Power Play

‘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 (#ulink_a9af00dc-1ad0-57d4-a25a-f78af1a6824b)

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 (#ulink_924bb3de-c244-5921-b691-a8547a9a0a4a)

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.

‘Sure,’ he said, sensing an opportunity of his own. ‘Governor Carr always makes time for our British friends.’

I hurriedly made arrangements. Luntz greeted me at the Governor’s Mansion. He is unimpressive to look at, a badly dressed, shambling figure with scuffed shoes and an appalling jet-black wig, but what lies beneath the bad wig has made him one of the most sought-after political consultants anywhere in the United States. Luntz walked down the central staircase in the mansion towards me wearing a stained blue suit, which fitted him the way a horsebox fits a horse. We shook hands and I followed him upstairs to meet Governor Theo Carr. We sat on the porch at the back of the mansion, the three of us, drinking iced tea and chewing over world affairs.

‘To what do we owe this honour, Mr Price?’

‘Please call me Alex, Governor. I was just passing through on my way west and I thought it would be good to say hello.’

I offered to host a visit to London, guaranteeing that Governor Carr could speak to Members of Parliament, my future brother-in-law (who was then the Leader of the Opposition,) government ministers, and maybe even the then Prime Minister, Fraser Davis’s predecessor.