by Simon Conway
As ever in the aftermath of an interrogation, Noman felt a wearying sense of disappointment. Every torture victim was initially fascinating and unique. It was a ritual as febrile as courtship. You ingested a life. It filled you with information, some of it useful. But the violence wore through the uniqueness so quickly. Soon the victim’s will was gone and all that was left was finite flesh with its dumb obedience to physics – cut deeply enough and this comes off, whack hard enough and that ruptures.
It was always a let down.
Noman stubbed out the Flake on the victim’s skin. There was barely a response, just a soft and plaintive sigh. The man had resigned himself to death.
‘Don’t be afraid,’ Noman told him, whispering in his ear. ‘I love you and I will shortly send you to Paradise.’
This much Noman knew. The victim’s name was Ghazan. He was a battlefield medic trained by the infidel Americans in the eighties, back when they were doing their utmost to turf the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Heady times. Back then anybody could set themselves up as freedom fighter, Mujahideen groups sprouted like mushrooms. They’d put a Kalashnikov in your hands and point you at the border. The Russians had gunned them down in droves, of course, hence the need for medics.
For the last few years Ghazan had made his living puttering around the tribal areas on a motorbike, providing first aid to sick and wounded Taliban fighters in their mountain hideouts. In return he’d been offered food and lodging and occasionally a few rupees. In 2008 he had come to the attention of Baitullah Mehsud, the black-bearded head of the feared and powerful Mehsud clan and leader of the newly formed Tehrik-i-Taliban, the Pakistani Taliban. Ghazan’s training as a medic held great personal appeal to Baitullah, who was afflicted with diabetes and peripheral arterial disease in his legs. Deemed trustworthy, Ghazan had become his personal physician and remained so until just before Baitullah’s death in a drone strike in August 2009. The recent rapid increase in the tempo of drone strikes and several close shaves with Hellfire missiles had forced Ghazan to park-up his bike and curtail his activities. For the last two months he’d been holed up in the South Waziristan market town of Wana. It was there that he had come to Noman’s attention. Noman arranged to have Ghazan watched and followed and when he next made an attempt to leave the town he’d had him detained at a police checkpoint and brought here, in the boot of a car, to the basement of Tariq’s parents’ house in Lahore.
On the subject of the House of War and its elusive, shadowy leader Abu Dukhan, Ghazan had little to reveal. He claimed that he had no direct experience of the man or the organization. He had never treated any of its fighters and had no knowledge of the group’s whereabouts. Like others in Baitullah’s circle he had heard whispers of an itami device being prepared in the mountains, but he had not been privy to any secret conversations. Under interrogation he had revealed one interesting piece of information though. It was said that a mullah, who had fought and lost his leg at the Battle of Jalalabad had officiated at the wedding Nikah of Abu Dukhan’s youngest son to a local girl in Bajaur Agency.
Noman felt the first flicker of excitement at the news, a stirring of the loins. After weeks of fruitless searching he had finally uncovered a clue. It wasn’t much, he knew that, more than ten thousand fighters had been involved in the disastrous assault on Jalalabad and one-legged mullahs were ten-a-penny in the tribal areas but it was a start. It demonstrated that Abu Dukhan wasn’t infallible. He hadn’t entirely erased his tracks.
He realised that while he had been standing there thinking, Ghazan had bled out. The man was dead and there was no point lingering. He banged on the door to be let out.
‘Clear up the mess,’ he told Raja Mahfouz, once the door was opened. ‘Dump the body in a ditch.’
He climbed the stairs to the waiting widow.
#
Throughout the arid parts of the earth almost everyone sees Paradise as an oasis. Was that what Ghazan had been thinking of there at the end, a lush garden in the desert? For most of Noman’s army colleagues the image of Paradise was the military cantonment with its clean, neatly signposted streets gleaming with antique artillery pieces. But when Noman dreamt of Paradise. He dreamt of a world rid of people. Everything engulfed in brilliant, cleansing fire.
He had slept, woken, fucked and now lay limbs akimbo, spread-eagled like a starfish beside the widow. He’d forgotten that sex could do this, cause total dissolution, cast him into the void of his dreams and then reel him back out again, scourged.
The widow was so gloriously unhinged, a study in Stockholm syndrome. He’d shared with her his belief that Ghazan would lead him to the House of War and then he’d described the act of torture in all its colourful detail and what he’d mistaken at first for horror and agitation had turned out to be feverish arousal – during the telling she had developed the glazed, hilarious expression of an Abu Ghraib guard. A little girl caught in a dirty act. He’d winked like an over-friendly uncle and told her what he was going to do to Khan once he proved that he had betrayed his country.
He felt like he’d died and been reborn. He felt as blissfully content as an alley cat. Nothing would now stop him from finding the House of War. But then, as abrupt as a dawn raid, a question came needling into his brain. What if he found them? What then? He doubted that he’d be satisfied with breaking up the group, killing its members and confiscating their bomb-making materials. Stripping Abu Dukhan of his anonymity in a basement cell didn’t hold any particular appeal. So what was it that he wanted from the House of War?
If he was honest with himself, part of him wanted them to have a bomb, realistically a dirty bomb (the army wasn’t missing any of its hundred-and-ten A bombs). He imagined it as a thick coat of chopped-up radioactive waste packed around an explosive core, like a sweet Laddoo ball rolled in coconut flakes. He tried to picture them using it. Where? America and Europe were too risky. Afghanistan maybe. He could see an explosion on the Shomali Plain, a cloud of deadly particles sweeping towards the massive American base at Bagram, eviscerating filthy, Indian-sympathising Tajik villages along the way. But what if they decided to use it in Pakistan? It made his imagination soar. A mighty upheaval that swept aside the networks of corruption and patronage that were throttling his country, a baptism of fire that would see a stronger and more determined Pakistan reborn. People would have to die, of course, but there were already far too many Pakistanis, too many for the land they found themselves in, and more all the time. What would it be like to wake up and find the world as it was in his dreams?
His phone beeped, a text message. He picked it up from the bedside table and peered at the screen. It was from his wife, Mumayyaz.
You’re a cold-hearted bastard.
She was right. He was. But he was also a man of vision and daring, a man who had chosen to live by his dreams.
18. Tell me how this ends?
Afghanistan was as dismal a failure as Iraq and no one wanted someone like Ed hanging around as a visible reminder of that failure.
They didn’t want to be reminded that he’d spent Election Day in 2009 on an Afghan Army base, and while he kicked his heels waiting for Tariq to show up for a meet, he watched as the Colonel commanding the base set up an unregistered polling booth and stuffed the ballot boxes with several thousand votes for President Hamid Karzai.
They didn’t want to be reminded that he’d spent a night on the border near Spin Boldak in Kandahar Province, also waiting for Tariq, and watched as trucks full of opium were escorted over the border into Pakistan by men working for the Afghan border police.
Most of all they didn’t want to be reminded that the only reason the British Army was in Helmand Province was because they were already in Helmand Province. We were there because we were there. And because we were there, we were there some more.
The Afghan government was a criminal syndicate made up of warlords, drug-runners and thieves. British soldiers weren’t combating terrorists but instead were fighting and dying in local political disputes. The Taliban was ju
st a catch-all phrase for people who didn’t like foreigners.
The reasons behind the war were long forgotten. It was no longer a war of retribution for 9/11, no longer a war of democratic nation-building or educating girls. It was merely a place where soldiers were sent by politicians to pretend to win, even as they died. It was now just an unending treadmill of pride, money, heroism and national prestige.
Blah, blah, blah…yadda, yadda, yadda…Give it a rest Ed! Who do you think you are: Cassandra? It was all right to hear this stuff from whining liberals in the media but from a serving officer? It wasn’t acceptable.
He’d done good work; everyone knew that. He’d certainly worked hard, in both Iraq and Afghanistan – it was just that with every log he turned and every upbeat assessment he shot down, the more misguided Britain’s overseas adventures came to seem.
Nobody liked that, least of all top floor at Vauxhall Cross. After all, they had almost completed the transition from an intelligence-gathering organisation to a sexed-up, dossier-producing propaganda arm of the government of the day.
Consequently, there was no one to speak up for him at the disciplinary hearing. The prosecuting officer described his regrettable transformation from a poster boy for diversity in intelligence (the go-to guy on Pakistan, South Asia, the Third World, multiculturalism, whatever seemed alien and incomprehensible) to a resentful thug who took no care of his appearance and less of his surroundings. Called as a witness, Totty described how he’d railed against Upper Caucasia (the double-barrelled boys and girls who populated the upper floors at Vauxhall Cross) and raged obsessively against the Americans and their intelligence agencies and their oh-so-special forces. According to Totty, he seemed to hate them more than the ISI.
No extenuating circumstances were offered. Ed made no defence. He admitted assaulting the CIA Head of Station in Kabul and he was summarily dismissed.
#
Jonah, the taciturn keeper of the Khyber Collage, who Ed had last seen in a basement under Whitehall, was waiting for him in the corridor outside.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘It’s a bloody mess.’
Ed shrugged. There was nothing to say.
Jonah scribbled a mobile number on a piece of blank card and handed it to him. ‘I’ve got a job for you if you’re interested. It’s not much. A courier run. The usual guy has ducked out on me and I need a replacement. You’d be doing me a favour.’
Ed took the card and two days later, in the absence of anything else to do, he agreed to the job.
On the last Thursday of that month he collected a briefcase full of dollars from a man in a hotel room within shuttle distance of Heathrow and boarded an Emirates flight to Dubai. On arrival he was driven to a city centre hotel by his old friend Dai Llewellyn. He lay on the bed in the air-conditioned chill of a hotel room with the case beside him. An hour or so later he received a call from a Somali in one of the suites on the upper floors. He rode up in the elevator. He knocked on the door. The Somali escorted him into the suite where a woman, entirely disguised by a black burqa, was waiting. After he had handed over the briefcase, and the money was counted to everyone’s satisfaction, the woman left with the briefcase, and he left soon after. He went straight down to the car park and was driven back to the airport.
In the days following he walked and ran across the city. He ranged along the Thames Path from the Barrier to Richmond. He followed the network of canals. In the gothic undergrowth of Tower Hamlets Cemetery he watched a fox and her cubs emerge warily from behind a gravestone.
After a week, Jonah contacted him to tell him that the usual guy was back and his services were no longer required.
‘Thanks for helping me out,’ Jonah told him. ‘I’ll let you know if anything else comes up.’
‘Don’t bother,’ Ed told him.
To all appearances, his career as a spy was over.
19. Comprehensive logistic solutions
On a crisp Monday morning Ed walked like a gift from on high into the life of Sameenah Kassar, the exasperated proprietor of J&K Cargo and Travel.
Ed strode past the grim Victorian portal of the Job Centre on Settle Street, past the crowd of lost souls (Poles, Estonians, Somalis, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis like himself but with lousy English) who hung around outside, and towards the impatient blare of car horns. The traffic was backed up to Commercial Street.
He crossed the road, easing between bumpers, and went past the Somali corner shop and nodded to the butcher in his bloody apron outside Hazara Meat Trading and the Sylheti barber standing beside his revolving candy-cane. Then he stepped, deft as a boxer, between the sacks and suitcases freshly arrived from Lahore by way of Heathrow, which were spilled haphazardly across the tarmac behind the abandoned J&K panel truck that was blocking the road.
Ignoring the scowl of Nasir, Sameenah’s dolt of a nephew who was on crutches with his leg in plaster, Ed went right up to her and said in his politest English: ‘Can I help?’
Sameenah Kassar was a small round woman in her mid-fifties with a sonorous voice and a piercing eye. She was wearing a crimson-red dupatta and a similarly red mackintosh, and as she looked around, with her hands on her hips, Ed thought she resembled the put-a-brave-face-on-it ringmaster of an out-of-control circus. The clowns were in the ascendancy. In the last week she had been struck a triple blow. On Tuesday she had been disqualified from driving her beloved BMW X5 for eight weeks and fined £200. On Wednesday night Nasir had been struck down by a hit-and-run driver on Whitechapel High Street. And now, to cap it all, her most reliable driver Mohammed Akram had flung his keys on the pavement, accused her of being a slave-driver and marched off in the direction of Wapping leaving half a truck full of luggage spread across the street.
‘I won’t hear of it,’ Sameenah was saying to her nephew when Ed intervened. ‘I’m not hiring one of your good for nothing Bengali friends again and I’m most certainly not hiring another bloody relative. I want someone with more than two brain cells to rub together.’
It seemed like she didn’t hear him the first time so Ed repeated the question, ‘Madam, can I help?’
Sameenah looked him slowly up and down, taking in his polished shoes, his pressed trousers, his calloused and capable hands, and the spark of desperation in his eyes.
‘Do I know you?’
Ed nodded. ‘I’m Rifaz Malik’s son.’
Sameenah frowned, seemingly oblivious to the increasingly angry shouts and staccato car horns, ‘The one that went to Oxford?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I thought you worked at the Bank of England?’
There didn’t seem to be any point in correcting her.
‘You want me to move the truck?’ he asked.
Her mind made up, Sameenah grasped Ed by the sleeve and pressed the truck’s keys into his palm. ‘I expect the best of you and I expect it now.’
‘You won’t be disappointed.’
Quickly and without fuss, pausing only to placate the gridlocked traffic with a cheery wave, he cleared the road of baggage, emptied the truck of its last bags and moved it out of the way. Next he found a space in the crowded lanes to park it without taking off anyone’s wing mirrors. Then he returned to sort the luggage into local deliveries by minivan and a larger consignment for onward transfer to the Bradford office. He did all this under the suspicious and resentful eye of the spurned would-be heir Nasir. I’m going to have to watch him, Ed thought.
At the end of the day, as expected, Sameenah offered Ed a job.
#
J&K Cargo and Travel Limited offered comprehensive logistic solutions ranging from a courier and cargo booking service specialising in fast deliveries to Pakistan and worldwide, to secure and reliable same-day/next-day money transfer, to the provision of tailored packages for the minor and major pilgrimages to Mecca, the Umrah and the Hajj, all of it overseen by its larger-than-life founder, Sameenah Kassar.
She was an observant widow with a prodigious appetite, every lunchtime after noon p
rayers a feast of lamb chops, dry meat and naan bread was hand-delivered to her office by Tayyabs Restaurant, and every other afternoon before prayers she spent an energetic hour in the company of a local widower who served as an Independent on the local council. Most mornings she performed callisthenics in a garish shell-suit with matching headscarf, and most evenings at sunset she put in an appearance at the East London Mosque before returning to an empty house. She indulged herself by owning a top-of-the-range blue BMW that was as big as she was small, and she was not averse to the occasional glass of finest Speyside single malt.
If there was a blot on the landscape, a cloud that darkened the horizon, it was that she had only produced one child. But what a child! Ed had heard it said of Pakistan that its women were more impressive than its men and he quickly decided that Leyla Kassar was the living proof.
Ed first set eyes on Leyla, Sameenah’s dangerously attractive only daughter, on a Wednesday afternoon. It was no different from any other day. Sameenah was enjoying the widower and Ed was in the shop, seated across a desk from an elderly pilgrim intent on completing the Hajj, who was counting out tens and fives and the occasional twenty-pound note from an ancient-looking red Rover biscuit tin. First he heard the chime of the door opening and then felt Nasir bristling beside him. He looked up and felt the world lurch sideways.
Standing fully six inches taller than her mother, with a bare midriff and black skinny jeans, she scowled as she stalked across the room. She tugged out her white ear-buds, emptied her vintage carpetbag on the desk, and collapsed into the out-of-bounds Aeron chair in front of the iMac that was hers and hers alone. She spent an hour updating the website and answering feedback forms while Ed sneaked glimpses of her slender wrists and long tapering fingers adorned with chunky silver rings and bangles, and multi-coloured wristbands proclaiming Make Poverty History, Occupy and Ban Cluster Bombs.
And Ed found a new mission. He became an instant and surreptitious student of her. He committed her parts to memory: her spiky black hair, glossy and exotic as a sea urchin on a tropical reef; smooth sugarcane-coloured skin; high sculpted cheekbones; and her angry and smouldering green eyes (‘Those bloody Greeks!’ Sameenah would exclaim). Then abruptly, just as Ed was summoning up the courage to introduce himself, she shovelled all her stuff back into the voluminous bag, slung it over her shoulder and stalked out again, without even throwing a glance in his direction.
