by Ben Coes
A new and broader news cycle commenced just a few minutes after the BBC report. This wave of reports was sparked by a report from Kashmir. From Srinagar, near the war front, Al Jazeera reported that the battle between India and Pakistan had moved to a state of cease-fire.
More calls flooded into the Pakistani Foreign Ministry as well as El-Khayab’s office.
CNN, BBC, and Fox all picked up Al Jazeera’s story from Srinagar.
Sometime in the early afternoon, Fox’s New Delhi correspondent, Caitlin Montgomery, went live with a report that quickly and dramatically altered the dynamics back in Islamabad.
* * *
“According to anonymous sources inside the Indian Foreign Ministry,” said Montgomery, “a temporary cease-fire has been negotiated between India and Pakistan. As reported earlier, there has been no battle activity at the Kashmir war front for several hours now. Perhaps more important, according to one source—repeat, this has not been corroborated—but according to my source within the Indian government, Omar El-Khayab, the president of Pakistan, has been removed from office in what he termed a ‘coup d’état’…”
61
AIWAN-E-SADR
“We sent a military jet to pick you up,” said Jessica. “It’ll be there by six. They’ll take you three to Qatar. Rob stays in Qatar. The jet will bring you and Alex back to Washington. Alex is joining Special Operations Group out of Langley. Then there’s you, Mr. Andreas. There are a lot of grateful people running around here. I was hoping maybe I could have five or ten minutes of your time in between all the accolades you’re going to be receiving.”
Dewey stood in a large conference room down the hall from Bolin’s office, staring out at Constitution Avenue. Iverheart stood next to him. Millar sat in a chair at a large conference table.
“Alex is wounded,” said Dewey into the phone, glancing at Millar, whose bandage had been recently changed. “He needs a doctor.”
“There’s a military hospital in Qatar,” said Jessica. “They can patch him up and Bethesda can handle the rest after you guys arrive. By the way, Islamabad police figured out he killed the customs agents. Hector is working with ISI to kill the warrant, but exfiltrating him to Qatar is probably a good idea.”
In the distance, at the far side of the square in front of Aiwan-e-Sadr, Dewey heard a crash, then the tinkling of breaking glass. He reached to the table and picked up a set of binoculars. Across the square, perhaps a quarter mile away, he could see a group of young men hurling rocks at a storefront, whose plate glass was now broken.
“How is Bolin?” asked Jessica. “Can he do the job?”
Dewey watched through the binoculars as one of the men in the square lit something on fire. Smoke suddenly wafted up from the sidewalk. People spread away from the small fire. From the corner, a pair of soldiers ran, weapons out. Dewey heard the faint crack of automatic weapons fire. One of the men fell to the ground. The others dispersed.
“Yes, he can do the job,” said Dewey, still watching the scene through the binoculars. “Without question. It was good intelligence work. He was the right choice. But you need to get us out of here. It’s heating up.”
“What are you talking about?” asked Jessica.
“The crowds are learning about El-Khayab’s removal. It’s going to heat up here and Bolin’s going to need to clamp down. I’ve never seen more bishts in my life. I don’t want to be around when they find out El-Khayab’s dead.”
“Is Bolin aware of this?”
“I don’t know,” said Dewey. “I haven’t seen him in a few hours. They’ve restricted access to him.”
“Even to you?”
“Yes.”
Dewey watched as another pack of men came at the pair of soldiers at the far side of the square from behind. As a soldier was attempting to stomp out a small fire, one thug came from behind, a piece of wood raised over his head, and struck the soldier in the back of the head. He fell to the street. As two more men charged, the other soldier turned and raised a machine gun. The two men fell, shot to death, the sound of the machine gun fire coming half a second later. From the corner, four more Pakistani soldiers ran over, weapons out, and the remaining youth ran into the crowd.
Pulling the binoculars away from his eyes, Dewey could barely make out the section of the crowd, much less the specific people. How many more small conflicts like this were taking place, here, in Islamabad? Rawalpindi? Peshawar, Karachi, Lahore? How many more fires and riots were just beginning in large towns and small, across the country?
He glanced at Millar and Iverheart. Iverheart was calm. He had moved to the conference table. In front of him, he’d disassembled his SIG P226 and was absentmindedly cleaning it. Millar looked tense. Every few minutes, he wiped sweat from his brow nervously. He kept staring blankly out the large window at the crowd.
A loud crash came from the square, the sound of glass breaking. Then, a big plume of smoke burst into the air. Dewey moved to the window, joined by Iverheart and Millar. To the right of the palace, on a block just east of Constitution Avenue, a four-story office building was engulfed in flames, which mushroomed out from a first-story window. People ran from the flames, dispersing chaotically.
Dewey’s eyes met Iverheart’s.
“You need to get that jet here earlier, Jess.”
62
AIWAN-E-SADR
The first nervous minutes had turned into anxious hours for Khalid el-Jaqonda. He sat in the dark on the quarry tile floor of the small private bathroom off of what had been President El-Khayab’s office, glancing every few minutes at the glow-in-the-dark dial on his Rolex Submariner watch. It had been more than four hours since Bolin had interrupted their meeting with SSG in tow and a large, dangerous-looking American by his side. Whoever he was, he was running the show. Whoever the mean-looking American with the quick trigger finger was, he’d changed el-Jaqonda’s world forever.
He breathed deeply, as his cardiologist had instructed him to do, to try and control his anxiety, but it was of little use. He’d sat inside the dark, windowless bathroom for hours, trying to figure out how the hell he was ever going to get out of the bathroom, out of Aiwan-e-Sadr, out of Islamabad, and out of Pakistan—alive.
His roughly sketched-out escape plan was simple: wait until well after midnight, then try and slip out of Aiwan-e-Sadr. Once outside the presidential compound, he would attempt to go to his house to retrieve some belongings, then head north, above Peshawar, where he had allies inside the Taliban.
But there were major problems with the plan. First, there was the simple fact that eventually Bolin would come back to his office, and if he wanted to use the bathroom, he would just get one of his guards to unlock the door. If he found el-Jaqonda inside, he would be shot on sight.
If he made it to midnight without someone finding him, he would then have the challenge of getting out of the building without being seen. There were soldiers from SSG on every corridor, and multiple soldiers at every entrance.
If he could get outside, el-Jaqonda felt confident the rest would be manageable. The military was likely using all of its energy and power quelling popular uprising in the streets, especially the cities. No one would have the time to think about one little man, even if that little man, along with his boss, had, intentionally or not, instigated it all.
El-Jaqonda had his cell phone and every few minutes he pressed the button in order to have some light inside the small room. But the battery was running down. He’d scrolled through the numbers five or six times, thinking about whether any of his stored contacts could help him. The problem was, colleagues at the Ministry of Defense, even his assistant, Sharit, would all be worried about their own hides right now. Any one of them would turn him in. A different dynamic existed with counterparts in other countries. He considered calling Mi Jong, his closest associate in the Chinese Ministry of National Defense. But Jong would care only about future sales of Chinese planes and missiles to El-Khayab’s successor. Jong would turn him in faster than you ca
n say wonton soup.
The one person el-Jaqonda came closest to calling was his brother, who lived in Chicago and owned three dry cleaners. He thought of calling him because he wanted to talk to someone, that was all, and to say goodbye. But el-Jaqonda was scared that someone would hear his voice.
Then, it came to him, and he cursed himself for not considering it first.
You fucking idiot.
He hadn’t considered calling the one person who might be able to help him because his phone number was not in his contacts list. He had memorized the number instead, at that person’s insistence.
* * *
More than two thousand miles away, a phone rang. Aswan Fortuna walked to his desk and picked it up.
“What is it?”
“Aswan,” he said. “It’s Khalid.”
“Khalid, are you okay?”
“I can’t talk,” said el-Jaqonda.
“What’s wrong?” asked Fortuna. “I can barely hear you.”
“Coup d’état,” said el-Jaqonda. “There’s been a coup d’état. President El-Khayab is dead.”
“What?” said Fortuna. “This is … this is unbelievable, Khalid.”
“I need your help,” said el-Jaqonda. “I know of no other.”
After a long pause, Fortuna cleared his throat.
“Where are you? Of course I will help you.”
“I’m hiding in the palace. If they find me, they will kill me.”
“Calm down. It’s going to be fine. Who did this?”
“Field Marshal Bolin, commander of the war against India. But the Americans were behind it all, Aswan.”
“The Americans?” asked Fortuna, momentarily taken aback.
“It was America. Some sort of special forces. I watched the whole thing.”
“Americans,” Fortuna said, barely above a whisper.
“Yes, Americans. They did the entire thing. I saw him. I heard his voice. Bolin was like a puppet to him. It was an American who shot Osama Khan.”
Fortuna gasped. “This American,” he said. “What did he look like?”
“Big,” said el-Jaqonda. “Tall. Scary-looking. Toughest I’ve ever seen. He looked like he would kill you just for looking at him the wrong way.”
“Go on,” said Fortuna, his heart racing.
“He had brown hair,” said el-Jaqonda. “He was plainclothed, jeans, a T-shirt. A beard and mustache. Black paint beneath his eyes, but you could see that he was very tan.”
Fortuna’s breathing grew rapid.
“This is important, Khalid,” said Fortuna. “Did you hear his name.”
“They called him Andreas.”
63
AIWAN-E-SADR
At 4:30 P.M., down the hallway from his temporary command center, Field Marshal Bolin walked into the media briefing room. He stepped behind a dais. Behind him, a navy blue backdrop covered the wall. Just in front of the backdrop stood an orderly, colorful line of Pakistani flags. In front of the flags, but behind Bolin, stood two men in business suits, Azra Ankiel, the leader of the Pakistani National Assembly, and Seranas el Debullah, the leader of the Pakistani Senate.
A single camera sat in front of Bolin, providing a pool feed to all news outlets. The address was being broadcast live on all stations inside of Pakistan and was carried live on news outlets across the world.
Bolin wore his military uniform.
“This morning, in order to end the violence and bloodshed that threatened to destroy our homeland, the Pakistani military acted to bring stability and peace to Kashmir, Pakistan, and our region,” said Bolin, reading from prepared remarks that he had placed on the dais in front of him. “These actions were done in order to prevent further escalation of violence between Pakistan and India. I have spoken several times with Indian President Rajiv Ghandra, and our countries have agreed to stand down all offensive military activities directed against each other. The terms of this cease-fire will be made permanent over the coming hours and days. Moreover, President Ghandra and I have committed to meeting face-to-face in order to discuss what went wrong in Kashmir, and how we might create systems and measures to prevent other such terrible activities from occurring in the future.”
* * *
Dewey watched Bolin’s address on a television down the hallway from the briefing room.
Within minutes of the address, he could sense a change in the chemistry of the still substantial crowds gathered around Aiwan-e-Sadr and down Constitution Avenue. It was as if a lightning bolt had come down and struck the square. The crowd became more energized and violent.
The sun was going down. Darkness had begun to cast itself across the Islamabad evening.
The chant seemed to stop, then start again, several times. What had been a unified chorus turned into an unpredictable, louder, chaotic wave of shouts.
Some of the people left the square, no doubt India haters who nevertheless saw no point in remaining for what was sure to be a bloody evening.
The others, the ones who remained, became aggressive.
In several parts of the square, smoke now drifted into the sky. Fires started, too many fires for the Pakistani soldiers to extinguish.
The sound of breaking glass became common now. Rocks, bricks, hurled through storefronts and office building windows. The occasional popping sound of gunfire interrupted the noise every few minutes.
At one point, the chant alternated. “Death to India” became “Death to Bolin.”
For the first time since landing in Pakistan, despite the severe risk involved during the execution of the coup itself, Dewey felt a small, electric wave of fear spread up his back.
“There’s no fucking way we’re getting a Humvee through that crowd,” said Iverheart.
“Chill out,” said Dewey.
He glanced at the table. Millar’s new bandage was crimson.
“How are you?” asked Dewey.
Millar stared at him. His eyes were glassy.
“Not good,” he said quietly. “I need some painkillers.”
In front of him, in the middle of the table, the MP7 machine gun lay on its side.
Dewey left the room and walked down the hallway to Bolin’s temporary office. Two guards stood outside the office door. When Dewey approached, they would not move to the side, their Kalashnikovs remained trained at Dewey as he approached.
“I need to see him,” said Dewey, stepping between the two soldiers, despite their raised weapons.
“We’re under orders—”
“Yeah, I don’t give a fuck,” said Dewey. He reached the door and pushed his way in, throwing aside the two smaller men.
Bolin sat behind the desk, speaking into a phone. When he saw Dewey, he glanced behind him at the two guards disapprovingly. Two men sat in front of Bolin, one of them General Lerik, and another general he didn’t recognize.
Dewey stood, waiting for Bolin to finish his call.
Bolin hung up. He glanced at the two generals seated in front of him.
“Yes, Mr. Andreas,” said Bolin, a hint of anger in his voice. “It seems the job is complete, yes? Time for you and your team to disappear. What do you want from me now?”
“We need a chopper in here,” said Dewey. He nodded to the window and the crowds gathered down Constitution Avenue. “There’s no way we’re going to make it through that. By Humvee or any other vehicle.”
Bolin nodded, a slight grin on his face.
“You like to order people around, don’t you?” asked Bolin. “Have you ever considered the use of the word ‘please’?”
Dewey stared at Bolin, at first in disbelief, then with unvarnished anger.
“Please,… Mr. President,” said Bolin, grinning at the two generals in front of him. All three started to laugh.
Dewey remained silent until the laughter stopped.
“Just get me a fucking chopper,” Dewey said.
He turned and walked toward the door. At the door, he turned and looked at Bolin.
“One more thing, Fiel
d Marshal,” said Dewey. “One last piece of free advice: you need more soldiers out there. Your battalion is soon going to be overrun. El-Khayab was right: in case you’re not listening, they’re calling for your head.”
64
AIWAN-E-SADR
El-Jaqonda unlocked the bathroom door, opened it, then stepped into the cavernous, empty office of the president of Pakistan. The room was eerily silent and dark. The chanting from Constitution Avenue had stopped. He walked to the window and looked out. El-Jaqonda saw fires smoldering in buildings along the wide boulevard, and smoke in the distant sky. Hundreds of soldiers patrolled the streets.
El-Jaqonda had one opportunity to save his own skin, and it was right now.
He walked to the door of the office. He reached for the engraved brass doorknob and opened the big door. El-Jaqonda stepped into the hallway, raising his arms above his shoulders as he did so.
He was immediately besieged by three armed guards, who raised their weapons.
“Who are you?” shouted one of the soldiers, aiming his Kalashnikov at el-Jaqonda’s head. “Down on the ground!”
“My name is Khalid el-Jaqonda,” he said, kneeling, then lying stomach down on the marble floor. “I place myself under your arrest. I was the deputy minister of defense under President El-Khayab. I intend no harm.”
“What were you doing in there?”
“I was locked in the bathroom. Please, I must speak with President Bolin.”
One of the soldiers placed flex-cuffs on el-Jaqonda’s wrists.
“You’ll do no such thing,” said one of the soldiers.
“I was in charge of the nuclear weapons program,” said el-Jaqonda. “It’s imperative that I speak with him. One of the nuclear weapons is loose. It’s outside the control of the Pakistani military. Khan sold it. I must speak with him.”
