The Best American Crime Writing (23 page)

Police had never heard of the group, but the name sounded a gong at the Islamabad bureau of the BBC, which in late October had received a package from the National Youth Movement for the Sovereignty of Pakistan. Inside were an unplayable videocassette and a computer printout announcing the capture of an alleged CIA operative, “one Joshua Weinstein, alias Martin Johnson, an American national and a resident of California.” Also enclosed was a photograph of a male Caucasian in his thirties. Flanked by two robed and hooded men aiming AK-47s at his head, he was holding up a Pakistani newspaper showing the date of his abduction—just as Danny would months later.

U.S. embassy officials said at the time that no one named Joshua
Weinstein or Martin Johnson had either come to Pakistan or been reported missing, and that the letter was a hoax. When local police agencies and other Western embassies said the same, the BBC let it drop. But the release of the virtually identical Pearl materials got the BBC checking again with American diplomats. Was the first “kidnapping” truly a hoax? Why so many similarities between the October episode and Pearl’s abduction? The response was a studied silence.

Police, meanwhile, were focusing their suspicions on Harkat ul-Mujahedeen, the terrorist group that had hijacked the airliner to free Sheikh and Azhar. With a number of its members killed by U.S. air strikes, Harkat ul-Mujahedeen had the motive, as well as the MO, its predecessor group, Harkat ul-Ansar, being thought responsible for the kidnapping and presumed murder of a group of backpackers in India in 1995.

Trouble was, this didn’t have the feel of a jihadi operation. Where were the
allahu ahkbars
in the note? The riffs about Palestine and infidels and Western demons? There wasn’t even a mention of “Zionist conspiracy.” Instead, the demands read like an ACLU press release. The English was too good, too. Usage, spelling, and grammar were virtually perfect, and the few errors seemed deliberate, as if the writer was trying to hide his education. Jihadis didn’t have to feign lack of schooling; most were illiterate.

One investigator, inspired, typed “foreign,” “kidnapper,” and “suspect” onto
Google.com
and clicked search. The first listing that popped up was “Omar Saeed Sheikh.” No one believed it; couldn’t be that easy.

Within days, the elite Criminal Investigation Division determined the true identity of Arif and raided his house—where they found relatives in the midst of a Muslim prayer service for the dead. Arif had been killed fighting the Americans in Afghanistan, they claimed. No one believed that either, and a nationwide manhunt got under way.

The
Journal
, meanwhile, was moving on several fronts. Managing editor Paul Steiger issued a statement that Danny was not now nor ever had been an employee of any agency of the U.S. government, and the CIA broke long-standing policy to say the same. Foreign editor Bussey and correspondent Steve LeVine flew in to shepherd Mariane, whose Buddhist group was chanting a mantra for Danny. A media strategy was devised. Mariane made herself available for interviews, but only to outlets that had Pakistan reach, such as CNN and the BBC. Questions about what story Danny was working on were deflected, lest the truth cause him harm. Finally, a confidential appeal was made to major U.S. media organizations to not disclose that Danny’s parents were Israeli. All agreed.

But on January 30, Danny’s Jewishness leaked. In a story in
The News
, Kamran Khan, the paper’s chief investigative reporter, wrote that “some Pakistani security officials—not familiar with the worth of solid investigative reporting in the international media—are privately searching for answers as to why a Jewish American reporter was exceeding ‘his limits’ to investigate [a] Pakistani religious group.”

“An India-based Jewish reporter serving a largely Jewish media organization should have known the hazards of exposing himself to radical Islamic groups, particularly those who recently got crushed under American military might,” Khan quoted “a senior Pakistani official” as saying.

Having let the religious cat out of the bag, Khan—who doubles as a special correspondent for
The Washington Post—
revealed Danny’s relationship with Asra Nomani, whom he claimed—falsely—Danny had imported from India to be “his full-time assistant.”

“Officials are also guessing, rather loudly, as to why Pearl decided to bring in an Indian journalist,” Khan wrote. “They [are] also intrigued as to why an American newspaper reporter based in
[Bombay] would also establish a full-time residence in Karachi by renting a residence.”

Khan’s revelations stunned colleagues. But there was no wondering about the source of his information: He was well-known for his contacts at the highest levels of the ISI.

The same morning Khan’s story appeared, the kidnappers released a second note, changing Danny’s supposed spying affiliation from the CIA to the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service.

The language that followed differed radically from the first note:

This did not sound like Sheikh—and it wasn’t. A note later found on his computer read, “We have investigated and found that Daniel Pearl does not work for the CIA. Therefore, we are releasing him unconditionally.”

Having lured Danny, Sheikh had ceased calling the shots; Danny’s fate was now in the hands of more murderous others.

Investigators, however, were still concentrating on Gilani, who turned himself in on January 30, protesting his innocence and ticking
off the names of more than a dozen senior and retired officials who would vouch for his services to state security.

After interrogating Khawaja—who backed Gilani’s story—police began having second thoughts. Ul-Fuqra had never been involved with violence in Pakistan and indeed had become so inactive of late the State Department had dropped it from the terrorist list. Someone had set Gilani up. But who?

In Karachi, a newly arrived contingent of FBI men were tracing the source of the kidnappers’ e-mails, while Yusuf’s Citizens Police Liaison Committee was manually sorting the connections among 23,500 telephone calls. The effort paid off, with the identification of Fahad Naseem, an employee of a cyber café, as the sender of the e-mails and the linking of his phone calls to two other conspirators.

The police moved just after dark, heading off in unmarked vans to grab Fahad. If Pakistani interrogation methods had their usual brutal efficacy, Fahad would quickly lead them to the second kidnapper, who—likewise persuaded—would lead them to the third, who would rapidly decide that giving up the boss was in his best interest. When they got him, they’d have Danny. It all had to be pulled off by morning prayers at the mosque. After that, everyone in town would know.

Stops one, two, and three yielded the desired results. But they were stymied at four. They had the ringleader’s name, his phone number, his uncle’s Karachi address—before sunup, they even had his uncle, cousin, and aunt in custody. The aunt placed a call to his cell phone, begging him to surrender. Then the lead officer came on the line. “The game’s up, Sheikh,” he said. The answer was a click.

For days, nothing more happened. Sheikh appeared to have vanished, and there were no further messages from the kidnappers. Fake messages, though, were cascading in, including one which
said that Danny’s body could be found in a Karachi cemetery. Three-hundred-plus cemeteries were scoured; no body. But a fresh corpse was found in a vacant lot near the airport. Though the face had been rendered unrecognizable by a bullet, to Randall Bennett, who’d been summoned to the morgue, the victim seemed the right age, skin color, and body type. But something was odd about the mouth; ever so slightly, it seemed puffy.

“Roll back his lips,” Bennett asked. He let out a breath at the sight of metal. Danny had smiled often during their meeting; Bennett knew he didn’t wear braces.

On his way to visit George W. Bush, General Musharraf—who was now blaming India for the abduction—assured the world that all would be well. The case had been cracked; Danny’s release was expected any minute.

February 14, Sheikh made a liar out of him.

According to the police, he’d been captured in a daring raid in Lahore two days before. The truth was that he’d been turned over by Brigadier Ejaz Shah, home secretary of Punjab and formerly a hard-line officer of the ISI. Sheikh had turned himself over to Shah February 5, and for a week it had been hidden from the police. “Whatever I have done, right or wrong, I have my reasons, and I confess,” Sheikh said when he was brought before a magistrate. “As far as I understand, Daniel Pearl is dead.”

Police interrogated him for a week, a silent ISI man always present, but got little else. “You are my Pakistani and Muslim brothers,” he said. “You can’t be as cruel as Hindu policemen were with me in India.”

Then, one day, the lead investigator—the officer who’d said, “The game’s up, Sheikh”—visited his cell. They discussed the Koran, and the investigator said, “Show me in the Koran where it says you can lie.”

“Give me half an hour,” said Sheikh. He said his prayers and made his ablutions, and then he told them nearly everything.

He’d learned that Danny had been killed, he said, when he called Siddiqi from Lahore, February 5, and ordered, “Shift the patient to the doctor”—a prearranged code for Danny to be released. Siddiqi replied, “Dad has expired. We have done the scan and completed the X rays and postmortem”—meaning that Danny had been videotaped and buried. As he understood it, Sheikh said, Danny had been shot while trying to escape. Where the videotape was or what was on it, he said he didn’t know.

The sole subject he refused to discuss was the week he had spent with his ISI handlers.

“I know people in the government and they know me and my work” was all he’d say.

A week later the videotape was recovered in a classic sting. A man (authorities won’t reveal his identity) called a Karachi journalist (nor his) and said he had a tape of what had happened to Danny Pearl, and would sell it to the movies for $100,000. The journalist told the U.S. consulate, which instructed him to tell the man to bring it to the lobby of the Karachi Sheraton at four o’clock, where a movie producer would meet him. An FBI agent played the role to perfection.

They watched the tape on Bennett’s living room VCR—over and over, to make sure of its authenticity. But that was Danny, all right, shirt off, unconscious, on his back. A three-inch wound could be seen in his left side. A hand and part of a forearm came into the frame, holding a large butcher knife. The person wielding it seemed expert.

The rest you probably know by now. Mariane appeared on
Larry King
and signed a book deal and had her baby. People wept at memorial services for Danny in New York, Washington, Los Angeles,
London, and Jerusalem. As of this writing, Sheikh and three codefendants were still on trial. Everyone in Pakistan expects all of them to be convicted and sentenced to die by hanging.

You no doubt are aware, too, that Danny’s dismembered body was found in a shallow grave in the garden of a nursery outside Karachi in mid-May. The terrorists who led police to it said that Danny was picked up by a taxi outside the Village Garden, taken to a nearby location, put into a van there, and driven around Karachi for hours. He was very calm, they said, and did not resist. When at last they came to their final destination, he asked, “Where is the man I wanted to meet?”

His killing moved people who are normally very tough about such things. The lead investigator wept when he told Mariane Danny was dead, and for the first time in years working hazard posts, Randy Bennett let the grotesque get to him. He was coming back to the consulate after endlessly watching the videotape, and a Pakistani was standing in the street covered in the blood of a goat whose throat he’d just slit. Bennett saw a large butcher knife in his hand, then the man shot him an “I hate Americans” look. He slammed on the brakes, got out, and went up to him jaw to jaw. ‘You got a problem with me?” he said.

I never did answer the why of everything. Sheikh said that the reason was to strike a blow at Musharraf, while Musharraf himself said it was because Danny was “overly inquisitive.” And more than a few knowledgeable Pakistanis think the ISI was involved. When asked by
Vanity Fair
whether it shares that view,
The Wall Street Journal
issued a two-word written answer: “No comment.”

One why I was able to answer: Why did Danny risk everything for a story?

I didn’t need to go to Karachi to find out; I could remember.