Kamal took a deep drag and savored the flavor for a moment. Dropping the lit cigar into the puddle of petrol, he headed towards the hallway that led out of the Chamber. His work here was complete.
* * *
Minto was taken quietly and in the dead of night just a few hours after Absar was burned to a crisp in an abandoned building in an industrial area of the city. Neither Minto nor his men were ever heard of again, nor did they ever see the inside of a court of justice.
Meanwhile, Kamal’s performance in Karachi had set him firmly on a road he coveted, headed straight to the Jungle.
Chapter 4
It was two in the morning when he placed the call. He hadn’t taken into account the time difference between Pakistan and Virginia, meaning that the call would ring unanswered in an empty office. Northwright’s undercover asset had let his impatience get the better of him and the value of the information that he held would lose significance if not passed immediately. His call would have given Northwright an operational advantage because the rest of the organization would not know for days, as it worked through official channels in Pakistan. This call had to get through, he thought to himself.
Realizing his mistake, the operative dropped the call and quickly searched his mobile for Northwright’s private cell number and hit send. A groggy, sleep-deprived Northwright stirred in his mistress’s bed as he phone rang on the table beside him. Unwillingly, he rolled away from the twenty-five-year-old plaything in his arms, trying to find his phone in the dark before his mistress woke. Late night calls were normally routed through the control center and they all knew not to call him here, especially here. Married for almost thirty years, this was his only escape from the covert world that he spent his life in. More importantly, Nicole, his mistress, knew nothing of what he actually did for a living. To her, he as a businessman with a bad marriage; all she really cared about were the expensive gifts and being pampered in exchange for her body.
David Northwright was a seasoned intelligence operative trained in the South American killing fields. From his days fifteen years ago as a lowly field operative to his final posting as Station Chief in Bogota, he had established a vicious history of kidnapping and torture. He had a special position on every wet team The Company assembled simply because of his bloodlust and skill.
Now, as a retired operative, he worked for the highest bidder doing whatever he was asked to do. The loyalty and brotherhood taught at The Company was leveraged to bring his ‘favorites’ to the dark world he now ruled.
As Northwright rubbed the sleep from his eyes and read the number, he realized that the perceived change in protocol was much more significant.
“Hold for encrypted communication,” in a barely-comprehensible voice, Northwright gruffly spoke into the phone.
“Sir, we have a problem,” blurted the caller immediately. “Minto is missing and Absar is dead.”
Northwright hung up. The encryption had not yet activated. Fucking idiot. Don’t they teach these guys anything? As a known player in geopolitical espionage, Northwright could be sure that a number of intelligence ears had heard the information, but there was a slim possibility that no one would connect the significant to him. Can’t risk any communication breaches, he thought to himself. He shut off his cell phone and with a practiced flip of the wrist, he opened it up and removed the SIM. Reaching down to pull a Zippo from his pants pocket, he got out of the bed, his mind on the seven words he had heard before he had disconnected the call. His mistress stirred in the bed, realizing he was not beside her.
“Why are you up?” she muttered half asleep, reaching for Northwright’s shadow.
“Sorry darling, had a nightmare,” Northwright quickly answered, hoping that she would fall back into a deep sleep. “Kind of unsettling. Go back to sleep, I’m going to pop out on the balcony for a smoke.”
Nicole, now more aware, slid over and wrapped her arms around his waist, strategically placing her hands. “Let me help you relax. We can have a smoke together… after.”
Northwright fingered the SIM between his fingers, contemplating whether being insistent on a cigarette would raise additional questions, or worse bring his plaything completely out of her slumber wanting to discuss the nightmare. Northwright knew that with the SIM in his hand, all tracking mechanisms were defeated, as were the NSA’s ability to use his phone as a listening device. He could destroy the SIM later, he thought as he slid back into bed, and Nicole did what earned her the expensive gifts.
* * *
The sheer size of the ISI Academy campus intimidated Kamal. The Jungle, as it was known among the rank and file, sprawled over 5,000 acres of land situated in a location that no one would ever find without a map and a guide. As he was driven down the tree-lined road to the large granite building in the center, Kamal couldn’t help but compare this to his training bases at The Bird’s Nest and Attock Fort. The granite building stood alone amidst a beautifully manicured lawn and flags of the various branches of the armed forces flying above. The rest of the grounds were populated with forest, endless and vast, which would most likely be used as a training ground. Exiting the vehicle, Kamal was ushered into the building by a soldier, in full military dress, while another took his baggage from the car. In the foyer, he was given a file with his room assignment, rules, agenda for the day and course list. The soldier directed him towards a door guarded by two more men in full dress uniform.
He entered a large hall where, he guessed, noticing the long benches and tables lining the sides of the room, they would serve lunch. The hall was massive, a double level affair with galleries along the second floor that overlooked the room. And it was crowded. Kamal stopped in his tracks, momentarily overwhelmed by the sheer size and magnitude of the space. He focused his attention on the men closest to him, trying to find familiar faces among the crowd. He knew of several SSG batch mates and seniors who had been accepted into the Jungle.
No one looked over. Kamal moved forward through the buzzing room, scoping it out. He easily identified testosterone filled infantry soldiers from the raucous laughter and loud jokes. In contrast, air force and navy representatives were quiet and refined, speaking in low murmurs in small groups.
“Oye, baanchod! What the hell are you doing here?”
That voice… Kamal turned towards Major Iftikhar Siddiqui, a former instructor at The Bird’s Nest during his SSG training, psyched to see a friendly face. The Major was a solid figure, built like a compact truck with a booming voice. His friendly greeting had several heads turning towards him, but the Major was impervious to the affronted stares. He gestured to Kamal to join them.
“Welcome to the Jungle!” the Major grabbed Kamal’s hand and pulled him forward to introduce him to his group. “Gentlemen, this is Captain Kamal Khan, a former student of mine.”
“Sir.” Kamal nodded formally to the group, most of whom were a blur of names and uniforms. This is a bloody convention on good posture, he thought as he took in the ramrod straight stance of everyone around him. He turned back to the Major. “Will you be our counter-terrorism instructor here as well?”
“I’ll join you for the advanced courses, but SSG soldiers are exempt from basic training,” the Major said with a wicked smile. “I get the boys first.” He cocked his head towards a small group huddled together in a corner of the giant room. “My job is to turn them into men.”
Kamal hadn’t noticed the small group – they seemed to be shrinking into their skins, intimidated and quiet. “The boys?”
“Civilians.” Coming from the Major, it sounded like a dirty word.
Kamal’s brows went up in surprise. “Civilians? I thought…”
“We have a civilian division, Kamal. I thought you knew that.” The Major was amused. “They’re political appointees, or federal service commission candidates.”
“Basic training with these guys is a load of fun.” One of the Major’s friends, a slim-built man sporting a fantastic handlebar mustache, was blatantly staring at the ‘boys’. “They�
��re untested, undisciplined and unprepared, lacking the essential skills that every soldier here has.”
“And unfit.” The group’s contempt for the civilian population in the room was obvious.
“Our only saving grace is that they’ll never get to field or covert service.”
Kamal felt bad for the boys, but he was surprised that the ISI accepted political appointees. “Where are they normally posted?”
“Analysis. They’re given access to the most inconsequential data to limit the opportunities to share intelligence for financial gain.”
“There are two things to remember about civilians in the ISI.” Ziad, the handlebar mustache guy, took the opportunity to teach the newbie a few things. “First, political appointees are likely to be snitches for the party in power. They work for them, for individuals, not the country. They’re also far more likely to be turned or exposed if allowed into the field. We’ve seen this happen with the CIA, FSB and MI6 for years now.”
“Our legacy, though, is in this room.” The Major nodded to the plaques on the wall celebrating successful ISI operations, each with a date and detail but no operative names. On the wall to his right were photographs of past Directors General of the ISI since its inception in 1948 by General Robert Cawthome, an Australian born British Army Major General who later joined the Pakistan Army. The whole room reflected the glorious history of the intelligence services. “We pander to civilian sensibilities by allowing them to feel like a part of us. It hasn’t slowed us down yet.”
“Attention!” The soldiers outside the door had entered, and the room snapped to attention at the command. Almost all of them, that is; the civilians, unused to reacting to orders, stood shifting their weight from side to side, as if standing in a school assembly. One of the soldiers noticed the disrespect of the order and surged towards the two who were most unsteady. Kamal watched, remembering his first days in basic training. Oh shit, he thought. Those guys are about to get their first drill.
“Stand up straight! Do you think that this is your mother’s living room?” spat the soldier in his face. “You know you don’t belong here! Tell us whose influence you used to get into this Academy. Stand fucking still, maggot!” The poor man leaned back, desperately trying to avoid the soldier’s spittle as he got yelled at. But he stood up straight, looking at the uniformed soldiers’ stances and mimicking them to the best of his ability. It wasn’t good enough for his assailant, however, who took his time yelling out the finer points of standing to attention.
“We will break you! We will turn you into men from the boys you are now.”
A second instructor, and then a third stepped forward to straighten out the civilian population of the room. The military candidates stood watching, making no attempt to hide their contempt. The volume increased exponentially as the instructors took each individual’s weaknesses and beat them over the head with them.
The civvies did their best to follow the orders, perhaps for the first time in their over-privileged, coddled lives, eventually falling into some semblance of order and discipline. A hush fell over the room as the soldier at the door straightened his rifle and yelled “Attention!” a second time.
A wave passed through the room as the uniformed soldiers snapped to salutes, heads stiffly facing forward. The Chief of Army Staff and Director General ISI were standing in the doorway. Files for every military candidate in the Academy passed across the desks of these two men during the selection process. The civilians had an easier path with a commission of bureaucrats and military officers, but for those wearing a uniform, these men held the keys to their graduation and future postings as covert operatives.
Kamal had many interactions, granted from a distance, with both these men. Both had attended the SSG graduation and personally congratulated the graduates. He had medals pinned on his chest by the COAS when he returned from Fort Benning’s International Sniper School for his performance and for winning the competition at the end of the course. This would be the first time that he would have more regular interaction and assessment from either man.
Behind the two military officers were members of the federal commission that had been responsible for selecting the civilians to the Academy. As the military officers moved to congratulate and interact with the uniformed personnel, the bureaucrats did the same with the civilians. This was a purely ceremonial practice done at the beginning of each Academy session.
The Generals reached the end of the room and took their respective places behind the podium that had been set up. The Director of the Academy, Brigadier Asif Nazar, was the first to step forward and welcome the candidates to the academy. An accomplished officer with a Sandhurst background like Kamal, the Brigadier didn’t seem as daunting as his title, standing just short of six feet with a bit of weight around him. Looks like the good General has been missing physical training, Kamal thought to himself.
His address was short, covering his expectations of each candidate at the Academy and what the Academy offered to those who were able to successfully complete training. The Brigadier ended with an introduction to Lieutenant General Misbah Qadir, Director General of the Inter-Services Intelligence, stepping down from the podium as his boss got up to speak.
The Lieutenant General was a striking contradiction to the Brigadier. He had not attended foreign military schools. He was a true son of the Pakistani soil. A graduate of the Pakistan Military Academy at Kakul, the Staff College in Quetta and this same ISI Academy, Lt. General Qadir had years of experience in Military Intelligence. He was a natural choice to head the ISI.
“If you are here thinking that this Academy will turn you into James Bond or a super spy that people will write stories about, you need to exercise your ability to walk out that door right now. This is not the place for you if that is your dream.” Lt. General Qadir had an imposing voice, deep and raspy. “Pakistani intelligence has always been the most respected intelligence service in the world because of the standards that we instill and uphold in our operatives. We have spent decades earning our position in the espionage community and no one in this room will be allowed to erode it. This service stands as one unit, one force, not individuals. If you decide at any point that you are bigger than the service, you will find yourself outside the service as a target instead of an asset.”
“This is the beginning, but how it ends, only those who graduate know,” he continued. “We will teach you what it means to be a warrior in the true sense of the word, following a code that embodies integrity, loyalty, honor, selflessness and courage as your guide. You will learn to understand the phrase that every warrior lives by – Never ask how many there are the enemy, just where they are.”
He spoke with great passion and honor about the achievements and the great men who had made them possible, but just as the plaques on the wall remained anonymous, he never mentioned a name. The service was supreme, Kamal thought to himself, and we are a part of that supremacy as long as the service allowed it.
“Intelligence is a game of imperfect information. We can guess our opponent’s moves, but we can’t be sure of them until the game is over. As you will learn during your courses and your time here, this it is not a game. The risks we take are real, and sometimes deadly. We move chess pieces, countering the moves of our opponents, on an imaginary board that could be confined to the location we are in or spread across the entire globe. This is real-time strategy implementation. It isn’t for the weak of heart, it is for those who have the mental drive to be more than they ever imagined.”
* * *
The Jungle launched a set of vital concepts for Kamal’s training and career as an operative – the need to know, the need to compartmentalize and the need to validate intelligence and its sources. The first briefings provided the foundation of his espionage education. During training, the candidates were regularly shuffled to locations where their instructors had organized ‘teachable’ moments. Sometimes the prepared location would be on the sprawling 5,000 acres, others could be
hundreds of kilometers away. Kamal had a slight advantage over many of his batch mates because of the counter-intelligence training during the SSG course, but that slight advantage became much greater with his actual field experience.
The instructors at The Jungle, discounting a few devout Muslims, were alcohol-swilling spies ranging from good to amazing. They included seasoned officers like Colonel Akbar, a veteran of the Afghan conflict and a key trainer of the Mujahideen, and non-military personnel like Doctor Waqar Shah, a specialist in psychological warfare. Some had served as station chiefs, or cultural attaches as they were known to the outsiders, others were masters of covert operations whose tradecraft behind enemy lines had become the stuff of legend within the ranks of the military, keeping operations and operatives alive. They had worked in India, the United States, North Korea, China, Israel and other countries, both friendly and unfriendly to Pakistan.
Other instructors included paramilitary specialists, field operatives and linguists that would help to get the candidates ready for situations and encounters that they would need to extract themselves from. One thing was made clear to all the candidates – if you are caught behind enemy lines, the ISI will distance itself from you.
In other words, you are fucked six ways from Sunday, Kamal thought to himself. That made the requirement to absorb information quickly and clearly imperative for every candidate. It would be their own skills that would get them out of hot water and to safety – the institution would not be able to save them until they were clear of all threats and then only if the intelligence was valuable to the institution, military and state of Pakistan. The Jungle was replete with stories of operatives that had been turned out into the cold when their objectives went belly up and didn’t deliver quality intelligence to the headquarters.
The heart of intelligence, not matter how you looked at it, was human espionage. The best intelligence came from an operative’s ability to understand and influence behavior, from polite conversation to overt threats, and maneuver through emotional cycles to get valuable information unavailable to others. This intelligence was the foundation of covert actions, which were in the realm of statecraft, a tool of foreign policy decision-makers. Those who excelled in this level of espionage were elevated to recruiters, the holy grail of spies, that were able to identify, engage and convince foreign nationals to turn against their own interests for personal rewards. The candidates were told that the ISI kept a list of politicians, bureaucrats and other influential people who had fallen into this trap and used that information to influence decisions on foreign policy and domestic matters.
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