Bloodmoney

9

“Lund te char” is a pungent curse in the Punjabi dialect. It means, literally, “hop on my dick,” or as an American would say, “Fuck off.” That had been the CIA’s message to Lieutenant General Mohammed Malik with this business in Karachi, and he did not like it. Nobody wants to be embarrassed in public, but there is a special sting when a man’s honor is his most precious possession. So it particularly wounded the general that a previously unknown unit of American intelligence had sent an operative into his country, without authority, and then had gone to such trouble to conceal it.

It was an insult. The ISI chief had considered whether he should do something to hurt the Americans back. That would have been easy enough to arrange, for there were so many ways the Americans, tied down by their expeditionary wars and short of breath, depended on their Pakistani allies.

But General Malik was not a rash or vindictive man. And the more he considered the situation, the more it seemed to him that before seeking to punish the Americans, he needed to understand better what they were doing. He needed to understand, in particular, how this new intelligence unit was choosing its targets. And to do that, it was necessary to travel to the remote territory where the Karachi operation had been aimed. This was not a project he could delegate to one of his case officers, much less to one of the agents on the ISI’s string. For, in truth, he did not trust his colleagues on anything truly sensitive, especially involving the United States. So he made the phone calls himself, and sent messages by other channels, to be sure that the ground was prepared.

The general set off with his driver at first light one June morning in his Toyota Land Cruiser. He winced when the SUV passed beneath the illuminated portrait of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and below it the words of the founder’s invocation in 1947: unity, faith, discipline. How little Pakistan had of all three, after nearly sixty-five years, but the general was a hopeful man, and at least he could be disciplined.

They rolled along the Grand Trunk Road toward their first stop, the military air base just west of Peshawar. The trucks heading toward the Khyber Pass were decorated like the wagons of the Raj days: The drivers’ compartments were made of wood-intricately carved and then painted in rainbow colors and decorated with tiny mirrors and scarabs to ward off the jinns of the hills. In his younger days, the general had found these trucks colorful and charming, but today they seemed just another sign of his dear country’s backwardness. He closed his eyes and tried to understand the puzzle of what the Americans were doing.

The general wanted to travel light, with as small a footprint as possible. So he had requested a one-engine Mashaq trainer, rather than the fat Mi-17 cargo helicopter the air wing commander recommended. The pilot still hadn’t been told the destination when the DG-ISI arrived. General Malik waited until the little propeller had started to whirl and then put on his headset and spoke into the microphone:

“Do you know Wana garrison in South Waziristan?” he said. The pilot nodded. “Take me there.”

The young pilot gave the thumbs-up sign. He was from Gilgit in the north, with the light skin and high cheekbones of the mountains. He had flown the Wana route often enough since coming to Peshawar, usually to ferry officers of the Frontier Corps to their garrison deep in this most remote of the tribal areas. But he had never, in all his flying days, transported a three-star general. The air wing commander filed a hasty flight plan for them, and they were off.

The flight took nearly two hours. They bumped over the low mountain ranges south of Peshawar, toward Orakzai Agency and then south across the ancient princely states of Bannu and Tank, which had for centuries been way stations for caravans coming north from Karachi and the Arabian Sea. At Tank, the pilot banked west and steered the little plane into South Waziristan.

The landscape below was a dry corrugated wilderness: desolate mountains, jagged ridges mile after mile toward the Afghan border. Think of the rolling sea in a typhoon, but with the endless brutal waves formed of dirt and rock. The heat of summer shimmered off these trackless hills, producing a low haze that made it look all the more like the devil’s land. It was a place for snakes and scorpions, bugs and vermin. A humble goat would get lost amid these rocks, let alone a human being. The region might be impassable to outsiders; but it was a fortress home to the Wazir, Mehsud and Darwesh Khel tribesmen. Farming was all but impossible in these barren lands, so the natives since the beginning of time had been fierce hunters and brigands.

After the plane crested a last arid peak, almost at the Afghan frontier, a broad valley opened below, and in the middle of this flat ground, improbably neat, stood the town of Wana. Here was a small oasis of cultivation: There were apple orchards and wheat fields, and the fortlike compounds of the residents, each clan living behind high mud walls with gun towers at the four corners to protect them from their plundering neighbors.

Western philosophers might talk abstractly about the state of nature as a war of each against all; but here, it was the simple fact of life. The word “cousin” in Pashto had the same meaning as “enemy.”

At the edge of the town was an asphalt airstrip, baking in the sun. The small plane circled the outpost once at high altitude to scout the terrain, and then corkscrewed steeply down to the landing field. When the plane rolled to a stop, the pilot popped the hood. A wind was blowing, so that the heat radiated over the tarmac with the scorching ferocity of a convection oven.

A jeep was waiting to meet General Malik. He drove a half mile to a Pakistani military camp, where he changed out of his uniform into the traditional tribal costume of the Pashtuns, known as a shalwar khamiz, with loose cotton trousers and a long shirt. When he emerged from the dressing room, he looked to be a different man. The military starch and polish had disappeared.

Another car was waiting for him; this one was a dusty Land Rover several decades old. The driver was a local man who had been recruited by the ISI from the Waziristan Scouts. The general gave him a map and explained that he wanted to go to a particular compound, some miles outside of town, which was the home of the khan who headed one of the powerful Darwesh Khel clans along the western rim of Waziristan.

The Land Rover rumbled along until the pavement became gravel, and the gravel became dust. As they neared the compound, they encountered a checkpoint manned by tribal militiamen. The driver spoke to one of the guards, who waved him through. The visitor was expected. They stopped at the brown walls of the homestead. They were next door to hell: A few miles farther on began the rough hills, radiating fire-red in the midday sun. But this compound was, if not paradise, at least a place of respite.

The gate creaked open, and a young man bade the general to enter. Inside was an oasis, hidden from the world: There were fruit trees and bright-blooming flowers, and the gurgling sound of water that flowed through a handsome fountain. The general followed the young man to the villa at the far end of the courtyard. As they walked, they could hear the chug-chug of the gas turbine that powered the air conditioners and other appliances. A door opened, and they were welcomed into a room decorated with a fine carpet, patterns woven in rose and turquoise, and red-velvet couches and a table piled high with fresh fruits and sweets.

The Darwesh Khel clan leader, Azim Khan, rose to greet the visitor. He wore his white beard trimmed, rather than in the woolly bush of his neighbors, because he was partly a city man. They exchanged a kiss of mutual respect and trust, and the host professed that he was honored: One of the most powerful men in Pakistan had come alone and unarmed to see him, bringing a blessing to his home. But the host was nervous, too. He feared that the visitor had come to punish him.

Azim Khan lived most of the time in Karachi, where he had land and villas, and a prosperous nephew who worked at Habib Bank Tower. But for the past week, the old man had gone to ground-returned to his tribal homeland and stayed within the mud walls of his compound. He was frightened and confused, and so he hid.

The khan summoned one of his grandsons to bring tea and a heaping platter of fruits, and then a tray of sweets for his guest. Then, when they had eaten and drunk, he asked the others to leave the room, so that he could talk with the visitor alone.

“Let us not pretend,” began the general. “It is enough for the others to tell lies. But between us, it must be only the truth. One lie and the clear water will become cloudy. Do we agree on that, my friend?”

Azim Khan put his hand on his heart, in a show of sincerity. “Koag bar tar manzela na rasagei,” he said, quoting a proverb in the Pashto language, which means, “A tilted load won’t reach its destination.” He translated it into Urdu for the general.

“I know that you were going to meet with the Americans last week,” said the general. “It was wrong, what you planned to do. But I forgive you.”

“Thank you, General Sahib. I do not deserve your mercy.”

“I want to talk with you about the Americans,” continued the general. “I need to understand what they want. Their actions confuse me. How many times have you talked with them?”

“Only once, sir. The second meeting was to take place a week ago. But that did not happen, as you know.”

“What did you discuss before, at the first meeting?”

“We were in the Emirates, sir. The American man asked me to come there, with my nephew. He said that they wanted peace with the Pashtun people, so that we would be their friends. They wanted to begin with the Darwesh Khel people, so that others would follow. All the wealth of America would assist us in this project, he said. I told him I would consider it.”

“Did he offer money personally to you, Azim Khan? Please be honest, my brother. Let there be no grit of lies in this pure brew we are sharing.”

“Yes, General. He wanted to make a gift. Of course he did. I told him our proverb. Sta da khaira may tobah da, kho das pie de rana kurray ka. ”

“And what does that mean? I am a Kashmir-born man, and I do not speak your Pashto language.”

“Sir, the words of the proverb say, ‘Don’t give me your alms, just save me from your dogs.’ I was trying to tell him that I could not help him with his enemies. But he wanted to give me the money anyway. It was a very large amount.”

“And what did you decide, Azim Khan, when you had thought about it?”

“Well, sir, I thought, if these foolish Americans want to give money to an old man with a white beard, why not? So my nephew told him that. Yes, I would meet him again and accept his gift. And he was coming to see me, this man, on the night he was taken.”

“How much money was he sending you, brother? No harm will come to you if you tell me the truth.”

“Well, General, I am embarrassed. But I will tell you. He was sending me two million dollars. It was wired to my account, from a secret fund. And he promised more money, much more, in the future if we worked together. He said it would be ten million dollars, maybe more. He would put it in an account, where I could go visit all this money. And there would be more money for other Pashtun people. I think they wanted to buy peace, sir.”

General Malik laughed. He did not mean to, but he could not help himself. He made a dismissive gesture with his hand, as if he were brushing something unpleasant away.

“ Dudh vich mingyan, ” he said, a Punjabi expression that means, literally, “rat turds in the milk.” “These Americans are the clowns of the world, are they not, my brother? They drop their bombs from the sky, and then when we get angry, they think of friendship. They think they can make war, and then charm us with money. Really, they bring mirth on a summer day.”

“Yes, General. We smile, but we have a saying for this, too, sir. ‘A stone will not become soft, nor an enemy a friend.’ These Americans think they can change all things with money, even the hardness of the stone. But they cannot.”

“So here is my question, Azim Khan, the thing that still puzzles me. How did they know to come to you, an elder of the Darwesh Khel? Are they this clever, that they understand our tribes and clans? Or has some Pakistani person told them on what doors they should knock? I think it must be the second answer, don’t you?”

“I am sure I do not know, sir. These Americans have advisers for everything, and perhaps for this, too.”

“Now I must ask you another question. It has been troubling me ever since the day this American man disappeared. We know who took him. They are the miscreants, the takfiris who hide in these mountains beyond, who think they are God’s assassins.”

The old man nodded sadly.

“But what I do not know is how these miscreants learned that the American agent was coming. And I am wondering, Azim Khan, I will not play the rabbit with you, I am wondering if it was you who told these miscreants about your meeting. Or your nephew, perhaps it was him.”

“No, sir. We did not say a word. Why would we do that? I am not a greedy man. But now my two million dollars has gone. I do not have it. You can turn over every stone from here to Bannu, but you will not find it because I never got it. And the ten million more that they promised, surely that is gone, too. How will I get that now, General? I cannot.”

General Malik had taken his chin in his hand, which was something that he did when he was pondering a question and did not have the answer.

“So how did the miscreants know of the meeting, Azim Khan, if you did not tell them?”

“Sir, there are secrets and there are mysteries, and this is a mystery. It is a problem for the Americans. They are leaving footprints that cannot be seen. But someone is tracking them, just the same.”

General Malik said his goodbyes. He left presents, as well, gifts that he had brought that, although they were not two million dollars, still brought a deferential nod from the clan leader, and rented his loyalty for a season.

The general got back in his two-seat Mashaq trainer and flew back toward Peshawar through the late afternoon. The summer clouds were forming to the east, hot and sticky, and the plane was buffeted like a shuttlecock, so that the pilot felt that he must apologize to his distinguished guest for the turbulence. But the general barely noticed the rough ride, for he was lost in his puzzle book.

Where did the information come from that drove the American operations? That was what the general wondered, and it had bothered him more each year since September 11, as the Americans squeezed for more from Pakistan. He knew they had their agents, of course they did. The ISI tracked them, and usually it found them out. But this was something more delicate and evanescent. It was as if the Americans had found a window on the culture itself, so that they thought not just about this secret or that, but about the social glue that held the place together.

Who could tell them such things, that was what troubled the general. Who would be smart and subtle enough to see the patterns and describe them to the Amriki? If General Malik encountered a person with such a subtle mind, he would want to hire him for the ISI-unless he was a traitor, in which case he would kill him.

General Malik had searched for such an agent, most diligently. He had conducted surveillance, made arrests, interrogated people in the most unpleasant ways, looking for the one who might be opening to American eyes the family secrets of Pakistan.

The general had conducted what the services in the West described as “mole hunts.” But he did not like the word “mole.” It made these people sound cute and furry. He preferred to call them by the local slang, gungrat, which means “dung beetle.” For that was what they were, burrowing into the shit of the motherland and then scurrying away to the West. But if there was such a dung beetle, the general had never been able to find him.

He was too smart, this one, too mindful of the ways of intelligence services, and the general had concluded that he must be a man who knew enough to erase his tracks even as he made them. He was out there, for a certainty, and as the little plane bumped over the last ridge of mountains and began its descent toward Peshawar, General Malik made a promise to himself that he would find this man someday, and punish him.