by Jason Elliot
I hardly dare believe it. Despite periods of numbing doubt I have never fully believed he was dead. It strikes me that the east, where fate put us together like a cosmic matchmaker, is now delivering him back to me.
The Baroness has read my mind again. ‘I know,’ she says with a look that suggests she understands how much the news means to me. ‘We need to get you back there. I shall have to arrange a context.’
My mind’s racing, then comes to a sudden halt at a dark thought. ‘It’s been a long time,’ I say. ‘We don’t know what’s happened to him in the meantime.’
‘He should come in. You either bring him back,’ says the Baroness quietly, looking across the water, ‘or you deal with the situation on the ground as you see fit. You were his best friend, and it must be for you to decide.’
It’s February and I realise I’ve forgotten that the next day is my birthday.
8
It’s now Saturday, five days after my temporary incarceration with Billy, the Face and the charming colonel with the nice green beret. My rib still hurts when I take a deep breath or laugh, and my eye has a purplish corona around it which gives me a slightly menacing look that I enjoy. It’s time for another briefing with Seethrough and, as promised, he’s laid on transport.
At dusk I drive with H to the outskirts of Hereford, where we board a black Puma helicopter fitted with additional fuel tanks and passenger seats around the sides. It’s run by the best specialist pilots from the RAF and is called the Special Duties Flight, part of the Firm’s special operations capability. It’s the limousine of helicopters, says H, and rattles much less than others because it’s maintained more diligently and they actually take the trouble to tighten up all the nuts and bolts. Even the pilot sounds quite posh. It’s the Firm’s preferred means of transport between London, Hereford and Fort Monckton on the coast, where among other things, H now tells me, he occasionally teaches the finer points of MOE – covert methods of entry – to selected aspirants, based on the exceptional talents of his mentor, a Major Freddy Mace.
We belt ourselves in and H gives a thumbs up to the loadmaster, who makes sure everything is properly stowed. The aircraft winds into the air and swoops south-east. I watch the Cotswolds race past beneath us as we roar at spectacularly low altitude towards London and over a carpet of glittering lights to a heliport that I didn’t know existed. It hangs over the Thames not far from Battersea and is marked london in big illuminated white letters. I can’t imagine why anyone who already knows how to fly a helicopter to Battersea might need to be reminded of this, and H is none the wiser.
A squat and pale-faced driver meets us and whisks us along Battersea Park Road in a powerful Vauxhall. A few minutes later the towers of Legoland, bathed in orange light, loom up ahead of us. We draw to a stop alongside the building beneath a security barrier where our IDs are checked, and descend into an underground car park.
I recognise Stella, Seethrough’s secretary, who’s there to meet us. I wonder whether this timid-looking Moneypenny, whose face and manner are so very forgettable and who asks us meekly whether we’ve had a pleasant journey, has perhaps just come up from the subterranean ops room where she’s been assisting the running of some far-off minor war. I’m tempted to make a joke and ask how saving the world has been for her today, but keep silent as she leads us to a row of capsule-like doors, runs her card through the reader and admits us to the lift.
Seethrough is ready for us upstairs with a briefing list of three items. The first is the latest imagery from our Cousins, as he calls the Americans. He unrolls two poster-sized satellite photographs of astonishingly high resolution and clarity, and military topographic maps that cover the same area.
For the first time we have the thrill of studying our target: a huge, medieval-looking fort with four giant turrets, nestling in the mountains north-west of Kandahar. In its cellars are the Stinger missiles that the Cousins have paid their tribal agents so handsomely to gather together. At the going rate, a minimum of $100,000 per missile, there’s over ten million dollars’ worth of them stashed in the fort, according to the TRODPINT reports. Some have been bought from the same commanders to whom they were originally supplied, others from profiteering middlemen, and others from the Taliban themselves. A few have been smuggled into Pakistan and spirited away by the CIA, who maintain a light aircraft at Peshawar airport for this very purpose.
An Afghan TRODPINT member will be assigned to help us reach the target, explains Seethrough. More on that in a few minutes, he says. Our job, he reminds us, is to find a good enough pretext to be in the area, to OP the fort from a distance, get inside and verify the serial numbers of the missiles, and then destroy them. We will receive a notice to move when the weather is clear enough for post-strike analysis and BDA by satellite.
I can’t remember what BDA stands for.
‘Battle damage assessment,’ interjects H.
The maps will travel back to Hereford with H, who will study the terrain and draw up a list of our requirements, while I’m to work on our cover plan.
Secondly, I have a forty-eight-hour visit to the US.
‘Go and see your kids,’ says Seethrough, ‘and in your spare time you can have a chat with the ops chap from CTC, who’ll brief you on the set-up from their point of view and show you how to find the serial number on a Stinger. Your flight’s tonight.’ He hands me my travel documents and a hotel reservation in Washington. ‘They want you there at night for some reason,’ he says. Then he hands the rolled-up photographs and maps to H.
‘Want to look those over while I have a word?’ He gestures to another table. H obliges by moving across the room and Seethrough retrieves a file with multicoloured tabs poking out of it and opens it in front of me.
‘Recognise anybody?’ he asks.
It’s a shock because I had thought him dead. He looks much older in the photograph but I do recognise him. It’s Gemayel, grey-haired now but unmistakable.
‘He’s become a big fish since you last saw him,’ says Seethrough. ‘Must have cut a deal and agreed to act as a source.’ That, he explains, is how these things work. Since I last saw him, nearly ten years earlier, Gemayel has become the chief financial officer of a Middle Eastern organisation with a wide popular influence. The Americans call it a terrorist organisation, but in the British government nobody can decide whether it’s got anything to do with terrorists or not, so we maintain contact. Gemayel is now in charge of its global funding network, and has kept open a channel back to the Firm, making him ‘onside’ in Seethrough’s parlance. He’s evidently been living in South America, where for some reason most of the organisation’s funds are funnelled and then redistributed. A few years ago he resurfaced in Beirut at the highest level of the organisation’s architecture, and since then has survived two assassination attempts by the Israeli intelligence service.
‘Still with me?’ asks Seethrough.
I nod, though it’s all getting stranger by the minute.
‘Most of the chatter we’re getting about Stinger purchases is coming out of the Sudan. Gemayel has an area-wide network based in the capital Khartoum. We on the other hand have precisely one operational officer, whose identity is already declared. What we need is for Gemayel to ask his people to listen out for noises about the Stingers. That way we can at least do some eliminating. He may be onside, but we can’t do a face-to-face with one of our known people without Mossad breathing down our necks. So when you’re back from America I thought you could talk to him and rekindle the spark. You’ve got the perfect excuse of wanting to catch up after all these years.’
‘I can remind him of our happy days together.’
‘Precisely,’ says Seethrough, taking me up on the irony.
‘Let’s say he agrees. What does he get out of it?’
‘He gets to keep his head,’ says Seethrough soberly, and turns the pages in the file to an immediate-level CX report from Lebanon station. It bears the secret router indicator actor, indicating that no one out
side the Firm is allowed to see it. It’s addressed to the head of the Global CT controllerate, which is Seethrough, and the security caveat reads: UK T O P S E C R E T /DELICATE SOURCE. But it’s the subject title that shocks: proposed assassination of Elias Rashid Gemayel by israeli security services.
I scan down the page. The Israelis, if the report is to be believed, are planning to kill Gemayel with an explosive charge in his mobile phone placed by one of his own security staff. They’ve managed to buy one of Gemayel’s own bodyguards, and the plan is to be carried out later this month, when Gemayel returns from Rome to Beirut and will receive a new mobile phone. In exchange for this deadly snippet of information, Seethrough is hoping that Gemayel will pass on whatever his people can find out about the Stinger purchases.
‘Fair trade, don’t you think?’ says Seethrough, pursing his lips and raising his eyebrows in his signature gesture of enquiry.
‘The Israelis won’t be too happy when you give away their plan,’ I say.
‘You win some, you lose some. Par for the course. They know that. Though I shall probably be denied that marvellous Mossad cheesecake from now on.’
There are some further details, which I struggle with because my head is spinning a bit from all this. I’m given the name of my CIA Counterterrorist Center contact and a phone number to memorise for when I’m in Washington. There’s also a backup number for use with a PIN and a code name in case I can’t use the mobile and need to call London. The rest is transparent, he says. I’m on a trip to see my children. The hotel is paid for, but any other expenses, he reminds me with a cynical glance of regret, are not deductible.
I dread America. More correctly, I dread the prospect of seeing my ex, who holds my children hostage there, and makes it as difficult as she possibly can for me to spend time with them by skilfully inflicting the maximum psychological damage on me when I’m at my most vulnerable. It seems unfair to indict an entire nation on the behaviour of a single woman, but the feeling of anxiety returns to me whenever I board a plane to the US, and is countered only by my excitement at the prospect of seeing my kids. It’s the emotional see-saw between these two extremes that’s hard to manage, like the toxins and antitoxins administered by professional torturers to their victims.
Flying west, time goes backwards, so I have the strange experience of arriving at Dulles airport an hour or so after I’ve left England. According to local time, on my arrival it’s 1 a.m. At the immigration desk a uniformed officer glances humourlessly at the bruise above my eye.
‘You should see the other guy,’ I say.
He runs my green card, which isn’t green, through a reader, stamps my passport, and a grin comes over his face as he hands them back.
‘Welcome home, buddy. It’s a lot safer here.’
Which is comforting, because I’m already nervous at the prospect of encountering my ex.
I have no checked baggage and pass into the arrivals hall, where I scan for a driver holding up a sign with the name of a forgettable business written on it. He looks like a former soldier, to judge from his haircut and the muscles squeezed into his tight black suit.
‘Welcome to Washington DC, sir,’ he says after we exchange innocuous-sounding pass phrases. We walk outside to a line of waiting cars and he opens the rear door of a capacious four-wheel-drive Chevrolet with darkened windows. On the far side of the back seat is the ops officer from the Counterterrorist Center. I haven’t been sure what kind of person to expect, but this isn’t it.
At first I see only the hat, an expensive-looking dark Stetson with a leather braid around the base of the crown. I see the dark blue blazer, the starched white shirt and the jeans and cowboy boots. Then I take in the long blonde hair falling over the shoulders. The Stetson tilts up, and I’m looking into the face of a good-looking woman of about fifty, whose features break into a gleaming smile that makes me freeze momentarily in surprise.
‘Howdy, amigo,’ she says with unexpected earnestness. ‘You look like you never saw a cowgirl before.’
This is quite possibly true. I’m stammering for a reply.
‘Just not this late in the evening.’
‘Well, better late than never,’ she says. ‘You ready to saddle up?’
I climb aboard and we shake hands. There’s a Germanic-looking strength to her face, softened by the fairness of her hair and skin. Her jaw is square and tapers towards a prominent chin, and the thinness of her lips suggests a masculine hardness. I feel the steely quality of her gaze on me, as if she’s assessing the nerve of her guest. We follow the convention, adhered to in certain circles, of first names only.
‘Good to meet you, Tony. Heard good things about you. I’m Grace.’ She leans forward to the driver. ‘Full chisel, Mike.’ An opaque glass screen rises between us and the driver, muffling a hiss of static as he radios the news of our departure to wherever we’re going. The car surges forward and we merge into the river of lights flowing along the Dulles Access Toll Road, heading towards Tyson’s Corner.
‘It’s a pleasure to be here,’ I say, ‘but do you mind if I ask why it has to be at night?’
‘God, you English are so darn polite.’ She laughs. ‘Course you can. I understand your time here is short. I booked you for the night so’s we can keep our appointment in Afghanistan. Time zone there is nine and a half hours ahead of us.’
‘We’re going to talk to someone who’s in Afghanistan?’
‘Better than that. But I hate to spoil a surprise.’ She clips an ID card to my jacket pocket. ‘When were you last in-country?’ I’m assuming by this she means Afghanistan, not America.
‘About four years ago.’
‘De-mining outfit, right?’
I nod.
‘Ever meet Massoud?’
‘Twice.’
‘Like him?’
‘I never thought he was a saint, but you can’t not admire him,’ I say.
‘Hell of a guy,’ she agrees. ‘Wish I could be there now. Kind of place that gets its claws into you. Ran four missions to our friend up north. Hell, I’m an honorary male Afghan.’
It’s hard to imagine. Massoud’s base of operations in the Panjshir valley and the northernmost province of Afghanistan called Badakhshan aren’t the easiest or safest places to travel. They’re the only portions of the country yet to fall to the Taliban, and are doggedly defended by Massoud and his dedicated soldiers. I travelled along the dirt roads of the region and through its spectacular mountain passes and valleys on de-mining surveys for the trust. Now Massoud’s ailing forces, squeezed between the Taliban’s inexorable advance from the south and the frontier of Tajikistan to the north, are fighting for survival. I’ve guessed that the CIA has sent advisers to the area to liaise with Massoud, the Taliban’s final opponent, but I never imagined that a woman was among them.
‘Choppered out of Tajikistan last year with a few of the boys on an Mi-8 that was damn near ready to fall apart. There was a few times I thought we were all fixin’ to eat dirt,’ she says, grinning at some recollection of peril, ‘but Massoud looked after us best he could. Didn’t seem to mind my being a woman.’
I ask if she thinks Massoud will survive the Taliban’s advance.
‘I don’t rightly want to think about it,’ she says. ‘He’s the last chance that darn country’s got. If the Taliban take the north and Massoud has to ride out on a rail, Afghanistan’s going to become one giant threat matrix that’s going to break everybody’s balls.’
‘Not yours, I take it,’ I say.
She laughs. ‘All depends. If the State Department keeps up its no-account fantasy of cosying up to the Taliban and we don’t get a result soon on Obi-Wan, then yes, mine too.’
Obi-Wan, I’m assuming, is her pet name for Osama bin Laden, a mild-mannered Saudi playboy turned anti-American jihadist. The Western world has hardly heard of him.
‘Had him in our sights a couple of times, but you have to promise me you’ll keep that dry. We even figured Massoud’s boys could do the job
for us, but he’d take a whole heap of grief for it if anyone found out we’d sponsored it. Nobody in the Muslim world wants to be known for killing their very own Mahatma Gandhi.’
It’s not a comparison I would have thought of. But it’s true that bin Laden is beginning to be seen as a kind of hero in the Islamic world, and his message of defiance against American domination is catching on.
Our shared respect for Massoud has broken the ice between us, though there’s not much to break because she’s so refreshingly outspoken. I’m enjoying the contrast between talking to her and the tight-lipped Seethrough, who only shares information when he has to. We talk as the car heads along Dolley Madison Boulevard towards Maclean. Grace works for a secret unit within the already secret Counterterrorist Center, dedicated for the past couple of years to tracking and, if possible, capturing bin Laden and bringing him to trial for his role in the bombing of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. After having been hounded out of his native Saudi Arabia and then, under American pressure, from Sudan, he’s set up in Afghanistan. There he can move freely between his devotees’ training camps and preach his messianic message to all who’ll listen, though few of his fans are themselves Afghans.
‘What are the chances of getting him?’ I ask.
‘Take away some of the more hare-brained schemes and we’ve still got a good option set,’ she says. The technology to launch a cruise missile strike against bin Laden is all there. There are submarines in the Persian Gulf ready to unleash their weapons. But the White House can’t afford to repeat the spectacularly inconsequential strikes that took place in response to the African bombings in 1998, when a hundred million dollars’ worth of cruise missiles were fired into one of bin Laden’s training camps, where he was said to be holding a jihadist summit meeting. Twenty or thirty volunteer fighters, mostly Pakistanis, were killed as the missiles blasted the Afghan dust and rock. Bin Laden, it is said, had left the meeting a few hours earlier. But the failure gave him the best publicity for his cause that he could have dreamed of. Now the political climate isn’t right for another strike in any case. At the time, says Grace, the great American public was really only interested in one thing: the contents of Monica Lewinsky’s cheeks.