“Plato Karsarkis spilled the beans to me before he got on his plane, Billy. He spilled the fucking beans to me about everything he had been doing and all the rest of it as well.”
“And by the rest of it you would be referring to…”
“Cynthia Kim, the NSC operation in Indonesia, and the explosives and detonators used in the Bali bombing.”
Billy didn’t say anything right away. He just scratched the back of his neck and examined the ceiling, which kept me from seeing his face clearly. I assumed that was the whole idea.
“And there’s one other thing you ought to know, too, pal,” I went on before he could regroup. “Karsarkis bugged your debriefing of Cynthia Kim in Singapore. He had tapes of the whole thing, tapes with your voice on them.”
Billy stopped pretending to study the ceiling and shifted his eyes back to mine. “Have you heard them?” he asked.
“No,” I answered truthfully. “I haven’t.”
“But you’re sure he had them.”
“Yes,” I said. “Absolutely sure.”
“How can you be so sure if you didn’t hear them?”
“You’ve known me for over twenty years, Billy. Would I tell you I was sure if I wasn’t?”
Billy’s expression never changed. He was a cool one. Whatever else he might be, I had to give him that at least.
“Well,?="jdamn,” he sighed, flicking his eyes around the room and then back to mine before taking a deep breath. “Don’t that beat all?”
Looking back it was probably only a minute or two before Billy spoke again, but at the time the silence had seemed to stretch on for much longer than that.
“Do you know if he had the tapes with him when his plane blew up?” Billy asked.
“Not for sure.”
“But you think he did.”
I nodded.
“What about copies?” Billy asked. “Were there any copies?”
“There may have been,” I said, avoiding Billy’s eyes. I wondered if Billy noticed me avoid his eyes, but he just nodded slowly a few times, giving no indication of it if he had.
“I could always have those guys,” he inclined his head toward his security men, “come over here and torture you.”
“You could,” I said, “but you probably won’t.”
“No.” Billy made a little popping sound with his lips. “I probably won’t.”
The waiter returned unbidden and replaced Billy’s empty glass with a fresh martini. I noticed he didn’t offer to do anything along similar lines with my nearly empty glass of Bushmills.
“So what happens now?” Billy asked after he had taken a sip.
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I guess I was hoping…”
I stopped talking and stared for a minute at a spot on the tablecloth.
“I really don’t know,” I said again.
Billy nodded as if that all somehow made perfect sense.
“Look, Jack…”
Billy paused. He look as if he was trying to make up his mind about something and I waited for him to decide on whatever it was.
“A lot of things are more complicated than they seem,” he said after a moment.
“Did your people blow up that plane, Billy?”
“My people?” Billy smiled slightly at that, although I thought he looked tired and a little sad when he did. “No, not my people.”
“But somebody’s people?”
Billy put his glass down again and adjusted its position slightly. He didn’t say anything.
“Then let me put this plainly just to make sure there’s no misunderstanding between us,” I said. “You’re willing to let me think it is at least possible someone in the government of the United States blew up a plane in order to kill Plato Karsarkis and keep him from telling the world what he knew about White House involvement in covert operations that turned sour.”
Billy leaned across the table. Lowering his voice he tapped me on the back of the wrist with one finger.
“You do not have the first fucking idea how much is possible, Jack. Governments do things all the time that in your wildest imagination you would never begin to believe. We do what we do because-”
“Oh, please,” I interrupted. “Spare me the for-the-sake-of-the-greater-good speech. Could you just do that for me?”
“S?uo;Oh, plure,” Billy said. “I can do that for you. If you want me to.”
We sat for a while in silence again after that, me looking at the wall behind Billy and him watching the room over my shoulder.
“Who was it, Billy?” I asked him finally. “Who sent those guys to kill Karsarkis?”
Billy shook his head, but he didn’t say anything.
“How about me then? I asked. “Who send those guys who tried to kill me?
“You may not believe this, Jack, but nobody wanted to kill you.”
“You’re right. I don’t believe that.”
“They thought it was Karsarkis in that car,” Billy said. “It was just a coincidence that you were there instead.”
“Nothing about any of this shit ever turns out to be a coincidence,” I said. “Besides, Karsarkis told me it was you who was behind it.”
“Me?”
“Not you personally. The White House. The National Security Council. The boys in the basement. You were the ones who wanted to keep Karsarkis from talking because you were afraid of what he was going to say. You were the ones who wanted to shut him up.”
Billy Redwine nodded, but he didn’t say anything.
“Was it you, Billy? Did you send those guys to Phuket?”
“No.”
“Then who?”
“I…don’t…fucking…know.” Billy waved his hand quickly back and forth through the air as if that would brush it all away. “What part of that don’t you understand?”
“If you wanted to know, you would.”
“Listen to me for a second here, Jack. Just listen to me.” Billy spoke in the kind of soothing tone normally reserved for dealing with animals that were dangerous and unpredictable. “You’re playing in the big leagues now. Be careful.”
“Is that some kind of a threat, Billy?”
He pushed his tongue into one cheek and held it there a while, and I thought I saw in his eyes the look of a decision being made.
“You know more about international money and banking than anybody I’ve ever met, Jack, and that’s where the action is these days. We could use somebody like you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Come work with us.”
“Us? Who’s us? The White House? NSC? The CIA?”
“Ah, Jack…” Billy shook his head slowly, “things aren’t that simple anymore.”
“What the fuck does that mean? Sometimes you play your cards so close to the vest I’m not sure you’re holding any. Anyway, you can’t be serious.”
“Oh, but I am. Dead fucking serious. You haven’t put a foot wrong so far. I’m very impressed.”
“Exactly what was it I did that was so damned impressive?”
“You didn’t do anything, Jack. There you are, handed one of the really ugly secrets of our time, and you didn’t do a damned thing. You stayed calm and unruffled, and eventually you came to?ou are, hame, which is exactly what you should have done.”
“Then I wonder why I’m really not all that proud of myself right now?”
“I need you with me, Jack,” Billy pressed.
“What would you have done if I’d gone public?” I asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t have to come to you. I could have gone straight to the Senate Intelligence Committee. They would probably have been pretty interested. Held big public hearings. That kind of thing.”
Billy gave a little half-shrug. “We would have blown you right out of the water.”
“You mean you would have had me killed.”
I didn’t make a question out of it.
“Well…” Billy looked as if he was thinking about it. “Not unless we really had to.”
After that he snorted in a way he apparently thought amounted to an ironic laugh.
“I’m joking, Jack.”
“No,” I said, “you’re not.”
“Yeah, I am…mostly.”
After that we slipped off into a silence in which we avoided looking at each other. When it became obvious Billy was prepared to wait me out all night if he had to, I took a deep breath and slugged back the rest of my whiskey. Then I leaned forward and folded my arms on the table.
“You’re going to have to convince me all this was really okay, Billy. You really are going to have to convince me, or…”
“Or what?” he asked when I hesitated.
“I don’t know, Billy. I can’t tell you yet.”
Billy nodded slowly at that. He lifted his martini glass, but when he realized it was empty he put it down again. Then he leaned forward and folded his own arms on the table.
“Regardless of what Plato Karsarkis may have told you, Jack, and in spite of what you may think you’ve guessed on your own, there’s a lot more going here than you know about.”
“Guys like you always say things like that, Billy, but-”
He waved me impatiently into silence.
“It’s smelly shit. Stuff you would never believe. The only way anything is ever going to be okay is if some hero steps up and hammers a stake right through the bad guys’ fucking hearts.” Billy cocked his thumb and tapped himself in the chest with it. “That would be me.”
I said nothing.
“But to pull that off,” he went on, “I’ve got to have somebody I can trust to do a little business for me from time to time.” He squinted slightly, then reversed his hand and reached out and jabbed me in the chest with his forefinger. “That would be you.”
I pushed away his extended finger and folded my arms again.
“You’re a paper shuffler, Billy, just like I am. What do you think you’re going to do? Throw your laptop at the villains? Besides, you’ve got to find them first.”
“I can do that.”
“How?”
“It’s called reconnaissance by fire, my friend. You shoot at the tr?="1ees. If somebody shoots back, they’re there.”
“Look, Billy, I don’t-”
“And there’s one other thing you need to know.”
I waited.
“Two weeks from tomorrow, the president is going to announce a little reshuffle in the White House staff.”
“You’re leaving?”
“Hardly.”
I watched Billy carefully. I could have sworn I saw him sit up a little straighter.
“The president is going to announce my appointment as his new National Security Advisor,” he said. Then he leaned back and cut me a major wink. “I’m going to be running the NSC.”
For a moment I was too flabbergasted to say anything, but Billy was plainly expecting me to so I did my best.
“Well, congratulations…” I fumbled.
“Thank you, Jack.”
“I mean…well, that’s great…but, Billy, after what I’ve told you tonight, how in the world could you even think about-”
“Just shut the fuck up, Jack. Let’s order some red meat and a lot of booze and you can hear me out. Then if you want to tell me to stick my offer straight up my ass, go ahead. But listen to me first. You owe your old roommate that much at least.”
Dinner went on for over an hour after that. Billy did all of the talking. I chewed at my food without tasting it, and I nodded and said uh-huh a lot, but looking back, I can’t remember what I ate or even very much about what Billy Redwine said to me.
When we exchanged goodnights on Fifteenth Street just outside the Old Ebbit Grill, Billy insisted I meet him at his office the following afternoon at four. At first I refused. I was tried and a little angry, and I hadn’t decided what I was going to do next, or if I was going to do anything at all. But I knew Billy wasn’t going to take no for an answer so eventually I gave up arguing with him and just nodded.
After that I stood for a long time on the sidewalk and watched as Billy and his minders crossed Fifteenth Street and walked back toward the White House. I followed them with my eyes until they were lost to sight behind the line of marble columns marking the north portico of the Treasury Building.
I have no idea at all why I did.