The Pakistan Conspiracy, A Novel Of Espionage (3 page)

To his great credit, Mort Feldman had the decency to drive her personally to Benazir Bhutto International Airport. There he pulled a few strings so she could sit in the plush Rawal Lounge, usually the province of ambassadors and government ministers. He chatted with her aimlessly for a few minutes while awaiting her flight to London. They shook hands and hugged. Before leaving, Feldman told her that “I know there are great things in store for you.” Then he winked.

Her diplomatic passport made short work of passing through customs.

Kate was surprised and pleased by Feldman’s mysterious comment. What did he mean?

On Wednesday, May 4th, Brigadier Mahmood Mahmood arrived at the colonial-style Islamabad Club at half past twelve precisely, his chauffeured staff car pulling into the curved driveway fronting the red-tiled main club building on Murree Road.

Though still well maintained, the Islamabad Club had seen better days, when Pakistan was making a real effort to become a secular nation.  A little frowzy now, it was still popular with military officers and wealthy Westernized Pakistani
grande dames
, who could safely preen in lipstick, high heels, and plunging necklines within the club’s walls.

When he was a lieutenant colonel years ago, Mahmood had the privilege of attending a course for senior officers at the United States Air Force War College at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. In some odd way, the Islamabad Club always reminded Mahmood of the Officers’ Club next to Cypress Tree Golf Course at Maxwell, though the Islamabad Club had pretensions of grandeur not found in Alabama.

In the lobby was a hardwood plaque listing, in sunken gilt letters, all Club Patrons since its founding in 1967. They included every military chief who had served in that period but pointedly omitted all but one of the civilian Prime Ministers, and that one was Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir’s father, who was hanged by General Zia-ul-Haq. The plaque said a lot about who wielded real power in Pakistan.

Brigadier Mahmood invited his top aide, Colonel Ehsan Akram, to join him for luncheon, preferring the club dining room to any one of several officers’ messes he could have picked in Islamabad. He sought absolute privacy. Mahmood wanted to be briefed unofficially on the blowback from CIA’s Bin Laden operation earlier in the week, all the unvarnished ISI intelligence gossip Akram could provide. That kind of conversation was not one to be held in an officers’ mess.

Akram, 40, was a stocky man with a receding hairline and a mustache not unlike Mahmood’s, though he lacked his boss’s dash and flair. To the extent that he trusted anybody, Brigadier Mahmood trusted his chief of staff.

“You can imagine the pressure General Pasha has been under since Monday,” Akram began. He spoke in low tones at the corner table in the main banquet hall. “The National Assembly has scheduled a session with him
in camera
next week, where he will be asked to choose between two equally dreadful propositions: that he was incompetent and did not have a clue that OBL was in Abbottabad, ditto the American invasion; or that he
did
know of OBL’s presence and also of the invasion, and was complicit in permitting it. So the politicians insist that he brand himself either an idiot or a traitor.”

Mahmood chucked mirthlessly. “It is not credible to me that the Army knew anything about Sheikh Osama,” Mahmood protested. “Why would we risk destroying the work of a lifetime by sheltering him? Clearly, if someone knew where he was, we would have protected him properly and thus prevented his capture. Or we would have killed him ourselves, quietly dispatching him without fuss.”

“There are theories being floated behind closed doors,” Akram said. “Three seem to be getting the most bandwidth: First is that the Army and ISI were totally unaware of the Sheikh’s presence in Pakistan with several of his wives and children, living a lifestyle that would be the envy of most Pakistanis.”

“Humiliating though it may be, I do believe that is the correct one,” Mahmood said.

“The other two are that the ISI did indeed know where the Sheikh had hid himself and provided him with the house and protection.”

“Rubbish!” Mahmood exploded. People at neighboring tables glanced over.

“The third idea is the most intriguing and the most convoluted.” Akram smoothed his mustache theatrically, first left and then right, with his index finger. “This theory holds that while the ISI knew where the Sheikh was hiding and took part in his abduction and death, it decided to portray this wholly as an American operation to avert riots by all who regard Bin Laden as a hero.”

“That’s the most preposterous of all,” insisted Mahmood, whispering now. “Clearly, the Army might wish to disassociate itself from the killing of a famous jihadi warrior. But surely we in the ISI would have anticipated the situation now playing out? That we are being made to look incompetent? It would have been far easier to expel Bin Laden to Afghanistan, or to kill him quietly ourselves.”

“Perhaps that is what we should have done,” said Akram.

“I am certain no one in the Army knew anything about this. The proof is the very disaster that has befallen us. Who in the Army leadership would have deliberately allowed us to be humiliated like this?”

“Only the Indians and perhaps the Americans would wish it,” agreed Akram.

“Which suggests that we need to do what we can to find out if the Americans have anyone else in their sights. They might attempt another victory by killing Ayman al-Zawahiri or Mullah Omar.”

“We could find them faster than anyone else,” Colonel Akram said.

“I think perhaps we can,” Mahmood agreed. “And I am quite certain that we should try.”

***

Finishing a modest lunch, Brigadier Mahmood left Colonel Akram and asked his driver to take him up the road to the Serena Hotel, Islamabad’s most posh and most expensive.

The lobby was empty. Mahmood’s steps echoed in the vast open spaces and the long corridor he followed to an isolated elevator bank in the rear of the main building. He took the lift to the sixth and topmost floor and went to a corner junior suite, where he knocked.

The door was open by Mort Feldman, CIA station chief, dressed in khaki pants, a well-tailored matching safari jacket and an ascot.

“Brigadier, my dear friend,” Feldman said. “I wasn’t sure you would come.”

“You are right to have wondered,” Mahmood said coolly. “You have created some serious problems.”

Feldman nodded and bit his lip. With an expansive motion of his arm, he directed the general toward a seating area and coffee table next to a floor-to-ceiling glass wall and sliding glass doors that opened to a balcony. The hotel architects had picked their site well. From this height there was a magnificent view of the steep Margalla Hills, the westernmost foothills of the Himalayas, rolling away to the north in deep greens and lighter browns with rocky outcrops bearing pine trees. Off to the left, Mahmood could just make out the four minarets and the central A-frame of the King Faisal Mosque, the largest in Pakistan, a gift of the Saudis.

“You and your CIA fellow gangsters are in the doghouse, to borrow an American phrase,” Mahmood said when he was seated. “I don’t think you understand what a damnable mess you have created with your cowboy high-jinks.”

“No, Mahmood, I think I do understand,” Feldman responded. “These decisions were made above my pay grade, in the White House itself in fact. These were political decisions, not the decisions of CIA. Had I been asked to give an opinion, I would have suggested bringing you in. I assure you that I would have done it differently. With you and your people on board. I don’t know how else to put it to you.”

Mahmood was having none of it. “Political or not, it was not wise to betray Pakistan yet again,” Mahmood said firmly. “You blow hot and cold with us. We bask in America’s favor. Then you abandoned us. When we helped you kick the Soviets out of Afghanistan, we were your friends
de jour
. After the Soviets withdrew, you lost interest in us and courted India. After 9/11 you came back. And now, even though we have been your loyal ally in your ‘war on terror,’ you just don’t trust us. That is clear. This week you cut us out of the game altogether, you invaded our country with a military unit, an act of war against Pakistan.”

Feldman nodded. He knew better than to engage Mahmood in a debate. Mahmood was right. Feldman could not win, and any argument was likely further to inflame the Pakistani general. Feldman’s job right now was not to defend the Administration. He needed to repair the damage as quickly as he could. If the truth be told, Mort Feldman shared much of Mahmood’s anger at Washington. Washington had made Feldman’s job in Pakistan twice as difficult.

“Mahmood, I’m the last guy to argue with you. The view from my Embassy is not the same as the view from DC. In the interests of our own jobs, let’s try to heal the breach.”

“That’s rubbish,” Mahmood said. “Be prepared for repercussions. Some of your colleagues from the Agency are going to be deported in the next few days, that’s at a minimum.”

“I guessed as much. We must find something we can cooperate on right away so the whole relationship doesn’t go down the tubes.”

“That may be difficult right now.”

“Let’s not forget that we have mutual interests,” Feldman said. “For starters, we don’t want an escalation of terrorism in retaliation for the OBL thing, not here, not in the States.”

“Don’t worry about Pakistan. I think perhaps you have done us a small favor in that regard,” Mahmood said. “I doubt that any local groups will tar Pakistan with the Sheikh’s death. Americans will be blamed. Your people would be wise to be vigilant when you travel in Pakistan. And there is increased risk of something across the ocean.”

“There are those in Washington who believe Al Qaeda has been vanquished,” Feldman said. As he spoke, the brigadier rose and walked to the sliding glass doors to the balcony.

“You know my friend,” Mahmood said, “Pakistan looks remarkably peaceful from this high vantage.”

“Can you help us in any way?” Feldman said. “I mean on the retaliation front? We are concerned about domestic groups who have ties here. They are that much harder to spot.”

“You probably hear the same rumors we do,” Mahmood said. “I find personally that the greatest challenge of our business is separating the noise from the real message.”

“Our resources are limited in Pakistan,” Feldman said. “I’m appealing to you for any helping hand you can provide.”

“You always liked to keep busy, Morton. Though I wonder if you recognize how radical parts of Pakistan have become?”

Feldman did not reply. Though it was not obvious on a first analysis, the Pakistani failure created leverage: it was incontrovertible now that without Pakistani help the United States had demonstrated its ability to find and kill the most famous terrorist of the new century, and had pulled off this feat inside Pakistani borders. Though he would have to bide his time for a week or two, and bite his tongue and make profuse apologies, the fact that OBL had been living in Abbottabad since 2005 put pressure on Pakistan. Once the ISI got over its shame and anger, the generals would feel compelled to be more cooperative.

Kate Langley flew to Dulles International via Heathrow, arriving mid-day Saturday. She took a taxi to Rosslyn, Virginia, where she checked into a medium price extended-stay business hotel. She slept until noon on Sunday then telephoned a friend, Claire Stoppard, a senior analyst with the Terrorist Finance and Financial Crimes organization at the Treasury Department. They made a date for dinner at a restaurant on M Street near Wisconsin Avenue.

Claire was one of the few in Kate’s circle of friends in Washington who knew enough about what she did for a living not to ask probing questions. This gave Kate the luxury of not having to use her ‘legend’ when interacting with her. Like most CIA employees, Kate Langley was by nature forthcoming and fundamentally truthful. She hated having to tell ‘white lies’ to those of her friends outside the intelligence community, even in service of a greater good. It was impossible to form deep friendships with people whose basic understanding of who you were and what you were about involved significant untruths—a non-existent job at the Commerce Department, in Kate’s case, along with other falsehoods about background, skills, and personality.

Claire had worked with Kate on a project involving money laundering in a narco operation in South Asia. She knew Kate was CIA, and, indeed, she knew Kate was working at the sharp end of CIA, in the National Clandestine Service, at the American Embassy in Islamabad.

To Claire’s credit, over dinner she did not mention Osama bin Laden or Pakistan, though the OBL takedown had made above-the-fold headlines in
The Washington Post
practically every day the previous week, and Claire must have guessed Kate had just returned from Islamabad.

“I may be working here for a while,” Kate offered over coffee and dessert. “An HQ job appeals to me now, living in a country where I don’t have to look over my shoulder every five seconds, and where supermarkets, police security, and clean water are taken for granted.”

“You’ll get bored fast,” Claire said. “Washington is a good town for a certain type of person, but not for you. Too many mind games and too much deskwork, and way too many daggers in backs. It’s knife fighting without real knives here.”

Kate had no ready answer to that; in fact, she dreaded the prospect of being sidelined in a government bureaucracy in the nation’s capital. She wanted to be back in the field, where a single person, the right person, could really be a game changer. Even the President did not have much influence in Washington.

***

On Monday, Kate reported to CIA headquarters, a green 260-acre wooded campus ten miles up the Potomac River from the city on the Virginia side, to start her debriefings. She expected a dull morning filled with routine reports and interviews and was surprised to get a summons before lunch to Olof Wheatley’s office in the Counterterrorism Center.

This hive of activity occupied the entire ground floor of CIA’s new headquarters building (NHB). While the old headquarters (OHB) had the boxy air of a retro sixties college campus (it had been designed at the height of the Cold War by the same architects who created the United Nations building in New York), the new edifice looked more like the gleaming headquarters of a faddish European pharmaceutical company.

Attached to the west façade of the old building by a series of corridors, it doubled CIA’s floor space to two million square feet. In a concession to preserving the existing forested landscape, much of the new building was buried into the excavated side of a hill.

To reach the Counterterrorism Center, Kate passed through the glass atrium of NHB, an elegant lobby filled with natural light and plants, and descended three floors into a windowless labyrinth of fluorescent light. Here some 2,000 employees, ten per cent of the total CIA workforce, labored day and night to find, track, and sometimes to kill terrorists. CTC had evolved into the heart of the Central Intelligence Agency and had grown more than six-fold since the days when it was headed by a legendary director who had promised that “flies will be dancing on Osama’s eyeballs” when he was finished with Al Qaeda’s top leadership.

Olof Wheatley was a lateral transfer into the Agency, brought in by the Bush White House to make CIA less insular while tapping the skills of the wider world, especially the world of business and Wall Street. Though he had briefly served in the Agency as a recruit right out of college, Wheatley abandoned the bureaucratic and largely ineffective CIA of the 1980s for a more lucrative career as an investment banker.

Forbes
had estimated his personal net worth at just under one-quarter billion dollars a few years earlier, though he kept a low profile and had largely maintained his anonymity in the national press.

Wheatley looked the part of the investment banker. He wore suspenders in an organization of men with belts, his John Lobb shoes cost more than an entry-level staffer made in a month, and his bespoke suits were from Kilgour, French, and Stanbury in Saville Row, London.

The walls of his office bore the usual trophy photos of Wheatley posing with foreign leaders, Senate notables, and two U.S. presidents. The comfortably large room had a couch, upholstered chairs, coffee table, and a small conference table, all standard issue for high-ranking CIA leadership.

Wheatley stood when he saw Kate and extended his hand.

“I was sorry to hear you were a political casualty of the OBL raid,” Wheatley began in a voice many described as soothing. “It’s a cost of being in the business we’re in.”

“I’m surprised you noticed, and it’s not a problem. Actually, I am grateful to have had as much time in Pakistan as I did.”

Kate was talking too fast. She felt foolishly nervous. She wanted to kick herself or bite her tongue. She had hoped to appear collected, and she would have dressed better had she known a senior manager was on her agenda.

He motioned her to one of a pair of large armchairs and took the couch opposite. She smoothed her skirt and crossed her legs demurely.

“I’ve been chatting with your old boss this morning. He tells me you walk on water,” Wheatley said. “We all know you saved his life back in February in Quetta. You’re a hero. He’s pulling out all the stops. He wants me to find a good opportunity for you.”

Kate was grateful. Poor Mortie: it was after 9 PM in Islamabad and Wheatley had probably kept him at his desk well into the evening. Kate guessed there had been plenty of late night phone calls from headquarters in the week after the Bin Laden raid. If it was daytime in Washington, it was daytime in every CIA station in the world. You learned to live on headquarters time, not local time, especially when it came to the phone ringing and responding to cables. Wheatley thought nothing of calling staffers at 3 AM, dragging them out of a warm bed.

She was intrigued by Wheatley’s comment about a job.

“Something here at the CTC?” she asked.

“You’ll need some preparation here of course, and I want to get to know you a little better before you go back out, and to get you integrated with my team. But, no, not a job here. We need you back in the field. You are exactly the person we need overseas.”

“What part of the world?”

“Right back where you came from, South Asia, Pakistan, where the bad guys roam.”

“But that won’t be possible,” Kate said. “I was pretty much kicked out for good.”

“You won’t be going back under official cover,” Wheatley said. “We’ll have to get you in under the radar.”

Wheatley was talking about a more dangerous way to get CIA officers overseas, not as one of the coddled diplomats in the safety of an American Embassy, complete with diplomatic passport and diplomatic immunity. They were planning to send her back as a NOC, (pronounced ‘knock’), an agent under Non-Official Cover. She would have no official ties to the United States Government. If caught by an adversary under those circumstances, prison—or worse—might well result.

“Now that’s not something I thought was in the cards,” she said.

“No one blames you for being PNG’d,” Wheatley said. “The Paks are pissed. Hell, I don’t blame them. I’d be pissed too. Mortie says his life has been hell since the raid. He’s surprised he hasn’t been booted out himself.”

“To be honest, I’d rather be in the field at this stage of my career. I don’t think I could do my best behind a desk.”

“This won’t be a desk job,” Wheatley said. “It’s high risk, but you’ve already been involved with Yasser al-Greeb, you’ve met General Mahmood, and you’ve demonstrated exceptional skills in the special operations area. We think you’re just right for this mission.”

“So what is involved?” Kate said. “What is the objective?”

“Ayman al-Zawahiri, the last remaining top dog in Al Qaeda,” Wheatley said flatly.

“Isn’t finding Al-Zawahiri Mortie’s highest priority now that OBL is dead?” Kate asked.

“Absolutely, and he’s totally on board with this. He asked for you personally.”

“So I’ll be working for him?”

“Actually, your contact with him will be limited for security reasons. The Paks can’t get wind of the fact that you’re back in country. We’ll insert you via Bagram and you’ll make your way to the border.”

“So who will be my handler?”

“That would be me,” Wheatley said. “We’re going to run you directly out of the CTC. This is an operation I’m going to direct myself. It’s a Code Zero on the chief’s list.”

Code Zero referred to the CIA Director’s list of priority tasks, zero being the highest priority, nine the lowest.

“This is going to be getting a lot of attention on the Seventh Floor. The Director wants daily updates.”

Kate reflected quickly on the assignment. Al-Zawahiri’s capture would signal the demise of the original top-tier Al Qaeda leadership. There could be no higher-profile operation within CIA. This was a dream job. Her feeling of total failure was being replaced now by a warm feeling of elation. This was going to be her big break, her chance to do something in the field, away from a desk.

“There is already way too much premature talk on the Hill and in the press of Al Qaeda having been rolled up,” Wheatley said. “People forget that Al-Zawahiri is more of a hands-on leader than Bin Laden ever was. He’s ruthless, he seems to enjoy killing. He’s no philosopher. He’s more of a pit bull.”

“A weird trait in a physician.”

“Exactly. He’s more of a vivisectionist, a butcher. And he’s always eager to launch the next attack, always trying to surpass the last one in terms of violence and bloodshed. Anyone who thinks he’s going to take OBL’s death lying down isn’t thinking clearly. We absolutely need to take him down fast. No doubt he will want to do something spectacular right away to establish himself as the new top man.”

“What about Yasser al-Greeb. How does he figure into this?” Kate asked.

“As you know, Al-Greeb is still out there. The guy who tried to blow you up was a Moroccan, low level cannon-fodder who was using Al-Greeb’s name to get close to us.”

“And the real Al-Greeb is our pathway to Al-Zawahiri?”

“That’s our working hypothesis,” Wheatley said. “Al-Greeb is in Al-Zawahiri’s inner circle now. We think they are both in Peshawar. Al-Zawahiri is an easy man to disguise and so he is more easily concealed in a crowded urban area. Al-Greeb is a cipher for us, all we have is a grainy, low-quality mug shot from Amman.”

“We have to capture or kill him?”

“Exactly. And it will have to be done the hard way. Predator drones are useful for reconnaissance, but we can’t bomb inside Peshawar with Hellfire missiles. Too many innocent people would be taken out as collateral damage. It would be impossible to conceal.”

“So what is our link to Al-Greeb?” Kate asked. “What’s the connection?”

“That’s the most interesting part of all this,” Wheatley said, “and one of the reasons I want you for this operation. It’s all about Mahmood Mahmood. We happen to know that Brigadier Mahmood has been meeting on a regular basis with Al-Greeb, perhaps to monitor Al-Zawahiri, perhaps to protect him, we don’t know yet, though I’d be willing to bet serious money that Mahmood is not a turncoat. You’re going to find out for us. You have the previous contact with Mahmood. It could be the one thing that can give us a small edge here.”