The Beijing conspiracy

CHAPTER 4

T he dusty city of Peshawar, the capital of the wild and remote North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan, was bathed in the eerie light of a half moon. Nearly 18 kilometres to the west of Peshawar, the ancient Khyber Pass began its narrow, steep and stony journey up towards the border with Afghanistan. In 1893, when Pakistan had been part of India, the British Foreign Secretary of the colonial government, Sir Mortimer Durand, had drawn an arbitrary line on a rudimentary map. The establishment of the Durand Line as the border between Afghanistan and India had been typically colonial and typically designed to serve British interests. With little consultation, arrogant hands had once again ignored centuries of culture and tribal lands. The new border sliced through the middle of the Pashtun tribes, dividing them between two different countries. The vehemently disputed area now provided sanctuary for a resurgent Taliban who were attacking the coalition and NATO forces in Afghanistan on a daily basis. The lawless North-West Frontier Province also provided sanctuary for an even more sinister group, al-Qaeda.

In the foothills of the Hindu Kush, a few kilometres to the north of the Khyber Pass, the forward scout of the patrol protecting one of al-Qaeda’s most senior generals had seen a movement in front of him. He held up his hand, signalling those behind him to stop. Instinctively, twenty of the fiercest fighters in the world fanned out silently over the snow-covered rocks, taking up positions on either side of the path, their Kalashnikovs loaded and ready, their dark eyes calmly scanning the rocky hills. Each wore two bandoleers of 7.62mm rounds over their shoulders and the dull brass casings glinted menacingly in the moonlight. The donkeys carrying the other supplies, together with their handlers, propped obediently on the path. The small group had come from Xinjiang, and they’d been moving through the soaring mountains of the Hindu Kush for nearly two months, travelling at night and retreating to rest in the caves during the day. The infidels with their noisy helicopters were clumsy and easily avoided, but Khalid Kadeer’s fighters were taking no chances. The Taliban who provided the guides through each of the areas they controlled were jumpy. Taliban fighters needed to be approached with caution.

Kadeer sat calmly on an icy rock at the side of track. In the distance, a thousand metres below them, he could see the lights of Peshawar, shrouded among the smoke from the house fires. He looked back behind him. The moonlight was reflected on the snow and granite of the higher peaks, and despite the enormity of what he was planning, Khalid Kadeer felt strangely at peace. He reflected on the different moods of the mountains. Sometimes thick clouds would roll in, swirling around the peaks and foothills, signalling an angry change. The blizzards would howl for days, with temperatures plunging to minus 40 degrees centigrade. The stinging sago snow would tear at the flesh of anyone who was foolish enough to try and move, then just as quickly the anger would dissipate. Tonight, Khalid mused, the towering mountains were majestically peaceful. They reminded him of another mountain and his thoughts turned to the Prophet Muhammad and the Archangel Gabriel. God’s message, Kadeer knew, had been delivered to the Jews through Moses and the prophets, and the Christians had received theirs through Christ, but for centuries it seemed that God had ignored the Arab nations. Rabbis and priests had been quick to ridicule his Arab countrymen, preaching to anyone who’d listen that the Arabs were not part of God’s divine plan, but in the year 610, Gabriel appeared before Muhammad on the top of Mount Hira in Arabia and the balance had been restored. God’s revelations had finally been delivered in the Arab language. If only the West would accept those revelations as being the equal of the messages of Moses and Christ, Khalid thought bitterly, it might be a different world. Instead, evangelists in the United States and elsewhere in the West had described Islam as an evil religion and the die was cast. If humankind would not accept the various religions’ core messages and embrace the beauty of diversity and difference, those very same religions would become the source of humankind’s destruction.

Khalid breathed in deeply, absorbing the power of the mountains. Just as the Prophet Muhammad had felt when he retreated to Mount Hira in what was now Saudi Arabia, it was here in the mountains of the Hindu Kush that Khalid felt closest to Allah, all praise be upon Him. It was here that he had received the messages to deliver the world three warnings, and it was here that Allah, the Most Kind, the Most Merciful, had directed him to prepare the final solution in case the West stubbornly refused to alter its present course. Khalid remained hopeful that China, the United States and her British and Australian partners would negotiate, but hope was slowly fading for the Muslim world. Kahlid recalled Sura 71 of the noble Qu’ran when Allah had given a similar mission to Noah and sent him to warn the people to change course. The message for Muslims from the Qu’ran had been the same message as the Christians had received in the Bible. ‘Warn your people before some painful torment comes to them!’ but Noah too had been in despair. ‘My Lord,’ he had said, ‘the people have defied me… they have hatched a great plot… do not leave any disbelievers with homes on earth… do not increase wrongdoers in anything except destruction.’ Kadeer could understand Allah’s disappointment with the conduct of his children, and if Allah willed it, as he had with Noah, the final solution would be implemented.

Dr Kadeer turned back towards Peshawar. As the moon faded and the dawn broke, the indigo of the night cloaking the surrounding hills was slowly tinged with hues of soft purple and pink. The ancient city was stirring. Kadeer’s thoughts turned fleetingly to the meeting he’d scheduled for later in the week with his chief lieutenant, Amon al-Falid. It was rare for Kadeer to meet with his top operational planner from the United States, but Peshawar was no ordinary city and the mission Allah had directed him to prepare was no ordinary mission. Kadeer leaned back against the rocks and closed his eyes to take a short nap. It was a habit of a lifetime that enabled him to stay alert through the long days and nights. As he dozed, he drifted back to his childhood spent in the little village near Kashgar in the far west of the vast autonomous region of Xinjiang, not far from China’s border with Kyrgyzstan. A time when Khalid was eight and he’d been playing with his cousin after school.

It was October 1955. Mao Tse-tung had been in power for just six years but it had been long enough for the ruthless dictator to establish control over the far-flung western Xinjiang region with the establishment of the Xinjiang shengchan jianshe bingtuan, the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps. The small, peaceful villages to the west of the city of Kashgar were under the control of a young, ruthless and ambitious Peoples’ Liberation Army officer, Captain Ho Feng. Ho Feng had been ordered to keep the Muslims under control and he was determined to make his mark.

Like Kadeer’s simple mudbrick house, his cousin Abdul Rasal’s house was built in a square, with a dirt courtyard in the middle. An old pump stood in one corner of the courtyard, from which the family gathered water. The roof of the house was decorated with colourful Uighur motifs, and on the other side of the courtyard weathered wooden pillars supported a high veranda. In the room beyond it, Abdul’s family slept on a carpeted platform, but for now, the family’s cotton-filled mattresses made from Uighur silk were rolled up against the mud wall.

‘Abdul! Khalid! Where is the wood, you two?’

‘Coming, Mama!’ Abdul grinned as he took another shot at Khalid’s marble in the dirt pitch they’d made, but his marble missed.

‘I win!’ Khalid yelled, pocketing his cousin’s marble and getting up to cut the wood for his aunt. Hayrinisahan was stoking the fire in the kitchen in readiness for the evening meal. Khalid always looked forward to staying with Hayrinisahan. She was like a second mother, although more fun. As he put the pile of kindling he’d cut next to the wood-fired stove his aunt smiled at him, but her smile faded as first one truck, and then another, followed by several more roared past the house. Khalid and Abdul rushed to the door and peered through the beads at the convoy of Han Chinese soldiers tearing down towards the village square. A staff car was travelling in the middle of the convoy and Khalid caught sight of the most hated man in Xinjiang, the ruthless Chinese Captain Ho Feng. His skin was oily and his fine, black hair was parted in the middle and fell either side of an oval face. Ho Feng’s dark eyes were inscrutable. He was responsible for the murders of hundreds of Uighurs and even the mention of his name struck fear into the peaceful Muslims.

‘Khalid! Abdul! Come back inside, both of you!’ Hayrinisahan scolded, covering her mouth and nose as a thick cloud of dust swept into the house, settling on the elegant Uighur carpets covering the walls.

A short while later, Hayrinisahan’s face paled as the sounds of systematic gunfire rent the air. Friday prayers at the little village mosque would have finished and although she’d expected her husband, Ali, to be home by now, he often dropped in to see Khalid’s parents and was sometimes a little late. She hadn’t worried unduly.

The day before, one of Ho’s soldiers patrolling in the village square had been knocked down and killed by a runaway horse.

‘Make an example of them!’ Captain Ho ordered. ‘That house over there!’

Twenty Chinese soldiers stormed into Khalid’s house, rounding up Khalid’s mother, father, uncle, brother and his little sister. With his mother crying and his sister screaming in fright, they were roughly paraded in front of the captain.

‘String them up!’ he commanded, ‘and leave them there for three days, so these people learn how to keep their animals under control.’ Captain Ho caught sight of the village Imam in the door of the little mosque. ‘And set fire to their mosque,’ he added with a sinister smile. ‘Perhaps Allah will help them put it out.’

Khalid woke with a start. The images of his mother and father, uncle, brother and baby sister, their heads twisting grotesquely as they swung from wooden poles beside the burned down mosque were seared indelibly on his soul.

Khalid’s forward scout scanned the foothills below. He’d seen a movement behind a large rock that stood sentinel-like on a bend ahead. The scout moved forward cautiously, keeping off the narrow, rocky track, alert in case the infidel had chosen to put in an ambush. He caught the movement again, a shadowy figure with a weapon, and he stopped, holding his position on the dominating high ground.