Gone Tomorrow
‘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.’
SIXTY-SIX
THE ROOM STAYED QUIET FOR A LONG MOMENT. JUST muted city sounds from the window, and the hiss of air from a vent above the bathroom. Springfield moved away from his position by the TV cabinet and sat down on the bed.
I said, ‘Name recognition.’
Sansom said, ‘It’s a bitch.’
‘You got that right.’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘But it’s a big file,’ I said.
‘So?’
‘So it’s a long report. And we’ve all read army reports.’
‘And?’
‘They’re very dry.’ Which they were. Take Springfield’s Steyr GB, for instance. The army had tested it. It was a miracle of modern engineering. Not only did it work exactly like it should, it also worked exactly like it shouldn’t. It had a complex gas-delayed blowback system that meant it could be loaded with substandard or elderly or badly assembled rounds and still fire. Most guns have problems with variable gas pressures. Either they blow up with too much or fail to cycle with too little. But the Steyr could handle anything. Which was why Special Forces loved it. They were often far from home with no logistics, forced to rely on whatever they could scrounge up locally. The Steyr GB was a metal marvel.
The army report called it technically acceptable.
I said, ‘Maybe they didn’t mention you by name. Maybe they didn’t mention him by name. Maybe it was all acronyms, for Delta leader and local commander, all buried in three hundred pages of map references.’
Sansom said nothing.
Springfield looked away.
I asked, ‘What was he like?’
Sansom said, ‘See? This is exactly what I’m talking about. My whole life counts for nothing now, except I’m the guy who kissed Osama bin Laden’s ass. That’s all anyone will ever remember.’
‘But what was he like?’
‘He was a creep. He was clearly committed to killing Russians, which we were happy about at first, but pretty soon we realized he was committed to killing everyone who wasn’t exactly the same as him. He was weird. He was a psychopath. He smelled bad. It was a very uncomfortable weekend. My skin was crawling the whole time.’
‘You were there a whole weekend?’
‘Honoured guests. Except not really. He was an arrogant son of a bitch. He lorded it over us the whole time. He lectured us on tactics and strategy. Told us how he would have won in Vietnam. We had to pretend to be impressed.’
‘What gifts did you give him?’
‘I don’t know what they were. They were wrapped. He didn’t open them. Just tossed them in a corner. He didn’t care. Like they say at weddings, our presence was present enough. He thought he was proving something to the world. The Great Satan was bending its knee before him. I nearly puked a dozen times. And not just because of the food.’
‘You ate with him?’
‘We were staying in his tent.’
‘Which will be called their HQ in the report. The language will be very neutral. The ass-kissing won’t be mentioned. It will be three hundred tedious pages about a rendezvous attempted and a rendezvous kept. People will die of boredom before you’re halfway over the Atlantic. Why are you so worried?’
‘The politics is awful. The Lend-Lease thing. In as much as bin Laden wasn’t dipping into his own personal fortune, it’s like we were subsidizing him. Paying him, almost.’
‘Not your fault. That’s White House stuff. Did any sea captain get it in the neck for delivering Lend-Lease stuff to the Soviets during World War Two? They didn’t stay our friends either.’
Sansom said nothing.
I said, ‘It’s just words on a page. They won’t resonate. People don’t read.’
Sansom said, ‘It’s a big file.’
‘The bigger the better. The bigger it is, the more buried the bad parts will be. And it will be very dated. I think we used to spell his name differently back then. With a U. It was Usama. Or UBL. Maybe people won’t even notice. Or you could say it was someone else entirely.’
‘You sure you know where that stick is?’
‘Certain.’
‘Because you sound like you don’t. You sound like you’re trying to console me, because you know it’s staying out there for the world to see.’
‘I know where it is. I’m just trying to get a handle on why you’re so uptight. People have survived worse.’
‘You ever used a computer?’
‘I used one today.’
‘What makes for the biggest files?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Take a guess.’
‘Long documents?’
‘Wrong. Large numbers of pixels make for the biggest files.’
‘Pixels?’ I said.
He didn’t answer.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘I see. It’s not a report. It’s a photograph.
SIXTY-SEVEN
THE ROOM WENT QUIET AGAIN. THE CITY SOUNDS, THE forced air. Sansom got up and used the bathroom. Springfield moved back to his former position by the TV cabinet. There were bottles of water on the cabinet, with paper collars that said if you drank the water you would be charged eight dollars.
Sansom came out of the bathroom.
‘Reagan wanted the photograph,’ he said. ‘Partly because he was a sentimental old geezer, and partly because he was a suspicious old man. He wanted to check we had followed his orders. The way I remember it, I’m standing next to bin Laden with the mother of all shit-eating grins on my face.’
Springfield said, ‘With me on the other side.’
Sansom said, ‘Bin Laden knocked down the Twin Towers. He attacked the Pentagon. He’s the world’s worst terrorist. He’s a very, very recognizable figure. He’s completely unmistakable. That photograph will kill me in politics. Stone dead. For ever.’
I asked, ‘Is that why the Hoths want it?’
He nodded. ‘So that al-Qaeda can humiliate me, and the United States along with me. Or vice-versa.’
I stepped over to the TV cabinet and took a bottle of water. Unscrewed the cap and took a long drink. The room was on Springfield’s card, which meant that Sansom was paying. And Sansom could afford eight bucks. Then I smiled, briefly.
‘Hence the photograph in your hook,’ I said. ‘And on your office wall. Donald Rumsfeld with Saddam Hussein, in Baghdad.’
‘Yes,’ Sansom said.
‘Just in case. To show that someone else had done the very same thing. Like a trump card, just lying there in the weeds. No one knew it was a trump. No one even knew it was a card.’
‘It’s not a trump,’ Sansom said. ‘It’s not even close. It’s like a lousy four of clubs. Because bin Laden is way worse than Saddam ever was. And Rumsfeld wasn’t looking to get elected to anything afterwards. He was appointed to everything he did after that, by his friends. He had to be. No sane person would have voted for him.’
‘You got friends?’
‘Not many.’
‘No one ever said much about Rumsfeld’s photograph.’
‘Because he wasn’t running for office. If he had ever gotten into an election campaign, that would have been the most famous photograph in the world.’
‘You’re a better man than Rumsfeld.’
‘You don’t know me.’
‘Educated guess.’
‘OK, maybe. But bin Laden is worse than Saddam. And the image is poison. It doesn’t even need a caption. There I am, grinning up at the world’s most evil man like a puppy dog. People fake pictures like that for attack ads. And this one is real.’
‘You’ll get it back.’
‘When?’
‘How are we doing with the felony charges?’
‘Slow.’
‘But sure?’
‘Not very. There’s good news and bad news.’
‘Give me the bad news first.’
‘It’s very unlikely that the FBI will want to play ball. And it’s certain the Department of Defense won’t.’
‘Those three guys?’
‘They’re off the case. Apparently they’re injured. One has a broken nose and one has a cut head. But they’ve been replaced. The DoD is still hot to trot.’