1898, was it? Colonel Kahn said to the ground in front of him as he leaned over between the blue markers to puncture the Bermuda grass with his tee and ball and strolled back to address the Friends of Golf. Latecomers, eh? he jabbed smugly. The Rawalpindi Golf Club, my home course, established 1885. Steven has been there and can tell you. In paradise, isn’t it, Steven. The foothills of the Himalaya.
The colonel returned to his ball and set his stance only to relax it again for the sake of further illuminating the Americans about the benefits of a Pakistani golfer’s congenital volume of good fortune, athletes naturally gifted with excellent motor control but the secret to their success, said Khan, was an Asian mind-set that married competitiveness with a balanced inner calm. Then the colonel resumed his stance, threatening the ball with a flurry of quarter-swings before he cocked his arms fully into position and fired the white orb a mile down the skinny fairway, the ball sailing and rising and sailing and dropping centered on the lane between shoals of beachy sand that counted as rough below the channel of pine thickets shaping the hole. Sammy whistled and Ben snarled.
You bastards could have warned me.
The colonel’s father, an Air Force officer assigned as an attaché to the foreign ministry, had taken his family from Islamabad to London when the colonel was a boy. Excelling through the forms at the elite private schools, not merely in the classroom but on the golf and tennis squads, the colonel had then entered Cambridge, matriculating out of the university straight into the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, the initial training center for cadets destined to become British Army officers, or, for cadets imported from the boondocks of commonwealth states, the promising youth meant to be fast-tracked into the higher ranks of their nation’s armed forces. At Sandhurst as at Cambridge, Kahn was again courted as a scratch golfer, a token dusky-skinned champion out on the Hampshire courses surrounding the academy. After two years as a cadet, which culminated in Kahn being awarded the Overseas Cross for the all-around best wog in his class, he received his commission as second lieutenant and, in short order, Rawalpindi summoned him home, eastward into the service of his country and an entry-level position at the ISI directorate, where his rank rose steadily through the intelligence service according to his reliable performance out on the links with a heady eclectic assortment of the world’s spymasters, arms dealers, and bagman princes. Most of them, sniffed Kahn, faders, choppers, and chokers, the kind of blokes knocking worm-burners off the tee.
Gee, that’s quite a story, said Sammy. Goes to show you what you don’t know. I had always thought golf was a Christian sport. I never imagined Muslims would take to it.
The colonel stopped and looked at Sammy with a nervous smirk. Let me ask you, said Sammy, not very convincing as an open-faced yokel, awed by the little mysteries of the big world. You ever played golf with the Talib gang? The Reverend Omar? Gulbuddin Hekmatyar? Or what’s his name? Sammy snapped his fingers. Mr. Hakkadin? You know who I mean, Steven.
Jalaluddin Haqqani, Chambers said helpfully. Charlie Wilson called him goodness personified.
You ever played a round of golf with Goodness Personified, Colonel? Sammy asked.
He is not Taliban, said the colonel. He is Punjabi and will not accept Arabs telling him how to pray or fight.
All I’m asking, Colonel, is what does Sharia law have to say about golf?
I’m quite certain, absolutely nothing.
Well, there you go, said Sammy. I think I can speak for all of us when I say our hopes and prayers are with you, Colonel, as the man we trust to bring the great game of golf to Afghanistan.
Ha-ha-ha. Kahn hammered his laughter as flat as the fairway. Ha-ha. That’s very good. Let’s hope the Afghanis appreciate our great game, isn’t it?
Eville watched the curtain close on their thinning amiability, the duplicity of tight smiles and the wink of implied threats, not an exercise in affable one-upsmanship but a charade with insane implications, lives saved or lost depending on this sentence or that pun.
Here they were on seven and the Paki had just slapped a drive worthy of Nicklaus straight into the gut of Ben’s sanguine and normally indomitable self-assurance. Goddamn it to hell, Ben howled on the seventh tee. Where does a Stone Age Muslim get off hitting a ball like that, son of a bitch, and Khan grinned viciously, handing his club back to Coleman, needling Ben, That is your mistake right there, isn’t it? In the nutshell, I believe you say. You think I give a shit about Islam.
I want you to know, Colonel, said Ben, nothing on this earth would make me happier than to program a six-pack of Tomahawks to pay a visit to some of your madrassas.
Steven, the colonel protested. You promised me we were playing today with friends.
The undersecretary, penciling in his scorecard, glanced over at Khan with well-practiced sympathy. I apologize for Ben’s rudeness, he said. I think Ben expected he was going to roll you over.
Apology accepted, of course, said Khan.
On the other hand, continued Chambers agreeably, look what happens when you put a white man’s back against the wall. They don’t take it very well, do they?
You right about that, said Coleman, paving the way for everybody to laugh again, and they went on to finish the round, Kahn and Ben trading holes seven and eight only to be rejoined in the self-canceling impotence of their identical talents on the ninth.
After Colonel Rashid Khan had pocketed a three-thousand-dollar check from Ben, he of the freshly striped Christian buttocks, the Friends of Golf sent him on his way back to Islamabad and his treacherous directorate, recommitted, he swore with his gloved right hand over his heart, to working in a mutually advantageous relationship with the Americans. Partnership, fellowship, you cannot disagree, Steven, this is our destiny.
Saying his farewells, Khan rubbed it in one last time, the win over Ben having affected him with a giddy infusion of bad sportsmanship, waving Ben’s check above his head like a flag taken in battle.
American money is always put to good use in Pakistan, eh, Steven?
The gift bag is officially empty, Ben said. No concessions, no mulligans, no nothing.
And may I ask, Ben, how is your bum? said Khan. Perhaps my excellent caddy will be so kind as to apply some ointment to the lacerations.
Rashid, the undersecretary cautioned. Keep in mind we’re not guys inclined to find the time to issue démarches. That’s the message here. Deliver it to Islamabad.
Agreed, said Khan, shaking the undersecretary’s hand as an electric cart arrived to whisk him back to the pro shop and the car waiting to return him to Pope Air Force Base. Lovely to play again, Steven. We should do it more often.
One more thing, said Chambers. This kid Yousef is very fond of his uncle.
Very good, said Colonel Khan. Done. We will keep an eye on him.
You know what I’m saying, said Chambers. I’m saying, share.
Yes, yes, said Khan. But I am dancing on snakes.
Understood, said Sammy. We’re going to put their heads on pikes and we want flies crawling across their dead eyes.
Don’t look so mystified, Ev, Chambers said. Friends kept close and enemies kept closer was the law of the shadowlands. He told Burnette the plan, although it was not a plan anybody was particularly wedded to, to send him out to Pakistan, a liaison for special operations that were about to enter an actionable phase in Central Asia. That had been their intent, the Friends of Golf and Delta’s Colonel Hicks, and they had been willing to let the chemistry develop of its own accord in the laboratory of Haiti. There had to be some chemistry in these relationships or they quickly became untenable—well, it was a preference, not a law, and they’d find another mission to occupy Captain Burnette.
I can’t hide it, sir, said Burnette, his relief at Khan’s exit turned to gratitude. We weren’t Simon and Garfunkel.
They had veered off from the tenth tee to walk in loose formation toward an isolated gazebo overtaken by blooming wisteria vines, its cedar-shake roof sheltering a picnic table where the resort’s staff was finishing its prep for what would be their lunch—pitchers of iced tea, two silver chafing dishes containing warm Kaiser rolls and Carolina pit barbecue, a serving bowl with cole slaw, a bottle of Trappey’s hot sauce. Chambers told Eville to drop the bag and come sit down before Sandy Coleman, his mouth already sharked around a dripping sandwich, ate up everything in sight.
Unlike the slow peeling back of the underlying mysteries of the morning, the ensuing revelations sprang forth like Russian nesting dolls in reverse—big, bigger, biggest—jolting Eville toward ever-higher states of both alertness and dread, beginning with the surprise of how nonblack—not white but processed, pasteurized mainstream, a federally owned civil servant—Sandy Coleman turned out to be as he got down to business, rushing with his food to clear his ravenous hunger from the agenda. Be right back, he said, as everyone else was getting started with the fixings, and he wiped red sauce from his hands with a napkin and gulped from his glass of iced tea and stood up to trot over to Ben and Sam’s electric cart and returned carrying a large brown envelope and sat back down, shorn of any vestiges of jive, to deliver his briefing to the Friends of Golf.
What have you got for us, Sandy? said Sam.
Coleman opened with a date of prime importance to the culture of his profession, December 2, 1993, the last day in the life of Pablo Escobar and the Medellin cartel. Into the vacuum left by Escobar’s death in Colombia’s narcotrafficking power struggle had stepped the Cali cartel, the dominant organization for the past few years but under increasing pressure from attrition and rivals and armies and prosecutors and governments and in danger of losing its monopoly of the market. That freighter you boarded in Gonaïves, Captain? said Coleman. She was carrying what might turn out to be the last large shipment of cocaine the Cali people ever manage to pull together. Time will tell, but the trending suggests that these people won’t be in business by next year.
Aw, cripes, said Eville, that ship showed up in Cap-Haïtien.
That is correct, said Coleman, explaining that, anchored in the harbor in Le Cap, the freighter had off-loaded seven tons of product, give or take a ton, which were, over the course of a week, broken down into smaller units to be loaded onto smaller vessels to make high-speed or low-profile runs into the coastal waters of Florida, Texas, and Louisiana.
How did I miss that? Burnette lamented, his forehead propped with the palm of his right hand.
Eville could read Coleman’s unspoken recrimination in the man’s eyes before the agent attempted to console the captain with bureaucratic push-offs. Cancel that thought, he told Burnette. Our interagency priorities are best addressed when we allow the product to flow through a completed network. Anything you might have done to intervene would have been counterproductive and we would have waved you back. We depend on the transshipment of those loads. We need to be able to track the supply and distribution chain and identify affiliates, okay? So let’s get back on point. Why Cap-Haïtien? The answer is twofold, part one obvious and not so interesting, part two very interesting. The first reason is the endemic corruption of the Cap-Haïtien police department. The HNP command changed hands during this period—I know Captain Burnette, if he likes, could speak to that. Anyone falling out of his chair yet? The second reason is why you gentlemen asked me here today, aside from your fraternal impulse for playing practical jokes—not to say that I take no pleasure in my role in your little skits.
Nobody handed you a script, said Ben. You have a weakness for improvisation.
A dark genius for impersonating your inner Sandy, Sammy agreed.
Anyway, said Coleman, unruffled. First, some backstory. With the demise of the Medellin cartel, and the apparent weakening of the Cali syndicate, what we’ve been seeing is a shift of organizational and operational capabilities to the north, by which I mean Central America and, more pertinently, Mexico. We are at this time observing what still must be categorized as a transitional period, which, in the provenance of drug lords means a period of flux and anarchy. There’s a cumulative effect we’re observing, as the small-time operators step in and eventually are assimilated and consolidated—or annihilated—by more ambitious but still nascent organizations, primarily in Mexico, primarily on the Gulf Coast, with more manpower and more rapacity and more political clout, who have seen the future and staked a claim. Okay? Back to Haiti.
First, why Haiti? Answer: a lawless state with imminently corruptible functionaries and an unguarded coastline within striking distance of the United States. A slam dunk, as they say. Why specifically Le Cap? For all those same reasons but with a bonus ingredient—one of the world’s foremost traffickers in the opium trade and heroin just so happened to be in Cap-Haïtien, exercising nominal jurisdiction of the northern districts under the auspices of a United Nations mandate, and in accordance with the nature of his entrepreneurial personality, exploring the business environment, researching the players, and essentially testing the waters for expanding his own geographically specific activity into an enterprise with significant outreach, an entity that would function more like a global conglomerate.
Agent Coleman, said the undersecretary with a low whistle of appreciation. Is that what a country boy sounds like after he comes home from a Rhodes Scholarship?
I’m from Oklahoma, Coleman explained for the captain’s benefit.
You’re talking about Khan! said Eville, aghast, kicking himself for his deficiency, his lack of situational awareness.
Yes, of course, said Coleman. Who else but Colonel Rashid Khan? What we all want to determine is why? Personal wealth? Khan is a rich man, yet we all know rich men never know when to stop making themselves richer men. And, since his illicit activity has back-channel approval by his C & C structures in Islamabad, we should ask ourselves, is there another motive that is not so obvious as greed and regional power? At the moment I would argue that the answer is not available. How might it make itself available? I would also argue that we have made a good start on narrowing and, with the evidence at hand, eliminating some of the variables.
One thing we know, said the undersecretary. The colonel is one of the best liars on this earth.
Eville found himself half-listening, mesmerized by the choreography of Coleman’s fingers bouncing over the large brown envelope that had replaced the plate in front of him. The limber, flexing troupe arrived at a suspense-filled pause, the fingers poised to lunge upon the envelope’s metal clasp. So, said Coleman, an unexpected character appears on the stage of the production in Cap-Haïtien. Who is he, why has he come? At first, no one seems to know. The fingers shucked back toward the clasp and unbent its flanges, removing the envelope’s contents, a thin sheaf of eight-by-ten black-and-white photographs, the top image a portrait of a darkly handsome white man, his features faintly swarthy and cunning and his expression animated by a roguish charm. The man’s name, Coleman told them, was Parmentier.
He looks Jewish, said Ben. Is he a Jew? What are we dealing with here? Mossad?
Coleman needed only a minute to exhaust his knowledge of Parmentier —a Cajun from Louisiana, a petty thief and addict who was lucid enough and smart enough to earn underworld credibility as a dealer in New Orleans, gaining the trust of the city’s crime bosses and flirting with the local mafia, which helped him relocate to Boston after some unpleasant business involving narcotics took him off the streets, the leniency of the sentence a result of outrageously expensive lawyers and a sealed plea bargain that seemed to infer he would be offering his services to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Next stop Tampa, where Parmentier seems to have rendered the promised service to the Bureau in a rather reckless manner. His movements after the Tampa sting are not entirely clear, said Coleman. What is clear, though, he said, flipping over the top photo
graph to reveal the one underneath, a waist-up image of Parmentier and Colonel Khan, standing in front of the colonel’s white UN-provided SUV, engaged in conversation, is that he came to Haiti, to Cap-Haïtien, where it appears he made a new friend and perhaps a new associate.
Time frame? asked Ben. Before the ship?
After, said Coleman. The product had already left the country. Perhaps its arrival in the States reminded Parmentier’s people of Haiti’s potential. That’s a guess but a good one. Parmentier is likely representing Mexican interests who are capitalized to some extent by interests in New Orleans, though I can’t document that. But let’s assume it’s true. We still have to ask ourselves, what’s in it for our Colonel Khan? Short-term skimming? He’s in town, he’s the sheriff, he takes his ten percent, he rides on, end of story. So okay, said Coleman, flipping to the next photograph. This was taken a few days ago. Anyone want to speculate?
Who took these pictures? asked Burnette, already figuring it out, glancing not at Coleman but at Chambers who said, You didn’t underestimate her, did you, Ev?
No, sir, said Burnette, and there was no more mention of the undersecretary’s daughter.
The third photograph suggested the possibility of another ripening mystery, Parmentier and Colonel Khan together at the shabby porticoed entrance to an art gallery in downtown Port-au-Prince. Let’s assume they’re not collectors, said Coleman, flipping to the fourth and final photograph in the sheaf. This guy, he said, the pink moon of his fingernail tapping the platinum Levantine head of the man in the portrait, is the gallery’s owner.
Always a pleasure working with you, Sandy, said Undersecretary Chambers, standing up from the table. Sandy said he forgot to mention the creation of a Haiti task force at the Treasury Department, a most undesired development—competition, interference, cross-purposes, hoarding, premature ejaculation, bureaucratic infighting and all the liabilities of a turf war—and Chambers told him not to worry about it, We’ll pump in smoke. Then he instructed Captain Burnette to take the clubs out of the cart and ferry Agent Coleman back to the clubhouse, which Burnette did, and the Friends of Golf sauntered over to the tenth and teed up and played on.
The Woman Who Lost Her Soul Hardcover Page 58
