The Pakistan Conspiracy, A Novel Of Espionage (17 page)

Pine boxes of rifles and mortars packed the walls. This had been home to a large number of men for a long time. Though in the shadow of the snow-capped peaks of Afghanistan, the temperature was comfortable, the air was dry. Given food and fuel, men could have stayed here for years without hardship.

“Can you imagine how long it must have taken to excavate all this?” Brigadier Mahmood said. “Perhaps ten years, carved into the sheer rock within Zagi Mountain.”

“I thought these were mines?” Wheatley said, his voice echoing in the long chamber.

“Indeed, this area has been mined for quartz crystals since the British Raj. But then came Al Qaeda and the Taliban. They were here. They expanded these tunnels for reasons that have nothing to do with mining quartz. Seventy of them died defending it when we took it back four months ago—there were Egyptians, Uzbeks, Chechens, and Afghans killed in the operation. They had occupied the ridges above us and we found some 156 caves linked together in an underground city. We still have not completed our exploration. For a time, we believe Ayman al-Zawahiri himself lived here.”

“It is difficult for me to accept that you discovered this huge complex almost by accident.”

“Would you believe me, Mr. Wheatley, if I told you that there are tribal lands not far from here, lands that are officially part of Pakistan, where no member of the Army has dared to set foot since Pakistan became independent in 1947? Only in the last five years have we really begun to assert control over our own territory. These wild lands are not easily governed. Indeed, this was the main hub of militancy where local tribes have been the supreme rulers for centuries.”

“This cave complex is a revelation,” Wheatley said. “I have long suspected such hives of Al Qaeda activity existed in your country, but frankly my people mainly thought they were farther north.”

“Undoubtedly, there are more such cave networks, but I am confident this was the mother nest, so to speak—this was command central, where Al-Zawahiri issued his orders when Sheikh Osama went into hiding.”

“And where is Al-Zawahiri now?”

“Perhaps in Peshawar, perhaps somewhere closer to the border. He would be a relatively easy man to hide. But all this is not why I brought you here. There is something I want to show you.”

Brigadier Mahmood led the way down the cave tunnel, illuminated by a string of naked bulbs strung above him. A hundred yards from the cave entrance they came upon a large wooden desk, made of expensive tropical hardwood, perhaps taken from a colonial accounting office in the British era. It was elaborately carved, with a pair of antique brass kerosene lamps on either side of a desk blotter. It looked for all the world like an elaborate partner’s desk hidden away in the dark cave.

“These electric lights, we added,” Mahmood said. “When guerrillas lived and worked here, they used flame for heat and light. This desk was obviously the workplace of an important commander, perhaps Al-Zawahiri himself. Look in the file drawer on the right.”

Wheatley walked from the front of the desk to the rear, where a comfortable, padded wood director’s chair was pushed under the well of the desk. The cave floor beneath was carpeted with a thick, expensive wool rug of Afghan design. A wealthy banker might have felt at home here, had he not recognized that he was underground in a cave. Wheatley pulled out the oversized drawer revealing bound school copybooks. He opened one. It was filled with Arabic script.

“This is not the work of Pakistanis,” Mahmood said, pointing to the calligraphy. “These notebooks, and others we have removed and studied, are written in Arabic. One of them shows a record of correspondence with a man name Abu Jandal. You are familiar with the meaning of Abu Jandal?”

“I’m afraid not. ‘Father of’ something, I believe.”

“Very good. Abu Jandal means ‘father of death.’ This is a man known to both of us. He is the French arms merchant, Jacques LeClerc.”

“And the thrust of this correspondence?”

“Less than a year ago, Al-Zawahiri, though Yasser Khalidi al-Greeb, began negotiations with Abu Jandal to purchase a nuclear device, not to build one from scratch, but to purchase a working military model.”

“Russian?”

“Probably. Certainly not Pakistani, of that I can assure you. That was the point of my discussion with Morton Feldman. Abu Jandal searched for and ultimately found a seller. And the negotiations were to have been concluded in time for the bomb’s deployment on the 9/11 anniversary this year. The tenth anniversary.”

“Two months from now,” Wheatley said.

“Two months from now,” agree Mahmood.

“So that is our timeframe,” Wheatley said, “and the clock is ticking.”

The Number 6 train from Moscow arrived at the main Tashkent Railway Station, in the Mirobod district of the Uzbek capital, around seven in the morning, nine hours behind schedule. The trip had taken three days and covered 2,450 miles.

A porter appeared in the first class cabin occupied by Colonel Marchenko and Jacques LeClerc bearing hot, green Uzbek
chai
and black coffee in chipped china cups and saucers. LeClerc slept on, sitting upright in his seat. Marchenko drank coffee. Outside the train, he could hear a cacophony of tinny plops and drips—the sound of rain falling into a brigade of buckets spread around the interior platform beneath the leaking roof.

Marchenko left the coach to stretch his legs. He was appalled at how the station had deteriorated in the two decades since he had last visited the city, the period since the Soviets had withdrawn. Judging by overheard conversations on the long rail journey, even the Uzbeks, who generally loathed Russians, seemed nostalgic for the old Soviet days when there was some semblance of a functioning economy, employment, and hospitals that actually cared for the sick.

Across the wet, gray tracks Marchenko could see the rotting hulks of railway cars and tankers, abandoned like beached ocean liners, rusting on a littered plain of dark cinders and twisted track. He glanced toward the rear of the train. Somewhere among those bulky steel freight cars was his ticket to warm sun and the comforts of coastal Spain, the RA-211 tactical nuclear demolition device, packed into a wooden piano crate swathed in layers of burlap.

Tashkent was as far as they could safely take the bomb by rail. Here the prize would be unloaded and transferred to a truck for haulage to Karachi, 1,550 miles by land almost directly due south from Tashkent, where the handoff would be made to Yasser al-Greeb. From Karachi, the nearest blue-ocean port that did not require transiting Iran, one could travel by sea anywhere in the world. No doubt, that was why Al-Greeb had selected it.

Marchenko hailed a luggage porter and asked him in Russian for directions to the information desk, where he could find a public telephone. The porter directed him to the cavernous main hall and walked much of the way with him. Marchenko mused how odd it was that oppressed people, people who had every right to be surly and rude, were nonetheless so often polite. It was a weakness, Marchenko thought—to be exploited like all weakness. He thanked the porter but did not tip him.

The retired KGB colonel called a number he had written, in reverse order, in a matchbook before leaving Moscow. He told the woman who answered that he wanted to speak to Uktam. Uktam, a driver who had worked for him in the old days, came on the line and greeted him with boisterous enthusiasm, promising to meet him within the hour at the taxi stand in front of the station.

Marchenko returned to the coach to collect Jacques LeClerc, who in the meantime had awakened and was drinking hot tea. They soon rendezvoused with Uktam, who was driving an Uzbek-assembled Chevrolet 4WD with seats upholstered in thick sheepskin. Uktam greeted Marchenko with rough but genuine pleasure. Marchenko asked Uktam about police and security.

“Officially, there are no problems,” Uktam said in fractured Russian. “Petty thievery by men pretending to be policemen. Some pay the fines, but I do not. They are cowards. The real police, they arrest practicing Muslims, not foreigners! No problems for you boss!”

Uktam left the railroad station entrance and drove around Tashkent, still very much a Soviet city along the Stalinist model, a metropolis of wide roads, tall shade trees and outdoor cafés. He circled back to the entrance of the Tashkent diesel locomotive repair plant to the south of the tracks. This gave ingress to the freight yard and the loading docks.

Marchenko presented a bill of lading to the cargo transfer clerk, who told him that it would take several hours to unload the train before it circled around in the yard in preparation for the return trip to Moscow. They would have to come back later.

***

Uktam found a two-ton
jingle-jangle
truck for sale in a Tashkent garage west of the train station for $800, payable in crisp new American ‘Ben Franklins.’ LeClerc had a plentiful supply of these. The
jingle-jangle
was brightly painted in flashing, geometrical palettes of oranges, reds, blues, and greens, with chimes, tassels, and amulets hanging off the front bumper and other surfaces. The slightest motion set them off, giving protection against all manner of
djinns
and demons. Yet the vehicle was old enough to suggest poverty. Marchenko and LeClerc both agreed that since the
jingle-jangle
truck is the ubiquitous means of cargo transport on the roads of central Asia, it would attract less notice than a conventional vehicle, especially a new one.

The truck’s seller claimed it had been used mainly to haul firewood to urban centers from the country, and this was borne out by the wood chips, bark, and detritus in the bed. Had it been also used to transport small arms, rockets, and other contraband, that would not have been the first time a
jingle-jangle
vehicle had been put to such use in these lands so often home to war. Marchenko believed that the crated atomic bomb could be safely concealed amidst innocuous cargo. The principal risk now, Marchenko surmised, was that other local drivers, so stoned on
chars
, the powerful local cannabis, might swerve straight into them in a head-on collision.

Uktam hired a grizzled, bearded Pashtun driver named Zabet who was familiar with the old silk routes. He would go the distance with them to Karachi, blending in with his brothers on the road. More difficult to conceal would be the two Europeans, so rarely seen riding on
jingle-jangles
. They decided to hire Uktam and his 4WD Chevrolet to ride some miles ahead of the truck. They could spot potential trouble and use an ancient Motorola HT-1000 two-way hand-held radio to communicate with Zabet, the bearded Pashtun, in the truck. This might provide some small extra margin of safety, though, in truth, even the jingoistic Marchenko realized that they were far more likely to be hijacked or robbed traversing Russia than in these wild and sparsely populated ‘stans of Asia.

The first leg of the trip was the 250-kilometer straight shot along the M39 toward Samarkand, then another 350 kilometers to Kholm, east of Mazare-e-Sharif, where they would pick up the A76 for the short jaunt to Kabul. The roads were passable as long as visibility was good. They were not in a hurry. They did not want to attract attention. They would travel only in daylight, and only in caravans of similar
jingle-jangles
. If they took two or three days, or twice that, to reach Kabul, so be it.

From Kabul to Kandahar along the A1, and on to Quetta on the A75, and then the final 665 kilometer stretch on the isolated N25 through the great wastelands of Baluchistan to Karachi and the ocean.

In a week—two at most—they would certainly reach the ancient, fabled portal to the Arabian Sea.

Mort Feldman woke up in the simple pine coffin. His left wrist and ankle were handcuffed to an iron pipe running parallel to the wooden box and slightly above it. Sleeping on his side in the same position hurt.

He was in a windowless room with an air vent that admitted light, in an upper storey of an ancient
haveli
mansion. He judged he was somewhere in urban Baluchistan, based on the Tareen dialect of Pashto and the Baluchi variants of Urdu phrases he recognized spoken in streets below. Sometimes he heard Sindhi and sometimes he thought he heard Punjabi, but this was less common, as would be the case, he knew, in the southwest of Pakistan.

It was cold at night though warm during the day, so he deduced he was at some elevation above sea level. Perhaps he was in Quetta, the capital city of the Pakistani Taliban? Certainly he was in an urban environment; honking horns and the stench of air pollution told that story well.

In daylight hours, Feldman was allowed to sit on the floor next to the coffin unshackled. After the first week, as a special privilege because he had been cooperative, his captors let him have a rough woolen blanket as a mattress and pillow to spare his sore butt.

Feldman had not been moved since that long road trip the night of his kidnapping. The journey had been an ordeal, one that still brought on a cold sweat whenever he recalled it. The heat of the metal floor in the back of the van, above the stove-hot exhaust, had burned his right leg. The blister still hurt. The acrid fumes of unleaded gasoline had nearly suffocated him.

In his cell, life had become bearable. He was not beaten, though he was frequently blindfolded when others were in the chamber. He had to ask permission to use the toilet, observed by a guard. He was given a bucket in a corner of the room, one he could not reach at night when he was tethered to his box.

On good days, his keepers rewarded him with small treats. A cup of coffee, once or twice. Only once was he was given a small glass bottle of warm Coca-Cola, maybe six ounces. He had savored every molecule.

As he awoke, Feldman twisted slightly in his pine box bed, adjusting his head so he could see the bottom of the interior wall. Using his right thumbnail, he incised a barely visible line in the soft pinewood, the thirteenth such line in the plank, he observed. He had been too disoriented the first few days to perform this ritual, but he guessed that he had started on the third or fourth day. That meant he had been held now for fifteen or sixteen days. This simple rite of maintaining a personal calendar was an act of defiance against his captors that helped maintain his sanity.

He pondered, as he always did every morning upon awakening, the central questions of his captivity: Who has done this to me? And why?

Somewhere in the back of his mind, especially early in the morning or when falling asleep at night, when he was at the edge of consciousness in that twilight between wakefulness and sleep, Feldman dreamed the thought that it was the ISI, not Al Qaeda, that kidnapped him. Why had he not been interrogated more vigorously? Why had his captors seemed so indifferent to him, such reluctant jailers? Why was he still alive when many before him had been put to death in Pakistan? There were no answers.

An hour later, Feldman’s principal jailer unlocked the door of his prison and brought him a cold mug of weak tea and a crust of bread. This guard, a short, gaunt man with high cheekbones and an unhealthy, sallow complexion, seemed more alert than usual, almost nervous. He was the only human being whose face Feldman had seen since his capture. Feldman had taken to calling him ‘Crusoe,’ to which the man did not respond. It appeared that he did not understand even one word of English, which in Pakistan suggested he was on the very lowest rung of society.

Moments after starting to sip his vile tea, Feldman could hear shouting in a lower room, though he could not make out the words. The angry voices became louder as he heard men climbing steps. So this was perhaps the end? Today he would die? He gagged and spit out the ghastly tea.

And then the door of his cell opened and Brigadier Mahmood Mahmood was standing before him.

***

“You sons of bitches.” Feldman said. “What took you so long?”

“I’m afraid I am both your captor and your liberator,” Brigadier Mahmood said. “Your presence here is the result of an unfortunate miscalculation. I apologize.”

Feldman was almost paralyzed with happiness and anger and surprise. It took him a few seconds to find his voice, but it seemed to him an eternity. His jaw seemed wired shut.

“So this is payback for OBL?” Feldman asked in a hoarse whisper.

“Not precisely so,” Mahmood said smoothly. “More in the way of a visceral retribution for humiliating the nation of Pakistan. And as a means of attracting high attention and focus in Washington.”

“Are you going to kill me?”

“Good heavens, no! Your ordeal is now over. Sane voices in the Army have prevailed, including mine. Indeed, now we face together a common problem that requires your attention and mine. A problem vastly greater than the disappearance of an intelligence officer, no matter how legendary.”

“And what the fuck would that be Mahmood? I need a bath and some clean clothes right now, and a stiff drink, not more of your bullshit and your British manners.”

Feldman felt rising up within him a rage, an overpowering, fulminating anger, that he had been unable to feel or that he had not permitted himself to feel, in the two weeks of his captivity. And then, he found himself in tears, sobbing, his body wracked with a terrible and uncontrollable sense of shaking relief.

Brigadier Mahmood put his arm on Feldman’s shoulder. Neither man spoke for what seemed a very long time.

***

“I don’t think you realize how concerned Pakistan is about the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan," Brigadier Mahmood said. He and Mort Feldman were in a lower room of the
haveli
in Quetta. Feldman had been allowed to wash in the primitive bathroom off the main bedroom in the crumbling mansion. He was promised he would have access to real bathing facilities in a decent hotel soon. He was given a fresh change of clothes. He had eaten, though sparingly, for he was not hungry and his stomach, empty now for two weeks, could accept only small quantities of nourishment. Feldman had asked for the use of a telephone but Mahmood had prevailed on him to wait before contacting people in Washington or Islamabad. Ordinarily Feldman would have protested vigorously, but he didn’t have the energy.

“Look, Mahmood, we know that you assholes in ISI play a double game. You take money from America and help the Taliban—and I’ll be damned if I can make any connection whatsoever between what’s just happened to me and the war in Afghanistan,” Feldman said. His voice was calm. It sounded eerie to him, for he had not heard it in two weeks.

Ignoring Feldman’s bad temper, Mahmood spoke quietly.

“On our part, Mort, the Army here feels that we are badly used by the United States and kept in the dark,” Mahmood said. “We try to be good partners, but you do not treat us as such. You treat us as servants, or worse, as ignorant amateurs.”

“Look, we’ve been through why the White House did not feel that it was possible to include ISI or the Chief of Army Staff in the OBL takedown,” Feldman said. “So let me ask you point blank: Had we brought you into the planning, would OBL have been warned in advance?”

“Not by me, certainly,” Mahmood said calmly, evading the question. “Look, let me say that I understand your reasoning, even if I do not fully agree with it. Yes, it is possible that he would have been warned by radical Islamist elements within the military. But you are wise enough to know that there are a few people whom you could have trusted.”

“Those decisions were made a couple of levels above my pay grade,” Feldman said. “And I’m telling you now that this fucking kidnapping is going to be a tough sell for you at Langley, no matter how justified you may feel. You may soon wish you had buried your mistake by just killing me. Are you prepared for the stink this is going to raise?”

“Your colleague Mr. Wheatley has been in Pakistan for almost a week now,” Mahmood said. “He was sent here to find you. And he has slowly become aware of a problem far more serious than your kidnapping. It will be embarrassing. But, to put it rather bluntly, we now face the blowback from your rash assassination of Sheikh Osama. There is now the grave possibility of the first nuclear device ever to be detonated by non-state actors, a terrorist bomb in the hands of Al Qaeda. That is the problem we have, both of us, you and me.”

Feldman reflected briefly, agreeing privately that this was surely the most serious problem he would ever face in his CIA career. He said nothing to Mahmood.

***

“That son-of-a-bitch spent fucking
hours
with me,” Olof Wheatley said on the telephone at the Embassy in Islamabad. “He took me to lunch, showed me the Al Qaeda hideout at Zagi Mountain, gave me the grand tour. And I never suspected for a minute that he knew where you were.”

“He’s hard to read,” Feldman agreed from Quetta. He was speaking on a scrambled line. “Even in the best of times. He had me fooled too, back in Islamabad.”

“I still don’t get it. When he told me his personal driver was the guy at the wheel, I understood there were ISI people involved, but I never guessed Mahmood himself.”

“I don’t think Mahmood knew before the fact. As Mahmood explained it to me, a faction within the ISI decided to do the deed as payback for OBL. And to reshuffle the deck a bit. Mahmood claims he wanted to unwind it, but it took two weeks for him to prevail. Meanwhile, the profile of this Russian demolition device started rising, and now they are concerned that the plan is far more developed than they previously believed.”

“On that point, we think they may be right, given the financial information from Kabul and Paris.”

“Mahmood is concerned the package has already slipped through Central Asia and is somewhere at sea.”

“We’ll deal with that when you’re back. We also got some news from Moscow. A British national there was murdered in a park off Prospekt Mira, a technical guy who used to work at Aldermaston. Our Russian friends found his laptop in a hotel and are sharing it with us.”

“So we think we’re talking about something bad coming out of Russia?”

“Sure looks like it. We’ll know more when we see the computer hard drive. The important thing right now is that you’re OK. How soon before you can get to Islamabad?”

“Mahmood insists on taking me back himself. A day or two.”

***

At sunset, downtown Quetta darkened while the copper, mustard, and russet peaks of Chiltan, Takatu, and Murdarghar, soaring two miles into the sky, blazed with fading sunlight high above the bowl-shaped cradle of the city, a spectacular light show heralding the starry darkness.

Mort Feldman traveled in a military caravan with Brigadier Mahmood to the Command and Staff College north of town on Quetta Road, near the airfield. This was the oldest and most prestigious educational institution of the Pakistani Army, an elite school much like the United States Army War College, limited to officers of the rank of captain or above with eight years of active duty.

Here the best and the brightest of Pakistan’s military took a one-year tour to get that extra intellectual and social polish they needed to make general officer. The Staff College campus had one of the finest medical complexes in the nation, and Mahmood insisted that the resident medical officer there examine Feldman before returning to Islamabad the next morning.

“My fondest wish would be to be commandant here someday,” Mahmood said wistfully in the back of the car he shared with Feldman as they passed through the gates into the spacious campus. “For me, it would be an intellectual feast.”

“I predict that you will get your wish,” Feldman said graciously.

“The post calls for a lieutenant general or a major general. I am a mere brigadier.”

“But a brigadier destined for greater things,” Feldman said.

Mahmood barked a mirthless laugh.