by Gary Haynes
Tom ran his hand through his close-cropped hair and groaned, a deep sense of personal failure and shame engulfing him.
Crane stood up and put his hand on Tom’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, Tom.”
Tom knew that the chances of the president agreeing to the release of those who’d attempted the assassination of his Pakistani counterpart and the payment of the ransom were non-existent. The Leopards had killed thirty innocent men, woman and children in the attack, simply because the Pakistani leader had escaped unscathed. They’d gone on a killing spree. Besides, her kidnappers hadn’t said that they would release her, just that they wouldn’t kill her within the three-day timeframe.
But then his training kicked in and he glanced at his wristwatch. The clock had started ticking at 19:40 Pakistan time.
He got up and walked to the cockpit, asked for a satphone. He’d spoken with Vice Admiral Theodore Birch, the head of DS and an Assistant Secretary of State, a couple of times already. After a few minutes, Tom was speaking with him again. He asked him if there was anything their people in the office of counterterrorism division could do. Anything at all. But he knew what the answer would be before it came.
He rubbed his temples with his thumbs and forefingers, his mind racing in a hundred different directions, trying to find a way to get a lead, anything other than accepting the status quo. He’d seen the ligature marks on her wrists and ankles, and had watched her eyes as the recorded voice had fallen silent. It was clear to him that she hadn’t been aware of her fate up until then. He wondered what kind of impact that had on a person’s mind, even one as strong and resourceful as the secretary’s.
Crane came up to him. “The Pakistani fighters are closing in. We’re outta here now.”
27.
Crane was slumped in an armchair in his small suite back at the Ariana. He wore a dark-blue bathrobe and picked at his fingernails, as if he were still trying to remove the dirt from the fort. The living area was neat but tired-looking, with sickly pea-green walls and furniture that looked as if it had been brought in flat-packed. The light bulbs were of the energy-saving variety, and gave off a jaundiced glow.
“Helluva day, huh? But don’t let the white towels and clean bed sheets fool you, Tom. This is still Kabul, so keep alert. I know at least five analysts who sleep with the light on and cuddle a Smith and Wesson Sigma like a comfort cloth. You gonna take a shower? You smell like a rodent.”
Although he’d removed his dusty jacket and had slipped on a white shirt previously, Tom was still dressed in combat pants and scuffed boots. He hadn’t washed yet. He was anxious for answers. He bent over an oval table and placed down two glasses, with heavy serrated bases. He poured a large whisky for Crane, a smaller one for himself. Crane said that despite sampling almost all of the world’s alcoholic drinks in their natural environments, he loved Scotch above all else. It beat ouzo, schnapps, rum, sake… He rattled off another five national drinks, most of which Tom had never heard of. Ignoring him, Tom walked over to the armchair and handed him his drink.
“How did they disable the GPS sensor under her skin?” he asked.
“You can buy a tracker defence device on the net. A small unit with enough power to jam a signal within a five-metre radius,” Crane replied, almost nonchalantly.
Still standing, Tom took a sip, felt the alcohol warm his throat. “Why would they lead us to the fort? They must have known we would kill the men there.”
“They kill their own by the dozen a day. Internal feuds. One tribal warlord taking another’s land. Think suicide bomber. Think a country where you sell your twelve-year-old daughter for two hundred bucks. Think–”
“I got it, okay.”
“Besides, we just used up all our resources on the proverbial wild-goose chase. I’d say that was kinda smart.”
Tom walked back to the table, put his glass down. Turning, he said, “Is Brigadier Hasni still around?”
“Hasni?”
“I heard about him when I did my spell in counterintelligence.”
“Yeah, he’s still around. Like a bad smell,” Crane said, smiling at his own jibe.
“I guess he knows the answer to my conspiracy theory, as you call it.”
Crane laughed hard, his chest heaving. “And I know for a fact that man has tortured to death over twenty people. He’s a butcher. But in his own way, he’s as passionate about Pakistan as POTUS is about America. Besides, he’s an untouchable, so any little caper you’ve dreamed up won’t be worth a dime.”
“You think,” Tom said, eyeing the older man and nodding.
He had a plan, one that he needed Crane’s help to accomplish, although he’d already decided that it was more of a desire to act, rather than a coherent strategy.
“I don’t feel inclined to score points here, so I’ll just say that if you’re planning on going back to Islamabad, I’ll do my best to dissuade you,” Crane said. “You go back there, you’ll go it alone, and that, I can tell you, is just plain suicide.” He took a gulp of whisky, licked his lips. “Besides, I got a duty to have you arrested by the Marines, you talk like that.”
“I made a promise to Lyric, and I’m not about to renege on it. You’re the only man I know who can help me out. If things go wrong, I won’t mention your name.”
Despite Crane’s scepticism, Tom still believed the ISI were responsible. Even if they hadn’t executed the abduction, there was no way the secretary could’ve been taken if they hadn’t sanctioned it.
“If the ISI know you’re a loner, you’ll say my name. You’ll fucking sing it,” Crane said, scratching the back of his head. “They have these machines that turn your vitals into the size and consistency of plums. Get it?”
Tom walked over to a taupe-coloured sofa opposite Crane, dropped down onto it, said, “Then give me someone who knows the city.”
“You’ll put them in danger, too. I’ve had five assets arrested and imprisoned by the ISI this year already. I’m not inclined to lose any more.”
“So what are we gonna do, huh? Sit on our asses until Lyric’s head is cut off on YouTube? Just gimme a break here.”
Crane eased forward, spread his arms. “And if I don’t?”
“I’ll go back anyways.”
“Don’t you think we are talking to everyone who might know something? Jesus, Tom, we got close to five hundred people on this,” he said, cradling his glass of Scotch as if it were a panacea.
“I just can’t go home and do nothing.”
“You won’t make it. I’m telling you the truth. So just forget it. And if you persist, I will have you restrained.”
“No, you won’t,” Tom said, getting up from the sofa.
He figured Crane was old school, too. He sure as hell wasn’t a stuffed-shirt Ivy League type out to play the game in DC by the time they were thirty-five.
As he got halfway to the door Crane said, “Wait.”
Tom turned. Crane seemed deep in thought. He rubbed the rim of his glass with his forefinger, and looked oddly sad, given that they weren’t exactly tight.
Looking up, he said, “You didn’t even ask the right question.”
“What do you mean?” Tom said.
“Sit down.”
Tom walked back to the sofa and sat back down.
Crane pursed his lips. “You shouldn’t have asked how the GPS sensor under her skin was deactivated. You should have asked how they knew it was there. I told you not to trust anyone. Don’t.”
Tom shuffled uncomfortably on the sofa. He hadn’t asked the right question. But his mind was made up. His eyes locked with Crane’s and, for a second or two, he had a notion that he was going to tell him something extraordinary. But when the man spoke, it was practical.
“Whatcha got in mind anyhow?”
“I could pass for a Pakistani, least at night,” Tom said. “I’m good at finding weak spots in security. Buildings, in particular. I make them strong. But this time I’ll exploit it. You know Hasni has to be implicated in some way. Just
let me check his place out. Then maybe I could plant some of those bugs your techs make, the ones that look like stones or moss. People feel safe in their gardens. They say all kinds of things.”
Tom knew that satellites and drones could pinpoint a man or woman from thousands of miles away, but it still took a bug from relatively close quarters to hear a conversation that wasn’t taking place on a cellphone.
Crane groaned. “How do you know he has a garden?”
“I was busy when you were taking a shower. Took a peek at some satellite imagery.”
“Houseman would crucify me for even having this conversation with you. You realize that, right?”
Tom nodded.
“Okay,” Crane said, sighing. “I’ll put you in touch with someone. His name is Sandri Khan. But don’t ever repeat that. Now listen.”
28.
Linda blinked open her eyes. She lay on a ragged floor mattress in a small cell, feeling heady and limp. She’d been drugged. To ease the trauma of the video her captors had taken of her and keep her docile, she imagined. The cell was stone-built. A single battery-operated LED light hung from a hook below the dome-shaped ceiling about four metres above her. She rubbed her sore wrists, chafed by the restraint, and realized she could move her feet as well. She raised her head slightly, but felt as if her skull were cracking open, and slowly resumed the foetal position.
She’d been moved from the cell where the video had been made. But only down a corridor and a short flight of flagstone steps, the ceiling so low that she’d had to duck down underneath the lintel, her guards almost doubling over. She’d seen from the interior walls and the height of the passageway that it had been built maybe a couple of hundred years ago.
The air was damp, but there was a hint of salt hanging there. She focused and heard the faint sound of waves breaking on a shore. If she hadn’t been drugged for days, she guessed she might be on the south coast of Pakistan. Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and main seaport, perhaps. She felt a sudden throb in her upper left arm, looked down and saw that it had been bandaged. The images of the underground room she’d been taken to after the car journey flooded her mind.
Two women, dressed in white lab coats with light-blue latex gloves and surgical masks, had stood by a small operating table. A number of surgical instruments, including a scalpel and clamps, lay on a cloth on a stainless-steel tray beside it. An oxygen tank, fixed by a tube to a respirator, stood in a rack at the head of the metal table. She trembled with fear. Perhaps they were going to remove a finger or an ear, she thought. But then she realized what they were going to do. Her GPS necklace and ring had been removed already, so they were going to remove the sensor that had been implanted under her skin in her upper left arm.
She’d been led to the table and had heard the men leaving behind her. The women stepped forward and began to undress her. She resisted at first, wrapping her arms around her body and pushing her chin down. But they were strong and firm and she relented, deciding that if she put up too much of a struggle the men would return and do it anyway. Be compliant, Tom had told her. Follow instructions. Don’t antagonize a kidnapper. Standing in her underwear, she was led onto the table. She began to grind her teeth, her breathing becoming rapid and audible. One of the women smoothed her forehead, her touch like a mother’s calming a child. The other woman put a long finger to her lips and shushed her. She looked over and saw a burqa hanging on a hook. The garment gave her a degree of hope. They will dress me in it afterwards, she thought. The mask had been put over her nose and mouth and, trying desperately to refrain from crying out, she’d drifted off.
She clasped her left arm lightly now, and began to rock back and forth. Despite the terrifying words that had come from the tape recorder as the video had been made, still no one had spoken to her directly. Not that she relished being called a bitch or worse, but the silence was burrowing away at her brain like a trapped insect. Men of violence come with barking threats, someone had once told her, but real killers say nothing.
If they were intent on carrying out their threat to kill her, she had three days left to live, or less. She worried that her girls would’ve seen the video, or been told about it. She prayed to God to give them strength. But God had not heard her prayers, or, if He had, He had chosen not to act on them.
She wondered briefly if there was some higher purpose to her incarceration, if her fate was that of martyr for a cause that she did not believe in, for she could see only revenge benefitting. Surely God was not involved in such things, she thought; and then she realized that her mind was still drug weary, her reasoning skewed.
She knew that men and women captured in the line of duty were at their most vulnerable to interrogation during the first seventy-two hours. And since no one had questioned her, she had a notion that they were bluffing. Maybe they weren’t Shia jihadists after all. Maybe it was all about the multibillion-dollar reward.
She told herself to focus on being released.
Two minutes later, she was contradicting herself in her mind. Although she knew that ransoms had been paid for US public officials and members of the military in certain circumstances, paying those who had taken her, without proof of their innocence of the Washington atrocity, would be both politically and morally unacceptable. If they were members of the Leopards, releasing the murderers of the Washington atrocity was even less likely.
And they know this, she thought.
Focusing on the burqa folded on the floor a few metres away, she guessed she would be on the move soon, too.
She bit the inside of her lip, tasted blood, as she tried to revive herself fully. Her complicity was beginning to sicken her. In the short timeframe her kidnappers had imposed via the tape recorder, she knew her only hope was to escape.
29.
Crane’s knowledge of Pakistan had appeared limitless, and Tom had found himself warming to him.
After he’d finished tutoring, he told Tom what to say and do if he was picked up, a crash course in CIA counterinterrogation techniques. Things over and above Tom’s basic SERE training, which, he said, was as useful as a eunuch to a sperm bank in the circumstances. Then he made a few calls and informed Tom that a CIA operative would drop by his room and give him some essentials, including the camouflage transmitters, although she’d be oblivious to what was going on. Jabbing a gnarled finger, he added that she’d had a rough time over here, so he’d be obliged if Tom was courteous.
Finally, he got all serious and offered Tom a capsule about the size of a pea that he’d taken from an antique snuff box.
“What’s that?” Tom asked.
“You know what it is. If, and that’s a massive if, you need to take it, crunch it on your back teeth, or it will pass through your system like a marble.”
“No, thanks.”
“Okay. But remember. This is just covert recon. Nothing more. You check out his house, drop off the bugs in the garden, and then come back over the border. If it don’t have a weak spot, don’t take any risks. I’ll do my best to get the idea sanctioned by Houseman in the interim. But that could take twenty-four hours or more, once everyone with an opinion has their say, including the lawyers. Fucking bureaucracy is breaking my balls since waterboarding hit the headlines.”
“You think we’ll have time to get something incriminating?” Tom asked.
“The truth. No. But don’t even think about trying to get into Hasni’s house.”
Tom shot him a look that said: you’re telling me? He knew the doors and windows would likely be fitted with magnetized sensors and vibration detectors, the floors covered by portable pressure mats. Silent wireless alarm systems throughout. All kinds of stuff. He planned to position a spy camera first, which would be utilized to check out the garden via a secure satellite website on a cellphone. If it was clear of people, he’d plant at least three disguised voice-activated listening devices. It was a long shot, he had to admit.
But he was grateful to Crane for letting him go over the border and fac
ilitating his as yet unofficial mission, although he wondered why he had agreed so easily.
He could have done many things to stop me, Tom thought; not least calling Birch. It was something of a mystery for now.
The phone rang.
“Get that, will ya?” Crane said, sinking back into his armchair.
Tom walked over to a pine dresser where the secure landline was and picked it up. It was Houseman.
“Where’s Crane?”
“He’s here, sir.”
“Switch on CNN,” he said. “Do it now. And tell him to ring me when the item finishes.”
Tom put the handset back in the cradle and grabbed the satellite TV remote. Thumbing it, he told Crane what Houseman had just said. The screen showed three hooded and cuffed men, their heads being pressed down as they were made to duck into a Pakistani police vehicle. It looked to be in real time and staged, the scene illuminated by portable floodlights.
“The Pakistani authorities have three men in custody who have been charged with the abduction of the US Secretary of State, Linda Carlyle, state terrorism, and multiple counts of murder.”
“They hood them so you can’t see the beating they took,” Crane said, nodding sagely.
“The three as yet unnamed men have confessed to being members of the Leopards of Islam. They will stand trial in Pakistan. Official sources have indicated that an internal report of the ISI, the Pakistan intelligence agency, highlights the fact that Pakistani police officers recognized some of the men directly involved at the scene of the kidnapping as being members of the Leopards. This is Debbie Cann for CNN news, Islamabad, Pakistan.”