The Ghost

“Washington is prepared to provide sworn testimony that no United Kingdom personnel were directly involved in the capture of those four men in Pakistan.”
    “Really?” Really? Really? I keep on parroting it, and I wince every time I hear the sycophancy in my voice. The fawning courtier. The self-effacing ghost.
    “You bet. The director of the CIA himself will provide a deposition to the court in The Hague, saying that this was an entirely American covert operation, and if that doesn’t do the trick he’s prepared to let the actual officers who were running the mission provide evidence in camera.” Lang sat back and sipped his brandy. “That should give Rycart something to think about. How’s he going to make a charge of war crimes stick now?”
    “But your memorandum to the Ministry of Defence—”
    “That’s genuine,” he conceded with a shrug. “It’s true, I can’t deny that I urged the use of the SAS. And it’s true the British government can’t deny that our special forces were in Peshawar at the time of Operation Tempest. And we also can’t deny that it was our intelligence services that tracked down those men to the particular location where they were arrested. But there’s no proof that we passed that intelligence on to the CIA.”
    Lang smiled at me.
    “But we did?”
    “There’s no proof that we passed that intelligence on to the CIA.”
    “But if we did, surely that would be aiding and abetting—”
    “There’s no proof that we passed that intelligence on to the CIA.”
    He was still holding his smile, albeit now with just a crease of concentration in his brow, as a tenor might hold a note at the end of a difficult aria.
    “Then how did it get to them?”
    “That’s a difficult question. Not through any official channel, that’s for sure. And certainly it was nothing to do with me.” There was a long pause. His smile died. “Well,” he said. “What do you think?”
    “It sounds a bit”—I tried to find some diplomatic way of saying it—“technical.”
    “Meaning?”
    My reply on the tape is so slippery, so sweaty with nervous circumlocutions, it’s enough to make one laugh out loud.
    “Well…you know…you admit yourself you wanted the SAS to pick them up—no doubt for, you know, understandable reasons—and even if they didn’t actually do the job themselves, the Ministry of Defence—as I understand it—hasn’t really been able to deny they were involved, presumably because they were, in a way, even if…even if…they were only parked in a car around the corner. And apparently British, you know, intelligence gave the CIA the location where they could be picked up. And when they were tortured, you didn’t condemn it.”
    The last line was delivered in a rush. Lang said coldly, “Sid Kroll was very pleased with the commitment he was given by the CIA. He believes the prosecutor may even have to drop the case.”
    “Well, if Sid says that—”
    “But fuck it ,” said Lang suddenly. He banged his hand on the edge of the table. On the tape it sounds like an explosion. The dozing Special Branch man on the nearby sofa looked up sharply. “I don’t regret what happened to those four men. If we’d relied on the Pakistanis we’d never have got them. We had to grab them while we had the chance, and if we’d missed them, they’d have gone underground and the next time we’d have known anything about them would’ve been when they were killing our people.”
    “You really don’t regret it?”
    “No.”
    “Not even the one who died under interrogation?”
    “Oh, him,” said Lang dismissively. “He had a heart problem, an undiagnosed heart problem. He could have died anytime. He could have died getting out of bed one morning.”
    I said nothing. I pretended to make a note.
    “Look,” said Lang, “I don’t condone torture, but let me just say this to you. First, it does actually produce results—I’ve seen the intelligence. Second, having power, in the end, is all about balancing evils, and when you think about it, what are a couple of minutes of suffering for a few individuals compared to the deaths—the deaths , mark you—of thousands. Third, don’t try telling me this is something unique to the war on terror. Torture’s always been part of warfare. The only difference is that in the past there were no fucking media around to report it.”
    “The men arrested in Pakistan claim they were innocent,” I pointed out.
    “Of course they