Bloodmoney (16 page)

Omar had learned the catechism from his father: Wars begin with
badal,
an assault on a man’s honor and self-respect. A proud man must avenge this insult, measure for measure, or he would suffer the greatest shame. That was why there were ceaseless wars in the tribal areas, Haji Mohammed had explained. It was the Nang-e-Pashto, the tribal code of honor, which required people to seek vengeance for the injustices inflicted by their cousins, neighbors, rival tribes, foreign invaders. A man would vow to sleep on the ground, or eat with his left hand only, until he had taken revenge, and only then would he let himself relax.

“To my mind death is better than life, when life can no longer be held with honor,” Haji Mohammed had said one night after a long talk under the stars.

“Please, Father,” Omar had implored, thinking that the old man might put a gun to his son’s head at that very moment. But Haji Mohammed had laughed and explained that he was just quoting a passage from Khushal Khan Khattak, the warrior poet of the seventeenth century, and that it was the same now and always.

This was a code that understood war, but it had been tested by the great wars that shook the red-rock hills like a long, echoing chain of explosions.

When Omar was a little boy, the Russians were still over the border and his town was a staging ground for the Afghan holy warriors. Omar remembered how they would parade through town with the guns they had received from the Americans and their Pakistani agents. When the Russians finally left, the holy warriors became ordinary warlords and it was a world of anarchy. Then when Omar was a teenager, there were the fierce young men who called themselves Talibs and demanded justice. They marched through Makeen, too, on their way in and out of Khowst and Kandahar.

But all this was just a prelude to the big war that had come after Omar had left home to pursue his studies—when Al-Qaeda came to South Waziristan with its money, and then the Americans came after them, and brought all the hell there is on earth. Dr. Omar had wondered then if he should return home, but he knew that was impossible. He had pleaded with his mother and father to leave, but that was impossible, too. They were rooted in the rocky soil like two prickly cactus bushes.

Omar had thought for a time that he could end the war if he helped make Al-Qaeda go away, so that the Americans would go away, too. But that was beyond his powers.

There was a shadow that followed him, as it follows every Pashtun man, and that was shame. It was not enough to be successful; what was essential was to be an honorable man. That was why he had gone home two years before, to see if he could escape the shadow. But another shadow, a shame that was shameless, had darkened his world.

Omar had always wondered what he would do if something bad happened to his parents. And then, on that terrible day, he had discovered the answer.

Dr. Omar waited for more of his graduate students, but none came by for the rest of the morning. He locked the door of his office and went to the computer lab, a squat two-story building a hundred yards away, where he preferred to do his communications for reasons of concealment. He had a number of different email accounts that he visited and, it might be said, a number of different personalities that inhabited these electronic spaces.

Most times, Omar felt that he was living behind a mask. But oddly, when he did this work under a variety of assumed names, he felt something close to peace.

STUDIO CITY, CALIFORNIA

Sophie Marx was numb
from fatigue when she returned from Dubai. She hadn’t slept well on the outward leg because of worries about the meeting ahead. She had hoped to collapse into her seat on the way home, but she slept only fitfully: Her body was too heavy for slumber, and her mind was too hot. She had taken on responsibility, on behalf of Gertz and the whole team, for investigating the disappearance of a colleague. But she was coming home empty-handed. Her theory had been wrong. She was still baffled about how Howard Egan’s cover had been broken, and she didn’t know who else in her organization might be vulnerable. It was an oppressive sense of failing in an assignment where she had badly wanted to do well.

She tossed back and forth on the couchette of the Emirates jet, trying to get comfortable. But sleep didn’t come, and she thought about ways she could answer her questions. Part of her problem, she concluded after many hours, was that she didn’t understand the context for these events: Why was Egan in Pakistan in the first place? Why was he paying money to tribal emirs? What was the mission for which Gertz had risked this man’s life?

Marx went to the office, tired as she was, after a brief stop at home to shower and change. She wanted to begin querying the files to see if she could answer these questions. Jeff Gertz was away on one of his mystery trips, which made it easier. She figured that she didn’t have to ask his permission to pull the operational files, because he had already granted it.

The Hit Parade’s most sensitive information was not in the computer system, but kept in hard copy only, in a large room called “the Vault” on the ninth floor. The keeper of this archaic library was a retired military officer who had formerly worked for the National Security Agency’s military cryptology branch, known as the Central Security Service. He was a fussy man who had helped protect some of the country’s biggest secrets for several decades. He was always called “the Colonel,” even though he had retired from active duty ten years before.

Marx took the elevator to the ninth floor and walked to the colonel’s lair. The door was closed and he didn’t answer at first, perhaps hoping that the visitor would go away. She knocked again, harder, and this time the door opened and out stepped the Colonel. He was a short, balding man, little taller than Marx herself, with a florid face and a bulbous nose. His actual name was Samuel Sinkler, but people rarely used it; he preferred rank only.

“Sorry to disturb you, Colonel, but I need to look at the Pakistan operations files.”

She showed him her badge.

“Nope,” he answered. “Sorry, you can’t have them.”

“But Mr. Gertz personally authorized me to look at all files I needed to investigate the Howard Egan case.”

“He didn’t tell me that.” The Colonel had a thin smile. He liked saying no.

Marx shook her head. She was tired and didn’t like being jerked around.

“I need those files, Colonel. I can’t do my work without them.”

“That’s not my problem, miss. You could get Mr. Gertz, but he isn’t here.” He smiled again.

She pondered what to do. He obviously expected her to give up if he said no often enough.

“I’m not leaving until I see those files. Will you give me access if Steve Rossetti says it’s okay?”

“That’s a hypothetical,” said the Colonel.

She picked up a phone on the nearest desk and dialed Rossetti’s extension.

“Steve, it’s Sophie. I’m back from Dubai and I have an emergency. I need access to some files on the ninth floor and Colonel Sinkler says he needs someone’s permission. Can you come up now?”

There was a pause, while Rossetti temporized on the other end. He didn’t like making decisions.

“I really need help now, Steve,” she said. “Otherwise I’ll have to call Jeff. He won’t be pleased, but I have no choice.”

That did it. Rossetti arrived five minutes later and personally signed the necessary piece of paper for the Colonel. Neither man was happy.

“Thanks, gents,” she said breezily. The Colonel marched her back to the Vault and unlocked the steel door, while Rossetti retreated to his office.

It was cold in the stacks. The Colonel was one of those men who believed that people worked more efficiently at lower temperatures. Marx was wearing a long-sleeved blouse, but she was shivering after thirty minutes. She descended to her office and returned with a cardigan sweater, which she buttoned to the neck. It was dark among the racks and cabinets, so she asked the Colonel for a flashlight, which he grudgingly provided. He seemed to think that darkness, too, was part of good security.

Marx started with the paper records of Egan’s travels. These were more detailed than the computer records she had consulted before. They showed a total of five trips to Pakistan over the previous thirteen months. Two of those journeys had been to Karachi, two to Lahore and one to Islamabad. To see what Egan had been doing on those trips, Marx had to consult two other sets of files. The first was his personal 201 file, which recorded the active cases he had been managing, but using cryptonyms to conceal the true names of his contacts. At the time of his disappearance, he was the case officer for four agents, all of whom had the digraph “AC,” which was The Hit Parade’s notation for Pakistan, borrowed from an old CIA cryptonym.

To learn the real identities behind those code names, Marx had to consult a separate registry inside the Vault, which was locked and guarded by video surveillance. Here again, the Colonel initially said no. Marx summoned Rossetti back, and he signed another piece of paper that allowed her access.

“I hope you find something,” said Rossetti. “If this turns out to be a wild goose chase, Gertz will be pissed off.”

“I’ll worry about Jeff,” she answered. “Not your problem.”

Rossetti walked back to elevator, muttering as he went, “Get some sleep.”

The Colonel told her to turn her back while he punched the proper code into the cyber-lock. The door clicked open. She fumbled for the light switch and set to work.

Marx began matching crypts with true identities. She first found the name of the man she had interrogated in Dubai, Hamid Akbar. She knew he would be one of the four. Egan had met him four times over the thirteen months, twice in Karachi, once in Istanbul and once in Abu Dhabi. The second name was Azim Mohammed al-Darwesh, whom she assumed must be Akbar’s uncle. Egan had met him just once, four months before the kidnapping, in Abu Dhabi, on the same date as the meeting with his nephew, Akbar, who evidently had accompanied him to an initial get-acquainted meeting outside the country. This much was simply confirmation of what she already assumed.

Then came the surprises.

The third name listed was Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Chaudhary. He appeared to be a serving officer in the Pakistani military. Egan had met him three times: once in London, once in Beirut and once in Lahore. Marx ran traces on Chaudhary’s name and discovered that he served in the office of the chief of Combat Development, which was the branch of the Pakistani military that had overseen its nuclear weapons program. He was from a prominent Punjabi family, and he was the third generation to have served in the military.

The fourth name was Professor Aziz Mukhtar. He was the rector of Mohiuddin Islamic University in Azad Kashmir. Traces on the professor showed that he was a leading activist for the liberation of Kashmir from Indian control. Egan had met with him twice, both times in Dubai.

It was an unlikely mix: A banker, a tribal leader, a military officer from a great aristocratic family and a Muslim activist. Marx was confused. These might be foreign-intelligence operations, designed to gather information about Pakistan’s plans and intentions. But Marx doubted that. FI collection was still the province of the old CIA structure. This looked like something different.

Marx knocked on the Colonel’s door. He assumed she was finished for the day, and extended his hand to receive the flashlight. But she had come with a new question.

“If you please, Colonel, I would like to look at the disbursements register,” she said. “I need to see what we’ve been paying the agents whose names I’ve been pulling.”

“You can’t,” answered the security officer. The blank, unhelpful look on his face shaded toward a smile. It gave him pleasure, once more, to say those words of refusal.

“Let’s not go through this again. I can go back downstairs and get Steve Rossetti a third time, and he can come up and tell you the same thing as before. But, honestly, Colonel, that’s a waste of time. Why don’t you just say yes?”

“I can’t. It’s not possible to see those records.”

“Why the hell not?” It was a relief to be able to swear at this cranky old man, but she wasn’t expecting his answer.

“Because those records aren’t here, that’s why not. And watch your language.”

“Where are they, if they aren’t here?”

“Mr. Gertz has them. I don’t know where he keeps them. And I know for certain that nobody has ever accessed them, because if they had, they would have asked me first, just like you did. But it’s a waste of time. The disbursements are off-line. When I have questions about money, I ask Mr. Gertz. So should you.”

Sophie Marx returned to the Vault, more confused now than before. She still wanted to answer the basic question: What were The Hit Parade’s objectives in Pakistan? But she wondered now if she might have been misjudging the program’s scope. She had assumed that Howard Egan was the only officer handling Pakistani cases, but that might be wrong. She took up her flashlight again and went prowling in the main personnel and travel files. Because the data wasn’t computerized, there was no easy way to do a search and cross-tab for anyone who had visited Pakistan or handled a Pakistani agent. It all had to be done by hand.

Marx went back to the registry of cryptonyms and looked for all the cases with the AC digraph, which marked the agents as Pakistani. It took her the rest of the afternoon to pull together the information, but it was worth the trouble. She realized that she had been looking at a piece of a larger Pakistan operation.

There were fully nineteen cases, including the four that had been handled by Howard Egan. The others had been run by case officers who were based in Paris, Beirut, New Delhi, Cairo and Amsterdam.

Armed with the agents’ code names, she went back to the inner file of true names and began to assemble the picture. The Hit Parade had recruited senior officials from all three major Pakistani political parties; it was paying money to the leaders of four more tribes in the frontier areas, two in North Waziristan, one in Orakzai and one in Malakand. It had two more agents from Kashmir on the payroll, and three prominent Pakistani clerics.