Free Banquo's Ghosts by Richard Lowry Page A

wire-rimmed glasses under short curly hair that he tried to keep under control with a prodigious amount of mousse making the top of his head shiny and seemingly impregnable. Andover looked back out his window.
    “You know, Bryce, I brought you over, and up , I might add, from the State Department’s backwater Bureau of Intelligence and Research, the office of nobodies, because I know your father. The Attorney General of the United States. And your father, the Attorney General of the United States, told me you were a smart kid and a fast learner. Smart and fast. Smart and fast. I’d like you to be one of those things. Either will do.”
    Bryce sat back in his chair prepared to listen, staring calmly at Deputy Director Andover’s back. The patrician always started out this way. First came the tongue-lashing, then came the lecture in which DEADKEY showed how impressively learned he was, then came the requests for action. Nothing new here.

    The deputy director took a deep breath, “I’ve directed the Action Center to unplug our assets in Turdistan at the request of State. The striped-pants know-it-alls think they’re going to referee the spoiled brats at Turtle Bay to force the turbans to lift their nuclear skirts for us. Okay, so we’ll play nice for a month or two.”
    Bryce blinked at all the name-calling, but Trevor Andover always had an adder’s tongue.
    Translation: The State Department has requested any pathetic vestiges of our human intelligence personnel in Iran to lay low or withdraw to Kurdistan, while they took their bloody good time dancing a minuet at the United Nations with the president of Iran, he of the nuclear skirts, in hopes of forcing him to do something stupid, either show us his hand, castrate himself into a political eunuch, or bluff himself into a war. Any of the above would do. But it would probably turn out to be Russian roulette, with neither set of diplomats knowing which way the gun really pointed.
    Andover turned and picked up a paper on his desk. “Now I’ve got a red flag from DOS that they’ve processed three —get that? three—Green Books, plus visas, and confirmed plane tickets for Tehran International, and sent the blank Green Books to Banquo & Duncan in New York. Photos TBS.”
    Translation: The Directorate of Support notified the Deputy Executive Director that they processed three Green Books, i.e., Passports—color green for the Middle East—in this case Iranian Passports, with photos TBS—To Be Supplied later by Banquo & Duncan. Therefore Banquo’s gang in New York was planning on sending three of their people into Iran, on some sort of look-see, cloak-and-dagger op. Despite the Deputy Executive Director’s direct orders, orders from DEADKEY stating to all departments and agencies: Stand Down.
    Andover sat behind the desk, flipping the red flag notification into the wastebasket.
    “I want you to go to New York. Tonight.”
    “All right. But why didn’t we simply email the old fart and request his presence for dressing down?”
    “On what pretext, pray tell?”

    “Cut off his funds. He’ll come down.”
    Andover’s mild blue eyes grew exasperated. He rose from his place, went to a bookshelf, and took out a bound folder the size of the Manhattan yellow pages, then tossed it into Bryce’s lap. His aide jumped as it hit his thighs.
    “Young man, sitting on your prep-school pecker is the $30 billion Central Intelligence Agency Budget for the year 2006, several years out of date. In it you may indeed find the $5 million our Agency spends on our old friend Banquo. Actually it’s only $2.5 million, as we share it with some clowns with the White House’s NSA guys, or the National Intelligence Director’s office. I can’t remember which, and they don’t even know.”
    What came next was a rebuke:
    “Banquo’s shop actually runs on about $35 million a year. He has four expert Exchange Traders working the street 24/7/365 who last year alone beat the S&P by seven