Tarullo was walking faster now, gesticulating as he spoke on the phone and nervously checking his watch every twenty seconds.
Sophie strode along with him, determined to get him to the airport on time. Rather than take the tunnel, they bolted across Park Lane, waving down the traffic so that the big man could make his way across the busy thoroughfare. He lumbered into the hotel as quickly as he could, retrieved his bag and had the doorman hail a black taxi from the queue.
Tarullo gave the cabbie a forty-pound tip, in advance, and said he had to- had to-make the eight o’clock British Airways flight from Terminal Five. Marx watched him go and then walked the hundred yards up Park Lane to her own hotel.
At the entrance to the Dorchester was a concrete island that served as a turnaround for vehicles approaching the front door. A neat wrought-iron fence protected a fountain in the middle, where passersby liked to sit in the sun in the late afternoon and watch the famous people go through the revolving door of the hotel across the way.
Sitting by the fountain as Sophie Marx approached, scanning the entrance with the eye of a man trained in surveillance, was Jeffrey Gertz. He was wearing sunglasses, and he had a full beard now, but he was unmistakable.
When Gertz saw Sophie, he sprang to his feet and walked toward her. She thought of running away, but that would attract the attention of the police who were parked in a squad car on Mount Street, just to the right, and Marx wanted to deal with the London police at that point even less than she did with Gertz.
He was smiling as he walked toward her, with his hand extended in greeting.
“You’ve been ignoring me,” he said, still smiling. “I don’t like that.”
“Get over it,” she answered. “As you said, I’m a ‘former employee.’ And I don’t feel safe around you. I wonder why that is.”
“Don’t be melodramatic, Sophie. It doesn’t suit you. We need to talk. Let’s go someplace quiet.”
“The only place I’m going is into my hotel. How did you find out I was still here?”
“You’re noisy. You move like an elephant. Come on, buy me a drink.”
Gertz walked toward the revolving door. Sophie followed along behind. She was curious what Gertz would have to say for himself after his imaginary world had come crashing down.
The doorman gave Sophie a concerned look as Gertz entered the hotel lobby, as if to ask whether this bearded roustabout was really a guest of Miss Marx, a member of the hotel family. She nodded that he was okay.
Sophie led the way to the bar, which flanked Park Lane. It was just beginning to fill with drinkers in the late afternoon. She found two chairs at the end of the long, curved counter. The martini glasses and bottles of liquor were lined up against the mirrored glass like an army at sunset. Sophie took her seat and told the bartender she wanted a kir.
“Don’t we want somewhere a little more private?” asked Gertz. “We have a lot to talk about.”
“Privacy is the opposite of what I want with you,” she answered. “I want a public place, in my hotel, where everyone knows me. It’s the only way I would feel remotely safe in your company.”
“Suit yourself,” said Gertz. He ordered a gin martini and began popping pistachio nuts into his mouth from the silver-plated dish.
“Nice spot, the Dorchester. A rich guy must have set you up here. But I guess he isn’t so rich anymore. From what I’m hearing, his hedge fund is about to go bankrupt. Let’s see how nice people are to him now that he’s an ex-rich guy trying to stay out of prison.”
“It won’t work, Jeff. Maybe you think you can hang it all on him, but it’s going to come out.”
“It doesn’t matter to me either way. My fingerprints aren’t on anything. I’m invisible. But you need to be careful, sweetie. You’re still a target. And a very bad person is coming your way. That’s why I tracked you down. I wanted to give you a warning. He knows where you are. He has all your aliases.”
“The Pakistani? We’re shutting him down. Mr. Hoffman told me so. We’re rolling up him and his people. His network wouldn’t exist, as near as I can tell, without your help.”
Gertz laughed and knocked the bar with his fist.
“That’s rich. ‘Mr. Hoffman told me so.’ I love that.”
She was angry now, at his arrogance and the dismissive tone. She had forgotten how compact and self-assured Gertz was.
“How could you do it, Jeff? This man was your ‘consultant.’ You let him see into your operations. How could you be so stupid?”
Gertz ran his index finger along the edge of his glass until it began to hum. He took a swig, and then another.
“What do you know?” he said. “Nothing.”
“I know his name. Omar al-Wazir. I know you used him in 2005, and that you stayed in contact with him. I know…” She paused, trying to think of the word that would sting him the most. “I know that you are a fuckup.”
Gertz muttered a curse of his own in response, but that wasn’t enough. He was a man whose inner balance required that he be needed and respected by others. That was his vulnerability. He had to prove he was right.
“You don’t get it. This isn’t ‘Tradecraft for Tots’ like they teach at the Farm. This is the real world. He was my asset. He helped me pick my targets for recruitment. He knew the pressure points in Pakistan. He helped me move money to them. He helped set up the network. The operation wouldn’t have been possible without him. He did a lot of good. It turned out he had flipped. He became dangerous. That wasn’t my fault.”
“Are you crazy? You got your own people killed, Jeff. How could there be anything worse than that?”
He took a sip of his martini, liquid ice on his tongue. He shook his head.
“I feel sorry for you. You’re a sucker, and you’re about to walk off a cliff.”
He stood up from his stool and dropped twenty pounds on the mirrored counter of the bar.
She stared at him, her eyes angry and defiant, but with just a flicker of uncertainty.
“Piece of advice,” he said. “Parting shot. Don’t trust Cyril Hoffman. Who do you think told me about the Pakistani professor in the first place? How do you think I know he’s on his way to London? From Hoffman, that’s how. You’re getting played.”
He turned and walked away, back toward the hotel lobby.
“You’re lying,” she muttered. But she wasn’t sure that she knew where the truth lay anymore. Sometimes it was indeterminate; the closer you got to it, the more you disrupted its pieces, so that it changed its shape and position. The truth wasn’t straight. It had bends and curves.
41
How do wars end? That was the question that had vexed Omar al-Wazir since he was a boy, when the time of the big wars was beginning in his part of the world. He could see well enough how they started, but how did they ever stop? He thought about it now as he sat in an air terminal waiting to board his Pakistan Airlines flight to London. It was a jumbo jet, and the waiting room was hot and crowded with Pakistanis of every age, old grandmas off to see their children in Manchester and young families going home to Neasden or Wandsworth, all tired and sweaty in the gritty seats of the boarding lounge.
The professor’s face was clean-shaven, as always. He was wearing a gray suit of light summer wool and a white shirt. His glasses rested on the top of his big nose. It was the face of a doctor of computer science, a modern man, as he always insisted. In the simplicity of his demeanor, there was an invitation to trust. That was why he had been so adept at recruiting others: They wanted to believe that he was their ally; they felt more confident in battle if someone like him was on their side.
A part of the answer to this question of ending wars, the professor thought, was that the fighters on both sides got tired. They were exhausted by battle, bled white from their wounds. They had run out of troops and money, and so it was time to go home. That was what had happened to the Russians, certainly. Their Afghan war ended because the nation was bankrupt, economically and ideologically. A regime fell because of an unwinnable war, just as had been the case in 1917. Other wars ended because of political exhaustion or simply impatience; a nation still had the money and the weapons to fight on, but its will was gone. That was the story of America in Vietnam, the books all said. The war had been lost back home; events on the battlefield were of secondary importance.