At Hell's Gate

by Mark Abernethy

  This concern fed into a background issue: who had assigned Emile’s team, and was the timing a fluke? I mean, a day after I arrived in Kabul, a disastrous – perhaps even staged – attempt on the cell tower was thwarted by the local militia. Could that possibly be a coincidence?

  I don’t believe in coincidence. Which meant whoever assigned Emile had some kind of live intelligence. They either collected signals from Gregory’s communications, or they had people on the ground. They had eyes. As soon as that occurred to me, I realised it might have been a mistake to bring Gregory to the Serena. And if I was right about that, whoever was surveilling us already knew where we were.

  Steph arrived with something to eat and I opened my laptop and got a wireless connection through my cell phone’s hotspot. I asked Gregory to spell the name of Infuse Digital, and I started with Google and then accessed some of the database services: those services list corporate histories, changes to boards, capital raisings, financial statements and all the regulatory declarations that companies have to make to operate in a sovereign territory. If you’re lucky, there’s a repository of corporate press releases too.

  I quickly found that Infuse Digital was a telecom services and consulting company that owned and operated mobile phone and data networks for developing nations, and for poor communities that were not serviced by commercial networks. They claimed to work in places like Peru and Burma, and they also claimed temporary network contracts with some high-profile NGOs and aid agencies.

  ‘These Infuse guys have a big overlap with what ABC does,’ I said to Gregory. ‘What was your concern about them wanting to keep open a cell network in Afghanistan?’

  Gregory made a face. ‘Afghanistan is going digital. Why would Infuse want to keep open an inferior analogue system, against government policy? The way I see it – and many people at ABC – Afghanis will switch to the digital service, and then where’s our revenues from keeping this thing open?’

  I left it dangling, but there was an obvious conclusion: terrorists use analogue networks because the calls are harder to intercept and the phones include features that can be used to trigger IEDs. Features such as ‘auto answer’ on older Nokias. You connect the Nokia to your bomb and when the device is in place, you call the phone. When it auto-answers, the bomb is detonated.

  I kept digging around and was about to end my search when I caught sight of a name that meant something to me. ‘Gregory, what’s “Talisman”? Is this an owner or shareholder of Infuse?’

  Gregory shook his head. ‘It’s a foundation that seems to be connected to Infuse, somehow.’

  ‘What do they do?’

  ‘They collect old analogue phones from the Western world, repair them and give them to people in the developing world.’

  My heart was sinking. ‘How does it work?’

  ‘You’ve seen those phone recycling bins at the big retailers in Australia?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said.

  ‘There’s a secondary market for those phones, and various companies bid for them, repair them and sell them back into the market. One company might do iPhones, one company might do Galaxy. It’s a business. Talisman buys analogue phones, resurrects them and sells them into analogue network markets.’

  ‘Like Afghanistan? The Middle East?’

  ‘Sure, it’s all legit,’ he said. ‘They just overbid the market – they’re the world’s biggest player.’

  ‘Overbid?’

  ‘If you bid two US dollars per analogue phone, and I have a standing bid at five dollars, then everyone wants to sell me their Nokias and Ericssons. See?’

  I saw, all right. I really saw, and I felt sick.

  My phone buzzed. It was MG, texting me that he’d done the pick-up. I asked Steph to stay in the room while I slipped out. I stood in the hallway and called MG.

  ‘We’ll be there in twenty minutes,’ he said, picking up.

  ‘Don’t be,’ I said. ‘We’re going to Plan B – I have three rooms booked under Mainline Holdings. I’ll be there when I can. And watch for surveillance.’

  ‘We made?’

  ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘Let’s try to stay clean.’

  Our Plan B base was the Maple Leaf, a hotel downtown. It was low-key and not one of the big American chains. But it was clean, the water pressure was pretty good and they had armed soldiers on the doors. I didn’t like splitting a team in-country but in this case I didn’t know where the watchers were and until I did I wanted my reinforcements kept secret.

  Before I went back in that room, I needed to understand. If it came down to either Gregory being surveilled or me, which one was it most likely to be? If someone was in his computer, they’d see invoices from my company, but I can assure you that someone looking at one of my invoices would not be able to pick up what I do or what the payment is for simply from reading that PDF. Anyway, Gregory had flown to Singapore to brief me in a clean room, and if I was right about him being a former officer in the British Army, I’d have to assume he wasn’t leaking. That would leave me as the weak point. The French investors in ABC obviously knew that something was up with Gregory – because he’d argued with them about it – but it was me, my involvement and the date of my travel that they had specifically followed. As I say, coincidence doesn’t work for me.

  I pushed back into the room. I was still on the clock, still had employees and I certainly had expenses. Gregory looked up as he chewed on a bite of sandwich. ‘What now?’

  ‘First, you pay me,’ I said. ‘Then we get on with the job.’

  12

  I found the valet at the front desk, and slipped him five US dollars. ‘Can you fire up the Patrol?’ I asked him. ‘But let me load up my associate in the parking garage, okay? It’s a sensitive matter with a wife who’s not my wife, if you see the problem?’

  He looked confused and then beamed at me. ‘Okay, mister,’ he said, ‘the silver Nissan Patrol?’

  ‘That’s the one, mate,’ I said. ‘We’ll be down in five.’

  I sat in the foyer armchair and made a call to an embassy – a call I didn’t want to make in company. The switchboard answered, and I asked for Aaron White, and she said I must have the wrong number.

  ‘Sure I do,’ I said. ‘Tell Whitey it’s Mike Daly and give him the number you’ve just captured. And it’s urgent.’

  I hung up and nibbled on a fingernail. I hadn’t demonstrated my concern about the Talisman and Infuse connection to Gregory. Scaring clients is not the way to get more work. But as Gregory had explained the rebirthing of mobile phones, I’d remembered where I knew Talisman from; that information came from a time when I’d helped various governments keep an eye on the activities of young Middle Eastern gentlemen living in western Sydney. Talisman was certainly a foundation, perhaps even charitable, but its funding and governance led back – as far as I could remember – to entities associated with al-Qaeda.

  My phone buzzed and I saw No Caller ID on the screen. ‘Whitey,’ I said, picking up. ‘You clear?’

  ‘Underwater,’ he said. ‘How can I help you, Big Unit?’

  ‘Talisman?’

  ‘Iranians.’

  ‘What about Infuse Digital?’

  ‘Iran by way of Hamas.’

  ‘Fuck, Whitey,’ I said. ‘I thought we were handing over a civil society?’

  ‘Ain’t civil, ain’t no society,’ he grumbled.

  Whitey was so experienced that – as rumour had it – he couldn’t be brought into a desk job.

  ‘You in that shit last night? That the interest?’ he asked.

  ‘Not in it,’ I said.

  ‘Okay, I gotta go, but Uncle Whitey’s got one simple message for the Aussie pilgrim.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Stay out of that shit. We clear?’

  ‘Clear,’ I said, and he hung up.

  Back at the room, my ears ringing w
ith Whitey’s warning, I cornered Gregory. ‘If I were you, Greg, I’d be happy that this morning didn’t turn into a case of lead poisoning.’

  ‘I am, believe me,’ he said.

  ‘You have kids, Greg?’

  He looked down at his hands. ‘Two. They live with their mother.’

  ‘Okay, in my experience, mate, it’s time for you to find something worth living for, beyond this fucking company of yours, okay?’

  He nodded. He was listening.

  ‘I’m serious about this,’ I said, pointing out the window. ‘Those Frenchies walked into your room, sat down like they owned the place, and then expected you to pay them for screwing up your plans.’

  ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘Okay, so you know what that means, right?’

  ‘That they can walk into my kids’ house?’

  ‘That occurred to me,’ I said. ‘I want to move you to a safe site – a place that’s not blown.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I need you to request my personal security services, and agree to make the second payment,’ I said. ‘I can get you out of here, and maybe stop repercussions in England. But I need money to make it happen.’

  ‘I request your personal security detail,’ he said, without hesitation. ‘I agree to pay you a total of 420,000 US dollars, payable today.’

  I nodded. ‘From here on in, do everything I say and we might get through this.’

  We met the valet in the parking garage and loaded Greg into the back seat, where he lay down sideways. Steph crawled in and lay along the floor of the back seat. She reached forward under the driver’s seat and pulled out what looked like a 9mm SIG Sauer.

  I caught the elevator back up to reception, walked into the drop-off apron area and waited for the Patrol to be delivered. Cloak and dagger? Maybe, but I was way beyond just trying to be relaxed and cool about everything. I’d been a road warrior in this city – I knew the difference between what was paranoid and what was possible. Most of the people I employed had lived and worked in Kabul or points south, and they all knew the score about Afghanistan: a kind assumption about your fellow man might be the last thing you ever assume.

  I drove off the apron and down the faux-Versailles gardens, thinking quickly about what a money-chasing owner of a building company would be doing: where would he go? How would he drive? This was all going through my head because I was out in public and reminding myself that I had a cover and so did my team. I phoned ahead to MG and asked for the garage to be opened for me at Maple Leaf. It would at least get the vehicle off the street.

  I stopped at a set of traffic lights and saw a depot shop of the type they have in Asia: it’s a phone shop, laundromat, money transfer spot and grocery store in one, and I was being playful, wondering how I’d use that shop to aid my cover when I suddenly had a thought. Scratch that: my blood ran a bit cold and I was now staring through the windscreen in a trance, and behind me someone sat on the horn. I moved through the green light. ‘Fuck me dead,’ I mouthed to myself, but Steph must have heard because from her hide in the back she asked me what was up.

  ‘I think I know the tail,’ I said. ‘Christ – they’ve been on me the whole time.’

  I muttered to myself all the way to the Maple Leaf, taking some figure eights and other ruses to identify a tail. I drove into a garage which turned into a courtyard and parked end-to-end with the other – white – Nissan. MG shut the garage doors behind us and a security guard armed with an M4 assault rifle walked towards us, asking for ID. Leaving Steph and Gregory in the back of the Patrol, I followed the security man in the side door from the courtyard, and over to the reception desk. Then I went upstairs and into the unoccupied room. I went straight to the window, looked out on the street, my heart thumping.

  Fishing a wad of US dollars from my pocket, I gave them to MG and asked him to look after the Steph and Gregory issue.

  ‘I don’t want Greg’s name listed at this hotel,’ I said. ‘The gig’s changing.’

  ‘To what?’ he asked, and I told him I’d go into it when he got back.

  Five minutes later, Steph and Gregory were in the room, so there were four of us. I had the laptop set up and was running it through the hotspot on my burner phone.

  ‘So what’s going on?’ asked MG. I told him what I could, and that we were now going to remove Gregory from Afghanistan and do what we could for his family.

  ‘But first, Greg, do you know the centre management at your office block in Singapore?’

  Gregory looked confused. ‘Um, yeah, but . . .’

  ‘Call them,’ I said. ‘I need access to the CCTV security footage, on the day I came to see you.’

  ‘That was the eighteenth, I think,’ he said, looking at his phone, then scrolled a bit and said, ‘Nineteenth, ten o’clock.’

  ‘Call them,’ I said.

  Gregory did that and had the conversation, telling the manager that we wanted the security footage from around 9.55 am. Then he put his hand over the phone and asked me, ‘You want to stream it?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He can send me a link, if he wants.’

  Thirty seconds later I received an email from centre management, and clicked on the link. It asked for a password, and Gregory read it out from his phone. The site gave me a list of cameras and I saw there were twelve in the main atrium. I sampled five of them before I saw the one I wanted: an angle that looked straight at a certain women’s fashion store. I circled back and found the footage of me walking to the jeweller’s display window at 9.57 am. I could see me looking in and then looking to my left, and then out of camera shot I could see the European man with sandy hair walking to the clothes store and the Chinese woman walking out and greeting him. In the bottom of the screen, I turn back to the window and then look to the right, away from the clothes store. And as this happens, the woman holds the man by his biceps and she is looking straight at me, mouthing something to her accomplice. I then walk away from the jeweller’s window, and she grabs her man by one arm, turns him and they start walking behind me, both speaking.

  I was annoyed with myself. I had noticed this bloke – I remembered thinking ‘not tourist’ – yet when he walked over to a woman, I lost my suspicion. Beaten by my own ploy: the married couple was a cover I’d used many times, to blend in.

  I wound back the footage to before I came into the shopping area, and now I could see the woman waiting for me in the doorway of the clothes store, back-pedalling a bit when I walked into the atrium.

  And I was also fairly certain now that I’d seen her on another occasion.

  ‘Geez, I’m getting soft,’ I said to MG. ‘I’m pretty sure I saw this woman at the Serena restaurant, the first night I arrived.’

  ‘Shit,’ said the Texan. ‘She’s in the hotel?’

  I nodded, too embarrassed to admit that there was also a seventy per cent chance that this same couple was following me in Doncaster, and when I had looked up to put my coffees on the roof of the ute, she’d turned the situation into just another Chinese property buyer perusing the real estate window. Really confident, pattern-of-life tradecraft – a bit like me.

  I explained to my core group that with the Taliban, and other actors, engaging in the politics of our cell tower, I felt the dangers of continuing now outweighed the benefits. It had also transpired that we were working against the policy of the company that employed us.

  ‘The British, American and Australian armies couldn’t beat these pricks,’ I said. ‘I don’t fancy our chances. If a Taliban commander wants that tower to stand, then short of an earthquake or lightning strike, it will stand.’

  ‘You seen the mercenaries again?’ asked MG. ‘They active?’

  ‘No,’ said Steph, ‘but that doesn’t mean they aren’t coming.’

  ‘What’s the plan?’ asked MG, lighting a smoke.

  I said, ‘To lift Mr Crowther
back to the United Kingdom, with little or no drama.’

  MG looked at Gregory, and the Englishman nodded.

  ‘We got a plane?’ asked MG.

  ‘When we have our payment, we’ll have a plane.’ I said this to MG, but I was looking at Gregory.

  Gregory pulled his own laptop from his bag, opened it and connected to my phone. We waited and the room was feeling muggy. I opened the minibar fridge and grabbed a can of Coke. I was so thirsty and tired. I realised now that I’d never felt comfortable with this job – it had just never gelled and it was exhausting me.

  My laptop pinged, signalling an email. I clicked on the email from my bank in the BVI, alerting me to activity in my account. I could have gone into my bank website and checked it but I didn’t see the point: if Gregory thought I was the right man to dud at this tricky point in his life, then he was both stupid and crazy.

  I asked everyone to stay in the hotel rooms until I could confirm a charter flight. There were only so many Western-style hotels in Kabul, and if the French goons had called in some more cattle, they’d probably be searching the city for us.

  I paused at the door, looked back at MG. ‘You looked after the manager and the valet-porter guy?’

  ‘Yep, boss,’ he said. ‘A hundred each should hold them.’

  ‘They know there’s more where that came from?’

  ‘Yep, boss.’

  ‘Those security guys, with the M4s – did we look after them?’

  ‘Yep, boss.’

  In a low-income country like Afghanistan, US dollars go a long way, especially if you let the service people know that the tap can be turned on again. I didn’t want the French sniffing around with their money, and the Maple Leaf folks not remembering us fondly.

  I knocked on the next door down where Doug, Rich and Timmo were staying, and told them it was Mike. Rich opened the door and he gave me an open-palm handshake. ‘Aye, Mike,’ he said, ushering me in. Rich was a heavily tattooed tough guy from Liverpool with one of those tall, craggy builds that never goes to seed. He could have been thirty-five or forty-five – you’d never know. Timmo was a tall, blonde-haired, grey-eyed Aussie who gave away little with facial expressions.