“But I don’t know the details.”
“Precisely,” said Perkins. “You have grasped the point entirely. You don’t know the details, so can’t give me unnecessary advice. I have to get off the phone now so I can go home and meet one of the ‘tidy-uppers.’ You make your call, highest level, please, and deliver the appropriate, oblique warning. Then we’ll see about getting together. Want to go grouse shooting? I’ll be going up to my place in Scotland in August. Let’s do that.”
Perkins hung up without waiting for a response. He had a few more tasks to take care of, in the part of his computer system that housed the trading records. By then it was past nine a.m., and people were beginning to arrive at the office. Perkins turned off all his electronic systems, triple-locked his door behind him and kissed his secretary on the way out.
He strolled back to Ennismore Gardens at a leisurely pace. He felt easier now that he had done the housekeeping. Back at home, the representative from “Mr. Jones” was waiting in the drawing room, perched on the edge of the couch and looking most uncomfortable. Perkins apologized that he had been out taking his morning “power walk” around the Serpentine, a ritual that couldn’t be interrupted, rain or shine.
The visitor introduced himself as Rupert Ogilvy. He was a mousy-looking man, thin as a string and overmatched by his pin-striped suit. He looked like a bank clerk, which wasn’t far off. He was an administrative officer at a small support base Gertz maintained out near Heathrow. The young man proffered a business card, which Perkins didn’t bother to read because it was surely a phony.
“I have a draft statement that you might want to consider,” said young Ogilvy. He removed a piece of paper from his valise and handed it over.
The page had no letterhead or other markings. It was just two paragraphs, stating the simple and undeniable facts: An employee of Alphabet Capital named Howard Egan had disappeared while on a business trip to Pakistan to meet with clients of the firm. Alphabet Capital was requesting help from the U.S. and Pakistani governments in finding Mr. Egan and arranging his safe return.
Perkins read the document carefully and made several corrections in the margins. Then he put it in his pocket.
“Please let us know if you are making any changes,” urged Ogilvy.
Perkins laughed. The young man was sweating, even in the cool of the morning. He obviously wasn’t happy at the thought that one of his colleagues had disappeared.
“Don’t worry,” Perkins said, “and don’t tell me what to do. I’ve had enough of that from your colleagues already.”
11
When Lieutenant General Mohammed Malik was a student in America long ago, one of his military science professors had admonished the class, knowingly, with that old chestnut: “If you sup with the devil, you must use a long spoon.” How right that had seemed to everyone. But they were in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. That was the land of the guileless, eternal smile. What did they know of the devil? In the unlikely event that they ever encountered the devil, they wouldn’t have supped with him, anyway, long spoon or short. They would have dropped a bomb on him.
General Malik realized when he returned home after his stint at the War College that he did not have the luxury of his American friends. The devil lived in Pakistan. It was necessary to sup with him on a daily basis simply to survive, sometimes without any utensils at all, grabbing it up with your hands.
The devil that concerned General Malik at the moment was the group of operatives that had kidnapped the American traveler, Howard Egan. Yes, he knew who they were. The Americans might not like it, but that was his job. The group in this case was called Al-Tawhid, which means “divine unity,” or, to use the more common term, “monotheism.” The general would have denied to his last breath that he or his service had any contact with these miscreants. But of course that was not true. They were well known to the ISI, and indeed had been used on occasion to do ISI business over the last few years. That was what intelligence services did. And then, if anyone criticized the contact, they lied about it. Only the Americans tried to pretend that the intelligence business was any different.
The best place to sup with these particular devils was their birthplace and home of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan on the country’s western border. General Malik knew the city well, for he had studied at the Army Staff College there as a young officer, and had returned as “chief instructor,” as the deputy commander’s position was known, before moving to the ISI.
The general flew to Quetta from Rawalpindi, this time in a lumbering Pakistani Air Force C-130. The plane was not like the gray American versions; it was painted in the colors of the desert, tan and brown, so that it was almost an airborne version of the trucks that plied the Grand Trunk Road. The general sat up top, in a comfortable seat just behind the air crew, not down below with the ordinary soldiers in their web seats slung from metal poles. Three-star generals were not soldiers anymore; they were demigods.
The plane landed at the military air base just north of the Quetta city center. As he stepped out of the C-130, General Malik saw again the austere, arid beauty of the place. The city was like the floor of a rock-hewn amphitheater, a dusty plain surrounded on all sides by reddish gray peaks. Back when he was a student, the young officers at the Staff College had names for these rocky citadels: “Takatu,” to the north; “Chiltan,” to the southwest; and nearest, to the southeast, the low, graceful cliff whose form they called, in English, “Sleeping Beauty.”
General Malik went first to the Staff College. He called on the commander, who was an old friend, and paid a visit to the Officers’ Mess, a prim brown stone building banked by cedars. But this visit was really a bit of subterfuge. While there, as was his habit on these trips, he changed into civilian clothes and took a new vehicle; not the army staff car in which he had arrived, but a dirty Hyundai, pitted by the road, in which he would travel to his appointment.
The general headed off again, now in mufti. His frail car passed through the city center, past the knot of people gathered at the four-pillared front of the railway station, and then north toward the red rocks that framed the northern approach to the city. The driver turned off the main road, into a neighborhood that was largely Afghan refugees. For the Quetta police, this was no-man’s-land. But for the director general of the ISI, there was no such thing as a forbidden zone. The car zigged and zagged down several byways until it came to a rough-hewn mosque and next to it a walled compound shielding a rambling two-story villa.
General Malik called a number on his cell phone and spoke to an ISI case officer inside the villa, to advise that he had arrived. A metal gate swung open and the Hyundai turned into the compound and parked, while the gate was quickly closed and relocked. The general walked toward the villa, its rough concrete blocks topped by the rust-red protruding rods of the steel reinforcing bars.
The young ISI officer met the visitor at the threshold of the villa. He was dressed in the garb of Pashtun tribesmen: a turban around his head, a long vest, loose trousers billowing in the breeze. The general entered the building and was escorted into the salon. It was curtained against the midday sun, but in the low light the prize was visible: Seated on the couch was a fierce-looking young man, a warrior prince, he seemed, with a grizzly black beard and long hair under a white turban.
“Commander Hassan,” said the general, extending his hand. The young man took the general’s hand in both of his. There were no kisses on the cheeks; these were men who, but for the ritual hospitality of the meeting, might shoot each other.