advisers and challenged them to name the core failure in American policy in the past fifty years. Kristina stood up and said it was the ‘United States’ inability to understand the psychology of our enemies in the way we understood the psychology of the Russians during the Cold War.’
‘Explain what you mean, Dr Taft,’ Carr had asked, almost like a job interview. Perhaps it was a job interview. Kristina delivered a history lesson. She said that since the Iranian revolution of 1979 and the overthrow of the Shah of Iran, all America’s troubles originated in an ‘Arc of Instability’ stretching from Palestine and Israel through Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and Iran to Pakistan and Afghanistan.
‘But we don’t understand what we are doing,’ Kristina insisted. ‘So we blunder about like dinosaurs with powerful bodies and very small brains. If we don’t change, we are going to be extinct.’
Theo Carr was clearly interested; Bobby Black less so.
‘Give us an example of this dinosaur tendency, Dr Taft,’ Black said. ‘I want some facts.’
‘Fact: Under George W. Bush the United States military destroyed Saddam Hussein in Two Thousand and three,’ Kristina replied. ‘Fact: the United States and its allies overthrew the Taleban in Afghanistan in Two Thousand and two.’
She paused.
‘So?’
‘So, what good did it do us? At great cost to ourselves in American lives, we took out Iran’s two most dangerous enemies, and the Iranians still hate us. Fact: Under Bill Clinton in Nineteen Ninety-eight we saved the Muslim people of Kosovo from slaughter and get no credit from Muslims anywhere. So how dumb are we? We think tactics and ignore strategy; we screw up because we don’t think through what the objective really is. No More Manilas means no more being dinosaurs.’
‘The objective …’ Bobby Black started to say something but Theo Carr waved him to be silent.
‘How do we do better, Dr Taft?’ Carr asked.
‘By thinking like the people of the region, sir. By remembering the old Arab cliché, that My Enemy’s Enemy is My Friend. By getting smart. By getting others to do the dirty work for us.’
‘But how?’ Carr insisted.
That’s when the White House reading list was born, despite Bobby Black’s protests.
‘Here’s a start. Arabs and Persians watch our TV, our movies, read our books, listen to our rock music. We should do the same with their literature. They understand us and we do not understand them.’
‘Through storybooks?’ Bobby Black scoffed.
‘One good novel revealing how ordinary Muslim people think,’ Kristina responded, ‘is worth a dozen CIA estimates about the opium crop in Afghanistan or political gossip on instability in Iraq or Pakistan or wherever.’
‘She speaks Arabic, that’s why she thinks this way,’ Bobby Black responded. ‘I speak American and, in plain American, we need to understand these people a whole lot less, and condemn a whole lot more.’
‘I speak Human,’ Kristina contradicted Bobby Black a second time, which is maybe where all the trouble between them started. ‘And it’s the human battle we need to win.’
The President looked at Kristina, then at his Vice-President, and decided the novels should stay on the White House reading list. As Kristina told me the gist of the story that day waiting for Bobby Black, she suggested some bookstore titles for me, beginning with an Egyptian novel called The Yacoubian Building.
‘A young man from a poor background wants to become a police officer,’ she told me, ‘but he’s from the wrong class and can’t afford the bribes. So this decent young guy becomes a terrorist instead. The author says the real disease in the Muslim world is despotism. Terrorism is just one of the symptoms. He’s right.’
I tried to digest this thought.
‘So, has the Vice-President read this insightful book?’ I asked mischievously. Kristina Taft laughed again. I had broken through. I could see her visibly relax in my company, and I sensed an opportunity. Bobby Black was shaping up to be the most powerful Vice-President in US history, even more powerful than Dick Cheney. After Manila, Theo Carr announced that Black would be in charge of anti-terrorism policy. It was difficult for me to see how his approach and Kristina’s ideas could ever work together in the same administration. She would need allies. So would I.
‘More than two hundred American dead,’ Bobby Black had said in speeches in the dying days of the campaign. ‘Two hundred and forty seven of our people; thirty-nine of other nationalities. Two hundred and forty seven of Us. Every American will be avenged. You have my word. No–More–Manilas.’
All through the transition, London had badgered me to find out what this sabre-rattling talk actually meant. The most important question for any British government is always to figure out what the Americans are up to, and I am the person who is supposed to know.
‘The Spartacus Solution,’ I told Andy Carnwath when he contacted me at Fraser Davis’s insistence.
‘What the fuck is that?’ he said. Phone conversations with Andy Carnwath are typically littered with so many expletives that within the Civil Service they are known as ‘The Vagina Monologues’. I explained that the British military attaché had heard whispers in the Pentagon that Bobby Black had been very impressed by a discussion paper written by an obscure US Army General, Conrad Shultz. General Shultz–according to the DoD, the Department of Defence buzz–had written a paper during a year’s sabbatical at West Point calling for ‘The Spartacus Solution’ to terrorism.
I had no idea what the paper was about but I reminded Carnwath that Spartacus led the slave rebellion against the Romans. He and his fellow rebels were crucified on the roads into Rome.
‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ Carnwath said. ‘Slaves? Crucified? You’d better get a copy of this fucking fairytale, Alex. Top priority.’
The urgency of getting a copy of ‘The Spartacus Solution’ became even more obvious when Theo Carr announced that General Shultz was to become the new Director of Central Intelligence.
‘So, come on, has the Vice-President been reading anything on your booklist, Dr Taft?’ I teased. ‘I mean, anything at all?’
‘Vice?’ Kristina replied mischievously, sipping her black coffee and using a nickname for the Vice-President that was already current in Washington, even though he had been in the White House for such a short time. ‘Vice boasted to me that he hasn’t read a storybook in thirty years and did not need fiction to tell him that, once you’ve got people by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. So I guess I have some work to do.’
She watched for my reaction. I nodded, sympathetically. Diplomatic Warning Bell Number Two went off in my head. Dr Kristina Taft had now clearly signalled to me that there was serious tension in the White House, and the Carr administration was less than ten days old. Perhaps she was also signalling that she herself was out of her depth, but I was less sure of that. It would take me a long time to find out what her depth might be.
We were interrupted by an aide who came through to say that Bobby Black had finished his meeting with President Carr and was now ready to see us. We walked down the corridor. The Vice-President was behind his desk. He did not get up. He did not apologize for keeping me waiting.
‘Ambassador Price.’ We shook hands. His fist was cold and moist, like wet dough. The air smelled strongly of lily pollen.
‘Mr Vice-President.’
‘You know Johnny Lee.’ Johnny Lee Ironside nodded. I was glad to see him. He was to become a guide into the Heart of Darkness that is the OVP, the Office of the Vice-President. I congratulated Bobby Black on the election.
‘I’m very pleased to see you here in the White House, Mr Vice-President,’ I said. ‘The Prime Minister has instructed me to pass on his personal congratulations and his