by Hock G Tjoa
It had taken years to build her cover. Geisha houses sometimes required five years of training. Additionally, the Agency wanted to be sure her cover could be not be easily compromised. Tang persisted, and her fluency in Japanese, Russian, and English, as well as her resourcefulness, resulted in a brilliant career in operations.
One night, as she entertained a small group of clients, she received an urgent message—an interruption that meant the direst emergency in an establishment for geishas. Excusing herself from her customers with an inscrutable smile, she went to see the housekeeper. “Mama-san, you called.”
The housekeeper addressed her by her working name. “Mudan-san, intruders have just killed our guards. I saw them fall right before our cameras went dark,” the housekeeper whispered, closing the door to her office and nodding to her left. The security cameras were, indeed, dark. “I think three or four men are headed upstairs.”
She handed Tang her handbag. “I will make a call to our friends.”
“Call our customers upstairs, first,” Tang suggested. Then, as the housekeeper dialed her phone, Tang heard a sound at the door and unhesitatingly shot through it. A body slumped against it. She whispered, “Turn all the lights off and go to my clients.” As Mama-san dialed her phone, Tang stepped out the door.
Ducking into the hallway, she kicked off her costume shoes and ran as the shadows flickered to the stairwell. She heard several muffled shots from the floor above as the attackers and defenders exchanged fire with silenced handguns. As she stepped into the stairwell and put her foot on the first step, a door opened above. She shot at the dark shape that emerged and also brought her left hand up over her heart. A knife thrown from above hit her hand and pinned it to her breast.
When Tang regained consciousness, she was being lifted to a stretcher while medics worked furiously to stop the bleeding from her chest. The housekeeper came by with a smile of approval. “Calling our customers first was the right thing to do. I shall stay with them and pray to the Goddess of Mercy for you.”
A few days later, the chief of security for the geisha house came to see her at the hospital. He stood at the foot of her bed and bowed deeply. “You have protected the good name of our house and brought peace to the souls of the security guards.”
Tang smiled solemnly and tried to bow her head.
“I know you are not strong enough to talk,” said the security chief. “But I thought you might be interested to learn that both men you shot were wearing bulletproof vests and you hit them each in the throat.” He shook his head and said gruffly, “There should be songs raised for such an exploit like those of the samurai archers of the Genji.”
He stood at attention and bowed again. “Mama-san has also told me about your fight with the drunken swordsman last year.” A slight smile played on his lips. “Most unusual training you have had for a geisha.”
Not long after that incident, Tang accepted the reassignment to the Analysis Department. A fresh challenge for you, the Spymaster had said.
“But I only have a user’s knowledge of the wonders that the department can perform,” Tang protested.
“That is what I want you to do—think of and tell us what other wonders you think the department should learn to do.”
Her geisha-like looks concealed the tenacity and passion with which she pursued her cases. Her cheerful nature also made her the best diplomat within the agency, making friends and keeping sources that most other agents had given up on.
Wang asked, “What do we know about the other five potential arms sales? In general terms, of course; I shall want details later from each of the analysts who worked on this personally.”
Wang had learned from older and wiser intelligence chiefs the importance of “compartmentalizing” intelligence to avoid having entire operations, if not the agency itself, compromised by a leak, a mole, or a betrayal. But he discussed most issues with both Tang and Hu, so they shared the knowledge. He trusted them both and felt that should anything happen to any one of them, the other two might need this shared wisdom to continue running the agency.
“Although we are very limited in assets outside China for undercover operations, we do have resources that can record passive intelligence,” stated Tang. “By asking the right questions, we were able to obtain a list of those who have been traveling to Kabul, Karachi, or Islamabad during the past month. Then, we asked ‘friends’ in the Middle East and South Asia if they knew of specific activities by any suspected actors.”
“These friends will not spy on their own countries for us but will answer questions on general matters,” Tang continued. “It was a brilliant move to set up those arrangements, sir.”
“An achievement born of necessity,” answered Wang self-deprecatingly.
“There was a mountain of data to sift through. Fortunately, that is something we do well. Our friends gave many insights and vital confirmations. In the end, we have definite information about the three operations from the Middle East and the two from South and Central Asia, as well as our original North Korean subject.
“It took us about a week to compile the original list of those who had traveled to and from the Pashtun region during the previous month. This list included thousands of residents, relatives of residents, traveling merchants, pilgrims, and so forth. It took another week to check these names against lists we have of possible arms dealers and their aliases and to trace their itineraries to confirm or eliminate them,” explained Tang, who continued, “The list was narrowed to twelve suspects. Confirmation from our friends allowed us to reduce this list to five names, in addition to the North Korean. Here are their folders. Two are well-known dealers based in Karachi and Kazakhstan respectively, one high-profile operator in Dubai had not been active in arms dealing but in practically every other form of criminal activity, and two are shadowy figures. One based in Tehran and the other operating in Palestine.”
“Why wouldn’t the Iranian and the Palestinian sell to their own national regimes?” asked Hu.
“Why not, indeed,” agreed Wang.
“It gets more complicated,” declared Tang. “Though, one should see why some transactions are best kept outside a family.”
“I have heard about the unhappy results of trying to teach a member of one’s family how to drive,” added Wang.
“We should not gloat over people with children,” said Hu.
Tang lifted an eyebrow and continued, “When I asked our friends in the Middle East whether they knew if anyone on the list was engaged in a transaction that could destabilize our border regions, I received confirmation regarding the Iranian and—an Israeli agent.”
Wang and Hu stared at Tang. After a moment, Wang said, “You are wise to leave the identification as Palestinian.”
Tang nodded. “Our friend there was sure the report was not wrong, but he was quite as shocked as we were. He wished to check around further and requested that we be very discreet with this information.”
Wang nodded. “Of course. Or we will never get any information from him again, possibly not from anyone else for that matter. Word will, no doubt, get around.” He looked up at his principal assistants. “In a strange way, despite what we do, our world is built on trust.”
“What danger is there to China in any of this?” asked Hu.
Wang looked at him grimly and said, “This is not our war—we used to say that frequently when we were a young nation. We continued to say that even when we should have known better.” The Spymaster shook his head as if to clear it of cobwebs. “I wish I knew what the Pashtuns want to do with such a device.”
Tang looked at her chief and replied, “We can guess, even if we don’t have someone listening to their conversations. They cannot expect to defeat Afghanistan, let alone Pakistan, with one such device, or even six. We might infer that they’ll use the device as a threat for leverage in a negotiation. Such a weapon could devastate either Kabul or Islamabad.”
Hu said, “If leverage is what they want, they don’t
even need the device. It will be enough if the others act as if they have it.”
The Spymaster nodded slowly in agreement, then said with a smile at Hu, “You’ve noticed this in your card games perhaps?” Then to Tang, he asked, “What evidence do we have of the arms deal itself?”
Tang smiled in triumph and laid down a sheet of paper. “Six bank accounts wired one million Euros each to a seventh bank account. They are the deposits from each of the dealers—the entrance fee for those who wish to participate. The first dealer to deliver a working nuclear device to the Pashtuns will receive thirty million Euros. If the deposits are non-refundable, the Pashtuns already have the first six million.”
“Just for the sake of argument,” Hu said, “let me ask again, why should China care about this situation?”
“Administrator Hu, you did not ask questions like this when you were an operative,” said Spymaster Wang. “I wonder about your intentions.”
“Sir, I recommend that we should weigh the cost of each mission,” Hu replied. “When I was an operative, I assumed that someone else did that.”
“I agree, of course,” said Wang. “We do not feed a baby every time it cries. Sometimes it is less costly to let something happen even if lives will be lost.” The Spymaster got up to help himself to more tea. He waved at the teapot, but both Tang and Hu shook their heads.
“And we should always look for a way to change the odds to our favor,” continued Hu.
“If we are persuaded the Pashtuns have a use for the device, or even to threaten the use of it, we have to assume it is for something serious,” Wang said, resuming his seat.
“The Analysis Department has concluded that the Pashtuns aspire to independence and nationhood,” said Tang. “The nuclear device is definitely not about bragging rights at a wedding or a gathering of clans. It is to convince Afghanistan and Pakistan that they each will have to give up territory to the would-be Pashtun state.”
“I don’t know if the outcome of this nuclear adventure will threaten China, but I am sure that we will be very interested in the debate and process as well as the outcome,” said Wang as he gestured at an old map of Central Asia on one wall. “Afghanistan no longer sits on the essential path between point A and point B as it did a century ago, but whoever is able to dominate in this region is of interest to China and India—not to mention all the countries bordering that area and even some that do not. Secondly, there are also those within that region with a passionate desire to spread their ideology, even with terrorist acts.”
The Spymaster put up another map, a modern one of west China, as he continued to speak, “Thirdly, their passion or daring may embolden others, including minorities in our own country.”
Hu persisted with a question, “But is this a security issue, and therefore one for our agency’s involvement?”
“You’re right, Old Hu. Ideally, this is a question that we should address together with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, especially if it involves all the ‘stans’ along the Old Silk Road. They are now in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization that lies within the mandate of the MFA. In the long run, China must weigh its relations with those countries carefully and take appropriate actions.
“But for now, perhaps we should ask ourselves this question: If China’s interests are at stake, what is the best way to protect them?” declared Wang. “Otherwise, we might get ourselves tangled up in definitions and questions over jurisdiction.”
“Kashgar is the city in China that lies closest to Afghanistan and all these other countries. It is a fitting choice for a code name,” noted Analyst Tang.
“Perhaps it is too obvious,” said Wang. “Maybe we should simply refer to it as Operation K and leave alone those who think of dietary supplements.”
“You will report this situation at the Committee on Public Safety meeting, then?” asked Administrator Hu.
“Not this week,” said Wang. “We can afford the delay of a week or two. Something may turn up to give us more than logical inference to present,” he added as his associates left for their offices.
“The Committee will provide guidance on whether it should remain an intelligence issue or not. Ironic, is it not, that what happens in another world should determine the arrangement of chairs in China, with our cities and the Party—and that other world should be one that knows or cares nothing about us, and we almost never think about or understand?” A world that my colleagues, preoccupied with China’s brilliant rise among world economies, would find more outlandish than even the minorities in Tibet and Xinjiang.
2: THE VILLAGE IN THE MOUNTAIN
The Pashtuns have resisted authority for decades, even centuries. But the event that radicalized Najmudin the Soldier happened ten years ago when a crackle of rifle fire shattered the calm of the mountains.
Flocks of small birds chattered wildly, desperately flying from their roosts in the trees like chickens scattering from a predator in their yard. A falcon dropped out of the lazy circles it was flying in the sky, speared one of the sparrows, and swooped away with it.
The rifle fire ceased as three Jeeps roared into the village; the men wore the insignias of the Pakistani Army and Intelligence units. They moved with arrogance from house to house. The villagers knew from experience and stories told over the years in the mountains that they were surrounded by many more soldiers from the plains than they could see. Though several villagers were well-armed, everyone had heard of the total annihilation of the villages in which anyone resisted.
Resentful faces watched as the Pakistanis quickly found the man who had been betrayed to them and bundled him into one of the Jeeps. Only the man’s wife wailed to voice her anger and despair. Only one man, Shopkeeper Gholam, strode up with his arms waving angrily to protest the invasion of the village. A burst of machine gun fire aimed at his feet stopped him in his tracks. The Shopkeeper glared in silence at the men as they all piled into their Jeeps and drove off.
The man taken away was Abdur-rahman. His family had lived in the village for as long as anyone could remember, and he owned sheep, goats, and fruit trees. Having completed high school, he frequently engaged in earnest conversations with the mullahs and anyone else who was willing to talk and argue with him. He was the village intellectual and Shopkeeper Gholam’s best friend for thirty years.
The Shopkeeper approached his friend’s house but stopped just as Abdur-rahman’s brother-in-law appeared and nodded to him. He would go in to give his sister what comfort he could. In the house, the two sons and two daughters of the man taken away watched their uncle speak quietly, sadly, to their mother as her wails gradually diminished into sobs. Although all was quiet in the rest of the dozen houses that made up the small, nondescript village, a palpable resentment vibrated in the air like the buzzing of bees whose hive had been violated.
The villagers were all Waziris, a major tribe of the Pashtuns, and like many Pashtuns, they were spread over a region divided by a political border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. The British had negotiated this border with the Amir of Afghanistan more than a hundred years earlier in order to create a buffer zone between Tsarist Russia and British India. It was a border referred to by the bureaucrats of all countries as the Durand Line. The Pashtuns refused to recognize it.
The people of the plains were Pakistanis, speakers of Urdu, and most of them came from the Punjab. Their leaders still yearned for the land that was partitioned between them and the Hindus. The partition left many in Pakistan with the feeling that an amputee might have for the limbs he’d lost. Meanwhile, they sent the regular army or the intelligence service, and perhaps even the infidel drones, to intimidate the Waziris and other Pashtuns of the Federally Administered Territory.
The mountain folk had no such fixation for the Punjab but dreamed instead of joining with their Pashtun cousins to the north, in Afghanistan. These separate dreams and yearnings naturally caused much grief between the mountain tribes and the people of the plains. The Pakistanis viewed Pashtun hospitalit
y with great suspicion; they were more suspicious when it involved their neighbors to the north. The Pashtuns (like the Bedouins) held to their hearts the injunction of the Prophet to be hospitable to those with whom they broke bread and shared salt—even if these were their enemies.
This was only one among many of the Prophet’s teachings, but it resonated particularly with the Pashtuns. Ironically, there were fanatical feuds among them, conjured out of real, but sometimes dimly remembered, quarrels among the families. Their proclivity for unforgiving hostility when they felt honor had been breached was a Pashtun weakness. Abdur-rahman and the Shopkeeper had debated this over three decades. Like everyone else, they knew the Pashtuns had united twice since the nineteenth century, once to fight the British and a second time against the Russians a generation ago.
Abdur-rahman passionately believed that the Pashtuns could and would unite yet again and take their place as a nation. He had even trekked north to visit Waziris and other Pashtuns in Afghanistan. The Shopkeeper, like most other Pashtuns, felt the call of this dream, but could not imagine how the clans and tribes could unite when it was commonly said and deeply held among the Pashtuns that a man must stand with his brothers, even against their own cousins.
A few days after Abdur-rahman’s arrest, his second son called on the Shopkeeper. He had come early in the afternoon, an hour or two before the usual clientele at the tea shop.
“Shopkeeper.”
“Yes, my son.” The Shopkeeper knew his name, of course, Najmudin, but in their culture, people did not call each other by name. They preferred nicknames—the Tall one, the Thorn among the roses (for an only son among many daughters), the Breadmaker’s third son, and so forth. The use of family terms was quite common as well. Son, brother, uncle, etc. Women were often called the mother, sister, or aunt (of the goatherd or of the clever one or the short one).