“Do you know anything more?” asked Malko.
“No, and I’m going to ask you not to contact me again, except in an emergency. I could get in very serious trouble. It might already be too late.”
He seemed panicky.
Malko was starting to understand the warning given to Maureen Kieffer. The Afghans were doing whatever they could to isolate him. And this was probably just the beginning. The NDS had surely noted his visit to Nelson Berry. What would they make of that?
This was no longer an impossible mission, he thought. It was a suicide mission. He would have to warn Washington as soon as possible, he decided.
The NDS agent put the menu down.
“Would you mind if I left now? I’m not hungry, and I only came because I promised.”
“That’s all right,” said Malko. He wasn’t hungry either.
After a weak handshake, Malko watched Kibzai slip out like a shadow. There was nothing left for him to do but call Jim Doolittle and be driven back to the Serena.
It was eight in the morning when his cell phone rang. Nelson Berry apologized for calling so early.
“I got in at two a.m. Did you phone yesterday?”
“Yes, I did,” said Malko. “Send me Darius, please.”
Malko would have to tell Berry about the NDS surveillance. It might upset him, maybe even make him back out of the whole project. But he didn’t have any choice.
Malko took the briefcase with the five hundred thousand dollars downstairs and left the hotel. The day was chilly, and he drew his cashmere coat a little tighter. Past the police checkpoint, he spotted the Corolla. He got in and laid the precious briefcase on the floor.
Darius was as silent as ever. They drove down Sharpoor Street, first passing NDS headquarters, then “poppy palace row,” eventually reaching the rutted road that led to Berry’s house. Suddenly Darius slammed on the brakes and uttered a brief curse. The jolt made Malko look up. A car was stopped across the road.
Moments later, both the Corolla’s front doors were yanked open at the same time. Malko saw men with guns, their faces hidden by ski masks.
One grabbed Darius by the arm and threw him to the ground. When he tried to get up, the man pistol-whipped him, and he collapsed. The masked man immediately got behind the wheel, while a second climbed in the backseat and jammed his gun into Malko’s neck. Malko wasn’t even carrying the pistol Berry gave him—not that it would have done much good.
The man at the wheel shifted into reverse, and the Corolla jounced backward out onto Sharpoor Street. Not a word had been spoken.
He’d been kidnapped!
Malko didn’t dare move. At least he hadn’t been shot immediately. That was a good sign.
Continuing down Sharpoor Street, the Corolla passed any number of armed guards, none of whom paid it the slightest attention. Twenty minutes later, after a complicated route through back alleys, the car entered a small courtyard. Several men immediately surrounded it.
Malko was taken out and searched and relieved of his cell phone.
Another man took the briefcase with the money and led him into a kind of workshop. Once they were sure he wasn’t armed, they sat him in a corner of the workshop and talked briefly in Dari or Pashto, behaving as if he wasn’t there.
One of them came over and slipped a canvas bag over Malko’s head, blindfolding him, then tied his hands behind his back. Two men raised him to his feet, forced him to walk a few yards, and shoved him forward. When his head hit a metal floor and his legs were lifted up, he realized he was being stuffed into a car trunk. The lid slammed. He had trouble breathing and was very cold. He felt the car start and drive out to the street.
Who had kidnapped him?
The car drove on a bumpy road for a while, then on pavement, then on bumpy road again. When it stopped after what felt like half an hour, he felt both relieved and frightened, wondering what would happen next.
The trunk was opened and two men helped him out. When one removed his improvised hood, he saw the lights of Kabul in the distance. They were at a farm on a hillside, and the air was chilly.
His kidnappers, who were still masked, hustled him around behind what looked like a farmhouse and brought him to a well. They looped a thick rope around his chest, lifted him over the edge of the well, and pushed him out. Malko found himself dangling in space, being lowered along damp stone walls.
The descent didn’t take long. Five or six yards down, his feet touched the bottom of the well. It was dry, thank God!
They untied the loop and pulled up the rope.
In the darkness, Malko could make out a man sitting on the ground: a youngish Afghan with a full beard and deep-set eyes. He gave a surprised look at Malko, who clearly wasn’t Afghan, and said something in Dari. Malko answered in English, but the man shook his head. He didn’t understand. As they sat looking at each other, suddenly everything went black. The kidnappers had covered the well, plunging them in darkness.
Malko shivered. The temperature was icy. He would’ve wanted to talk to his companion in misfortune, but the man crouched against the wall seemed to be dozing.
How long would he be down here?
Why the kidnapping?
And above all, would anyone be looking for him?
His head bandaged, a shaken Darius told Nelson Berry what had happened.
“They were waiting for us,” he said. “They knew we had money. They were bandits.”
“What about the car?”
“They drove off in it.”
The South African couldn’t understand it. There were certainly robbers in Kabul, but how could they know Malko was carrying a lot of money? It was very strange.
Berry was now out five hundred thousand dollars in cash, plus the armored Corolla, which was easily worth a hundred thousand. Why kidnap Malko? There was only one possible answer: ransom. So the kidnappers would be demanding ransom, but from whom? Malko didn’t live in Kabul, and they didn’t know about his connection with the CIA. Nor would the Corolla’s license plate lead them to Berry. The car was registered in the name of an Afghan who lived in the Emirates.
“Darius, we’ve got to get all the people we know working on this,” he said. “I’ll go see my pals in the police. Maybe they’ll know something.”
Warren Michaelis dialed Malko repeatedly, but the calls immediately went to voice mail. He also tried the Serena, but Malko hadn’t been seen at the hotel since that morning. Clearly something had happened to him, but no assaults on foreigners in Kabul had been reported. The local hospitals would have noted the presence of a non-Afghan.
“We’re going to the NDS,” said Michaelis.
That was the only agency with the technical means of locating Malko’s cell phone. Their Russian training would come in handy.
Nelson Berry was in a funk. Despite his many connections, he hadn’t gotten any information. There had been no sign of Malko since that morning. Just then, his cell rang. Maybe he would learn something, he thought.
A rough-sounding man spoke, in Pashto.
“Is Malko Linge your pal?”
He so butchered the Austrian’s name that Berry had to make him repeat it twice before he could answer yes.
“We have him,” said the man. “If you don’t give us fifty million afghanis, we’ll cut his throat. You have until tomorrow. After that …”
The man hung up.
Berry looked at his cell. They must have found his number in Malko’s phone. But they couldn’t know that Malko wasn’t actually a pal of his.
The South African quickly sized up the situation. He had no intention of paying any ransom, and it probably wouldn’t do any good anyway. There would be bargaining, of course, but Berry wasn’t prepared to waste even a tenth of that sum in a lost cause.
He wondered who could help him. Contacting the Kabul CIA station was out of the question; they would ask him too many questions. There was nothing he could do for Malko except to haggle over the size of the ransom, to gain time.
He tried
to call Malko’s number back, but without success. No number had appeared on-screen when the kidnappers phoned him.
Berry walked over to the bar and poured himself a shot of vodka. It was too bad. He liked Malko, and the Austrian could have earned him a lot of money.
Just the same, he decided to try one thing. Using a special phone, he dialed a number in the United States. An anonymous voice instructed him to dial a code, which he did, getting a second voice mail. The first was just a cutout.
“Our friend has been kidnapped and there’s nothing I can do,” said Berry. “You better alert whoever needs to know.”
Clayton Luger would have his own ways of taking action.
The cover on the well was moved aside, admitting a dim, grayish light. Malko looked at his watch, which they’d neglected to take from him.
It was 7:00 a.m.
Next to him, his companion in misfortune was curled up and appeared to be sleeping. Malko felt as if he’d spent the night in a refrigerator. He was shivering. When he looked up he saw something being lowered from the top of the well. It was a cardboard box with two bowls of palau—rice mixed with pieces of mutton, the national Afghan dish—and two bottles of water.
Malko was so hungry that he devoured the food, but the rice was cold and didn’t provide much warmth. When he finished eating, he turned to his companion.
“How long have you been here?” he asked in English.
The man shook his head, not understanding, so Malko tried the word for “here,” one of the few Dari words he knew. Holding up his fingers, he asked, “Inja?”
This time, the man understood. He held up five fingers on his left hand, and four on his right: nine. So you could survive nine days in these conditions, thought Malko.
He wondered who would be working on his behalf. Maybe Nelson Berry, and maybe the CIA.
Standing at his office door, Walid Varang greeted Warren Michaelis with a broad smile. The Afghan was the third-in-command at the NDS.
When they shook hands, Varang’s wrist displayed a Rolex watch worth a million afghanis. It clearly was the fruit of admirable thrift, since his salary was only fifty thousand afghanis a month. When the Directorate seized a shipment of heroin, part of it always went missing, and most of that went to the higher-ups.
“We’ve located Malko Linge’s cell phone,” Varang announced.
Michaelis felt a huge wave of relief.
“Where?”
“In Chehel Sotoun.” A very poor neighborhood, a slum without running water or electricity. “We’ll go there together.”
Waiting in the courtyard were three Fords crammed with armed men. The lead car held the technicians whose job was to locate the cell phone. They drove along the Kabul River for a few miles, then climbed a hillside on a slick, muddy road. The cars passed squalid hovels under plumes of charcoal smoke, a few women in blue burqas, and men with pushcarts.
Halfway up, they stopped. Varang got a message on his radio and turned to Michaelis.
“We’re very close,” he said.
They all piled out, and the NDS agents took positions around their chief. The technicians set up their gear in a small intersection with no shops nearby, only houses. Thanks to the cell phone’s built-in GPS, they could pinpoint its location within a few yards. Suddenly two of the technicians walked over to a garbage bin, frightening some stray cats in the process.
One man kicked the bin over, spilling its contents.
Michaelis watched as the Afghan bent and picked something up, which he brought over to them. He immediately recognized the Nokia he’d given Malko.
“The signal hasn’t moved since yesterday,” said Varang. “I think whoever kidnapped Mr. Linge threw away his phone here, to cut the trail. This is as far as our investigation can take us.”
The two men exchanged a long look, and Michaelis understood that Varang thought they would never see Malko alive again.
Warren Michaelis gazed thoughtfully at Malko’s Nokia. Once its battery was charged, he would know what numbers had been called, which might give him a lead.
The NDS agents climbed back into their cars, leaving him alone in the intersection. He eventually got in and turned to Varang.
“What can we do?”
“Not much,” said the Afghan, shaking his head. “At the NDS we don’t deal with street crime, which seems to be the situation here. But criminals don’t usually attack foreigners; it makes for too many complications. This is a strange case.”
“Do you have a theory about what happened?”
“No, except that Mr. Linge was almost certainly kidnapped. Otherwise, we would have found his body by now. Unless …”
Varang left the sentence unfinished, then continued.
“You might ask the Interior Ministry. They handle political offenses and extortion. Unless you know something more specific, that is.”
Which meant that Varang thought Malko might have been kidnapped in connection with his CIA activities. As it happens, Michaelis was wondering the same thing. Could the Austrian have been seized and forced to reveal what he was doing in Afghanistan? If that was the case, the attack could have come only from President Karzai’s entourage—and they would never find him. If the Taliban were involved, they would have already taken credit for the kidnapping.
Varang dropped Michaelis off at his Land Cruiser.
“I’m very sorry,” he said. “I really would have liked to help you. I’ll send a bulletin to all our offices, in case we hear anything.”
Once back in the Ariana, Michaelis summoned the case officer who’d been detailed to deliver the five hundred thousand dollars. The young man confirmed that he had given the cash to Malko in person.
Just whom was the money for? Michaelis wondered. The Taliban, according to Malko. Even if there were a way to identify the recipients, the CIA station people weren’t authorized to contact them.
Michaelis sat down to draft a report for Langley. He didn’t know what Malko Linge’s mission in Kabul was, but it was off to a very bad start.
Nelson Berry saw an unknown number appear on his cell phone and answered. It was the same man with the Pashto accent as the day before, one of Malko’s kidnappers.
“Do you have the money?”
“It’s impossible to get that much money together quickly, and you know it,” said the South African. “Let’s meet so we can agree on a reasonable price.”
“Ours is the reasonable price.”
“In any case, I need to be sure he’s still alive,” said Berry, changing tactics. “I want a photo of him with a copy of the day’s newspaper.”
“We’re not taking any photos,” said the Afghan sharply. “I’ll send you something else: an ear.”
“You don’t even know who I am,” said Berry.
“True, but we can send it to the Serena, and they can pass it on. You’ve got until tomorrow.”
He hung up.
Berry wished he hadn’t taken the call, because he now faced a new dilemma. If he didn’t do something, this would end badly. The best solution was to alert the CIA, but that meant revealing his contact with Malko, which he didn’t want to do.
Berry decided to wait until the next call. They never killed hostages quickly, he told himself. Or maybe Malko was already dead, in which case it wouldn’t make any difference.
Another cold night had passed when a faint glow lit the upper walls of the well. Looking up, Malko saw a man leaning over the edge. He said a long sentence in Dari. Malko’s companion started, said a few words, then painfully got to his feet. A rope with a loop was already being lowered. The prisoner took it and wrapped it around his chest. Before he could say anything, the rope tightened and he was hoisted up to ground level. He scrabbled on the stone wall with his feet, as if to help himself rise faster.
Malko felt a stab of envy. His fellow hostage was free, his ransom probably paid. That might turn out to be helpful, he realized. The man was sure to be questioned by the police, who would learn that Malko was bein
g held and come looking for him.
He looked up again.
The Afghan had now reached the edge of the well. The kidnappers who had hauled him up pulled him over, and he disappeared from sight.
Now Malko felt even lonelier. The presence of the other man, even though he couldn’t communicate with him, had been some comfort.
Suddenly he heard the sounds of a heated argument in Dari. The voices grew louder. This was followed by silence, an angry yell, and the sound of pleading.
The two gunshots startled him.
There were no more sounds from above. The cover was put back on the well, and Malko was again in darkness. He no longer envied his companion, whom the kidnappers had obviously killed, maybe because the ransom hadn’t been paid. It didn’t make his own future look very bright.
Trying not to think, Malko huddled against the wall in an effort to keep warm. If only he could communicate with his captors, tell them whom to contact to negotiate his ransom. Because if nothing happened, he might suffer the same fate as the Afghan. He could always refuse to take the rope, of course, but they would just shoot him at the bottom of the well.
Reza Assefi, the Interior Ministry’s special counsel, bowed deeply to Warren Michaelis. In Kabul, the Americans still ruled the roost. The previous month, the CIA had delivered three hundred and seventy-five million dollars’ worth of gear purchased from Rosoboronexport, which sells military Russian matériel, to outfit the Afghan police: AK-47s, night-vision scopes, communications material, and Jeeps.
Those kinds of presents can buy lot of friendship. Without American dollars, the Afghan police would be getting around on bicycles. Some of this gear was resold to the Taliban by corrupt cops. Others took their shiny new toys and switched sides. In a way, the American aid helped pretty much everybody.
In keeping with Afghan custom, Assefi and Michaelis politely inquired about each other’s families, drank tea, and discussed politics and the weather. At last, the CIA station chief was able to get around to the reason for his visit. A man connected with the Agency had come to evaluate the situation in Kabul, he said, and had disappeared.
Chaos in Kabul Page 7