Bloodmoney

28

They say the safest airline is the one that has just had a crash, because the crew takes extra precautions. On that theory, Sophie Marx decided that she would stay at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, which had been the target of a catastrophic truck bombing some years before and was for a time off-limits to U.S. diplomatic personnel. She reasoned that if it was officially regarded as dangerous, the hotel would be the safest place in Pakistan. She was traveling in alias, and she was not normally a fearful person. But on her way into town from the airport in the late afternoon, the air heavy with the heat of summer, she thought about calling her parents, with whom she hadn’t talked in more than a year.

It was dark by the time Marx arrived, and an improbable array of blue Christmas tree lights twinkled along the length of the hotel’s front security barrier. It was a horizontal concrete block decorated with faux-Oriental arches, topped by the too-red Marriott emblem. The design said “America in Pakistan,” once a selling point but no more. The facade had been rebuilt after the attack, with double-thick walls that were now advertised by the hotel as “bomb-proof.”

Marx was tired from the flight and wanted to remain anonymous for a few more hours. She took a swim in the hotel’s indoor pool and then dined alone in the Japanese restaurant. She told herself that this was just another operation; there was an element of danger whenever she traveled; this time it was just more palpable. She took a pill before going to bed, but she awoke in the middle of the night. She finally drifted off toward four o’clock with the television on.

The next morning, before breakfast, she sent a text message to the cell phone number she had been given for General Malik, saying that she had arrived. She described herself as Mr. Hoffman’s friend. Thirty minutes later, the phone rang and it was the general himself, inviting her to pay a visit later that morning.

“Gentle lady,” he said solicitously, “I will send a car to the Marriott at ten o’clock to pick you up.”

“How do you know I’m at the Marriott?” Marx hadn’t told him where she was staying, and she was supposed to be traveling under clean cover.

“Please, madam, this is my country. There is very little here that I do not know. Let us not get off to a bad start before we have even met.”

Marx said that she would be ready at ten. She knew then for a certainty that she was in danger. Her identity had been compromised within hours of her entry into Pakistan, and she had no good way to protect herself. If she tried to leave the country now, the ISI could stop her; if she tried to seek protection in the U.S. Embassy compound, the ISI could block her way. The Pakistanis could arrest her anytime they wanted. Her security was in the hands of someone she didn’t know and had little reason to trust.

The general’s Land Cruiser arrived at ten o’clock as promised. When Marx emerged from behind the security wall, the driver jumped out of the vehicle and opened the passenger door. She was dressed in a cloak and scarf in deference to local sensibilities, but the driver seemed to know who she was by her appearance. Was there anyone in Pakistan who didn’t know that she was coming?

Marx wished she could leave a trail of bread crumbs to find her way back home, as in the children’s fairy tale. The moment she entered the car, she was effectively General Malik’s prisoner.

They headed south on Ataturk Road, in the direction of the ISI’s headquarters in Aabpara. But rather than turning right on the Kashmir Highway toward the office, the driver continued south into Shakarparian Park, a lush expanse of green that bordered the city center. He left the main avenue for a gravel road that wound through a grove of trees and came to a security checkpoint, where a guard waved him through. The Toyota stopped at the road’s end at a guesthouse on the banks of a large body of water, which Marx knew from her maps must be Rawal Lake.

In the heat of midmorning, nothing was stirring. The surface of the water was smooth as glass, and the air was thick. The trees were barely green, more a light tan, their leaves baked like chips in the oven. Even the birds had gone silent. The driver escorted Marx to the guesthouse and opened the door, beckoning her to take a seat on the couch. The room was cooled by a noisy window box that throbbed and rattled against the heat. The driver brought a cool drink from the pantry and set it before the guest. Then he retreated out the door and locked it from the outside.

Marx waited for more than an hour before the general arrived. She searched for something to read and found only one book, The Defense and Foreign Affairs Handbook on Pakistan. She opened to the first page: “Pakistan is, indeed, a nation on the edge. Many of the critical challenges facing Pakistan today, however, are not of its own making.” It was America’s fault, India’s fault, somebody’s fault. She put the book aside.

She debated calling Cyril Hoffman to tell him where she was, but decided against it. The call would surely be monitored, and there was nothing Hoffman could do now, in any event. It was easier simply to admit that she was helpless.

Rain clouds gathered, and there was a brief shower, the raindrops falling straight down into the water on this windless day, perforating the surface of the lake with tiny dots. The shower ended as quickly as it had begun, and in an instant the bright sun returned. It was like being in a terrarium. Her hair felt wet and matted against her neck; she pinned up her ponytail so that it formed a bun.

General Malik arrived just after noon, accompanied by an aide carrying a laptop computer. The general was a courtly man, trim in his uniform, handsomer than Marx had expected. The aide placed the laptop on a table at the far end of the room; he plugged it into the wall, powered it on and then disappeared out the door.

“I am so very sorry to be late,” began the general. “It must appear that this was a deliberate slight, but I assure you it was not intentional. I was talking with Cyril Hoffman, to be quite frank with you.”

Marx nodded but said nothing. It was always a mistake to be ingratiating, especially for a woman. Better to let the general say what he wanted. When she didn’t answer, the general arched his thick black eyebrows curiously and then continued.

“I was talking with Cyril about you, as a matter of fact. I am a bit worried, you see.”

Marx kept her silence for another moment, but she needed to understand what he was telling her.

“Why are you worried, General? Here I am, ready to do business.”

“Because I think it is possible that others know you are here in Pakistan. To be more specific, madam, I am concerned that your presence here is known to the Tawhid organization that is responsible for the deaths of the other American intelligence officers.”

Marx studied him. This clipped and controlled man was famous for his dexterity at lying, but in this case she thought he was being truthful.

“How could they possibly know I am here? You must have told them.”

“Certainly not, madam. That is why I called Cyril. I wanted to inform him of this danger, you see, and to assure him that I had played no role in disclosing the fact of your visit. No, I am sorry to say that they learned of your travel quite on their own. That is the problem, you know. They have found you out.”

“How can you be sure they know, if you didn’t tell them yourself?”

“Please, Miss Marx. Do not let us trifle with each other. I know because it is my job to discover the secrets of these miscreants. I have agents among them. I overhear their conversations. I watch and listen. And I am telling you, with the greatest of regret, that based on this intelligence I am quite certain that they are aware of your travel to Pakistan.”

“Can you control them? Can you keep them from harming me?”

“ Achaah! ” He tapped his forehead with his hand. “That is what you Americans can never understand. To know is not to control.”

Marx thought a long moment. She didn’t want to be panicked or rushed. She watched the general’s eyes. They were dark brown, with a sparkle of light at the center. It was an intelligent face, if not quite an honest one.

“I believe you, General,” she said.

“Thank you.”

The tightness in his cheeks eased. He tried to smile.

“So I must ask you,” she continued, “how do they know that I am here? What is this methodology that allows them to monitor our movements? Mr. Hoffman told me that you have ideas about how they are targeting our officers. He said that it involves our financial networks. He said you would help. That’s why I came. Now the matter is a little more personal. I am quite in your protection.”

“You touch me, madam.” He put his hand on his heart. “Come, sit down with me at the computer and I will explain what I can.”

He gestured for her to join him at the table at the far end of the bungalow, where the screen of the laptop was glowing faintly. She rose and followed him across the room. He removed a small object from the pocket of his uniform. It was a computer flash drive. He fumbled with the drive, attempting to insert it in the USB port at the back of the machine.

“I am not very good at this, I am afraid. That is the problem with being a general. There is always someone younger and cleverer to do such things for me.”

Eventually he got the drive in place. He sat down at the computer and manipulated the mouse until he had clicked open the file from the external drive. A four-line Excel spreadsheet came up on the screen.

“This is what I wanted you to see,” said the general. “Mumbo jumbo, you will say. But look, please, and then we can talk about what it all might mean.”

He turned the computer screen toward her, so that she could read the document more clearly. It displayed the four strings of letters and numbers:

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.

He handed her a piece of paper that contained the same brief burst of information. That was his gift, for which he had summoned her, at considerable danger, from across the sea.

Marx studied the screen, trying to break the code. At length, she turned back toward the Pakistani officer. She was shaking her head.

“I want to understand what this means, General, but I am having trouble. It looks like bank routing numbers. Can you decipher it for me?”

“Perhaps I can,” he answered. “Not because I am smart about such things, which is very far from true. But I have a young major on my staff who is quite the computer buff. He has been helping me, you see, so that I could make some sense of this bloody nonsense.”

She took his hand and held it for a moment. It was a forward gesture for a woman in a Muslim country, but it was spontaneous and genuine.

“Please tell me whatever you can. I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, but it’s a matter of life and death.”

The general nodded, in deference to the woman’s distress.

“I will tell you everything, then, madam. I was not sure that I would do so. This is a complicated business for us. I do not need to explain. But now that I see you, and understand the risk you have taken to come here, I am quite ready to be helpful.”

“You are very generous. Thank you.”

“The first thing you need to know, madam, is that I obtained this computer device from a Tawhid courier we captured in the Tribal Areas just over a week ago. He was on his way into Afghanistan. During interrogation, he stated that the information on this device would help his group to kill American agents.

“The American agents are dead,” she said. “The latest victim was just killed in Kabul. I was notified before I left London.”

General Malik bit his lip. He shook his head. He appeared sorrowful, but that was only to hide his feeling of guilt. He had been warned that such an attack was coming and he had done nothing to stop it. That was the fact. He leaned toward her across the table.

“I am sorry for this, but it could not have been helped.”

She kept silent for a moment, but she was angry. The operative in Kabul had been her colleague. He had a wife and children.

“Yes, General, it could have been helped. You could have stopped the people who killed him. Or you could have told us. This is a strange friendship, where you watch our people get killed and don’t do anything to prevent it. We deserve better than this, don’t you think?”

He put his hands up, palms extended limply. “Please, please. This is not the time for recriminations. We have much for which we could reproach you. This is a tricky game, you know. We are not playing cricket on a nice green lawn. Perhaps I should go away. What is the use? It is the same old story: You blame us, we blame you.”

He pulled back his chair and rose, as if he were preparing to leave.

“Please stay, General. Talk with me. I am trying to be honest with you. It is a measure of my respect. We must understand each other, for it is a fact that we need your help.”

He bowed his head, not quite in deference. He was still standing.

“Please,” she repeated.

“Very well,” he said, taking his seat again. “We will not think about the past, but the future. Let me continue with my story. We intercepted this courier fellow. He was carrying the computer drive that I have shown you, containing the information that is on the screen there. He told us that there were others on the road carrying the same information. We did not understand it at first.”

“But now you do?”

“Yes. My clever major thinks he does, at least. These are bank codes, just as you say. They are numbered, one and two, for two American agents that the Tawhid was tracking. Let us look at the first line.” He pointed to the first line of code on the screen:

1) BANK JULIUS BAER BKJULIUS CH12 0869-6005-2654-1601-2 BAERCHZU 200 71835.

“So here is what we think: This is the coding for the bank account from which a payment originated. It is Bank Julius Baer, a private bank in Zurich, which is known as ‘BKJULIUS.’ What follows that is a twenty-one-character code, beginning with ‘CH12.’ We believe this is the International Bank Account Number for the originating account. This is called the IBAN, I am told. The final entry, which begins ‘BAERCHZU,’ is what is known as the SWIFT code. I had always assumed this was a reference to making haste. But no, my major tells me that it is an acronym for Society of Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, which manages this system for wire transfers. I hope that makes sense, perhaps just a bit.”

“It makes perfect sense, General. And let me make a guess. The second line is the recipient account.” She pointed to the second line on the screen:

BANK ALFALAH ALFHAFKA 720 34120

“You are the clever one, madam. This is the account that your operative in Kabul was using to receive the payment for the gentleman he intended to, what shall we say, to bribe. It does not include an IBAN designator because Afghanistan is not part of the IBAN system. But it does include a SWIFT account address with the ‘AF’ and ‘KA’ notations to signify Afghanistan and Kabul.”

“What about number two? I assume it’s the same pattern, originating account and receiving account.” She traced the two lines with her finger:

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

She looked at the end of the string for the SWIFT code of the recipient bank. “TJ” was the country designator. She groaned and shook her head. That stood for Tajikistan. This was the address of the bank in Dushanbe that had been receiving money for Meredith Rockwell, now deceased.

Marx closed the laptop. She did not want to look at the ghostly glow of the screen anymore.

“I knew the recipient,” she said. “This message was her death sentence.”

“Yes, it was. I am sorry to say so. These miscreants are very smart. They obtain the routing numbers, you see, and then they recruit people in the banks, simple Muslim boys who are clerks. That way they learn who controls these accounts. When a payment arrives, they know the paymaster is coming soon, and they know the name, the work name, you see. And there are other things, I think.”

“What other things are those, General Malik?”

“Credit card numbers, perhaps, airplane reservations, patterns, signatures. Who can say? Whatever is on a computer. All the things that you think are confidential. That is how they know that you are here, madam. They start with a few pieces of data, and then they connect them. They highlight the person who buys the ticket from London to Islamabad using the same telephone number or wire-transfer procedures as someone already on their list. They follow the patterns, you see. Like any clever idea, it is really quite simple. You just have to be smart enough to think of it.”

She put her head in her hands. She had been trying to solve this puzzle, piece by piece, and at last she could see the picture: It was a system that had been constructed as if in a mirror image.

“My God. It’s so obvious,” she said.

The Pakistani general looked at her curiously, waiting for some explanation of her outburst.

“Do unto others,” she said.

“I beg your pardon, madam.”

“We call it the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Well, now they’re doing it unto us.”

He looked at her dumbly, as if this were all too complicated for a simple Pakistani.

“I am sorry, Miss Marx, but I do not understand your golden rules and riddles. If you want my help you will have to explain it more clearly.”

“I am sure you understand very well, General. You probably figured it out long ago. And it is no riddle at all, just good tradecraft. We built a system to capture terrorists. We watched their bank transfers, their money flows, their phone calls, their credit-card purchases; their movements. Then we used computer programs to look for links and patterns, so that we could identify our targets. And then we killed them. Sometimes you helped.”

The general coughed.

“And now they are using the same tools against us. That is what has happened, isn’t it?”

The general smoothed the skirt of his uniform jacket. It was awkward to have to answer such a direct question.

“I think you may be on to something there, madam. Very well said, I think. They have taken your book of plays and made a copy, turned it inside out, rather. Yes, I think you have smoked it out now.”

He was playing with her and she didn’t like it. She reached out her hand again for his, but he withdrew his arms from the table and folded them, his long fingers intertwining.

“Who is this smart, General Malik? Who has organized this system? Do you have any idea?”

He stared at her, blankly at first, his face a mask. But then he softened slightly; his lips turned up at the corners and his eyes relaxed.

“Tell me,” she pressed. “Too many people have died.”

“Very sensitive, this one is. Not easy to talk about.”

“But you must help me. Mr. Hoffman said you were the only hope. I risked my life to come see you, General. I implore you.” She extended her hand again. She did everything but cry.

He sighed and smiled. Perhaps he had intended to tell her all along, but he acted as if it were a gesture of gallantry for a damsel in distress.

“Ah, Miss Marx, how can I refuse you? It is easier to be cold-blooded with a man, but a charming woman melts the heart.”

She disliked this playacting, but it obviously appealed to the general’s vanity.

“You are a gentleman,” she said. That brought a look of solemn satisfaction to the Pakistani’s face.

“Here is what I can tell you: There is a man we have been trying to apprehend for some time. He has many names, as you might expect. Usually people call him ‘the professor,’ or ‘ustad,’ which means the learned one. We think that he is the one who has solved these technical puzzles. We have made many investigations. But we do not know who he is. He covers his tracks very well. Perhaps he is already known to us, but we cannot see it. Maybe he is even known to you.”

“Where is this professor? How can we find him?”

The general shook his head slowly. “That is the difficulty, you see. He is a ghost. We have tried very hard to find him, you must believe me. We have summoned many professors over the last few years, I assure you. But we have not been successful. He has a network of associates, some known to us and some unknown. But even they do not know his identity; we see only where he has been, not where he is.”

Marx drained what was left of her water. She wanted to trust the general, but it was hard to believe that the ISI could not locate such a person, using its own pervasive net of contacts.

“Is this professor the leader of Al-Tawhid? They issued the statement taking credit for the operations he has enabled, so I assume he is their emir.”

“No, no. We suspect that he works with the Al-Tawhid. He uses their people. But he is not really a member. I do not think he is very comfortable with the jihadists’ ideas. He is a modern man, to know so many things. They are too primitive.”

“Then why would he do this? If he’s not a jihadist, why would he work so hard to kill American intelligence officers?”

“Ah, madam, I could tell you. But I am not sure you would want to hear the answer. It will be upsetting.”

“Of course I want to hear it. Don’t be silly. Tell me.”

“Perhaps it is a matter of revenge, madam. So many people have died in these wars, you see, and it is an insult that is felt by our whole nation. Perhaps the professor knew some of the dead, I cannot say. But I suspect it is a matter of personal honor for him. You said it yourself a moment ago: Do unto others.”

She was silent. There was nothing, really, to say. He went out to fetch his orderly and have him make some tea.