by Fritz Galt
Tureki nodded for her to go on.
“What’s more, with India’s latest hydrogen bomb test, Pakistan’s existing nuclear deterrence is obsolete. And do you know who gave India the technology for the new bomb? You guessed it. The United States is pissed off at the Islamic terrorists running amok in the region, and America virtually handed India the bomb. So if Pakistan intends to get anywhere with its special projects such as regaining Kashmir and supporting your regime, they’ll have to play up to the Americans big time. And there are a number of ways Pakistan can improve its relations with America. Number One is settling on Kashmir and Number Two is withdrawing military support for your regime. Islamabad has already declared war on the terrorists you support. And can you guess the first thing we’ll tell Pakistan? You’ve got it. We’ll tell ’em that you’re holding the American ambassador hostage. Am I making myself clear?”
Tureki nodded. He talked into the phone briefly, then hung up. “Our supreme leader Mullah Mohammad Omar just heard what you were saying.”
Damn. She had just revealed the New Initiative to the Taliban. The U.S. had befriended India in order to get Pakistan to relinquish its ties with global Islamist militant groups and to stop its aggressive military exploits in Kashmir and Afghanistan.
“You can pick up your ambassador now. We’re pulling the plug on bin Laden’s satellite phone and attaching troops to monitor his movements. He’s not going to start a World War Three from here.”
They walked down the steps.
“How about the eight other hostages?”
Tureki squinted at the sky. “One step at a time. You have your ambassador and we’re restricting bin Laden. We won’t release the eight Christian missionaries until we have absolute assurance that America won’t send troops into Afghanistan.”
The chief justice and Yusaf were already in the car.
Natalie paused. “You Taliban sure act tough, but you don’t go overboard.”
“We must take larger questions into consideration,” Commander Tureki said. “It’s a hard one for the world to understand.”
“I suppose you do have your daughter’s interest at heart,” she said.
He held the door for her. “You don’t know how lucky your daughter is to be free of all of this.”
Natalie took her seat and looked up into his darkened face in the harsh sunlight. “She’s not free, sir. She’s lying in a coma from the new malaria.”
The door swung out of the commander’s grasp and clicked loosely in place.
Natalie gave it a second try and slammed it tight.
“Where to now, ma’am?” Yusaf asked.
“Take me to Demazang Prison. Your Supreme Leader has just released Ambassador Ford.”
Yusaf’s eyes widened, and he swallowed hard. His voice sounded somewhat hurt as he translated her instructions to the driver.
“Take your hand off me,” Ambassador Ford ordered the prison guard.
A fist shoved him by the suit coat out the gate into the chilly sunlight.
Cries for help in English and German, both male and female, resounded down the damp, whitewashed corridors of the prison.
The iron door clanged shut behind him, muffling the cries.
“Whew,” he said. “That was some experience. That’ll take up an entire chapter in my next autobiography.”
“Not anything I’d ever read,” Natalie said, walking with him back to the car.
Ambassador Ford squinted at her in annoyance. “Who are you? You’re not on my staff. Where are they?”
“Back in Pakistan.”
“Damn it. Why did they leave me here?”
“I think it’s called abduction, sir. You were abducted by the Taliban, and they sent your staff home.”
“How did you get in here?”
“I’m here to negotiate your release.”
“Okay. Now that I’m free, I’ve been rehearsing a few choice words for that son-of-a-bitch who put me behind bars.”
“No. Under the circumstances, I think it would be prudent to get your ass out of here while you can.”
Yusaf held the door open for them and then jumped in next to the driver.
“There he is,” Ford shouted at the passenger squeezed in beside Natalie. “He sentenced me to prison.”
“To the airport,” Natalie ordered, trying to keep the ambassador’s hands off the chief justice.
“Have it your way,” Ford said. “To the airport.”
They rode in silence for several minutes, Ford clearly trying to resolve some confusion in his mind. At last he said, “Why did the Taliban abduct me?”
“I guess because you’re a big wig.”
“But, what did they want me for?”
She glanced at the chief justice. “I don’t know, and I didn’t ask.”
He shifted in his seat to study her. “Who are you anyway?”
“Nobody you’d know.”
He shifted back and muttered to his window. “Well, thank you anyway.”
“Now maybe you can help me.”
“Sure. Anything.”
She had to find out more information about the missing malaria scientist, Rajiv Khan, from the CDC in Atlanta. “I want you to get me into the U.S.”
He shifted back to take her in more fully. “Don’t you have an American passport?”
“Let’s just say it’s not that simple.” She didn’t bother to explain that if the INS knew that she had come from India, which was currently under quarantine, they would turn her back at the border.
“You could enter the country as my guest under UN protection.”
“That’ll work.”
He rested a hand on her knee and leaned forward to whisper, “You’re not some sort of Ocalan figure, are you?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I don’t like what happened when the Greek ambassador smuggled him into Nairobi. When Turkey caught wind of that, Kenya booted the ambassador out and the Greek government fired him. Personally, I like my job.”
“I’ll bet you do, Mr. Ambassador.”
“You’re not a Peace Corp volunteer, are you?”
“No.”
“If you don’t mind my asking you this, how did you get me released?”
“Believe me, you don’t want to know.” She removed his hand from her knee.
“Why are you so irritable? You should be reveling in your victory over these bastards.”
“Precisely because for the past two days while I’ve been jumping through hoops to save your ass, the world has completely disintegrated.”
With a hushed whisper, she filled him in on news of the coups around the Indian Ocean and the revelation by the WHO of a fatal malaria epidemic sweeping India.
Each sunbaked stone she and the ambassador passed meant they were closer to freedom. But the future also filled her with dread.
The airport terminal finally came into view. It might be her portal out of Afghanistan, but she had to mentally prepare to leave. She was leaving Afghanistan for the United States of America.
She would be leaving the familiar for the unknown.
“Mick. Great to see you,” Lou Potts said, approaching Mick from behind his consul general’s desk.
“Cut the crap, Lou,” Mick said, ignoring the proffered hand. Instead, he took a seat.
“Well, Mick, you were right after all,” Lou conceded. “The Indians never did set off a hydrogen bomb. They didn’t set off a bomb at all.”
“That’s water under the bridge.”
“You could get your job back.”
“I am back and I’m not asking for pay. I want to find a certain Indian-American biologist who disappeared somewhere in India several months ago.”
“Ah ha. You think this person holds the key to the malaria problem?”
“Exactly. Now, I’m told some congressman’s daughter was abducted by the same group, the Temple of the Highest Peace.”
Lou’s thin lips held back a smile. “Natalie told you?”
“Yeah, she did.”
“Good, good. That’s good.”
“What’s good? That it was Natalie who told me or that we’re piecing together the puzzle?”
“Piecing together the puzzle. That’s good, Mick. I’ll give you the details on Congressman Butler.”
“Shoot.” Mick extended his legs, placed his sandals on the consul general’s desk and folded his hands behind his head.
Lou was a real maverick who ran his own show irrespective of edicts from Delhi. He told how he guided the congressman through the local police inspector’s interrogation, and he described the consulate’s efforts to aid doctors studying the new form of malaria.
Lou pointed at Mick directly. “I have no problem assigning you to deal personally with the congressman, if you think that will help us locate his daughter.”
“Not to mention locate the malaria researcher.”
“Whatever. However, you must understand,” Lou said somewhat nervously. “as an ex-government employee, you do not have U.S. Government sanction for your actions.”
“And exactly what does that mean?”
“Mick, you’re on your own.”
Chapter 23
The evening shift at Bombay’s Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) headquarters squatted along the walls of an inner hallway. Some read the afternoon edition of the local newspaper Mid Day, while others chewed betel nut, sang tunes softly, or gabbed.
At dusk the crickets ceased chirping.
Precisely at midnight, a small rat strolled along the baseboard toward the dim end of the hall just as a servant entered bearing a silver platter of tea. Without hesitation, the rat continued through the door before it swung shut. The servant poured tea for the men.
Overhead, a dim light bulb hung tangled in a dusty chandelier. The thin yellow glow barely reached the end office door where a burnished brass plaque read: Bureau Chief P.B. Patil.
An hour past midnight, a telephone rang inside the chief’s office, and the men heard him respond.
Moments later, Chief Patil rushed out and wedged his toes into flip-flops. A young doorman jumped to his feet and held the door open.
“We’ve got a positive ID at the airport,” Chief Patil announced.
Investigator Sanjay Kader stood and wheeled about, pushing open the door to his own office. He pressed a light switch on the wall and weak rays revealed a rusty fan, a metal table, a chair and a filing cabinet.
Chief Patil followed him into the room. “Pull the file on Wassim Shaikh,” he ordered
Sanjay sat behind his desk and said to a clerk standing at the doorway, “Get the file on Wassim Shaikh.”
The clerk padded in on bare feet, found the “S” drawer and pulled out a file. He opened the folder and spread it on the desk for Sanjay.
Sanjay double-checked the name, closed the folder and handed it to his chief. “Here you go, sir. One Wassim Shaikh.”
“Come with me,” Chief Patil ordered, and the two men returned to his office where this time the doorman was already holding the door open.
“I believe we missed him,” Chief Patil growled. “The flight’s already left for Pakistan.”
Sanjay nodded. Even with a positive ID at the airport, not apprehending a suspect in time wasn’t uncommon. The role of immigration officials was to key in the names, nationalities and passport numbers of passengers departing India. If the computer found a match against a database of known criminals or suspects, the official would detain the passenger and alert the CBI.
More often than not, the computer system was down and the officials merely wrote down the information. In such cases, a clerk from the immigration office would stop by each official’s booth on the hour and take the handwritten lists back to another office where he or she would manually cross check names and passport numbers against a printed list.
Long after a suspect’s flight had left, they might discover a match.
“Let’s alert the authorities in Pakistan,” Sanjay urged.
Chief Patil was already one step ahead of him. He had swung behind his desk and sat waiting for the phone to be dialed for him.
Sanjay punched in a long distance number and presently heard a cheery female voice.
“Pakistan Immigration Service.”
“This is Chief P.B. Patil’s office in Bombay, India. We have a passenger alert. The chief would like to speak to Colonel Javed Sayed.”
“One second, please. Speak here.”
Sanjay handed the phone to his chief.
“Good evening, Javed,” Chief Patil said. “It seems we’ve got a suspect on Pakistan International Airways Flight 275 to Islamabad via Karachi. He’s due to land in Islamabad in an hour’s time.”
“Is he your suspect or ours?”
“He’s on our list,” Chief Patil said. “Unfortunately the computer check must have been down and we let him through.”
“Hold up a minute.”
Chief Patil waited patiently, tapping a pen against a barren desk for several minutes. It was a formality to keep the enemy waiting before responding to a request. He did the same to the Paks when they phoned him.
“Okay, I’m back,” Colonel Sayed said. “Give me his name.”
Chief Patil snapped his fingers and Sanjay laid the file before him.
“His name is Wassim Shaikh and he’s traveling on an Indian passport.” He read off the passport number and a description of the man. Six feet tall, black beard, wheatish skin.
“Fine. Now what’s his crime?”
“He is wanted for crimes against the State. Our record shows that he has planted several bombs in Kashmir.”
“That’s it?” Colonel Sayed said impatiently.
“No, there’s more. Our file has a note from the U.S. Embassy in New Delhi. This man’s also wanted in America on suspicion of terrorist activities.”
“What’s his ticket destination?”
“Riyadh.”
“Hold up a minute.”
Another formality. Kashmir was disputed territory, and many extremists were actually funded by the Pakistani government through private channels. Normally the pause would take longer, cooperation would be slightly more difficult to obtain. Except that the U.S. was involved.
Colonel Sayed came back within a minute.
“Okay. I’ll alert the American Embassy here and find out what they want to do with him.”
“You’ve got to apprehend him. We want him back. We have some questions to put to him.”
“I understand that, but we’ve got the Americans to consider, too.”
“You just nab him at the airport, and we’ll both interrogate him. Then we’ll decide where to extradite him.”
“That’s what I’m trying to avoid,” Colonel Javed Sayed said. “You know what happened when we extradited the character who sprayed CIA employees with semi-automatic weapon fire in Langley. We had public uprisings here that I don’t care to repeat.”
“Okay. Okay. Let the Saudis nab him in Riyadh. Our officers there will interview him in due course.”
“I’m glad you’re so reasonable,” Colonel Sayed said.
The phone clicked dead.
Chief Patil handed the file back to Sanjay, who handed it back to the clerk.
“How should I file this, sir?” the clerk asked.
“Put it on my ‘Follow-up’ stack,” Sanjay said, as the two men left the chief’s office.
Chief Patil nodded to his doorman who dutifully closed the door.
Sanjay squatted in the hallway outside his office and resumed reading the newspaper.
Twilight seemed to last forever in the Southern Hemisphere. It was mid summer in Mauritius.
Alec arrived at the Hotel Le Saint Jacques and marveled at the Christmas decorations already in place despite the extraordinary political times facing the island.
With a felt-tipped marker, a blonde girl wearing cut-off jeans wrote welcome signs in French and German. The staff scrubbed tables brought in from storage for the massive touris
t onslaught expected that holiday season. A delivery truck waited just off the open-air lobby with an enormous freshly cut Christmas tree.
“Welcome, sir,” a smartly dressed receptionist with a neat little moustache said.
Alec cleared his throat. “I need the room number of a Miss Camille Dinad.”
“I can’t give out that information, sir. If you’d like to have a seat, I can ring her up.”
“Tell her I’ll be waiting in the lobby.”
“And your good name, sir?”
“Pierce. Alec Pierce.”
He strolled around the breezy, well-lit lobby. Ethnic Indian workmen carried the Christmas tree past him and down stairs to the dark outdoors. The hotel was designed to be a small village, with paths leading to private cottages that faced the sea. Behind the cottages sat an artificial village square with restaurants, cafés and boutiques set around an illuminated swimming pool.
Then he spotted Camille. She was just mounting the stairs from the cottages. She stood back to let the Christmas tree past and then climbed the last remaining stairs. She wore a one-piece strapless dress that barely covered her shapely derriere.
“The new Islamic government is going to celebrate Christmas and allow miniskirts?”
“We’re not trying to anger the population,” she said.
“Or scare tourists away,” he added. “You don’t seriously think any charter group will fly here after the coup.”
“Why not? It’s the same country it has always been.”
“With a somewhat sinister government.”
They descended to the mock village square. Couples were strolling under the stars.