Borrowed Time u-11

by Hugh Miller

  ‘Yeah. Well.’ Mike tasted his coffee and shrugged.

  Lenny grinned. He was short, wiry, with big grey eyes behind Armani steel-framed glasses. His hair, exposed for most of each year to tropical and subtropical sun, was lighter on top than at the sides.

  ‘One question before we hit business,’ he said. ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Truly? Where it matters?’

  ‘Truly. I miss my wife and my son every day of my life. They are my last thought before I sleep, always. But that’s as it should be. I’m OK. I function, I can entertain hope, and I’ve a strong impulse to survive.’

  ‘Even though you’re in a suicidal occupation.’

  ‘Even though.’

  ‘Good. I needed to know that.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Still divorced. Still drinking. Still hoping for a change, and still working too hard to do anything but go with the current.’ Lenny slapped the table gently. ‘To business. How can I help you?’

  ‘I have to tell you a story first,’ Mike said. ‘I’ll try and keep it interesting. It’s about a bully-boy called Paul Seaton. You remember in 1984, when the US began to help the mujahedin to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan? One of the key figures in that operation was Paul Seaton, a New Yorker from the Lower East Side. A very, very tough character. He was dropped into Kandahar to train Afghan rebels in the use of advanced weapons.’

  ‘I’ve a fuzzy recollection,’ Lenny said, flapping his fingers at the side of his head. ‘Was there a CIA connection somewhere?’

  ‘I’ll get to that. Paul Seaton was a hard instructor, even by mujahedin standards. To graduate from the first stage of his combat course you had to shoot down a Russian helicopter with a ground-to-air Stinger missile. If the pilot survived, you had to kill him with your bare hands.’

  ‘I heard about that. The Reagan administration sat on the details, but George Bush’s boys finally blew the whistle about what went on out there in the name of democracy.’

  ‘Seaton was unquestionably a talent,’ Mike said. ‘He had a genius for subversion, but he had never been stable. In 1986 he was known to be turning to Islam, and in 1987 he went native. He vanished into the hills with his own murderous little group of fundamentalists. At that time he declared he was a sworn enemy of the government of Afghanistan and the mujahedin movement. And that was the last official news of him.’

  Mike paused to take a mouthful of coffee.

  ‘Two years ago, however, on a satellite picture taken on a routine pass over Amritsar in northern India, somebody looking a lot like Paul Seaton showed up at the head of a drug convoy travelling through the hills north of the city.’

  ‘Well, well.’ Lenny was suddenly more alert. He pushed his spectacles along his nose. ‘For a long time our people in India and Pakistan have been catching rumours about an American who runs drug convoys. His main route, allegedly, is along the border with Pakistan and Kashmir, then down the western territories of India as far as Firozpur in the Punjab. Until now, I was inclined to dismiss the stories as myth.’

  ‘Seaton’s real, no mistake. And I’ve studied the satellite picture enough times to be sure it’s him leading the horse convoy.’

  ‘So,’ Lenny said, ‘apart from a professional curiosity about criminal developments, what’s your special interest in Seaton?’

  Mike made an effort to look blank. ‘It’s nothing I’d call special.’

  ‘Aw, come on …’ Lenny was openly sceptical. ‘I know you, remember? I know your different kinds of intensity. And I could do a monograph on your grades of determination. Tell me straight — are you harbouring one of those fashionable private agendas? Or a plain old personal grudge?’

  ‘I might be. Let’s just say Paul Seaton is owed a comeuppance. It’s been owed a long time, but certain recent events mean there’s an outside chance I can maybe do something about it.’

  ‘Even up the score?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘What do you want me to do?’

  ‘Find out all you can about Seaton. If he’s in the drug trade, you’re the man to find out more.’

  ‘I’ll do what I can. Leave it with me.’ Lenny looked at his watch. ‘Let’s have some more coffee. Then we can swap gossip until it’s time for me to go back and terrorize another dope courier.’

  * * *

  UNACO occupied an entire floor of the Secretariat building on the UN’s East River site. Two hundred and sixty employees, eighty of them specialists, handled the daily administration of the world’s most efficient crime-fighting body. Thirty prime-rated field agents, recruited from international police and intelligence agencies, formed the core of the ten Strike Forces, and each Strike Force had its own suite of rooms within the network of UNACO departments. On his return from Seattle, Mike went directly to Strike Force Three’s ‘withdrawing rooms’, as Philpott called them.

  To get there he had to pass through General Communications, a big, buzzing room filled with computers, telex machines, printers and satellite TV receivers. The department was staffed by twenty multilingual operators and twenty-three communications technologists, all of them women.

  As Mike passed through, nodding and smiling from one desk to another, he saw what he was used to seeing: polite curiosity behind the warm smiles, a subtle prying as one individual after another looked for signs of pain still burning in him.

  Behind the mahogany door with TF3 lettered on it, Mike sat down at one of the computers. He took a Zip disk from his shirt pocket and inserted it into the drive slot. A copy of Reverend Alex Young’s letter came up on the screen. Mike read it again, picturing the scenario, trying to view it from the standpoint of a priest dedicated to the nurture of a place and its people:

  I risk repeating myself, Reverend Young wrote, when I say the Vale of Kashmir is an area of exceptional beauty, both physical and ethereal, a centre of harmony and growth, and it breaks my heart to foresee what the signs make plain — this wonderful place being sundered and ultimately destroyed by the incursions of greed, corruption, and brute violence.

  Mike sat back. He pictured Paul Seaton somewhere near the centre of that avarice and graft and brutality. The picture was easy to conjure.

  He took out the Zip disk and tapped a command key marked SECURE CONFERENCING. A box appeared onscreen and invited him to enter a telephone number; simultaneously a tiny red light mounted on the camera atop the screen lit up.

  Mike entered the number of CIA Records at Langley, Virginia. After a moment a screen announcement told him he was connected; who did he wish to talk to? Mike entered the name Joshua Flynn. A pause, then a white square appeared onscreen, which turned quickly to a live colour picture of a thin-faced, exceptionally gloomy-looking man. The dolour vanished and he smiled widely as two-way visual contact was established.

  ‘Mike!’ The voice was alarmingly realistic over the computer’s sound system. ‘Where have you been? It’s so long since we spoke, I thought you must have defected.’

  ‘There’s no place left to run, Josh. How’re you doing?’

  ‘In spite of the wishes of my contemporaries, I must say I’ve thrived.’ Flynn waved an arm at the shelves and machinery ranged behind him. ‘I’m in charge these days. I’m one of only three men at Langley with all-level access to the files. If you forget how many lumps of sugar you take in your coffee, give me a call, we’ll have a record of it here somewhere.’

  ‘I’m chasing a favour, Josh.’

  ‘I can’t imagine any other reason why you’d call.’

  ‘A man by the name of Paul Seaton. He was —’

  ‘An employee of this agency,’ Josh cut in. ‘I knew him reasonably well, for a time. What do you need to know?’

  ‘Background stuff, leading up to the time he took off and became a bandit.’

  ‘You on to him for something?’

  ‘I could be, with luck. Just in case the luck holds, I’d like to know as much about him as I can.’

&nbs
p; ‘I could tell you most of it from memory,’ Flynn said, ‘but let’s be professional about this, right? I’ll call up the file. One second, Mike.’

  It took four seconds. Flynn studied the printout, nodding.

  ‘OK. A summary of the known career of Paul Elliot Seaton, who will now be forty-three years old.’ Flynn put down the summary and looked directly out of the screen at Mike. ‘From the time Seaton left college he put himself at the disposal of people with power, the kind of power he knew he could never generate himself. He was open about his technique — he once told me his motto for getting on in life was “Find the engine you need and hitch a ride”. Anyway, Paul was preeminently physical, he wasn’t hampered by a conscience. He worked as errand-boy and muscle for several small and medium-sized politicians until an opportunity came along to join the CIA.’

  ‘Who gave him the opportunity?’

  ‘It was a recommendation from a grateful relative of our first director, Allen Welsh Dulles.’

  ‘He did somebody a big muscular favour.’

  ‘I’d guess so,’ Flynn said. ‘The job he got here carried no guarantee or likelihood of promotion, but Paul Seaton got to do harm, and he got to carry a prestigious ID that showed he was a legitimate employee of the Agency. For three years he was a happy young man. Then in 1977 Jimmy Carter arrived, and he directed a fresh administration to put tight controls on the clandestine activities of the CIA. A month later Paul Seaton was out of a job.’

  ‘How did he get involved with the mujahedin initiative in Afghanistan?’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t a lot more than a dogsbody around here,’ Flynn said, ‘but one or two people at the Pentagon kept records of those boys from Langley who’d distinguished themselves in situations calling for, quote, effective physical action, unquote. Seaton had drawn attention to himself for some of the things he got up to in Cuba and Chile, and so, within a month of getting his can kicked out of the CIA, the former gofer-bodyguard-enforcer-saboteur had himself a new job with the military.’

  ‘Did you see him at that time?’

  ‘Once. While he was doing his three-month training at a government facility in the Ozarks. I went there with a pair of our covert operations people for a briefing on Project Kandahar, as they called it. I spoke to Seaton for a couple of minutes. He was full of himself, full of the mission ahead. He was mustard-keen to get over there and start teaching bodily assault and slaughter.’

  ‘He was the man for the job,’ Mike said, then quickly added, ‘or so I gather.’

  ‘Yeah. When I asked the fellow in charge just what it was that Seaton and the others were training to do, he said, “They’re gonna teach one group of Neanderthals how to exterminate another group of Neanderthals, in the interest of maintaining a balance of power consonant with the needs and purposes of the United States.”’

  ‘But Seaton didn’t shape up the way they imagined he would, right?’

  ‘He’d been in Afghanistan only three or four months,’ Flynn said, ‘when he discovered an inborn leaning to fanaticism. He also found he had an aptitude for the life of a brigand. After the end of his tenth month in Kandahar, he severed all contact with the military.’

  ‘And what do you know about his present activities?’

  ‘Nothing. There have been rumours he’s into drug running, hill banditry, kidnapping, all the usual stuff villains get up to in the stretch of territory from Kabul to Chittagong. Nothing has ever been substantiated, and frankly he doesn’t fall within our sphere of interest.’

  ‘Well, you’ve been a help, Josh. I owe you one.’

  ‘Now I’m boss I can let you run it up to three you owe me. Then you have to pay it off in wine. Let me know if you get anything new on Seaton.’

  Mike promised he would. He closed the conference connection. At the top of the notebook page he had filled while Flynn was talking he scribbled P. Seaton — background.

  Soon, he thought, pocketing the notebook. Soon, you heap of garbage.

  3

  The following morning at 9:15 a message went out to all personnel of Task Force Three to attend a meeting in UNACO’s briefing room. Mike Graham was in a diner with coffee and the Washington Post when the pager vibrated against his chest. C.W. Whitlock got the message as he sat in his car in a street off Times Square, talking to a private detective he occasionally employed. Sabrina Carver heard the buzz of the pager where she had left it, resting on the ledge above her bathroom washbasin. She abruptly ended her telephone conversation with her mother, ran to the bathroom and read the terse message.

  ‘Bang goes the gym,’ she said, shutting off the last word, realizing she had started to talk to herself again. She had always believed the habit was harmless enough when she was at home, but lately she worried that it could spread to other places, or go really malignant and turn into a compulsion. She feared ending up like people she sometimes saw on the street and in stores, in deep conversation with themselves, detached and strange.

  Bang went the gym, anyway. She had planned to go there at ten, do an hour, come back, shower, spend plenty of time getting dressed and made up, then have a long gossipy lunch with a school friend who was in town.

  She could always go to the gym in the afternoon or the evening, so it was no disruption of the day, except that on a day when she was lunching out she liked to visit the gym in the morning, for then it felt like less of a misdemeanour to have dessert with her meal.

  She got ready quickly and checked herself in the mirror. The dark gold Joseph Janard jersey suit was an extravagance she had been saving for the spring; it was still only February, a grey New York day, but she felt sunny enough to carry it. Her mother, born and raised in Paris, had told her never to forget that because she was blonde, relatively tall, and had a lot of French in her DNA, she could get away with clothes that would make most other New York women look downright silly.

  A Cartier watch and a light brown Elégance wool coat across her shoulders completed the ensemble. She slipped her SIG P220 pistol into her purse and left for the UN.

  As she came out of the elevator opposite the UNACO main entrance she saw Mike Graham ahead of her. She hurried and caught up.

  ‘What’s the meeting about?’

  ‘No idea,’ he told her. ‘But I hope it isn’t something that needs all of us.’

  Sabrina waited for more, but that was all he said.

  When they stepped into the briefing room Philpott and C.W. Whitlock were already there. Philpott was by the big ceiling-to-floor window that overlooked the East River. He was muttering testily to his mobile phone. Whitlock leaned patiently against the shiny panelled wall, arms folded.

  “Morning, kids,’ he muttered.

  Whitlock was the most versatile of all the UNACO agents, and the one most readily consulted by Philpott. He was a graduate of Oxford and a one-time officer in the Kenya Intelligence Corps. Philpott had personally recruited him into UNACO. They were often to be found together, although their closeness created no jealousy. Everybody knew Philpott was too much of a loner to have favourites.

  ‘You look stunning, Sabrina,’ Whitlock observed as she hung up her coat.

  ‘That’s what I was aiming for. I’m going straight to lunch after the meeting.’

  ‘You’re kind of overdressed for McDonald’s,’ Mike said. He sat down at the long central table and stared pointedly at Philpott, who was trying to terminate his call.

  ‘We’re going to the Arcadia,’ Sabrina said, sliding into the chair opposite Mike. ‘Special occasion. Me and Tania, an old friend from school. The last time we met she was very pretty, but I haven’t seen her in ten years so I have to assume the worst — she could be stunning. The haute couture is my best defence.’

  Philpott ended the phone call and slammed the mobile down on the table. ‘That was the Secretary General’s office,’ he said. ‘UNACO is to be the subject of a techniques-and-procedures review. I resisted, but it would seem that somebody in Policy Control has a persuasive turn of argument — either
that, or they’re blackmailing one of the under secretaries.’

  ‘They want to change the way we do things?’ Mike said.

  ‘At the administrative level,’ Philpott nodded. ‘It’s aimed at me. It’s personal. Just because I won’t play the good doggie every time Secretary Crane or one of his lesser vermin set foot in the place. However.’

  Philpott sat down at the end of the table and opened his leather document case. ‘I want to brief you on the ground tactics and preliminary arrangements for an upcoming assignment.’

  Mike raised his hand. ‘If I might say something, sir, before you start.’

  Philpott sighed. ‘Hurry up, then.’

  ‘I want to take a couple of weeks of my outstanding leave to nose around the situation in the Vale of Kashmir. You know, the troubles the clergyman wrote to the Security Council about.’

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’

  Mike adjusted his body language to look candid and open. ‘I thought that if a small fuse were stepped on now, it would prevent major explosions later.’

  ‘No,’ Philpott said. ‘I can’t agree. Out there, stepping on a small fuse could mean simultaneously putting your foot on a land mine. It’s not a place for one-man campaigns.’

  Mike stared at Philpott for a long moment. ‘I’m disappointed you feel that way.’

  ‘No need to be,’ Philpott said. ‘There is time we can borrow.’

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘The ballistics-update course that you and the other members of Task Force Three should be attending from Tuesday next — it’s been put back two weeks.’

  Mike looked at Whitlock, who was now sitting beside him. He looked back at Philpott. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘As I promised I would, I gave extended consideration to Reverend Young’s plea. I also spoke to Sufi Gopal in our Delhi office. He spoke without the clergyman’s passion, but his calm words were a good deal more chilling. I’ve decided there is enough criminal rumbling in Kashmir to justify organized UNACO intrusion.’

  Mike stared. ‘Really?’

  ‘It’s what I called the three of you here to discuss. It’s a genuinely worrying picture. There is escalating terrorism, there is drug running, there is the calculated disruption of peaceful development, and there’s the possibility that even a small increase in friction could spark off fighting that would involve Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and China.’