Power Play

‘The objective …’ Bobby Black started to say something but Theo Carr waved him to be silent.

‘How do we do better, Dr Taft?’ Carr asked.

‘By thinking like the people of the region, sir. By remembering the old Arab cliché, that My Enemy’s Enemy is My Friend. By getting smart. By getting others to do the dirty work for us.’

‘But how?’ Carr insisted.

That’s when the White House reading list was born, despite Bobby Black’s protests.

‘Here’s a start. Arabs and Persians watch our TV, our movies, read our books, listen to our rock music. We should do the same with their literature. They understand us and we do not understand them.’

‘Through storybooks?’ Bobby Black scoffed.

‘One good novel revealing how ordinary Muslim people think,’ Kristina responded, ‘is worth a dozen CIA estimates about the opium crop in Afghanistan or political gossip on instability in Iraq or Pakistan or wherever.’

‘She speaks Arabic, that’s why she thinks this way,’ Bobby Black responded. ‘I speak American and, in plain American, we need to understand these people a whole lot less, and condemn a whole lot more.’

‘I speak Human,’ Kristina contradicted Bobby Black a second time, which is maybe where all the trouble between them started. ‘And it’s the human battle we need to win.’

The President looked at Kristina, then at his Vice-President, and decided the novels should stay on the White House reading list. As Kristina told me the gist of the story that day waiting for Bobby Black, she suggested some bookstore titles for me, beginning with an Egyptian novel called The Yacoubian Building.

‘A young man from a poor background wants to become a police officer,’ she told me, ‘but he’s from the wrong class and can’t afford the bribes. So this decent young guy becomes a terrorist instead. The author says the real disease in the Muslim world is despotism. Terrorism is just one of the symptoms. He’s right.’

I tried to digest this thought.

‘So, has the Vice-President read this insightful book?’ I asked mischievously. Kristina Taft laughed again. I had broken through. I could see her visibly relax in my company, and I sensed an opportunity. Bobby Black was shaping up to be the most powerful Vice-President in US history, even more powerful than Dick Cheney. After Manila, Theo Carr announced that Black would be in charge of anti-terrorism policy. It was difficult for me to see how his approach and Kristina’s ideas could ever work together in the same administration. She would need allies. So would I.

‘More than two hundred American dead,’ Bobby Black had said in speeches in the dying days of the campaign. ‘Two hundred and forty seven of our people; thirty-nine of other nationalities. Two hundred and forty seven of Us. Every American will be avenged. You have my word. No–More–Manilas.’

All through the transition, London had badgered me to find out what this sabre-rattling talk actually meant. The most important question for any British government is always to figure out what the Americans are up to, and I am the person who is supposed to know.

‘The Spartacus Solution,’ I told Andy Carnwath when he contacted me at Fraser Davis’s insistence.

‘What the fuck is that?’ he said. Phone conversations with Andy Carnwath are typically littered with so many expletives that within the Civil Service they are known as ‘The Vagina Monologues’. I explained that the British military attaché had heard whispers in the Pentagon that Bobby Black had been very impressed by a discussion paper written by an obscure US Army General, Conrad Shultz. General Shultz–according to the DoD, the Department of Defence buzz–had written a paper during a year’s sabbatical at West Point calling for ‘The Spartacus Solution’ to terrorism.

I had no idea what the paper was about but I reminded Carnwath that Spartacus led the slave rebellion against the Romans. He and his fellow rebels were crucified on the roads into Rome.

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Carnwath said. ‘Slaves? Crucified? You’d better get a copy of this fucking fairytale, Alex. Top priority.’

The urgency of getting a copy of ‘The Spartacus Solution’ became even more obvious when Theo Carr announced that General Shultz was to become the new Director of Central Intelligence.

‘So, come on, has the Vice-President been reading anything on your booklist, Dr Taft?’ I teased. ‘I mean, anything at all?’

‘Vice?’ Kristina replied mischievously, sipping her black coffee and using a nickname for the Vice-President that was already current in Washington, even though he had been in the White House for such a short time. ‘Vice boasted to me that he hasn’t read a storybook in thirty years and did not need fiction to tell him that, once you’ve got people by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. So I guess I have some work to do.’

She watched for my reaction. I nodded, sympathetically. Diplomatic Warning Bell Number Two went off in my head. Dr Kristina Taft had now clearly signalled to me that there was serious tension in the White House, and the Carr administration was less than ten days old. Perhaps she was also signalling that she herself was out of her depth, but I was less sure of that. It would take me a long time to find out what her depth might be.

We were interrupted by an aide who came through to say that Bobby Black had finished his meeting with President Carr and was now ready to see us. We walked down the corridor. The Vice-President was behind his desk. He did not get up. He did not apologize for keeping me waiting.

‘Ambassador Price.’ We shook hands. His fist was cold and moist, like wet dough. The air smelled strongly of lily pollen.

‘Mr Vice-President.’

‘You know Johnny Lee.’ Johnny Lee Ironside nodded. I was glad to see him. He was to become a guide into the Heart of Darkness that is the OVP, the Office of the Vice-President. I congratulated Bobby Black on the election.

‘I’m very pleased to see you here in the White House, Mr Vice-President,’ I said. ‘The Prime Minister has instructed me to pass on his personal congratulations and his sense of awe’, I continued, ‘at your ability to confound conventional wisdom. Prime Minister Davis would like to learn your election-winning secret.’

Bobby Black smiled the way a car salesman does with an irritating customer.

‘Our secret is that winning the War on Terror isn’t the most important thing,’ he said. ‘It’s the only thing. The voters of this country understand that. I’m hoping to get your Prime Minister to understand that too. It’s kind of like missionary activity on our part you might say. Spreading the word.’

The November election had been a split decision. Carr and Black had won the White House but the Democrats scraped through to keep control, narrowly, of Congress. That was one of the reasons I was so keen to meet the new House Speaker, Betty Furedi, later that day, to try to gauge how much she would cooperate with Carr, and how much she might get in the way. Vice-President Black looked across the desk at me and blinked. A slack, lopsided grin appeared across his face.

‘Fear’, he said, by way of further explanation of the election victory, ‘works.’

I took a breath. If Bobby Black thought fear was a useful weapon to use upon the American electorate, then perhaps our discussions about the treatment of British terrorist suspects like Muhammad Asif Khan might not be about to go so well. I looked at Kristina Taft. She pulled out a Montblanc pen and gazed at the yellow legal pad in front of her. She did not catch my eye. The Vice-President launched into a short speech.

‘Newspaper stories in your country about torture’, he began softly, ‘are not helpful: not helpful to President Carr and this administration, not helpful to my people, not helpful to the fight against terror, and not helpful to the close cooperation between our two countries.’ Bobby Black went on to explain that in what he called ‘exceptional circumstances and exceptional times’ the ‘exceptional’ use of torture was justified. ‘You do not need me to remind you that, since Manila, these are exceptional circumstances,’ he emphasized, ‘which is why the President as Commander-in-Chief has authorized enhanced interrogation techniques. Some people choose to equate these with torture. I don’t care what word you use. I care that we get the job done.’

He hit a doughy hand on the table in front of him for emphasis. The Vice-President did not equivocate. Nor did he talk about ‘robust treatment of detainees’, which is the phrase that a beleaguered Prime Minister Davis had used in the Commons. And he did not try to pretend all this was simply some rough stuff that had got out of hand. Bobby Black confirmed to me that one of the first acts of the Carr Administration had been to sign what was known as National Security Directive 1402227. He clasped his hands together in an attitude of prayer and calmly explained that this directive specifically authorized the use of ‘highly coercive methods of interrogation by the United States’, which might be considered to fall within the United Nations definition of torture. This time he did not say ‘fuck the United Nations’, though I suspected he was thinking it.

‘The presidential authorization’, Black said, ‘comes with safeguards.’

‘Safeguards?’ I repeated. ‘What safeguards can you have on highly coercive interrogation, Mr Vice-President?’ He tapped his fingers together. His ruthlessness had an honest face. He never pretended otherwise.

‘All highly coercive procedures must be carried out under the supervision of a designated senior CIA officer. Only the Central Intelligence Agency–not the US military–only the CIA is authorized to carry out these enhanced interrogation procedures.’

I gulped. So, those were the safeguards? In their entirety? There was a pause while I was allowed to digest these statements.

‘Well, in the Khan case—’ I began, but Bobby Black cut me off. He said it was ‘just one of those things’ that the story had got into the British press, and that he did not bear grudges about that.

‘In fact, I’m mighty grateful the British media are reporting we are playing hardball with al Qaeda and their British supporters like Mr Khan,’ he said. ‘Because we are. We are serious. Committed. Determined. We do not do this lightly. It shows the nature of the exceptional threat we face.’

He had the franchise on the word ‘exceptional’.

‘Legally Mr Khan is not—’

‘Legally we have a Golden Shield, Ambassador Price. A Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card. The President, under the Constitution of the United States, has absolute authority to manage a military campaign as he sees fit, including whichever enhanced interrogation techniques he chooses to authorize, notwithstanding any definitions of torture used by foreign powers or multinational organizations.’

‘But the United Nations’ definition …’

He grinned. ‘You know what I think of the United Nations.’

I tried to change the subject. ‘Specifically, when it comes to British citizens like Muhammad Asif Khan—’

‘Well, let me tell you about British citizens,’ Bobby Black interrupted again, ‘including the British citizen who was the Manila suicide bomber, your Mr Fuad …’He paused for effect. ‘The fact that British citizens might be subject to coercive interrogation techniques shows that we do not discriminate in favour of our closest friends and allies. Look around this room.’ I did as I was bid. Kristina Taft still did not catch my eye. ‘There’s a new team in Washington, Ambassador. We have a mandate from the American people to go after the Bad Guys, to implement what some of us are calling “The Spartacus Solution”, and I intend to see we do it.’

‘The Spartacus Solution?’ I leaned forward with real interest now. ‘I have heard the term but I …’

‘Yeah,’ Bobby Black said, and nodded to Johnny Lee Ironside. ‘Give the Ambassador a copy, Johnny Lee. With my compliments.’

Johnny Lee handed me a short bound document of maybe fifty pages of A4. I felt thrilled, as if I had just been handed the Holy Grail, but I tried not to look too pleased. The document said on the front: ‘The Spartacus Solution–how the United States will win the War on Terror.’ The Vice-President looked over at Kristina.

‘This is the kind of bedtime reading that might get us somewhere against these SOBs, even more than storybooks, isn’t that right, Dr Taft?’

Kristina looked up and smiled. It did not take much emotional intelligence to understand what she was thinking behind that smile.

‘Thank you, Mr Vice-President,’ I said, to break the awkward silence.

‘You’re most welcome,’ Bobby Black responded. ‘Anything and everything for our British friends. Now, before you go, Ambassador, Johnny Lee tells me you had experience in the British Army in Ireland?’

‘As a very young man in Northern Ireland, yes, Mr Vice-President. I had a short time in Military Intelligence and—’

‘So, if you and your British Military Intelligence buddies could have prevented a terrorist attack, let’s say the bombings on the London Tube, by torturing one or two bad guys, would you have done it?’

‘If,’ I replied, clutching at ‘The Spartacus Solution’ document, as though it might be taken away as punishment for giving the wrong answer. ‘It’s a big “if”,’ Mr Vice-President. When you begin to torture someone, you can never know for certain if—’

‘Of course you damn well would use torture,’ he answered his own question definitively, snapping at me but again never raising his voice. ‘Torture works. Fear works. Read Spartacus and tell me you agree.’

I blanched. It sounded like an order.

‘Mr Vice-President,’ I responded, keeping as calm as possible, ‘I will of course read “Spartacus”, and thank you again for the documents. But I also read American history. De Tocqueville wrote that America is great because America is good. In the worst days of your Civil War in Eighteen Sixty-three, President Lincoln signed into law instructions to the Union Army that torture and cruelty were not to be permitted. With great respect to you, Mr Vice-President, if Lincoln could win a war for the very existence of the United States without using torture, so can we now in the twenty-first century. I prefer Lincoln over Spartacus.’

Everyone in the room was looking at me now, including Kristina. Bobby Black stretched his neck like a turtle emerging from its shell.

‘Well, thank you kindly for the historical lecture, Ambassador,’ he said slowly. ‘But I think you will find that in Lincoln’s day nobody was blowing up airliners with C4 plastic explosives or crashing them into skyscrapers filled with civilians. The Confederates were not suicide bombers. The people we now have to face down–well, they inhabit a different moral universe from the rest of us normal folks, and your Prime Minister needs to get out front and centre of this and get your own citizens into line. The human-rights question people oughtta focus on is the right of normal folks to go about their business without getting blown up by some British fanatic like Rashid Ali Fuad in Manila or your friend, Mr Khan. If you don’t see your problem, well, we do. And if you don’t act, we will.’

Bobby Black gently slapped both wet palms down on the desk. He was white with anger and it was clear that the meeting was over. I said something about democratically elected governments not being able to pick and choose which aspects of human rights to support, which to abandon, depending upon apparent necessity. I said this not because it would change anything, but for the weakest of diplomatic reasons–so that I could report back to Downing Street that I had made a protest on behalf of the UK government. They could spin it to the press and in the Commons. Bobby Black looked at me with pity on his face, as if I had farted, and out of a generous spirit he’d decided to ignore the smell. His eyes were glazing over with indifference.

‘Thank you for your time, Ambassador,’ he said, reaching forward to shake my hand. Wet dough again. ‘Enjoy your bedtime reading.’

Johnny Lee Ironside nodded at me. ‘Good to see you, Alex. Let’s get caught up soon.’

Kristina Taft showed me out.

‘You’re brave,’ she whispered. ‘Not many do that.’

‘Is it always like this?’ I replied, putting the copy of ‘The Spartacus Solution’ in my attaché case and presuming on a connection with her that I sensed I had now made. Kristina did not reply until we were almost at my car, which–I noticed–was now parked at the more private south entrance, away from the cameras.

‘Pretty much,’ she said. Then she tugged gently at my sleeve. ‘Maybe we should talk,’ she whispered. ‘We seem to be on the same page on all of this.’

I nodded.

‘You were brave too. Over the books.’

She shrugged. ‘It’s not brave to do what you think is right.’

I looked straight into her grey eyes and a moment of recognition passed between us. One of the peculiarities about being British Ambassador in Washington is that there are always factions within US administrations, and sometimes they see you as a potential ally, a useful tool or even as an intelligence asset for use against the other factions. It is a difficult and dangerous game to play. It’s also thrilling. Being allowed to play it at all makes the British a little bit special in the diplomatic corps in Washington.

‘Of course, let’s talk,’ I responded. ‘Any time. You say when.’

‘Not in the White House,’ she said. ‘I’ll figure out someplace. I might need more help than you think. Later today they’re announcing that I’m being promoted to National Security Adviser.’

‘Congratulations!’ I was genuinely pleased for her, though I was not sure she would survive. She was too young, too inexperienced, and Bobby Black already had his tanks on her lawn. He was already doing her job.

‘I’ll call you,’ Kristina said.

I understood. Or at least I thought I understood. If the meeting I had just endured was a sign of things to come, then relations between Britain and the United States were about to take a serious turn for the worse, mostly as a result of one man. Kristina would need friends and so would I. I was also flattered and intrigued to be asked to spend time with one of the rising stars of the Carr administration.

I climbed back into my car and told the driver to take me to the rest of that day’s meetings on Capitol Hill–but he informed me of a surprise hitch. While I had been meeting Vice-President Black, Speaker Furedi’s office had called the embassy to cancel. She had to be in the House chamber for an emergency session to discuss the Carr administration’s demands for a huge increase in defence funding. The Carr team wanted to rewrite the entire budget as an emergency antiterrorism measure. Carr and Black were talking about Spartacus and vengeance for Manila, while Betty Furedi and the Democrats in Congress were reluctant to pay for whatever it was they had in mind.

‘We’re sorry, Ambassador,’ Furedi’s Chief of Staff, a soft-voiced Californian called John Crockett said to me when I rang him for details. ‘I hope you understand. We’ll reschedule.’ I always thought Crockett was a decent man.

‘Of course, John. Not a problem. I know how busy Speaker Furedi must be. Call me.’

Suddenly I had a two-hour hole in my day. I felt like a schoolboy who is told that lessons are cancelled. I had nothing planned, nothing to fit in, and I realized that I also had a longing to see Fiona. I would apologize and tell her that I would no longer try to hurry her into motherhood, and that perhaps she should spend more time in England. I sensed that she felt trapped. I would make the peace and buy flowers on the way back to the embassy. I replanned my day very quickly. First, I would call Downing Street and tell them about Bobby Black and the Khan case. Then I would mention–just in passing–that I had obtained from the Vice-President himself a copy of the document that we all were so desperate to see, General Shultz’s report on fighting terrorism, ‘The Spartacus Solution’. Then–after receiving the well-deserved congratulations of a grateful British people from Downing Street–I would give Fiona a big surprise.

FOUR

By the time I stepped out of the Rolls-Royce at the embassy with the copy of ‘The Spartacus Solution’ in my attaché case in one hand and a bunch of flowers for Fiona in the other, the ice storm had rolled in over the Potomac and all down the Chesapeake Bay. The roads were slick, the air bitterly chilled, the sidewalks mostly empty. Dampness seeped through my coat like cold fingers. I stopped off at a florist’s near Dupont Circle to buy Fiona as large a bunch of flowers as I could find. I forget what, exactly. Roses. Maybe tulips. They were just closing because of the ice storm, and grateful for the business.

When I reached the Great House, as the Ambassador’s residence is sometimes called, I walked into the living quarters. I put the attaché case down. I had the flowers in my hand and I bounded up the red-carpeted stairs two at a time, like an eager suitor, anxious to make amends. Fiona sometimes worked at her interior designs in the library, and so I tried it first, but there was no sign of her. I checked my watch and decided that she might be exercising on the treadmill in the small gym next to the main guest bedroom, but there was no sign of her there either. I turned the flowers in my hand. I was about to head towards the final possibility, that she was still in our own bedroom, when I heard a noise from the guest quarters. I turned. You never know what twist of fate, what nerve or synapse drives you to take a decision, but I suddenly threw open the door of the guest quarters.

Fiona and her lover were in front of the three large mirrors above the dresser. They had angled the mirrors so they could watch themselves. He was naked. Fiona wore a black bra, nothing else. Their clothes had been discarded carelessly and were strewn on the floor. He was behind her, holding her hips with his big hands. She was grasping the table top of the dresser in front of the mirror and gasping. I could not see Fiona’s face. Her hair was stuck to her skin with sweat. The man turned and I recognized James Byrne, the Washington Post columnist, immediately. He had been over for dinner at the embassy a number of times, to parties and diplomatic receptions. I had known him since before I was Ambassador, and before he had been given his syndicated column. Byrne was standing upright, his hips moving. He is a big man, bigger than me, over six feet, slim and muscled, a Bostonian who had played American football for one of the Ivy League college teams. He had hair on his back and shoulders, like a monkey. The hair was slick with sweat and it disgusted me.

I said, ‘Get your dick out of my wife.’

Byrne looked at me and stepped away from her. Fiona turned too. She stood up slowly and put her hands to her face in shock. She gasped something which I did not catch, clasped her breasts and ran towards the bathroom. I heard her slam the door, but all the time I was watching Byrne. I walked towards him and hit him once, hard, in the throat with my fist. He fell to the floor like a puppet whose strings have been cut, gasping for breath. I stood for a moment and thought about killing him, but the moment passed. Instead I turned him over with my foot and looked at him gagging on the floor, then I walked out of the room. I had to step over the flowers, which were scattered all over the floor. Despite the ice storm, Fiona left for London that very same day, on the overnight flight from Dulles to Heathrow. Tulips. The flowers were definitely tulips.

FIVE

Some people are in the fund-raising business. I am in the friend-raising business. When you are a British diplomat in the United States, you look around and decide who the future leaders and opinion-formers might be, and in the words of Prime Minister Davis’s Communications Director, Andy Carnwath, ‘You get up their arse, Alex, and you stay there.’ Diplomacy is political proctology. Up the arse and stay there.

I am regarded as being good at it. A few years back, just before Fiona and I were married, I was Number Three at the Washington embassy. I sensed that Governor Theo Carr was preparing a run for the presidency as soon as I heard he had hired Arlo Luntz as his Chief Political Adviser. Luntz is a world-class operative. Like Bobby Black, I don’t much like him, but I do respect him. All three of us–Black, Luntz and me–have one thing in common: we came from nowhere, we were born to nothing, and we try to do the best we can. I respect that. Anyway, at the time I persuaded the then British Ambassador in Washington that I should go down and meet this Theo Carr before he hit the big time. Luntz called me back straight away.