Chaos in Kabul (39 page)

Startled, Malko stuffed the paper in his pocket. This was
the first time Kotak had arranged to meet with him somewhere other than the mosque. Malko had until the next day to investigate the area.

When they were in the elevator cab, Shaheen asked, “Am I keeping you from something?”

“Not at all,” said Malko, who wasn’t about to mention the message he’d just received.

Without being too obvious, he looked the young woman over again. She was still wearing her pantsuit and had no makeup. She radiated a low-key, very natural sensuality.

She stepped out of the elevator first, and the gentle swaying of her hips aroused Malko’s libido. He was living under such constant stress that the slightest distraction tended to go right to his head.

They reached his room at the same time, and she waited while he put the door key into the slot. They were making progress.

He didn’t let Shaheen get as far as her usual armchair. Instead, he gently took her arm and turned her around until they were face-to-face. Their eyes met. The young woman’s gaze was less limpid than usual, and slightly quizzical. Malko had decided to skip a few stages. He slipped his arm around her waist and drew her close.

She yielded without struggle or protest, just calmly said, “I know what you want, but there’s no point in trying.”

“And what is it that I want?” asked Malko, intrigued by this pseudosubmission.

Shaheen smiled slightly.

“When I became a woman, my mother showed me the opening between my legs. She said that all the men I met would try to put their penis into that opening. She said I had to prevent them until I found a man to marry me. Otherwise, I would be cursed with misfortune. You’re a man, so it’s normal that you would want to do that.”

She was so matter-of-fact, and her tone so neutral, that Malko nearly burst out laughing.

“So you haven’t found a man?”

“I don’t want to get married yet. I’m working and I’m happy. If I have a husband he will beat and rape me. If I don’t submit, he will throw acid at me or kill me.”

She had a pretty radical concept of human relationships, thought Malko, who was somewhat knocked off his stride. He certainly didn’t intend to rape her.

“Aren’t you afraid of me?” he asked.

“No,” she said, quite seriously. “There’s no reason for you to be interested in me. I have never been with a man, and I know nothing about sex. I only know not to let anyone take advantage of me; that’s all.”

She was looking at him confidently, without aggressiveness.

Suddenly Malko yielded to an irresistible impulse. Leaning close, he put his lips on hers. He expected her to pull back, but not only did she not retreat, but her lips parted and her body pressed slightly against his.

Pushing his advantage, he slipped his tongue into her mouth. To his astonishment he promptly felt a delicate, warm tongue
meeting his. Within seconds, they were sharing a passionate kiss that lasted until Shaheen freed herself, slightly out of breath.

“It’s just like in the Indian videos!” she exclaimed. “The people kiss almost like that!”

Looking down, Malko noticed that her nipples were straining against her sweater. Their kiss apparently hadn’t left her indifferent.

Rousing herself, she abruptly said, “That was very pleasant. I’m going off to bed now.”

Shaheen clearly didn’t connect that which was forbidden—having sex—with innocent physical pleasure.

He walked her to the door, knowing that he would get a little further next time. A conquest of this wise virgin would make a pleasant change from covert intelligence operations.

The CIA Land Cruiser stopped along the Wazir Akbar Kahn roundabout near a checkpoint at Street 15, which was the continuation of Wazir Akbar Kahn Road. The roadblock at its entrance was on the boundary of the heavily guarded Green Zone around Hamid Karzai’s palace.

“Drive up the avenue a ways,” Malko told Doolittle. “I’ll call you when I’m finished.” If the white SUV parked in the roundabout itself, it might attract attention.

Once the car was gone, Malko walked through the black-and-white barrier across the avenue under the gaze of a bored Afghan soldier concerned with cars, not pedestrians.

Malko saw that Street 15 was lined with private residences, with another checkpoint at its far end. Also, the houses had numbers, which was unusual in Kabul. He walked as far as number 69, stopping at a brick wall on his left with a black gate through which he could see a garden.

There was no one in sight.

He’d been standing in the dark for ten or fifteen minutes when a slim, bearded man walked up from the end of the street. He gave Malko a slight smile and said, “You come!”

Malko followed him to the end of Street 15, passing through the second checkpoint as easily as he had the first. A dark Corolla was parked in the shadows. The young man opened the rear door for Malko, revealing Musa Kotak sprawled on the backseat. There was no one at the wheel, but Malko could see a man standing a little distance from the car.

“Thank you for coming,” said Kotak. “It’s safer than at the mosque. Were you followed here?”

“To be honest, I don’t know. Not since I turned onto the street, anyway.”

“We posted a lookout at the entrance,” said the cleric. “He would have warned me of anything suspicious. I have good news: Mullah Beradar is in Kabul and wants to meet with you. Were you able to find a location?”

“I have the use of a friend’s guesthouse,” said Malko. “All you have to do is set the time.”

“How about tomorrow evening at seven?”

“That’s fine,” said Malko. “The owner of the guesthouse gave me her business card with the address printed in Dari. Will that do?”

“Let me see me the card.”

Malko handed it over, and Kotak took a look.

“I will give the card to Mullah Beradar,” he said, pocketing it. “He should find the place without any trouble. Will you be alone?”

“Yes, except for the guesthouse watchmen.”

“That’s perfect,” said Kotak. “We will talk again later, after your meeting. Remember, Mullah Beradar is a very important man. He
will be speaking on behalf of Mullah Omar, who trusts him implicitly. So weigh your words carefully.”

As he usually did, Kotak took Malko’s hand in his and murmured, “May Allah watch over you.”

All Malko needed to do now was to alert Maureen. Neither he nor Doolittle knew how to get to her place, so Malko phoned from the car. The young woman was in her workshop, thank God.

“Could you swing by the hotel?” he asked.

“I can come around dinnertime, but just for a minute.”

Parviz Bamyan was now receiving hourly reports of Malko Linge’s movements. He had detailed fifteen agents to round-the-clock surveillance.

He cursed. It was nine o’clock at night and he’d just received his latest report. Linge had gone to a street off the Wazir Akbar Kahn roundabout, but the two NDS agents tailing him hadn’t been able to see whom he was meeting. Many foreigners lived on that street.

Bamyan was on edge. If the information from the Quetta mole was accurate, Mullah Beradar was certainly coming to Kabul to meet Linge. That had been Bamyan’s private hunch, but he was now inclined to think he was right.

If he could capture Beradar dead or alive, he would earn President Karzai’s gratitude.

Maureen got to the Serena at seven and left her car and driver outside, to avoid the checkpoint hassle. Malko was waiting in the lobby.

“Do we have time for a quick cup of coffee?” she asked. “I have another meeting with a customer.”

They went into the still-empty bar and Malko gave her the scheduled time of his meeting the next day.

“No problem,” she said. “I’ll be at my shop until about nine. I’ll send a driver to pick you up, and he can take you back afterward. You’ll find whatever you want to drink in the bar.”

Malko smiled. “I doubt the person I’m meeting is into alcohol.”

Five minutes later, Maureen was gone.

Everything was set for the meeting with Beradar, and Malko could report the good news to Washington.

“When you and Mr. Luger are finished talking, we can have a bite in the cafeteria,” said Michaelis.

Malko had shown up at the Ariana Hotel with Doolittle in the afternoon, because of the time difference with Washington. His meeting with Beradar was now just a few hours away. From Michaelis’s office, he called Clayton Luger’s number. It was 8:10 in the morning in Washington.

“That meeting is very important!” Luger said after hearing Malko’s account. “You have to convince Beradar that our approach is the only one with a real chance of countering Hamid Karzai. If Abdullah Abdullah can get even tacit Taliban support, he could be elected in a landslide. It would avoid a bloodbath with the Tajiks and also keep Karzai from returning to power in some other form.”

“I’ll do everything I can,” Malko promised, “but I doubt Beradar will give me an answer right away. Still, the fact that he’s risking coming to Kabul shows the Taliban feel your project is very important.”

“We have to save Afghanistan, and there are only so many ways of doing it,” said Luger seriously. “If Karzai manages to hang on, it’ll spark a civil war worse than in 1992.”

It was really unbelievable, thought Malko: the United States
and the Taliban, sworn enemies since 2001, were now acting in concert.

Strange bedfellows, indeed.

Sitting on the big sofa in Maureen’s living room, Malko listened hard for sounds from the outside. Her driver had brought him from the Serena, and he’d been waiting at the guesthouse for more than an hour. The meeting time had come and gone long ago.

No one showed up.

Could Beradar not have found the place? Had he been arrested? Anything was possible.

Malko resolved to wait another half hour before heading back to the hotel. He would have liked to contact Musa Kotak, but it was too risky.

At eight thirty, Malko finally went to find the driver, who was waiting in the kitchen.

He felt terribly let down.

There were no messages waiting for him at the Serena, and he didn’t see Shaheen Zoolor. He was reduced to eating alone in the depressing dining room, surrounded by Japanese.

It wasn’t until 11:00 p.m. that his cell beeped, with a very short text from Kotak:

Tomorrow noon same place.

Maybe he would learn what had gone wrong.

Malko didn’t have long to wait this time. An old Corolla
pulled up in front of number 69, and the man at the wheel gestured to him to get in. They immediately took off down Street 15, merging with the traffic on the roundabout.

Malko soon lost track of their route. They entered the Shahr-e-Now neighborhood and negotiated a maze of alleys before finally turning into a courtyard. Two young Afghans immediately closed the gate behind them. A young bearded man led Malko to a living room with furniture covered with plastic slipcovers. There was just one person in the room: Musa Kotak, looking worried.

“There was a problem,” said the cleric, rising to greet his visitor.

“Wasn’t Mullah Beradar able to find the place?” asked Malko.

“He was able to find it, but when he got close, he sent someone ahead to check it out. The man reported that the guesthouse was being watched, almost certainly by the NDS. Mullah Beradar did not want to take any chances, so he left.”

To Malko, this was very disturbing news. How could the NDS have learned about the meeting? It hadn’t involved phones or email; everything had been arranged orally.

Kotak provided an explanation. “I think the NDS suspect you of being in contact with us, so they are watching all the places you
normally go. There was no way they could have known about the meeting.”

“What should we do now?” asked Malko.

“Mullah Beradar wanted to leave Kabul immediately, but I convinced him to try a second time to meet you, this time using our connections. He will be expecting you today at four o’clock in a store run by one of our sympathizers, an extremely devout man. You know Chicken Street, don’t you?”

“Yes, of course.”

“Go to store number 276. It sells newspapers, scarves, and clothes. There will be a young man behind the cash register, to the right of the door. Ask him if he has any
shahtoosh
.”

“What’s that?”

“Extremely fine scarves woven from the fur of Tibetan antelopes. The fibers are ten times smaller than a human hair. The sale of
shahtoosh
is forbidden because the antelopes are endangered. That is the password. The man in the store will take you to Mullah Beradar.”

A nervous Jim Doolittle dropped Malko off at the start of Chicken Street, a main Kabul business thoroughfare that, oddly enough, turned into Flower Street halfway down. Malko had gone shopping there before, so his presence today shouldn’t arouse undue attention from anyone who might be following him.

As he walked along the street, he made a point of entering a half dozen stores selling lapis lazuli carvings, jewels, and carpets, examining several items each time. It was easy to identify the shops; each one had a number on its facade. Eventually, he reached number 276. It was long and narrow, like the others. Malko opened the door and saw that its walls were hung with cashmere scarves. A
young man with steel-rimmed glasses and a small goatee gave him a salesman’s smile.