The Agent Runner

by Simon Conway

  It was close to midnight. Ed was walking down Wentworth Street, past closed shops and the metal brackets that would be market stalls in the morning, when a large man in a hoodie fell into step alongside him.

  ‘You were supposed to make yourself invaluable, nobody said anything about you screwing her daughter.’

  ‘Fuck off,’ Ed growled.

  Jonah gave him a sideways glance. ‘You really like her don’t you?’

  Ed stopped and turned on him. They stood facing each other for a few moments, weighing each other up with their hands loose but ready, each one waiting for the other to make the first move. Jonah was bigger, his fists like axeheads, but Ed was younger by ten years and fast on his feet.

  ‘I went to see the Somali girl,’ Jonah told him, his face impassive. ‘She’s now with a foster family down in Brighton.’

  The fight went out of Ed. ‘How is she?’

  ‘She’s fine. She’s got good people looking after her. They’re confident she can be placed with an adoptive family soon.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Ed told him.

  ‘You ruffled a lot of feathers with that particular stunt,’ Jonah told him. ‘Now come on, Queen Bee wants to talk you.’

  They hurried down rain-slicked back streets. Jonah led him through a unmarked door beside a commercial waste bin and up a narrow set of carpeted stairs past signs for an actuary’s office on the first landing and an immigration lawyer on the second. The flat was on the top floor behind a scuffed white door. Jonah produced a set of keys.

  Inside the flat smelled of curry, empty beer bottles and stale cigarette smoke. There was a dimly lit corridor with a threadbare carpet and at the end of it a kitchen with two large windows that were big for the room and looked out on Whitechapel High Street. Burns was sitting there, in a linen suit and leopard-print heels, with a skinny Cappuccino on the table in front of her and an open briefcase at her feet.

  ‘Sit down.’

  Ed sat and Jonah pulled up a chair alongside him. From the briefcase beside her Burns took out a sealed envelope and placed it on the table.

  ‘You’ve always suspected that there was someone behind Tariq, that someone else was writing his script. Isn’t that right?’

  ‘That’s right,’ Ed conceded, staring at the envelope.

  ‘We think its time the Pakistanis thought the same thing.’ She glanced at Jonah. ‘Open it.’

  Jonah tore the envelope open and shook out the photos inside. He spread them out like a dealer at a table. Three mug shots: two men and a woman. Ed recognised Javid Aslam Khan but not the other two.

  ‘That is Noman Butt,’ Jonah said, pointing. In the photo, the man resembled a boxer at a photo-call. He radiated brute hunger. He looked as if he was about to bite. ‘He is head of the ISI’s SS Directorate, which monitors terrorist groups that operate in Pakistan and is responsible for covert political action and paramilitary special operations. We believe that he had operational control of the surveillance operation that was overseeing bin Laden’s confinement in Abbottabad. We know that you know the name. Tariq mentioned him in his last face-to-face meeting with you.’

  ‘Give us the known-knowns, Jonah,’ Burns said. ‘Tell us about the humble beginnings and the rise to power, the Janissary zeal. Give us a feel for the man.’

  ‘This is what we have learned,’ Jonah replied. ‘Noman Butt was born in a village of low-caste Hindus in central Sindh. The village has since been destroyed.’

  ‘You wouldn’t want to be a Hindu in Pakistan,’ Burns said. ‘They fall into the category of Graham Greene’s “torturable class”.’

  ‘Hindus in Pakistan are outside the system altogether,’ Jonah continued. ‘They have no access to protection, patronage or charity. Add to that both his parents died while he was still a baby. He was taken into an orphanage and we assume that it was there that he converted to Islam. We have no idea whether he was coerced or chose to convert voluntarily. As soon as he was old enough he joined the army. It can’t have been easy. Twenty years ago a Sindhi officer in the infantry would have seemed as likely as a girl flying a fighter jet. But now they have three girls flying fighter jets and more and more Sindhis are joining the officer class. Noman was one of the first. The army is the only Pakistani institution that works as it is meant to and in the Pakistani military nothing is impossible, even for one such as Noman. He was an exceptional soldier and recognised for it. He graduated from the Kakul Academy as one of the top students. He served with the elite Baloch regiment and the Special Services Group before joining the ISI. It was there that he came to the attention of Javid Aslam Khan who was then head of the ISI’s Afghan Bureau and chief architect of the rise of the Taliban. Noman became Khan’s factotum and enforcer, a man he could turn to if secrets needed burying or fingernails needed pulling. And to bind him close and to ensure that Noman would stick by him whatever happened, Khan married him to his daughter and brought him to live in the family home.’

  Burns leant forward in the chair, her eyes shining with excitement. ‘Noman is the loyal acolyte. The son Khan never had.’

  It was obvious where they were going with this. ‘You want the acolyte to stab his master in the back,’ Ed said.

  ‘Exactly so,’ Burns said. ‘Well done you.’

  ‘He’s the only one who is a match for Khan,’ Jonah said. ‘We think he’s in a vulnerable position following bin Laden’s death. After all, he was supposed to be keeping the bogeyman safely in the basement. It didn’t work out and now he’s in danger of being scapegoated. He’s become suspicious, paranoid even, seeing enemies under the beds everywhere, even close at hand. His loyalty to his father-in-law, and the ISI, is on a knife’s edge.’

  He glanced at Burns who nodded in unspoken agreement.

  ‘We believe that the situation is ripe for exploitation,’ Jonah explained. ‘Which is where you come in.’

  ‘We want you to be the weapon that Noman uses against Khan,’ Burns said.

  ‘How?’ Ed asked.

  ‘The delivery job you did for us in Dubai. Tell him Jonah.’

  Jonah tapped the remaining photo. ‘This is Mumayyaz Khan, the beloved only daughter of Javid Aslam Khan and wife to Noman Butt. Once a month she visits Dubai. The deliveries that you and others made correspond with the dates that she was there.’

  So that’s why they had him flying to Dubai, Ed thought. It was an entrapment operation. Their plan was to trick Noman into thinking Khan was a British spy and his daughter a willing accomplice.

  ‘You’ve been planning this all along,’ he said.

  ‘We have,’ Burns agreed.

  From the briefcase she retrieved a bound document with yellow tabs to indicate where a signature was required and a black rollerball pen, and put them on the table in front of him.

  ‘I have here a disclaimer for you to sign,’ she said. ‘Jonah is going to witness it.’

  ‘What does it say?’ Ed asked.

  ‘Nothing out of the ordinary. We didn’t coerce you. You’ll never sue us. Whatever happens to you it’s your own fault.’

  ‘And if I refuse?’

  ‘We close down the operation. Khan goes unpunished. You go back to work at J&K and it’s as if none of this had happened.’

  ‘You’re the only one who can do this,’ Jonah said.

  It was an impossible decision. He should throw it back in their faces, their outrageous plan and their stupid bloody disclaimer. He should run right back to Leyla and have nothing more to do with it. They were in love. He was done with secrets. Nothing trumped that. Nothing, that, is except unfinished business.

  Khan.

  He couldn’t help himself. He owed it to Tariq.

  With a sense of foreboding, he took up the pen and signed where indicated. Jonah signed after him.

  ‘All done,’ Burns said, brightly. She slipped the document into the briefcase and walked with Ed to the door.

  ‘See you on the other side,’ she told him.

  They shook hands. It would have been b
ad form for her to wish him luck.

  #

  Jonah waited until after Ed had left before lodging his protest.

  ‘We should have told him.’

  ‘Told him what exactly?’ Burns replied. ‘That Khan really is one of ours, that we’ve paid him good money for more than five years with almost nothing to show for it, and now we’ve decided to discard him? That political expediency has trumped loyalty. That we’re prepared to roll the dice for Noman Butt instead. You think that someone in Ed’s situation would find that reassuring?’

  ‘He’ll work it out, eventually.’

  ‘So let him. Better still, let Noman force it out of him.’

  27. Bomb-boy

  At first it was just a feeling, a hint of constancy, a sense that something was different: Noman checked out the pedestrians – the usual melee of hawkers and beggars and eunuchs and fakirs that always seemed to swirl around him – and over the course of a couple of days, he gradually became aware that he was being watched. He was in a crowded market place in Dera Ghazi Khan, eight hundred and fifty kilometres from Karachi, when he realised who it was that was watching him. He was walking away from a meeting with an informant, taking the usual precautions, when he felt the hairs bristle on the back of his neck, swung round and caught the briefest glimpse of the boy’s pinched face between market-stalls, his black eyes shining like jet – the boy from the Manghopir shrine.

  The next time he saw him the boy was sitting in the shadow of a tree opposite the widow’s house in Lahore, five hundred kilometres further north. It was not long after dawn and Noman was standing scratching his balls at an upstairs window when he spotted him. He ran stark naked out into the street – the terrorised neighbours knew better than to complain – but by the time he got there the boy was gone.

  He re-appeared that night, just after the bootlegger had made his weekly delivery of drink and drugs. This time the boy showed no inclination to flee. Noman dashed down the stairs, pulling on a dressing gown as he went.

  He was within a few yards of the boy when he simultaneously realised two things: that he should have grabbed a weapon, any kind of cudgel; and, more importantly, that even if he had brought a weapon it wouldn’t make a blind bit of difference.

  The boy was a bomb, a living, breathing bomb.

  Noman stopped in his tracks. His mouth hung slack. What the fuck? In front of him, the boy had parted his coat and revealed the rows of shiny ball bearings glued to his chest like chain mail, and the length of cable disappearing into his sleeve, his grubby thumb on a fire-extinguisher red trigger switch.

  ‘Are you here to kill me?’ Noman managed, in a tremulous voice. His mind was racing. Who’d sent this boy to kill him? He’d done so many people wrong there was no point in trying to draw up a short-list. He’d tortured a dozen people in the last six months alone. It could be anyone. Fuck!

  He felt his bowels loosen. Not that. Please don’t let me shit myself!

  ‘Why?’ he pleaded. He thought about dropping to his knees and pressing his forehead into the dirt. It was pathetic. He was within a hair’s breadth of death and he was blubbing like a girl. Not like this! Where was a fucking sniper when you needed one?

  The boy shook his head.

  No? What did that mean? Noman felt a surge of fury. He wasn’t going to kill him or he wasn’t going to give him a reason? Why wasn’t the boy being clear? Was he mute?

  ‘Take me to Loyesam,’ the boy said.

  He obviously wasn’t mute. Did he mean Loyesam in Bajaur Tribal Agency, on the Afghan border? It would take at least fifteen hours to drive up there.

  ‘You want me to take you to Loyesam?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Now?’

  The boy nodded.

  ‘Like this?’

  He pointed to his bare feet and bathrobe.

  The boy nodded.

  Fuck!

  ‘We’ll need money for fuel,’ Noman said.

  ‘I’ve got money,’ the boy said. Then he used the Arabic phrase all good Muslims are supposed to utter before setting out, ‘I hope Allah has written a safe journey for us.’

  And then he smiled, his teeth a row of blackened stubs – it was terrifying.

  #

  Sometimes at night, driving fast on the highway, Noman had seen two headlights rushing towards him and felt a sudden impulse to spin the wheel, floor the accelerator and charge head-on at the oncoming car. He could imagine the collision, the shattering glass and tearing metal, the slow-motion somersault and the car’s bodywork unravelling. In the aftermath, a few moments stillness amongst the noise and smell and smoke, and then the creeping flood of gasoline.

  A spark.

  Whoosh!

  At times in the last decade he’d given himself a taste of it, veered into the oncoming lane and held his nerve for a few seconds before veering away again, usually in a blare of flashing lights and horns. But he’d always turned down the option of suicide. He couldn’t do it. No fucking way! How could he leave?

  The truth was he felt an uncontrollable tenderness for his own shit-filled life. Everything he despised was here: family, colleagues and victims. And besides, his appetites were intact, he had not yet filled himself up. He wanted more drink and drugs, more deceit and violence, more cunt and God, willing…more arse.

  He really didn’t want to die.

  #

  He was thinking these things as he drove his Range Rover up the Grand Trunk Road and beside him bomb-boy sat rubbing the trigger switch.

  Noman had spent some time studying suicide bombings, mostly in crowded areas. It was part of his job. He had the statistics memorised. He knew that the worst crowd formation was a semi-circular one – like a concert audience – with a fifty-one percent death rate and a forty-two percent injury rate. And vertical rows such as those in a mosque were the best for reducing the effectiveness of an attack, with a twenty percent death rate and a forty-three percent injury rate. Secular targets yielded a higher death rate. Some took it as proof of God’s existence.

  He knew that eighty percent of the ammonium nitrate used in IEDs in Afghanistan and Pakistan came from just two fertiliser manufacturers in the south of the Punjab province, one was PalmTree and the other was the Chuppa Group, which was owned by the Khan family. He knew that a young suicide bomber could be bought for as little as four thousand dollars and much of the training was done in the tribal areas.

  He knew that in most cases when the explosion occurred the bomber’s head was severed from his body and found intact afterwards at the scene. He fervently hoped that if the boy detonated himself he wasn’t smiling when he did it. He didn’t want them to find the head with that smile on it.

  He wanted to be buried properly and intact. He wanted his body washed and covered in a white shroud. He didn’t want to be scraped off the pavement. He particularly didn’t want to die as a result of a bomb manufactured from fertiliser produced by his wife’s family.

  If he was going to get out of this he needed a plan, but he couldn’t think of one. All he had was this giddy feeling, as if events had taken over. He was in, whatever in meant.

  They stopped for fuel. Nobody seemed to find it remarkable that a man in a grubby bathrobe and a feral dirty-faced boy in what looked like a bat-suit were travelling on the road at night. The boy’s money was good. He produced fistfuls of it from the pocket of his voluminous coat. The tank filled, they set off again. Soon they turned off the highway and headed into the shadowlands of rock that marked the edge of the tribal areas. The boy seemed to have an unerring ability to anticipate and avoid police and army checkpoints. He told Noman to switch off the headlights and they drove that way for several hours, not knowing what lay more than a few seconds overhead. At one point, lightning exploded overhead and illuminated the blasted landscape with a wash of cold blue light.

  The next time they stopped it was for pre-dawn prayers. Noman couldn’t remember the last time he’d risen for Fajr, though it was a sin to miss it and he was ofte
n awake at that time. And he never bothered with the compensatory qaza prayer. In fact, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d prayed at any time of day or night. For a moment he wondered if he’d forgotten how and what kind of wrath that might provoke in the boy. But he found Raja Mahfouz’s prayer mat rolled up in the back of the car and under the boy’s watchful eye he performed a barely adequate rak’ah, a cycle of prayer in remembrance of God.

  The boy did not pray. Perhaps he thought he was already dead?

  ‘They said you were a Hindu,’ the boy told him when he’d finished.

  ‘I’m an officer in the army of the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.’

  ‘Get in the car.’

  They set off again. A fan of light came from the sky as the sun rose.

  #

  Later that day they found the one-legged mullah waiting for them in the hujra, or meeting room, of a malik’s fortified compound on the outskirts of Loyesam. The compound had twelve-foot high stone walls and a scattering of dun-coloured buildings with the house on one side of an open dusty space as large as a parade ground and the hujra on the other. The distance between the two buildings suggested that the landowner didn’t like to spend much time in his hujra talking to his tenants.

  Inside the hujra, the walls were painted a dark institutional green to waist height and then a dirty white all the way up to the cheap and shiny tin plates on the ceiling, each decorated with a crude impression of a fleur-de-lys. It was several degrees cooler than the outside and filled with a sweet, pungent scent of opium. At the centre of the room a stoned bacha-boy in a sari was slowly turning like the ballerina on a music box, his eyes glazed and unseeing.

  The mullah was sprawled on a pile of cushions with his plastic leg lying beside him. Noman entered just as he was sucking on a long-stemmed pipe, his face shrouded by smoke. The mullah closed his eyes and drifted away for several moments. Then he jolted awake. He was looking beyond Noman, at bomb-boy standing in the doorway, and the expression on his face suggested a curious mixture of horror and resignation.

  ‘While you were gone I dreamt that you were never coming back,’ he said.