Who Killed Daniel Pearl (41 page)

“Listen,” he fumes, with a lisp, furiously refusing to allow me a word in edgewise now, “don't interrupt, listen to me. Omar was convicted, and I'm not going to comment on the verdict much less criticize it. But who, in this affair, is more guilty, the one who did it or the one who, by his attitude, did everything to put himself in harm's way? Can't you see how Mr. Pearl provoked Omar, how he goaded him, how he deserved what happened to him? That's a really Jewish thing. A form of Jewish masochism. No, don't say no. There are Jewish characteristics, everybody knows it. I know that in Europe it's polite to question that. But there's no point in denying it when the charges are overwhelming. Look around you. Listen. Let's say we forget the physical traits, all right? But the moral characteristics? These traits History has given all peoples of the world, and the Jews in particular? You're going to tell me that some of these traits are common to a number of peoples. I'll grant you that as well. A business sense, for example, usury, the Jews and the Hindus undoubtedly have that in common. But duplicity . . . The aptitude to lie . . . The way they invented the genocide of Hitler, to better hide their own depravity. Who would benefit from the crime? In my profession, that's the question we always ask: Someone will benefit from this crime, now who is it? This particular crime, everyone knows it did Hitler no good. And everyone knows it's of extreme benefit to Mr. Sharon. Well, I'm not saying that Mr. Sharon made up the Holocaust. There are people who think America is in the hands of the Jews and the Jews are in the hands of Satan—thank God, I'm not one of those people! I'm not anti-Semitic! But think about how convenient it is. Follow my reasoning: The more we talk about the Holocaust, the less we talk about the bloodbath in Palestine. The more they show you these faked photos of Jewish children in tears, the less you worry about the carnage in Iraq and in all the Muslim countries of the world.”

The police chief seems satisfied with his reasoning. More and more incessantly, as if he were keeping a beat, he makes this idiotic gesture that is starting to get on my nerves, of pulling his lone lock of hair back over the top of his head, where it never stays more than a second—but that's all right, he goes back to get it and starts all over again, and it slips back again, and he puts it back again. I'm burning to tell him, “Are you done with your hair, now? After all this time you don't get it? It'll never stay!” But no. He looks so content. And excited. Barely glancing at the note someone brings him. Not listening to the officer who just told him of a vicious crime that's just been committed in the suburbs of Lahore. Guffawing, slapping his thigh when he mentions the “faked photos” of Jewish children.

“Just a minute!” he starts up again, his face turning crimson, clutching his desk as though he were afraid of keeling over. “Now, I'm not saying the Jews haven't suffered, too. The Pakistanis are good people, they don't deny this sort of thing, they sympathize. But, it's just a question: these people who have learned suffering, why can't they learn to love? They had the entire world at their bedside, and now at their feet, why can't they pity others, the persecuted Muslims of Palestine, Iraq, and Jammu Kashmir? In short, all this, to tell you it is the key to the Pearl affair. Put yourself in Sheikh's place. He sees these images of massacred Palestinians. He knows Israel is a splinter in Muslim land. And he sees an Israeli—What do you mean, ‘not an Israeli'? Ah! But yes, I beg your pardon— Pearl's father was Israeli, and his grandfather . . . For me, it all adds up. Someone who has an Israeli father and grandfather is objectively Israeli and is therefore responsible for the crimes of Israel. It's logical. So, put yourself in the place of Sheikh. He sees an Israeli who comes to provoke the Pakistanis by intervening in their affairs. We don't concern ourselves with the Israelis' affairs. It wouldn't occur to us and besides, we don't get mixed up in anyone's affairs. But he, Pearl, does. Then, this annoys the Sheikh. He can't stand seeing this fellow who goes rummaging around everywhere, asking sneaky questions. Because that's also a Jewish trait, sneakiness—What? But of course. You only have to look at history. There was a Jewish English minister, Balfour, who decided, in 1918, to install a Jewish state in Palestine. Well, right from that moment, do you hear me, right from 1918, he had secretly planned that the final date would be thirty years later, day for day, to 1948, it's proven. Isn't that sneaky? Isn't that proof of what I'm telling you? All right. The Sheikh has had enough. He's like all of us who see the parade of snoopy Jews who come to stick their big noses in our Pakistani affairs all the time and, now, in the Pearl affair. But Omar is more courageous than the others. He has principles. He sees his principles through. And so he kidnaps the Jew. But, once again: Who is responsible, huh? The one who kidnaps or the one who is kidnapped?”

He stares at me. The expression in his eyes is suddenly nasty, his smile venomous. Something at once brutal and weak in the way he opens his mouth slightly. The gesture, one last time, of pulling his solitary lock of hair back up to the top of his head. A hiss in his breathing.

“But, really, Mr. Lévy, I hope I'm not upsetting you. I hope, at least, that you're not a Jew. It's been amusing talking philosophy with you.”

And me, dumbfounded, not believing my ears, caught between hatred, pity, the impulse to burst out laughing, and the desire to tell him who I am:

“And I hope you are not Muslim, for Islam is a great religion that respects the peoples of the Book.”

Still another day, in Islamabad, I have a strange meeting with Asif Farooqi, Daniel Pearl's fixer.

I've wanted to see him for several months.

Right from the beginning of my investigation, he's the first person I tried to contact.

He had always said no, up until now. He invariably told every intermediary who approached him on my behalf, “It's too hard, too painful. I feel so responsible, you understand? After all, I'm the one who made the connection between Danny and the Sheikh, aren't I?”

Once I even talked to him on the phone. I had gotten hold of his mobile phone number. I had arranged it myself, without going through Abdul. And the man who answered was polite, but strangely ill-at-ease, almost frightened.

“You have to understand, I am not alone, I have a wife and children. After Omar's trial, they told me, ‘That's enough, never talk about any of this again.' And so, no, thank you, I can't see you, please leave me alone, I beg you . . . ”

I had sent him a long e-mail, detailing the kind of questions I wanted to ask: what Danny was like, how he behaved when he was working on a story, if he was imprudent, irresponsible, courageous; the last weeks; the last day; if he was different, the last day; you always feel it, you always know when you're getting into a dangerous area, right? Did Danny feel it too? Did he know it? But Farooqi had replied with two curt lines to repeat that he had promised not to speak again and that he would keep his promise.

And then, that day, my Pakistani cell phone rings and it's the same Asif Farooqi. “In fact, I've been thinking . . . We can meet, if you like.”

To my great surprise, the man who had made it a point never to speak of Danny suggests we see each other that very night, in the residential area of Islamabad. “No, it's not my place, it's my office, the Japanese news agency, Jiji. That's where Danny and I used to meet, I thought that would please you.”

And here he is in front of me, alone, the Japanese employee having left when I arrived. (When I got there, it seemed to me I saw a parked car across the street, with the lights out, with people inside, but I wouldn't swear to it.) And here he is, the appearance of a well-mannered young man, round glasses, twenty-five, maybe thirty, slim, with a little baby fat around the jowl, a weak chin, and a real sadness when he speaks of the good times he had with Danny and Mariane.

He has all the time in the world now.

Yes, yes, he's thought about it, he's glad to render me this service and he has plenty of time.

It's not every day you can contribute to the book of a writer, right? Ask me the questions that interest you, I'll do my best to answer.

Except that, after half an hour of conversation, an unpleasant impression crosses my mind.

His way of being constantly mistaken about all the details . . .

The dates that are off (the meeting at the Akbar the 13th instead of the 11th), the mistaken names (Bukhari instead of Fazal Karim), the wrong places (locating Danny's prison in Sorhab Goth, when I know very well that it's farther down the Super Highway, at Gulzar e-Hijri) . . .

His way, time and again, of citing one group instead of another, of attributing what belongs to Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami to Lashkar, or what is Sipah-e-Sahaba's to Harkat ul-Jihad al-Islami . . .

Or on the contrary, to mention a precise piece of information— Brigadier Ijaz; Omar's surrender eight days before his arrest—and then to glance at me out of the corner of his eye to see if I'm moved, if I express surprise, or if I let it pass without reacting.

At first, I react. I say, “Hang on, Lahori is the head of the Lashkar, not the Jaish!” or “Of course I know who Brigadier Ijaz is, I think I ran into him in Lahore . . . ”

And then, after a while, I stop myself. I wonder if these aren't all traps or snares that I'm falling into and if, instead, I should try not to react. So I let it go, I let him talk, I see him coming with his deceptively innocent manner of talking about the “three letters,” or of mentioning the names of Memon or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed to see if I'm surprised, or if I pick up on it, or if I take notes, or if I act like someone who is already aware of all this. So, I see him coming. And, smarter by half, I get up at the most opportune moment, pretending to have to make a phone call, or take a leak, or go in the next office to look at the news dispatches on the screen.

The idea occurs to me that, perhaps, Asif is there less to talk than to make me talk.

The idea occurs to me, and rapidly takes root in my mind, that he only agreed to see me to know where I am in all this, what I know, and what areas I'm looking into.

Is Farooqi working for someone? Sent to me? On a mission? Once again, it is a bad sign. Once again, it proves that no one is falling for my story that I'm a novelist fictionalizing the encounter between Pearl and Omar any more.

And then, the bizarre incident whose significance, at the time, I didn't really understand but that, in retrospect, seems to confirm these scattered impressions.

The French embassy for once arranged an appointment for me, with Hamid Mir, the former director of the Islamabad Urdu newspaper
Ausaf
, who is currently launching a private TV station.

Hamid Mir is an important man. He is a biographer of bin Laden. He's one of the few journalists who's been able to interview him in years. He did so in 1997. Then in May 1998. And while, regarding his last interview, in November 2001, some in Pakistan question the absolute authenticity of his version of the circumstances—blindfolded, shut in the trunk of a car, a scenario from an espionage novel—no one questions that the interview took place, nor the fact remains that he is one of the privileged spokesmen of the master of al-Qaida.

So I go to see Mr. Mir. I must, because I want to talk to him about all this. I must, because I want to question him about Omar who, I read somewhere, he had known and found unstable, intellectually disturbed, dangerous. And I must, because I want to ask him at last about his appointment with Danny the day of the kidnapping, or the eve of it, or even before—I have to verify it, but no matter, that's a detail: What's essential is that he is the only public person to have seen the two of them, the victim and the executioner, at such a brief interval, and for me, this is priceless.

So here I am, a few minutes before noon, in the restricted parking area in front of the offices of Geo TV, the new Urdu satellite television station Mir is starting with a few others.

A group of five men, some in
shalwar kameez
, another in a
djellaba
, are standing there in front of the building, watching me approach.

A little farther away are three other men, clean shaven, apparently cops or bodyguards, all carrying arms, keeping the immediate area clear.

Obviously, they're all there for me, because, as soon as I get to the stairs leading up to the entry of the building, the man in the
djellaba
strides up and takes me wordlessly by the arm, scarcely giving me time to protest, and forces me down to the cellar as the others, the bearded men and the security men together, rush down behind us.

Once downstairs, a stern-faced orderly frisks me, takes the card I show him, disappears into an office at the end of the hall and returns a few seconds later.

“Mr. Mir is not here. Mr. Mir does not have time to see you. Mr. Mir says he knows nothing of this appointment with you. Mr. Mir demands that you leave immediately.”

And with that the bearded men and the body guards take me by the arm again, in unison, without listening to my protests, ignoring the typed memo confirming my appointment with Mr. Mir that I've taken from my pocket, and push me towards the stairs, manhandling me out to the sidewalk, to my car.

It all happens very quickly.

Very quickly as well, I call Mir whose mobile phone number I had taken the precaution to note and who answers on the first ring.