The Pakistan Conspiracy, A Novel Of Espionage (16 page)

Kwang had acquired the barber’s chair years earlier in Saigon, from a Western hotel being razed by the Communists. It had followed him all over the world. He was reclining in it and being shaved with a straight razor by his Vietnamese valet—a member, like Kwang, of the majority Kinh ethnic group—when a diminutive Vietnamese woman, his mother, stepped into the room with a cup of pale, aromatic green tea.

“There is a message from the Singapore child,” she said in Vietnamese. “She asks that you call her at once.”

Kwang grunted but did not move from his chair. The application of lavender water after the shave helped sooth his nerves. And he had a facial massage to look forward to, to help start the day.

Kwang loathed Kabul, but he hated Vietnam even more. Kwang longed for the day when he could retire to Paris in style, the only city on earth where he felt truly at home. For the moment, there was more money to be made in Kabul than in Paris, from corrupt Russian
biznesmeni
in the arms and drugs trade, as well as from terrorist militias to whom legitimate banks were barred. Kwang was money manager to them all.

Russia had become the world’s top narcostate and arms trader. Afghanistan was its greenhouse, and also the destination for much of its black market weapons.

“There has been an unauthorized entry into our computer network,” the young Singapore clerical staffer told him when he called. She spoke in English, the only language they shared.

“How do you know this?”

“The data transfer log shows a complete download of the external hard drive, though no backup was scheduled yesterday. That can only mean that someone hacked in.”

“Are there any money transfers scheduled this week?” Kwang asked.

“No. Already made. We have nothing for several days. Until next week, in fact.”

Kwang rang off without thanking his assistant. He would peruse the last month’s business later in the day. He was satisfied that any clandestine interest in his bank was related not to a future transaction, or a current one, but far more likely a money transfer that had already taken place. That likely meant a drug investigation, probably by DEA or Europol. He had weathered such investigations before. It was not hard in Afghanistan, which was largely beyond the reach of American or European law enforcement.

The Karzai government was perhaps even more corrupt than its predecessors. The only ruler of Afghanistan with clean hands, when it came to black market trading, especially in drugs, was the Taliban, an irony that appealed greatly to the thin Vietnamese banker. Life under the Taliban had been hard. Life under Karzai and the Americans was easy—as long as one was generous with bribes.

Kwang retired to his library, a room with windows that had been bricked up so as to keep out sound, light, and air. He would deal with the problem later. Meanwhile, he had an unopened carton of books flown in from
Chapitre
, the savvy French bookseller that gives Amazon a run for its money in France and Asia. Reading was his escape.

French-language books from Paris, gourmet meals prepared by his personal chef, and the presence of his doting mother were the only things that made life in Kabul tolerable to Minh Kwang.

The United States Consulate in Peshawar is a clean, white four-storey shoebox of a building at 11 Hospital Road in the northern section of the British cantonment. Fronted by a soaring flagpole bearing the Stars and Stripes, it is larger than many American embassies. Given its strategic location, it is also probably more important.

A few hundred yards south on Hospital Road lies Mall Road, and up Mall Road as it veers to the east is the Military Intelligence HQ for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. The ravenous black crows who call Peshawar home could make the trip from atop the American Consulate flagpole to the ISI flagpole in fewer than sixty seconds. The two organizations live cheek by jowl, or so geography would suggest, though this is not an association either one of them would advertise.

The ISI complex occupies a parcel of land 900 feet square, about the size of a Western city block, comprising 20 acres. Commanded by a colonel, it includes a squash complex, well-maintained games pitches, an officer’s mess, barracks, administration buildings, and an underground dungeon for sequestering and questioning prisoners. It was built by the British and to all outward appearances the British have never left.

Though Brigadier Mahmood briefly considered driving Olof Wheatley from Islamabad to Peshawar himself, using the oldest Jeep with the worst suspension he could find, in the event the trip was made in a comfortable, new ISI-owned SUV, with a driver.

Mahmood and Wheatley made small talk in the back. Using the new M1 Motorway, the 97-mile trip took under three hours. Brigadier Mahmood was doubly glad he had not attempted to drive himself when the van ran over a twisted metal bolt, probably a decoration from one of the rainbow-colored
jingle-jangle
trucks sharing the road, which dug itself into a tire. The driver changed the flat in fifteen minutes.

The SUV made Peshawar before noon, where Brigadier Mahmood directed the driver to the American mission on Hospital Road. He deposited Wheatley there, promising to pick him up in sixty minutes for luncheon. Mahmood then went the additional few hundred yards to ISI headquarters to check in by secure link with Colonel Akram in Islamabad. He had been out of touch with his office for most of the morning, an unusual lapse, but for reasons more related to decorum than security, Mahmood had been unwilling to keep his cell phone switched on during the trip.

Wheatley spent a few minutes chatting with the consul general, a highly regarded former staffer in the National Security Council. She gave him the message Kate Langley had drafted for him only hours before about the Zagi spreadsheet in the BanKoNoKo computer. Borrowing an empty office, Wheatley excused himself to phone Kate at Bagram Air Field.

“I’m deep into these PDF files,” Kate told him, “but nothing so far that adds color or detail to the Zagi transactions. There’s no doubt that the French arms dealer LeClerc is the link between the Mort Feldman kidnapping and the recent chatter about nukes.”

“How can you be sure that Zagi doesn’t refer to something else?” Wheatley asked. “Why does it have to be the mountain near Peshawar?” He was dreading having to report on something so tenuous to the director, especially as the kidnapping of an overseas station chief was already a crisis of the most dire kind. To ramp this up with concerns about a nuclear device would cause lights to burn until morning at both Langley and the White House.

“Because Zagi is such an unusual name,” Kate replied. “My colleague Keven Smyth has been looking at maps, gazetteers, and computer databases—the only ‘Zagi’ is the mountain mining area near Peshawar. We’ll continue researching it, but for the moment it looks solid.”

“Do a data dump on the CTC,” Wheatley commanded. “They’ve got more resources than you. Don’t try to analyze all this on your own.”

“Already done, sir. The night duty staff has been fully briefed, both by phone and in writing.”

Wheatley wondered how far he should tip his hand with Brigadier Mahmood at lunch. Perhaps revealing CIA’s knowledge of the BanKoNoKo connection in Kabul would provide a way to initiate a discussion of Mahmood’s cryptic statement to Feldman the night he was kidnapped?

Did Mahmood know that there was an association between the nuclear bomb rumors and Feldman’s kidnapping? On the theory that ISI understood their own backyard, their personal
chasse privée
, a lot better than Americans ever could, surely the answer to that question was ‘yes!’ He thought he should risk it. Mahmood was the only game in town, and either man might be summoned back to Islamabad at a moment’s notice, limiting their further opportunities to collaborate.

Brigadier Mahmood returned to the consulate precisely on schedule, this time in an aging black Lincoln Towncar, transport accorded only to VIP visitors. He took his American guest to Khan’s Club, a restaurant he did not much favor himself but that he thought might be more to Wheatley’s taste than the bland British boarding school fare Mahmood personally preferred. Mahmood loathed curries or spicy food of any kind.

Khan’s Club was in a restored Rajasthani-style
haveli
, a multi-storey Pakistani mansion surrounding an enclosed courtyard. It was in the most ancient district of Peshawar, the walled Old City, whose precincts were a labyrinthine warren of narrow lanes and dark shadows teaming with humanity, carts pulled by donkeys, and the smell of roasting kebabs.

***

They ate Afghan-style food as prescribed by tradition, seated on
toshaks
, floor cushions with backrests.

“I have met with the people you call terrorists,” Mahmood told Wheatley, “I’ve never made any effort to conceal it. You must remember that, as a matter of national security, the Pakistani Army is obligated to deal with our neighbors in Afghanistan. We cannot have enemies on both our borders and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan vastly complicates matters for us. You more than anyone must be aware that Pakistani national interests and American interests are rarely in complete alignment. Sometimes we find that we have common cause with the Taliban, both here and across the border. It’s a political fact of life.”

“But these are criminals,” Wheatley protested. “They target Pakistanis for death, as well as Americans.”

“Worse than that,” Mahmood said. “They are bad Muslims. Ramzi Yousef, whom I helped your government to capture, was a drunk who consorted with prostitutes in Karachi and the Philippines. His uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom I also helped you to capture, was a libertine who preferred cocaine to the Koran. He spent his evenings in strip bars indulging in lap dances. I didn’t say I liked them. And, my dear Mr. Wheatley, I never invited them to luncheon with me here at Khan’s Club.” The brigadier chuckled appreciatively.

Wheatley decided to abandon his train of discussion about consorting with the enemy, an argument he was losing. Rather, he would cut right to the chase.

“The national interests of Pakistan and the United States surely are aligned when it comes to nuclear weapons in the hands of Al Qaeda,” Wheatley said. “If Al Qaeda ever detonated an atomic bomb on American soil, the blowback in South Asia would make the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan back in 2001 look like a tourist outing. If it could be demonstrated that you knew of the plotting beforehand but failed to stop it or alert us, Pakistan might well cease to exist as a nation.”

“Without question,” Mahmood agreed, nodding, “this is true. I discussed this with your station chief, Mr. Feldman. We might well be ‘bombed back to the Stone Age’ to quote one of your State Department officials. Everyone understands this here.”

Wheatley laughed. “Mr. Armitage claims he never made such a threat.”

“And he also let Mr. Libby at the White House twist slowly in the wind,” Mahmood said, “to borrow another one of your colorful American phrases.”

“You are remarkably well-informed about political minutia in Washington,” Wheatley said, smiling. “I’m most impressed. I confess that my knowledge of Pakistan does not have quite that level of granularity.”

“Such is the fate of most of America’s diplomatic partners,” Mahmood said gracefully. “America is the Rome of our times. We send our very best people to Washington. We study America far more thoroughly than America studies us.”

Wheatley conceded outwardly that this was true, though he did not believe it.

“Mort Feldman telephoned me in Washington the evening he ran into you at the Marriott,” Wheatley continued. “He told me that you wanted to be sure that our side understood that the chatter about nuclear weapons did not refer to any weapons in Pakistan.” Wheatley deliberately twisted what Feldman had said. Mahmood took the bait immediately.

“Actually, what I told him was that the intercepts about nuclear weapons did not refer to a Pakistani weapon. An important distinction. It was not a weapon made in Pakistan.”

“Do you think then that Al Qaeda does in fact have a nuclear device?”

Mahmood paused, stretching both his arms out in front of him.

“We have both been listening to routine phone intercepts and web rumors about an ‘
itami
’—the Pashto term for an ‘invention’ or simply for ‘technology’ which is the word they sometimes use to refer to an atomic bomb. I personally believe that this chatter must be taken as deadly serious. In the aftermath of the death of Osama Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leadership, and Ayman al-Zawahiri in particular, will make an effort to exact revenge in the most terrible way possible.”

“You believe the possibility of this bomb is credible?”

“I’m afraid so,” Mahmood said.

Wheatley paused and looked directly at Mahmood. His face was impassive, the face of a man who seemed fully at ease.

“You can imagine our reaction,” Wheatley said. “Nothing could possibly provoke a stronger interest than such a bald, existential threat to the United States. This is the worst nightmare we have regarding our homeland security.”

“And mine,” Mahmood agreed. “It serves neither one of us to permit Al Qaeda have this power, much less to threaten us with it. But surely it could have been foreseen?”

“How do you mean?”

“In terms of taking out Bin Laden. Surely you expected blowback?”

“To be honest, our analysis of Al Qaeda right now is that they have limited strength and are stretched too thin. Sure we expected blowback from OBL. But we don’t expect things that they just aren’t capable of doing. Their leadership is decimated. Their financial resources have been tied up and money impounded. No, to be quite frank, we would not have predicted that this would be the time Al Qaeda was willing to play, or was capable of playing, the nuclear card.”

“A wounded or sick animal is more deadly than a healthy one,” Mahmood observed. “Ayman al-Zawahiri is an old and tired man. He may wish to do something spectacular now, to exceed 9/11. And he does not have much time to do it.”

“I take your point,” Wheatley said. “So let us discuss what we can do to stymie them.”

“What do you suggest?”

“For starters, help us to understand the details of what is known.”

“This is somewhat delicate, but let me try. I recognize how important such intelligence is to you. I was saying earlier that I have had meetings with terrorists. This includes meeting with a man named Yasser Khalidi al-Greeb, a Jordanian physician whom we know to be close to Ayman al-Zawahiri.”

“I know this name,” Wheatley said. He was straining forward, listening as intently as he could, anxious to miss not a syllable of what Mahmood was telling him.

“My relationship with Al-Greeb is, how can I put it—complex. It is a question mainly of not wanting to be surprised by what is going on within various groups. We do not collaborate, but his direct superior Ayman al-Zawahiri knows that the price for working in Pakistan is the need to keep us informed. Another American phrase comes to mind: we expect AQ to ‘put us in the picture’ as the price for living in Pakistan. This will become clear to you when we go to Zagi Mountain. There you may appreciate the complexity of our problem, a problem we both must face.”

***

They were standing in what could have been mistaken for a gigantic concrete water pipe, a spacious cylindrical tunnel beneath the earth about twenty-five feet high. The rock walls had been smoothed with chisels and the floor tamped into a smooth, hard surface. Bedding rolls, lanterns, pillows and expensive carpets littered the corners.