Chaos in Kabul (10 page)

Malko was so hungry that he devoured the food, but the rice was cold and didn’t provide much warmth. When he finished eating, he turned to his companion.

“How long have you been here?” he asked in English.

The man shook his head, not understanding, so Malko tried the word for “here,” one of the few Dari words he knew. Holding up his fingers, he asked, “
Inja
?”

This time, the man understood. He held up five fingers on his left hand, and four on his right: nine. So you could survive nine days in these conditions, thought Malko.

He wondered who would be working on his behalf. Maybe Nelson Berry, and maybe the CIA.

Standing at his office door, Walid Varang greeted Warren Michaelis with a broad smile. The Afghan was the third-in-command at the NDS.

When they shook hands, Varang’s wrist displayed a Rolex watch worth a million afghanis. It clearly was the fruit of admirable thrift, since his salary was only fifty thousand afghanis a month. When the Directorate seized a shipment of heroin, part of it always went missing, and most of that went to the higher-ups.

“We’ve located Malko Linge’s cell phone,” Varang announced.

Michaelis felt a huge wave of relief.

“Where?”

“In Chehel Sotoun.” A very poor neighborhood, a slum without running water or electricity. “We’ll go there together.”

Waiting in the courtyard were three Fords crammed with armed men. The lead car held the technicians whose job was to locate the cell phone. They drove along the Kabul River for a few miles, then climbed a hillside on a slick, muddy road. The cars passed squalid hovels under plumes of charcoal smoke, a few women in blue burqas, and men with pushcarts.

Halfway up, they stopped. Varang got a message on his radio and turned to Michaelis.

“We’re very close,” he said.

They all piled out, and the NDS agents took positions around their chief. The technicians set up their gear in a small intersection with no shops nearby, only houses. Thanks to the cell phone’s built-in GPS, they could pinpoint its location within a few yards. Suddenly two of the technicians walked over to a garbage bin, frightening some stray cats in the process.

One man kicked the bin over, spilling its contents.

Michaelis watched as the Afghan bent and picked something up, which he brought over to them. He immediately recognized the Nokia he’d given Malko.

“The signal hasn’t moved since yesterday,” said Varang. “I
think whoever kidnapped Mr. Linge threw away his phone here, to cut the trail. This is as far as our investigation can take us.”

The two men exchanged a long look, and Michaelis understood that Varang thought they would never see Malko alive again.

Warren Michaelis gazed thoughtfully at Malko’s Nokia.
Once its battery was charged, he would know what numbers had been called, which might give him a lead.

The NDS agents climbed back into their cars, leaving him alone in the intersection. He eventually got in and turned to Varang.

“What can we do?”

“Not much,” said the Afghan, shaking his head. “At the NDS we don’t deal with street crime, which seems to be the situation here. But criminals don’t usually attack foreigners; it makes for too many complications. This is a strange case.”

“Do you have a theory about what happened?”

“No, except that Mr. Linge was almost certainly kidnapped. Otherwise, we would have found his body by now. Unless …”

Varang left the sentence unfinished, then continued.

“You might ask the Interior Ministry. They handle political offenses and extortion. Unless you know something more specific, that is.”

Which meant that Varang thought Malko might have been kidnapped in connection with his CIA activities. As it happens, Michaelis was wondering the same thing. Could the Austrian have been seized and forced to reveal what he was doing in Afghanistan? If that was the case, the attack could have come only from President
Karzai’s entourage—and they would never find him. If the Taliban were involved, they would have already taken credit for the kidnapping.

Varang dropped Michaelis off at his Land Cruiser.

“I’m very sorry,” he said. “I really would have liked to help you. I’ll send a bulletin to all our offices, in case we hear anything.”

Once back in the Ariana, Michaelis summoned the case officer who’d been detailed to deliver the five hundred thousand dollars. The young man confirmed that he had given the cash to Malko in person.

Just whom was the money for? Michaelis wondered. The Taliban, according to Malko. Even if there were a way to identify the recipients, the CIA station people weren’t authorized to contact them.

Michaelis sat down to draft a report for Langley. He didn’t know what Malko Linge’s mission in Kabul was, but it was off to a very bad start.

Nelson Berry saw an unknown number appear on his cell phone and answered. It was the same man with the Pashto accent as the day before, one of Malko’s kidnappers.

“Do you have the money?”

“It’s impossible to get that much money together quickly, and you know it,” said the South African. “Let’s meet so we can agree on a reasonable price.”

“Ours is the reasonable price.”

“In any case, I need to be sure he’s still alive,” said Berry, changing tactics. “I want a photo of him with a copy of the day’s newspaper.”

“We’re not taking any photos,” said the Afghan sharply. “I’ll send you something else: an ear.”

“You don’t even know who I am,” said Berry.

“True, but we can send it to the Serena, and they can pass it on. You’ve got until tomorrow.”

He hung up.

Berry wished he hadn’t taken the call, because he now faced a new dilemma. If he didn’t do something, this would end badly. The best solution was to alert the CIA, but that meant revealing his contact with Malko, which he didn’t want to do.

Berry decided to wait until the next call. They never killed hostages quickly, he told himself. Or maybe Malko was already dead, in which case it wouldn’t make any difference.

Another cold night had passed when a faint glow lit the upper walls of the well. Looking up, Malko saw a man leaning over the edge. He said a long sentence in Dari. Malko’s companion started, said a few words, then painfully got to his feet. A rope with a loop was already being lowered. The prisoner took it and wrapped it around his chest. Before he could say anything, the rope tightened and he was hoisted up to ground level. He scrabbled on the stone wall with his feet, as if to help himself rise faster.

Malko felt a stab of envy. His fellow hostage was free, his ransom probably paid. That might turn out to be helpful, he realized. The man was sure to be questioned by the police, who would learn that Malko was being held and come looking for him.

He looked up again.

The Afghan had now reached the edge of the well. The kidnappers who had hauled him up pulled him over, and he disappeared from sight.

Now Malko felt even lonelier. The presence of the other man, even though he couldn’t communicate with him, had been some comfort.

Suddenly he heard the sounds of a heated argument in Dari. The voices grew louder. This was followed by silence, an angry yell, and the sound of pleading.

The two gunshots startled him.

There were no more sounds from above. The cover was put back on the well, and Malko was again in darkness. He no longer envied his companion, whom the kidnappers had obviously killed, maybe because the ransom hadn’t been paid. It didn’t make his own future look very bright.

Trying not to think, Malko huddled against the wall in an effort to keep warm. If only he could communicate with his captors, tell them whom to contact to negotiate his ransom. Because if nothing happened, he might suffer the same fate as the Afghan. He could always refuse to take the rope, of course, but they would just shoot him at the bottom of the well.

Reza Assefi, the Interior Ministry’s special counsel, bowed deeply to Warren Michaelis. In Kabul, the Americans still ruled the roost. The previous month, the CIA had delivered three hundred and seventy-five million dollars’ worth of gear purchased from Rosoboronexport, which sells military Russian matériel, to outfit the Afghan police: AK-47s, night-vision scopes, communications material, and Jeeps.

Those kinds of presents can buy lot of friendship. Without American dollars, the Afghan police would be getting around on bicycles. Some of this gear was resold to the Taliban by corrupt cops. Others took their shiny new toys and switched sides. In a way, the American aid helped pretty much everybody.

In keeping with Afghan custom, Assefi and Michaelis politely inquired about each other’s families, drank tea, and discussed politics and the weather. At last, the CIA station chief was able to get
around to the reason for his visit. A man connected with the Agency had come to evaluate the situation in Kabul, he said, and had disappeared.

They found his cell phone in a garbage can, but no ransom demand had reached the U.S. embassy. Michaelis thought it obvious that Malko would have told his abductors whom to contact.

A warm smile firmly in place under his handsome, well-trimmed mustache, Assefi listened.

“That’s terrible,” he said. “You should have come to us sooner.”

“Would you have been able to do anything?”

“I don’t know, but we could have launched an investigation,” said Assefi, immediately backtracking. “As it happens, we’re handling a similar case right now. There might be a connection. Wait a moment.”

Assefi stepped into his office and made a call. Minutes later, a secretary in a head scarf brought him a thick folder.

“Here we go,” he said, opening it. “Ten days ago, a young banker named Gulbuddin Mohammadi was kidnapped as he left the bank. Next day, a man called his wife and threatened to kill him if she didn’t pay a million afghanis. The woman didn’t have that kind of money, so she contacted us, and we put a tap on her phone.

“This didn’t get us anywhere, unfortunately. The kidnappers used hidden numbers when they called, and by the time we could pinpoint the call, it was too late. From their voices, we guessed they were Pashtuns. We searched our records but didn’t find anything. These groups often form and split up quickly. They’re people who come to Kabul in search of work and are trying to get by.”

“So you weren’t able to identify them,” said Michaelis.

“No, unfortunately.”

From the police official’s somber tone, Michaelis sensed he hadn’t heard the end of the story.

“Did the wife pay the ransom?”

Assefi shook his head.

“No. She put their house up for sale but couldn’t find a buyer. And this morning we found her husband’s body in a vacant lot in the Pashmina Bafi neighborhood with two bullets in his head.”

Michaelis was shaken.

“What do you suppose happened?” he asked.

“Gangs like this aren’t very organized,” explained Assefi. “When they realize they aren’t going to get a ransom, they kill the hostage, then pretend they haven’t.”

“We absolutely must rescue Malko Linge,” said Michaelis.

“It’s surprising that you haven’t gotten a ransom demand,” said Assefi. “They do this for money. It’s either that, or something else is involved.… We’ll open an investigation in any case, starting from the last time Mr. Linge was seen.”

“He left the Serena two days ago, in the morning.”

“Ah, you’ve given me a lead!” said the Afghan. “I’ll have the hotel staff questioned, and keep you posted.”

This meant they would round up some unlucky bastards, tear out their fingernails, and beat them to a pulp. Afghan police methods were pretty crude. The only reason they didn’t use electric shocks on prisoners? Too many power outages.

Reza Assefi stood up.

“I will keep you informed every hour,” he said warmly, eager to still be deemed worthy of the Americans’ three hundred and seventy-five million dollars.

Michaelis left the ministry feeling depressed. Knowing the Afghan police’s limited abilities, he didn’t think there was much chance of their finding Malko.

Back at his office, he passed word to the telephone operators to immediately route to him any call involving a ransom demand.

All he could do now was pray.

On the seventh floor of CIA headquarters in Langley, Clayton Luger was feeling grumpy. He hadn’t gotten any news of their operation since Malko’s phone call from the Kabul station.

From his office window, Luger could see the ugly cafeteria and the parking lots, coded blue, green, yellow, and purple. People with offices on the Potomac side had a beautiful view across the green space and the river.

A secretary knocked on the door and put a freshly decoded message on his desk.

“It came via Doha,” she said.

When Luger read the message, he could feel the blood drain from his face. It had originated in Kabul and reached him through a series of cutouts:

“My God!” Luger exclaimed.

His stomach in a knot, he phoned his secretary.

“Get the Kabul station on the line!” he snapped. “Warren Michaelis. If he isn’t there, have him traced.”