The Company: A Novel of the CIA (109 page)

"It is a worst-case scenario," Andropov said, "but I believe that the imperial ambitions of Reagan, aggravated by his tendency to view us as an evil empire, to use his own words, justify a worst-case conclusion." Andropov's right hand appeared from under the blanket. He leaned over the bedside table and scratched the words "Approved and sanctioned," and, in a clumsy script, his full name on the bottom of the six-line authorization order designated, 127/S-9021, that Starik had prepared. "I consent to KHOLSTOMER," he announced in a gruff whisper. "I instruct you to launch the operation before the end of November."

The General Secretary's head sank back into the pillow in exhaustion. Starik said, softly, "I will do it, Yuri Vladimirovich."

3

SOMEWHERE IN AFGHANISTAN, SUNDAY, OCTOBER 23, 1983

IBRAHIM'S BAND, SOME SIXTY IN ALL, TRAVELED BY NIGHT, SOMETIMES ON foot, sometimes on donkeys, occasionally in canvas-covered trucks driving without headlights not only as a matter of security, but because Afghans believed vehicles used less gasoline when they ran without headlights. Everywhere they went, peasants offered them shelter and shared the meager rations of food left to them after the passage of Russian commando units. Everyone recognized Ibrahim and he seemed to know dozens by name. The group would turn off the trail as soon as the first silver-gray streaks of light transformed the tops of the mountains high above them into murky silhouettes. Closely guarded by the mujaheddin, Anthony and Maria were led along narrow tracks marked by whitewashed stones. Scrambling up footpaths, they would reach one of the half-deserted, half-destroyed hamlets clinging to the sides of steep hills. Each hamlet had its mosque, surrounded by the stone houses that had not been destroyed in Russian air raids, and the rubble of those that had been hit. Inside common rooms fires blazed in soot-blackened chimneys. Calendars with photographs of the Kaaba at Mecca or the Golden Dome Mosque in Jerusalem were tacked to unpainted plastered walls next to the mihrab—the niche that marked the direction of Mecca. Pistachios and nabidth, a mildly alcoholic drink made of raisons or dates mixed with water and allowed to ferment in earthenware jugs, would be set out on linoleum-covered wooden tables. One morning, after a particularly arduous night-long march, a boy set a porcelain bowl filled with what looked like cooked intestines in front of Maria. She made a face and pushed it away. When Ibrahim taunted her, Maria—who had been raised in Beirut by her Lebanese-American father—retorted with an old Arab proverb, "Yom asal, yom basal"—"One day honey, one day onions."

Ibrahim, a moody man who could explode in rage if he thought Islam was being mocked, spit out, "What do you Westerners know of onions? Here everyone has suffered, and deeply, at one time or another."

Hoping to draw biographical details out of Ibrahim, Anthony asked, "Are you speaking from personal experience?"

His eyes clouding over, Ibrahim stared out a window; clearly the story was distressing to him. "It was in the middle seventies," he recounted. "The Iranian SAVAK arrested me when I was transiting Tehran in the mistaken belief that I worked for Iraqi intelligence. This was before the start of the Iran-Iraq war when tension between the intelligence services ran high. The terrible part was that I did not know the answers to their questions so I was powerless to stop the torture, which lasted for three days and three nights. There are still moments when I feel the pliers biting into the nerves on my right arm and the pain shooting to my brain, and I must clamp my lips shut to keep from screaming." Beads of sweat materialized on Ibrahim's upper lip as he sipped nabidth from a tin cup. "I live with the memory of searing pain," he continued. Ibrahim retreated into himself for some time. Then, almost as if he were talking to himself, he picked up the thread of the story. "Believe me, I do not hold it against the Iranians. In their place I would have done the same. I have been in their place, here in Afghanistan, and I have done the same. When I convinced the SAVAK of my innocence they again became my comrades in the struggle against imperialism and secularism."

A thin boy who had lost a leg to a mine hobbled in on one crude wooden crutch deftly balancing a straw tray filled with small cups of green tea. Ibrahim distributed the cups and sat down cross-legged on a frayed mat to drink one himself. From high above the hamlet came the whine of jet engines. A mujaheddin darted into the room and reported something to Ibrahim. He muttered an order and his men quickly extinguished all their gas lamps and candles, and the small fire in the chimney. From another valley came the dull thud of exploding bombs. In the darkness Ibrahim murmured a Koranic verse. From the corners of the room, some of the fighters joined in.

On the evening of the tenth day of the journey, Ibrahim led his band and the two prisoners to the edge of a riverbed that cut through a valley. A rusted Soviet tank lay on its side, half submerged in the water. In twos and threes, the mujaheddin crossed the gushing torrent in a bamboo cage suspended from a thick wire and tugged across by hand. Maria clutched Anthony's arm as the two of them were pulled over the raging river. Once on the other side, Ibrahim set out in the pale light cast by a quarter moon clawing up steep tracks filled with the droppings of mountain goats. After hours of relentless climbing they reached a narrow gorge at the entrance to a long canyon. Steep cliffs on either side had been dynamited so that the only way into and out of the canyon was on foot. Inside the gorge, the trail widened and the terrain flattened out. Hamlets of one-story stone houses lay half-hidden in the tangle of vines that grew over the slate roofs. Vintage anti-aircraft cannon covered with camouflage netting could be seen in the ruins of a mosque and the courtyard of a stable. In the pre-dawn murkiness men holding gas lamps emerged from doorways to wave scarfs at Ibrahim. The Pashtun headman of one hamlet buttoned a Soviet military tunic over his Afghan shirt, buckled on an artificial leg and hobbled over to shake hands with the mujaheddin as they passed in single file. "Your courage is a pearl," he intoned to each. Further up the trail, the group reached a mud-walled compound with a minaret rising from a mosque in the middle and a line of mud-brick houses planted with their backs against a sheer cliff. Smoke spiraled up from chimneys, almost as if Ibrahim and his warriors were expected. A young woman appeared at the doorway of one of the houses. When Ibrahim called to her, she lowered her eyes and bowed to him from the waist. Two small children peeked from behind her skirt.

"We are arrived at Yarhrib," Ibrahim informed his prisoners.

Lighting a gas lamp, Ibrahim led Anthony and Maria up to an attic prison. "This will be your home until the Americans agree to deliver missiles in exchange for your freedom. Food, tea, drinking and washing water will be brought to you daily. The ceramic bowl behind the curtain in the corner is to be used as a toilet. You will lack for nothing."

"Except freedom," Maria said scornfully.

Ibrahim ignored the comment. "For one hour in the morning and another in the afternoon you will be permitted to walk in the compound. Guards will accompany you at a distance. If you hear the wail of a handcranked siren, it means Russian planes or helicopters have been spotted so you must take shelter. I wish you a good nights sleep." He looked hard at Anthony. "Tomorrow, God willing, we will begin your interrogation," he said softly. "Prepare yourself." With that Ibrahim backed down the ladder, lowering the trapdoor behind him.

Anthony looked across the room at his companion. Her collarless shirt was soaked with sweat and plastered against her torso just enough for him to make out several very spare ribs. Maria removed her boots and stretched her feet straight out and, unbuttoning the top two buttons of her shirt, absently began to massage the swell of a breast. Shivering in her damp clothes, she shed for the first time the tough exterior that she had gone to great pains to project—the ballsy female journalist who could hold her own in a male-dominated profession. Out of the blue she said, "We're fooling ourselves if we think we're going to get out of this alive."

Anthony watched the flame dancing at the end of the wick in the gas lamp. The truth was that the mention of an interrogation had shaken him. He remembered Ibrahim's account of being tortured by the Iranian intelligence service.
In their place I would have done the same. I have been in their place, here in Afghanistan, and I have done the same.
Anthony wondered how much pain he could stand before he cracked; before he admitted to being a CIA officer and told them what he knew about the Company's operations in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Glancing again at Maria, he saw how miserable she was and tried to raise her spirits. "Man is a victim of dope in the incurable form of hope," he recited.

He smiled in embarrassment. "I had a lit teacher at Cornell who made us memorize Ogden Nash—he said it would come in handy when we were trying to impress girls."

She smiled weakly. "Are you trying to impress me, Anthony?"

He shrugged.

She shrugged back. "If we ever get out of here—"

"Not if. When. When we get out of here."

"When we get out of here we'll start from scratch. You'll quote Ogden Nash and I'll be suitably impressed, and we'll see where it goes."

As Ibrahim made his way across the compound toward the two prisoners the next morning, a beardless young man wearing a dirty white skullcap fell in behind him. He had a dagger wedged into the waistband of his trousers and an AK-47 with spare clips taped to the stock slung from a shoulder. A yellow canary, one of its legs attached to a short leash, perched on his forearm.

Anthony had noticed the lean young man hovering near Ibrahim on the long trek across the mountains and had nicknamed him the Shadow. "Why do you need a bodyguard in your own village?" he asked him now.

"He is not here to guard my body," Ibrahim replied, "He is here to make sure that it does not fall alive into the hands of my enemies." He gestured with a toss of his head. "Come with me."

Maria and Anthony exchanged anxious looks. He tried to smile, then turned to follow Ibrahim and his Shadow toward the low building at the far end of the compound. Pushing through a narrow door, he found himself in a whitewashed room furnished with a long and narrow wooden table and two chairs. A 1979 Disneyland calendar was tacked to one wall. Three of Ibrahim's young fighters, scarves pulled across their faces so that only their eyes were visible, leaned impassively against the walls. Ibrahim's Shadow closed the door and stood with his back to it next to a pail filled with snow that had been brought down from the mountains earlier that morning. Ibrahim settled onto one of the chairs and motioned for Anthony to take the other one. "Do you have any distinguishing marks on your body?" he asked his prisoner.

"That's a hell of a question."

"Answer it. Do you have any tattoos or scars from accidents or operations or birth marks?"

Anthony assumed Ibrahim wanted to be able to prove to the world that the diplomat named McAuliffe was really in his custody. "No tattoos. No scars. I have a birthmark—a dark welt in the form of a small cross on the little toe of my right foot."

"Show me."

Anthony stripped off his sock and Clark boot and held up his foot.

Ibrahim leaned over the table to look at it. "That will serve nicely. We are going to amputate the toe and have it delivered to your American Central Intelligence Agency in Kabul."

The blood drained from Anthony's lips. "You're making a bad mistake," he breathed. "I'm not CIA. I'm a diplomat—"

Ibrahim's Shadow drew the razor-edged dagger from his waistband and approached the table. Two of the warriors came up behind the prisoner and pinned his arms against their stomachs.

Anthony started to panic. "What happened to that famous Pashtun moral code you told us about?" he cried.

Ibrahim said, "It is because of the moral code that we brought snow down from the heights. We do not have anesthetics so we will numb your toe with snow. That's how we amputate the limbs of wounded fighters. You will feel little pain."

"For God's sake, don't do this—"

"For God's sake, we must," Ibrahim said.

The last of the warriors brought over the pail and jammed Anthony's bare foot into the snow. Ibrahim came around the table. "Believe me, when the thing is accomplished you will feel proud of it. I counsel you not to struggle against the inevitable—it will only make the amputation more difficult for us and for you."

Anthony whispered hoarsely, "Don't hold me down."

Ibrahim regarded his prisoner, then nodded at the two warriors pinning his arms. Very slowly, very carefully, they loosened their grip. Anthony filled his lungs with air. Tears brimmed in his eyes as he turned away and bit hard on his sleeve. When it was over Ibrahim himself pressed a cloth to the open wound to stop the bleeding. "El-hamdou lillah," he said. "You could be Muslim."

Five days later, with Anthony hobbling on a makeshift crutch next to Maria during one of their morning walks, Ibrahim's prisoners witnessed the arrival of the gun merchant. A swarthy-skinned man with a long pointed beard, he wore opaque aviator's sunglasses and a Brooklyn Dodgers baseball cap with a handkerchief hanging off the back to protect his neck from the sun. He and two black Bedouins drove a line of mules charged with long wooden crates through the main gate and began unpacking their cargo onto woven mats. In short order they had set out rows of Chinese AK-47 assault rifles, American World War II bazookas, German Schmeisser MP-40s, as well as piles of green anti-tank mines with American designations stenciled on them. As the morning wore on, mujaheddin drifted up to the compound from the hamlets spread out below it and began to inspect the weapons. Some of the younger fighters looked as if they had stumbled into a candy store. Calling to his friends, a teenager wearing camouflage fatigues rammed a clip into an AK-47 and test fired a burst at some tin cans atop the back wall, causing the mules to bray in fright. Ibrahim, followed by his everpresent bodyguard, appeared from one of the stone houses set against the cliff to talk with the gun merchant. Tea was brought and they settled onto a mat to haggle over the prices, and the currency in which they would be paid. The two men came to an agreement and shook hands on it. Rising to his feet, the gun merchant noticed the two prisoners watching from a distance and apparently asked his host about them. Ibrahim looked across the compound, then said something that caused the gun merchant to turn his head in Anthony's direction and spit in the dirt.