But this? Two crackpots, crazy as moonbeams, prognosticating about their turds. Number of. Quality. Duration of toilet. Density of material. Sphincter, tightness of.
There’s long contemplation on this point. The Bedford grinds through its gears as they head uphill.
Exhaustion finally pushes Ackerman over the top. ‘They’ve got those supercomputers at Fort Meade. You could call up the National Security Agency: Hi . . .’ she feels the giggles welling up from deep inside her ‘. . . Bill Lamayette here. You thought I was dead, but I’m not actually. Anyhow, over here in Pakistan we’ve got some dudes talking about their O-rings and their axe-length wallylogs. Care to crunch that for us, tell me whether this is cipher for some kind of terrorist attack . . .’
Lamayette is ready for some silliness. The whole thing now too ridiculous for words, that he’d risked his career, his whole life, for this . . . ‘Hey, Ackerman. What are you yuking about? You’re the one who’s got to take this to the ambassador, or have you forgotten?’ The CIA officer gets into his stride, noting she’s doubled over, crying with laughter, dabbing her eyes with the long sleeve of her traditional embroidered kaftan. Panting. He puts on a falsetto voice: ‘Ambassador, we worked out the code: one pint of prune juice and a two-flush turd that steamed like a bowl of Chocolate Malt-O-Meal . . .’
It’s at this moment, that look of hysterical desperation on her face, that Lamayette knows he could have her. Her chest heaving, tears leaking down her face. All he needs is to wind up his boyish charm, keep pressing those buttons, and he would bend her to his way. For sure. Even if it amounts to nothing more than sympathy sex, so what? A guy going down in flames deserves one last roll of the dice, one last rummage around on government property. Almost in anticipation, he can’t help but admire those breasts, filling out that kaftan so nicely. There’s nothing quite like the full, heavy breasts of a woman laughing out of control. And that Rita Hayworth hair . . .
God bless.
It’s only Jahanghir’s blank, wearied face that keeps him from riffing on into the night. His look of anticipation, of hungry expectation: Mr Bill, what do we do now? How about you disappear in a puff of smoke . . . Darkest hour is the hour before up comes sunshine, Mr Bill . . . Go away, Jahanghir, and he forces his thoughts back on to those laughing titties. Random imaginings about hefting them in his hands, gently blowing across the nipples and waiting for the response. Like a schoolboy stretching out each last moment of the holidays, he’s feverishly blocking off the looming horror: the board of inquiry, yammering lawyers, depositions, explaining the gorilla, the exploded car. This sackable offence . . . and that one . . . all the goodies waiting for him. Still Jahanghir waits for instruction . . . Never give up, you say that, Mr Bill.
In that moment, whatever chemistry there is with Ackerman, an alignment of planets perhaps, fizzles out under the earnest gaze of an upright, loyal Pashtun. I’m going to damned well dock him some pay for that look of disapproval.
Lamayette shakes his head wistfully, takes the wrapper off another packet of Lucky Strikes, rolls the cellophane into a tight ball and flicks it away. ‘We really have got stuff-all here, haven’t we?’
Ackerman sniffs, wipes her eyes then the dripping tip of her nose. Does the breathing-exercise thing. Inhale. Hold. Exhale. Again. It’s such a performance that the two men are in rapt attention, waiting for her to ready herself.
‘I did have two other things. First. This line of chat about the Qissa Khawani Bazaar. It was a bit unclear. Sort of muffled.’ She flicks a look at Jahanghir, seeking confirmation, and he nods sideways. Go ahead, and she takes her notes from Lamayette . . .
‘It starts with a fragment of a question from Hamza: . . . always gives me inspiration. How do you remember the Massacre?
‘Pir Durbar: Qissa Khawani was the unravelling of British rule. Full stop. Not just in North West Frontier Province. But in whole of India. We heard our fathers and uncles talking, we closed our eyes and could see the hundreds of young men and women coming forward to take the place of those killed. Innocents. Every one of them. Pashtun baring their chest to bullets. How wonderful. Offering no resistance, embracing promise of martyrdom. The Badshah Khan told his followers: I am going to give you such a weapon that the police and the army will not be able to stand against it. It is the weapon of the Prophet, but you are not aware of it. That weapon is patience and righteousness. No power on earth can stand against it. Which is why after Qissa Khawani the British would say, only thing more dangerous than a Pashtun with a gun, is a Pashtun with no gun.
‘Hamza: And it is true each of the martyrs reached for the Koran?
‘Pir Durbar: Very many did. Those that fell in the bazaar were clutching the Koran, and those that followed stooped to pick up holy book and with Allah’s strength walked with grace into battle. The true mujahid. The power of that sacrifice was what doomed British rule. Be damned to Gandhi and his salt marches. A triviality. A nothing, simply for the news cameras and his Western friends. It was the martyrs of Qissa Khawani that crushed imperialists.
‘Hamza: And so it shall be again. Tomorrow we shall make Qissa Khawani famous again. Operation Macchar. Patience and righteousness shall once more be the weapon of the Prophet.’
‘Operation Macchar . . . he’s talking about a mosquito?’ Lamayette shakes his head at the Urdu word. The name means nothing. Dammit nothing. No operational detail. ‘What else?’
Ackerman explains there had been general cooing of agreement on the Macchar Qissa Khawani, that it would be a political game-changer in Pakistan, but the discussion had quickly moved on to more consultations: Hamza had passed a stool earlier in the week which, in the right light, looked like the spectacled hood of the cobra so beloved by the Hindu deity Shiva.
Ackerman, with her scribbled translation, asks, ‘Do you want to know the significance?’
‘Enough about bowels already,’ Lamayette mutters, shuffling uncomfortably. ‘I think I need a history lesson on Qissa Khawani. I feel like the only one who doesn’t know what’s being talked about.’
Jahanghir, to his left, starts. ‘You know Qissa Khawani Bazaar, in Peshawar?’
‘Sort of.’ Lamayette shrugs. In truth, Peshawar had doubled in size in the four years following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Where there might once have been a charming boulevard or a clutch of shady mango trees, there is now concrete. Most of the architecturally pleasing things in the city had been gobbled up in the rush to accommodate this new diaspora. To Lamayette, Qissa Khawani is typical. He knew it only as yet another of the city’s nondescript, overbuilt roads. Jammed up with a mix of noisy one-man commercial operations: teashops, dry-fruit sellers, barbers, tyre retreaders, DVD stores, leather goods, hi-fi emporiums. He’s aware of its Kiplingesque name – the Storytellers’ Bazaar – and how it had been the pre-eminent place for travellers to stop and gossip by the now demolished Kabuli Gate. Above street level loom impenetrable, low shabby blocks of offices, darkened unfriendly windows, dripping air-conditioners and thickets of telephone and electricity lines. You assume all manner of illegal activities are countenanced. Not the sort of place a CIA station chief chooses to tarry long.
Jahanghir rolls his moustache between his fingers. ‘In 1930, the local Pashtun allies of Gandhi were arrested by the British. These people were called Redshirts. The people of Badshah Khan. Our King of Chiefs. Very famous people; Badshah Khan taught Pashtun how not to fight. Can you imagine that? Us? Pashtun? Anyway . . .’ and the Pakistani whispers ‘ . . . All held in Kabuli prison. This very much angered local people,’ and Jahanghir puffs his chest out, ‘we local people protest next day, marching to prison, marching along Qissa Khawani Bazaar. There, in the bazaar, that is where they are being shot. Two hundred dead certainly, maybe even as many as four hundred.’
Lamayette is startled. ‘Four hundred?’
‘You are sounding surprised, Mr Bill?’
‘Four hundred dead, and I never heard of this before . . . ?’
Jahanghir rolls
his head. ‘Very great tragedy of my people. These were Pashtun who die. Even worse, they were Pashtun who worked with Gandhi, and therefore not friends with Jinnah.’ He looks dolefully back and forth between his audience of two. ‘After Partition, it is Jinnah’s people not Pashtun who write the history books of this country. And for the friends of Gandhi, we are too Muslim, not Hindu enough for the history writers of India. All Indians want to write about is the salt satyagraha. It makes them feel very good about themselves. Very brave about such a . . .’ and Jahanghir squeezes his thumb and two fingers together ‘. . . such a small thing.’
Ackerman segues into the discussion. ‘The satyagraha happened early in April 1930, the breaking of the salt tax. The Qissa Khawani Massacre was on the twenty-third, almost three weeks later. The worst that happened to Gandhi and his followers were beatings and jail, but it was enough to spread his fame throughout the world.
‘But in Peshawar, it wasn’t just sticks and stones. This crowd of Redshirts walked willingly down that narrow bazaar into a fusillade of gunfire that lasted almost six hours. Wave after wave, they kept coming. By any definition the danger and intimidation that Badshah Khan’s followers faced was many orders of magnitude greater than Gandhi’s. Walking to their deaths, into a blaze of machine-gun and rifle fire without a thought of retribution or violence. They were called the Servants of God. It turns out to be one of the most important occasions of Muslim non-violent resistance.’
Lamayette examines his big meaty hands as if in the folds of his palms he’s written the answer to some perplexing question. ‘Important maybe to some fucking dusty academic. But nobody knows about it. So how much use is that?’
‘OK. Not a lot, I grant you. But it’s a powerful thing that people in these parts remember. The Indians remember overthrowing the salt tax, we celebrate defying the British tax on tea, and the Pashtun have the Qissa Khawani Massacre.’
Frustrated, Lamayette slams a fist into his palm. ‘That doesn’t give me a when or a how, a who or a where.’ So close . . . so close he can almost sense the shape of this thing. Almost.
‘What the hell is this Operation Macchar?’
Operation Macchar, less than fifteen hours to go
MI5 Headquarters
Thames House
London
It’s early evening on a Sunday, the Sunday of a long weekend, and Sheila ‘Noppy’ Davane is standing at the window of her MI5 office. Just light enough for her to be gazing down on the slow, brown, rippling surface of the River Thames.
Just to her left is Lambeth Bridge and beyond that, downriver, is Westminster Bridge. The London Eye beyond that. She watches in the far distance the tiny, bobbing heads of another surge of visitors crossing Westminster Bridge towards the South Bank facing her. No doubt heading towards Waterloo Station, and onwards to homes in places like Raynes Park, Virginia Water and Eastleigh. Places most people couldn’t point to on a map, but which are the very essence of this country’s being. From her lofty vantage point, she thinks of them all as her people. The famous unseen, silent majority on whose behalf she is striving. These are the people who, if they were to know the dangers Davane has to face on their behalf, the rules she has to shade, would no doubt quietly nod. Get on with it, they’d say. Stick it to them.
Noppy Davane has what management consultants like to call ‘institutional memory’. She had started with MI5 back in 1975 at the height of the IRA’s first bombing campaign on the mainland. More than thirty years of total and unyielding sacrifice.
She had started in a pool of headphone-wearing typists, copy-taking messages from agents and informers who were ringing in from public phones to a free-of-charge number that MI5 used to run. She’d been brought to London to make sure callers from both sides of the Irish border would find a kindred spirit who could understand the accent. They weren’t likely, either, to hang around spelling out place names, or explaining the geography of a place. Often, they needed to speak quickly and quietly because what they were doing would get them killed. Simple as that.
Murdering Mick bastards. She sighs as she thinks of what the other secretaries used to mutter, as they transferred to her the informers who were risking their lives to help MI5.
The Thames flows slowly under the bridge. From her window, she watches almost in a trance, through the outline of a stand of lime trees between her and the river’s edge. Her office space is very twenty-first-century – modern, functional and grey. The only colour comes from her niece’s oil paintings of favourite County Antrim seascapes.
There’s a phhsssh sound. Davane’s soundproofed door is pushed open and a young secretary who she had bossed into working today, to help make sense of Davane’s computer, and her backlog of emails, pokes her head around the corner. Glasses up on her head. ‘There’s a call you might want to take, Ms Davane.’
‘Who is it?’ She gently nudges her forehead into the triple-glazed glass sheet in front of her. Feels the blessed cool on her skin.
No answer. She turns, and sees the door already closed. Staff these days . . . she curses under her breath as she labours towards the desk. Her leg paining more than usual.
The voice at the other end of the line she recognises instantly.
‘Mr Bill Lamayette. Well. This is an honour. The BBC are reporting you have reached the Other Side. Got your seventy-two virgins yet?’
On speakerphone, the drawling Louisiana accent comes through crystal clear. ‘They’re virgins, all right, but only because they’re ugly and old. Wouldn’t touch ‘em with my dead dog’s dick.’ Slight pause, and crackle from the satellite relay. ‘No disrespect meant.’
‘None taken,’ and Noppy’s face creases into a smile. ‘You must be in a whole world of trouble calling me. Your employers have been putting out the hard word about your quote unreliability unquote. Erratic behaviour. Pending internal investigations. And so on.’
‘Straight from the Langley playbook.’
‘Both of our playbooks, I fear.’
‘Yeah. Well. Whatever.’ Lamayette sounds embarrassed, disappointed to discover what he feared was true all along: in time of crisis, there is no shame in blame. ‘Listen. I’ve gone a little bit off reservation on this one. I’m about a hundred and fifty miles north of Peshawar. Been surveilling a madrasa. Some full-of-shit holy man got a visit from a guy who’s wired in with the wrong side of Pakistan intelligence and has money to burn. Hamza Khan is his name, son of General Ali Mahmood Khan.’ Davane nods slowly. She saw her fair share of MI6 and CIA work-product. General Khan rings distant bells, so her eyes squint, trying to work out where this is going.
‘Anyway. In watching Hamza we might have turned up something . . . Operation Macchar. Mean anything?’ He spells out the word and the possible ways it could be Romanised.
She thinks for a while, tapping the top of her desk with an HB pencil. ‘No, can’t say that it does, Bill.’
A hint of desperation in his voice. ‘How about an Operation Mosquito?’
‘I’m going to put you on hold for a minute.’ And with that she calls through to MI5’s archives, asks them to cross-reference their databanks and all intercept traffic for any Operation Mosquito, or Macchar.
When she comes back, the news is not good. She smiles as she reads a handwritten note. ‘There was an Operation Mosquito in 1944. Near Caen. The Germans had purposely made stagnant some marshes and a couple of canals, so the whole place was overrun with mosquitoes and wasps. Hence Operation Mosquito. The 26 Field Hygiene Section sprayed oil and cut down some hedges.’
For a long time, there’s not a word said. Just static on the line.
‘Doesn’t sound promising,’ admits Lamayette, finally.
‘No, Bill.’ Davane puts down her pad, sharing in his disappointment. Part of her notes, rather clinically, that she is experiencing an unusual sensation: empathy.
‘Promise me this . . .’
‘Sure.’
‘Plug Qissa Khawani and Operation Macchar into Dictionary. Let that be my last l
oving gift to the world.’ Dictionary is the vast software program that sifts and analyses keywords and phrases sucked out of the electronic ether by the Echelon listening posts scattered across the world, but centred on the National Security Agency at Fort Meade and GCHQ in Cheltenham. MI5 is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the processed surveillance data.
‘You’re a rogue, William Lamayette . . . I hope whatever it is you are doing this for, it pays you back in spades.’ She makes a note. Qissa Khawani and Macchar, check spellings.
So. When Sheila ‘Noppy’ Davane hangs up the phone, there’s a look of consolation, anguish even, on the thick flesh of her face. It’s a call she was glad to have taken. Somebody right at the bottom of a big hole, trying to get himself out. From the Old School, like herself. Looking for help. Hoping to do the right thing.
Good for you, boy.
Minutes later and Lamayette is striding back towards the cab of the tow truck, his distinctive features obscured by a grey turban and shawl arrangement. Jahanghir struggles to keep up. To make the call to London, the tow truck, with the stricken Bedford, had parked off the verge of the busy Malakand road. He’d made the call from inside the cabin, leaving it to the driver to find the highest point on the pass to get the best signal. It’s barely a two-lane road. Buses and lorries roar past in gales of exhaust fumes, headlights and horns blaring. Noise. Dust.
The American has to raise his voice to Jahanghir. ‘Look, old friend. Travel with your cousins in the front. Me and the lady, we’re just going to chill out in the Bedford. Don’t worry about us.’
And Jahanghir smiles wolfishly, his teeth flashing in the light of an approaching truck.
‘Just tell me this, old friend. How long have I got? Where’s Peshawar from here?’
The Pakistani looks left and right. Either way the curved mountain road hugs the side of the valley, snarled with traffic, pinpricked with the coming and going of truck lights off into the distance. ‘Maybe we have made ten miles from the madrasa, so another . . .’ shrug of the shoulders ‘. . . fifteen to Malakand and one hundred and fifty to Peshawar. Long night.’
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