State of Honour (13 page)

Khan stopped the car after about ten minutes, opposite a partially lit government office block.

“We should split up,” he said. “At the very least they’ll be looking for two men in a dark Mazda.”

“You’re right,” Tom said, his mind fighting to control a rising sense of panic.

Khan turned sideways in his seat. “Before you ask, the property has a concrete tunnel running underneath, secured with eye-recognition blast-proof doors. There are three safe rooms on different floors with metre-thick walls lined with steel plates and filled with sophisticated comms. And when he travels around the city, he is accompanied by military vehicles in a limo that can withstand an attack by an RPG. You should go back over the border and go home. Never return to Pakistan.”

“So why did you bring me here?” Tom asked.

“I was ordered to do what you asked, within reason.”

Tom figured Crane had wanted to make a point. He had. But it was helluva way to go about it, he thought. He had a vague notion that Crane’s motives for letting him come here were more complicated. But for now, they would have to remain unknown.

“But I will tell you something,” Khan said. “There is only one way to get to Hasni. His son, Mahmood.”

“No,” said Tom. “I don’t hurt children.”

“He is not a child. He is, I think, twenty-two. A student at your Harvard University,” he replied.

Tom thought about it. Mahmood was barely a man and likely innocent of his father’s crimes. But he knew he had no other option to get to Hasni in the short timeframe imposed by the video. It took ten years and billions of dollars to find bin Laden, and, despite the most sophisticated surveillance equipment in the world, if it hadn’t been for waterboarding the CIA would still be looking for him. He didn’t like it, but it was a fact.

“Very few people know of his true identity. He goes by an assumed name. You should know that Mahmood is protected by a bodyguard. Do not underestimate this man. Hasni would only entrust his son’s safety to one who is formidable. His name is Zafar. A squat man with a bearded face; eyes like black diamonds. Mahmood is scrawny and clean-shaven. And before you ask, I do not know where he lives.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Tom asked.

“Hasni is responsible for killing many of my friends. He would kill me, too, if he knew what I’d done.”

Tom figured it would be a waste of words to ask him what he’d done. Truth was, he didn’t care.

“Mahmood’s assumed name is Hassan Rind. I prayed about this on our way here. God has spoken to me. He has told me I can trust you, American, despite your lack of manners.”

Tom heard the sound of a car pulling up close behind them, the headlights flooding the side-view mirror. The lights were extinguished and the engine turned off. He watched Khan check the rear-view, a worried expression crossing the Pakistani’s hollow-cheeked face.

“Who is it?” Tom asked.

“ISI.”

Tom grabbed the rear-view and twisted it, scanning the car behind. Two thick-set men sat in the front seats of a black Mercedes, the half hidden bulks of more behind. He saw the front passenger door open and a man got out, his broad-shouldered frame swaggering towards them as if he’d watched too many dubbed Mafia movies.

Tom heard a shout just as Khan twisted the ignition key. As the car drove off a handgun was discharged. The round hit the rear windshield, the impact sending tiny shards of glass onto the back seat. It passed between them with a loud
hiss
and penetrated the plastic dashboard. Khan hit the gas and zigzagged into the outside lane, careering past a taxi. He honked the horn at a man on a moped, who wobbled but remained upright. Tom turned around and saw the Mercedes speeding up behind them. With that, the car engine started to splutter, and small geysers of hot steam rose from the air vents. Khan swerved behind a gold-coloured Lexus and slowed down.

“Damn them to hell,” he said.

The steam was obscuring the windshield and Khan tried frantically to clear it with his sleeve, but to no avail. Tom wound down the window and put his hand over a vent, but the steam burned him and he winced. Khan swung the car to the left, cutting back into the inside lane, and accelerated off the asphalt highway. The car dipped into a storm drain runoff, and rose up the kerb of the sidewalk before crunching forward onto a piece of waste ground between two apartment blocks. If the car had shocks, Tom figured they weren’t functional ones. As the car barrelled ahead he held the passenger door handle tightly, rocking with the impact, too preoccupied now with the recklessness of the manoeuvre to worry about the ISI. Khan was driving blindly.

“Stop the damn car!” Tom said.

Khan slammed on the brakes and the car shuddered to a halt. Tom nearly hit his nose on the dash, but put up his free forearm just in time, banging his forehead on it. Ignoring the throbbing pain, he ducked down and pulled his SIG from the bag in the footwell, chambering a round. As he straightened up Khan put his hand gently on his right forearm. Tom felt bad, but he knew he couldn’t save the secretary from a Pakistani prison cell. He nodded and picked up his bag before opening the car door, hearing the Mercedes coming up close behind.

“I won’t–”

“Go,” Khan said.

As Tom propelled himself out of the car, he swivelled his head and saw the Mercedes bouncing forward, its headlights blinding his eyes. He turned and raced over the waste ground. Hearing rounds being fired behind him, he stopped instinctively. Twisting around, he watched Khan knock out one of the lights and aim at a front tyre, a round ripping open the rubber, flattening it.

The muzzle of a sub-machine gun poked out of the rear window of the Mercedes. Tom dived for cover onto the hard ground, grazing his knees. He saw the flash as a burst was fired, but the car had dipped into a small crater as the weapon had been discharged. The spray of bullets cut a shredded line less than a metre from his prostrate body, the stony soil peppering his face. If it hadn’t been for the uneven ground, the burst would have likely cut him in two.

He pushed himself up, turned and ran, leaping over mounds of hardened cement and rusted girders, the land being an abandoned construction site. He skirted around behind a blackened, portable cement mixer, and saw that Khan was keeping the ISI men at bay, his rounds bouncing off the Mercedes’ hood and slamming into the open doors. He’s a brave man, Tom thought. He spun around and sprinted towards the end of the site, careful not to sprain an ankle on the lumpy earth. Fifty metres on there was an industrial chain-link fence, about three metres high.

Reaching the fence, he heaved his bag to the other side. He stepped back before running at it. He managed to scramble over, ripping his linen shirt on a protruding piece of wire. He crouched down, the lack of streetlights adding to his sense of isolation but keeping him hidden.

A few hundred metres from the fence, the streets of the Blue Area were almost deserted. A cool breeze played across Tom’s face, although he still felt clammy. He shuffled along the sidewalk, his ankle beginning to ache from the drop. As he passed a large, detached house surrounded by a brick-built privacy wall he saw a man watching him from an upstairs window and did his best to speed up. He wasn’t sure where he was going. He just wanted to get the hell out.

He thought about ringing Crane. But what could he do? he asked himself. Maybe he could get an asset to pick me up? As he took out the cellphone from his bag, he watched a police squad car slow down as it levelled with him. A white Honda Civic with a dark-blue stripe down the middle, the words “CAPITAL POLICE” on the side. An officer peered over and shone a flashlight into Tom’s face.

“You. Stand still,” he shouted in Urdu.

The car eased into a rest stop about three metres ahead, and Tom sensed his heart rate race. As the cop opened the passenger door Tom risked walking towards him, doing his best to calm himself down. The cop was maybe twenty, clad in dark pants and a light-blue shirt, a black beret riding high on his thin, pockmarked face. He figured the cop had taken him for a vagrant or worse. He was filthy and dishevelled, his clothes ripped. Not your average Blue Area occupant. Then: maybe the ISI has put out an APB already, he thought. But the cop’s hand didn’t go for his handgun in a leather holster on his hip.

“What are you doing here?” the cop asked.

“I’m lost,” Tom said as he reached him.

The cop raised a hand to his lapel radio, said, “You’re coming with me. You–”

He didn’t get the rest of the sentence out. Tom had taken advantage of the raised hand, whipping out a stinging right hook to the liver just below the floating ribs. The cop groaned and sank to his knees. Tom thought about bringing his elbow down onto the back of the cop’s neck, just hard enough to keep him quiet, but the punch had left his victim gasping for air and it wasn’t necessary. Instead, he reached into the bag and pulled out his suppressed SIG. Rushing forward, he ducked down into the space where the car door had been left open. The other cop was older, probably in his mid-forties, with a bushy moustache and double chin. His left hand was pulling at a Steyr AUG rifle lodged upside down in metal brackets between the two front seats.

“Don’t do it,” Tom said, the SIG raised.

The cop’s hand hovered over the rifle before slowly moving back to his waist.

“Take off your radio,” Tom said.

The cop obeyed. Tom reached over and took it from him, threw it to the ground and stamped on it. Pointing his suppressed SIG, he shot the car radio with a round, the circuit spitting out sparks. The cop almost leapt off his seat with shock.

“Ease your sidearm out. Toss it over here,” Tom said, motioning to the seat next to him.

The cop did so. Tom unclipped the rifle’s magazine and slipped it into his bag, together with the cop’s Beretta before ducking out.

“I’ll just disarm your friend. Then you can drive him away. No one is going to get hurt here.”

“He looks hurt to me,” the cop said.

“Maybe his pride, is all.”

“You will never get out of Pakistan,” he said.

The cop grinned. For a fleeting moment, Tom thought the cop knew something. He had no idea how, unless the ISI had in fact distributed his description. Either way, he needed to move. His grinning face had rattled him. He walked over to the winded man, smashed his radio and disarmed him. He started to run, sprinting for a hundred metres or so, ignoring the pain in his ankle.

He saw an alley bordered by a small, wooded park area to the left, and the side security wall of a hotel to the right. He checked the wall for CCTV cameras and shielded his eyes as he spotted one. He guessed he had less than half an hour before the cops reported the incident back at the station. He took off down the side alley, deciding to get out of Islamabad on his own, remembering what Crane had said about using a cab if his car gave up on him. With luck, it would be the quicker option.

Linda could still smell the sea. She had been given a meagre meal of fish and rice, together with a bottle of water and a fresh set of clothes to wear: sweatpants, a black T-shirt and sweater, although the burqa had been left in the cell. The effects of the drug had abated fully, and she was lucid. She had no idea how she would escape at this point, but just the thought of it made her feel strangely elated. Sitting against the wall, she nodded, her mind made up.

A couple of minutes later, the cell door was unlocked and a man came in, his face obscured by a ski mask, his hands gloved. She noticed at once that he carried a long pair of hairdresser’s scissors, a mirror and a plastic bottle. He placed the items on the stone floor and stepped back.

“Cut and dye hair. Like this,” he said, taking a piece of paper from his pocket and holding it before her face.

She glanced at it. It was a childlike sketch of a head, the hair coloured in with a marker pen.

He tossed it to the floor. “I come back later,” he said, and left.

She pushed herself off the floor and walked over to where the items had been left. Be compliant, Tom Dupree had said. She was resenting it now, but, if she wanted to escape, antagonizing her captors wasn’t a good option. She picked up the mirror and stared at her face. Her make-up had been removed and her eyes were puffy and red, the crow’s feet more pronounced, her forehead creased with sleep lines. She thought she’d aged ten years. She’d never been motivated by an ability to grab the attention of people by her natural beauty. But she was careful to look her best, and if that meant that she appeared attractive in front of the cameras or at some function, so be it – things that now seemed part of another world and time.

Bending down, she picked up the scissors and sketch, and walked to the small wooden table pushed against the wall. Propping up the mirror, she noticed that the table was unstable. She crouched down and checked the legs. The one on the left, wedged into the corner, was wonky, a single rusted screw keeping it in place. Ignoring it, she looked at the sketch, knelt, and began to snip. An act that soon became frenzied as she hacked away in order to finish the job quickly.

She wondered if it was an attempt to humiliate her further, but then dismissed the notion. They could do a thousand things to humiliate me if they were so inclined, she thought. It must be simply to disguise me. But from whom? There was the burqa for that. Even if they decided to move her again, she guessed that she would be hidden from view in any event. Still, she had no choice in the matter.

After she had done her best to recreate the image on the paper, the frenzy being replaced by a modicum of care before applying the dye, she slumped against the wall. Hearing the door opening again, she looked up. A similarly masked man was standing there, with a trash bag in his hands. But he said nothing. He walked over and picked up the items before placing them into the bag. He started to gather her cut hair, being fastidious to remove even a single strand. She wondered if they would use it to prove they had her, since it contained her DNA. But they had the video, she thought. It was simply to cover their tracks, then. He walked out without saying a word, the door left ajar.

The same man who had ordered her to cut and dye her hair appeared. She could tell from his size, his clothes, and the way that he moved: languidly, as if he were bored or some reptile hybrid. He stood before her, appeared to be examining her attempt. He nodded, grunting approval.

“Change into burqa,” he said, pointing to the full-face garment folded on the floor.

He turned to leave.

“Do you believe in God?” she asked.

He stopped. “God is Great,” he said.

“Did he tell you to kidnap women? To threaten them with murder?”

“You are Kafir. An unbeliever. Allah is not your God.”

“You don’t believe that.”

He shrugged and left.

She got up and paced about, her mind active.

Her father had told her that the higher she climbed, the lower her sense of injustice would plummet, not because she would become self-serving, but simply because she would become aware of the competing influences, the otherwise secret agendas and the interplay and complexity of geopolitics. He’d been right, to a degree. But she fought hard and long to ensure that America left Afghanistan. The US would not become fully embroiled in another war while she had a say, although she’d agreed with the rationale for the initial invasion: the defeating of the Taliban regime. But she knew that her death could negate all that. There would be another war. The thought of more young men and women coming home in boxes, or spending the rest of their lives in wheelchairs or on antipsychotic drugs, gave her the impetus she needed to act quickly.

Two minutes later, the outline of an escape plan began to form in her mind.