Prelude To War: World War 3 (Steve Case Thriller Book 1)

by Phillip Strang

  ‘Take Peeters and Sherzai. You can make out it is work-related. There’ll be plenty of others investigating through the official channels. I’m told your regional manager Latif is well-connected. He may be a good person to talk to first,’ Fred Bull said.

  ‘Peeters can always state that he is there to assess the security situation for the NATO troops in the area.’

  ‘Abdul Sherzai is not a local, he will not have the necessary contacts. I will ask him to come down anyway,’ Steve said.

  ‘Best if you all travel separately. Make sure you are not seen in the company of Sherzai. It is a hotbed of Taliban, and Mullah Omar is supposedly somewhere close. You need to be very careful.’ It always irked Steve, when persons who had never been to the country, offered their wisdom on security issues. He was well acquainted with the security situation and how best to protect himself, although he had seen many Westerners who acted as though they had obtained a veneer of invulnerability. He still recognised that there were dangerous places and acted accordingly.

  Steve duly contacted André and Abdul. ‘André, can you get down to Kandahar at the earliest, see what you can find out from your people?’

  ‘I’m already planning a trip. I’ll be stationed out at the airport at the NATO military compound there. I will conduct my investigations through military channels. I assume that we need to know whether this is Taliban.’

  ‘Correct, find out what you can, and we can meet up in Kabul next week.’

  Information was coming in through the grapevine regarding the slaying in Kandahar. It was indeed an Englishman; he had been working for the UN on the upgrading of the road from Kandahar to Herat. Steve took the 8.40 a.m. flight on Ariana Airlines down to Kandahar. Just one hour on a Boeing 737-400 that Ariana used internally in the country was not too bad.

  He still missed the early days in the country when Transcontinental Communications, his employer, had its own chartered aircraft – a Beech 1900D, 18-seat twin turboprop. It also flew lower, and the views over the remote countryside were exhilarating. They even had a low-level flyover of the fortress citadel of Balkh, the ancient capital of Bactria with a history stretching back four thousand years. Its decayed earthen walls stretched for ten kilometres. In those days, the take-offs and landings in Kabul were not for the faint-hearted. It was always a rapid take-off and climb to twelve thousand feet, to put it out of range of the Taliban’s surface to air missiles. Returning to Kabul, the procedure was reversed – position over the airport, and then a fast spiral down.

  ***

  Security was tight at Kandahar International Airport; it had been controlled by the NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) since 2007, and they allowed civilian flights under strict control.

  Transcontinental was only one of two organisations to land there when the U.S. military had been in control, the other being the UN. With them, it was a strict escort on and off the base by a military Humvee. In those days, there would be the constant movement of the American Army’s twin-engine Chinook helicopters as they went out on operations. Steve would often see some hapless local offloaded from one of the Chinooks for debriefing and no doubt incarceration. For a few lucky individuals, it was to include an all-expenses vacation in the Caribbean.

  Latif, Transcontinental’s local manager was exceptional. He knew his way around town, knew the right people, and knew the security situation better than anyone else. If he said, ‘Do not move out of the guesthouse’, you did not move. The company maintained its own guesthouse with staff and security, and this time, the security was a lot tighter. The English construction engineer’s death had unnerved even the Afghanis.

  Latif met Steve on his arrival at the guest house, ‘Mr Steve.’ No matter how many times he would tell a local just to refer to him as Steve, it would always be prefixed by ‘Mr’.

  ‘The security situation is not good. You will need to stay in the guest house for the next few days. A killing of a Westerner always escalates the danger in the city.’

  ‘Can you keep me updated as to the British engineer, use your contacts. I need to evaluate how it will affect our operations down here in Kandahar. In the past, we have been able to conduct our field operations without too many issues. If that is to change, then I will need to formulate an alternate strategy to conduct business.’

  Latif, a valuable employee, was well connected in the region. Steve was under no illusion that he knew who the Taliban were in the region, although he had never seen any signs of this, but people tended to be guarded as to where their true loyalties lay; they may have to change them quickly.

  There had been times in the past when Steve had been down in Kandahar, and it had been calm. At those times, Latif had been willing to take any of the Westerners at the guesthouse, down into the bazaar for a local meal, washed down with black market Russian vodka. This was not to be one of those times.

  André had managed to get a flight down with the NATO military; he was stationed out at the airport. Abdul was yet to arrive.

  The following day, Steve received a phone call from André.

  ‘Steve, remember the Game we spoke about the other day? Well, I know whose playing and what is the planned strategy.’

  Steve had ascertained that André had some information, which he didn’t wish to outline in too much detail while on a military base.

  ‘Let’s meet back in Kabul in the next couple of days,’ replied Steve. ‘We can talk about tactics then.’

  Abdul never made it to Kandahar; he would not have been able to add much. His prying could have raised concern. Life was cheap down there, too many questions and people disappear.

  However, he did contact Steve with an update as to what he had heard around the corridors of power in Kabul. ‘I have been keeping my ear to the ground. The British road engineer is a Taliban assassination, Leopold Laterme is not. The Taliban have claimed responsibility for the death of the British engineer.’

  It was two days later when Latif reported. Steve had been idling his time in the guest house, mainly watching Bollywood movies on the TV. One thing that the Afghanis loved were the movies from India. ‘Mr Steve, the Taliban killed the British engineer. My contacts are good, and the information is confirmed. He was in an area where he should not have been.

  ‘One hundred and thirty Indians were killed by the Taliban some years back when the road was being built from Delaram to the Iranian border by the Indian government. That is where he was, and he was out of the vehicle.’

  Latif’s update had been comprehensive. There was not much more that Steve could achieve or find out. He did take the opportunity to enhance his cover by meeting with a few local politicians; they came to the guest house. There were always a few bottles of Johnnie Walker available; most of them would take one as a gift.

  Fred Bull was soon on the phone after Steve emailed his report on Dixon’s death. ‘We still need to follow up on Laterme’s death.’ He was nothing else if not tenacious.

  ‘Fred, I suspect there are facts that you are not revealing to me.’

  ‘André Peeters has heard the term “the Great Game” on a couple of occasions,’ Steve said. ‘I’m meeting up with him and Abdul Sherzai in the next couple of days.’

  ‘Where did he hear this?’ Fred responded quickly in a raised voice.

  ‘Once at Bagram, he went there for a security briefing, and just recently in Kandahar.’

  ‘Please meet up as soon as you can. Find out what André understands by this, and file me a report. It doesn’t need to be too elaborate, just give me the salient facts,’ Fred Bull said.

  ***

  ‘Fred Bull was certainly concerned when I mentioned the Great Game.’ The three, Steve, André, and Abdul were having coffee by the pool at the Serena Hotel in central Kabul. It was a haven from the craziness of the traffic on the street. Steve did not usually go there, it was expensive, and would rate highly on a Taliban hit list for a suicide bomber.

  ‘I’ve heard it mentioned twice. The first
was at Bagram, and the second, it was a Canadian Major who was on the phone in Kandahar on my recent visit down there. He mentioned that the “Great Game” was to commence soon.’

  Abdul spoke, ‘I know the term. I will let André continue as my recollection is limited and possibly prejudiced.’

  ‘André, let’s hear your account,’ Steve said.

  ‘Hopefully, I will not offend Abdul.’

  ‘I will not be offended.’

  ‘In the eighteen hundreds, the British and Russian empires were involved in strategic rivalry in this part of the World. The British coined it the Great Game.

  ‘Britain feared that if Russia controlled Afghanistan, it would use it as a staging post for an invasion of the ‘Jewel in the Crown’ of the British Empire, India. Pakistan at that time did not exist.

  ‘In the early nineteenth century, the British installed a puppet ruler in Kabul, thus commenced the first Anglo-Afghan war. Within four years, the British retreated with guarantees from the resurgent Afghan leadership that they would be allowed to travel from Kabul to Jalalabad with no reprisals from the Afghan military. Jalalabad at that time was part of India. The Afghans did not honour the agreement and attacked the British on the retreat.

  ‘Of the four and a half thousand soldiers, only one British soldier and a few Indian soldiers survived the trip. Of the twelve thousand followers, only about two thousand survived, and most returned to Kabul to exist by begging or to be sold into slavery.’

  ‘That is where we differ. To the Afghans, it is with great pride that we honour those noble warriors who dealt such a decisive blow to the British,’ Abdul said.

  André resumed his story. ‘In the 1870s, the Russians sent an uninvited diplomatic mission to Kabul. The British demanded that the ruler of Afghanistan accept a diplomatic mission from them. The British sent in forty thousand troops to back up their request, and the Second Afghan-Anglo war commenced with their taking Afghanistan, and installing Abdur Rahman Khan on the throne.

  ‘A few years later the Russians and the British agreed that north of the Amu Darya River on Afghanistan’s northern border was for the Russians, and South of the River was for the British. Of course, neither of the invading militaries considered the Afghani people in their actions.’

  ‘They treated my people as third rate citizens,’ Abdul said.

  After a short break, André continued. ‘The next Great Game was put forward a few years back as an academic treatise. It is clear the American government intends to implement it. This time, it has nothing to do with conquering India or extending empires. It is purely about one subject, the mineral resources and the oil and natural gas reserves that lie under the ground in Afghanistan.

  ***

  There was little communication from Fred Bull for some weeks, and the year was drawing to a close. Steve, André, and Abdul kept in contact via phone or email.

  Abdul set up a meeting at a restaurant out near Brides Dress Corner for the following Sunday. He may have known the name of the street, but the Westerners identified streets and areas of the city by a distinguishing feature. Hence, a street corner where the shops were selling wedding dresses was appropriately named. There was also Car Parts Lane, Tin Pot Road, TV Street, and so on.

  Sunday midday, the three met, all were on time.

  ‘I have heard something of interest,’ said Abdul. ‘It was a seemingly innocent remark by a junior official in the Ministry of Mines. I had been invited to a meeting with the minister, Ahmad Khan, a Tajik from the north, close to Mazar-i- Sharif. The minister is looking for UN money to develop an open cut copper mine, about fifty kilometres to the west of Mazar. It was not an unusual request, though the UN have not been involved in mining infrastructure and development, as of yet.

  ‘No doubt, the Minister has some involvement in the project.’

  Steve and André listened, nodding their heads in acknowledgement.

  Abdul continued. ‘They had contracted a company out of Egypt to conduct a detailed assessment of the project. I’ve seen the report. It seemed to be in order, though I am not qualified to comment. I passed it on to our people back in New York. Reserves valued at one billion dollars conservatively, five years to develop the infrastructure, ten per cent production at that time, ramping output up to one hundred per cent in another five years. It offered a potential fifty million dollars per year revenue within a two-year period.’

  ‘No wonder they’re interested,’ said Steve.

  ‘I believe it is relatively small for a copper mine,’ Abdul said. ‘The UN, through its UNOP’s division, could help. They are already on the ground in the country working on a number of large-scale development projects, such as roads, hospitals, schools, and could be interested. There could even be a return to the UN to subsidise other projects.

  ‘At the mention of one hundred per cent annual production, a junior minister raised the issue of transportation out of the country. As we all know, moving anything into the country is difficult. The majority comes in through Pakistan and the Khyber Pass, while some comes in through Iran.’

  ‘At least, plenty of stolen trucks from Europe do,’ Andre said. ‘Visit Herat, in the North West, and you’ll be staggered by the number of foreign number plates on the vehicles.’

  ‘A smaller amount also comes in through the countries to the north, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Turkmenistan,’ Abdul said. ‘It is very limited due to the distances involved.’

  ‘How do you move massive quantities of minerals and ores out of the country?’ asked Steve.

  ‘The junior minister raised this very subject,’ replied Abdul. ‘The Minister told him it was already being dealt with.

  ‘The statement “it is being dealt with” concerned me, however. If we look at reports of current mining assets within Afghanistan, the figures are astounding. Three trillion dollars in reserves has been mentioned, and others are talking it up to around thirty trillion dollars.’

  ‘But how do you get that wealth out?’ Steve asked again. ‘Mining it would not be a major problem.’

  ‘The country would become a massive hole in the ground,’ Andre said.

  Abdul looked at his two colleagues for a moment, waiting for an answer. ‘It appeared to me,’ he said, ‘that the minister had knowledge of some way of taking the resources out.’

  Chapter 4

  The day following the meeting with André and Abdul, Steve filed his report to Fred Bull. Initially, it was a preliminary report at Fred’s request, outlining André and Abdul’s observations and comments. In fact, he just scanned their notes along with Latif’s updates and sent them off. As he was working on the more detailed report, he received a phone call from Fred.

  ‘Don’t worry about the detailed report. You’re needed for training in the States. ‘You need to be here by Tuesday.’ This was the best phone conversation that Steve had had so far with Fred. No excessively complicated report and a few days in New York were music to his ears. Of course, it wasn’t for training; the reason was more obtuse than that.

  Shortly after, there was another phone call. This time from Fred Vandenberg, the CEO of Transcontinental Systems, his employee in Kabul, reiterating the same. ‘I’ll make sure your tickets are ready for pickup later today.’

  Steve was pleased to comply; the last time he’d been in the States was earlier in the year. It had been seven months since he had seen his family. He would take the opportunity to visit.

  His parents and a married sister were in Rock Hill, South Carolina, a small community of about seventy thousand; it was just a sixty-minute flight from New York to Charlotte, in North Carolina, and then a short drive back to the family home. There was no one else to see apart from some friends and an elusive fish. There had been a steady girlfriend not far from his parent’s house, but he was an adventurer, and she was not. He went off on his travels, she married his best friend.

  Romantic relationships tended to suffer amongst those who worked in remote locations such as Afghanistan. The last
serious relationship had been with an expat who was working with an NGO, a non-governmental organisation, in Kabul; they had been trying to support local women to set up small business ventures making handicrafts, and to assist in primary child health care.

  Megan, an Australian from Queensland, was a attractive woman in her mid-thirties, and he had become fond of her while she had been in the country. It looked as though they were moving towards making the relationship more permanent, but her time in Kabul had ended suddenly four months earlier. He had wanted to settle down, and she was ideal for him.

  They had kept in touch for a while, planning to meet up, but they had not exchanged an email for the last three weeks; he was just too occupied to give it much thought.

  He phoned Abdul to let him know that he would not be around for a few days. He could not get hold of André.

  Monday afternoon, and, as usual, he arrived early at the airport. There was a new terminal now. It was certainly better, but far from perfect. The old Russian-built terminal was still used for domestic flights, but it had been a nightmare and best avoided at all costs.

  He was an experienced traveller, carry-on baggage certainly made life simpler.

  ‘You’ve been put up to business class,’ announced the lady at the Emirates bookings counter in Dubai. He was not used to the sharp end of the plane; someone was looking after him.

  A pleasant wait in the business lounge in Dubai, a comfortable flight to New York, and a ride in from JFK in a pre-arranged Lincoln town car. 11 a.m. Tuesday, and he was in his hotel room close to Wall Street, the deluxe treatment was certainly appreciated. With a day to himself, he took it easy. A quick shower and he headed off for a stroll around Central Park. He always enjoyed New York, and after so long in Afghanistan with all its constraints, it was good to feel free.