sneakers, white pants, white T-shirt. Puffs of black hair from his back sprouted about his neck, melding into the smooth skin of the densest, closely shaved five o’clock shadow in the world.
“He’s right out of central casting in Midnight Express ,” Johnson quipped. No one responded. The Guard stared at him; Wallets stared at him. While Banquo elegantly crossed his legs and flicked some invisible lint from his trouser leg.
“Actually, his name is Yossi, and he says he’s an Iranian Jew, but it would probably take an army of spooks and genealogists to determine his true origins,” Banquo explained. “We found him working in a Yemeni prison, masquerading as a common guard under an assumed name. He was pretending to conspire with some Al Qaeda lads who were plotting a breakout, hoping to eventually blow up something or other when they got over the wall. Typical Yemeni/Israeli security
service pony express operation. Send someone in, make nice through the bars, then after the breakout ride hell for leather to cut them off at the pass. At our request the Israelis urged the Yemenis to behead him in public, which they faked on TV, and we spirited him out. Now he’s ostensibly dead and can pass under the radar. For various common professional courtesies, I allow him to operate as Mossad’s mole in my house. He speaks Hebrew, Arabic, Berber, and Farsi. His English is so-so. He’s a very useful man to have around. Banquo & Duncan never opposes hiring men of dual loyalties; it’s dual results we abhor. Which brings us to the object of our lesson.”
Here he directed Johnson’s attention to the little man at the desk, still writing away, as if he were alone.
“Allow me to introduce Dr. Ramses Pahlevi Yahdzi of the University of Isfahan. Physicist and nuclear scientist.” The little man didn’t look up from his papers. Johnson repressed the urge to say, “How do you do?” to the little bent head. He was one of Banquo’s ghosts, an unobtrusive man willing to perform the mundane tasks without which the grandest operation couldn’t come off, from driving a car to playacting. Banquo’s silk-stocking voice kept on, to Johnson’s ear a rich blend of Boston Brahmin and Jean Pierre Robie in Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief :
“Pahlevi Yahdzi, born April 23, 1945. Graduated Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vienna Mathematics Institute. Married, father of two. The Persian Robert Oppenheimer, the mullahs’ greatest living hope to acquire nuclear weapons, the single most important man in Iran. Not the imams, not the president who sees holy auras around himself—this gentleman. The man you’re going to interview, your nuclear tour guide on the Al Jazeera Fairytale Express. Peter, do you know what happens when Iran succeeds in testing its first atomic bomb?”
Without waiting for a reply, Banquo answered his own question:
“Here’s one scenario. Extreme, I admit, but within the range of plausibility. Oil goes to $500 a barrel. Iran becomes the hegemonic power in the Middle East region, using the Straits of Hormuz like the tollbooths on the Tri-Boro Bridge. The Mahdi Army of the shitty Shiite Sheik al Sadr reconstitutes itself and takes over most of Iraq. The U.S. forces in the entire region are ‘redeployed’ to Okinawa by an act of Congress.
Afghanistan returns to its natural troglodyte state. A long period of retreat sets in. Across Europe, the socialist democracies that presently suffer 14 to 18 percent unemployment, reach 20 to 25 percent unemployment in a single month, with spikes of 80 percent in their Muslim ghettos, and default on their national financial obligations. The nice parts of Paris are burned to the ground. The London Tube stops operating. Anonymous gangs murder a thousand Pakistanis in Berlin. Switzerland expels all nonwhites from its Cantons. Italy tries the same thing and fails. Vatican City is beset by immigrant riots. Nobody bothers noticing anymore the millions who perish in
“He’s right out of central casting in Midnight Express ,” Johnson quipped. No one responded. The Guard stared at him; Wallets stared at him. While Banquo elegantly crossed his legs and flicked some invisible lint from his trouser leg.
“Actually, his name is Yossi, and he says he’s an Iranian Jew, but it would probably take an army of spooks and genealogists to determine his true origins,” Banquo explained. “We found him working in a Yemeni prison, masquerading as a common guard under an assumed name. He was pretending to conspire with some Al Qaeda lads who were plotting a breakout, hoping to eventually blow up something or other when they got over the wall. Typical Yemeni/Israeli security
service pony express operation. Send someone in, make nice through the bars, then after the breakout ride hell for leather to cut them off at the pass. At our request the Israelis urged the Yemenis to behead him in public, which they faked on TV, and we spirited him out. Now he’s ostensibly dead and can pass under the radar. For various common professional courtesies, I allow him to operate as Mossad’s mole in my house. He speaks Hebrew, Arabic, Berber, and Farsi. His English is so-so. He’s a very useful man to have around. Banquo & Duncan never opposes hiring men of dual loyalties; it’s dual results we abhor. Which brings us to the object of our lesson.”
Here he directed Johnson’s attention to the little man at the desk, still writing away, as if he were alone.
“Allow me to introduce Dr. Ramses Pahlevi Yahdzi of the University of Isfahan. Physicist and nuclear scientist.” The little man didn’t look up from his papers. Johnson repressed the urge to say, “How do you do?” to the little bent head. He was one of Banquo’s ghosts, an unobtrusive man willing to perform the mundane tasks without which the grandest operation couldn’t come off, from driving a car to playacting. Banquo’s silk-stocking voice kept on, to Johnson’s ear a rich blend of Boston Brahmin and Jean Pierre Robie in Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief :
“Pahlevi Yahdzi, born April 23, 1945. Graduated Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Vienna Mathematics Institute. Married, father of two. The Persian Robert Oppenheimer, the mullahs’ greatest living hope to acquire nuclear weapons, the single most important man in Iran. Not the imams, not the president who sees holy auras around himself—this gentleman. The man you’re going to interview, your nuclear tour guide on the Al Jazeera Fairytale Express. Peter, do you know what happens when Iran succeeds in testing its first atomic bomb?”
Without waiting for a reply, Banquo answered his own question:
“Here’s one scenario. Extreme, I admit, but within the range of plausibility. Oil goes to $500 a barrel. Iran becomes the hegemonic power in the Middle East region, using the Straits of Hormuz like the tollbooths on the Tri-Boro Bridge. The Mahdi Army of the shitty Shiite Sheik al Sadr reconstitutes itself and takes over most of Iraq. The U.S. forces in the entire region are ‘redeployed’ to Okinawa by an act of Congress.
Afghanistan returns to its natural troglodyte state. A long period of retreat sets in. Across Europe, the socialist democracies that presently suffer 14 to 18 percent unemployment, reach 20 to 25 percent unemployment in a single month, with spikes of 80 percent in their Muslim ghettos, and default on their national financial obligations. The nice parts of Paris are burned to the ground. The London Tube stops operating. Anonymous gangs murder a thousand Pakistanis in Berlin. Switzerland expels all nonwhites from its Cantons. Italy tries the same thing and fails. Vatican City is beset by immigrant riots. Nobody bothers noticing anymore the millions who perish in
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