The Company: A Novel of the CIA (105 page)

"How do you know I saw Massoud?" Manny asked.

The young woman raised her very dark eyes, which were brimming with laughter. "I heard it from a rabid fundamentalist name of Osama bin Laden when I was drinking watered-down whiskey at the Pearl bar." She produced a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes and, when the two men declined, stabbed one into her mouth and lit it with a small silver lighter. "Have your paths crossed?"

When Manny shook his head no, she said, "Doesn't surprise me—he loathes the West as much as he loathes Russians, and America symbolizes the West. Bearded guy, thirtyish, gaunt, with a gleam of icy charm where his eyes ought to be. He's a full-time fund raiser for several of the mujaheddin groups. You guys might want to save string on him—the word on bin Laden is he inherited a few hundred million from his Saudi father and has big plans about how to spend it."

Manny flashed a knowing look in Anthony's direction. "Say hello to Maria Shaath, who has more balls than a lot of her male colleagues. She's famous for turning to the camera on a battlefield and saying: 'Afghanistan is a place where armed children with long memories set out to right wrongs done to the great-grandfarners of their grandfathers.' Maria, meet Anthony McAuliffe."

Anthony said, "I've seen you on TV."

Maria fixed her straightforward gaze on Anthony. "Another spook?" she asked sweetly.

Anthony cleared his throat. "I'm an attache at the American consulate."

"Yeah, sure, and I'm Maria Callas, come to entertain the mujaheddin at the Khyber Pass with arias from Italian operas." She turned back to Manny "He's green behind the ears—tell him the score."

"He's been flown in to work up a report on the weapon pipeline— the people who pay our salaries want to know how much of what they send to the Pak ISI is getting through to the folks actually shooting at Russians."

Maria helped herself to Anthony's mug of beer, then wiped her lips on the back of her small fist. "I could have saved you the trip out," she said. "The answer is precious little. Buy me dinner and I'll let you pick my brain." And she smiled a tight-lipped smile.

"Afghanistan is a can of worms," she said over a bowl filled with what the menu billed as chop suey. "It's a place where you can trade a copy of Playboy for a bottle of fifteen-year-old Scotch whiskey, and get your throat cut if you're caught sleeping with your feet pointed toward Mecca. Actually, there are a lot of overlapping wars going on: ethnic wars, clan wars, tribal wars, drug wars, religious wars, the Iranian Shi'ites versus the Afghan Sunni, taleb studying the Koran in their Pak medressas versus the Afghan diaspora in the secular universities, Massoud's Tadzhiks versus everyone, Saudi Wahhabi versus the Iraqi Sunnis, capitalists with a small C versus Communists with a capital C, Pakistan versus India."

"You left out the last but not least," Manny said. "The Afghan freedom fighters versus the Russians."

"There's that war, too, though sometimes it gets lost in the shuffle. Look, the truth of the matter is that the Americans only vaguely understand what's going on and, more often than not, wind up backing the wrong horse. You need to stop looking for quick fixes to long-term problems.

"We're not going to give them Stinger missiles, if that's what you mean," Manny insisted.

"You will," Maria predicted. "In the end the itch to get even for Vietnam will overwhelm sweet reason. Then, when the war's over the bin Ladens will turn whatever weapons you give them against you."

Anthony asked, "What would you do if you were the American President?"

"First off, I'd stop supplying weapons to the former Peugeot salesman who claims to be a descendant of the Prophet. I'd give the cold-shoulder to splinter groups which want to create the perfect Islamic state modeled after the seventh-century Caliphate."

"Are you saying Russian rule in Afghanistan is the lesser of two evils?" Anthony wanted to know.

"I'm saying you're laying the groundwork for the next disaster by settling for the quickest solution to the last disaster. I'm saying hang in there. I'm saying the journey isn't over until you've copulated with the camel."

Manny pulled a face. "Copulating with a camel is a high price to pay for getting where you're going."

Maria batted her slightly; Asian eyes. "Don't knock it if you haven't tried it."

Manny said, "Are you speaking from experience?"

Marie shot back, "Bilagh!"

Manny translated for Anthony. "That's the Persian equivalent of 'fuck you.'"

Laughing to herself, Maria went off to mooch a cup of coffee from Hippolyte Afanasievich Fet, the local KGB rezident. Fet, a mournful middle-aged man with sunken cheeks, was the laughing stock of Peshawar because of his uncanny resemblance to Boris Karloff. He was dining at a corner table with his much younger and deliciously attractive wife, and two male members of his staff.

Maria caught up with Manny and Anthony in the parking lot three quarters of an hour later. "Can I bum a lift back to University Town?" she asked.

"Why not?" Manny said.

The two bodyguards squeezed in next to the driver and Maria settled into the back of the car between Manny and Anthony. "What did Boris Karloff have to say?" Manny inquired.

"Hey, I don't tell him what you say to me," she remarked.

"But he asks?"

"Of course he asks."

Manny got the point. "I withdraw the question," he said.

The sun was dipping below the Suleiman Range as the car swung off Jamrud Road west of the airport and cut through the quiet, grid-like streets filled with consulates and plush private homes rented by US-AID officials and Pakistani brass and Afghan resistance leaders. The Company had a high-walled villa sandwiched between the estate of a Pashtun drug dealer and a warehouse filled with artificial limbs. Maria shared a house with half a dozen other journalists one street over. The Chevrolet slowed at an intersection to let a bus filled with children pass. A sign at the side of the road said in English: "Drive with care and seek help from Almighty Allah."

"There are two kinds of experts in Afghanistan," Maria was saying. "Those who have been here less than six weeks and those who have been here more than six months."

"Which category do you fall into?" Anthony asked. Up ahead, a cart pulled by oxen was blocking the street. Two men wearing long shirts and baggy trousers appeared to be wrestling with a broken axle. "I'm in the second category," Maria started to explain. "I've been here for seven months—"

In the front of the Chevrolet, the driver looked around nervously as he pulled up twenty meters from the cart. "Don't like this," he muttered. The bodyguard with the turban around his head tugged a .45 automatic from his shoulder holster. From behind them came the screech of brakes. Three Jeeps skidded to a stop, pinning the Chevrolet in their headlights.

"Dacoit," cried the driver. "Bandits."

The bodyguard with the shotgun flung open the door and dove for the ground and rolled once and fired both barrels at the nearest Jeep. One of the headlights sizzled out. The staccato rattle of automatic fire filled the night. Glass shattered. Dark figures loomed around the car. The driver, hit in the chest, slumped forward onto the wheel. The car's horn shrieked. The turbaned bodyguard fell to the right, his torso hanging half out of the open door. On the road, a man kicked the shotgun out of the hands of the bodyguard and rammed the muzzle of a rifle into his back and pulled the trigger. The bodyguard twitched, then lay still. In the Chevrolet, Manny wrestled Betsy from his shoulder holster. Before he could throw the safety, hands reached in and dragged him from the back seat. Bearded men hauled Anthony and Maria out the other door toward one of the two tarpaulin-covered trucks behind the Jeeps. Behind them, one of the assailants bent over the turbaned bodyguard to make sure he was dead. The bodyguard twisted and pointed his pistol and pulled the trigger at point-blank range, and a .45 caliber bullet with grooves hand-etched into its soft head shattered his attacker's shoulder. Another man wearing combat boots kicked the bodyguard hard in the head, then reached down and slit his throat with a razor-sharp Turkish yataghan.

In the back of the tarpaulin-covered truck, the three prisoners were shoved to the floor and their hands were lashed behind their backs with leather thongs. Foul-smelling leather hoods were pulled over their heads. Maria's muffled voice could be heard saying, "Oh, shit, this is all I needed." Under their bodies, the truck vibrated as the driver floored the gas pedal and rattled off down a side street. Minutes later the two trucks, running without headlights, bounced onto a dirt track and headed cross-country in the direction of the Khyber Pass.

Hippolyte Afanasievich Fet made his way through the maze of alleyways of the Meena Bazaar to the tattoo shop above the Pakistani acupuncturist with the colorful sign out front that read, "Eyes, Ears, Nose, Throat & Sexual Problems." The two bodyguards, unzipping their jackets so they could get at their shoulder holsters quickly, went up the creaking stairs first to inspect the premises. One emerged to say it was safe for Fet to enter. He went inside and sat down in the red barber's chair in the middle of the room, which was illuminated by a single forty-watt overhead electric bulb. Shadows danced on the woven straw mats covering the wooden walls. The floor was smudged with green from the naswar—the small balls of tobacco, lime and spices Pakistanis kept tucked under their lower lip—that had been expectorated by clients. From outside came the sound of two mountain tribesmen, high on hashish, urinating into the stream of sewage running along the curb.

Fet glanced at the telephone on the table and then at his wristwatch. One of the bodyguards said, "Maybe your watch is fast."

"Maybe it didn't come off," said the second bodyguard from the door.

"Maybe you should keep your opinions to yourselves," Fet growled.

At three minutes after midnight the phone rang. Fet snatched it off the hook. A voice on the other end of the line said, in heavily accented English, "Ibrahim is on his way to Yathrib. He is not alone."

Fet muttered "Khorosho" and severed the connection with his forefinger. He dialed the number of the duty officer in the Soviet consulate. "It's me," he said. "I authorize you to send the coded message to Moscow Centre."

The truck had been climbing a steep mountain track for the better part of three hours. At first light the driver, downshifting and veering to avoid shell holes filled with rainwater, steered the vehicle onto a level clearing and cut the motor. The tarpaulin was unlaced and flung back, the tailboard was lowered and the three prisoners, their wrists bound behind their backs, were prodded onto solid ground. Hands pulled the leather hoods off their heads. Filling his lungs with fresh mountain air, Anthony looked around. They were obviously in some sort of guerrilla encampment high in the mountains—though it was impossible to say whether they were still in Pakistan or had crossed into Afghanistan. Layers of blue-gray mountain ridges fell away to a cinereous horizon stained with veins of tarnished silver. Anthony had the feeling you could see for centuries, and said so.

"You're confusing time and space," Maria remarked sourly.

"I thought they were pretty much the same thing," Anthony insisted.

"Two sides of the same coin," Manny agreed.

"Exactly," said Anthony.

Around the guerrilla camp bearded men, some with blankets over their shoulders, others wearing surplus US Army coats, were loading arms and ammunition onto donkeys and camels. Nearby, yelping dogs brawled over a bone. Next to a long low mud-brick structure, a bearded mullah wearing a white skull cap read from the Koran to a circle of men sitting cross-legged in the dirt. At the edge of the clearing, a teenage boy fired a bazooka into a tree at point blank range, felling it in a shower of splinters. Then he dragged over a wheelbarrow and began to collect firewood.

Its engine straining, black exhaust streaming from the tailpipe, the second truck came up the mountain track and pulled to a stop on the flat. A lean and graceful figure emerged from the passenger seat. He was wearing a black turtleneck under a soiled knee-length Afghan tunic, thick English corduroy trousers, hand-made Beal Brothers boots and a brown Pashtun cap with an amulet pinned to it to ward off sniper bullets. His skin was fair, the hair under his cap long and matted, his short beard tinted reddish orange with henna. He had the dark, intense eyes of a hunter, with shadowy hollows under them that didn't come from lack of sleep. The fingers of his left hand worked a string of ivory worry beads as he approached the captives. He gazed out over the hills.

"Five years ago," he said, speaking English with the high-pitched, rolling accent of a Palestinian, "I was standing on this mountain top watching Russian tanks come down that road in the valley. My men and me, we sat on these stones all morning, all afternoon, all evening, and still the tanks came. We stopped counting after a time, there were so many of them. Many of the new recruits to the jihad came from the mountains and had never seen an automobile before, but Allah gave them the strength to war against tanks. They fired rockets at the tanks using hammers when the percussion mechanisms on the launchers broke down. Since then, many tanks have been destroyed and many mujaheddin have died. Against the tanks we are still making war."

From far below came the distant whine of jet engines, though no planes were visible. The men on the hilltop stopped what they were doing to stare down into the murky depths of the valleys. Flares burst noiselessly, illuminating the low ground haze more than the ground. Green and red tracer bullets intersected in the sky and napalm canisters exploded into bright flames on a thread of road that ran parallel to a stream. The fingers of the tall guerrilla leader kneaded the worry beads as he turned to face the three prisoners.

"I am Commander Ibrahim. You are on my territory. Pakistani law is behind us, Afghan law is ahead of us. Here Pashtunwali—the Pashtun moral code— is the highest law and I am its custodian."

Four mujaheddin pulled a stretcher from the back of the second truck and started toward the low mud-brick building carrying the warrior who had been shot by the bodyguard in the attack on the Chevrolet. What remained of his shoulder was held in place with a blood-soaked bandanna knotted across his chest. His body quaking, the wounded man groaned in agony. Ibrahim scooped brackish rainwater from a puddle with a rusty tin can and, propping up the wounded mans head, moistened his lips. Then he and the three captives trailed after the stretcher. Anthony ducked under a low lintel into a dark room that was filled with smoke and smelled of hashish. Half a dozen guerrillas too young to grow beards sat around a small potbellied stove sucking on hookahs. Two old men tended to the wounded man, who had been stretched out on a narrow wooden plank. One held an oil lamp above his shattered shoulder while the other peeled away the bandanna and coated the raw wound with honey. The prisoners followed Ibrahim into a second room. Here a young boy cut the thongs binding their wrists and, motioning them toward straw-filled pillows set on the floor, offered each a bowl of scalding apple tea. Ibrahim drank in noisy gulps. After a while the boy returned with a copper tray filled with food—each of the prisoners and Ibrahim was given a piece of nan, a flat unleavened bread baked in a hole in the ground, and a small wooden bowl filled with a greasy goat stew and sticky rice. Ibrahim began eating with the fingers of his left hand—Manny noticed that he hardly used his right arm, which rested in his lap. The prisoners, eyeing one another, ate hungrily.