A Loyal Spy

by Simon Conway

  “We were,” Jonah acknowledged.

  Never underestimate Khan’s snobbery or his attachment to all things British—he may be a jihadi but he’s a pukka one, was Monteith’s memorable line. Like Jonah and Nor, Javid Khan was the product of a minor boarding school in the English home counties. A generation separated them but had been enough to suggest a form of kinship a decade before when the Department floated a freshly discharged and recently disgraced former British army officer named Nor ed-Din in front of Khan as bait.

  “Why shouldn’t I hand you over to the police?” the brigadier demanded.

  “Because you’ll be next …” Jonah was finding it difficult to reconcile the Anglophile with the jihadi. “Why exactly did Kiernan have to die?”

  The brigadier flicked his cane across his boot-tops in irritation. “The Home Department has issued you a permit.”

  “Good,” Jonah replied.

  “We leave first thing in the morning.”

  “Good.”

  The brigadier turned on his heel and strode away.

  Jonah finished his postcards and walked over to the post office opposite the hotel to buy stamps. He snarled at one of the watchers when he got too close. The man slunk away.

  “Al-Qaeda has re-established the predominantly Arab and Asian paramilitary formation that was formerly known as Brigade 055 as part of a larger, more effective fighting unit known as the Lashkar al-Zil, or Shadow Army,” the brigadier explained, staring out of the window of his Nissan Patrol at the passing landscape, the ragged peaks veined with marble and the fortress-like compounds. They were driving up through Mohmand to Bajaur in a four-vehicle convoy with a squad of tribal police as escort. The brigadier’s mood had much improved.

  “The Shadow Army has units analogous to battalion, brigade and division formations. They have good weaponry and better communications systems than our own army. Even the sniper rifles they use are better than ours. Their tactics are sophisticated and they have defenses including trench and tunnel networks as well as bunkers and pillboxes that are taking us days or weeks to dismantle. It’s mind-boggling. This is not a ragtag militia. They are fighting like an organized force and they have been instrumental in the Taliban’s consolidation of power in the tribal areas.”

  They passed a pile of Soviet aircraft bombs outside a scrapyard in Muhmadkut and clusters of collapsing mud hovels that had once housed Afghan refugees who had since returned. Jonah wondered how long it would be before the bombs followed them over the border and were used to manufacture improvised explosive devices.

  “We believe that Nor has put together a specialist unit of the Shadow Army, trained to undertake acts of sabotage overseas,” the brigadier told him.

  “How do you know this?” Jonah asked.

  “The army has captured one of them.”

  They passed a column of Pakistan army trucks towing artillery pieces. It began to rain, a light drizzle. The tribal police squatting in the back of the pickup ahead drew their pattus around their shoulders and clutched the barrels of their assault rifles more tightly.

  “The prisoner is in the custody of the government agent in Khar. That’s where we are going.”

  A Cobra attack helicopter flew directly overhead, its undercarriage so close that the driver ducked his head and swore, and the police were buffeted by the rotor-wash.

  The government agent’s office was housed in a wooden building with dripping eaves which resembled a large and long-neglected cricket pavilion. On the walls of his office were several wooden panels engraved with the names of his predecessors; a succession of government agents dating back to the early nineteenth century, when the first ones were young subalterns of the British Raj.

  The current incumbent was a bearded Pashtun, a member of the Wazir clan of South Waziristan, who, according to the brigadier, had been disowned by his family since accepting the post and lived with a considerable bounty on his head. He greeted them in his office and then led them through a side door and down a dark and moldy corridor to a storeroom that smelt of wet canvas.

  The prisoner was hanging by his dislocated arms from a length of chain attached to a roof beam. He was naked and his body was covered in livid bruises. There was an expression of utter dejection on his swollen face. There were two large Pakistani soldiers standing on either side of him. Each of them was holding a four-foot metal bar.

  The brigadier spoke to them in Urdu and they replied at some length. The brigadier looked back at Jonah, who was standing in the doorway, trying not to remember being similarly strung up in a basement beneath the stables in Baghdad.

  “This chap attempted to sell a diamond in the market, a very large diamond.”

  “Who is he?”

  “He’s a deserter.”

  “What unit was he serving with?”

  “He was a Black Stork, a combat diver of the Naval Special Services Group based in Karachi. He is one of five. They are trained combat divers. Until three months ago, they were working at the new deep-water port in Gwadar. Then there were some difficulties. Since then, they have been hiding out in a family compound towards Loyesam, near the Afghan border.”

  “And?”

  “Three months ago, they were approached by an individual who meets Nor’s description. He offered them highly paid employment.”

  “What kind of employment?”

  “An underwater demolition job.”

  “Where?”

  “He wasn’t told.”

  “Ask him again.”

  The brigadier spoke to one of the guards, who stepped up to the prisoner and struck him across the ribs with the metal bar. The prisoner screamed.

  “Not like that!”

  The brigadier appeared surprised. “You don’t approve of our methods?”

  “Just ask him the question,” Jonah replied, through gritted teeth. The brigadier lifted the man’s chin with the tip of his cane and spoke to him softly. He had to hold his ear close to the man’s lips to hear him reply.

  “He says that they were told that they would be given further details as well as passports with the correct visas and airline tickets on the night before they traveled. They were told that they would be met at the destination and taken to a safe house where they would be provided with the materials necessary to manufacture plastic explosives. Further briefings including the location of the target would be provided in due course.”

  The helicopter touched down on the edge of the escarpment and Jonah, suddenly jolted out of sleep, hit the quick release on his safety belt and leaped for the ground like a shipwrecked man scrambling for the shore. Ahead of him, the brigadier strolled to the cliff-edge beside the mortar line and engaged in conversation with the battery commander, who pointed at something in the distance. The mortars sprang out of the tubes with a pop like champagne corks.

  The houses in the valley below resembled fortresses, with square turrets and mud-walled compounds the same khaki color as the surrounding rocks. Several had been destroyed. The explosions caused by impacting mortars looked like tiny blossoms of dust on the distant hillside. A tower took a hit and crumbled.

  There was sporadic answering fire: flint-sparks in window-slits and bunkers.

  A machine gun opened up and a line of tracer snaked across the space. The brigadier summoned him over. Jonah approached the precipice.

  “The infantry are advancing up the valley,” the brigadier said, and pointed with his cane at the line of troops strung across the valley floor. As the soldiers approached the first of the houses the mortar line fell silent. Farther up the valley it was possible to see a line of women on a mountain path, tiny blue dots in burqas fleeing in the direction of Afghanistan.

  “Why haven’t they closed off their escape route?” Jonah asked.

  “Don’t presume to tell them their business,” the brigadier scolded him. “Anyway, it’s not their fault. They lost the element of surprise. Just before dawn the Americans fired two missiles from one of their drones at a house in the villag
e.”

  Several hours later, standing in the ruin of one of the houses, the brigadier turned over a transistor radio with his cane. A soldier held up a charred exercise book. The only body they had found was that of an elderly Pashtun, curled round a Kalashnikov in a stairwell.

  “The miscreants were here, of course,” the brigadier said. “But it appears that they received prior warning of the attack. The women and the elderly stayed behind to delay our advance and give the fighters long enough to escape.”

  “Who warned them?”

  The brigadier shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you?”

  Bitter with frustration, Jonah continued to pick through the wreckage.

  “We had better leave soon. The helicopter has gone. We’ll have to drive back.”

  “Hold on,” Jonah called. He knelt down beside the open door of a wood-burning stove and reached in to remove the charred mass of papers stuffed inside. He peeled them apart. Nothing was legible. There was nothing of value in the house. He wanted to punch a wall.

  “Come on, we need to get back before dark,” the brigadier said.

  “I’m not coming with you, Brigadier.”

  The brigadier frowned. “What are you going to do?”

  “I’m going to follow them.” He pointed towards the mountains of the Hindu Kush. “I’m going to Afghanistan.”

  He knelt down to take the Kalashnikov out of the elderly man’s dead hands.

  “I admit that I knew that Kiernan was traveling in that convoy,” the brigadier told him. “It was my business to know. But I’m not the one that tipped off Nor. He walked away from us at the same time as you walked away from him. Whoever he offered his allegiance to … the Taliban, al-Qaeda, whoever … they are the ones that wanted Kiernan dead, not us. Our fingers have been as badly burned as yours. Remember that when the Americans finally catch up with you. I am not the guilty party.”

  “I’ll remember,” Jonah replied. Cradling the Kalashnikov in his arms, he set off in the direction of the setting sun.

  THE NEW GREAT GAME

  August 31–September 2, 2005

  The suburban enclave of Wazir Akbar Khan, on the north side of Kabul, once home to the senior ranks of the Taliban and their Arab supporters, had been overtaken by NGO workers, diplomats and journalists. One of its longtime residents remained, though. Yakoob Beg’s compound had grown to include several adjacent houses and now occupied an entire city block. There was a checkpoint on the main approach and in front of it a loose knot of petitioners, beggars and hangers-on.

  “Coming through,” Jonah called out in Dari, heading for the main gate with its twelve-foot steel doors. People made way for him, staring at him in sullen silence. Jonah greeted one of the guards in Dari and gave his name. Within ten minutes he was being shown into the hujra, the guest room. There were about a dozen bearded, turbaned men sitting on silk cushions arranged against the walls, and there was a strong aroma of hashish in the air. Yakoob Beg was reclining beneath a gold-stitched tapestry with a sitar player on his right. He looked larger and sleeker than Jonah remembered, like an overfed cat. He motioned for Jonah to come and sit beside him on his left side.

  “Greetings,” he said.

  “I hope that you are well,” Jonah told him.

  “Business is good, inshallah.”

  A small boy brought Jonah a beaten metal pot, poured warm water on his hands and then dried them with the towel. He was passed a glass of vodka. Solemnly the men raised their glasses and drained them.

  Jonah reflected that there was a certain irony that in their final months controlling the country the Taliban had outlawed opium cultivation and come close to eradicating the crop and as a consequence ending Yakoob Beg’s considerable influence and power. But with the triumph of the Northern Alliance and their American backers the opium trade had rebounded and was now flourishing. Yakoob Beg was more powerful than ever.

  “How is my friend Colonel Monteith?”

  “He is in hiding,” Jonah replied. “The Department has been disbanded.”

  “It is an unfortunate business.”

  A dancer entered the room. Dressed in a long blue skirt and a crimson blouse with silver bells attached to hands and feet, face disguised by a red veil, the dancer stepped across the room. The men reached out to touch the skirt as it brushed past.

  “I’m here looking for Nor,” Jonah told him.

  Yakoob Beg nodded slowly, watching the dancer twisting and turning. “I understand.”

  “Has he been here?”

  “He was here in Kabul for a matter of hours,” Yakoob Beg acknowledged with a wave of the hand. The dancer was moving faster and faster, arms held high above a lean, muscular body. The sense of excitement in the room was palpable. “But he has gone …”

  “And the men with him …?” Jonah asked.

  “They were also here and they have also gone.”

  “I’d like to know more about them.”

  “There is someone that I can ask.”

  Finally, the veil dropped, revealing a young man’s face with the beginnings of a mustache. He was a bacha dancer, literally a boy for play. One of the men grabbed the veil from the floor and pressed it to his face, inhaling its aroma.

  “I appreciate your assistance,” Jonah said.

  Another round of vodka followed and then more sitar music and another dancer. The dancer was even younger than the first and wearing lipstick. Yakoob Beg’s eyes were almost closed, and Jonah wondered whether he was asleep, but then he reached into the folds of his robe and retrieved a business card.

  “There is an American that wants to speak with you,” he said, passing Jonah the business card. A name was printed on it. Mark Mikulski. And a New York telephone number. He turned over the card. On the back, written in pen, was a telephone number beginning with 070 followed by six figures: an Afghan mobile number. Beneath it, the same pen had written: Let’s talk.

  “He’s here in Kabul?”

  Yakook Beg nodded.

  “He knows that I’m here?”

  “An educated guess, he knows that you were in Pakistan and that you crossed the border into Afghanistan.” He made a fluttering gesture with his hand. “Everybody knows it.”

  “What is he doing here?”

  “He is leading a team of FBI investigators that are out at Bagram airbase. They have one of the Uzbeks involved in the shooting in custody. He was a child at the time but he is an adult now. He is singing. Since they have been questioning him, they have recovered the wreck of two vehicles from the Khyber Pass and it is said some charred bones.”

  “Are you exposed?”

  “Perhaps,” Yakoob Beg replied. “But I have also been careful. The leader of the Uzbeks was dealt with several years ago. The remaining witnesses were very young at the time of the incident. It was a chaotic time and nobody has a clear recollection. Of course, like you I am concerned about further revelations from Nor. It would be unfortunate if he found himself in American custody again. But I also have safeguards in place that will offer me a measure of protection if that occurs.”

  “For your own safety, I should leave,” Jonah told him.

  “Nonsense, you may stay here for as long as it is safe. But I also think that you should talk to Mr. Mark Mikulski.” From his robes he retrieved a mobile phone and passed it to Jonah. “Take this.”

  “Why do you want me to call Mikulski?”

  “Kiernan’s widow and his eldest daughter are here.”

  “If I could take back what happened, I would,” Jonah told him. “Monteith is the same. Any of us would.”

  “They have offered a substantial reward for information,” Yakoob Beg explained. “People are coming forward. The Uzbek was the first, others will inevitably follow. Kiernan’s family are being told what they want to hear. Monteith is being painted as a gullible fool and you are being demonized. They accuse you of being al-Qaeda. If you a have chance now to present your side of the story, perhaps you should take it. Who knows when the opportu
nity might come again?”

  “I have to find Nor,” Jonah said, pocketing the phone.

  “First you should sleep. I will make inquiries in the morning.” As he got up to leave, one of the bacha dancers took Jonah’s place beside Yakoob Beg. He rested his head in the opium trader’s lap.

  Jonah woke to shafts of sunshine falling through the windows of his room. There were segments of blue sky and racing scuds of cloud. After washing in a bucket, he crossed the courtyard to the hujra.

  Yakoob Beg was sitting on a cushion watching BBC World coverage of Hurricane Katrina. On the screen Ray Nagin, the mayor of New Orleans, was speaking: “Every person is hereby ordered to evacuate the city …”

  Watching it, Jonah found himself reminded of Nor’s confession on YouTube, his barely veiled threat: I swear to God, the greatest tide that ever was remembered in England …

  “Will they all leave?” Beg asked.

  “Most will,” Jonah replied, “but some will stay. Others may not be able to leave.”

  “What will happen to them?”

  “I guess they’ll wait for the government to give them assistance.”

  “And will the American government ride to the rescue?”

  “They should.”

  “I have arranged for you to meet someone who can help you,” Beg told him. “My driver will escort you there.”

  A couple of hundred meters beyond the martyr’s shrine on Char-i-Shahid, and through a set of large arched wooden doors, there was a small, concealed graveyard with about a hundred and fifty graves. Jonah recognized the wizened old man who was sweeping leaves among the graves, but if the cemetery guardian recognized him in return he gave no indication of it. The old man had tended the graves at Kabul’s Christian cemetery for more than fifteen years, paid and unpaid, throughout the civil war, when Jonah had used it as a clandestine meeting place, and subsequently during the Taliban regime, when continuing to care for Christian graves was an invitation to a beating or worse.

  There had been some changes since Jonah’s last visit. The most recent additions were memorial plaques to fallen soldiers from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) Afghanistan. On the right as he entered, he saw that there was a newly placed plaque to British soldiers and opposite it, at the other end, there was one to German soldiers. Others were embedded in the perimeter walls.