“I wonder how many senior Al Qaeda types live within a few miles of where we are standing?” Kate said.
“I have always thought that Ayman al-Zawahiri would be found eventually in Peshawar,” Mahmood said. “You know he worked with the Red Crescent here in the late 1980s, and often met with Sheikh Osama at this very mosque? In those days, Al-Zawahiri carried two passports, a Swiss one in the name of Amin Uthman and a Dutch credential with the name Mahmood Hifnawi. I’m told that it was fairly easy to track him back then, which we did, but of course interest in him was limited to very few.”
“Why do you refer to Osama Bin Laden as ‘Sheikh Osama’?” Kate asked, annoyed. “It seems to dignify him in a way that any American would find offensive. And doesn’t it accord him a status that he never had?”
“Perhaps it is just force of habit. I usually don’t talk about him that way with Americans, but I have grown less guarded in the way that I speak with you,” Mahmood said. “Though you may despise him, don’t forget that he was able to mobilize and motivate two large and important groups of actors: First, the mujahideen in Afghanistan, whom you Americans supported with money and arms; and then the jihadists, whom you did not. He will always be remembered by Muslims as a great man, if a flawed one. And for a long time he was a hero among Americans for the work he did to oust the Russians.”
“We do tend to think in the States that moral clarity derives from black and white distinctions,” Kate admitted. “I suppose that under different circumstances, if he’d died before the Soviets left Afghanistan, for example, Bin Laden would today be regarded in America as a freedom fighter and a hero.”
“Precisely my point,” Mahmood said. “You are so much easier than most of your compatriots in grasping the Pakistani view. I enjoy it very much and find it refreshing. I like especially your notion that he died too late. History would be written quite differently if he had.”
“What do you mean?”
“That shows a grasp of Pakistani irony. An American would say of someone, ‘he died too soon’ meaning that he was deprived of the happiness of a long life, whereas a Pakistani would sooner say ‘he lived too long’ meaning that he used the extra time on earth merely to destroy his good reputation. Americans are optimistic, and we Pakistanis are the opposite.”
“Yes, I get it,” Kate said. “Pakistanis tend to think that the dice are loaded against them. We call that a fatalistic point of view.”
“The idea of inshallah is fatalistic,” Mahmood agreed.
“Inshallah in this country means one day later than mañana,” Kate said. “It’s a miracle that anything ever gets done in Pakistan.”
***
Brigadier Mahmood told Kate he wanted to show her the ‘drop’ in the Mohabbat Khan Mosque: a cubbyhole in an outdoor stairwell wall where a moveable tile gave access to a tiny hiding space large enough only for a rolled slip of paper. They approached the mosque by its main entrance.
“This is a classic example of Mughal architecture,” Mahmood said. “It was built in 1670 and destroyed at various times by the Sikhs, though the British helped restore parts of it. I think it is the most beautiful building in Peshawar. Imagine what it must have looked like in its prime.”
Adjacent to the entrance of the mosque, an ancient doorway led them into a large courtyard surrounded by a three-storey gallery. They climbed the tiled stairway to the uppermost balcony. The walls and columns of the building seemed to Kate as delicate as eggshells, with mosaics made up of tiles as small as pebbles.
“It is there,” Mahmood said, pointing discreetly. “When I have wanted to see Al-Greeb or one of his people, I would leave a message, and if they wanted to see me, they would do the same. I have my driver in Peshawar check the drop once a fortnight.”
“Wow, that’s quite a wait between visits. So how long between the time you request a meet and the event itself? Is it always two weeks?”
“Less, usually. There is no set schedule. This is all done very quietly and very carefully. I believe they check the drop more frequently than we do.”
Kate knew that her orders were to try to initiate contact with Al-Greeb, but she was ambivalent about the timing and the procedure to carry it out. Who would benefit most from this transaction? If Al-Greeb was not aware of the degree to which ISI and CIA had penetrated his plans to ship arms—and possibly also a nuclear device—from Russia to Karachi and onto the Nippon Yoku-Maru, surely a request for a meeting from Brigadier Mahmood would signal to him that something was amiss?
To that extent, even the act of making contact made CIA worse off than they had been before. What, then, might they gain by contact? Well, that was not a question she could comfortably answer. The notion of CIA having even informal contact with Al Qaeda was beyond imagination. Only in Pakistan was it conceivable that an intelligence agency could talk off the record with a terrorist organization, if only to try to minimize surprises on both sides. It seemed to Kate this was warfare without beliefs or principles: One did not negotiate with criminals.
The one area where Kate felt completely comfortable was with her partner at ISI: Brigadier Mahmood. In the time they had spent together in Islamabad, Karachi, Surat, and now in Peshawar, she had found in Mahmood an intelligence as acute as that of Mort Feldman or Olof Wheatley, mixed with a personality that was far more likeable and cultured. Mahmood was one of those rare Pakistanis with one foot in Pakistan and another foot in the United States, a man uniquely able to explain Pakistan to Americans and America to Pakistanis.
As she got to know him better, Kate respected Mahmood more. That was not her usual experience, either with work colleagues or with personal friends, whose weaknesses became more apparent the better one got to know them.
“Well, I guess this is crunch time, Mahmood,” Kate said. “Are you still on board with trying to set up a meet?”
“I am completely on board, as you say.”
“And your bosses?”
“It is probably best that I protect them from these activities,” Mahmood said.
“But what if something goes wrong? What if Al-Greeb holds you hostage?”
“That is unimaginable. To harm an ISI brigadier would bring the wrath of the whole government down on—our guests. I’m sure they don’t want and could not withstand that.”
Kate paused before asking her last question. “And what about me coming with you?”
“I’m afraid that is out of the question,” Mahmood said. “Even if you were not a pretty woman, you are an American and an infidel, if you will forgive me for putting it so crudely. Any one of those alone would make your presence unacceptable. I am so sorry, Kate. Honestly, I could not consent to these risks even if these obstacles did not prevent our even contemplating your participation.”
Kate nodded without replying. She had already heard these arguments in the last 48 hours. Besides, there was a supportive role she could play in this exercise that did not require Mahmood’s cooperation or even his consent.
She returned to the bottom of the staircase on her own and waited outside the entrance of the mosque, by the tiled blue ablution pond. Brigadier Mahmood joined her some five minutes later.
“It is done,” he said.
***
Kate was not used to having free time on her hands, but there was little she could do in Peshawar while waiting for a response to Brigadier Mahmood’s message requesting a meeting with Yasser al-Greeb. She talked to Alice Carulla on the secure phone at the consulate on Hospital Road, though she felt quite out of her depth in the hi-tech world of image intelligence. But Carulla also relied on Kate to some extent, because Kate had more experience in the field
“What do you think the odds are that Yasser al-Greeb is on the Nippon Yoku-Maru?” Carulla asked her.
“If the bomb is on board, I would say pretty good,” Kate said. “It’s the sort of operation that would require high-level direction that can’t be provided at a distance. You only have the 9/11 advantage of complete surprise once. Gone are the
days when Al Qaeda leaders can direct these things at a remote distance.”
“Of course, there may be some other technical person on the ship,” Carulla replied. “Especially if they’re going to detonate the device onboard. It’s possible some of those guys would stay with the bomb to make sure nothing goes wrong in the final hour or two.”
Carulla was one of those talkative analysts who seemed happiest when they had someone else to bounce ideas off of and challenge them, Kate conjectured that Mort Feldman was probably barking orders at her and otherwise treating her like a flunky, and this was correct. Carulla didn’t mind. She was happy to have an overseas gig. She told Kate that the Red Sea was sufficiently constrained a body of water to make it easier to scan for ships than the Arabian Sea or the Indian Ocean. She expected to find the vessel soon, even if she had to rely on the use of human eyeballs to do it.
“And what would be your guess about the intended target?” Kate asked.
“If they are going to detonate the bomb while it is still in the hold of the ship, or in a container by the superstructure, that would suggest any of the larger ports in the Mediterranean, or the Suez Canal itself.”
“The Canal? That would kill Egyptians, most of them probably Muslim.”
“That’s true, but remember that Al-Zawahiri is an Egyptian who detests the Egyptian regime, and the destruction of the Suez Canal would be a huge blow to Egypt, both in economic terms and as a matter of prestige. Killing people may not be the only part of Al Qaeda’s terror equation.”
“I remember that they used to brag that they had achieved $500 billion worth of damage in 9/11 with less than $500 thousand in investment,” Kate said, “an astronomical rate of return, as they stated in one of their videos.”
“Exactly. There might be other reasons, too. Consider that a bomb going off in the Suez Canal is not likely to attract the full retaliation of the United States as an attack on the homeland surely would. Also, it would pit Muslim against Muslim in one of the most powerful and populated Arab nations in the Middle East. It would change the focus of the terrorists from the so-called Crusader nations to the ‘near enemy,’ namely those Muslim nations accused of having sold out their Islamic heritage to the West for material gain.”
“What about Israel?”
“Well, it’s just me talking here, but I think that’s less likely,” Carulla said. “The Canal is a bottleneck they must realize will be hard to traverse.”
“But once, or if, they reach Port Said and the Mediterranean, the Israeli port of Jaffa—which for all practical purposes is part of metropolitan Tel Aviv—is one hundred miles up the coast. Surely that would be a target? What’s the population of Tel Aviv?”
“The Jaffa and Tel Aviv metro area is the most densely populated part of Israel. Maybe 3.5 million people? I’m guessing, I can easily get accurate numbers on this. But if Israel is really their target, then they are taking the most roundabout route imaginable to reach it. Think of it, Kate. They traveled from Moscow to Uzbekistan, then swung west and south in a circle with a radius of thousands of miles to arrive at a destination they could have reached by a much more direct route, through the Caspian, or Turkey via the Black Sea. Why would they do that?”
“Well, the roundabout travel plan has a lot of advantages. The route they took is through ungoverned and ungovernable lands, with little risk of detection.”
“Israel has to be on the list, I agree,” Kate said. “A nuclear bomb going off in Jaffa harbor would be a game changer. But I’ve got to believe though that the Israelis bring to intermodal transport the same sort of hyper-vigilant security that they bring to El Al air travel. If Al-Zawahiri is still in charge, Egypt seems like a better bet to me, given what we now know.”
Kate thanked Carulla for chatting with her for so long and rang off. Honestly, she felt sidelined and not usefully employed in Peshawar. In the afternoon, she used a street map to figure out that only a couple of miles separated the American Consulate and Chowk Yadgar Square. She decided to walk the distance on foot. To blend in with the locals, she put on a grubby shalwar kameez, one of several available in the consulate for just the purpose she intended, and wrapped her hair and neck in a scarf, as Peshawar women did outdoors, both for the sake of modesty and to protect against the sun. The clothing would not hide her from any skilled or expert tracker, but at least she would not attract the stares and lewd attention any young Western woman always got on the streets of Peshawar in Western attire.
Chapter 30 — Peshawar
Kate Langley strolled from the American Consulate to Mall Road and headed east, past ISI headquarters, where she knew Brigadier Mahmood was working that day. She walked by the venerable Governor’s House and its extensive, leafy grounds on Saddar Road, then crossed into the Old City.
Though the wall that used to encircle it was gone, the transition from wide, Western-style roads to the narrow lanes of an ancient city designed for a world before automobiles was impossible to miss. One could trace a line in the ground where the old fortifications once stood. The Old City was packed with human beings, a kind of chaos of bodies, bicycles, pedi-cabs, and honking vehicles, all wreathed in a bluish haze of terrible, choking smog.
Kate went south of the wrought iron fence fronting Lady Reading Hospital, the medical facility that bore the name of the wife of a former Viceroy of India. The hospital had been established when Pakistan was still part of the British Raj. Its serene, park-like grounds belied the fact that hundreds of Peshawar’s bomb blast victims were treated here.
She followed the hospital fence north on Cinema Road to the narrow Andar Sheher Bazaar, and then on to the Mohabbat Khan Mosque. By circling the entrance several times, she was able to find a spot on the lane opposite that gave her a direct view of the wall on the stairwell where Brigadier Mahmood had pointed out the drop.
She had not practiced those CIA surveillance techniques learned at the Farm and on field trips in downtown Washington for months; she felt rusty and conspicuous. Did she really expect to see someone actually service the drop? The idea seemed ridiculous to her, of very low probability, and if anyone saw her and had the slightest suspicion, it might compromise Mahmood’s effort to contact Yasser al-Greeb. The truth was, she had no good reason to be there at all.
Kate heard her cell phone ringing. She pulled it out from underneath her heavy clothing and answered it.
“Is that you across the street, my dear?” She recognized Mahmood’s voice.
Kate squelched letting her surprise show. Looking up and down the lane, she could not see Mahmood.
“Where are you?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
“About fifty yards in front of you, at eleven o’clock, to the east of the ablution pond,” Mahmood said. She looked in that direction and saw a tall man waving.
“Oh god, I’m so damned embarrassed,” Kate said grimly, “All my training, down the drain. How did you spot me?”
“Coincidence and luck, mainly. I’ve been tailing you since Lady Reading,” Mahmood said.
“And I suppose I stand out like a sore thumb?” Kate said.
“Not really. You’re pretty good, but you have a very special gait, quite unique, almost like a ballet dancer. It is not Pakistani. At first I wasn’t quite sure, but then I saw your hair peeking through your scarf. Too light an auburn color to be a Pakistani woman. That’s what gave you away. I knew then it had to be Miss Kate Langley of CIA. Next time wear a wig.”
“Trying to look inconspicuous in Peshawar is hard,” Kate said.
Mahmood crossed over. His disguise was a simple shalwar kameez just like Kate’s, the universal dress of South Asians of both sexes, but somehow the clothes fell on his body in a more natural way. He also wore a turban and a heavy wool vest. Had she passed him in the street, she might not have recognized him, but for his eyes.
“I can only guess what brought you here,” Mahmood said.
“And you’d be right. I was bored. I had nothing worth doing, and then I realized that the
Consulate is really quite close by, and it was such a beautiful day. I needed to get away from desks and reports.”
“Spoken like a woman and not a clandestine officer!” Mahmood said.
This offended Kate, but she laughed anyway, a reflex in herself that she abhorred.
“Well, now that you’ve found me doing some illicit spying, aren’t you going to take me to lunch?”
“You are very forward,” Mahmood said. “Actually, I was going to propose exactly that. There are some wonderful places to eat right down the road at the Clock Tower, just on the other side of Chowk Yadgar, or if you want something uniquely Peshawar, there is a famous kabab place north of here, across the street from Jinnah Park.”
“Kebab for sure!” Kate said. “I am definitely in the mood for something unique to Peshawar.”
“Now, I must warn you, what we call a kebab, or kabab, is not the skewered meat you Americans call a kebab. That conception is more Turkish than Pakistani.”
The Pakistan Conspiracy, A Novel Of Espionage Page 24
