The ISI chief continued in his convoy toward Malakand. They traveled north through the dusty plain of Mardan, lined with roadside stalls and small shops. The general smiled every time he saw a billboard depicting a Kalashnikov rifle. It was the insignia of a laundry powder bearing the same name. Only the Pashtuns would make an assault rifle the symbol of cleanliness.
As they pressed on, in the lee of Mohmand Agency to the west, the road began to rise toward the mountains. The gaily decorated trucks, laden with their cargos, slowed nearly to a crawl and the general’s convoy weaved back and forth on the two-lane road, narrowly missing cars in the descending lane. As the switchbacks grew steeper, the traffic sometimes halted altogether, while the general’s driver beeped indignantly on his horn and muttered Punjabi curses.
They eventually reached Malakand Pass, and just beyond it they came to the old fort that guarded this portal through the mountains. It was a tidy garrison, little changed in the sixty-five years since the British had left. The convoy drove past a company of infantry soldiers mounting their vehicles for patrol and continued on to a small brick house at the edge of the compound. A man in civilian clothes was waiting. This was Major Tariq, the local ISI officer who had summoned General Malik.
The major led his boss over a hill and down a path lined with blue pines and cedars. On this downward slope, the view opened to a magnificent valley in the distance: the Panjkora River rushing south through Dir District to meet the Swat River. It might have been an alpine vista in summer: the peaks framing the lush ground; the riverbanks lined with graceful alder and willow trees; the farms rich and green.
The major continued down the hill till he reached a pair of red-brick buildings. This was the local ISI station and, next to it, the combination guesthouse/stockade, depending on whom it contained. Today it was a stockade, and inside it was the man General Malik had come to see.
“Haj Ali” was the name the prisoner had given to Major Tariq. He had been captured in Bajaur two days before, trying to make his way across the frontier into Afghanistan. When he had searched the man, Major Tariq had found a flash drive, a portable data-storage device that could be plugged into the USB port of any computer. The major had installed the device on his laptop and examined the information. He hadn’t understood what it meant, other than that it looked important, so he had summoned the chief of his service.
General Malik entered the building that served as the local ISI station. On the wall he saw his own picture, neatly framed, along with portraits of his recent predecessors. Directors came and went, but the ISI was a permanent fixture in these parts; visitors to the major’s office might have been recruited by different ISI regimes, but the message was that they were all knitted into the same web.
Major Tariq unlocked the secure area at the rear of the room, where he kept his sensitive materials, and bade the general enter.
General Malik took a seat before the computer. The flash drive was already installed, and in a few moments the screen was alight. The drive contained just one brief document, an Excel spreadsheet that was designated “Registry.”
The general clicked on this document and the screen displayed four entries each with a difficult string of letters and numbers. There were no markings at the top to identify what each column represented, and they presented a confusing array.
The four entries were divided into two pairs and read as follows:
1) BANK JULIUS BAER BKJULIUS CH12 0869-6005-2654-1601-2 BAERCHZU 200 71835
BANK ALFALAH ALFHAFKA 720 34120
2) BARCLAYS BANK BARCLON GB35 BARC-4026-3433-1557-68 BARCGBZZ 317 82993
AMONATBONK ASSETJ22 297 45190
General Malik studied the short document, making a few notes to himself on a pad. At length, a puzzled general turned to his subordinate.
“What is this hallahgullah, Major?” he asked, using a local slang word that means confusion. “Is this what you brought me all the way to see? This is just numbers and letters. It is a banking directory.”
“Yes, sir.” The major bowed his head submissively. “But it means something, I am quite sure.”
“Everything means something, babu. But what? Have you questioned the man who was carrying it?”
“Only a little, sir. I was waiting for you.”
General Malik printed a copy of the document. Then he logged off the computer and removed the flash drive to take back with him to Islamabad. He asked the young case officer to stay behind while he walked to the other building in the compound, where the courier was confined.
The ISI chief stooped to enter the low-ceilinged room. It had the musty animal smell of a century of prisoners. The general swung open the shutters, and a bright shaft of light illuminated the form of Haj Ali. He was a young man, handsome even in the suffering of his confinement. He had an unmistakable Pashtun face: prominent nose, hard cheeks, thick black hair and beard and sharp, hooded eyes. He was shackled, his hands and legs bent tight against the frame of a wooden chair.
General Malik took a chair next to the window, so that the prisoner had to squint into the sunlight to see his visitor. For a long while, perhaps five minutes, the general didn’t speak. The captive courier strained against his shackles, making the muscles of his neck, face and arms taut with his resistance.
The general’s first word was a call to the major to come and unlock the metal cuffs. When the prisoner’s hands and feet were free, he stood for a moment, arched his back and then sat again in his chair with dignity. Major Tariq asked the general if he wanted a guard for protection, and the general said no, that he wanted to be left alone with the man.
The silence resumed, and as it continued, five minutes, ten minutes, it was the Pashtun man who became restless. He looked away, he cracked his knuckles, he coughed, he scratched his head. He was the one finally to speak.
“Nikka,” the prisoner began, using the Pashto word for grandfather. He quoted a famous warrior proverb, which the general had heard from other tough mountain fighters: “When I die, let it be in the way of a brave man, so that that everyone feels grief, not like a scorpion or a snake whose death brings to all relief.”
General Malik did not answer. The silence returned so that it filled the low room. At last he addressed the prisoner. He spoke in a low voice, not of menace, but authority.
“Who are you, brother?” asked the general. “What are you doing here?”
“I am Badal. That is my name. I am vengeance. What am I doing? Until I was caught, I was traveling to Afghanistan to take revenge on my enemies, the American spies.”
“Achaah,” said the general. It was an Urdu word that could mean assent or skepticism. “And how were you going to do this, Mr. Vengeance?”
“We know them, Nikka. We understand their secrets. We know where they go and who they meet. We will use this information to kill them, one by one.”
“I do not like these Americans, either. But I am smarter than you, brother. I do not announce it. I think you must be weak, to talk so defiantly but to have only your little arms and legs to carry you. I will get farther, I promise you. And do not call me nikka. I am not your grandfather.”
The young man shook his head.
“That is a lie, Nikka. You do not fight the Americans. You are their friend.”
The general ignored the taunt. He let the silence build again, and spoke after another minute had passed.
“I feel sorry for you, brother. You are a foolish young man. Those who know do not speak. Ask your superiors in the Tawhid. They will tell you. I think I am finished with you. You have not earned my respect.”
The courier studied the general. This was not what he had anticipated. Every fighter expects to be beaten if he is captured, and he tries to prepare for torture. To be treated as a dangerous man is a mark of honor. But the fighter’s dignity had been challenged by the general’s scorn. He puffed his chest and thrust his chin up like a fighting cock.
“We know their secrets,” the courier repeated. “We will take them do
wn, just as we did their agents in Karachi and Moscow. We see everyone and everything.”
“So that was your operation, then, in Moscow?” asked the general, inclining his head forward in a bow of respect.
“Of course, and there will be more to come, thanks God. Wait and you will see. It is not a lie. We know everything.”
General Malik sat back. He studied the prisoner and then shook his head.
“No, I do not believe it. If you were as important as you say, you would be carrying documents across the frontier. But we have looked at that little thing, that little chicken prick that you were carrying in your pocket. We have studied it, brother, and we know that it is just a few numbers and banks. If that is your big secret, then you are kutti da putr, as we say in the Punjab, the son of a dog.”
Now the courier was truly upset. He had been insulted, and he reacted in the way the general knew he would.
“You are wrong, Nikka. The proof of my words will come soon when more American agents are dead. Why do you think I was carrying the computer stick? Because I am taking the knowledge that it contains to my brothers in Afghanistan, and they will take it north, to Dushanbe. If I am caught, what of it? There are others on the road, and not just to Kabul. They travel to Cairo and even London and Paris. Soon the whole earth will be aflame and the American spies will not be able to walk upon it, anywhere.”
“The document has the names of banks in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Are the banks part of your plan for vengeance?”
“Ah, sir, that I do not know. I am a fighter, not a clerk. I do not study this computer stick, so I do not know what is on it. You are unlucky, sir. You have captured me for nothing.”
The general fell silent again, and not just for effect. He was thinking carefully about what the courier had said and trying to fit it with other things that he knew. After another long minute, during which the young man became restless again, the general posed a new question.
“Tell me about the man you call the professor. Do you know him?”
“No, Nikka, I do not know this man.”
“But you have heard of him. Do not lie, because I will find out and it will be worse for you later.”
The young man shrugged. “Of course I have heard his name. He is our sword, the professor. He is the one who knows. But I have never met him. Nobody meets him. He is the ghost. And now I am happy that you are asking, because it means you do not know who he is.”
“Do you think your computer stick comes from him?”
“Perhaps. Why not? I do not know. But it has the secrets, so maybe it comes from the professor. But I will never know. Nor will you, old general.”
“Are you lying to me, Haj Ali?”
“I am a fighter. I am Badal. I am taking vengeance for the death of my brother and my uncle and restoring the honor of my family. Why would I lie? You can beat me for a week and a month and a year, but you will learn nothing more than what I have told you.”
They did try to beat it out of him, of course. But, true to his word, he did not give up any more of the secret. General Malik observed the first interrogation session, back in Aabpara where they brought the prisoner, hooded for questioning. The general did not watch after that. He didn’t like torture, but more than that, he knew that in this case it would do no good. The man was just a courier. He didn’t understand the secrets of the letters and numbers himself. He only knew that they were deadly to the United States. They couldn’t let the courier go, after all that had happened. He died on his way to a prison in Lahore.
General Malik wondered whether he should share with the Americans what he had learned. He decided against it. It was not his job to protect intelligence agents of the United States, especially ones who were acting illegally inside his country. A simpler man would have set the Tawhid loose so they could bloody a few more faranghi spies, and gone off to the mosque to say his prayers. But General Malik was cursed with a Western trait: He brooded about his mistakes; he felt guilty about what he had left undone.
What did he really know? He had a four-item spreadsheet of numbers and letters. He would ask his analysts to explore what this intelligence meant, and then he would consider what to do with it. But it was not his problem. He would say to the Americans, much as they had said to him, lund te char. Hop on my dick.
25
DUSHANBE, TAJIKISTAN
Everyone loved Meredith Rockwell. She was Istanbul’s answer to the Junior League. She was a pretty girl, with flowing blond hair, so flamboyant and social that nobody wondered when she went jetting off to Dubai or Casablanca for the weekend. She had quickly become a fixture in the American community in Istanbul, organizing lunches and dinners, séances with local artists and boat trips up the Bosporus. She was a widow, she told everyone, children going to boarding schools back home; a big trust fund from her late husband to help her travel and entertain. Colorful stories about her had spread in the year she had taken residence in her fancy apartment in Besiktas. She was having an affair with a French count; no, it was a Saudi prince, or, in a third version, a Russian oligarch. All the while, she kept partying with her friends and traveling to exotic places, coyly refusing to explain where and why.
She was found dead on a street in Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan, where she had gone for one of her famous trips. She had taken a suite at the new Dushanbe Hyatt Regency, the fanciest hotel in Central Asia. The staff recognized her; she had been there before. Her luggage was still in the room, two Louis Vuitton bags, one of them still unpacked. The local authorities let the embassy tidy things up.
The police report said she had gone to find a bank on Rudaki Avenue and then taken a walk in the city park near the hotel. She had met a man there; she seemed to know him, witnesses said. She brought him back to the hotel and up to her room, and then he left. The hotel staff members were not scandalized. They expected that sort of behavior from Western women. The man was Tajik, witnesses said, or perhaps Uzbek or Pakistani. Nobody got a very good description. The doormen and porters looked away politely when the couple arrived.
Next she had taken a taxi, north along the Varzob River and then right on Somoni Avenue. She got out near the presidential palace but walked the other way, away from the crowded boulevards and the traffic and down a quiet street. It was a Russified neighborhood, still bearing the remnants of Soviet days: wood frame buildings painted salmon pink; signage of twinkling lights that formed Cyrillic script; high-cheeked Tajiks strolling in their summer T-shirts and jeans. Through this cityscape passed the American woman. She seemed to be going somewhere, from her deliberate pace, but there was no evidence that she had planned a meeting.
The assassination was a professional job. A car with darkened windows pulled alongside Rockwell as she was making her way down a lane a half mile from the city center. The assassin opened the door and fired two shots with a silencer. People didn’t realize they were gunshots at first; nobody would have paid attention at all, if she hadn’t screamed so loudly in English as she fell. The police tried to talk to her in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, but she wouldn’t answer their questions. They thought she was in shock. She died in the emergency room as a Tajik doctor tried to stop the bleeding.
Jeffrey Gertz was awake when the call came in the early morning. He flinched when the watch officer gave him the news. He’d had an affair with Meredith Rockwell. She was a party girl in true name, as well as alias. He went back to the office, driving way too fast through the canyon, not caring about anyone or anything except keeping a lid on his little organization.
Steve Rossetti was already at the office when he arrived. The operations chief lived in Encino, a few minutes closer. He looked relieved to see the boss. He didn’t want this to be his problem.
Gertz took him by the shoulders and looked him in the eye.
“We are at war, and we don’t even know who with. We are not going to give this enemy any more targets. That’s order number one. I want everybody to get in a hole and pucker up until we under
stand what’s coming at us.”
Gertz told Rossetti to work out the details and report back in an hour. That wasn’t much time to organize the message traffic and the operational changes, but Rossetti got it done. He was efficient, when he was told what to do.
They went to ground, no halfway measures this time. Gertz issued an immediate stand-down order to everyone, every officer in every clandestine platform around the world. Nobody was to move; no operational travel; no agent meetings; no movement at all outside home unless absolutely necessary. People were allowed to come home, but that was it.
Gertz called his sources abroad, to see what they knew. He got much commiseration, but no facts. This network of consultants and friends, which he had assembled over the years, was his privy cabinet. They provided the tips and suggestions that shaped Gertz’s operations. He had one special informant in the shooting gallery of South Asia who usually knew something, but this time he was dry as dust. Whoever it was had left no tracks, the informant said.
Rossetti ventured that maybe the media would miss the story in faraway Dushanbe, but Gertz knew that was impossible. This was the kind of news that was made for cable television and gossip magazines: American socialite gunned down without explanation in one of the armpits of the world, leaving her millionaire wardrobe back at the presidential suite.
The media lit up in a way they hadn’t with the two previous deaths. Meredith’s friends from Istanbul were on camera within that first news cycle, talking about her charity balls and society dinners and shadowy love life. It was irresistible. Who was the blond mystery woman? What on earth had taken her to Dushanbe? Why had she been murdered there so brutally, in a manner that could not be blamed on purse snatchers?
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