The Company: A Novel of the CIA (106 page)

When he'd finished his bowl, Ibrahim belched and leaned back against the wall. "While you are with me," he said, "you will be treated, in so far as it is possible, as guests. I counsel you to rest now. At sunset we will set out on a long journey." With that, Ibrahim removed his cap and, drawing his knees up to his chin, curled up on two cushions. Within moments, so it seemed, he was sound asleep.

Maria pulled a pad from a pocket and filled a page with tiny handwriting. Manny caught Anthony's eye and, nodding toward the two small windows covered with thick iron grilling, mouthed the word "escape." The two leaned their heads back against the wall but sleep was impossible. From the next room came the unrelenting moaning of the wounded man, and from time to time a muffled cry of "lotfi konin" repeated again and again.

Near midnight, one of the old men who had been tending the wounded man came into the room and touched Ibrahim's elbow. "Rahbar," he said, and he bent down and whispered something in the commander's ear. Sitting up, Ibrahim lit a foul-smelling Turkish cigarette, coughed up the smoke after the first drag, then climbed to his feet and followed the old man out of the room. The wounded man could be heard pleading "Khahesh mikonam, lotfi konin. " Manny explained to the others, "He says, 'I beg you, do me a kindness. '"

The voice of Ibrahim intoned, "Ashadu an la ilaha illallah Mohammad rasulullah." The wounded man managed to repeat some of the words. There was a moment of silence. Then the sharp crack of a low-caliber revolver echoed through the building. Moments later Ibrahim strode back into the room and settled heavily onto the straw-filled pillow.

"He was a virtuous Muslim," he declared, "and a shaheed—what we call a war martyr. He will certainly spend eternity in the company of beautiful virgins."

Maria asked from across the room, "What happens when a virtuous Muslim woman dies?"

Ibrahim considered the question. "She will surely go to heaven, too. After that I cannot be sure."

Well before the first breath of dawn reached the clearing, the three prisoners were shaken awake and offered dried biscuits and tin cups filled with strong tea. Ibrahim appeared at the door. "You will be locked in the room while we bury our comrade," he said. "After which our journey will begin."

When he'd gone, bolting the door behind him, Manny sprang to his feet and went over to one of the small windows covered with iron mesh. He could make out four men carrying the corpse, which was shrouded in a white sheet and stretched out on a plank, across the clearing. Walking two abreast, a long line of mujaheddin, some holding gas lamps or flashlights, followed behind. The cortege disappeared over the rim of the hill. Anthony tried the door but it didn't give. Maria whispered, "What about the grille on the windows?"

Manny laced his fingers through the grille and tugged at it. "It's cemented into the bricks," he said. "If we had a knife or screwdriver we might be able to work it out."

Anthony spotted a can of insecticide in a corner. He picked it up and shook it—there was still some fluid left in it. "Give me your cigarette lighter," he ordered Maria.

Manny saw instantly what he was up to. He took the lighter and thumbed the wheel, producing a flame, and held it near the grille. Anthony raised the can's nozzle up to the lighter and sprayed the insecticide through the flame, turning it into a jury-rigged flame-thrower that slowly melted the grille. When three sides of a square had been melted, Manny bent the grille out. "You go first," Anthony said.

Manny didn't want to waste time arguing. He hiked himself up on the sill and worked his body through the small opening. Ragged ends of the grille tore his clothing and scratched his skin. Anthony pushed his feet from behind and Manny squirmed headfirst through the window and tumbled to the ground outside. Anthony squatted and Maria stepped onto his shoulder and started to wriggle through the opening. She was half out when the bolt of the door was thrown and Ibrahim appeared on the threshold. Anthony cried out, "Run for it, Manny!"

Ibrahim shouted an alarm. Feet pounded in the clearing outside the mud-walled building as the mujaheddin raced to cut off Manny. Cries rang out. Jeeps and trucks roared up to the lip of the clearing and played their headlights on the fields dropping away to a ravine. Shots were fired. In the room, Maria slipped back through the opening into Anthony's waiting hands. Her shoulders and arms bleeding from a dozen scratches, she turned to face Ibrahim. He motioned with a pistol for them to quit the building and came out into the clearing behind them.

The manhunt ended abruptly. The headlights on the Jeeps and trucks flicked out one after the other. One of the bearded fighters ran over and said something to Ibrahim in a low voice. Then he joined the others kneeling for the first prayer of the day. Rows of men prostrated themselves in the dirt facing Mecca. Ibrahim turned to Anthony as two of his men tied the prisoners' wrists behind their backs. "My fighters tell me the escaped prisoner is for sure dead." He stared out over the praying mujaheddin to the glimmer of light touching the top of the most distant mountain ridge, hunched like the spine of a cat. "So I think," he added, "but God may think otherwise."

2

WASHINGTON, DC, WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1983

THAT'S A LOT OF CRAP, SENATOR," DIRECTOR CASEY GROWLED INTO the phone. He dipped two fingers into the Scotch and soda and slicked back the last few strands of white hair on his scalp. "If there was a shred of truth to any of it I'd submit my resignation tomorrow." He listened for a while, screwing up his lips and tossing his head the way the senator did when he presided over the Select Committee on Intelligence. "Look," Casey finally said, cutting into the soliloquy, "everyone and his brother knows I ran the President's campaign. But what's-his-name in the Washington Post is out to lunch when he suggests I'm running his re-election campaign from Langley."

Casey held the phone away from his ear and let the senator drone on. He'd heard it all before: the motivating force in the White House was the President's popularity; the search for popularity drove policy; the best-kept secret in the capitol was that Reagan and his senior White House people were ignoramuses when it came to foreign affairs; the President had a hearing problem so you couldn't be sure, when you briefed him, that you were getting through to him; he never came right out and said no to anything, it was always Yes, well or Sounds all right to me but, uh, after which the sentence trailed off; decisions, when you managed to get any, filtered down from the White House staff and it wasn't certain where they came from; for all anybody knew Nancy Reagan could have been running the country. The terrible part was that it was all true, though Casey wasn't about to tell the senator that; Reagan had never fully recovered from the bullet that John Hinckley had pumped to within an inch of the President's heart two and a half years before. "The story that he can't locate his chief of staff's office—it's a bad rap, senator," he said, forever loyal to his old pal, Ron. "Reagan's a big picture man but he's been on top of everything I've brought up to the White House, up to and including the downing of the Korean 747 that strayed into Soviet air space two weeks ago."

Casey's daughter, Bernadette, stuck her head in the door of the den and pointed upstairs: the people her father was expecting had turned up. "Senator, let me get back to you—I've got some Company business to attend to." He listened for another moment, then mumbled "Count on it" and hung up.

"Tell them to come on in," he told his daughter.

Ebby, Bill Casey's Deputy Director Central Intelligence, had met the plane carrying Manny at McGuire Air Force Base and driven his son (after a hurried phone call to Nellie) straight out to the Director's new tan brick house in the posh development carved out of the old Nelson Rockefeller estate off Foxhall Road in northwest Washington. As they made their way down half a level and through the three sitting rooms, he told Manny, "Jack may turn up, too. He's worried sick about Anthony—if you have any gory details, for crying out loud keep them to yourself. No point in alarming him more than we have to."

"Anthony wasn't hurt or anything," Manny said. "It was plain bad luck that he and the Shaath woman didn't make it through the window. I still kick myself for going first—"

"No one faults you so don't fault yourself."

He stepped into the den and Casey came off the couch to seize his hand. "This is my boy, Manny," Ebby said.

Casey waved both of them to leather-covered easy chairs. "I don't need to tell you how glad I am you got your ass out of there," he remarked. Sinking back onto the couch, he asked Manny about the escape.

"Anthony gets the credit," Manny said, and he went on to explain how Jack's son had turned a can of insecticide into a blowtorch to burn away the wire mesh on the window. "I'd slipped through and Maria Shaath was halfway out when the guerrilla leader—"

Casey, renowned for his photographic memory, had read the cable that Manny filed from Islamabad. "The one who calls himself Commander Ibrahim?" he said.

"Commander Ibrahim, right. They'd just buried the fighter who'd been shot in the attack and Ibrahim turned up at the door and gave the alarm. In the darkness I scrambled down into a ravine and up the other side. Headlights came on above me, illuminating the area. There were shots. I threw up my arms as if I'd been hit and fell over the lip of a bluff. Then I just let myself roll downhill. After that it was a matter of walking for three days in the general direction of the rising sun."

The DCI, a lawyer by training who had been chief of the Special Intelligence Branch of the OSS at the end of World War II, savored the cloak-and-dagger side of intelligence operations. "You make it sound easy as falling off a log," he said, leaning forward. "What did you do for food and water?"

"Water was no problem—I came across streams and rivulets. As for food, I took a refresher survival course at the Farm before I went out to Peshawar, so I knew which roots and mushrooms and berries were edible. Three days after my escape I spotted a campfire. It turned out to be an Afridi camel caravan running contraband over the Khyber from Afghanistan. I gave them the five hundred-dollar bills hidden in my belt. I promised them that much again when they delivered me to Peshawar."

When Jack turned up Manny had to go through the escape again for him. Director Casey, whose lack of patience was legendary, fidgeted on the couch. Jack, his face tight with worry, asked, "What condition was Anthony in when you last saw him?"

"He wasn't wounded in the kidnapping, Jack," Manny said. "He was in great shape, and very alert."

The Director said, "As far as I'm aware, we don't have string on a Commander Ibrahim."

Jack said, "There was nothing in Central Registry. The Afghanistan desk at State never heard of him. The National Security people have no string on him either."

"Which means," Ebby said, "that he's just come out of the woodwork."

"Aside from the physical description Manny's provided, what do we know about him?" the Director asked.

"He spoke English with what I took to be a Palestinian accent," Manny offered. "Which could mean he was brought up in the Middle East."

"He might have cut his teeth in one of the Hezbollah or Hamas training camps," Jack said. He turned to the Director. "We ought to bring the Israelis in on this—they keep close tabs on Islamic fundamentalists in the Palestinian ranks."

"That's as good a place as any to start," Casey agreed. "What about the report from the Kalasha informant?"

Jack, quick to clutch at any straw, said, "What report are we talking about?"

Ebby said, "This came in late last night. We have an informant among the Kalasha, which is an ancient tribe of non-Muslims living in three valleys along the Afghanistan frontier, who claims that a Palestinian named Ibrahim had been running arms into Pakistan and selling them in Peshawar. According to our Kalasha, Ibrahim has made a trip every two months—he bought automatic weapons in Dubai, crossed the Gulf and Iran in trucks, then smuggled the stuff into Pakistan and up to the Tribal Areas on pack animals."

"Did your informant provide a physical description?" Jack asked.

"As a matter of fact, yes. The Kalasha said Ibrahim was tall and thin, with long hair and an amulet on his cap to protect him from sniper bullets. His right arm was partially paralyzed—"

"That's Commander Ibrahim," Manny said excitedly. "He ate, he manipulated his worry beads with his left hand. His right arm hung limply at his side or lay in his lap."

"That's a start," Casey said. "What else did the Kalasha have on this Ibrahim character?"

"He described him as a rabid fundamentalist in search of a jihad," Ebby said. "He dislikes Americans only slightly less than he despises Russians."

"Well, he's found his jihad," Manny commented.

"Which brings us to the fax that landed in the American consulate in Peshawar," Casey said, impatient to move on. His expressionless eyes regarded Ebby through oversized glasses. "Are we sure it came from this Ibrahim character?"

"The fax appears to be authentic," Ebby said. "It was hand-printed in English, in block letters. There were two grammatical mistakes—verbs that didn't agree with their subjects—and two misspellings, suggesting that English was not the writer's native language. There was no way to trace where the fax originated, of course. It came in sometime during the night. Our people found it in the morning. It spoke of three hostages—Manny would have escaped by then but Commander Ibrahim probably thought he'd been killed and didn't want to advertise the fact, which makes sense from his point of view."

"They want Stingers," Jack said.

"Everybody out there wants Stingers," Manny noted.

"Not everybody who wants Stingers has hostages," Jack observed glumly.

Casey said, "I'm all for giving them Stingers—I'm for anything that makes the Russians bleed—but the praetorians around the President are chickenshit. They're afraid to escalate. They're afraid to make the Russians mad." The Director's head bobbed from side to side with the futility of it all. "How is it that we always wind up fighting the Cold War with one hand tied behind our back? Everything we do has to be so goddamned licit. When are we going to fight fire with fire? The Contra guerrillas in Nicaragua are a case in point. I have some creative ideas on the subject that I want to throw at you, Ebby. If we could get our hands on some cash that the Senate Committee on Intelligence doesn't know about—"