To Kill The Truth

by Sam Bourne

  Two worked for NGOs, one fairly high up in an international medical charity, the other as head of an LGBTQ organization in Canada. Ordinarily, if Maggie were drawing up any kind of list of suspects, she’d eliminate such palpable, neon-lit do-gooders first. But something stopped her this time. She thought back to that argument she’d had with Uri, the philosophy seminar, where he had expressed sympathy with the notion of shaking off the burden of history, of having a fresh start. Even him.

  She thought of the manifesto, with its tone of moral purpose. Those who seek justice insist we must remember. But those who seek peace insist we forget. The author believed he was on the side of peace and a better world.

  She kept the two NGO names on the list.

  There were a couple of journalists and an academic historian: surely destroying knowledge was anathema to them? The Director of Strategy to the Mayor of Omaha was a former student of William Keane’s. What possible motive could he have for torching libraries the world over?

  On the other hand, she had seen the crowds cheering for Keane. She knew his appeal stretched far and deep. What was to say it did not extend to a local government official in Nebraska? As for the academic, well, wasn’t Keane himself a historian?

  She got back up and went to the kitchen, where she poured herself a small – or small-ish – glass of whisky. Her skin still tingled from its encounter with Uri: the body with its own memory again.

  This was more difficult than she had anticipated. If she was looking for someone involved in, say, a corruption scam or a political manoeuvre, a process of elimination would always work quite swiftly. But this was different. From what she could tell, this threat did not arise from personal greed or ambition, venality or lust – her usual stocks-in-trade – but from something more nebulous. It seemed to be driven by principle. Fanatical, extreme, unhinged principle, but principle all the same. She would have to approach it differently.

  She was exhausted, but there was something keeping her awake. It was a nagging thought, like a dream that slips through your fingers the moment you try to grasp hold of it. Now, she recalled, that sensation had first surfaced when she had sat in this room, reading the manifesto.

  She reached for the hard copy that the governor had smuggled to her, sat up on the bed and started reading it again, from the start. She couldn’t have said what exactly she was looking for, though she told herself she would know it when she saw it. It wasn’t a thought or idea so much as a sensation: she was waiting to feel as if something had snagged, like the thread of a sweater caught on a barbed wire fence.

  More than once she dozed off. The author of this manifesto was a fluent writer, but also an obsessive one. Packed with academic references and, unexpectedly in a call for the eradication of history, replete with allusions to relatively obscure historical events, the manifesto was not an easy read.

  178. A phrase worth examining is “war memorial”. It is embedded deep in our language and rightly so. Most people think it refers to those monuments that exist in almost every place in America and elsewhere to “honor” those who died in wars. But the reason it resonates is that we understand that wars are themselves acts of memorial. They are almost always fought to avenge, honor or reverse some prior loss. And yet, we should know from even a basic reading of Sun Tzu or Clausewitz, that wars are seldom truly fought for those purposes. They are fought over resources and wealth, whether that be spices in the sixteenth century or oil in the twenty-first. Avenging the past might be the rallying cry, used to stir the masses, but it is rarely the genuine cause. Still, it works because of a weakness in men’s minds: a weakness for our own past.

  Her eyelids were heavy, but she forced herself to read on.

  179. Very few people are honest enough to admit this, which itself is revealing. It shows that we understand that this obsession with history is a weakness. Consider the phrase “ancestor worship”. It denotes primitive thinking. Yet when Slobodan Miloševic´ suggested that a battle that had been fought in 1389 needed to be avenged in 1989, what was he doing but engaging in the worship of ancestors that had lived six centuries earlier? He presented this as a matter of death and life, but really it had no bearing on the actual existence of the people of Serbia in the last years of the twentieth century. Such is the . . .

  There it was, that snagging sensation. It was familiar, not just from when she’d first read this document, but from much longer ago. She and Liz had been out in the park, and Liz had lost a ring. A silly bit of plastic costume jewellery, but she had liked it and the pair of them had marched the length of the park together, up and down, eyes fixed on the ground, like detectives in a missing persons inquiry, searching for that stupid ring. Eventually, Maggie had found it. But first came the sensation she had now, the feeling that she had glimpsed it somewhere in her peripheral vision. Twenty-five years ago, it had been a tiny shard of colour that had made Maggie turn around, retrace her steps and stare even harder at the ground.

  She had that feeling again now. As she read that last paragraph, word by word, clause by clause. What was it? Not ‘history is a weakness’. Not ‘ancestor worship’ either. Was it the reference to Milosevic? She tested each phrase on herself, to see if it triggered that response from her unconscious. She was waiting for the snag on the wire.

  He presented this as a matter of death and life . . .

  There it was. A matter of death and life. At first she was disappointed, for this was no great discovery: it was a formulation that would trip up any reader. The usual order – ‘a matter of life and death’ – had been reversed. It might have been no more than a mistake when typing, or a curious idiosyncrasy of the author’s.

  Her phone buzzed. The screen lit up with a news alert: FBI release ‘Bookburner’s manifesto’, document said to be penned by arsonist behind terror attacks on world libraries.

  So it was out there now. Whatever else the linguistic analysis had yielded, it clearly hadn’t produced anything to alter the conclusion the FBI Director had drawn, at Maggie’s prompting, that morning: that their best hope was to publish the text and wait for someone, somewhere, to read it and spot the word or phrase that identified the author.

  The nagging itch in Maggie’s brain had not gone away. She went to the New York Times website where the lead item was a news story about the release, including a few details on the FBI mission a source had revealed was codenamed Operation Florian. Embedded in the first sentence was a link to the text in full. Once there, Maggie ran a word search for ‘A matter of . . .’ It brought up no instances except the one she’d already found. She closed her eyes, her body desperate to surrender to sleep but her brain adamant that it settle this question once and for all.

  Question.

  Now she tried that, searching for: ‘A question of . . .’

  There were three results. The first offered a sentence that included the words ‘a question of historicity’. The next came up with ‘a question of jurisdiction’. Finally the third read: ‘This is not a simple question of wrong and right . . .’

  Wrong and right.

  The same reversal of the usual order. So perhaps this was a habit. She typed in ‘black and white’. Nothing. She typed in ‘white and black’. Still nothing. She tried a few more stock phrases, looking for that curious reverse. No luck. She had just two instances to go on.

  That’s when it came to her. There was only one person she’d ever known who shared that same verbal tic. What was strange was that she had only ever half-noticed it. She had never articulated it to another person or even to herself. But it had registered just enough to have snagged her both times she had read the document.

  If she was right, it meant the author of the Bookburner’s manifesto was no mystery. She knew who it was.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Capitol Hill, Washington DC, 11.05pm

  She’d had to go via several circuitous routes to get his home address, pulling in multiple favours with old Washington contacts. That was harder than usual, and not o
nly because of the hack into her phone book. Several texts went unanswered, several more calls went straight to voicemail. Thanks to that video, Maggie Costello carried a taint. For now, the DC calculus held that the safest bet was to steer well clear.

  She could have done it officially, through the Bureau. But that risked an advance tip-off: there would be a faction in the FBI loyal to this man, she had learned that much a while ago. The element of surprise was one of her few advantages and she was not about to squander it.

  And now here she was, parking up around the corner from the Capitol Hill townhouse that was, despite everything, still his. He was living proof that, in politics, most people, most of the time, got away with it.

  She climbed the three steps and knocked on the door which revealed itself on impact to be unlocked. She pushed it to find another, inner door that was secured. Next to it was a buzzer that appeared to include a video camera. She pressed the button and a hand instinctively went to her hair.

  A voice came through the speaker. ‘No, don’t change a thing! You look great just like that.’

  Just hearing him again made her shudder. She considered turning on her heel and heading back to her car. There had to be another way of doing this. But it was too late. He had already flung the door wide open and was standing there with his arms outstretched, as if expecting a hug.

  ‘If it isn’t Maggie Costello, as I live and breathe! Star of the hottest sex tape of the year, ladies and gentlemen.’

  His eyes were redder than when she’d last seen him, the paunch larger, but otherwise Crawford ‘Mac’ McNamara was so unchanged, he made it look like an act of defiance. The former chief strategist to the President of the United States was unshaven, barefoot and still in his trademark cargo-style shorts and rock-themed T-shirt. Today, and perhaps yesterday judging by the stains around the armpits, it was Metallica. The look said: unrepentant.

  ‘Maggie, come in. Please. We can’t have you on the streets. I don’t care what you did in that video, it hasn’t come to that!’

  She stepped inside, reminding herself of the resolve she maintained for most of the five months they worked in the same White House: do not take the bait.

  He gestured towards a living room, though it more closely resembled a cross between a bookshop and a campaign office. On the floor, apparently awaiting hanging, were framed newspaper front pages and the odd poster. On the tables, on the floor, even on the improbably chintzy chairs, were piles of books. Maggie noticed a cardboard box, from which were spilling copies of a single volume whose cover was filled with an up-close portrait of Mac’s face, so intimate you could see individual pores. The title was Burning Down the House.

  ‘Go on,’ McNamara said. ‘Take a copy. You know you want to. Everybody in America wants to read that book.’

  ‘So this is the period of “penance and quiet reflection” you talked about? You’ve been writing your memoirs.’

  He smiled. ‘I know you didn’t fall for that bullshit, Maggie. Everyone else in this town, yes. But not you.’ He affected the English accent of a Hollywood villain and dipped his head in a bow: ‘You were a worthy adversary, Miss Costello.’ And then, in his own voice: ‘It is still “Miss”, right? It’s not “Mrs”? I don’t want to offend anyone.’

  Do not take the bait. Do not take it.

  ‘Look at me, standing here. Where are my manners? Sit down, sit down. Please. What can I get you? Coffee? Scotch? Crack?’

  ‘Nothing, thank you, Mac.’ She crossed to the seat carrying fewest books, removed them and sat down.

  ‘You do look gorgeous, I gotta say,’ Mac said, still standing. ‘Life outside the White House suits you. OK, maybe I’m swayed a bit by that tape. Once that’s in your head, it’s hard to shake, you know what I mean?’ He suddenly stood taller, closed his eyes and with his curled right hand mimed the few jerking strokes of a man masturbating himself to a climax.

  ‘You are a truly disgusting man.’

  ‘Ya think? But guess what’s great. I am now free to be a truly disgusting man and no longer give a flying fuck what all the headshakers and teethsuckers of the liberal elite – your crowd – think about me.’ With his arms wide, he simulated a child pretending to be an aeroplane as he spun around singing tunelessly: ‘I’m freeeeee as a bird!’

  ‘Mac, I need to tell you why I’m here.’

  ‘I did wonder,’ he said, slumping into a chair, apparently exhausted by his brief pirouette, and putting his bare feet up on a coffee table, resting them on a particularly fat biography of Benito Mussolini. Maggie was close enough to see the dead skin and broken toenails.

  ‘It’s about the so-called Bookburner’s manifesto.’

  ‘My God, what kind of asshole am I?’ He was out of the chair and off to another room, calling out from over his shoulder, ‘Publishing that thing was your idea, right? I should have congratulated you the second you walked in here: Maggie Costello back at the heart of government!’ So her instinct had been right: Mac did have a mole inside the FBI.

  He was back clutching two empty flutes and a bottle of Krug, which he held close to his groin, uncorking it inches from Maggie’s face. She saw the foam explode. ‘Now what does that image remind me of?’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Mac, that video wasn’t me. As you well know.’

  Now the voice of a small-time New York gangster from a Jimmy Cagney movie: ‘A fella’s gotta right to dream, ain’t he?’

  Maggie put the glass down on the table, next to the Mussolini book, without taking a sip. ‘Now, listen.’ She was back in the West Wing, feeling the way McNamara always made her feel when she had the misfortune of working for him: like a 1950s schoolmarm, prim and uptight. This was what he wanted, what he always wanted: to unsettle, to wrongfoot, whoever he was talking to. ‘I’ve read that document and it bears the specific linguistic imprint of one person.’

  ‘Old news, Maggie. William Keane. The FBI got their computer geeks on it. Pattern recognition, language analysis, the whole nine yards of horseshit and it’s him.’ His inside sources again, this time getting it only half-right.

  ‘Not Keane, Mac. I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about you.’

  McNamara made a show of spluttering on his champagne. ‘Me? Are you kidding?’

  ‘ “A matter of death and life.” “A question of wrong and right.” You’re the only person I’ve ever met who does that. You and the author of the Bookburner’s manifesto.’

  ‘You’re sounding like a crazy woman again, Mags.’

  ‘Don’t call me Mags. If the language analysts haven’t picked it up yet, it’s because it’s a thing you do when you speak, and so far they’ve only been looking at published writing. Look, I can see that, on its own, that might seem like insufficient evidence. But then I took a little look at your résumé, Mac.’

  He emptied his champagne glass and poured himself some more.

  ‘And what I saw is that not only did you, the great scourge of the Ivy League, study at both Harvard and Yale, but you also did a semester at Stanford.’

  ‘Architecture.’

  ‘That’s right. But it just so happens that the one semester you were there coincided with the period when Professor William Keane was teaching a blockbuster course that, I’m told, absolutely everyone went to.’

  As she spoke, she recalled the lines in that alumni blog. There’d be people there who weren’t even history majors, all squished up sitting on the stairs, some of them sitting cross-legged right in front of the podium, lining up outside the lecture theater . . .

  Mac put down his glass and allowed a sly smile to pass his lips. ‘You know, given what happened the last time you and I had a chat, and how that worked out, I need to ask you something, Maggie.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Are you carrying a cellphone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘OK. So I need you to put that on the table.’

  ‘I’m not recording this conversation.’

  ‘All right, I believe you. But
as St Ronald of the Shining City on the Hill taught us—’

  ‘ “Trust, but verify.” ’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Maggie did as she was told. McNamara picked up the phone and turned the power off. ‘Any other recording devices, Maggie?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Don’t make me frisk you. I’ll enjoy it, but you won’t. So. Is there a wire under that underwire bra? Tell you what, why don’t you put that bag of yours in the next room. Just in case.’

  Maggie did that too. A price worth paying to get this over with.

  Once she was back and facing him, Mac cleared his throat. ‘Maggie, I think you’re very smart, you know that. One of the few over there I had to think about. The rest I could deal with in my sleep. But you were a cut above. And yet do you know where you let yourself down?’

  ‘I have a feeling you’re about to tell me.’

  ‘You get too hung up on the “who”. Who did this, who did that. Whodunnit. When the real question, the only question, is always why.’

  ‘Why.’

  ‘Yes. Why would anyone want to start burning books or killing historians or wrecking libraries and databases? Why would anyone want to do such a thing?’

  Maggie waited, allowing McNamara his little performance.

  ‘It’s not a rhetorical question, Maggie! Tell me: why?’

  ‘Because they want to destroy the past.’

  He got to his feet and started pacing. His legs were pale and unexpectedly thin. ‘Because facts are elitist and we are all about taking down the liberal elite.’

  ‘You’re joking, right?’

  ‘I am definitely not joking. Facts are elitist. So’s science. All knowledge, in fact. Elitist, to its core.

  ‘Just think about it. I’m a guy in, I don’t know, Wisconsin. I lost my job two years ago when they closed the steelworks down. And I see some Chinaman or Mexican working in a steel plant owned by the same company that shut my factory down. Now that guy feels in his water that that Chinaman and that Mexican took his job. That’s what he feels.