The Pakistan Conspiracy, A Novel Of Espionage

by Francesca Salerno

  “We appreciate your giving us the run of the port,” Kate said. The administrator clearly was not going to be much more help.

  Brigadier Mahmood stood up and strode toward the door.

  “Imagine what will happen to the global shipping industry if a ‘bomb in a box’ goes off somewhere—anywhere in the world,” Mahmood said coldly, facing the administrator. “Every port in Europe and America will be closed. I imagine the Port of Karachi would shut down to a standstill, too. How much would that cost you? And how long might it take for the gears to start turning again and for shipping to resume?”

  ***

  Outside in the plaza fronting the administration building, they took a military staff car to the principal container wharf of the port, the Karachi International Container Terminal, a long mole that curved against the sea wall. Even from land, one could see that Karachi provided shippers with a wonderfully protected natural harbor.

  “There are two ways we can go with this,” Kate said. “First is to track every container that passed through the Cargo Inspection System in the hour when it signaled a radiation alert. That will take time, and since those containers are already at sea, it will involve alerting authorities in other nations.”

  “Which would risk a worldwide panic,” Mahmood said. “What is your other approach?”

  “We know that the bomb was not brought into Pakistan in an intermodal. The roads from Uzbekistan through Afghanistan just aren’t designed for it.”

  “Which means that the cargo would have had to be transferred into an intermodal here at the port.”

  “Precisely. Or somewhere else here in Karachi.”

  “But consider that Al-Zawahiri and Al Qaeda have had ten years to develop a fleet of small freighters,” Mahmood objected, “maybe even dhows and junks, sailing on the dark fringes of the legitimate cargo transport industry. Why would they use a commercial shipper and draw attention to themselves?”

  “Because dhows and junks can’t sail into major Western ports,” Kate said. “It’s possible that a small freighter could be used to move a weapon to some other third world port, but if they want to sail to Amsterdam or New York, eventually they will have to make the transition to the standard intermodal container. Why not here and get it done at the outset?”

  “That makes eminent sense,” Mahmood agreed. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to identify the transit shipping agents who have the facilities to make such transfers, and that is something here totally under my control, an avenue we can pursue immediately rather than sending alerts all over the world that will surely incite alarm.”

  “We probably have to do both,” Kate said, “and hope that our research here bears fruit, but be prepared in case it doesn’t”

  “I would like to see the Cargo Inspection System unit while we are here,” Mahmood said. “Perhaps we will learn something beyond what was reported in Islamabad.”

  The CIS inspection station was in the central part of the enormous KICT—the Karachi International Container Terminal. A lieutenant in the regular Army was waiting for Mahmood and saluted smartly when he arrived.

  The CIS mechanism used to screen the intermodal containers was like an oversized magnetic scanner at the airport. The containers were moved through a central opening by a tractor conveyor belt. The young lieutenant explained that the CIS unit contained receptors to pick up radiation. It also had a high-powered gamma ray generator that was capable of sending a beam through thick metal and producing a photographic outline image of the contents of the box. A port technician explained the operation of the device, indicating that it took CIS about 45 seconds to scan each container—when it was working.

  “And even that is a long time, in terms of the volume of cargo that goes through a port of this size,” he said. “If we were to inspect by hand the containers on just a single large container ship, it would occupy us for a year or more.”

  “Do you ever open the containers?” Kate asked.

  “Yes, if we get an anomalous reading, or if the X-Ray looks suspicious.”

  “I’m still not clear on how you got an alert on the box two days ago yet were unable to isolate the container,” Mahmood said.

  “Sir, this is a high tech tool working in a low tech environment. All sorts of things can destabilize the sensors, especially vibrations, and the backup power units have been so overloaded because of Karachi’s erratic power that they often fail. What appears to have happened is that the container went through, registered a reading, and then CIS shut down before alerting the operator.”

  “So when the CIS machine shuts down, do you stop the inspections and just let the boxes through?” Mahmood inquired.

  “Yes, I’m afraid so. That’s what we did before CIS was invented, and when the machine isn’t working, we have no choice. We can’t shut down the port.”

  “Actually, I am fully prepared to shut down this port, if the need arises,” Mahmood said curtly.

  Kate’s Blackberry buzzed. It was Mort Feldman’s assistant in Islamabad. Karachi police had found a dead body, one of three that day. This one was just yards from where Kate and Brigadier Mahmood were standing.

  ***

  The decomposing corpse was that of a male of indeterminate age, clean-shaven, perhaps an Afghan though he was dressed in paramilitary khaki clothes and wore laced jungle boots. He had been strangled with a ligature and left under a burlap tarp in the warehouse of the international shipping agent, Global-Modal Asia Limited, in the East Wharf, Karachi Port.

  A technician from the Karachi medical examiner’s office estimated that he had been dead for 48 to 72 hours, enough time for the warm, humid conditions prevailing at the edge of the Arabian Sea to start their nasty work.

  “From his ID papers, we know this man is an Uzbek named Uktam Hakim, a taxi driver with a license for the Tashkent region,” the police lieutenant told Brigadier Mahmood.

  “He’s a bit far from home,” Mahmood said.

  “With respect, not really sir,” the lieutenant said. “There is always a steady stream of drivers in their jingle-jangle trucks from central Asia arriving in Karachi with cargo, and then leaving again with a haul back to the Asian interior. I am surmising that he was an Uzbek lorry driver with some business at this warehouse.”

  “Do you have a local address for Uktam Hakim?”

  “We do not,” said the lieutenant. “Just an address in Tashkent.”

  “We know Tashkent was the likely drop-off from Moscow,” Kate added.

  "Even so, why would these chaps leave a body in the warehouse of the shipper they were using to transport a bomb? Surely that would call attention to the very thing they wanted to conceal. Why not dump the body in the ocean?"

  “Let’s talk to someone at the shipping company headquarters downtown,” Kate suggested. “That’s where they would keep their records anyway. If one of the containers on our list passed through this warehouse, that’s a start that suggests we need to look into this.”

  They drove a mile or two from the port to the head office of Global-Modal Asia, which was in a shiny new glass skyscraper on the Mumtaz Hassan Road in the heart of the Karachi financial district, next to the stock exchange. Brigadier Mahmood noticed that the Sindh Police Headquarters was conveniently next door.

  Jaffar Sikandar was the managing director of the Karachi office of Global-Modal Asia Limited, and when he learned that an ISI brigadier general was in his waiting room he immediately came out to greet him. He was a well-groomed businessman in a dark gray pinstripe suit. He would have looked at home in any boardroom in the world.

  “Please call me Jeff,” he said when introduced to Kate. He spoke idiomatically perfect American English, probably from a stint in the U.S. as an MBA candidate, she guessed. He recognized Brigadier Mahmood and shook hands with him.

  “This must be about the unfortunate incident at the wharf,” Sikandar said.

  “Indirectly,” Mahmood said. “We’re looking for an intermodal container that may have passed throu
gh your hands as it left Karachi port.”

  “I was contacted two days ago by metropolitan police about a radiation alert, is that what you’re referring to?”

  “The two incidents, the radiation alert and now this murder, they may be connected,” Kate said.

  Sikandar opened a file folder that had been lying in the center of his desk, as though Sikandar had been studying it before they arrived. He pulled out a manifest.

  “These documents were faxed over to police headquarters,” Sikandar said. “They show that one of the cargo containers on the list of those flagged by your customs technicians was one of ours. Here is the ISO-BIC identification mark as required by the Bureau International des Containers in Paris. The shipper was Security Exports, S.A., also of Paris.”

  “That’s Jacques LeClerc’s outfit,” Kate whispered. “I’m amazed he’s using his own name.”

  “What was the name of the vessel you put it on?” Mahmood asked.

  “The freighter Nippon Yoku-Maru left yesterday for its next port, Jakarta.”

  “How long will that transit take?” Kate asked.

  “That distance is about 3,000 nautical miles. It will get there in eight or nine days, more or less, assuming it makes 15 knots of speed, which would be normal speed for a smaller ship of that size. So it will dock in Indonesia a week from today, all things being equal.”

  “And the ultimate destination of this particular container?”

  “The Port of Long Beach,” Sikandar said. “In California, USA.”

  ***

  The lovely restaurant boasted cuisine from a pan-oriental menu, had rave reviews in the International Herald Tribune as well as Karachi Daily News, and was located in the trendy Clifton Beach neighborhood, next to the British International School. It was already crowded at seven o’clock in the evening, with waiters weaving amid green, glass-topped tables with platters of sesame beef, dim sum, and tiny potatoes.

  At the table next to that Kate shared with Brigadier Mahmood, a young woman was drinking a chilled pina colada. More than half the diners had a wine bottle at their table.

  “Would you care for a drink?” Mahmood asked, noticing Kate’s glance in the direction of the neighboring table.

  “Only if you’ll share a bottle of wine with me,” Kate said.

  “I’m afraid I drink alcohol only in America,” Mahmood said. “But please don’t mind me. This district of Karachi is part of a small global village of the cultural elite—businessmen, diplomats, and travelers. It’s closer culturally to New York and Paris than it is to the Pakistan I know. Our stodgy rules don’t apply here.”

  Kate laughed. “So geography is just a state of mind—except for you.”

  “I’m too old to change,” Mahmood said. “I am an anachronism from a forgotten age. Tonight, I’ll stick with mineral water.”

  Kate joined him. Brigadier Mahmood had shed his uniform for a perfectly tailored dark blue business suit and a discreet Hermès patterned tie. He looked like a rich lawyer. Kate couldn’t help thinking that he seemed completely at home in this world of the ‘cultural elite’ though she felt that she utterly did not.

  “We have accomplished a lot today,” Kate said. “The Nippon Yoku-Maru is a small container ship that we can inspect in Jakarta, earlier if we are willing to board her at sea. LeClerc’s shipping documents show a California destination, 8,000 nautical miles from Indonesia by the most direct sea lanes, which is a 22-day voyage on average, assuming no other stops. We finally have some breathing room to track this down and nail it.”

  The Nippon Yoku-Maru is indeed of modest size,” Mahmood agreed. “But I can’t imagine that it will go directly to Los Angeles. More likely they have a flexible schedule to permit them to pick up odd shipments along the way, containers from shippers who don’t want to pay for the best, fastest ships. But this scenario all seems too easy for me. The body in the warehouse, the use of LeClerc’s company name on the manifest. I’m suspicious. There is more to this, something we have missed.”

  “From Jakarta, you could just as easily head north, toward the coast of China or to Japan.”

  “Exactly. We shouldn’t congratulate ourselves quite yet,” Mahmood said. “These chaps still have a few tricks up their sleeves I fear.”

  They were silent for a time, enjoying their meals. The chef was Malaysian, so they had started with nasi lemak—rice steamed with coconut milk served with fried anchovies, peanuts, cucumber, hardboiled eggs, and a torrid chili sauce called sambal.

  “May I ask you, Kate, why you chose this business we are in?” Mahmood asked the question hesitantly, as though he might be prying.

  “I’ll tell you my story only if you tell me yours,” Kate said. She liked Mahmood, though he seemed stiff and formal in a kind of antique British way. He was unlike any man she had met.

  Mahmood laughed. “My story is most sadly very easy to tell. I wanted to join the military from the time I was a small boy in short pants,” he said.

  “Because you are interested in war?”

  “Oh, on the contrary! Because I was interested in peace! In the Pakistan of my childhood, in the sixties and seventies, the military was the single unifying institution. To join the Army was a noble calling, particularly as an officer. And it allowed me to pursue academic studies in physics and nuclear technology with ample scholarships.”

  “But Pakistan did not have the bomb back then.”

  “We did not have the bomb, but Pakistan built its first experimental nuclear reactor in 1965, the year I was born. It was a gift of the United States in fact, the 10-megawatt Pakistan Atomic Research Reactor in Islamabad. I studied there as a graduate student.”

  “Wow, I should have known that.”

  “No, that is ancient history now. There was a different mood in those days,” Mahmood said. “It was called Atoms for Peace, a belief that technology was going to do a lot of good in Asia. It was a program of your President Eisenhower.”

  “And now?”

  “Today Pakistan is a more fractured, damaged country. There is too much poverty, too much corruption. Too many people feel that they will never be able to better themselves. There is not much hope in this land.”

  Kate wanted to ask all sorts of questions, but she restrained herself. In other circumstances, social circumstances, she would have enjoyed getting to know this strange, dark man better, but they were working together now, and it was imperative that she stay focussed. For a long time, neither of said anything, each lost in thought, enjoying their meal.

  Chapter 23 — Washington, D.C.

  Olof Wheatley spent the morning at the White House discussing the ‘Moscow Bomb’ with the President’s National Security Advisor and other members of the National Security Council. He was back in his office before 10 A.M. He immediately summoned Phil Drayton, Kate Langley’s former pod-mate in the CTC bullpen. Drayton thought that Wheatley had aged ten years since he had last seen him.

  “I’ve got good news and bad news,” Wheatley told Drayton when the younger man was seated in front of his desk.

  “The bad news is that the White House wants the FBI and DOD brought into the Moscow Bomb case via the High Value Interrogation Group. The good news is that I’m assigning you to that team to make sure I’m in the loop.”

  “You mean HIG?” Drayton asked. “The guys who sweat terrorists? Doesn’t CIA already have a rep in that outfit?”

  “Yes, we do, but that individual doesn’t report to me, so you’re going along for the ride. The National Security Advisor has been telling the President that we are not moving fast enough with tracking down Moscow Bomb and I’m sure our friends at FBI have not been contradicting them. So we’re getting help from FBI now, whether we like it or not.”

  “Who are we going to interrogate? So far, we have a dead Brit in Moscow and a dead Uzbek driver in Karachi.”

  “I’m coming to that. That’s the best part, in fact. Brigadier Mahmood told me in Pakistan that he had met with Yasser al-Greeb. At one time or ano
ther, he actually had the means to reach out to him and speak with him in person. I told the White House that we must assume that he can do it again, and when that happens, we’re going to get our hands on this guy and find out what he knows.”

  Wheatley took Drayton through his conversations with Mort Feldman about making Brigadier Mahmood an ‘informal’ member of the CIA team assigned to tracking down Moscow Bomb, and his concern about Mahmood’s true loyalties.

  “This is my way of putting him under the microscope,” Wheatley concluded. “Mahmood may have pulled the wool over Mort’s eyes, but not mine. If our friendly Pakistani general can reach out to Al-Greeb once, he can damn well do it a second time for my benefit, and this time I intend to be in on the conversation. To do it right, the White House insists that I work through HIG.”