The Bancroft Strategy

by Robert Ludlum

  “Please don’t pretend you know me.”

  “I’m just saying. A lot of true things are unreasonable. You know this. Someone tried to give you a logical explanation of what had been preying on your mind. And the fact is that, on some intuitive level, you’re still not convinced. Because otherwise you wouldn’t be here, drinking the worst coffee in lower Manhattan.”

  “Maybe,” she replied shakily. “Or maybe I was feeling grateful.”

  “You know better than that. If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t have needed rescuing in the first place.”

  Andrea studied Belknap’s face, tried to imagine how he would look to her if they were meeting for the first time. She would see someone who was ruggedly handsome, strapping, and, yes, intimidating. His dense, heavy muscles weren’t the kind produced by a health-club membership; they weren’t toned, they were knotted, muscles for work, not for display. And there was something else about him, too: the willed control of someone who could, if he chose, go out of control. A brute? Yes, in some sense. But more than a brute. There was something forceful about his very personality.

  “How come every time I try to think well of you,” she said after a while, “you try to set me straight?”

  “There’s a lake, and its waters are very deep and very dark. And your boat is very small. And you’re told that the only things in the lake are nice little fish. But one some level, you don’t believe this. You think there’s something big and scary down there.”

  “A lake,” Andrea mused. “Like Inver Brass. So what do you think? Has Paul Bancroft somehow reconstituted Inver Brass? Is he Genesis?”

  “What do you think?”

  “I wonder.”

  “Look, you’ve got to assume that everything he’s told you is a lie.”

  “Except I don’t,” Andrea said. “It would be overly obvious, in a way, and Paul Bancroft isn’t an obvious man. I think a lot of what he’s told me is truthful. Truthful, maybe, in ways we’re not fully capable of grasping.”

  “You’re talking about a flesh-and-blood human being, not some sort of Greek god,” Belknap snapped.

  “You don’t know him.”

  “Don’t be so sure. I’ve spent twenty-five years hunting down all kinds of assholes. When you get down to brass tacks, they’re pretty similar.”

  Andrea shook her head. “He’s not like anybody you’ve ever known. You need to start with that.”

  “Spare me. I bet he puts his trousers on one leg at a time.”

  “Oh, real subtle, Todd,” she said, with an odd surge of bitterness. Andrea felt herself flushing; she realized it was the first time she had called him by his first name. She wondered whether he had picked up on it, too. “Paul Bancroft is the most brilliant man either one of us is ever likely to meet. When he was at the Institute for Advanced Study, he used to chat with world-historical figures—Kurt Gödel, Robert Oppenheimer, Freeman Dyson, even Albert Einstein, for God’s sakes—and they talked to him as one of them. They spoke as equals.” She paused, but only to take a breath. “Maybe you find it comforting to reduce other men down to your own level, but you really don’t know how ridiculous you sound when you talk about Paul Bancroft like that.” She was surprised at how heatedly she spoke. Maybe she was still hoping that Bancroft would be vindicated—that her fears and suspicions would prove to be misplaced. But if they weren’t, and if Belknap made the mistake of underestimating Paul Bancroft, he was already lost.

  “Calm the hell down,” Belknap said. “Whose side are you on, anyhow? It sounds like the Great Brain has gotten to you. He must know what buttons to push.”

  “Screw you,” Andrea said. “Did you take in anything I told you about the Theta Group?”

  “I took it all in, and it gave me the creeps, okay? Find that comforting?”

  “Inasmuch as it suggests you’re in at least distant contact with reality, yes.”

  Belknap’s countenance darkened. “You’re describing some mastermind with more money than Scrooge McDuck and some wacko visionary plan for the betterment of mankind. People like that usually do more damage that people who set out to do wrong.”

  Andrea nodded slowly, relenting. In truth, it was Dr. Bancroft’s very utopianism that chilled her most. What Belknap said, in his crude way, wasn’t far from the mark. The grand theory, the big idea: They became motive forces of history. For the sake of a paper utopia, thousands of Peruvians had been slaughtered by Sendero Luminoso; millions had perished on the killing fields of Cambodia. Idealism had killed as many as hatred. “I’m not sure what he wouldn’t do if he thought the ends justify it,” she said.

  “Exactly,” said Belknap. “My bet is he’s crossed a line, probably did it a long time ago. He’s rigging the race, he’s stuffing the ballot boxes of human destiny. And, just like you say, he’d do anything, anything at all, that his theories tell him might be justified.”

  “But I still don’t think he’s Genesis.”

  “You have no grounds for saying that.”

  “You think I’m wrong?”

  “No,” he said, his eyes roaming the street outside. “I think you’re right. I also think he’s part of the picture somehow. There’s some kind of connection here—friend or foe, collaborator or nemesis or something else entirely. But there is a connection. Probably a complex web of connections. And one way or another, Jared Rinehart got tangled in that web. Maybe your mother, too.”

  Andrea shuddered. “But if my cousin isn’t Genesis, who is?”

  Belknap’s gaze swept across their surroundings again. “When I was in Washington, a friend of mine told me a few things about Genesis,” he said slowly. “They think he may be an Estonian. A mogul, the kind of gangster who became a billionaire when the state industries were privatized. More than that, he’s someone who seized control of a hefty chunk of the Soviet arsenal. We’re talking about a major-league arms dealer.”

  “An arms dealer?” That sounded wrong to her. She worried that Belknap was, once again, reducing the adversary to his own level.

  “We’re talking about the kind of person who has tentacles across the world. A person with a truly global reach, and global ambition, okay? This is a business that crosses national borders as easily as the birds in the sky, the fish in the sea. Who would be better placed? That’s our Genesis.”

  “And the Theta Group? Maybe you should ask your friend about how the Theta Group might fit into this.”

  Belknap reacted as if he had been slapped. “I can’t.” Breathing hard, he explained, “She was killed in front of me.”

  “Oh, my God,” she said softly. “I’m so sorry.”

  “There’s somebody else who’s going to be sorry one day.” Belknap’s voice was arctic.

  “Genesis.”

  A fractional nod. “Maybe the Theta Group has been trying to bring him down. Maybe they want to join forces. Who the hell knows? One way or the other, I’m going to hunt the bastard down. Because he’ll know where Jared Rinehart is. Sooner rather than later, I’m going to get my hands around the neck of this monster, and I’m going to squeeze, and if I don’t like what I hear, I’m going to wring his neck like a chicken’s.” He held his beefy hands before him, his fingers bent at the knuckles.

  “A velociraptor’s, maybe.”

  “Doesn’t matter. Every vertebrate’s got a neck.”

  “Estonia’s a long way away,” she said.

  “Genesis is a globetrotter. Like the Bancroft Foundation itself. Makes them natural allies. Or adversaries.”

  “You think Genesis has confederates inside the foundation?”

  “I think it’s likely. I’ll have a better idea when I get back from Estonia.”

  “You’ll let me know, right?”

  “Fair’s fair,” he said. “Meanwhile, stay the hell away from any on-the-lam operatives you come across. We’re nothing but trouble.”

  “So I’ve noticed. But I’m going to be doing some digging of my own. See, I talked to a friend of mine who works for the New York State
Department of Taxation and Finance.”

  “And this is someone who has friends?”

  “The foundation is chartered in New York, so I figured that paperwork had to be filed with this department.”

  Belknap craned his head once more, evidently peering for anything out of the ordinary. Had he noticed something? “And?” he prompted.

  “I didn’t strike gold or anything. But he said that there would be decades’ worth of paperwork in storage.”

  “In storage where?”

  “It’s all in an iron-mountain facility in Rosendale, New York,” Andrea said.

  “So what? Fake papers get filed all the time.”

  “No question. It’s different, though, when you’re dealing with private filings that are audited closely. These will be authentic records, and they’ll have to be truthful, at least up to a point. They won’t contain the whole truth, obviously. But there may be enough solid data points here to start with.”

  The waitress brought two plates. The special French toast he had ordered. “Sorry for the delay,” she said. “Benny went across the street to get some mascarpone. He didn’t want to let you down.”

  “Benny has never let me down,” said Belknap.

  “She thinks you’re a cop, doesn’t she?” Andrea asked after the waitress left.

  “She thinks I’m some kind of cop, she’s not sure which. A federal investigator, maybe. I’ve always kept it vague. Point is, they like cops over here.”

  “Because they don’t have anything to hide.”

  “Or because they do.”

  “So Doug is going to help me get access to this place in Rosendale.”

  “Ooh, paperwork.”

  “Somewhere in the past of this foundation, there’s got to be a chink. A giveaway. A clue. Some weakness that can be exploited. Something. There’s always something.”

  “Yes, in books and in movies. In real life, there’s often nothing. Hate to be the one to break it to you. Stories are one thing. Life’s another.”

  Andrea shook her head. “I think we live by stories. We organize our lives around stories. You ask me who I am, I tell you a story. But stories change. I told myself one story about my mother. When that story started to fall apart, I started to fall apart. You have a story about Jared Rinehart, about all he’s done for you—and that story makes it imperative that you rescue him even at the cost of your own life. There’s no experience outside of narrative.”

  “You ever think you spent too many years in the classroom?” Belknap looked at her with amusement. “I owe my life to Jared Rinehart. And that’s that. Don’t try to complicate it any more than that.” He gave her a stern look. “Try the French toast.”

  “Why? I didn’t order it. This is such typical male behavior. Imposing dominance through food.” She blinked. “Christ, I am turning into a college-town shrew.”

  Suddenly he stiffened. “Time to go.”

  “Says who?” Andrea demanded. Then she caught the expression on his face and felt chilled.

  “FedEx guy across the street.” Belknap spoke through gritted teeth. “Making a delivery.”

  “So?”

  “Wrong time of day. FedEx doesn’t make deliveries at four o’clock.” He put cash on the table and stood up. “Follow me.”

  Belknap gave the waitress a broad wink, then strode through a swinging door, past the kitchen, and out the back, a small paved area where a stack of recyclable bottles was awaiting pickup. A little beyond was a narrow alleyway. They squeezed past a Dumpster and made their way to an adjacent street. At the end of the block, Belknap craned his head around. Then, seemingly reassured, he bent down and keyed open the door of a dark-green Mercury. “Get in,” he said.

  Moments later they had turned the corner and, after a few more turns, blended in with the traffic on West Street.

  “Your car was parked at a fire hydrant,” Andrea said finally.

  “I know.”

  “How did you know it wouldn’t be ticketed or towed?”

  “You didn’t notice the ticket book on the dashboard. But someone who worked for the city would have. Means it’s a cop car. You leave it alone.”

  “This is a cop car?”

  “No, and it’s not a real ticket book, either. But it always does the trick.” He glanced at her. “You holding up okay?”

  “I’m fine. Stop asking me that.”

  “Whoa. Why don’t you save the ‘I am woman, hear me roar’ thing for some other occasion? I get it. You are strong. You are invincible. You are woman.”

  “Okay, I’m scared out of my wits. How the hell did your buddies—?”

  “Not my buddies, I don’t think. Yours.”

  “What?”

  “Didn’t have the hallmarks of a Cons Ops dragnet. Looked more like a stand-and-survey deal. My guys would have used a U.S. Postal Service truck, and there’d be more than one.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “My guess is, after your visit to One Terrapin, your colleagues have decided to keep an eye on you. Nonviolent monitoring. Keep tabs on an uncertain situation.”

  “I was careful,” she protested. “I had an eye out. I don’t know how they could have tracked me here.”

  “They’re professionals. You’re not.”

  Andrea blushed. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just live and learn. Or, more to the point, learn and live. You want to get to Rosendale, right?”

  “I was going to overnight at a hotel nearby.”

  “I’ll take you there.”

  “It’s a two-hour drive,” she warned.

  He shrugged. “The car has a radio,” he said.

  But they never turned it on as they motored over the Major Deegan Expressway north and onto Interstate 87. The car was as anonymous a model as he could get his hands on; nobody was following them, he assured her, and nobody had any reason to anticipate their movements, she told herself.

  “We could have been killed yesterday,” she said as he adjusted his rearview mirror for what seemed the tenth time. “It’s stupid, but I can’t get it out of my head. We could have died.”

  “You don’t say,” he returned heavily.

  Andrea stared at him, again trying to make sense of the man. He was all coiled muscle and rage, a visage that conveyed shades of frustration and anger, thick fingers, thickened nails—hands that had experienced a great deal of punishment, and surely had meted out no little punishment as well. He seemed hopelessly crude and unsubtle, and yet…there was also an acuity of perception here, an acuity that had so far eluded her. He was rawboned, coarse, blunt, and yet wily. What did they call him—the Hound, wasn’t that it? She could see it. He had a certain canine ferocity.

  “So something like this happens—a close call, a near miss, the grim reaper flashing his scythe—and you think, what, ‘Yes, I like the way I lived my life.’ Or you think something else?”

  Belknap turned to face her. “I don’t think.”

  “You don’t.”

  “That’s right. Top operative’s secret to success. Don’t think too much.”

  Andrea fell silent. He wasn’t auditioning for the Algonquin Round Table after all. She stole another look, noticed how the fabric of his shirt stretched around the bicep of his upper arms, how the hand that lightly grasped the steering wheel seemed at once battered and powerful. She wondered, idly, what he would have made of Brent Farley. The musclebound operative might have earned Brent’s flared-nostril contempt, but then he could probably have reduced Brent to jelly by clasping his hand too hard. She smiled at the thought.

  “What?” he prompted.

  “Nothing,” she said a beat too quickly.

  What did he make of her? Some spoiled Connecticut lady in over her head? Some overgrown grad student only recently out of Birkenstocks?

  “You know,” she said, a few minutes later, “I’m not really a Bancroft.”

  “You explained.”

  “My mother—she wanted to protect me from
all that. She’d been hurt, didn’t want me to get hurt. But there was part of being a Bancroft that she really valued. That’s what I never understood. That foundation meant something to her. I wish we could have talked about it.”

  Belknap nodded but said nothing.

  She was thinking out loud, and she doubted he was even taking it in, but neither did he seem to mind. Anyway, it was marginally better than talking to herself. “Paul said he loved her. ‘In a way,’ he said. But I think he did. She was beautiful, but not the porcelain-doll kind of beautiful. She was a live wire. Irreverent. Funny. High-spirited. And troubled.”

  “The drinking.”

  “But I really thought she put it behind her. It started with Reynolds. But a year or so after they got divorced, she made a pledge. And that was that. I never saw her with a drink after that. Then again, there was a lot I never knew about her. So much I wish I could ask her.” She felt her eyes grow moist, tried to blink it away.

  He gave her a stony gaze. “Sometimes the questions are more important than the answers.”

  “Tell me something. Do you ever get scared?”

  Another stony gaze.

  “I’m serious.”

  “All animals know fear,” Belknap said. “You see a mouse or chipmunk or a hog or a fox. Does it think? Beats me. Does it have self-consciousness? I’d guess not. Does it laugh? Doubt it. Can it feel joy? Who can say? But one thing you know. You know it experiences fear.”

  “Yes.”

  “Fear is like pain. Pain is productive if it tells you you’ve touched a hot burner or you’ve picked up a sharp object. On the other hand, if it’s a chronic condition, just feeding on itself, it’s not doing you any good. It’s just eroding your ability to function. Fear can save your life. Fear can also destroy your life.”

  Andrea nodded slowly. “It’ll be the next exit,” she said after a while.

  Three miles later, they approached the Clear Creek Inn, where she had made reservations for the evening. She felt a jolt of terror, blinked, and saw why. Standing in the parking lot, leaning against a car, was the unmistakable bulk of the nameless man from the Bancroft Foundation.