this is between you and your friends at the White House, but I thought you might give your Uncle Cyril a peek.”
Gertz smiled broadly, for the first time that evening.
“Things are going great, actually. We are pushing everywhere we can. The things that can’t be done-well, we’re doing them.”
“And you have enough money for all your operations? Don’t tell me what they are, because I didn’t ask.”
“We’re rolling in money. We have some, let us say, ‘novel’ funding mechanisms. You would love them, frankly.”
“I don’t want to know. Not now, anyway, when I can be subpoenaed and sued and publicly castrated on the George Washington Parkway. No, thank you. That’s why you are there: To think the unthinkable. And do it, too.”
“Heard, understood, acknowledged.”
“Can we tell Congress anything?”
“Don’t even consider that. That would undermine everything we’ve been trying to do.”
“Gadzooks, boy! Don’t go telling me what to do. I’ve already informed the director. He didn’t understand what I told him, fortunately. But he’s an ex-senator himself, for goodness’ sake, and he doesn’t like it when things get messy. If he understood that someone has been killing our deep-cover officers, he would say that we need to share the news-merely for reasons of self-protection.”
“It’s too risky. If it leaked that these men were U.S. intelligence officers, then people would ask what part of the agency they were working for. Then you would have to admit to your friends in Congress that you’ve built a whole new capability the public doesn’t know anything about. And at that point you can kiss the new clandestine service goodbye.”
“You are preaching to the choir here, Reverend.” Hoffman held up his hand, but Gertz continued.
“And then people would ask what we’ve been doing. What operations have we been running? Was the president aware? How would the White House like to answer that one? ‘Deaf and dumb’ won’t work if this hits Capitol Hill.”
“Yes, yes, I know all that. But there is this pesky matter of the law. The director read me the executive order on intelligence the other day. He helped write it, as a matter of fact. It gave me indigestion.”
“People talk too much.”
“Ah, that they do. I am afraid that God was not an intelligence officer.”
“With all due respect, that’s your problem, Mr. Hoffman. Read the director the National Security Act of 1947. It says the NSC will authorize ‘such other intelligence activities as may be required,’ and it doesn’t say how, which is good enough for me. But just don’t leave me hanging, if you decide to do a striptease. You and the director would regret that. I promise you.”
Hoffman’s eyes brightened.
“Oh, a threat! I like that. Yes, I do. I can’t tell you how that warms an old bureaucrat’s soul. You would lose in such a fight, my friend, quite disastrously. You would be blown into so many pieces that people would not know where to find them.”
“Don’t screw me, Mr. Hoffman. That’s all I’m asking. You’ll take a lot of other people down with you.”
“This is becoming tedious,” said Hoffman. “I need another drink.”
He scooted away from the table, with a big man’s delicate, small steps. It was almost a dance the way Hoffman walked, with something of the cadence of the old-time comedian Jackie Gleason. He returned from the bar with a shot of tequila for Gertz and, for himself, a mai tai with a tiny paper umbrella floating on the surface.
19
Thomas Perkins invited Sophie Marx to join him for dinner the night she arrived in London. He proposed that they meet at nine-thirty, his preferred dinner hour because it was after the New York markets had closed. He provided an address on South Audley Street and, when she asked if the place was formal, he laughed and said it was annoyingly stylish. She chose a simple black dress and a string of pearls. As she was about to leave her London hotel room, she decided to take her hair out of the ponytail and let it fall against her neck.
When Marx arrived at the appointed address, she found an unmarked door and, inside, a black velvet curtain. There was a hum of noise, more like the sound of a private party than a normal restaurant. There were no markings in the entryway to suggest that the establishment had a name. “What is this restaurant called?” she asked the hostess, who eyed her skeptically.
“It is a dining club, madam. It is called Edward’s.” The hostess softened when Marx said that she was a guest of Thomas Perkins and asked to be shown to his table.
Heads turned as she made her way down the long aisle toward Perkins’s table in the back of the room. It wasn’t just that she was attractive-that was true of most of the women here-but that she had a physical bearing and authority. The men and women scanning her lithe body might have guessed that it came from show-jumping or tennis. They would not have imagined that she had been trained to shoot automatic weapons and jump from airplanes.
There was a buzz in the place, everyone talking as they pounded down their drinks. It had the energy of a trading floor, which was where most of them had been an hour before, closing out that day’s bets of fifty million or a hundred million dollars, or in a few cases far more. Mayfair had found its legs again; even the people who had been wrecked pretended that they hadn’t, and nobody really knew, except from the size of their order flow. The one thing that everyone in the room thought they knew was that Thomas Perkins was on top of the world, especially as the elegant woman in the black sheath sat down at his table.
Perkins was reading a summary of that day’s trading, so he didn’t see her approach. When she reached his table, he looked up with surprise. It was like a blind date. When Anthony Cronin had called and asked him to meet a woman who was a colleague of Howard Egan’s, he had not imagined that she would arrive in quite this package. And she, in her own way, was also pleased: She had expected someone with a hard edge, but Perkins just looked intelligent. He was dressed in the clothes that rich men wear, hand-tailored and of finer fabric than is found on any rack. He looked studious in his glasses and also youthful, with that unlikely curl of blond hair.
People were still watching. This was too much attention. She leaned toward him and said that her name was Sophie.
“I read once that a spy should have a face that a waiter forgets,” Perkins said. “I think you flunk.”
“Thank you, if that’s a compliment.” She smiled, but it vanished in an instant. She leaned toward him and spoke in his ear.
“We are sorry about Howard Egan’s disappearance. It must be a shock for your people. We are grateful that you have been so helpful.”
“I didn’t realize that his work was so dangerous.”
“Neither did we. That’s why I’m here.”
Perkins pulled his chair closer. This was a noisy place, with more traders bursting in the door every few minutes from South Audley Street. They were pumped with testosterone-loud and vulgar, boasting of their big trades. They tried to hide their anxiety, but this was a world where people got destroyed in a day: A trader made bets that went sour, borrowed money to cover yesterday’s mistakes, and then more for today’s, and then, pow-the risk manager walked over to his screen and closed him down. And then he went to Edward’s to pretend it hadn’t happened.
“Are these people all billionaires?” asked Marx, looking around the room.
Perkins shook his head. “They all want to be, and some of them will be, but nobody knows which ones will get lucky. That’s what keeps the juice flowing.”
They drank some wine, making small talk, and then ordered food. She asked what “dressed crab” was, and he answered that it was the opposite of undressed crab. She ordered that, and risotto with white truffles. He ordered the same thing, to make it simple, and bottle of a 1990 Cheval Blanc, a first growth from Saint-Emilion, which at over five thousand dollars was the most expensive wine on the list.
