Who Killed Daniel Pearl (45 page)

On the 31st of December, Mariane arrives.

He's there at the Karachi airport to meet her, happy as a kid.

The next day, New Year's, they fly to Islamabad, meet up with Asif, and settle into their usual guest house, Chez Soi, at the top of Murree Road.

In Islamabad with Asif, he starts a fourth investigation, this time on something very different—a comparison of television programs in India and Pakistan, and how they inflame the passions of both countries and affect the culture of war. What is the war's lexicon? What kind of images, and what kind of commentary? Is there a journalistic responsibility for the military escalation between the two nuclear powers?

On the 6th, an article in the
Boston Globe
reports on a little-known figure of Islamist radicalism, Sheikh Mubarak Ali Shah Gilani, leader of the sect al-Fuqrah, and the guru of “shoe bomber” Richard Colvin Reid. It's the kind of story Pearl loves. Gilani is exactly the type of character he is looking for in his investigation covering the outlawed Islamist groups. Find me someone, he tells Asif, who can contact this Gilani! Find me someone who can take us to him!

On the 7th, Asif calls one of his colleagues whose name—bizarrely— never appears in the official accounts of the investigation or even in the press. He is Zafar Malik, of the Urdu newspaper
Jang
, a journalist who is very close to the jihadist groups engaged in the armed struggle in Afghanistan and Kashmir. “Maybe,” he tells Asif, “maybe I have what you're looking for. His name is Arif, I've met him four or five times. The first time was a year ago in the offices of Harkat ul-Mujahideen in Rawalpindi . . . I don't know him well but I'll see if contact is possible . . . ”

Two days later, the 9th, Zafar Malik succeeds in making contact. Danny hires a taxi that picks him up in front of Chez Soi. Accompanied by Asif, they take Pindhora Road to the midpoint between Islamabad and Rawalpindi. There, he finds a man of about twenty, bearded, wearing the traditional
shalwar kameez
, who introduces himself as the boss of a clothing manufacturer in Rawalpindi. This is the Arif that Malik spoke of. He gets into the taxi with Danny and Asif. Of course, he says, Gilani . . . Nothing easier than to go see Gilani. I'll take you there right now, to his house in Chaklala, in the suburbs, right near the Islamabad military air base. (Always this proximity, both symbolic and physical, of the two worlds: that of Islamism and jihad on one side, and the army and the ISI on the other.) Except, when they arrive, the house is empty and, according to the neighbors, its owner has just left for Chak Shazad, a quarter on the opposite side of the city. They don't know the exact address. Was Gilani getting nervous? Had he heard about the article in the
Boston
Globe
and started to worry? Or is this the trap they have begun to lay for Danny?

Still, on the 9th, first at 13:58, then again at 15:34, Danny calls former Afghanistan mujahid, ISI agent, and bin Laden pilot, Khalid Khawaja, the confirmed Islamist, whom he visited in his office upon first arriving in Islamabad. He had been given Khawaja's name and address in Washington. “The man is complicated,” they said. “He's the one who practically announced the attack on the World Trade Center in a declaration on CBS, in July 2001. But he's paradoxical, provocative, he has interesting contacts, he might be able to help you.” So, Danny went to see him. Khawaja is even one of the first people he contacted when he arrived in Pakistan. And to his surprise they got along well. Danny didn't dislike him—this secular Islamist, this beardless fundamentalist, this anti-American steeped in American culture and even molded by it, who embodied all the ambivalence, all the hardened hatred of the most radical part of the Muslim world toward the West. So, now, Danny calls him again. And as he has just read in the
Globe
that Khawaja is a friend not only of bin Laden, but also of the famous Gilani, he asks him, “Do you have any way to help me meet Gilani?”

The 10th, at 12:21, he calls Khawaja again. The conversation is short, 37 seconds. Two hypotheses. The first: Gilani again, still Gilani— he learned the night before through one of Asif 's sources that Gilani had married a cousin of Khawaja's wife, and even if he has since married a few other women, he has never divorced her—Danny learned, in other words, that the two men have closer ties than indicated by the
Boston Globe
. So he calls the former pilot to ask again, insistently: “Gilani, this is very important to me—I have to leave in a few days and I want this meeting with Gilani before I leave.” The second hypothesis: Danny's investigation of the transfer of nuclear expertise, something I myself wonder if Khawaja isn't well informed about; and if I ask myself this question, I imagine that a journalist of Danny's caliber asked the question before me. Following this hypothesis, he calls Khawaja to ask him not just about Gilani, but about Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmoud and Abdul Majid, the two nuclear scientists most up-to-date on the techniques of uranium and plutonium enrichment and whom the CIA knows had contacts in August with bin Laden and his lieutenant, the Egyptian Ayman Zawahiri.

Pearl doesn't lose sight, in the meantime, of investigation number 2, into the culture of war and propaganda. So, still on the 10th, he meets Naeem Bukhari, a courageous and independent television producer, who tells him, “You should follow this Pakistani television crew—they are shooting right now, some man-in-the-street interviews on the theme, ‘What do you think of the situation? How do you see your Indian neighbors? Do you think Pakistan should do more, speak and act more strongly?' You should follow them and see how they work.” Which Danny does. He spends the better part of the day, pencil in hand, with the crew. He is horrified by the way the journalist asks his questions—appalled at how the tone of the questions themselves orient the answers. Shameful! he says. What kind of television station tells people: “It's difficult to love your country without hating your neighbors”? That “A good Pakistani must scorn Indians and Jews”? Isn't it just a disguised way of inflaming passions, of calling for murder? Why not just say up front “produced and directed by the army”?

Still on the 10th, in the afternoon, while Danny and Asif are in a bazaar in Rawalpindi, Asif gets a call from Arif, the man who took them the day before to Gilani's empty house. Essentially, Arif says: “Tell your boss not to worry, he's got a raincheck. I know someone close to Gilani who will set up the meeting you're looking for.” This someone, supposedly called Bashir, is in reality, Omar Sheikh.

On the 11th, the big meeting with Bashir, alias Omar, takes place. A taxi, like two days before. Another meeting on Pindhora Road. Arif meets them at the same intersection, but this time he is accompanied by a bearded friend, who remains silent as Arif takes them to the Hotel Akbar, room 411, where Omar is waiting. The long conversation to gain his confidence. The club sandwiches. The iced coffee brought up by the little man in the
djellaba
. The atmosphere so dreary that Danny oddly doesn't notice the ominous aspect, or if he has, it hasn't discouraged him from his quest for Gilani.

“Bizarre, this Shabir,” he says to his fixer as they leave. “Why do you say ‘Shabir'?” asks Asif. “He said his name was Bashir.” “No, I distinctly heard him say ‘Shabir,'” says Pearl. In fact they are both right. Because Omar got tripped up in his own lie. One time he said Shabir and another, Bashir. So that the next day, trying to cover the slip, he signs his first e-mail with the odd, rather un-Pakistani name, “Bashir Ahmed Shabir Chowdry.” It should have raised suspicions, if not for Pearl, at least for Asif. Was this Asif 's real mistake?

On the 12th, Danny is still in Rawalpindi, in the smugglers market. Mariane wants a CD player. So he asks for a CD player. But when he is ready to pay, he asks for a receipt. What are you talking about? asks the merchant. How can you expect a receipt when you're in the smugglers' market and you're buying stolen goods? The scene will be repeated throughout the day, all over Rawalpindi. Danny, a man of principle, demanding the receipt, and the merchants, incapable of giving him one, persistently refusing. Mariane, in the end, is deprived of her CD player. And his ongoing investigation of the contraband trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan (an excellent first article in the series has already appeared on the 9th, three days earlier) continues steadily to enrich itself with experience.

From the night of the 12th to the 16th, he's in Peshawar. Does he want to go into Afghanistan, like fellow journalist Michel Peyrard? Is he looking for traces of al-Qaida and its ties with Pashtun gangs in the tribal zones? I don't think so. Let's not forget, Daniel Pearl was not a war correspondent. Proposed an assignment in Afghanistan in November, he answered, “No, that's not my field. You need special training to be a war reporter. I don't have that training.” Why would he have changed his mind? Why would he do now, what he didn't want to do yesterday? He's smart enough to know he's ill-trained for the job—why would he want to play the hero now? No, I think there are two reasons he's here. His ongoing investigation into the smuggling networks between Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the other is for the story we know he was conscious of having missed in part, the one that would inevitably take on full dimension in Peshawar, the strategic center of Afghanistan-Pakistan relations: the investigation of the possible transference of nuclear technologies organized by elements of the ISI for al-Qaida.

On the 18th he is back in Islamabad, where he will stay till the 22nd. These are the days, we recall, he receives a series of e-mails from “Bashir,” alias Omar. These are the days, in other words, when the Gilani trap begins to close around him. Asif finds him suddenly strange. At once feverish and evasive. Enthusiastic yet absent. He's hiding something. Asif can't get anything out of him, but he can see that something has happened and Danny's hiding it.

“I'm going to Karachi,” the reporter finally admits when cornered. “Why Karachi? Whatever for?” “Because from there I'll take a plane to Dubai and then the United States.” “But there are flights from Islamabad! Why go by Karachi?” “All right,” Danny says, giving up, “Let's say I've got something else to do in Karachi. I have to meet Gilani there, OK? But it's a secret.”

Asif is suddenly very ill at ease. Almost angry. First of all, why the secrecy? Why go to Karachi without him? Why split up now, only a few days before his departure? He has become attached to this enthusiastic, principled American, so different from the Americans he's known. And there's another thing: he is the one who introduced Danny to Arif, who brought him to Bashir. When he thinks about it, it's the first time in his life that he's introduced one of his sources to a client. And that makes him feel, without knowing how to explain it, vaguely uneasy, almost afraid.

On the 22nd, Pearl is in Karachi.

On the 23rd, at 11:30, he sees Syed Zulfikar Shah, head of immigration at the city's airport. Then, between noon and 13:15, brigadier Tariq Mahmoud, director of civil aviation. Mariane, from her memorandum, speaks of two interviews on the issue of cyber-crime. I myself saw the subject of the second. He was cautious, of course, embarrassed, when he understood why I was knocking on his door. But we did speak. I asked him what he had discussed that day with the murdered American journalist. And my feeling is that here again Danny was interested in the movements of Richard Colvin Reid, thus still and always, although indirectly, Gilani.

We know the rest.

We know the schedule, hour by hour, from the end of the day of the 23rd. Between 14:30 and 15:30, Randall Bennett, head of security at the American embassy, now posted in Madrid, told him: “Don't go to this meeting . . . we don't like the way it looks.” To the Marriott on foot. A phone call at 15:30 to Steph Laraich, chief of police at the French Consulate, who never found out how Danny got his number and still, to this day, regrets not having been there to take the call himself and say: “Watch out! Don't do it! Or at least, arrange a cover, a car to follow you, something.” Danny makes another call at 16:00, to Asif, in Islamabad, who remembers an uncharacteristic anxiety in his voice. “I'm suddenly asking myself, is it safe to see this Gilani?” And Asif, not wanting to seem jealous or vexed: “He's a public person, not well known, but public; if you meet him in a public place, I guess it's OK; one thing though, Mariane; don't take Mariane; the public place might be a mosque or a
madrasa
, and it wouldn't be a good idea if Mariane were with you, dressed European and pregnant.”

Mariane and Asra Nomani from 16:00 to 17:00. The cybercafé in Lakson Square Building, because he's still on the Reid affair. A telephone call to Jamil Yusuf at 17:10. The rendezvous a few minutes later at his office in Governor's House, where Yusuf will also tell Danny he doesn't feel right about the 19:00 rendezvous at the Village Garden. A call to Asra, who is hosting the Pearl's farewell dinner. “Start without me, I have one more appointment. I'll be there soon . . . ” And then the Village Garden, finally, where he leaves Nasir Abbas's taxi, and where, at exactly 19:00, a car, maybe followed by another, and preceded by a motorcycle, stops for him.

If we add it all up, Daniel Pearl was obsessed by two great questions during his last four or five weeks, and I think we must look where he was looking, to uncover the reasons he was put to death
—
to understand, we have to follow him and try to resume those two, final investigations.

The elusive Gilani.

And the nuclear question.