Uktam hired a grizzled, bearded Pashtun driver named Zabet who was familiar with the old silk routes. He would go the distance with them to Karachi, blending in with his brothers on the road. More difficult to conceal would be the two Europeans, so rarely seen riding on jingle-jangles. They decided to hire Uktam and his 4WD Chevrolet to ride some miles ahead of the truck. They could spot potential trouble and use an ancient Motorola HT-1000 two-way hand-held radio to communicate with Zabet, the bearded Pashtun, in the truck. This might provide some small extra margin of safety, though, in truth, even the jingoistic Marchenko realized that they were far more likely to be hijacked or robbed traversing Russia than in these wild and sparsely populated ‘stans of Asia.
The first leg of the trip was the 250-kilometer straight shot along the M39 toward Samarkand, then another 350 kilometers to Kholm, east of Mazare-e-Sharif, where they would pick up the A76 for the short jaunt to Kabul. The roads were passable as long as visibility was good. They were not in a hurry. They did not want to attract attention. They would travel only in daylight, and only in caravans of similar jingle-jangles. If they took two or three days, or twice that, to reach Kabul, so be it.
From Kabul to Kandahar along the A1, and on to Quetta on the A75, and then the final 665 kilometer stretch on the isolated N25 through the great wastelands of Baluchistan to Karachi and the ocean.
In a week—two at most—they would certainly reach the ancient, fabled portal to the Arabian Sea.
Part Two
Chapter 19 — Quetta
Mort Feldman woke up in the simple pine coffin. His left wrist and ankle were handcuffed to an iron pipe running parallel to the wooden box and slightly above it. Sleeping on his side in the same position hurt.
He was in a windowless room with an air vent that admitted light, in an upper storey of an ancient haveli mansion. He judged he was somewhere in urban Baluchistan, based on the Tareen dialect of Pashto and the Baluchi variants of Urdu phrases he recognized spoken in streets below. Sometimes he heard Sindhi and sometimes he thought he heard Punjabi, but this was less common, as would be the case, he knew, in the southwest of Pakistan.
It was cold at night though warm during the day, so he deduced he was at some elevation above sea level. Perhaps he was in Quetta, the capital city of the Pakistani Taliban? Certainly he was in an urban environment; honking horns and the stench of air pollution told that story well.
In daylight hours, Feldman was allowed to sit on the floor next to the coffin unshackled. After the first week, as a special privilege because he had been cooperative, his captors let him have a rough woolen blanket as a mattress and pillow to spare his sore butt.
Feldman had not been moved since that long road trip the night of his kidnapping. The journey had been an ordeal, one that still brought on a cold sweat whenever he recalled it. The heat of the metal floor in the back of the van, above the stove-hot exhaust, had burned his right leg. The blister still hurt. The acrid fumes of unleaded gasoline had nearly suffocated him.
In his cell, life had become bearable. He was not beaten, though he was frequently blindfolded when others were in the chamber. He had to ask permission to use the toilet, observed by a guard. He was given a bucket in a corner of the room, one he could not reach at night when he was tethered to his box.
On good days, his keepers rewarded him with small treats. A cup of coffee, once or twice. Only once was he was given a small glass bottle of warm Coca-Cola, maybe six ounces. He had savored every molecule.
As he awoke, Feldman twisted slightly in his pine box bed, adjusting his head so he could see the bottom of the interior wall. Using his right thumbnail, he incised a barely visible line in the soft pinewood, the thirteenth such line in the plank, he observed. He had been too disoriented the first few days to perform this ritual, but he guessed that he had started on the third or fourth day. That meant he had been held now for fifteen or sixteen days. This simple rite of maintaining a personal calendar was an act of defiance against his captors that helped maintain his sanity.
He pondered, as he always did every morning upon awakening, the central questions of his captivity: Who has done this to me? And why?
Somewhere in the back of his mind, especially early in the morning or when falling asleep at night, when he was at the edge of consciousness in that twilight between wakefulness and sleep, Feldman dreamed the thought that it was the ISI, not Al Qaeda, that kidnapped him. Why had he not been interrogated more vigorously? Why had his captors seemed so indifferent to him, such reluctant jailers? Why was he still alive when many before him had been put to death in Pakistan? There were no answers.
An hour later, Feldman’s principal jailer unlocked the door of his prison and brought him a cold mug of weak tea and a crust of bread. This guard, a short, gaunt man with high cheekbones and an unhealthy, sallow complexion, seemed more alert than usual, almost nervous. He was the only human being whose face Feldman had seen since his capture. Feldman had taken to calling him ‘Crusoe,’ to which the man did not respond. It appeared that he did not understand even one word of English, which in Pakistan suggested he was on the very lowest rung of society.
Moments after starting to sip his vile tea, Feldman could hear shouting in a lower room, though he could not make out the words. The angry voices became louder as he heard men climbing steps. So this was perhaps the end? Today he would die? He gagged and spit out the ghastly tea.
And then the door of his cell opened and Brigadier Mahmood Mahmood was standing before him.
***
“You sons of bitches.” Feldman said. “What took you so long?”
“I’m afraid I am both your captor and your liberator,” Brigadier Mahmood said. “Your presence here is the result of an unfortunate miscalculation. I apologize.”
Feldman was almost paralyzed with happiness and anger and surprise. It took him a few seconds to find his voice, but it seemed to him an eternity. His jaw seemed wired shut.
“So this is payback for OBL?” Feldman asked in a hoarse whisper.
“Not precisely so,” Mahmood said smoothly. “More in the way of a visceral retribution for humiliating the nation of Pakistan. And as a means of attracting high attention and focus in Washington.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“Good heavens, no! Your ordeal is now over. Sane voices in the Army have prevailed, including mine. Indeed, now we face together a common problem that requires your attention and mine. A problem vastly greater than the disappearance of an intelligence officer, no matter how legendary.”
“And what the fuck would that be Mahmood? I need a bath and some clean clothes right now, and a stiff drink, not more of your bullshit and your British manners.”
Feldman felt rising up within him a rage, an overpowering, fulminating anger, that he had been unable to feel or that he had not permitted himself to feel, in the two weeks of his captivity. And then, he found himself in tears, sobbing, his body wracked with a terrible and uncontrollable sense of shaking relief.
Brigadier Mahmood put his arm on Feldman’s shoulder. Neither man spoke for what seemed a very long time.
***
“I don’t think you realize how concerned Pakistan is about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan," Brigadier Mahmood said. He and Mort Feldman were in a lower room of the haveli in Quetta. Feldman had been allowed to wash in the primitive bathroom off the main bedroom in the crumbling mansion. He was promised he would have access to real bathing facilities in a decent hotel soon. He was given a fresh change of clothes. He had eaten, though sparingly, for he was not hungry and his stomach, empty now for two weeks, could accept only small quantities of nourishment. Feldman had asked for the use of a telephone but Mahmood had prevailed on him to wait before contacting people in Washington or Islamabad. Ordinarily Feldman would have protested vigorously, but he didn’t have the energy.
“Look, Mahmood, we know that you assholes in ISI play a double game. You take money from America and help the Taliban—and I’l
l be damned if I can make any connection whatsoever between what’s just happened to me and the war in Afghanistan,” Feldman said. His voice was calm. It sounded eerie to him, for he had not heard it in two weeks.
Ignoring Feldman’s bad temper, Mahmood spoke quietly.
“On our part, Mort, the Army here feels that we are badly used by the United States and kept in the dark,” Mahmood said. “We try to be good partners, but you do not treat us as such. You treat us as servants, or worse, as ignorant amateurs.”
“Look, we’ve been through why the White House did not feel that it was possible to include ISI or the Chief of Army Staff in the OBL takedown,” Feldman said. “So let me ask you point blank: Had we brought you into the planning, would OBL have been warned in advance?”
“Not by me, certainly,” Mahmood said calmly, evading the question. “Look, let me say that I understand your reasoning, even if I do not fully agree with it. Yes, it is possible that he would have been warned by radical Islamist elements within the military. But you are wise enough to know that there are a few people whom you could have trusted.”
“Those decisions were made a couple of levels above my pay grade,” Feldman said. “And I’m telling you now that this fucking kidnapping is going to be a tough sell for you at Langley, no matter how justified you may feel. You may soon wish you had buried your mistake by just killing me. Are you prepared for the stink this is going to raise?”
“Your colleague Mr. Wheatley has been in Pakistan for almost a week now,” Mahmood said. “He was sent here to find you. And he has slowly become aware of a problem far more serious than your kidnapping. It will be embarrassing. But, to put it rather bluntly, we now face the blowback from your rash assassination of Sheikh Osama. There is now the grave possibility of the first nuclear device ever to be detonated by non-state actors, a terrorist bomb in the hands of Al Qaeda. That is the problem we have, both of us, you and me.”
Feldman reflected briefly, agreeing privately that this was surely the most serious problem he would ever face in his CIA career. He said nothing to Mahmood.
***
“That son-of-a-bitch spent fucking hours with me,” Olof Wheatley said on the telephone at the Embassy in Islamabad. “He took me to lunch, showed me the Al Qaeda hideout at Zagi Mountain, gave me the grand tour. And I never suspected for a minute that he knew where you were.”
“He’s hard to read,” Feldman agreed from Quetta. He was speaking on a scrambled line. “Even in the best of times. He had me fooled too, back in Islamabad.”
“I still don’t get it. When he told me his personal driver was the guy at the wheel, I understood there were ISI people involved, but I never guessed Mahmood himself.”
“I don’t think Mahmood knew before the fact. As Mahmood explained it to me, a faction within the ISI decided to do the deed as payback for OBL. And to reshuffle the deck a bit. Mahmood claims he wanted to unwind it, but it took two weeks for him to prevail. Meanwhile, the profile of this Russian demolition device started rising, and now they are concerned that the plan is far more developed than they previously believed.”
“On that point, we think they may be right, given the financial information from Kabul and Paris.”
“Mahmood is concerned the package has already slipped through Central Asia and is somewhere at sea.”
“We’ll deal with that when you’re back. We also got some news from Moscow. A British national there was murdered in a park off Prospekt Mira, a technical guy who used to work at Aldermaston. Our Russian friends found his laptop in a hotel and are sharing it with us.”
“So we think we’re talking about something bad coming out of Russia?”
“Sure looks like it. We’ll know more when we see the computer hard drive. The important thing right now is that you’re OK. How soon before you can get to Islamabad?”
“Mahmood insists on taking me back himself. A day or two.”
***
At sunset, downtown Quetta darkened while the copper, mustard, and russet peaks of Chiltan, Takatu, and Murdarghar, soaring two miles into the sky, blazed with fading sunlight high above the bowl-shaped cradle of the city, a spectacular light show heralding the starry darkness.
Mort Feldman traveled in a military caravan with Brigadier Mahmood to the Command and Staff College north of town on Quetta Road, near the airfield. This was the oldest and most prestigious educational institution of the Pakistani Army, an elite school much like the United States Army War College, limited to officers of the rank of captain or above with eight years of active duty.
Here the best and the brightest of Pakistan’s military took a one-year tour to get that extra intellectual and social polish they needed to make general officer. The Staff College campus had one of the finest medical complexes in the nation, and Mahmood insisted that the resident medical officer there examine Feldman before returning to Islamabad the next morning.
“My fondest wish would be to be commandant here someday,” Mahmood said wistfully in the back of the car he shared with Feldman as they passed through the gates into the spacious campus. “For me, it would be an intellectual feast.”
“I predict that you will get your wish,” Feldman said graciously.
“The post calls for a lieutenant general or a major general. I am a mere brigadier.”
“But a brigadier destined for greater things,” Feldman said.
Mahmood barked a mirthless laugh.
“We tracked a suspicious shipment from Moscow to Tashkent, Uzbekistan,” Mahmood told Feldman. “My superiors thought it might be the nuclear device we have feared. I believe they hoped the device would travel through Afghanistan, where we would catch it in transit, creating a furor and greatly embarrassing the United States.”
“A terrorist nuclear bomb in Afghanistan? That might well keep U.S. troops on the ground at Bagram for decades, if it were known,” Feldman said. “What happened to it?”
“We lost them,” Mahmood said. “And we are not close enough to the Russians to ask them for help.”
“But you are confident something dangerous is on the move?”
“Oh, without question, yes. Something very, very big.”
“So where do you think it is headed?” Feldman asked.
“To Europe or America from Karachi by sea freight. That would be their best option, and perhaps also our best option for tracking it. Sea-lanes are known and even small vessels can be tracked easily. If that is what has happened, we will find it. But perhaps its destination is somewhere in Pakistan or India. That will be harder. Of course, perhaps it is still in Afghanistan.”
“What if they take it out by air?”
“The worst scenario of all,” Mahmood said. “These things are not so large. It could easily be moved by plane. But I don’t think they will try that.”
“Because of radiation detection?”
“Exactly. Though I don’t think they face as much risk as we would like them to believe.”
Both men reflected in silence for a few minutes.
“My guess would be Pakistan,” Feldman said. “There are Arabs and Egyptians here, lots of displaced Al Qaeda types who appreciate the relative freedom of the tribal areas. Ayman al-Zawahiri learned to speak Pashto and married a woman in Mohmand, in the northern tribal agencies, as you well know. Al-Zawahiri is probably in Pakistan right now, probably in Peshawar.”
“If I knew, I personally would tell you, my friend. But I do not know.”
“I’m going to be leaning on you, Mahmood,” Feldman said. “I hope you know that. Leaning on you. We have a saying in America—‘you owe me.’ You’re going to learn first-hand what that means. You owe me big time.”
Mahmood smiled. Feldman thought he heard a barely audible chuckle.
Chapter 20 — Islamabad
The weekend of Mort Feldman’s return to the Pakistani capital was occasion for a daylong open house at his rambling villa on Margalla Road, with Mort enthroned on an upholstered chaise longue in his study, receiving
friends and admirers like a recumbent Roman centurion.
It was a day to celebrate. But all the guests were from the American Embassy community. This was not a party to share with Pakistan.
An enormous homemade paper banner stretched across the den-like room, two stories high, the largest space in the house. It read ‘Welcome Home Mortie!’ and had been prepared with crayons and finger-paint by the teenage children of one of the senior communications techs. The lampshades were festooned with multicolored balloons tethered by strings that kept them bobbing. There was plenty of beer and wine.
Olof Wheatley delayed his return to Washington for a day to attend. From time to time, Feldman got up and chatted with guests, but mainly he lay stretched in his chair, watching the others and drinking beer. Though he still had a sore wrist and blistered ankle from having been chained for so long, he could not remember when he had last felt so happy.
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