead and leave him alone. We agreed to the deal.”
“So, if the money is in the Treasury Department’s account where we can’t get our hands on it, we should still tell Faris Hamzah: ‘Sorry, he’s dead and you get nothing.’“
“Faris Hamzah is the important Libyan?” said Julian. “The deal with the old man doesn’t prevent the United States from doing something to keep him happy, too.”
“That’s what we’re after? The pursuit of happiness for all of our double agents and informants and contractors?”
Julian noted the inclusion of contractors on the list. He was technically an independent contractor. He said, “If Mr. Hamzah is smart, he’d welcome the news that the old man was dead, so he could stop recruiting amateur hit men. The ones he sent couldn’t find their way across Chicago and back. When I drove them to the apartment and let them in, the old man killed them both without raising a sweat.”
“Good point. He also killed one in Vermont and two on the way to Chicago,” the senior agent said. “In all, he’s killed five men in the past year, all of them sent by our friend and ally. That’s not counting the guards he killed stealing the money thirty-five years ago, and the guerrillas in the hills who died because their supplies were cut off.”
Julian said, “I’m sorry, sir, but I’m still pretty sure things didn’t happen the way Faris Hamzah says they did. If the old man could steal the money from Hamzah, he must have delivered it to him first. And if Hamzah had the money, but didn’t deliver it to the fighters as soon as he got it, what was he waiting for?”
The senior agent’s phone rang. “Yes?” He listened. “Thank you.” He looked at Julian again. “He did send twenty million dollars to the United States Treasury.”
Julian sensed that the pause was to give him a chance to step into a trap, so he said nothing and waited.
The senior agent said, “Which means it’s lost.”
Julian’s brows knitted, and the agent knew he meant: “Why lost?”
“We can never get our hands on the money. Congress sets our budget. The commanding officer of military intelligence can’t walk up to the chairman of the intelligence committee and say, ‘Thirty-five years ago one of our own operators stole twenty million dollars from an operation. We hushed it up at the time, and so did everybody since then, but now the money has been returned to the Treasury, so we want it.’ “
“I guess we should have told the old man how you wanted the money returned,” Julian said.
“Do you know why we didn’t?”
“Because we didn’t think he would live up to the agreement?”
“No,” said the senior agent. “Because it never mattered whether he did or not. This isn’t about getting back the money from a thirty-five-year-old operation. Thirty-five years might as well be a million years. We’re in the business of furthering our country’s interests in the present. Our job isn’t to salvage some dismal screwup from a generation ago. It’s to move the ball forward a few yards today. Our job is about today. The objective today is to strengthen the bond between the United States and the leader of an important faction in Libya. Nothing else. So what has today’s work contributed to that?”
“I don’t know,” said Julian.
“We’ve sent the already-bloated Treasury a sum of money that in the three and a half trillion dollars of the annual budget isn’t even a rounding error. We also made a scene in a major American city and got two agents beaten half to death in a subway station. We let a rogue agent who has killed five men this year disappear once again like a fart in a hurricane.”
Harper’s train of thought seemed to have been running a slightly divergent course during this discussion, but it converged with the conversation again. “That guy must have been a beast when he was in his prime.”
The senior agent contemplated Harper for a period of two seconds, and then said, quietly, “He’s in his prime. Right now.”
18
Late that night Marcia Dixon drove south on Route 1 beside the Pacific Ocean. Hank was slouching in the passenger seat looking out at the reflection of the moon on the surface. The black water looked as though it were covered in wrinkles, but he knew that up close they were rank after rank of four-foot swells. Marcia cleared her throat and said, “Do you think there’s any chance we can stop to see Sarah?”
“Any chance?” Hank said. His response bought him a few seconds to think. The worst thing he could do now was to say absolutely not, because that would ensure that she would make an amateur attempt on her own. “We’d have to find a way to do it without getting her, you, or me killed. To the chasers you’re either a kidnap victim or an accomplice, so your daughter’s phone will be tapped and her computer hacked. That’s why I had you call her as soon as we were out of Chicago. After that it became too dangerous.”
“What if I used a go-between?” said Marcia. “She has a couple of friends she’s mentioned a lot since she started law school. One of them used to be her roommate before she started living alone.”