I knew what Irmie was thinking. If I was looking forward to seeing her, I wouldn’t be in Afghanistan. Time-wise, Munich is three and a half hours behind Kabul, which meant it was seven p.m. there. I wondered whether she was really going to bed.
“I have to hang up now.”
“Good night, Irmie.” My fiancée certainly wasn’t concealing the fact that she was unhappy about my accepting this assignment. I knew what she must be thinking. She was wondering whether she shouldn’t return the engagement ring.
I had to admit that when I saw Pete Hansen’s name, I hardly considered how difficult it would be for Irmie to cancel the plans she’d been making. When I signed on for this assignment, I was thinking more about myself than anyone else. How dumb can I get?
CHAPTER 5
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2013
“GENTLEMEN, THERE IS one thing I want to make clear. I do not intend to rest until the slimy coward who shot my husband is in captivity. Or better, until he is dead.” Wanda emphasized “dead.”
Neither Undersecretary Greer, Major Jones, Agent Hammond, Captain Leslie Corley, nor I felt there was anything we could add, and we remained silent. We were in Jones’ office in Camp Phoenix. Having drunk three coffees in the chow hall, I was now sucking on a bottle of water.
“Speaking for myself,” she continued, “I find these attacks on coalition forces, these so-called green-on-blue murders, reprehensible beyond belief. What kind of people can suddenly turn on a person they work with from day to day and then shoot him? Why can’t we identify them in advance? Why are we giving these people weapons? How fucking goddamn dumb are we? Tell me that.”
“It’s a different world over here, Wanda,” Stan said, obviously trying to mollify Wanda’s feelings. I didn’t envy his position. The investigation hadn’t gone all that far. “Afghans live by a different set of values.”
“I’m not buying that. I’m not buying that as a reason for not already having this individual in custody.”
Stan gazed toward me, an expression of exasperation on his face.
“We understand your feelings, Wanda,” I said, “but—”
“You understand my feelings!” Wanda repeated my words, her tone dripping with sarcasm. “Sure you do, Alex.”
I went on, undeterred. “But they know we’ll be out of here in two years. The ANA will—”
“I know, I know. The Afghan National Army will have to defend the country without American help. And it figures to have its hands full trying to do so.”
“You’re correct, Wanda. The Taliban have been regrouping and getting a lot of help from Pakistan,” Stan said. “What we don’t want is the Taliban reestablishing training camps. They had a sanctuary here. That’s what made 9/11 possible.” He paused. “That’s why we’re here, to prevent that from reoccurring.”
“Please, Stan, please. I know all that. I don’t live in a cave on a mountain somewhere. I’m stationed at the Pentagon.” She paused. “Anyway, I also wonder what our trainers are actually doing. Can’t they tell when one of these characters is unreliable?”
“Our people do what they can,” Hammond said, not doing much better in penetrating Wanda’s hostility than I had. “I talk to trainers constantly. They do their best to vet the recruits, but some of them switch sides after we take them on.”
“What do you mean?”
“For whatever reason, they decide they want to ingratiate themselves with the Taliban. One way to do that is to shoot an American. Others are coerced into doing it.”
“Permit me to get in on this,” Doug Greer said. “Part of the problem, Wanda, is, as we draw down, the Taliban increase their efforts to infiltrate the Afghan security forces. Like Alex said, they know the day will come when we’ll be gone.”
I said, “From what I’ve been told, we’ve discharged dozens of people who might be Taliban sympathizers.”
I focused my attention on Captain Corley, who was seated away from the table at the end of the row of file cabinets. She was a brunette, with very dark eyes and pale skin. Her expression was noncommittal, and she seemed more of an observer of the meeting than a participant. Until now, she was the only one who hadn’t commented. Her fatigue uniform couldn’t completely conceal her curves. I guessed her age at around thirty, maybe a year or two older.
“Any recruit suspected of having contact with the Taliban,” Hammond said, “is gone. It’s an ISAF rule. We’ve gotten rid of over a hundred so far.”
“We know how you feel,” Undersecretary Greer said. “I think we all feel like you. Frustrated.”
I noticed Captain Corley carried her M9 in a shoulder holster. When I directed my gaze in her direction, she tilted her head and quickly glanced away. For some reason, I had a feeling she’d been observing me.
“We wish we could turn back the clock,” Stan said. “But there’s no way of knowing in advance who’s going to commit a green-on-blue.”
“All right, all right.” Wanda shook her head, took a sip from her cup of coffee. “I still say Pete’s death could have been prevented.” She paused, nodded at me and at Hammond. “Two of the people in this room are investigating Pete’s death. I’d like to know—”
“I’d also like to know,” Undersecretary Greer said. “What’s actually happening with the investigation?”
“Why haven’t we been able to locate this Nolda person?” Wanda considered everyone at the table. “It’s been ten days since he killed Pete.”
“By now, he could be anywhere,” Stan said, “but there’s a good chance he’s back in Helmand.”
“We have people down there, ma’am,” Hammond added. “They’re asking around. We’ll find him—”
“Investigating a murder over here is nothing like investigating a murder in the States,” Stan interrupted. And for a lot of different reasons.”
“Like what?” Wanda couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of her voice.
“Like the language barrier, and the cultural barrier, and all the other barriers. We can investigate within the military community as effectively here as anywhere else, but when it comes to going out to the city, we have to depend on our interpreters.”
“And don’t forget the personal agendas,” Hammond said. “The Afghans all have them.”
Shaking her head, Wanda got to her feet. “I’m not buying all the excuses, gentlemen. In fact, that’s all I’ve heard in the last three days, in the time I’ve been here. Excuses.” Standing at the door, she said, “Reasons why you can’t do things. You people are good at that.”
A minute later Colonel Wanda Hansen was gone. Very likely, each of us breathed a sigh of relief. I know I did. I got to my feet, headed across the office to Stan’s wastebasket, and dropped in my empty bottle.
Stan poured out a cup of java for himself and Greer.
“I could use something stronger than coffee at this moment,” Greer said, “but I’ll take it.”
“She wants results,” Stan said. “You can’t blame her.”
“I’m not blaming her.”
Hammond passed me a green folder, which he’d had on his lap. “Here’s the file on Nolda. Where he was born, when he enlisted. You may want to check out some of the stuff. There’s the name of the captain in the outfit where he served. Bashiri. I set up an appointment for 1500.”
“How about other soldiers, the people he served with?”
Hammond said, “We talked with a bunch. Most didn’t have all that much to say. You can come around and see the transcripts of the interviews. I’ve got them all written out and translated. Basically, what we found out was zilch.”
I flipped through the file, which contained lots of paper. I’d go through this stuff tonight. Briefly, I wondered what Irmie was doing at this moment. Since it was close to 1000 hours here, it would be 0630 hours in Munich. Irmie would be in her car and on the way to work, perhaps already halfway there.
Standing at the office door, Captain Corley pushed back her hair and put on her fatigue cap. She then waved a silent good-b
ye.
Doug Greer arched an eyebrow. “Who is she?”
Stan said, “She’s got an interest in the investigation, wants to stay informed about how it’s going.”
“What kind of interest?” When Stan shrugged, Greer said, “She reminds me of someone, a movie actress.”
Hammond grinned. “Audrey Hepburn, maybe. Except she’s taller.”
“If you want to see her, you’ll have to take a ride down to Khost, Doug,” Stan said. “She’s stationed at Chapman.”
“She’s CIA?” We all knew that Camp Chapman was the agency station closest to Pakistan. “I don’t suppose she’s with the Khost Protection Force.” When Stan said he thought she was, Greer seemed impressed. Or maybe just puzzled.
The Khost Protection Force is a paramilitary operation, made up largely of native Pashtuns, which effectively uses surprise to conduct across-the-border raids on the Haqqani network in North Waziristan.
Standing with his hands on his hips, Greer continued to frown. “How would she fit in with a bunch of Pashtuns?”
Nobody had an answer.
Following the short silence, I said, “I’ll say this much for the KPF. They move fast. On one of the ops I was on, we went all the way to Quetta.”
Greer only continued to shake his head, seemingly puzzled.
I asked Hammond, “How does someone qualify to become a soldier in the Afghan Army?”
“The truth is,” he replied, “almost any male can become a soldier. The bar in this country isn’t high.”
“There must be some qualifications you have to meet.”
Stan said, “Basically only negative. For instance, you’re not supposed to be a drug addict, but there are a lot of addicts in the Army. There’s not anyone around who cares enough to enforce the rules.”
“You’re not supposed to have a criminal record,” Undersecretary Greer said. “That’s critical.” Pulling on his jacket, he smiled. “Even I know that.” He waved and headed for the door. “See you, guys.”
Stan shook his head. “But who keeps records in this country? That’s one reason it’s so hard to investigate over here.”
Hammond said, “I can answer a lot of your questions, Alex. I have the files, and my office is right across the way.”
Standing up, Hammond and I told Stan good-bye. Stan didn’t appear unhappy to see us leaving. It wasn’t even 1000 hours, but I had an idea he might be helping himself to one of the bottles of Weihenstephan beer that I noticed in his office refrigerator. Or maybe even to a shot from the bottle of vodka I figured he had stashed in a desk drawer.
CHAPTER 6
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 2, 2013
“HERE’S THE ENTIRE file, Alex. Everything we could gather.” Hammond and I were in his office in a wooden building two minutes away from Stan’s CID office. After turning on an electric heater, Hammond bustled around, opening his file cabinet and desk drawers and rummaging through papers stacked on a table beneath the window.
He dropped folders on the desk one after the other. “Let’s start with Nolda’s basic records, his 201 file, you might say.” He reached for a sheet of paper, ran his hand across it to smooth it out. “Here is what he started with, the volunteer form. This indicates his desire to become a soldier. Also a couple of his reasons. He says he wants to defend his village. The usual baloney. As you can see, all this stuff’s been translated. Haji helped with that.”
The volunteer form was creased and ink blots were all over, a real mess. I shook my head at the sloppiness. The Afghan military ain’t the American military, where the emphasis is very much on spit and polish, and the assumption is, if you’re a squared-away soldier, you’ll be a good soldier. Just another reminder that the differences between the countries begin with the fundamentals.
At that moment there was a gentle tap at the door. When Hammond opened it, I saw Captain Leslie Corley. Behind her, I could see falling snow. She said, “Bad weather. There won’t be any helicopters flying to Bagram for the next couple of hours.” When Hammond motioned her inside, she stamped her feet and said, “I hope I’m not interrupting. Major Jones said—”
I stood up. “Hammond’s filling me in on Nolda’s background.”
“You’re welcome to join us, ma’am,” Hammond said, pulling up a chair and pointing to the coat rack.
With Captain Corley alongside me, I picked up three photographs. “Are these him?” I took a long look, trying to read the countenance of Pete’s killer.
“Yeah, every recruit has to submit pictures of himself.”
Nolda had a typical Afghan expression, maybe a bit resigned, but many Afghans come across that way. He had dark curly hair, heavy eyebrows, a mustache over his thin lips. He didn’t appear angry, but he didn’t seem happy either. All in all, he was hard to read.
As Corley and I listened, Hammond explained. “You can see the Army wanted basic information—who his parents were, where he was born. There are no records to back up what he says. Mosques don’t keep track of births and marriages the way our churches do back home. These stamps indicate someone checked out what he claimed and found it to be accurate.”
“How carefully do they check out these statements?” Corley asked.
Sitting next to her, I saw she had dark liquid eyes and angular features that reminded me of a long-ago girlfriend named Madeleine. If Captain Corley was anything like Madeleine, she had substantial breasts, a slim and attractive figure. As Hammond said, she did resemble Audrey Hepburn, except for her expression, which was totally businesslike. As I made an effort to refocus on what Hammond was saying, I couldn’t help recalling how Madeleine enjoyed moving around in her bedroom while scantily dressed.
“I think I know the answer to that question,” I said. “Not too carefully.”
Hammond shook his head and shrugged. “I would say it varies. Naturally, in this country everyone can be bribed. But when no one offers them money, they’ll often do their jobs right. Here are his fingerprints. Here’s another form. Some elders from his village commenting on his character. He didn’t seem to have any problem getting people to put in a good word for him.” Hammond paused. “That, I would say, is in his favor. When I was in his village, I got the impression most people liked him.”
“How about these other forms?” Corley pointed at some official-looking documents.
“These describe his military service, ma’am. He was out in the west, and he seems to have been a good soldier. There’s even a report in here from one of our trainers attesting that he carried out orders, never caused problems. He was involved in a couple of firefights, did a good job of shooting up the Talibs. All in all, not a bad guy, it would seem.”
“No reason to suspect him, in other words.” I was thinking of Wanda’s point that we should be able to figure out in advance who the green-on-blue killers would be.
“None at all,” Hammond said.
I opened a manila folder filled with paper. On the cover was a label: “For Official Use Only.” Beneath the label was a stamp: “Law Enforcement Sensitive.”
“This is all our investigation,” Hammond explained. “That’s Fred Markham’s Investigation Report. Fred was the agent who handled the investigation and did most of the local interviewing. But he’s gone, left earlier this week for the States.” When I went through the stack, I found a sketch of the murder scene and photographs of Pete lying on the floor in a pool of blood. It wasn’t necessary to comment. I pushed the pile to Corley, who began going through it.
Hammond continued, “This packet here are the interviews. Fred did some, and I did some.” When I asked which might be worth following up on, Hammond said, “I talked with Captain Page. They worked together in the Oversight and Accountability office. When we spoke, it was right after it happened, like the next day. To be honest, I don’t think he was telling me everything.” I nodded, recalling Stan saying he hadn’t gotten much out of Page either.
Hammond said, “You can talk with him. His office is in ISAF Headquarters.”
“We talked with people,” Hammond said, “but got pretty much the same answer from everyone. We figure Pete was killed shortly after noon. Most people were on their lunch breaks. What I should also mention, the murder took place on a Wednesday. Nolda had been on leave for the week before, and this was his first day back.”
Corley said, “What time did he come into work on that day?”
“The Headquarters guards signed him in at . . . let’s see . . . at 0950 hours. He was late.”
I checked the sign-in log. “That means he was in the office for much of the morning.” When Hammond nodded, I said, “And we assume he killed Pete and then walked out of the building.”
“That’s the way it must have happened,” Hammond said. “At that time Colonel Hansen was alone in his office. Nolda had the desk on the far side of the room.” Hammond pointed to one of the photos, which showed how Pete’s office was laid out. “After committing the murder, he left the building. It was a while before anyone knew Pete was dead.”
As I flipped through the interviews, one comment caught my eye. It was from Captain Page. I remembered Stan saying Page and Pete worked in the same office and used to talk from time to time. “Here’s a guy who says Pete seemed to be growing more despondent by the day. What would cause him to be despondent?”
“Did he have personal problems?” Corley asked.
“Who knows?” Hammond said. “He had a tough job with a lot of pressure, that much I know.”
I made a note to interview Page.
“You also spoke to this Afghan officer? Nolda’s company commander?”
Hammond shrugged. “Over at Black Horse. I didn’t get much out of him.”
“Okay.” I knew Black Horse was one of the ANA training installations in Kabul. “Does he speak English?”
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