The Pakistan Conspiracy, A Novel Of Espionage

by Francesca Salerno

  She was wearing a dark nylon tracksuit that was invisible in the shadows. There was a rear door to the building, but a heavy steel crossbar protected it. Using a trellis and footholds on the windows, Kate worked her way to the roof of the building where a skylight gave access to one of the upstairs rooms.

  The skylight was about three feet by two and made of clear polycarbonate, probably installed years after the house was built, possibly when it was converted into commercial space. While it could be removed or broken with simple tools, there would be no way to disguise the fact of the break-in, and Kate had hoped to find ingress to the building that could not later be detected.

  While she was thinking how best to proceed, she heard a phone ring in the room beneath her, then clicking sounds, and then she saw a desktop computer screen light up. In the dim glow, she could see that the room, apparently used as an office, was devoid of cabinets or other storage for paper files. Just a small desk, phone, desktop computer, and a flatbed document scanner. Where were the bank’s paper files stored?

  Kate returned to ground the way she had come and worked her way back to the wall fronting the street. In just moments, she was back in Smyth’s SUV.

  “The windows and doors of this house are reinforced,” Kate said. “The security is lousy, but if I break in I will leave evidence of it.”

  “Break-ins are the biggest risk of urban life here—nighttime burglary. People install bars, reinforced doors, but it mainly doesn’t work. There are thieves everywhere in Kabul.”

  “What if this guy Kwang doesn’t keep paper records but stores them as PDFs? How hard would it be to try to access Kwang’s computer network through the phone lines?”

  She told Smyth about the computer screen clicking on when the phone rang.

  “The telephone system here is straight out of the 1930s,” Smyth said. “It’s all electro-mechanical and therefore hard to make sophisticated protection compatible with the primitive host technology,” Smyth said. “But I thought we were looking for paper chits, not electronic files.”

  “Yes we are, but I think Kwang may have outsmarted himself. I didn’t see any file cabinets in that upstairs office, and we both remember how barren the reception room downstairs was. I think Kwang operates on the theory that keeping paper files is a needless risk, especially if he has to change locations fast, so he, or more likely his young assistant, scans them onto a hard drive, probably in that upstairs office, as Adobe files. If we can get in that way, we get what we need and Kwang is none the wiser. Whereas if I physically go into the building, he’ll know tomorrow we were here.”

  “That’s consistent with the idea that he doesn’t keep cash here, which seems more certain to me based on what you just observed. I’ve never tried a cyber break-in in Kabul, but why not? If it doesn’t work, then we go back to Plan A and physically break down the door.”

  ***

  “These files are old LOTUS-123 spreadsheets from the 1980s,” Kate said, pointing to the file extensions. “Archaic software that runs on DOS—my father used it to keep household accounts when I was a kid. Is it even possible to open these things nowadays?”

  “Yeah,” Smyth said. “There is a conversion program in Office that turns them into Excel files. Kwang probably thinks that antique software is harder to bug. Another dumb mistake.”

  An hour of research at Bagram Special Ops center in conjunction with an IT contact at the always helpful KhAD, the Afghan Intelligence Service, had revealed that BanKoNoKo had two landlines in Kabul, one for voice and a second for facsimile transmission, neither of which was connected to a computer. A third line was leased personally to Minh Kwang at the bank location, and it was using this one that Smyth had struck pay dirt.

  It linked to the computer Kate had seen through the skylight, a Compaq made in the 1990s, a rugged model built to handle power surges, humidity, and being bumped and bruised in tough work environments. It was a machine favored decades previously by banks and oil companies with small overseas offices in inhospitable places.

  Using a sophisticated password cracker provided to field offices by the NSA, Smyth hacked it. As Kate hoped, the Compaq was connected to a Buffalo external hard drive with 120 gigabytes of capacity. The external drive stored scores of spreadsheets and thousands of Adobe PDF files, images of paper documents converted into electronic files by the flatbed scanner Kate had seen on the desk next to the Compaq. This was Minh Kwang’s file cabinet.

  They downloaded the contents of Minh Kwang’s Buffalo drive onto a machine at the Ops Center, a Dell product with a powerful Intel i7 Gulftown processor specially manufactured for the Agency in 2010. It was essentially a top-of-the line business computer, the equivalent in number crunching of a large mini-computer from the 1980s era of the Compaq. The data transfer complete, Smyth disconnected the link to the Compaq.

  “I love this machine,” Smyth said. “The Intel chip is big enough to run graphics for the coolest game programs.”

  “Isn’t that rather against the rules?” Kate observed.

  “Yeah, but with the killer boredom at Bagram, who’s likely to call me on it? Not you, I hope.”

  Kate ignored his question. “Let’s look at the spreadsheets first,” Kate said, “then we can attack the PDF files. Maybe we won’t even have to.”

  “Deal,” Smyth said.

  The fifth spreadsheet they opened in Excel was labeled ‘Shamsi’ and contained a dozen lines, each apparently representing an individual transaction. The most recent was for $11 million to Security Exports, S.A., Paris for something called ‘SA.’ The total for all transactions at the bottom of the spreadsheet was just over $15 million.

  “So here is the $11 million, shipped to Paris four weeks ago, to Jacques LeClerc for ‘SA’ whatever that is. What the hell is ‘SA’?”

  “Small arms?” ventured Smyth. “Though I must say that eleven mill seems like a lot of money for small arms.”

  “Could be,” Kate said. “But I really think it’s a company or a place, or the name of a project. And then what is the entity called ‘Shamsi?’ — Could it be the airfield maybe?”

  “Shamsi Field is the Pakistani military airport from which CIA launched the predators that found Bin Laden.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Kate said. “It’s also the place where our Marines crashed one of their KC-130s back in 2002.”

  “I’ve been there. It’s a small base,” Smyth said, “used before the war as a convenient spot for Saudi princes to land for their falconry expeditions in the mountains. It was strictly a U.S. Special Forces base from 2001 to 2006, but then it reverted back to Pakistan, with a cordoned off section CIA uses exclusively to service and launch the predator drones.”

  “It’s also a woman’s name, and a common surname in the Middle East and Pakistan,” Kate said. “Maybe with no connection to the air base?”

  “Is there is anything in those PDF files that ties back to any of this?”

  “That’s going to take a while,” Kate said. “There are at least a thousand of them.”

  Kate kept paging through the individual LOTUS files until she saw the very last one, labeled ‘Zagi.’

  “Oh, shit,” Kate said. “Zagi Mountain is where Olof Wheatley is going. The van that was used to kidnap Mort Feldman was from there.”

  “A straight shot down the A-One though Jalalabad and the Khyber Pass to Peshawar,” Smyth said. “A hundred miles from here. Three hours, tops.”

  “More like two hundred miles,” Kate said. “And some murderous hairpin turns.”

  She converted the Zagi spreadsheet into Excel and opened it. There were some twenty-odd transactions listed over a span of five years. Many involved money transfers to Security Exports, S.A., the LeClerc arms firm.

  “This is proof positive that there’s a link between Mort Feldman’s disappearance and the nuclear bomb chatter. I’ve got to get this to Wheatley.”

  “He’s already in Peshawar,” Smyth said.

  “All the more reason that he be put in th
e loop ASAP.”

  Kate drafted an urgent cable to Olof Wheatley and sent it to his CTC office. She also sent all the files downloaded from Minh Kwang’s computer to the CTC registry in Langley and to Claire Stoppard at Treasury.

  ***

  Minh Kwang had an old barber’s chair installed in a spare room in his fortress-like home in a run-down cul-de-sac in Kabul’s booming Khair Khana neighborhood, precincts he shared with Tajiks, Persians, but few Westerners. His neighbors thought his house was a factory or warehouse. Few realized it was a private residence, for Kwang’s mansion was a hermetically sealed cocoon.

  Kwang had acquired the barber’s chair years earlier in Saigon, from a Western hotel being razed by the Communists. It had followed him all over the world. He was reclining in it and being shaved with a straight razor by his Vietnamese valet—a member, like Kwang, of the majority Kinh ethnic group—when a diminutive Vietnamese woman, his mother, stepped into the room with a cup of pale, aromatic green tea.

  “There is a message from the Singapore child,” she said in Vietnamese. “She asks that you call her at once.”

  Kwang grunted but did not move from his chair. The application of lavender water after the shave helped sooth his nerves. And he had a facial massage to look forward to, to help start the day.

  Kwang loathed Kabul, but he hated Vietnam even more. Kwang longed for the day when he could retire to Paris in style, the only city on earth where he felt truly at home. For the moment, there was more money to be made in Kabul than in Paris, from corrupt Russian biznesmeni in the arms and drugs trade, as well as from terrorist militias to whom legitimate banks were barred. Kwang was money manager to them all.

  Russia had become the world’s top narcostate and arms trader. Afghanistan was its greenhouse, and also the destination for much of its black market weapons.

  “There has been an unauthorized entry into our computer network,” the young Singapore clerical staffer told him when he called. She spoke in English, the only language they shared.

  “How do you know this?”

  “The data transfer log shows a complete download of the external hard drive, though no backup was scheduled yesterday. That can only mean that someone hacked in.”

  “Are there any money transfers scheduled this week?” Kwang asked.

  “No. Already made. We have nothing for several days. Until next week, in fact.”

  Kwang rang off without thanking his assistant. He would peruse the last month’s business later in the day. He was satisfied that any clandestine interest in his bank was related not to a future transaction, or a current one, but far more likely a money transfer that had already taken place. That likely meant a drug investigation, probably by DEA or Europol. He had weathered such investigations before. It was not hard in Afghanistan, which was largely beyond the reach of American or European law enforcement.

  The Karzai government was perhaps even more corrupt than its predecessors. The only ruler of Afghanistan with clean hands, when it came to black market trading, especially in drugs, was the Taliban, an irony that appealed greatly to the thin Vietnamese banker. Life under the Taliban had been hard. Life under Karzai and the Americans was easy—as long as one was generous with bribes.

  Kwang retired to his library, a room with windows that had been bricked up so as to keep out sound, light, and air. He would deal with the problem later. Meanwhile, he had an unopened carton of books flown in from Chapitre, the savvy French bookseller that gives Amazon a run for its money in France and Asia. Reading was his escape.

  French-language books from Paris, gourmet meals prepared by his personal chef, and the presence of his doting mother were the only things that made life in Kabul tolerable to Minh Kwang.

  Chapter 17 — Peshawar

  The United States Consulate in Peshawar is a clean, white four-storey shoebox of a building at 11 Hospital Road in the northern section of the British cantonment. Fronted by a soaring flagpole bearing the Stars and Stripes, it is larger than many American embassies. Given its strategic location, it is also probably more important.

  A few hundred yards south on Hospital Road lies Mall Road, and up Mall Road as it veers to the east is the Military Intelligence HQ for the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan. The ravenous black crows who call Peshawar home could make the trip from atop the American Consulate flagpole to the ISI flagpole in fewer than sixty seconds. The two organizations live cheek by jowl, or so geography would suggest, though this is not an association either one of them would advertise.

  The ISI complex occupies a parcel of land 900 feet square, about the size of a Western city block, comprising 20 acres. Commanded by a colonel, it includes a squash complex, well-maintained games pitches, an officer’s mess, barracks, administration buildings, and an underground dungeon for sequestering and questioning prisoners. It was built by the British and to all outward appearances the British have never left.

  Though Brigadier Mahmood briefly considered driving Olof Wheatley from Islamabad to Peshawar himself, using the oldest Jeep with the worst suspension he could find, in the event the trip was made in a comfortable, new ISI-owned SUV, with a driver.

  Mahmood and Wheatley made small talk in the back. Using the new M1 Motorway, the 97-mile trip took under three hours. Brigadier Mahmood was doubly glad he had not attempted to drive himself when the van ran over a twisted metal bolt, probably a decoration from one of the rainbow-colored jingle-jangle trucks sharing the road, which dug itself into a tire. The driver changed the flat in fifteen minutes.

  The SUV made Peshawar before noon, where Brigadier Mahmood directed the driver to the American mission on Hospital Road. He deposited Wheatley there, promising to pick him up in sixty minutes for luncheon. Mahmood then went the additional few hundred yards to ISI headquarters to check in by secure link with Colonel Akram in Islamabad. He had been out of touch with his office for most of the morning, an unusual lapse, but for reasons more related to decorum than security, Mahmood had been unwilling to keep his cell phone switched on during the trip.

  Wheatley spent a few minutes chatting with the consul general, a highly regarded former staffer in the National Security Council. She gave him the message Kate Langley had drafted for him only hours before about the Zagi spreadsheet in the BanKoNoKo computer. Borrowing an empty office, Wheatley excused himself to phone Kate at Bagram Air Field.

  “I’m deep into these PDF files,” Kate told him, “but nothing so far that adds color or detail to the Zagi transactions. There’s no doubt that the French arms dealer LeClerc is the link between the Mort Feldman kidnapping and the recent chatter about nukes.”

  “How can you be sure that Zagi doesn’t refer to something else?” Wheatley asked. “Why does it have to be the mountain near Peshawar?” He was dreading having to report on something so tenuous to the director, especially as the kidnapping of an overseas station chief was already a crisis of the most dire kind. To ramp this up with concerns about a nuclear device would cause lights to burn until morning at both Langley and the White House.

  “Because Zagi is such an unusual name,” Kate replied. “My colleague Keven Smyth has been looking at maps, gazetteers, and computer databases—the only ‘Zagi’ is the mountain mining area near Peshawar. We’ll continue researching it, but for the moment it looks solid.”

  “Do a data dump on the CTC,” Wheatley commanded. “They’ve got more resources than you. Don’t try to analyze all this on your own.”

  “Already done, sir. The night duty staff has been fully briefed, both by phone and in writing.”

  Wheatley wondered how far he should tip his hand with Brigadier Mahmood at lunch. Perhaps revealing CIA’s knowledge of the BanKoNoKo connection in Kabul would provide a way to initiate a discussion of Mahmood’s cryptic statement to Feldman the night he was kidnapped?

  Did Mahmood know that there was an association between the nuclear bomb rumors and Feldman’s kidnapping? On the theory that ISI understood their own backyard, thei
r personal chasse privée, a lot better than Americans ever could, surely the answer to that question was ‘yes!’ He thought he should risk it. Mahmood was the only game in town, and either man might be summoned back to Islamabad at a moment’s notice, limiting their further opportunities to collaborate.

  Brigadier Mahmood returned to the consulate precisely on schedule, this time in an aging black Lincoln Towncar, transport accorded only to VIP visitors. He took his American guest to Khan’s Club, a restaurant he did not much favor himself but that he thought might be more to Wheatley’s taste than the bland British boarding school fare Mahmood personally preferred. Mahmood loathed curries or spicy food of any kind.

  Khan’s Club was in a restored Rajasthani-style haveli, a multi-storey Pakistani mansion surrounding an enclosed courtyard. It was in the most ancient district of Peshawar, the walled Old City, whose precincts were a labyrinthine warren of narrow lanes and dark shadows teaming with humanity, carts pulled by donkeys, and the smell of roasting kebabs.