The Agent Runner (30 page)

She took her customary route around the lake: a figure-of-eight loop, starting on the south side, passing Duck Island Cottage, the fountain and the massive old willow, with a nod to the orange-billed pelicans that were introduced to the park as a gift from the Russian Ambassador in 1664. Back then there had been rumours of witchcraft, that the large and ungainly creatures with sinister yellow eyes were Russian spies. She had once seen one swallow a pigeon in one gulp.

She had decided that a celebration of sorts was in order, and before she left work she would call her husband and ask him to pick up a two-inch thick
piece of sirloin and open a bottle of Clos de Vougeot laid down four years before. It was the last of the bottles left over from her daughter’s wedding. She’d been saving it for just such an occasion as this. She would eat the steak and drink a couple of glasses of the wine and was confident that she would sleep well.

She did not often sleep well. There was so much to worry about: the rise of militant Jihadists from the Maghreb to Eastern Libya, from Egypt’s Sinai desert to the battlegrounds of Syria’s civil war; the danger of the Israelis launching a pre-emptive strike and the Iranians retaliating by blocking the straits of Hormuz; further disintegration in the Horn of Africa and Yemen; civil war in Afghanistan post-2014. But it was Pakistan that kept her awake most often at night. It was Pakistan that she regarded as the most dangerous place on earth. Not just because of its out-of-control intelligence services and nuclear weapons, its radicalised madrassas and failing civil institutions, its terrorist training camps and unregulated arms markets. But also because of its large British-based diaspora.

It was Burns’ belief that the key to preventing a recurrence of the 7/7 London bombings in 2005 was a strong and stable Pakistan with its government (military or civilian) prepared to take control of its ungoverned spaces and rein in its extremist elements. How to achieve it? It was necessary for Britain to exert pressure, of course. But there was an equal need to be careful, to ensure that the pressure did not become so overwhelming that it undermined or destroyed Pakistan’s government by humiliating it in the eyes of its own people. The orthodoxy at Vauxhall Cross was that it was only legitimate Muslim governments and security services that could control terrorist plots on their soil. And so they had convinced themselves that the help of the Pakistani intelligence services to Britain, particularly the information passed by Khan via Tariq, had been absolutely vital to identifying the links between extremist elements in Britain and groups in Pakistan and to preventing more attacks on Britain, mainland Europe and the USA. The information that he provided had allowed the great uninformed mass to slump safely in front of their television sets and watch whatever passed for importance these days,
Britain’s Got Talent
or
X Factor
or whatever.

As a source Khan was of “unparalleled value”.

In truth, he was a fucking disaster. The Americans had described the contents of the USB stick known as “The sociopath’s address book” as ‘cannily compiled and heavily redacted’. They accused MI6 of being the credulous dupes of a foreign intelligence service. They were right. It was the same with the “alumni list”. Vauxhall Cross had been right royally screwed. The fish had reeled in the fisherman. Khan had repeatedly used them to enrich himself and pursue what seemed like private vendettas. The Americans were still demanding information on that bloody drone strike. Nobody really believed in the dirty bomb. By 2010 enough was enough. Burns had spent half-an-hour on the phone to Tariq while he was squatting in a ditch in Helmand, telling him that the information from Khan had to bloody improve or else.

Or else what?

Or else we shut off the money and find someone else to do business with
.

The final straw was the realisation that Khan must have known the whereabouts of bin Laden for several years before revealing it to them.

She’d never mistaken him for an angel. There had never been any doubt in her mind that he was a bad man, an unscrupulous manipulator who bore more responsibility than almost anyone else for the rise of Islamic extremism in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But she had expected him to honour the deal, the deal offered to him in 2005 when he agreed to provide information to Her Majesty’s government.

As far as she was concerned he had broken that agreement, which was why she had felt no qualms in acting to get rid of him. After all, spying was a profession of cold calculation. The west was probably going to fail in Afghanistan, leaving civil war and anarchy behind, just as it had after the Soviet withdrawal and the collapse of the communist regime. The last time around the anarchy had given birth to Al Qaeda, which had risen like a ghastly phoenix from the ashes. Who knew what might be born this time around? Ensuring an improved flow of information from Pakistan was therefore vital. Burns did not count herself amongst those who argued that electronic surveillance and drones were sufficient to protect Britain against its enemies. There would always be a need for human intelligence.

She stopped at the centre of the Blue Bridge with its view of the East Front façade of the palace.

It was standing here beside Jonah in the immediate aftermath of the death of bin Laden and the exposure of Tariq as a British spy that she had raised the possibility of discrediting Khan. At the time she had been under considerable pressure from No. 10 to deliver some form of nudge that would allow for a swift exit from Afghanistan. Something had to be done. It had been her hope that by removing Khan from his position of power in the ISI it would allow more malleable elements to rise to the fore. It was Jonah who had suggested Noman Butt as the poster-boy for a post-Khan future. It was an elegant solution, with a minimum of fuss. Mumayyaz would remain as the recipient of the funds and ensure that her ambitious husband delivered a better product than her father had. Together they had drawn up the plan to ditch Khan and empower Noman. Ed Malik was the obvious choice to execute it and his assault on the CIA Head of Station in Kabul had provided a helpful pretext for his subsequent downfall.

The plan had failed, of course. Noman had proven to be less malleable than promised, but at the same time it had exceeded her expectations. Khan had been given a timely reminder of how vulnerable he was and notice that it was time to deliver on old promises.

The indications were that he had learned his lesson. There was even a chance that her predictions of failure in Afghanistan might be turned around. By inadvertently entrenching Khan’s position, she had perhaps created space for a deal with the Taliban.

In his conversation with Jonah, Khan had pledged to arrange for Pakistan to free the senior Afghan Taliban officials that it was holding in Rawalpindi, releasing them to the care of the Afghan High Peace Council, which was tasked with opening talks with the Taliban. He had pledged not to interfere if the Afghan Taliban and the Afghan Council went to a third country as a venue for future talks. And if these initial steps bore fruit, he had promised to put pressure on hundreds of Taliban commanders fighting Western and Afghan forces inside Afghanistan to support reconciliation talks with Kabul. If Khan delivered on
these promises then it might be possible for America and Britain to withdraw from Afghanistan without it turning into a rout. And in return all he had requested was that the money continued to be delivered as before.

She took a left turn past the Nash Shrubberies and walked anti-clockwise past the playground.

It was unfortunate about Ed, of course. It wasn’t completely hopeless, but it was necessary to be realistic. He was probably dead by now. Burns had agreed to send Jonah out to Afghanistan to see what could be done, even if it was just a question of recovering the body. She would ensure that Ed received some form of posthumous recognition.

It was necessary to balance the destruction of one man – Ed – with what had been achieved. It was a matter of the greater good of the British people. They were fighting against an amorphous enemy that killed thousands with suicide bombers, which used torture and intimidation. It would be absurd to be squeamish when the stakes were so high.

51. Into the tribal areas

As they approached the bridge over the River Swat, Ed could see lights haloed in the driving rain and dark shapes moving in the road ahead.

‘It’s a checkpoint,’ he growled. ‘Hang on!’

He floored the accelerator. He caught a brief glimpse of soldiers in ponchos scattering. The car struck an oil drum a glancing blow and fishtailed on the road before righting itself.

Then they were on the bridge with the immense roar of water below them, the only light from the muzzle flashes behind them. A spray of bullets struck the back of the car and the windscreen cracked and spider-webbed in front of him. Ed cried out in pain and anger. The car grazed the parapet at the side of the bridge in a flurry of sparks, slid sideways and struck the other side before bouncing back into the centre of the road.

The road climbed after the bridge in a series of precipitous switchbacks. The windscreen was almost completely opaque and he could only see to steer by sticking his head out the side window.

‘Are they following?’ he asked her.

She turned in her seat. From this height she could see back down the route they had travelled and the bridge far below.

‘No.’

After a few minutes he pulled over to the side of the road. He got out and picked up a rock with his good right hand, and used it to knock out the windscreen.

‘You’ve been hit,’ Leyla said.

He was breathing heavily and blood was running down his sleeve. The adrenaline was already deserting him and he knew he would soon feel the pain.

‘Give me your belt,’ he said. She pulled it out of its trouser loops. He fed the tongue of the belt through the buckle slid it up over the wound onto his upper arm and tightened it.

‘You drive.’

He crossed to the passenger side. She got in beside him in the driver’s seat. She re-started the engine and pulled out into the road with her scarf drawn tightly across her face so that only her eyes were exposed. He ripped away the sleeve on his wounded arm and tore it into rags for a dressing with his teeth. He started winding them around his arm. When he was done he let himself sink back into the seat. He was cold and he could feel his heart pounding as it tried to keep feeding oxygen to his brain.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘I’ll tell you when we get there.’

‘Why aren’t they following us?’

‘Because its too dangerous on the roads for the army here.’

‘What about us?’

‘It’s dangerous for us too.’

The road had been damaged by flooding or earthquakes and in places the tarmac had buckled and cracked. Some parts had washed away and been replaced with meandering detours through dynamited rubble. Several times they had to slow to a crawl and weave between boulders that had tumbled into the road. The landscape appeared to have been torn apart by elemental energies.

#

There was a scintillating pattern in the rain, like falling strings of code not visible to the focussed eye. A drumbeat on the bonnet, stinging needles of rain striking his cheeks, the foot-well awash with bloody water.

The headlights barely pierced the storm but his retinas were filled with light. The car slammed to a halt. The falling rain swelled and contracted like a kaleidoscope.

‘You keep passing out,’ she said.

He gripped the dash with his good arm.

‘It’s after the next river crossing,’ he said, loosening the tourniquet.

‘You’re sure?’

‘I’ve been here once before,’ he laughed, sending shooting pains up his arm and into the base of his skull. ‘Two miles after the crossing, there’s a lay-by and a rock that looks like a raised fist.’

‘I can barely see the road ahead.’

‘Don’t worry,’ he told her.

#

Water was running across the surface of the bridge when they got there.

‘Hold tight,’ she said.

The car surged into the water, creating a bow wave. For a few precarious moments the car drifted sideways and it seemed as if they might be swept off the bridge into the ravine, but then they were through to the other side.

He watched the milometer tick by.

‘Here,’ he said.

She rolled to a halt and switched off the engine. Together they peered into the swirling darkness.

‘There,’ he said, ‘the Gonzo fist.’

‘It really does look like a fist,’ she said.

They got out of the car.

‘This way,’ he said.

They slid down the muddy shoulder of the road with Ed in front. There was a half-hidden trail leading away between two large spurs of rock. They went carefully between the two and followed the trail down into a ravine. Around a boulder they came in sight of an old Soviet command trailer on a Zil chassis with the skeletal remains of a radar dish at its front end. Its windows were lit by firelight and shadows danced in the windows.

‘Come on,’ he said.

She followed him into a muddy yard filled with stacks of tyres and car parts and what looked like the tails and nose cones of several missile systems. There was a number of vehicles behind the trailer but it was difficult to judge how many.

‘I know these people,’ Ed told her.

He moved into the shadow of the trailer and close alongside the window. He climbed up on an old ammunition crate and from where he stood he could see most of the interior. There was a fire in the stove and an on oil lamp hanging from a hook. A young woman in a headscarf was kneeling by the stove and sitting against the wall behind her there was an old man wearing a white turban. It was
Hakimullah, Tariq’s manservant. He was smoking a long-handled pipe. The young girl was his granddaughter.

Ed found Leyla squatting in the darkness by one of the wheels and pulled her to her feet.

‘It’s ok, they’re friends.’

He climbed the steps and knocked on the door. He didn’t want to surprise them. He pushed it open and stepped inside. The girl issued a stifled scream.