The Agent Runner

by Simon Conway

  Meanwhile there were loose ends still to be sorted. Ed Malik must be disposed of and Noman too, preferably without the embarrassment of a court-martial. Then there was the question of repairing his relationship with the British.

  ‘I’ll handle the clear-up,’ he said.

  ‘That would be best for all concerned.’

  ‘You can rely on me,’ Khan replied. His uneasiness began to dissipate. Perhaps it was all going to be ok, after all.

  45. #TheHiddenHand

  Leyla waited for the army to collapse the cordon and leave before getting out of the car. Crossing the road she ducked under the incident tape at the entrance to the cul-de-sac and cautiously approached the Gulberg house, skirting potholes filled with muddy rainwater.

  She had spent the last couple of hours in her aunt’s Volkswagen, within sight of one of the roadblocks, waiting to get back inside. After they were captured she was separated from Ed and driven back to her aunt’s place and dropped outside. She’d ditched the orange coveralls, thrown on some new clothes, taken her aunt’s car without asking and driven straight back. Since then she’d watched unmarked black vehicles come and go. She’d kept an eye on Twitter. At the time of attack several Gulberg residents had commented on the gunfire and what sounded like a tank in the road, and later others chipped in with details of the road closures. A Lahore-based news site was reporting that a major anti-terrorist operation was underway in the city.

  Now it was eerily quiet.

  She squeezed through the gap between the gatepost and the bulldozer and clambered over the flattened gate into the compound. There were spent cartridge cases scattered everywhere and scorch marks on the walls. She saw several large bloodstains and bloody drag marks in the sand that suggested bodies had been removed.

  She climbed the steps and went in through the front door. She walked from room to room, hoping for some clue as to where they had taken Ed and why.

  #

  Half-an-hour later she was sitting on the kitchen steps at the back of the house, trying to work out what to do next, when the boy appeared. One moment she was alone and the next he was there, standing watching her from beside the pipal tree, a malnourished-looking teenage boy in a long black coat, the same boy who had given them the key the night before.

  ‘Hello there,’ she said, getting to her feet.

  The boy shrank back into the shadows.

  ‘I mean you no harm,’ she said, walking slowly towards him.

  The boy remained where he was.

  ‘I’m looking for my friend,’ she told him, ‘the man who was with me last night. They’ve taken him somewhere. I don’t know where.’

  The boy nodded, solemnly.

  ‘Do you know where he is?’

  ‘Pharaoh has taken him.’

  ‘Pharaoh?’

  The boy reached inside his jacket and took something small out of his pocket. He held it out on his palm. On it was a plain black USB stick.

  ‘What’s on it?’

  The boy shrugged.

  #

  She sat cross-legged in the back of the Volkswagen with her MacBook on her lap, gave a prayer to a protector she didn’t believe in, held down the shift key to disable auto-play, plugged the USB stick in and ran a virus scan. Nothing. She breathed a sigh of relief.

  A folder of audio files. She settled back and listened to the voices. Ed’s softly delivered account of six years of clandestine meetings in ditches and graveyards and Noman’s questioning, by turns encouraging and hectoring, and always that name…Khan.

  She listened and listened again, and the rain came, at first gentle and then torrential, while it hammered on the car’s roof, she swapped the USB stick for a dongle, and started doing what she knew best, digging around on the web. There were plenty of surface markers, some of them as large as roadside advertising hoardings – library photos of Khan, beaming like a talent scout, alongside the Mujahideen warlords Gulbuddin Hekmatyr and Jalaluddin Haqqani.

  She delved deeper, rummaging amongst the bluster and paranoia in chat rooms, micro-blogs and social networks, and she came to know him by the name bestowed on him in equal measure by admirers and detractors: #TheHiddenHand. She learned that Khan was the former head of the Afghan bureau of the ISI and in that capacity was credited with driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan. Some said he was responsible for the murderous civil war that followed the collapse of the communist regime when the same warlords fought each other over the rubble of Kabul. Everyone seemed to agree that he was the one that spotted the Taliban in its infancy and nurtured it and launched it on its cleansing path. Some wag from the Association of Afghan Blog Writers had mocked up the identity parade from the film The Usual Suspects with an assortment of Taliban fighters and the banner headline: The greatest trick Khan ever played was the myth of Mullah Omar.

  She found company records listing him as shareholder in the Chuppa Group, supplier of bomb-making materials to the Taliban. There were rumours of links from Khan to Al Qaeda and its affiliates. It was Khan that had stashed bin Laden away in Abbottabad after he’d fled Afghanistan.

  Khan was the sworn enemy of the West…

  …and its secret friend.

  According to the audio files in her possession, Khan had been playing for both sides. Enriching himself at everyone’s expense. She wondered what the blogosphere would make of that. And in the silence following the temporary end of the rain, an idea came to her and, the more she thought about it, the more convinced she became that it might work.

  46. The pit

  ‘You should drink your tea.’ Tufail told him from the other side of the desk.

  Ed regarded the glass of masala chai with distaste. It hadn’t improved in appeal in the ten minutes since they removed his blindfold. There was a layer of milky scum on its surface as wattled as the pouches beneath Tufail’s eyes.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘You are in an interview room in the stockade at military headquarters in Rawalpindi. We have every manner of miscreant here: religious extremists, separatists, communists, wreckers, revanchists and saboteurs. We even have high members of the Afghan Taliban.’

  ‘Why am I here?’

  ‘Your accomplice Noman Butt is a traitor and it must yet be decided if you are also a traitor.’

  Ed studied the mirrored pane of glass set in the rough-hewn stone wall and wondered if there was someone standing the other side watching him

  ‘How can I be a traitor? I’m a British citizen.’

  ‘You are a Pakistani. And you cannot be a Pakistani and something else.’

  Someone tapped on the glass. Tufail sprang up out of his seat and knocked on the door to be let out.

  Ed pushed the glass of chai to the far side of the desk and waited.

  The door opened again. Tufail beckoned him with a finger. ‘This way.’

  Ed followed him along a windowless corridor past cell doors, through barred gates manned by guards, down several flights of stairs, into an older damper part of the prison, until he was so far underground that he wondered if he would ever see the sun again.

  #

  He was lying flat on his back on the concrete slab that served as a bed and staring into the impenetrable blackness, desperate for a sound, blackness so acute it hurt his ears.

  Time passed without measure. When a key turned in the lock he cried out in surprise. The door to the cell was opened and he was blinded by torchlight.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘It is Khan.’

  Ed was blinded, dancing prisms of light at the edges of his perception. Abruptly Khan pointed the torch away from his face and at his feet, a pool of light on the flagstones.

  What was he waiting for?

  Ed rolled off the slab and onto his feet, feeling the energy coursing through his veins and muscles and surging into his hands. He prepared to launch himself at Khan and slam his head against the stone. He was an old man, easily overpowered.

  ‘I’ve come to get you out of here,’ Khan said.
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  Which was not what Ed had expected. He held himself in check, suddenly not knowing what to do. ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Noman will not stand trial,’ He stepped out of the cell and hissed, ‘Jaldi, jaldi!’

  Cautiously he followed. Khan re-locked the door of the cell behind him and then pointed the torch down the corridor with its rows of steel cell doors. ‘This way.’

  Ed followed him along the corridor and down a further flight of stone steps. The further they descended the colder it got. At the bottom Khan unlocked a small metal door. Behind it was a tunnel with a low arched ceiling that was so narrow they had to turn sideways to advance through it. It was a long way before they got a taste of the outside air. When they did, Khan switched off the torch. They emerged onto a metal grille in a round brick-lined chamber. They were in a well with water beneath the grille and a view of angry clouds rushing overhead in the moonlit sky. There was a metal ladder leading upwards and Khan started up with Ed following, his hands gripping the wet rungs. As he climbed he saw that the brickwork was covered in thousands of tiny snails.

  The top of the well was at the intersection of four tree-lined pathways at the centre of a formal garden that was transformed into a sea of mud and puddles. As he eased himself over the parapet the humid monsoon air pressed like a damp cloth against his face. There was a distant rumble of thunder. More rain was coming. Khan beckoned and led him down one of the paths. An effort had been made to clear the way and the mud was piled up either side against the white-painted trees.

  At the end of the path there was a gate formed by two artillery pieces. Parked in the gateway was a silver Mercedes with Tufail at the wheel.

  ‘Get in the back of the car,’ Khan urged. ‘There isn’t much time.’

  The car took off across the army base. They passed rows of single storey barracks and waterlogged playing fields and a squad of Pakistani soldiers in tracksuits and fluorescent jerkins splashing along on the road.

  The car slowed as they approached the main entrance. The driver stopped and waited for one of the sentries to approach.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ Khan whispered.

  The sentry was wearing a poncho and carrying a torch, which he pointed at each of them in turn. When he saw Khan’s identity card he stepped back and saluted.

  ‘I’m sorry to bother you, sir.’

  ‘That’s quite alright,’ Khan told him.

  Within minutes they were speeding down the main road out of Rawalpindi.

  ‘Where are we going?’ Ed asked.

  ‘You’ll see.’

  Not long after Islamabad they turned off the highway and followed a potholed road that turned into a rutted track, which climbed into the hills. They parked alongside a jumble of rocks beside a wizened mulberry tree, its trunk bent, growing horizontally, just a couple of feet above the ground.

  They got out and stood beside the car. Tufail drew a pistol from the holster at his belt and pointed it at Ed.

  ‘Come on,’ said Khan.

  He placed a hand on Ed’s shoulder for balance and together they advanced down a path between the rocks with Tufail following.

  ‘You’ve caused me a lot of trouble, young man,’ Khan said. ‘If it wasn’t for my daughter you might have succeeded.’

  They emerged into a muddy bowl with sheer rock walls. There was a pit at the centre of it. As they approached the edge, two men climbed out of it. They were covered in mud from head-to-toe and only their teeth and the whites of their eyes shone out of their blackened faces. They dropped their spades before heading off up the path.

  ‘As it stands I’ve lost a lot of money,’ Khan told him.

  Ed glanced back at Tufail who was watching him down the barrel of the gun with his forefinger curled around the trigger. He supposed it must be easier to kill him out here and dump him rather than hang him in the cantonment, a way of avoiding embarrassing records. He stared into the bottom of the pit. The one thing he really regretted was that he hadn’t had an opportunity to make peace with Leyla.

  What he wouldn’t give for another punch.

  ‘But I’m prepared to let bygones be bygones,’ Khan said.

  Ed frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

  There was a shout from amongst the rocks behind them.

  ‘This way!’ Tufail called out in response.

  Two soldiers emerged, dragging a prisoner between them. He was manacled at the wrists and ankles and had a sandbag over his head, it’s pointy ends like a devil’s horns.

  ‘Your partner in crime,’ Khan said.

  Judging by his shape and size, it was Noman. Ed reflected that the hole was easily large enough for both of them.

  47. Kill-and-dump

  Squinting downwards with sweat-matted eyelashes, Noman could just about see through a gap at the bottom of the sandbag. He could make out the shape of a spade lying in the mud at his feet. He considered trying to make a grab for it but there was little enthusiasm in him for a pointless act of defiance. He was a realist, ferociously a realist, and there was nothing he could do to get him out of this situation. He was still struggling to comprehend how thoroughly he’d been outmanoeuvred. He’d seriously underestimated Khan and now he was going to pay for it.

  ‘When I’m done with you here I’m going to erase your file,’ he heard Khan say in matter of fact tone. ‘It will be as if you had died in that hut with your mother.’

  He was recalling the words of Khan of ten years ago, not long after he had brought him into the ISI and taken him under his wing:

  The only thing I will not tolerate is disloyalty.

  He should have paid more attention. The sweat in his eyes was making them smart. Through numb lips he contrived a smile. It was said of condemned men that they sometimes experienced moments of elation. What was the worst they could do to him?

  ‘Kneecap.’

  Crack.

  Noman let out a shriek of agony and toppled. His shriek rebounded off the rocks.

  When he opened his eyes again he realised that he must have passed out for a few moments. He could hear the rumble of distant thunder. More rain must be coming. He reached out and touched the mauled flesh and bone shards of his shattered knee. His hand came back wet and sticky.

  It’s time to climb the mountain.

  That’s what they used to say in the Special Services Group. Commandos! Don’t give up until you reach the top. You’re a Black Stork. Don’t let them know you’re beaten.

  He would not give them the satisfaction of dying quietly. He struggled up onto one knee, gritting his teeth against the pain. His other leg was hopelessly twisted, sliding in the mud at an unnatural angle, only held on by the manacles. He grabbed the spade and tried to use it as a crutch to lift himself further up.

  A shadow fell across the sandbag. Cursing, he tried to grab behind him, clawed hands grasping at air. A boot in his back propelled him into the pit. He landed face down at the bottom.

  ‘Fill in the hole,’ said Khan.

  Noman heard Ed protest. ‘He’s still alive.’

  ‘Do it or you’ll go in after him.’

  There was a pause. Then Noman felt the thump of soil landing on his back, like a gloved fist into a punch-bag.

  ‘Quickly!’

  Each loaded spade a further punch. You never quite knew where it was going to land. A spade-full landed on his destroyed knee – pain within pain. A wrenching that caused his mouth to open and filled it with the sodden hessian of the sandbag. Soon he was unable to move his arms above the elbow and he struggled to raise his head. He spat muddy water out of his mouth.

  It was like being back on the Siachen glacier when the avalanche buried him and he had to dig his way out. It was the worst time he ever had. Worse even than the battle that followed it. He remembered desperately moving his hands to create some space for air to collect in. It was the same now. It was all about air. Without air he’d lose consciousness in a couple of minutes and brain damage would soon follow. He had to keep moving, keep creatin
g space, his frantic hands scrabbling at the dirt.

  There was only one truly depressing thought, one wretched piece of thinking. He’d never pull it off a second time. Climbing up out of the avalanche was one thing, but this was a whole different matter. He felt an incredible weight pressing down on him.

  Look at me Mumayyaz. My wife. I’m down here in this hole, in this terrible place. Is this really what you wanted? Was there no softness in your heart?

  He was in the orphanage, the owner rapping his knuckles.

  ‘You filthy little Hindu!’

  He was with his mother who was washing pots in the kitchen.

  The dirt burned his eyes. There was nowhere to look. Only blackness. It was tempting but he might disappear into it, pass out and die.

  Then there was a kid with him in the hole, a kid from the orphanage who made up stories, a know-it-all kid using up valuable air.

  ‘What are you doing?’ the kid asked.

  ‘Burrowing,’ he replied, his fingers screaming from where the nails had ripped off.

  ‘My father’s a dacoit,’ the kid told him. ‘He’s the most feared bandit in the Sindh. One day he’s going to come rescue me.’

  ‘You can’t fool me,’ Noman said. In the orphanage, they had all lied about themselves. ‘You’ve got no dad. I can see through your lies.’

  ‘No one calls me a liar.’

  ‘I just did. Everyone knows you’re a liar. They’ll give you everything you want but they won’t believe a word you say. You name it, guns, dope, pussy and ass…whatever you want!’

  The kid grinned. ‘Bring it on. I’m going to join the army.’

  ‘Of course you are, whether you want to or not. When you get to basic training you’ll recognise the other orphanage rats because they lie and steal.’

  He felt suddenly very cold. His teeth were chattering and his knee was throbbing again.