Chapter 65

Springfield asked, “Where is it?”

I said, “I can’t volunteer information.”

“You’re full of shit.”

I shook my head. “Not this time.”

“You sure? You can take us there?”

“I can get you within fifteen feet. The rest is up to you.”

“Why? Is it buried? In a bank vault? In a house?”

“None of the above.”

“So where is it?”

“Call Sansom,” I said. “Set up a meeting.”

Springfield finished what was left of his water and a waiter came by with the check. Springfield paid with his platinum card, the same way he had for both of us at the Four Seasons. Which I had taken to be a good sign. It had indicated a positive dynamic. So I chose to push my luck a little further.

“Want to get me a room?” I asked.

“Why?”

“Because it’s going to take time for Sansom to get me off the most-wanted list. And I’m tired. I was up all night. I want to take a nap.”

Ten minutes later we were on a high floor, in a room with a queen-sized bed. A nice space, but tactically unsatisfactory. Like all high-floor hotel rooms it had a window that was no good to me and therefore only one way out. I could see that Springfield was thinking the same thing. He was thinking I was a lunatic to put myself in there.

I asked him, “Can I trust you?”

He said, “Yes.”

“Prove it.”

“How?”

“Give me your gun.”

“I’m not armed.”

“Answers like that don’t help with the trust thing.”

“Why do you want it?”

“You know why. So if you bring the wrong people to my door I can defend myself.”

“I won’t.”

“Reassure me.”

He stood still for a long moment. I knew he would rather stick a needle in his eye than give up his weapon. But he ran some calculations in his head and reached around under his suit coat to the small of his back and came out with a nine-millimeter Steyr GB pistol. The Steyr GB had been the sidearm of choice for 1980s-era U.S. Special Forces. He reversed it and handed it to me butt-first. It was a fine old piece, well worn but well maintained. It had eighteen rounds in the magazine and one in the chamber.

“Thank you,” I said.

He didn’t reply. Just walked out of the room. I double-locked the door after him, and put the chain on, and propped a chair under the handle. I emptied my pockets on the night stand. I put my clothes under the mattress to press. I took a long hot shower.

Then I lay down and went to sleep, with Springfield’s gun under the pillow.

I was woken up four hours later by a knock at the door. I don’t like to look through spy holes in hotel doors. Too vulnerable. All an assailant in the corridor has to do is wait until the lens darkens and then fire a gun straight through it. Even a silenced .22 would be completely lethal. There is nothing very substantial between the cornea and the brain stem. But there was a full-length mirror on the wall inside the door. For last-minute clothing checks, I guessed, before going out. I took a towel from the bathroom and wrapped it around my waist and collected the gun from under the pillow. I moved the chair and opened the door against the chain. Stood back on the hinge side and checked the view in the mirror.

Springfield, and Sansom.

It was a narrow crack and the image was reversed by the mirror and the corridor lighting was dim, but I recognized them easily enough. They were alone, as far as I could tell. And they were going to stay alone, unless they had brought more than nineteen people with them. No safety catch on the Steyr. Just a hefty double-action pull for the first shot, and then eighteen more. I took the slack out of the trigger and the chain off the door.

They were alone.

They came in, Sansom first, and then Springfield. Sansom looked the same as the morning I first saw him. Tanned, rich, powerful, full of energy and charisma. He was in a navy suit with a white shirt and a red tie and he looked as fresh as a daisy. He took the chair I had been using under the door handle and carried it back to the table near the window and sat down. Springfield closed the door and put the chain back on. I kept hold of the gun. I nudged the mattress off the box spring with my knee and pulled my clothes out one-handed.

“Two minutes,” I said. “Talk among yourselves.”

I dressed in the bathroom and came back out and Sansom asked, “Do you really know where that memory stick is?”

“Yes,” I said. “I really do.”

“Why do you want to know what’s on it?”

“Because I want to know how embarrassing it is.”

“You don’t want me in the Senate?”

“I don’t care how you spend your time. I’m curious, that’s all.”

He asked, “Why won’t you tell me where it is right now?”

“Because I have something else to do first. And I need you to keep the cops out of my hair while I’m doing it. So I need a way of keeping your mind on the job.”

“You could be conning me.”

“I could be, but I’m not.”

He said nothing back.

I asked, “Why do you want to be in the Senate anyway?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“You were a good soldier and now you’re richer than God. Why not go live on the beach?”

“These things are a way of keeping score. I’m sure you have your own way of keeping score.”

I nodded. “I compare the number of answers I get to the number of questions I ask.”

“And how are you doing with that?”

“Lifetime average close to a thousand.”

“Why ask at all? If you know where the stick is, just go get it.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“It’s going to take more resources than I could mobilize.”

“Where is it?”

I didn’t answer.

“Is it here in New York?”

I didn’t answer.

He asked, “Is it secure?”

I said, “It’s safe enough.”

“Can I trust you?”

“Plenty of people have.”

“And?”

“I think most of them would be willing to give me a character reference.”

“And the others?”

“There’s no pleasing some folks.”

He said, “I saw your service record.”

I said, “You told me that.”

“It was mixed.”

“I tried my best. But I had a mind of my own.”

“Why did you quit?”

“I got bored. You?”

“I got old.”

“What is on that stick?”

He didn’t answer. Springfield was standing mute, in the lee of the TV cabinet, closer to the door than the window. Pure habit, I guessed. Simple reflex. He was invisible to a potential external sniper and close enough to the corridor to be all over an intruder the second the door swung open. Training stays with a person. Especially Delta training. I stepped over and gave him his gun back. He took it without a word and put it in his waistband.

Sansom said, “Tell me what you know so far.”

I said, “You were airlifted from Bragg to Turkey, and then Oman. Then India, probably. Then Pakistan, and the North West Frontier.”

He nodded and said nothing. He had a faraway look in his eyes. I guessed he was reliving the journey in his mind. Transport planes, helicopters, trucks, long miles on foot.

All long ago.

“Then Afghanistan,” I said.

“Go on,” he said.

“Probably you stayed on the flank of the Abas Ghar and headed south and west, following the line of the Korengal Valley, maybe a thousand feet from the floor.”

“Go on.”

“You stumbled over Grigori Hoth and took his rifle and let him wander away.”

“Go on.”

“Then you kept on walking, to wherever it was you had been ordered to go.”

He nodded.

I said, “That’s all I know so far.”

He asked, “Where were you in March of 1983?”

“West Point.”

“What was the big news?”

“The Red Army was trying to stop the bleeding.”

He nodded again. “It was an insane campaign. No one has ever beaten the tribesmen in the North West Frontier. Not in the whole of history. And they had our own experience in Vietnam to study. Some things just can’t be done. It was a slow-motion meat grinder. Like getting pecked to death by birds. We were very happy about it, obviously.”

“We helped,” I said.

“We sure did. We gave the mujahideen everything they wanted. For free.”

“Like Lend-Lease.”

“Worse,” Sansom said. “Lend-Lease was about helping friends that happened to be bankrupt at the time. The mujahideen were not bankrupt. Quite the reverse. There were all kinds of weird tribal alliances that stretched all the way to Saudi. The mujahideen had more money than we did, practically.”

“And?”

“When you’re in the habit of giving people everything they want, it’s very hard to stop.”

“What more did they want?”

“Recognition,” he said. “Tribute. Acknowledgment. Courtesy. Face time. It’s hard to know exactly how to characterize it.”

“So what was the mission?”

“Can we trust you?”

“You want to get the file back?”

“Yes.”

“So what was the mission?”

“We went to see the mujahideen’s top boy. Bearing gifts. All kinds of gaudy trinkets, from Ronald Reagan himself. We were his personal envoys. We had a White House briefing. We were told to pucker up and kiss ass at every possible opportunity.”

“And did you?”

“You bet.”

“It was twenty-five years ago.”

“So?”

“So who cares anymore? It’s a detail of history. And it worked, anyway. It was the end of Communism.”

“But it wasn’t the end of the mujahideen. They stayed in business.”

“I know,” I said. “They became the Taliban and Al Qaeda. But that’s a detail, too. Voters in North Carolina aren’t going to remember the history. Most voters can’t remember what they had for breakfast.”

“Depends,” Sansom said.

“On what?”

“Name recognition.”

“What name?”

“The Korengal was where the action was. Just a small salient, but that was where the Red Army met its end. The mujahideen there were doing a really fine job. Therefore the local mujahideen leader there was a really big deal. He was a rising star. He was the one we were sent to meet. And we did. We met with him.”

“And you kissed his ass?”

“Every which way we could.”

“Who was he?”

“He was a fairly impressive guy, initially. Young, tall, good-looking, very intelligent, very committed. And very rich, by the way. Very connected. He came from a billionaire family in Saudi. His father was a friend of Reagan’s Vice President. But the guy himself was a revolutionary. He quit the easy life for the cause.”

“Who was he?”

“Osama bin Laden.”