General Malik said his goodbyes. He left presents, as well, gifts that he had brought that, although they were not two million dollars, still brought a deferential nod from the clan leader, and rented his loyalty for a season.
The general got back in his two-seat Mashaq trainer and flew back toward Peshawar through the late afternoon. The summer clouds were forming to the east, hot and sticky, and the plane was buffeted like a shuttlecock, so that the pilot felt that he must apologize to his distinguished guest for the turbulence. But the general barely noticed the rough ride, for he was lost in his puzzle book.
Where did the information come from that drove the American operations? That was what the general wondered, and it had bothered him more each year since September 11, as the Americans squeezed for more from Pakistan. He knew they had their agents, of course they did. The ISI tracked them, and usually it found them out. But this was something more delicate and evanescent. It was as if the Americans had found a window on the culture itself, so that they thought not just about this secret or that, but about the social glue that held the place together.
Who could tell them such things, that was what troubled the general. Who would be smart and subtle enough to see the patterns and describe them to the Amriki? If General Malik encountered a person with such a subtle mind, he would want to hire him for the ISI—unless he was a traitor, in which case he would kill him.
General Malik had searched for such an agent, most diligently. He had conducted surveillance, made arrests, interrogated people in the most unpleasant ways, looking for the one who might be opening to American eyes the family secrets of Pakistan.
The general had conducted what the services in the West described as “mole hunts.” But he did not like the word “mole.” It made these people sound cute and furry. He preferred to call them by the local slang, gungrat, which means “dung beetle.” For that was what they were, burrowing into the shit of the motherland and then scurrying away to the West. But if there was such a dung beetle, the general had never been able to find him.
He was too smart, this one, too mindful of the ways of intelligence services, and the general had concluded that he must be a man who knew enough to erase his tracks even as he made them. He was out there, for a certainty, and as the little plane bumped over the last ridge of mountains and began its descent toward Peshawar, General Malik made a promise to himself that he would find this man someday, and punish him.
10
LONDON
The sun was just coming up over Hyde Park when Thomas Perkins got off the phone with “Mr. Jones.” The first rays were white gold. From the top-floor study of Perkins’s house in Ennismore Gardens, he could look across the rooftops to the rust-red bricks of Harrods on Brompton Road, and east across the park to the hotel towers that marked the boundary of Mayfair. The city was changing shifts—some boozy stragglers wandering in from Clubland, a ruddy crew of workingmen mounting the scaffolding that wrapped a building nearby—all bathed in the early summer light.
It was the sort of June morning that had made London irresistible to Perkins ever since he’d set up shop there in the late 1990s. What he had discovered was that this was the best place in the world to be rich. But even that pleasure had its limits.
Perkins told the housekeeper he was going out, and that if a visitor arrived, he should wait in the parlor for his return. He knotted a cashmere scarf around his neck against the morning chill and trundled down the back stairs of his townhouse, slipping out through his garage door onto a mews. He followed this passageway until he emerged at Rutland Gate, where he crossed into Hyde Park.
Perkins was preoccupied. He hadn’t liked talking to this fictitious “Jones,” the government official who so ostentatiously wouldn’t say who he really was. The arm’s-length treatment made him feel tawdry, like someone who had gotten caught doing something wrong. That wasn’t the way it had started. The “recruiter,” for that’s what he had been, had spoken of patriotism. September 11 was still a burning memory, and Perkins had wanted to help, like everyone else. And then it had gotten more complicated.
As he strode across the park toward Mayfair, Perkins appeared as a solitary figure, not one of the commodores of finance. Such men are driven by chauffeurs; they do not walk. And when they do venture out, they are accompanied by bodyguards and bag holders—the small army of retainers that exists to minimize contact between the very rich and real life. But in this respect, as in others, Perkins was a somewhat different package.
Thomas Perkins was a tidy man in his early fifties, with small round-rimmed glasses and a thatch of blond hair. He looked boyish; people had been saying that about him ever since he actually was a boy, and it was one of his advantages: It’s easy to underestimate someone who seems unmarked by life, to assume that he can’t know the same things as people who have visibly lived and suffered.
He was used to being the smartest person in the room, and that sometimes made his boyishness oppressive. Even when he wasn’t talking, his eyes darted from speaker to speaker, or to a BlackBerry or computer screen. When doing business, which was nearly always, he would rarely smile or frown. On very rare occasions, when something had especially caught his fancy, you might hear a burst of staccato laughter, ha-ha-ha, followed by a wry comment or question, or, simply, a return to silence.
His lawyer, Vincent Tarullo, had once told him that he looked like Mr. Peabody, the talking dog on The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show. Mr. Peabody always knew the answer to everything. Tarullo addressed him by that name even when they were in company, to the point that some people in his Washington law firm actually thought that Peabody was the client’s name.
Perkins had another nickname, one that said more about his business life: In the London hedge-fund world he was known as “Pacman” because of his skill in gobbling up assets. The name stuck: Thomas Perkins was the motorized mouth, powering through the maze of finance and eating all the dots in sight, until there weren’t any more and he got to start on a fresh screen. He had enemies among his competitors—how could anyone that successful avoid it? But even among the people who tried to follow his trading strategies, Perkins remained mysterious.
Perkins made his way across the Hyde Park meadow, his head down and his thin body in a walk that was almost a run. He walked to work most days from the townhouse in Knightsbridge to his office in Mayfair, and he regarded the park as his front yard. The daffodils that a few weeks ago had displayed a dozen shades of yellow were now mostly wilted and gone. A few tulips were still in bloom, plush lips of color atop their narrow stalks. Even in June, the morning chill left the grass wet so that it matted under Perkins’s feet.
Mayfair made the pursuit of money seem like the only rational calling in life. This tiny area, bounded by Park Lane, Piccadilly, Regent Street and Oxford Street, was home to many of London’s big hedge funds; it was the place where the world’s most talented financial minds had come to make fortunes of a size that could not have been imagined even in the heyday of the British Empire when this district had become fashionable.
Perkins halted at Stanhope Gate. He studied his BlackBerry for the Asian trading news as he waited for the light to change, and then crossed Park Lane and walked into Curzon Street.
This was his favorite part of the journey, watching this little village come awake each morning—the clubs and clothiers, the restaurants and art galleries. It was a ballet of money, choreographed anew each morning. A few refuse trucks were still out in the early morning light, collecting the trading-room litter from the previous day. Some of these lowly trash men were said to be running little businesses of their own, selling hedge-fund secrets to hungry operators who want to slipstream behind the big boys’ trades.
Perkins turned right on Stratton Street, and entered a modern building in Mayfair Place. He took the elevator to the top floor, which belonged to Alphabet Capital. At the far end was Perkins’s office, with an expanse of windows that looked out across Piccadilly to the Ritz Hotel and, beyond that, to
Green Park and, in the far distance, Buckingham Palace.
Perkins opened the main door. It was just past seven, and he had expected that he would find the office empty. But in a far corner of the trading floor, bathed in shadow, Perkins could see one of the young traders who followed the Asian markets. Perkins called out hello and heard a wheezy answer from the trading desk.
Perkins disappeared into his vast office. There was a three-leafed desk, framed by computer screens as big as television monitors. There was a squawk box directly in front of where Perkins sat, with buttons for each of his main traders, so that he could give orders instantly when he saw opportunities in the markets.
Under Perkins’s desk, concealed behind a mahogany panel, was a safe. Perkins opened it and removed a tray of documents. Several of the documents bore the name of Howard Egan. Others were from accountants, auditors and lawyers. Perkins gathered them all and took them to the shredder. He ran the contents through once, and then passed the shreds a second time until they were confetti. He went to another safe, secreted in the private locker room behind his office, and removed another sheaf of documents. These, too, were shredded to dust.
Then Perkins picked up the telephone and called his private attorney, Vincent Tarullo, at home in Washington. Tarullo was a former prosecutor at the Justice Department and had run its National Security Section. He had seen almost every kind of trouble a person could get into.
“Sorry to wake you, Vince,” he said into the phone.
“No problem. I was just jerking off. That’s you, Mr. Peabody, I presume?”
“Moi-même.”
“Why are you at work so early?”
“I have a little problem,” said Perkins. “Something I never told you about.”
“Swell. I always like it when you go solo and exercise poor judgment. It gives me something to clean up.”
“Don’t try to be funny, Vince. This is not the moment. I have a man who has gone missing in Pakistan. His name is Howard Egan. E-G-A-N. He seems to have been kidnapped. I am going to put out a statement today here in London.”
“Why was he kidnapped, for chrissakes? And what was he doing in Pakistan? Does he really work for you?”
“Well, that’s the thing. This particular gentleman did a bit of moonlighting.”
“For whom?”
“You can guess, surely. Let us say that these people were not unknown to you in your former line of work.”
“Oh, Christ. You really are an asshole. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Complicated question. Simple answer: I wasn’t allowed to. Anyway, I didn’t, and that’s that. They want me to put out a statement and sit tight and wait for the whole thing to blow over. Does that make sense to you?”
“I don’t know. Do you have any other choice?”
“No. I want you to do something for me this morning. Call your old friends. Not the little guys, but the very biggest one you know, and tell him that I am assuming people will keep a lid on this. Tell him that if they don’t, the consequences will be extremely serious, for everybody. Ooga-booga. Scare them. You know how to do that.”
“Will they know what I’m talking about?” asked the lawyer.
“I rather think so. This is a little, um, difficult for them.”
“Are you going to tell me about this, Peabody? Because I think you should. I can fly over tonight. You need help.”
“Not now. Maybe I’ll tell you later. Right now it’s awkward. You would ask questions that I wouldn’t be able to answer.”
“Hey, level with me, my friend. Are you fucked up here?”
“No. I am the opposite of fucked up, whatever that is. I am just dandy. So long as everyone adheres to their bargains. Then I am fine. That’s all I really need you to worry about—that the dikes and levies are secure, and the floodwaters can be contained.”
“But I don’t know the details.”
“Precisely,” said Perkins. “You have grasped the point entirely. You don’t know the details, so can’t give me unnecessary advice. I have to get off the phone now so I can go home and meet one of the ‘tidy-uppers.’ You make your call, highest level, please, and deliver the appropriate, oblique warning. Then we’ll see about getting together. Want to go grouse shooting? I’ll be going up to my place in Scotland in August. Let’s do that.”
Perkins hung up without waiting for a response. He had a few more tasks to take care of, in the part of his computer system that housed the trading records. By then it was past nine a.m., and people were beginning to arrive at the office. Perkins turned off all his electronic systems, triple-locked his door behind him and kissed his secretary on the way out.
He strolled back to Ennismore Gardens at a leisurely pace. He felt easier now that he had done the housekeeping. Back at home, the representative from “Mr. Jones” was waiting in the drawing room, perched on the edge of the couch and looking most uncomfortable. Perkins apologized that he had been out taking his morning “power walk” around the Serpentine, a ritual that couldn’t be interrupted, rain or shine.
The visitor introduced himself as Rupert Ogilvy. He was a mousy-looking man, thin as a string and overmatched by his pin-striped suit. He looked like a bank clerk, which wasn’t far off. He was an administrative officer at a small support base Gertz maintained out near Heathrow. The young man proffered a business card, which Perkins didn’t bother to read because it was surely a phony.
“I have a draft statement that you might want to consider,” said young Ogilvy. He removed a piece of paper from his valise and handed it over.
The page had no letterhead or other markings. It was just two paragraphs, stating the simple and undeniable facts: An employee of Alphabet Capital named Howard Egan had disappeared while on a business trip to Pakistan to meet with clients of the firm. Alphabet Capital was requesting help from the U.S. and Pakistani governments in finding Mr. Egan and arranging his safe return.
Perkins read the document carefully and made several corrections in the margins. Then he put it in his pocket.
“Please let us know if you are making any changes,” urged Ogilvy.
Perkins laughed. The young man was sweating, even in the cool of the morning. He obviously wasn’t happy at the thought that one of his colleagues had disappeared.
“Don’t worry,” Perkins said, “and don’t tell me what to do. I’ve had enough of that from your colleagues already.”
11
QUETTA, PAKISTAN
When Lieutenant General Mohammed Malik was a student in America long ago, one of his military science professors had admonished the class, knowingly, with that old chestnut: “If you sup with the devil, you must use a long spoon.” How right that had seemed to everyone. But they were in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. That was the land of the guileless, eternal smile. What did they know of the devil? In the unlikely event that they ever encountered the devil, they wouldn’t have supped with him, anyway, long spoon or short. They would have dropped a bomb on him.
General Malik realized when he returned home after his stint at the War College that he did not have the luxury of his American friends. The devil lived in Pakistan. It was necessary to sup with him on a daily basis simply to survive, sometimes without any utensils at all, grabbing it up with your hands.
The devil that concerned General Malik at the moment was the group of operatives that had kidnapped the American traveler, Howard Egan. Yes, he knew who they were. The Americans might not like it, but that was his job. The group in this case was called Al-Tawhid, which means “divine unity,” or, to use the more common term, “monotheism.” The general would have denied to his last breath that he or his service had any contact with these miscreants. But of course that was not true. They were well known to the ISI, and indeed had been used on occasion to do ISI business over the last few years. That was what intelligence services did. And then, if anyone criticized the contact, they lied about it. Only the Americans tried to pretend that the intelligence business was any different.
&nb
sp; The best place to sup with these particular devils was their birthplace and home of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan on the country’s western border. General Malik knew the city well, for he had studied at the Army Staff College there as a young officer, and had returned as “chief instructor,” as the deputy commander’s position was known, before moving to the ISI.
The general flew to Quetta from Rawalpindi, this time in a lumbering Pakistani Air Force C-130. The plane was not like the gray American versions; it was painted in the colors of the desert, tan and brown, so that it was almost an airborne version of the trucks that plied the Grand Trunk Road. The general sat up top, in a comfortable seat just behind the air crew, not down below with the ordinary soldiers in their web seats slung from metal poles. Three-star generals were not soldiers anymore; they were demigods.
The plane landed at the military air base just north of the Quetta city center. As he stepped out of the C-130, General Malik saw again the austere, arid beauty of the place. The city was like the floor of a rock-hewn amphitheater, a dusty plain surrounded on all sides by reddish gray peaks. Back when he was a student, the young officers at the Staff College had names for these rocky citadels: “Takatu,” to the north; “Chiltan,” to the southwest; and nearest, to the southeast, the low, graceful cliff whose form they called, in English, “Sleeping Beauty.”
General Malik went first to the Staff College. He called on the commander, who was an old friend, and paid a visit to the Officers’ Mess, a prim brown stone building banked by cedars. But this visit was really a bit of subterfuge. While there, as was his habit on these trips, he changed into civilian clothes and took a new vehicle; not the army staff car in which he had arrived, but a dirty Hyundai, pitted by the road, in which he would travel to his appointment.
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