The father of the groom arrived half an hour after the rest of the marriage party. Under the watchful gaze of two bodyguards, he embraced each of the elders, apologizing for his delay and replying to their courteous questions about the hardships of the journey. The conversations were formal and prescribed by ancient traditions of etiquette. Gifts were exchanged, a pair of Italian pistols for the bride’s father, who reciprocated by presenting a Belgian hunting rifle to the father of the groom. Polite inquiries were made about the boy. They were told that he was abroad, unable to attend his own wedding. The marriage would be solemnized in his absence. A distinguished imam had come from Peshawar to preside over the wedding. He confirmed that the nikkah could be performed without the groom being present. Questions were raised by one or two of the older men in the bride’s family. But the father of the groom assured them that his son would consummate the marriage within a week.
More guests had arrived by now, for the groom’s father was an important man in the region, a prominent tribal leader whose authority extended across the border into Afghanistan. He had a reputation for being ruthless with his enemies but magnanimous with those who offered him their loyalty. The marriage contract had already been negotiated, and the walwar, or bride price, was paid in gold.
The ceremony itself was brief, almost perfunctory. After the nikkah had been witnessed and the imam recited verses from the Quran, news was sent to the women, who began their songs of celebration. Rifles were fired in the air, crackling like fireworks. By this time more than a hundred male guests were gathered in the Jirga Hall.
When the midday azaan was heard, all of the men went across to the mosque and offered Zuhr prayers. Recently rebuilt with bright blue tiles and a marble dome, the mosque had two slender minarets and a new bore well that provided fresh water for ablutions. All of this was due to the beneficence of the groom’s father, who was known throughout the region for his wealth and generosity.
Before the feast began, the bride’s father proposed a target shooting contest, a traditional part of Pakhtun weddings. Leading his guests to a hillock on the outskirts of the village, the host pointed to a stainless steel saucer, which had been placed on the opposite ridge, five hundred meters away. It glinted in the harsh sunlight, far out of range. Several of the groom’s party raised their rifles and fired, kicking up dust on the slope below the target. Even the bodyguards missed the target. Finally, the father of the groom asked for the Belgian rifle with its telescopic sight.
Resting the rifle on the shoulder of one of his kinsmen, the tribal leader took aim and fired. The first bullet went low by six inches. Gauging the distance with his eyes, he worked the bolt action and loaded another shell in the chamber. This time, he aimed above the saucer and instantly found his mark. The sound of the bullet striking metal rang out like a distant bell as the dish clattered down the rocks.
The wedding party returned to the hall for their feast. Sheep and goats had been slaughtered, and only the choicest portions were offered to the guests. The meal consisted of several courses of different kinds of meat from lamb and mutton to chicken and quail. While the men ate heartily and murmured blessings on the couple and their families, a storyteller regaled the audience with tribal myths and legends. The father of the groom had brought him along for entertainment. A toothless old man with a grizzled beard, he recited heroic tales of the Greek conqueror who left his mark on these mountains centuries ago. The raconteur reminded the wedding guests that each of them carried Alexander’s blood in their veins. The marriage they were celebrating today would carry on Sikander-e-Azam’s lineage.
As the feast concluded with sweetmeats and dates imported from Medina, the old man’s stories turned from bloodshed and valor to the romance of Sikander and his beloved Rukhsana. As he regaled the audience with their love story, one of the bodyguards approached the groom’s father and handed him a cell phone. The tribal leader took the call. He exchanged a word or two, then reached into the pocket of his vest. Taking out a small plastic case, no more than an inch square, he removed a memory chip and inserted it into his phone. For a moment, the screen lit up and then went blank, except for a blinking icon in the middle, pulsing like a beacon.
Interrupting the storyteller, the father of the groom rose to his feet and thanked his host and the assembled guests for their gifts and good wishes. He expressed regret that the celebrations must be curtailed. They needed to reach home before dark. A few protests were uttered, but the bride’s father immediately sent word that his daughter should prepare to depart. While most of the guests remained in the Jirga Hall, the immediate families retreated to the edge of the village and performed a brief leave-taking ritual. Now fully veiled, the bride was led away by female members of the groom’s family to one of the vehicles parked nearby. The two fathers embraced, and each of the wedding party said their farewells, climbing behind the wheels of the Landcruisers and driving away in a trail of dust.
Nobody noticed that the phone had been left behind among the cushions in the Jirga Hall.
By this time a Peregrine MV I drone had already crossed the mountains to the north of the Khyber Pass flying a low trajectory, like a raptor intent on its prey. The 233G JetStream engine was virtually silent, and the sleek fuselage, with sweptback wings, glided over the contours of the barren mountains, maintaining a constant height, forty feet above the ground. A CIA programmer at Bagram Air Base had locked in on the signal from the homing device in the phone. The guests at the wedding included several men who carried a price on their heads, local warlords and other persons of interest who supported the Taliban and their foreign allies.
Coming in over the ridge where the shooting competition had taken place, the drone fired two missiles that passed between the minarets of the mosque and rammed the Jirga Hall, bursting into a fireball that decimated the structure and killed most of the guests within. The sound of the explosion echoed across the hills, but the groom’s party, now several kilometers away, heard only a muffled crump, like thunder reverberating out of a cloudless sky.
Eight
Afridi was informed of the agent’s death by Manav Shinde, associate director of the Research and Analysis Wing, better known as RAW. Manav had called the night before, just as Afridi was about to go to bed. Their conversation was brief and cryptic, though both of them were aware of the emotion in each other’s voice. They had been colleagues for almost twenty years, though Afridi worked for military intelligence and Shinde was a civilian. In many ways, they couldn’t have been more different than each other in manner or personality, but over time they had developed a trust that was unusual in the intelligence community. Their collaboration went beyond official protocol and hierarchies, a personal bond that arose out of a shared sense of duty.
For the past eight years, Qasim had been one of their most successful undercover operatives in Pakistan. Afridi had recruited him, and Manav provided the funding and logistical support required to keep an agent in the field, including secure channels of communication. One of their brightest and bravest assets, Qasim had very little schooling but all of the survival instincts that made him a natural spy. Educated up to class five at a government primary school in Pahalgam, Kashmir, he was forced to start working as a mess boy at the age of twelve to support his widowed mother and two sisters. Afridi first met him fifteen years ago at the BSF mess in Pahalgam, and he was immediately struck by Qasim’s intelligence and resourcefulness.
After he had been given training and proved that he was not only capable but utterly dependable, they sent him across the border into Pakistan. Qasim accepted the assignment without hesitation. His only request was that his family should receive his monthly paychecks. This was done discretely through an NGO that worked with Kashmiri widows. Meanwhile, Qasim made his way to Rawalpindi and Islamabad. He created a convincing cover for himself with help from Shinde’s makeover team, who provided him with documents that identified his birthplace as a village along the Jhelum in Pak Occupied Kashmir. His first job was as
a dishwasher at a hotel before he got hired as a houseboy for a consular official at the American embassy. From there, with enthusiastic letters of recommendation, he went on to be employed by three other US embassy officials. Eventually, Qasim found himself working as a cook for the CIA deputy station chief.
As a household servant, he aroused little suspicion among the Pakistanis. In fact, the ISI had tried to recruit him to gather information on the Americans. His greatest value lay in the fact that he could report on the comings and goings of various American officials and their meetings with Pakistani military officers, Taliban informers, and tribal warlords involved in the Afghan conflict. Often used as a translator, Qasim had traveled to Peshawar several times with his employer, and he had been able to provide information on conversations between the CIA and Afghan factions.
The report of his sudden death had been delayed for twenty-four hours because it took the Americans some time to smooth things over with the Pakistan police. All that Manav could gather from his sources was that the cook had fallen from the upper balcony of the diplomat’s house and broke his neck on the steps of the verandah below. He was identified by his cover name, Mansoor, and the death had been ruled accidental, though Afridi and Manav both knew that Qasim had been killed in the line of duty. He was twenty-eight years old.
After receiving the news, Afridi was unable to sleep, until he finally dozed off in the early hours of the morning. His grief was compounded by regret at the loss of an invaluable source of information. Of course, if anyone had traced Qasim back to RAW, they would have denied the connection. Even as he mourned the young agent’s death, Afridi knew that Qasim’s sacrifice would never be recognized. Most Indians thought of Kashmiris as insurgents or traitors, and they would never learn of the heroic actions of men like Qasim who gave their lives as bravely as any soldier. Only three weeks earlier, Qasim had reported on a series of meetings between his employer and a man named Roger Fleischmann, CEO of Peregrine Corporation, an American firm that manufactured aeronautical equipment, remote guidance systems, and drones. It wasn’t clear why Fleischmann had come to Islamabad, and Afridi wondered whether there was a connection to Qasim’s death. Recently, he had been worried about their communication protocols. Qasim’s reports were forwarded directly to Shinde by a secretary in the High Commissioner of India’s office in Islamabad. It was possible that some of these messages had been intercepted, despite the strictest precautions.
The next morning, after only a couple hours’ sleep, Afridi was in his office studying a map of Kashmir. Seeing Pahalgam marked with a single dot, he felt a pang of remorse. The map showed no roads or physical features, for it was printed in Pakistan. It had been acquired through a Ministry of Health and Family Welfare official who attended a conference in Lahore a year ago. Afridi found the map both amusing and informative because of its inaccuracies.
All of Kashmir was depicted outside the borders of India. The Survey of Pakistan cartographers were engaged in an elaborate fiction of denial. The Line of Actual Control, where the two armies faced off, wasn’t even shown on the map. To an uninformed observer it might have seemed that anyone could drive unimpeded from Muzzafarabad to Srinagar. The only hint of ground realities was that east of the Pir Panjal most of Kashmir was blank. Aside from Pahalgam, the towns of Baramullah and Gulmarg were also marked, as well as the Banihal Tunnel and further north the Zoji La Pass, Kargil, and Leh. But these were little more than random specks on a vacant quadrant of the map. Farther west, in those areas of Kashmir occupied by Pakistan, details were more complete, with highways and clustered settlements, airfields, and borders of districts or tribal agencies.
For a few minutes, Afridi’s finger strayed northward into the high Karakoram, locating K2, Broad Peak, and Nanga Parbat. As a mountaineer, one of his greatest regrets was that he never had a chance to explore this region. For Indian citizens, these mountains remained forbidden territory. Lower down the map, he could see the Khyber Pass, Torkham, and Jamrud, an area from which his own ancestors originated long before partition. Afridi’s great-grandfather had accompanied Colonel Algernon Durand on the first survey of the Northwest Frontier, marking the borders of Afghanistan.
Catching himself, Afridi shifted his attention to the question at hand. Throughout the NWFP, including Chitral and the Northern Areas, as well as Afghanistan, the mapmakers had identified the locations of major hospitals. Each of these was marked with a bright red crescent, a sprinkling of medical facilities scattered across the Karakoram and Hindu Kush. Afridi consulted a second map, this one much larger and more detailed, produced by the Indian military, which showed the Siachen Glacier region where the plane had crashed.
Sources in Nepal had been able to establish that the turbo-prop departed Kathmandu soon after dark, an unscheduled flight for which there was no official record. It seemed this aircraft had flown into Nepal from either Guangzhou or Kunming. After refueling, the AN 24 appeared to have crossed back into Chinese airspace, north of the central range of the Himalayas, until it reached the borders of Ladakh. Here it cut across Indian territory, heading for Afghanistan. Flying under cover of night, the pilot gambled on his route. It would have been a safer option to swing northward beyond the upper reaches of Siachen, but instead, he made a fatal decision to try and save a few minutes. It was a dark, moonless night, and he miscalculated the altitude of the mountains that lay in his path.
Afridi traced possible routes the AN 24 might have taken if it had continued westward into Afghanistan. On the Pakistani map, he saw two red crescents clearly marked, one at Faizabad, the other at Kunduz. Both towns had airfields.
At that moment his telephone rang. Distracted, Afridi lifted the receiver and heard a dial tone before realizing it was his personal cell that was ringing. Reaching across his desk to pick it up, he noticed a number he didn’t recognize.
“Hello,” he said cautiously.
“Is this Colonel Imtiaz Afridi?” It was a woman’s voice with an American accent, though she didn’t mispronounce his name.
“Speaking.”
“My name is Daphne Shaw, and I’m calling from the United States.”
She paused, and there were several seconds of silence, though Afridi could hear the distant intake of her breath, half a world away.
“I was given your number by a mutual friend, Jehangir Daruwalla. He suggested that I could contact you in an emergency.”
“What sort of emergency?” Afridi asked. Daruwalla represented several European arms manufacturers. They had known each other since 1989, though Afridi hadn’t been in touch with him for the past year at least.
The woman coughed gently at the other end of the line. “I’m being unjustly targeted,” she said, “by the American government. This morning six armed men broke into my house and threatened to arrest me. They accused me of harboring terrorists.”
Afridi interrupted her. “Madam, I don’t know who you are or what you imagine I can do to help, but I have no authority or influence in the United States. And as you may be aware, this telephone call is probably being monitored as we speak.”
“No,” she said decisively, her voice taking on a more confident tone. “I’m calling from Eggleston, Ohio, and this is a secure line.”
“I still don’t know how I can help you,” Afridi replied.
The woman’s voice was hushed but firm. “By persuading the Indian government to grant me asylum.”
Nine
Luke knew they hadn’t finished with him, though Fletcher and Holman, or whatever their real names were, had finally left his hotel around midnight. Jet-lagged and unsettled by the interrogation, he collapsed into bed, afraid of what he might find when he woke up. Yet for all his exhaustion, he couldn’t fall asleep. This wasn’t the first time he’d been questioned about the Sikander-e-Azam Trust, which supported a number of NGOs in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan as well as dozens of schools and hospitals. The trust had offices in several major cities, including Peshawar and Kabul, as well as field stations in
Gilgit and Chitral. Among the people of Northern Pakistan, SEA had a popular reputation, for it operated without the corruption and bureaucracy of government agencies. The schools they funded were properly built, and their teachers were paid on time. Their hospitals were much better equipped than government clinics and the doctors well trained. For many, SEA’s work was a model of the kind of development that could be done in the region, providing direct aid and a sustainable future amid all of the uncertainty, pain, and deprivation.
“Why do you think an American company like Peregrine would give them money?” Fletcher had asked several times.
“I have no idea,” said Luke. “SEA doesn’t publish annual reports.”
“But you must have some sort of hunch,” he insisted. “Take a wild guess.”
“I really can’t begin to speculate,” Luke continued to stonewall them.
Several times during the evening, Fletcher had excused himself and gone out on the balcony to have a smoke. Luke resisted the urge to join him.
The truth was that Peregrine’s one-and-a-half-million-dollar donation was only a drop in the bucket. By even the most cautious estimates, Sikander-e-Azam Trust was annually spending half a billion dollars in the border areas. Over the past five years, SEA had become one of the most influential donor agencies in the region. It carried out projects of its own but also funded NGOs, government projects, and even Islamic charities, to make sure that nobody begrudged their presence. The staff members were skilled professionals, most of them with management degrees. Those who received SEA grants were held accountable for achieving specific goals and targets. Unlike many donor agencies, they kept their own costs down and operated efficiently and effectively. The Sikander-e-Azam Trust was often cited as an example of responsible philanthropy in a part of the world where waste, cynicism, and corruption were endemic.
The Dalliance of Leopards Page 4