***
They ate Afghan-style food as prescribed by tradition, seated on toshaks, floor cushions with backrests.
“I have met with the people you call terrorists,” Mahmood told Wheatley, “I’ve never made any effort to conceal it. You must remember that, as a matter of national security, the Pakistani Army is obligated to deal with our neighbors in Afghanistan. We cannot have enemies on both our borders and the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan vastly complicates matters for us. You more than anyone must be aware that Pakistani national interests and American interests are rarely in complete alignment. Sometimes we find that we have common cause with the Taliban, both here and across the border. It’s a political fact of life.”
“But these are criminals,” Wheatley protested. “They target Pakistanis for death, as well as Americans.”
“Worse than that,” Mahmood said. “They are bad Muslims. Ramzi Yousef, whom I helped your government to capture, was a drunk who consorted with prostitutes in Karachi and the Philippines. His uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, whom I also helped you to capture, was a libertine who preferred cocaine to the Koran. He spent his evenings in strip bars indulging in lap dances. I didn’t say I liked them. And, my dear Mr. Wheatley, I never invited them to luncheon with me here at Khan’s Club.” The brigadier chuckled appreciatively.
Wheatley decided to abandon his train of discussion about consorting with the enemy, an argument he was losing. Rather, he would cut right to the chase.
“The national interests of Pakistan and the United States surely are aligned when it comes to nuclear weapons in the hands of Al Qaeda,” Wheatley said. “If Al Qaeda ever detonated an atomic bomb on American soil, the blowback in South Asia would make the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan back in 2001 look like a tourist outing. If it could be demonstrated that you knew of the plotting beforehand but failed to stop it or alert us, Pakistan might well cease to exist as a nation.”
“Without question,” Mahmood agreed, nodding, “this is true. I discussed this with your station chief, Mr. Feldman. We might well be ‘bombed back to the Stone Age’ to quote one of your State Department officials. Everyone understands this here.”
Wheatley laughed. “Mr. Armitage claims he never made such a threat.”
“And he also let Mr. Libby at the White House twist slowly in the wind,” Mahmood said, “to borrow another one of your colorful American phrases.”
“You are remarkably well-informed about political minutia in Washington,” Wheatley said, smiling. “I’m most impressed. I confess that my knowledge of Pakistan does not have quite that level of granularity.”
“Such is the fate of most of America’s diplomatic partners,” Mahmood said gracefully. “America is the Rome of our times. We send our very best people to Washington. We study America far more thoroughly than America studies us.”
Wheatley conceded outwardly that this was true, though he did not believe it.
“Mort Feldman telephoned me in Washington the evening he ran into you at the Marriott,” Wheatley continued. “He told me that you wanted to be sure that our side understood that the chatter about nuclear weapons did not refer to any weapons in Pakistan.” Wheatley deliberately twisted what Feldman had said. Mahmood took the bait immediately.
“Actually, what I told him was that the intercepts about nuclear weapons did not refer to a Pakistani weapon. An important distinction. It was not a weapon made in Pakistan.”
“Do you think then that Al Qaeda does in fact have a nuclear device?”
Mahmood paused, stretching both his arms out in front of him.
“We have both been listening to routine phone intercepts and web rumors about an ‘itami’—the Pashto term for an ‘invention’ or simply for ‘technology’ which is the word they sometimes use to refer to an atomic bomb. I personally believe that this chatter must be taken as deadly serious. In the aftermath of the death of Osama Bin Laden, the Al Qaeda leadership, and Ayman al-Zawahiri in particular, will make an effort to exact revenge in the most terrible way possible.”
“You believe the possibility of this bomb is credible?”
“I’m afraid so,” Mahmood said.
Wheatley paused and looked directly at Mahmood. His face was impassive, the face of a man who seemed fully at ease.
“You can imagine our reaction,” Wheatley said. “Nothing could possibly provoke a stronger interest than such a bald, existential threat to the United States. This is the worst nightmare we have regarding our homeland security.”
“And mine,” Mahmood agreed. “It serves neither one of us to permit Al Qaeda have this power, much less to threaten us with it. But surely it could have been foreseen?”
“How do you mean?”
“In terms of taking out Bin Laden. Surely you expected blowback?”
“To be honest, our analysis of Al Qaeda right now is that they have limited strength and are stretched too thin. Sure we expected blowback from OBL. But we don’t expect things that they just aren’t capable of doing. Their leadership is decimated. Their financial resources have been tied up and money impounded. No, to be quite frank, we would not have predicted that this would be the time Al Qaeda was willing to play, or was capable of playing, the nuclear card.”
“A wounded or sick animal is more deadly than a healthy one,” Mahmood observed. “Ayman al-Zawahiri is an old and tired man. He may wish to do something spectacular now, to exceed 9/11. And he does not have much time to do it.”
“I take your point,” Wheatley said. “So let us discuss what we can do to stymie them.”
“What do you suggest?”
“For starters, help us to understand the details of what is known.”
“This is somewhat delicate, but let me try. I recognize how important such intelligence is to you. I was saying earlier that I have had meetings with terrorists. This includes meeting with a man named Yasser Khalidi al-Greeb, a Jordanian physician whom we know to be close to Ayman al-Zawahiri.”
“I know this name,” Wheatley said. He was straining forward, listening as intently as he could, anxious to miss not a syllable of what Mahmood was telling him.
“My relationship with Al-Greeb is, how can I put it—complex. It is a question mainly of not wanting to be surprised by what is going on within various groups. We do not collaborate, but his direct superior Ayman al-Zawahiri knows that the price for working in Pakistan is the need to keep us informed. Another American phrase comes to mind: we expect AQ to ‘put us in the picture’ as the price for living in Pakistan. This will become clear to you when we go to Zagi Mountain. There you may appreciate the complexity of our problem, a problem we both must face.”
***
They were standing in what could have been mistaken for a gigantic concrete water pipe, a spacious cylindrical tunnel beneath the earth about twenty-five feet high. The rock walls had been smoothed with chisels and the floor tamped into a smooth, hard surface. Bedding rolls, lanterns, pillows and expensive carpets littered the corners.
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 c
ompleted 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.”
Chapter 18 — Tashkent, Uzbekistan
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.
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