A Loyal Spy

by Simon Conway

  There was a man standing by the grave of the Hungarian-born explorer Mark Aurel Stein of the Indian Archaeological Survey. He was clutching a brown leather satchel and he looked up as Jonah approached.

  “You’re a long way from the sea, Commander.”

  Naval Commander Raja Mohan of the Indian navy smiled indulgently. “Not really, Mr. Said. In fact, for natural gas from Central Asia this is the shortest route to the sea.”

  “You’re going to build a pipeline?”

  “My country will soon have a population that is the largest of any country in the world,” Commander Mohan explained. “We have a mighty appetite for energy. So yes, I would say one day natural gas may flow through Afghanistan to Indian cities and ports.”

  “It’s been tried before.”

  “By the Americans perhaps, but not by us,” Commander Mohan replied. “And this is our time for greatness.”

  “What can you do for me, Commander?” Jonah asked.

  “Like many other people, including you perhaps, I owe Mr. Yakoob Beg a debt of information. He has offered to free me from that debt if in turn I provide you with certain information.”

  “I’m listening,” Jonah said.

  “Let me put this in context. India is expanding her interests to the west, the east and the north. In the navy, we like to think of the Indian Ocean as a single expanse, from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. We refer to it as our patch. It is our duty to ensure that goods travel freely within it. Therefore, it is also our duty to monitor any potential local threats. For instance, hundreds of millions of Muslims live along the Indian Ocean’s edges, most of them law-abiding citizens of viable states, some of them not. The western reaches include countries such as Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, which constitute a network of trade but also a network of global terrorism. At the same time, we see China attempting to establish a major presence in the Indian Ocean. This is a matter of great concern to us.”

  “Commander, I don’t have a lot of time.”

  “Why is that, Mr. Said? Are you concerned that the Americans may come and snatch you here?”

  “Do you have something for me or not?”

  There was a pause.

  “Very well, Mr. Said,” Commander Mohan agreed. “The Chinese are building a naval base and listening post in Gwadar in southern Pakistan, on the approaches to the Gulf of Oman. It is a massive construction effort with a considerable security presence. For political reasons the Pakistanis are not willing to allow the Chinese military to provide protection to the staff and the site. Instead, Pakistani security forces are assigned to the role. Our understanding is that the security forces assigned to protect the base were infiltrated by Islamic extremists sympathetic to the cause of Muslim Uighurs in western China. Several members of an elite squad of the Special Services Group, trained combat divers, killed their commanding officer and went on a rampage on the construction site, destroying machinery and killing five Chinese engineers before escaping. We believe that they then sought refuge in the tribal areas, where they made contact with al-Qaeda. Our intelligence apparatus maintains files on all identified members of Pakistan’s Special Forces.” He removed a buff envelope from his satchel and passed it to Jonah. “Inside you will find photographs and identity particulars for the people that you are looking for.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank Yakoob Beg. It is lucky for you that you are under the protection of one of the most powerful men in Afghanistan and that his influence reaches beyond the borders of this country, even to Delhi. If it was up to me I would have told the Americans that you were meeting with me and they would be surrounding us as I speak.”

  “I’m glad that you didn’t,” Jonah said.

  “I have my orders. I am told to cooperate. But looking at you, I am sure that it is a mistake.”

  The Indian turned around and walked out of the cemetery.

  Jonah stood for a while, listening to the swish of the old man’s broom among the gravestones, and then he dialed the local mobile phone number handwritten on Mikulski’s business card.

  He answered on the second ring. “This is Mikulski.”

  “It’s Jonah.”

  There was a pause.

  “You were going to tell me, weren’t you? In 2001, in the department store, that’s why you came to see me in New York. You were going to confess?”

  Mikulski was right. He had been about to confess. “It was bad timing.”

  “Events intervened,” Mikulski acknowledged. “There’s no way to avoid it now, though. There’s a warrant out for your arrest for the murder of James Patrick Kiernan and his bodyguard.”

  “We killed the wrong people,” Jonah told him. “We thought that we’d got Bin Laden.”

  “Who gave the order to execute the ambush?” Mikulski asked. “Was it Monteith acting on his own? Did he hate Kiernan that much?”

  “I don’t buy that,” Jonah said. “Monteith was far too professional to let his personal feelings get the better of him. He didn’t like Kiernan but he didn’t hate him. And we never, ever acted on our own. We were arm’s length, deniable, that’s true, but there were clear lines of communication from us to Fisher-King at MI6. We didn’t take a step without authorization.”

  “Fisher-King ordered the hit?”

  “Monteith spoke to Fisher-King before the ambush. My understanding is that Fisher-King approved the hit with the tacit approval and possibly the encouragement of somebody on your side: Langley or the Pentagon, perhaps even the National Security Council. I’m not sure who. The message he received was: Go ahead and do it but we don’t want American fingerprints on it. That’s the way it worked, that’s the way it has always worked, dating back to the war against the Soviets. We did your dirty work. The Afghan Guides were formed specifically as a means of cutting through the red tape in Washington. Somebody on your side okayed the hit to Fisher-King, who passed the message to Monteith, and Monteith went ahead and organized it. He was as shocked as the rest of us when we discovered we’d killed Kiernan.”

  “Who knew that Kiernan and not Bin Laden was traveling in the convoy?” Mikulski asked.

  “Nor says he got the information about Kiernan’s movements from the ISI, from Javid Khan’s mouth. Khan denies it. Khan and Kiernan were longtime allies from the fight against the Soviets. Sure, Kiernan was exasperated by ongoing ISI support for the Taliban, but things weren’t that bad.”

  “So what are you saying?”

  “I’m saying that we didn’t deliberately kill Kiernan, and I’m not convinced that the ISI did either.”

  “You believe Nor when he claims he thought it up himself?”

  Jonah paused. “Nor’s mercurial,” he said. “He was absolutely furious at us for abandoning him in ’96. What better way to really fuck us over?”

  “You don’t sound entirely convinced.”

  Jonah sighed. “I can’t see him acting completely on his own. Nor always wanted to belong to something. Sure, he didn’t last very long with any particular institution or organization, but he never stopped trying.”

  “Surely by that stage he belonged to al-Qaeda?”

  “I don’t believe that he ever belonged to al-Qaeda. If he took an oath, he had his fingers crossed and it was only because he was reporting to someone else … a third party.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. I’m trying to find that out. There’s another thing. Nor’s confession is partial. It’s not the whole story. Why stop at the death of Kiernan? What about Eschatos and stealing the diamonds? Why just pick on us Brits?”

  “Surely because he holds you responsible for what happened to him?”

  “Maybe, but I think he missed a chance to create an even bigger drama and it’s not like him to have passed over the opportunity.”

  “Are you willing to give a statement about what you’ve just said?”

  “When the time is right,” Jonah agreed. “But right now, my priority is trying to stop Nor. I take
his threat very seriously.”

  “So you’re not going to hand yourself in?”

  “I can’t yet.”

  “It’s better if you come in. We can talk about a deal. There are people here that are less reasonable than me, influential people. They want to hunt you down. You want to die by Hellfire missile?”

  “No.”

  “Yakoob Beg isn’t going to be able to protect you much longer. I don’t care if he’s bankrolling the entire Karzai family, as soon as there’s enough evidence linking him to the crime he’s going down. Nobody gets to act with impunity.”

  “I need more time,” Jonah said. “I have to stop Nor.”

  He cut the connection, popped open the back of the phone, removed the SIM card and crushed it in the dust beneath his heel.

  That afternoon Yakoob Beg secured him a seat on the UN Humanitarian Air Services flight out of Kabul. In Dubai he caught a plane to Amman, Jordan.

  INSIDE AL-QAEDA

  September 3–6, 2005

  The late afternoon traffic trundled along the road from Amman, leaving trails of dust and exhaust smoke. Jonah sat in the back of a battered yellow cab and stared out of the window as they drove through weathered limestone hills past quarries, factories, military camps and scrapyards. It was four hours since his plane had landed in Jordan.

  Zarqa was a dilapidated town of filthy, garbage-filled streets, exhaust fumes, donkey carts and low cinder-block buildings. Young men in jeans stood on street corners and women in hijabs scurried to and fro carrying heavy loads. Jonah caught the occasional glimpse of bearded Salafists, veterans of the Afghan jihad, flitting between doorways. The town was infamous as the birthplace of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the recently killed leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who was held responsible for a deluge of atrocities, including the bombing of the UN’s headquarters in Iraq which resulted in the death of the special envoy Sergio de Mello and the destruction of the Imam Ali Mosque in Najaf. It was less than three months since Zarqawi’s death in an American ambush. Jonah tried to imagine Nor’s early childhood in this place of wary hostility, but it was difficult.

  Nor’s father, Nazir, lived in a walled compound in a dusty side street festooned with overhead electrical cables. Jonah asked the taxi driver to wait. He was a couple of minutes early, and so he walked the length of the street.

  When he returned a serious-looking boy was sitting on the doorstep of the house. Jonah smiled at him. “Are you a policeman?” the boy asked.

  “No,” Jonah told him. “I’m a journalist.”

  The boy shrank back into the shadows at his feet as Jonah stepped up to the door. He knocked twice.

  Walid, Nor’s younger brother, opened the door. He had been five the last time Jonah had seen him, a small, round-faced boy. Twenty years later he was burly and fierce, with a long bushy beard and a prayer cap. He was wearing a shalwar kameez with short trouser legs in the Wahhabi style, in accordance with the saying of the Prophet which states that clothes that touch the ground are a sign of pride and vanity. Jonah had also heard it described as “al-Qaeda height.” If Walid recognized Jonah, he did not show it, but he stepped back to allow him to enter. Jonah glanced down briefly, not wishing to step on the boy, but he had gone.

  Nor’s father, Nazir, was standing in the hallway. Jonah remembered him as a quietly spoken man with owlish sunglasses and his thumbs tucked into the pockets of a neat gray waistcoat. He looked older, his hair was gray and his face lined, and he used a stick, but it was unmistakably him, even down to the waistcoat, which was threadbare now. They shook hands formally.

  “I remember you,” Nazir said. He may have been frail, but he had lost none of his powers of observation. “You were always covered in sticking plasters as a boy. I didn’t approve of you, as I recall. I thought that you were a bad influence. Your name is not Ishmael, and I don’t believe that you are a journalist.”

  “No,” Jonah conceded.

  “Please, you had better come this way.” He turned on his heel and walked slowly back down the darkened hallway, using the stick for support. About halfway down he stopped and peered over his shoulder. “How is your father?”

  “He is dead,” Jonah replied.

  They stared at each other in silence for a few moments and then Nazir said, “I’m sorry to hear about that.”

  He resumed his slow walk. At the end of the hallway, he opened a door that led into a sun-drenched courtyard with a blue ceramic-tiled fountain and carefully tended plants in terracotta pots. He pointed with his stick to a table and chairs. “Sit down.”

  Walid served tea, and before the conversation started he produced a tape recorder and set it down on the table. “It’s not that we don’t trust you,” Nazir explained apologetically, “but we can’t take a chance.” He glanced at Walid, who nodded to confirm that the tape was running. “All my children were bright but Nor was very bright. Maybe too bright. He was a sensitive sort of person. He cared about the plight of others.”

  Walid stared at the tabletop without comment.

  “I’m looking for him,” Jonah told them.

  “The FBI are also looking for him,” Nazir replied, “and because they cannot find him they have decided they need a scapegoat. My family has been selected. They send their lackeys in our Jordanian intelligence services, our Mukhabarat, to persecute us. I am not welcome anymore at the faculty in Amman. My wife has been suspended from the hospital. My younger son cannot get a job.” His face cracked into a mirthless smile and his eyes shone brightly. “When it rains in Washington, we have to put up umbrellas.”

  “I don’t mean you any harm.”

  “Your word?”

  “My word.”

  “It’s rather late for that, I think. You were my son’s friend but you turned him into a spy, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Jonah acknowledged.

  “We have a saying: a young boy’s company determines his destiny. It was unfortunate for Nor that you ever met him. Why are you looking for him?”

  “Because, like you, I am accused of being his accomplice. Because I was his controller, they have decided that we must be conspiring together.”

  “Is that why you are Ishmael?”

  “Yes,” Jonah acknowledged.

  Nazir paused, his teacup shaking ever so slightly in his hand. “Then perhaps you are the only one that can understand our tragedy.”

  “Where is he?”

  “He has vanished. Maybe he is in Iraq, maybe in London. He may have been yours once but he is al-Qaeda now and he means to right his previous wrongs, starting with your country.”

  He reached forward and switched off the tape recorder. “Find my son for me, Jonah,” he pleaded. “Tell him to stop. And tell him to do it before they put his family in jail.”

  “There’s a problem with that.”

  “Life is full of problems. Everything is a problem.”

  “How am I supposed to find him?”

  “He was your agent.”

  “Not anymore,” Jonah replied.

  “Go to them, Jonah. Go to al-Qaeda. Tell them you are his friend. He will confirm it. Tell them to take you to him. They may. They may not. They may kill you. What other choice do you have?”

  Standing to leave, Jonah looked down at Nazir. He had his eyes closed and his cheeks were wet with tears. Walid walked him to the door.

  “Go to your hotel,” he said.

  Jonah climbed back into the waiting taxi.

  The telephone in his hotel room rang just after three in the morning. Jonah was lying awake watching the television. Desperate New Orleans residents were screaming at helicopters from balconies and rooftops, waving towels and blankets. There was something both horrifying and compelling about the footage.

  He picked up the receiver. “Yes?”

  “You are Ishmael?” asked a softly spoken man.

  “Who is this?” Jonah asked.

  “This is Tariq. What do you want from us, please, Ishmael?”

  “I’m a friend of Nor.”<
br />
  “What is your business in Jordan?”

  “I have to speak to Nor.”

  The line went dead. Jonah stared at the ceiling. Fifteen minutes later the phone rang again.

  “What is your real name, Ishmael?”

  “Jonah.”

  Tariq put the phone down. Twenty minutes later he called again.

  “Jonah?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is Tariq.”

  “Yes, Tariq.”

  “A car is waiting for you outside the hotel. It is a black Mercedes. The driver is Zein. Please come now.”

  “Where will it take me?”

  The response was an order, strident in tone. “Come now. Right now.”

  Jonah threw on his clothes and ran down the corridor to the stairs. He stepped through the concrete blast barriers and out into the street. A battered and elderly black Mercedes was parked on the opposite side of the road. A small man with sparkling eyes and a big smile was holding the passenger door open. Jonah crossed the street to him. There was a second man in the shadows of the back seat, his face disguised by a red-and-white checkered scarf.

  “Jonah,” said the small man. Jonah nodded. They shook hands vigorously. “My name is Zein.”

  Jonah got into the passenger seat and Zein closed the door on him. He rushed around and slipped into the driver’s seat. He turned the ignition and the engine backfired. They all flinched and across the street the security men took cover. Zein cursed. They set off, weaving between the potholes in the road, with Zein watching his rearview mirror all the time.

  “You are Jonah?” asked the man in the back of the car.

  “Yes,” Jonah said, recognizing the voice from the telephone. “You are Tariq.”

  “That is correct. What do you know about this man, Nor?”

  “He used to work for the British intelligence services.”

  They turned off the tarmac road on to a bumpy, unpaved alleyway hemmed in by warehouses. Zein peered over the steering wheel, navigating between piles of drifting rubbish.