Bloodmoney

24

The people of the Tribal Areas have a fondness for proverbs, and there is one that sounds like this in the Pashto language: “Khar cha har chaire hum law she, bia hum hagha khar we.” The literal meaning is that a donkey will remain a donkey, no matter where it goes. Or, to put it more elegantly: Nature cannot be changed.

When Lieutenant General Mohammed Malik first heard this saying from one of his Pashtun case officers, he knew that it expressed a truth about the people of the frontier region: They were what they were; they could be pushed and prodded, but not changed. Money, flattery, pressure, guns-these might convince the donkey to move a little to the left or right, but they did not change its character. The people lived by their Pashtunwali, their tribal code. Its pillars were personal honor, the obligation to avenge an insult, and the chivalry that allowed the stronger man to be generous toward the weaker one.

General Malik recalled these tenets as he traveled toward Peshawar on his way into the Pashtun heartland. He had received a call the day before from one of his ISI officers in the field. A member of the Al-Tawhid brotherhood had been captured in Bajaur Agency in the far northwest. He was carrying an unusual piece of information that the local case officer did not understand. The man seemed ready to talk, but he was not yet talking. The ISI case officer did not want to pass the information up the chain of command. He wanted General Malik himself to come to Malakand Fort, to interview the Tawhid courier and see his documents.

General Malik set off at dawn in his Land Cruiser. He traveled in a small convoy this time, one vehicle ahead and one behind, with bodyguards armed against an ambush. He planned a stop in Peshawar on the way, to meet with the major general who headed the Frontier Corps, the constabulary force that was supposed to keep the peace in the Tribal Areas and sometimes did.

As the Grand Trunk Road neared the outskirts of Peshawar, a great reddish mound became visible. From a distance it looked like a small hill with a garrison arrayed across the flat-top summit. This was the Bala Hisar fort, which since the sixteenth century had controlled the entry to the Khyber Pass, thirty miles to the west, and thus the gateway between Afghanistan and the great Indus Valley that contained the modern nations of Pakistan and India.

The general’s convoy was waved through a checkpoint and took the steep road up this man-made hillock. In the courtyard atop the fort, a company of Frontier Corps guards mustered for his welcome. They wore the tunics and daggers of the British Raj, and their units were still called by the same names: the Khyber Rifles, the South Waziristan Scouts, the Bajaur Scouts and a half dozen others.

The corps commander greeted him. He was a big man, well over six feet, with a large belly and a growth of stubble on his face. He was a Pashtun himself, the descendant of the princely family that had ruled the ancient trading city of Bannu, a stopping point between Peshawar and Quetta. He knew how to run the frontier in the old-fashioned way, but he was not a man suited for the ISI’s intelligence game. If he encountered an adversary, his instinct was to shoot him, rather than recruit him.

General Malik pumped for information about Al-Tawhid. Was the group still growing in Bajaur and the Waziristans? Was the Tawhid content to attack the Americans and their Afghan allies across the border, or was it threatening Pakistan? The general would never have admitted it to the outside world, but the ISI was prepared to tolerate the Tawhid so long as it didn’t directly challenge the government. A double game was manageable, but not a triple game.

The Frontier Corps commander answered as best he could: Al-Tawhid lived village to village, operation to operation. It had not attacked the Frontier Corps yesterday, or for six months of yesterdays, but it could do so easily tomorrow. Its operatives were here on the frontier, but they were in the settled areas, too: in Karachi and Lahore and Quetta, and in Islamabad itself. General Malik nodded his agreement; he knew the reach of this “brotherhood” too well.

“These Tawhid are cocky buggers,” said the corps commander. “To rule the frontier, you need a big wallet and a big gun. These miscreants have neither, and they have been punished by the drones. But still they think they can take on America. I do not see it. Under their turbans, they are just men. They pretend to know, but what can they know? They are little men with big Korans.”

The corps commander, with his protruding gut and his rough speech, had unwittingly stated the problem that concerned General Malik. What did the Tawhid know? Where did these “little men” get the information that allowed them to poke the giant? The ISI had picked up the chatter, about a learned professor and his secretive ways. But the analysts didn’t understand what it meant, and that troubled the general. There were so many professors on the ISI payroll already; was this master miscreant one of them?

The ISI chief continued in his convoy toward Malakand. They traveled north through the dusty plain of Mardan, lined with roadside stalls and small shops. The general smiled every time he saw a billboard depicting a Kalashnikov rifle. It was the insignia of a laundry powder bearing the same name. Only the Pashtuns would make an assault rifle the symbol of cleanliness.

As they pressed on, in the lee of Mohmand Agency to the west, the road began to rise toward the mountains. The gaily decorated trucks, laden with their cargos, slowed nearly to a crawl and the general’s convoy weaved back and forth on the two-lane road, narrowly missing cars in the descending lane. As the switchbacks grew steeper, the traffic sometimes halted altogether, while the general’s driver beeped indignantly on his horn and muttered Punjabi curses.

They eventually reached Malakand Pass, and just beyond it they came to the old fort that guarded this portal through the mountains. It was a tidy garrison, little changed in the sixty-five years since the British had left. The convoy drove past a company of infantry soldiers mounting their vehicles for patrol and continued on to a small brick house at the edge of the compound. A man in civilian clothes was waiting. This was Major Tariq, the local ISI officer who had summoned General Malik.

The major led his boss over a hill and down a path lined with blue pines and cedars. On this downward slope, the view opened to a magnificent valley in the distance: the Panjkora River rushing south through Dir District to meet the Swat River. It might have been an alpine vista in summer: the peaks framing the lush ground; the riverbanks lined with graceful alder and willow trees; the farms rich and green.

The major continued down the hill till he reached a pair of red-brick buildings. This was the local ISI station and, next to it, the combination guesthouse/stockade, depending on whom it contained. Today it was a stockade, and inside it was the man General Malik had come to see.

“Haj Ali” was the name the prisoner had given to Major Tariq. He had been captured in Bajaur two days before, trying to make his way across the frontier into Afghanistan. When he had searched the man, Major Tariq had found a flash drive, a portable data-storage device that could be plugged into the USB port of any computer. The major had installed the device on his laptop and examined the information. He hadn’t understood what it meant, other than that it looked important, so he had summoned the chief of his service.

General Malik entered the building that served as the local ISI station. On the wall he saw his own picture, neatly framed, along with portraits of his recent predecessors. Directors came and went, but the ISI was a permanent fixture in these parts; visitors to the major’s office might have been recruited by different ISI regimes, but the message was that they were all knitted into the same web.

Major Tariq unlocked the secure area at the rear of the room, where he kept his sensitive materials, and bade the general enter.

General Malik took a seat before the computer. The flash drive was already installed, and in a few moments the screen was alight. The drive contained just one brief document, an Excel spreadsheet that was designated “Registry.”

The general clicked on this document and the screen displayed four entries each with a difficult string of letters and numbers. There were no markings at the top to identify what each column represented, and they presented a confusing array.

The four entries were divided into two pairs and read as follows:

1) BANK JULIUS BAER BKJULIUS CH12 0869-6005-2654-1601-2 BAERCHZU 200 71835 BANK ALFALAH ALFHAFKA 720 34120

2) BARCLAYS BANK BARCLON GB35 BARC-4026-3433-1557-68 BARCGBZZ 317 82993 AMONATBONK ASSETJ22 297 45190

General Malik studied the short document, making a few notes to himself on a pad. At length, a puzzled general turned to his subordinate.

“What is this hallahgullah, Major?” he asked, using a local slang word that means confusion. “Is this what you brought me all the way to see? This is just numbers and letters. It is a banking directory.”

“Yes, sir.” The major bowed his head submissively. “But it means something, I am quite sure.”

“Everything means something, babu. But what? Have you questioned the man who was carrying it?”

“Only a little, sir. I was waiting for you.”

General Malik printed a copy of the document. Then he logged off the computer and removed the flash drive to take back with him to Islamabad. He asked the young case officer to stay behind while he walked to the other building in the compound, where the courier was confined.

The ISI chief stooped to enter the low-ceilinged room. It had the musty animal smell of a century of prisoners. The general swung open the shutters, and a bright shaft of light illuminated the form of Haj Ali. He was a young man, handsome even in the suffering of his confinement. He had an unmistakable Pashtun face: prominent nose, hard cheeks, thick black hair and beard and sharp, hooded eyes. He was shackled, his hands and legs bent tight against the frame of a wooden chair.

General Malik took a chair next to the window, so that the prisoner had to squint into the sunlight to see his visitor. For a long while, perhaps five minutes, the general didn’t speak. The captive courier strained against his shackles, making the muscles of his neck, face and arms taut with his resistance.

The general’s first word was a call to the major to come and unlock the metal cuffs. When the prisoner’s hands and feet were free, he stood for a moment, arched his back and then sat again in his chair with dignity. Major Tariq asked the general if he wanted a guard for protection, and the general said no, that he wanted to be left alone with the man.

The silence resumed, and as it continued, five minutes, ten minutes, it was the Pashtun man who became restless. He looked away, he cracked his knuckles, he coughed, he scratched his head. He was the one finally to speak.

“Nikka,” the prisoner began, using the Pashto word for grandfather. He quoted a famous warrior proverb, which the general had heard from other tough mountain fighters: “When I die, let it be in the way of a brave man, so that that everyone feels grief, not like a scorpion or a snake whose death brings to all relief.”

General Malik did not answer. The silence returned so that it filled the low room. At last he addressed the prisoner. He spoke in a low voice, not of menace, but authority.

“Who are you, brother?” asked the general. “What are you doing here?”

“I am Badal. That is my name. I am vengeance. What am I doing? Until I was caught, I was traveling to Afghanistan to take revenge on my enemies, the American spies.”

“Achaah, ” said the general. It was an Urdu word that could mean assent or skepticism. “And how were you going to do this, Mr. Vengeance?”

“We know them, Nikka. We understand their secrets. We know where they go and who they meet. We will use this information to kill them, one by one.”

“I do not like these Americans, either. But I am smarter than you, brother. I do not announce it. I think you must be weak, to talk so defiantly but to have only your little arms and legs to carry you. I will get farther, I promise you. And do not call me nikka. I am not your grandfather.”

The young man shook his head.

“That is a lie, Nikka. You do not fight the Americans. You are their friend.”

The general ignored the taunt. He let the silence build again, and spoke after another minute had passed.

“I feel sorry for you, brother. You are a foolish young man. Those who know do not speak. Ask your superiors in the Tawhid. They will tell you. I think I am finished with you. You have not earned my respect.”

The courier studied the general. This was not what he had anticipated. Every fighter expects to be beaten if he is captured, and he tries to prepare for torture. To be treated as a dangerous man is a mark of honor. But the fighter’s dignity had been challenged by the general’s scorn. He puffed his chest and thrust his chin up like a fighting cock.

“We know their secrets,” the courier repeated. “We will take them down, just as we did their agents in Karachi and Moscow. We see everyone and everything.”

“So that was your operation, then, in Moscow?” asked the general, inclining his head forward in a bow of respect.

“Of course, and there will be more to come, thanks God. Wait and you will see. It is not a lie. We know everything.”

General Malik sat back. He studied the prisoner and then shook his head.

“No, I do not believe it. If you were as important as you say, you would be carrying documents across the frontier. But we have looked at that little thing, that little chicken prick that you were carrying in your pocket. We have studied it, brother, and we know that it is just a few numbers and banks. If that is your big secret, then you are kutti da putr, as we say in the Punjab, the son of a dog.”

Now the courier was truly upset. He had been insulted, and he reacted in the way the general knew he would.

“You are wrong, Nikka. The proof of my words will come soon when more American agents are dead. Why do you think I was carrying the computer stick? Because I am taking the knowledge that it contains to my brothers in Afghanistan, and they will take it north, to Dushanbe. If I am caught, what of it? There are others on the road, and not just to Kabul. They travel to Cairo and even London and Paris. Soon the whole earth will be aflame and the American spies will not be able to walk upon it, anywhere.”

“The document has the names of banks in Afghanistan and Tajikistan. Are the banks part of your plan for vengeance?”

“Ah, sir, that I do not know. I am a fighter, not a clerk. I do not study this computer stick, so I do not know what is on it. You are unlucky, sir. You have captured me for nothing.”

The general fell silent again, and not just for effect. He was thinking carefully about what the courier had said and trying to fit it with other things that he knew. After another long minute, during which the young man became restless again, the general posed a new question.

“Tell me about the man you call the professor. Do you know him?”

“No, Nikka, I do not know this man.”

“But you have heard of him. Do not lie, because I will find out and it will be worse for you later.”

The young man shrugged. “Of course I have heard his name. He is our sword, the professor. He is the one who knows. But I have never met him. Nobody meets him. He is the ghost. And now I am happy that you are asking, because it means you do not know who he is.”

“Do you think your computer stick comes from him?”

“Perhaps. Why not? I do not know. But it has the secrets, so maybe it comes from the professor. But I will never know. Nor will you, old general.”

“Are you lying to me, Haj Ali?”

“I am a fighter. I am Badal. I am taking vengeance for the death of my brother and my uncle and restoring the honor of my family. Why would I lie? You can beat me for a week and a month and a year, but you will learn nothing more than what I have told you.”

They did try to beat it out of him, of course. But, true to his word, he did not give up any more of the secret. General Malik observed the first interrogation session, back in Aabpara where they brought the prisoner, hooded for questioning. The general did not watch after that. He didn’t like torture, but more than that, he knew that in this case it would do no good. The man was just a courier. He didn’t understand the secrets of the letters and numbers himself. He only knew that they were deadly to the United States. They couldn’t let the courier go, after all that had happened. He died on his way to a prison in Lahore.

General Malik wondered whether he should share with the Americans what he had learned. He decided against it. It was not his job to protect intelligence agents of the United States, especially ones who were acting illegally inside his country. A simpler man would have set the Tawhid loose so they could bloody a few more faranghi spies, and gone off to the mosque to say his prayers. But General Malik was cursed with a Western trait: He brooded about his mistakes; he felt guilty about what he had left undone.

What did he really know? He had a four-item spreadsheet of numbers and letters. He would ask his analysts to explore what this intelligence meant, and then he would consider what to do with it. But it was not his problem. He would say to the Americans, much as they had said to him, lund te char. Hop on my dick.