The Beijing conspiracy

CHAPTER 14

C urtis O’Connor read through the summary of airport interrogations, signed off on the file and threw it into his out tray. In the last 24 hours, Customs and Border Protection had plucked no fewer than 141 people out of queues waiting to board aircraft and passenger liners. The interrogations had not been entirely random with most being American citizens of Muslim background or of Middle Eastern appearance. The results were no different from any other day. Three people had been detained for visa irregularities, and a petty thief wanted by police in Las Vegas for assaulting a prostitute had been arrested but nothing of substance had caught O’Connor’s attention. Based on their destinations he marked five citizens for routine surveillance – two in Syria, one in Jordan, one in Indonesia and an academic who was writing a book on the architecture of the Silk Road and who was trying to get into the North-West Frontier near Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. The war on terror was taking its toll, increasing the demand for surveillance. Out in the field CIA agents were struggling to cope.

In a basement of the US embassy in the Diplomatic Enclave in Islamabad, Washington’s relentless demands for information on Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts had been flooding in on a daily basis. The White House was also fending off mounting complaints in the US media that the Taliban were avoiding capture in Afghanistan by slipping across the border into Pakistan’s North-West Frontier Province. The Administration had assigned too few troops to Afghanistan, repeating the mistake ten times over in Iraq, but the White House had dismissed the criticisms and, despite the lack of resources, Esposito was pushing for something concrete the President could use to rebut his critics. In Islamabad the pressure was beginning to tell. Rob Regan, a big man with close-cropped grey hair was the CIA’s Chief of Station and he had been pulling some appalling hours. He read the latest ‘Top-Secret’ cable from Washington with disbelief.

‘Fuck me!’ he muttered.

‘No thanks,’ Tony Carmello, his younger, dark-haired and ever cheerful deputy said. ‘Washington?’ he asked.

‘Got it in one. We’re up to our armpits in alligators here and now they want us to mount a surveillance operation on some obscure academic who’s writing a book on Islamic architecture and the Silk Road. Another riveting bestseller. I don’t think those dickheads back in Washington would know if a Foggy Bottom bus was up their ass,’ Regan grumbled.

‘Well, not until the people got off,’ his deputy said with a grin, ‘and in the Secretary of Defense’s office you’d have to ring the bell.’ Neither of the CIA men could understand why the politicians and generals in the Pentagon had gone into two wars in the region without enough troops or equipment to do the job, and now the whole of the Middle East was in danger of going up in flames.

‘Who’ve we got spare?’

‘Only the new guy.’

‘Crawford? I don’t think he’s started to shave yet. He’s only been here five minutes.’

Regan’s deputy shrugged. ‘Bit wet behind the ears but he’s all we’ve got left. He has to learn sometime.’

O’Connor leaned back in his chair, thinking about what would be happening out in the field. In many ways he envied agents. Fieldwork had always been his forte and he longed to be back there.

The CIA’s most experienced counter-terrorism officer had no way of knowing, but he would get the opportunity much sooner than he expected, and in a part of the world that was as inhospitable and dangerous as it got.