Chaos in Kabul

by Gérard de Villiers

It was the best thing that could happen.

  But through his half-conscious haze, he could hear someone screaming, “Don’t shoot him!”

  He was still conscious when he saw someone leaning over and shaking him. Opening his eyes, Beradar could vaguely make out the shape of a man.

  “You’re Abdul Ghani Beradar, aren’t you?” the man yelled. “You’re under arrest, you Talib bastard!”

  To back up what he said, the policeman kicked Beradar’s thigh where he’d been shot. The pain was so intense that he passed out, so he didn’t see the military ambulance pulling up in front of the supermarket.

  The mullah’s hell was about to begin.

  “This is awkward,” said Clayton Luger, sounding dismayed. “Very awkward.”

  The moment Malko got back to the Ariana Hotel, he’d rushed to a secure phone line to warn Langley of the disastrous turn of events.

  “Did you give him Abdullah’s name?” asked Luger.

  “Yes, just before he had to make a run for it.”

  The CIA number two heaved a deep sigh. “Then let’s hope to hell they don’t catch him. Otherwise you’ve painted a big fat bull’s-eye on Abdullah’s back. Karzai hates him already, and if he finds out he’s hooking up with the Taliban, he’ll do everything he can to bump him off.

  “Well, there’s nothing left to do but hope for the best. Keep me posted!”

  Malko was reluctant to return to the Serena, but staying holed up at the Ariana would amount to a confession. Trying to get rid of Hamid Karzai brings me nothing but bad luck, he thought.

  Beradar’s stretcher was set down in Parviz Bamyan’s office, and the jubilant NDS chief looked him over.

  The prisoner had been given a shot of morphine, his wound roughly bandaged, and he’d been handcuffed to the stretcher. He was lucid, though still groggy.

  Bamyan leaned close and asked, “You’re Abdul Ghani Beradar, aren’t you?”

  “You know very well who I am, you communist dog!” snapped the cleric, staring at him coldly. “May Allah curse you!”

  Bamyan had indeed been a member of Najibullah’s old Khalq faction. Unruffled, he said, “Save your energy, because we’re going to have a lot to talk about in the coming days. I’m sure you have many, many things to tell me. Starting with why you came to Kabul, since it’s been so long since you visited our beautiful country.”

  Beradar closed his eyes without answering. He knew what awaited him. He had no fear of becoming a shahid—a martyr—but he was afraid of what would happen before he ascended to Allah’s paradise. Nobody had ever successfully resisted NDS torture, he knew. And he had so many secrets that his interrogators were sure to reserve special treatment for him.

  He could hear people entering the office, and the NDS leader gave them orders:

  “Take him to the first subbasement. And don’t beat him. Let him get his strength back. He’ll need it.”

  Haji Shukrullah, who owned the Chicken Street shop where Malko had met Beradar, looked up to see two plainclothes policemen entering his store. Without a word, they yanked him from behind the cash register and started to beat him.

  By the time they tossed him into the green police truck, his collarbone was broken and his face smashed. And this was just the start of the softening-up process.

  A good Muslim who had made the hajj, Shukrullah prayed to Allah to give him the strength not to be too cowardly. He didn’t want to be a shahid, but neither did he want to betray his friends.

  It was a fine line.

  Malko was having coffee at the Serena’s nonalcoholic bar, trying to settle his nerves. He had returned from Chicken Street without incident and was starting to feel hopeful again. Kabul didn’t have any real media, so he had no way of knowing if Mullah Beradar had managed to escape.

  The ringing of his phone pulled him from his thoughts.

  Without preamble, Warren Michaelis asked, “Are you at the Serena?”

  “Yes, I’m at the bar.”

  “Okay, I’ll be there in half an hour.”

  There had to be a serious reason for the CIA station chief to come to the hotel. Malko hoped it wasn’t a bad one.

  He had drunk two more cups of coffee by the time Michaelis showed up. The station chief was accompanied by a pair of Marine “babysitters,” who sat down at the next table. He looked tense and drawn.

  “Mullah Beradar is in the hands of the NDS,” he immediately said. “He was wounded and arrested.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Malko.

  “Yes. My NDS source confirmed it. This is a major problem, because they’ll make Beradar talk—about you.”

  Malko had no illusions about the cleric being able to resist torture. Blowing yourself up with a suicide vest was one thing, but having your fingernails ripped out was quite another. An obvious solution occurred to him.

  “This operation is obviously terminated, so why not fly me out now? I’m of no further use in Kabul.”

  Michaelis gave him a long look and said, “Actually, you are. I got a message from Mr. Luger. We have to assume that Beradar will give them the name of Abdullah Abdullah, which puts him in Karzai’s line of fire. You have to warn him.”

  “What?” Malko was taken aback. “Why me? I don’t even know Abdullah!”

  “Officially, the Agency can’t get involved in the presidential election, as you know. So the station isn’t allowed to approach someone like Abdullah Abdullah. But you’re a free agent and can go talk to him. And that will wrap up your mission. Once you’ve delivered the warning, you can leave Afghanistan.”

  Naked except for underpants and a bulky bandage on his thigh, Mullah Beradar was strapped to a metal table with his arms above his head and his ankles handcuffed to the side bars. An NDS agent had stuffed a rag in his mouth and was steadily pouring water from a pitcher onto it.

  The relentless flow kept bringing the cleric to the edge of suffocation.

  He gasped like a fish out of water. His head thrashed around, trying to escape the torment, which had begun hours earlier.

  They hadn’t asked him any questions yet, only half asphyxiated him at regular intervals. A very effective way to weaken him.

  The last of the water from the pitcher flowed into Beradar’s mouth, and he expected his tormentor to refill it from the big bucket nearby. Instead, he set it on the ground and took the wet rag from between his victim’s teeth.

  Beradar hungrily sucked air into his lungs, grateful for this unhoped-for respite.

  It didn’t last long.

  The interrogator sat down on a stool and lit a cigarette. He blew out the smoke and leaned close to his victim.

  “Now I’ve got a few questions to ask you, brother,” he said in a gentle voice. “Who did you come to see in Kabul?”

  The cleric realized he still had some willpower left.

  He didn’t answer.

  The man didn’t seem bothered by his silence. Then he took a drag on his cigarette to heat the tip and pressed it onto Beradar’s left nipple.

  Eyes bulging from their sockets, Beradar let out a loud scream as the smell of burned flesh filled the room. The pain was excruciating. The interrogator removed the cigarette so it didn’t go out, but the pain continued.

  When Beradar stopped screaming, the man said, “You should answer my question, brother. Otherwise it’s going to be a very long day.”

  Bamyan was turning Maureen Kieffer’s business card over and over in his fingers. They had found it in one of Beradar’s vest pockets.

  The NDS leader was puzzled.

  None of his men had reported Beradar visiting the woman, yet her card hadn’t wound up in his pocket by accident. To Bamyan, the link between them was immediately obvious: Malko Linge. Though he still didn’t have any concrete proof, he was now positive Linge was the man whom Mullah Omar’s envoy had come to Kabul to meet.

  He didn’t need the South African woman to apprehend Beradar anymore, of course. But having her in custody might be a good way to put pressure on the Americans.<
br />
  Just then someone knocked at his door: one of the interrogators from the Beradar cells. He’d been assigned to question the Chicken Street shopkeeper suspected of arranging the meeting between Linge and Beradar.

  “He talked,” the agent said briefly. “I showed him the photo of the khareji, and he recognized him. One of his cousins asked him to arrange the meeting, but he claims not to know what it was about.”

  “Very good,” said Bamyan. “Now he has to admit that it was Beradar.”

  “No problem, Commander,” said the interrogator before heading for the basement.

  A shopkeeper didn’t have the moral fiber of a Talib.

  Feeling satisfied, Bamyan stepped into his deputy’s office and handed him Maureen Kieffer’s card.

  “Go to this woman’s place and bring her back here. Don’t tell her why. Shake her up first. I want her to talk of her own accord.”

  It didn’t take the interrogator long to “persuade” Shukrullah that he was sure that it was Mullah Beradar he had welcomed into his shop. When the NDS agent started gently slicing the shopkeeper’s penis with a razor, he signed whatever was put in front of him without arguing.

  Shukrullah definitely didn’t have the soul of a shahid.

  Signed confession in hand, the interrogator returned to Bamyan’s office, where he was given a five-hundred-afghani bill for his promptness. Then Bamyan said, “Send him to Bagram, in solitary.”

  The Afghans had regained control of the prison, where they could now do whatever they pleased.

  When Malko entered his office, Warren Michaelis looked as if he was having a bad day.

  “Luftullah Kibzai just gave me some pretty lousy news,” he said.

  “Did Mullah Beradar talk?”

  “I don’t know about that. But the NDS arrested your friend Maureen Kieffer this morning, and they’re interrogating her. Do you know why?”

  At first, Malko didn’t know what to say. If the NDS had wanted to arrest Maureen because of her relationship to him, they would have done so long ago. But then in his mind’s eye he suddenly saw the young woman handing him her business card at the Serena. He had given that card to Kotak, who must, in turn, have given it to Beradar.

  Malko was horrified. Maureen couldn’t possibly know why she’d been arrested, because she didn’t know whom he was meeting at her guesthouse.

  Malko turned to Michaelis and said, “I think I know why the NDS arrested her.”

  Michaelis listened to his explanation in silence, nodding. Then he said, “It’s awful, and I don’t know how we can get her out of there. They’re going to ask her if she knows Beradar, and she’ll honestly say no.”

  Malko cursed himself. It was his fault that Maureen was in this hellish situation. “What can we do?”

  “For the time being, nothing,” said Michaelis. “I’ll try to have Luftullah Kibzai keep me posted on what’s happening. Let’s just hope they don’t treat her too badly.”

  The second slap landed while Maureen was still recovering from the sting of the first. They were delivered by a stocky, broad-shouldered Afghan because she answered no to the question, “Do you know why you’re here?”

  She had been living in a nightmare since three men showed up at her workshop and bundled her into an unmarked Corolla, without even giving her time to get her purse or keys. They took her directly to a little basement room with walls oozing humidity. Since then, the men kept asking her the same question, for which she didn’t have an answer.

  Sitting on a chair, cheeks burning and eyes full of tears, Maureen faced her interrogators.

  “I don’t know why I’m here,” she said in English. “I want my embassy notified. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  This last statement enraged the stocky one, who spoke English. Rummaging in his pocket, he pulled out a business card and waved it under her nose.

  “So what about this?”

  “It’s one of my business cards.”

  “Do you know where we found it?”

  She shook her head, and he continued, “On a fucking Talib, Abdul Ghani Beradar. He says he knows you.”

  The name meant nothing to her. But then she visualized herself handing the card to Malko for his meeting at her guesthouse. Everything was clear now, but she couldn’t tell them this.

  “I don’t know that man,” she said. “I don’t know how he got my card.”

  The stocky Afghan rubbed his hands. “You are a tough one,” he said. “A tough one and a liar. Well, we know how to deal with that. Let’s go!”

  They dragged her into a cell that held only an adjustable X-shaped metal table with tie-down straps.

  “Take your clothes off,” said the stocky man.

  When she didn’t move, he grabbed her sweater and tore it in half, with incredible strength. Leering at her large bosom, he seized her bra and ripped it off, baring the young woman’s breasts.

  As she tried to cover herself, he shredded her pants. In seconds, she was stripped to her white panties. The stone floor underfoot was cold. She shivered, her mind reeling.

  The two men forced her down onto on the steel X, securing her hands and feet. The icy metal against her back came as a shock.

  Standing next to her, the stocky Afghan started stroking her breasts and belly. When he got to her panties, he yanked on the elastic until it broke, revealing her blond bush.

  “Listen here,” he said. “If you answer my questions, in an hour you will be in a nice comfortable cell and we will leave you alone. Where did you meet Mullah Beradar?”

  Maureen was so frightened, it took her several seconds before she could speak.

  “I don’t know that man!” she cried. “I’ve never heard his name in my life!”

  The man walked to the foot of the table, took the two ends of the X, and spread them wide apart. That way, he could stand between his prisoner’s naked thighs.

  Shaking his head, he said in a mock-casual voice, “So you will not answer, eh? In that case, my friends and I are going to have a little fun with you. We have plenty of time.”

  In bed, Malko tossed and turned. He couldn’t stop thinking about Maureen, imagining the worst and raging at his powerlessness.

  With no solution in sight.

  He’d passed Shaheen Zoolor in the lobby but had barely glanced at her. She must be wondering why his attitude toward her had changed so much. He looked at his watch: 3:45 a.m. Time was passing with exasperating slowness, without relieving his sense of helplessness. He was well aware that the Americans couldn’t do anything. Nobody could do anything.

  As he did every day, Parviz Bamyan got to NDS headquarters at eight o’clock. He looked over the files placed on his desk but didn’t see anything of interest. The presidential palace had already congratulated him for capturing Beradar, and he was in a very good mood.

  When the Talib bastard downstairs had yielded all his secrets, things would be even better, Bamyan thought. He might officially be named head of the service at last.

  He was still toying with that pleasant thought when one of his deputies entered his office. It was the head of the Beradar interrogators.

  “Salaam alaikum, Commander,” he said. “I have good news for you.”

  Delighted, Bamyan said, “Sit down and have some tea. What’s the news?”

  “We worked very hard,” said the man, almost as a complaint. “Well into the night. He’s a tough son of a bitch, but he eventually told us everything. We now know why he came to Kabul: to meet with that CIA agent, Malko Linge. Also what they talked about.”

  “Baleh?”

  “The Americans and the Taliban plan to support a candidate together in the presidential elections.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone we know very well: Abdullah Abdullah!”

  “That Tajik dog!” Bamyan exploded. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m about to write my report, Commander. It’ll be ready in an hour.”

  Bamyan could hardly contain his excitement. “How’s yo
ur customer doing?”

  “He’s in pretty bad shape, sir. He had a very rough time. Do you want to see him?”

  “Yes.”

  They went downstairs together and crossed the courtyard to the small interrogation building. The stench hit them as soon as they started down to the subbasement: a mix of urine, filth, and sweat, and the stale smell of blood.

  The glare of a bare bulb lit the room where Beradar lay.

  He was motionless, eyes closed, but his chest still rose and fell weakly. Studying him, Bamyan saw the neat cuts made at the especially sensitive parts of his body. On a table nearby lay the metal saw that had made them, its blade still bloody.

  The NDS chief straightened up and said evenly, “Make sure you haven’t overlooked anything. Then strangle him and burn the body.”

  A corpse so badly mangled could never see the light of day, he knew. If the Taliban ever found it, their vengeance would be terrible.

  Bamyan headed back upstairs feeling proud of himself. He held some strategically important information, and Hamid Karzai’s enemy now had a name: Abdullah Abdullah.

  Without his usual CIA resources, it had taken Malko some time to discreetly contact the people around Abdullah Abdullah, and even more time for them find him a trustworthy escort, a minor Tajik drug runner.

  To make sure they weren’t followed, Malko and the man changed cars twice before even heading to the Parwan neighborhood where Abdullah lived. The only access to the Afghan political leader’s street was a narrow passage between two enormous concrete blocks guarded by armed men. Thirty yards beyond the chicane, guards patrolled the little house where Abdullah lived—and had, apparently, been born. There were still more armed men inside.

  On the threshold, Malko was greeted by a smiling man wearing a black Mao jacket, whose large eyes sparkled with intelligence.

  “Welcome,” Abdullah said in excellent English. “It’s a pleasure to have you in my modest home. Please, have some tea.”

  They sat on a sofa in an attractive living room with modern furnishings and a large flat-screen TV.