Egan removed the laptop from his briefcase and plugged in the Ethernet cable. He scrolled the news, and then opened the VPN connection to check his email from The Hit Parade in Los Angeles. They had mastered the art of digital camouflage. In the new service, your covert life existed in the cloud of the Internet, to be accessed whenever needed but never downloaded into the here and now.
Sophie Marx didn’t have anything new for him. The meeting was still set for fourteen hundred the next afternoon. No change in the ops plan, no change in the security status, no change in the authorities or rules of engagement. Egan logged off and tried not to think about tomorrow. That meeting was in another space, beyond the vertiginous horizon.
Howard Egan had come to Karachi to meet Hamid Akbar, a Pakistani banker who was a nominal client of Alphabet Capital. Anyone who read the emails they had been exchanging would see that Egan was there to promote a new Alphabet fund that invested in distressed real estate assets in North America and Europe. If anyone had asked questions, Egan would have referred them to Mr. Perkins, the chief executive officer of Alphabet Capital.
The real story of Hamid Akbar was more complicated. Twelve years before, he had been recruited as an “asset” by the Central Intelligence Agency. He was spotted when he was an engineering student at the University of Baltimore, and formally pitched a year later, before he went home to Pakistan. He was a Pashtun, which caught the CIA’s interest, even back then.
But Akbar had broken off contact with the agency soon after his return. He said that the relationship was insecure. The Pakistani security authorities would easily discover his covert connection, and they would imprison him. His CIA handler was sympathetic: He suggested that the agency might be in touch later, when he had cooled off, but for nearly a decade they had left the Pakistani alone.
Then one day, roughly a year ago, Hamid Akbar had received a visit from an American who had initially introduced himself as an investment adviser, Howard Egan. Egan had proposed a different sort of relationship, with an American entity that had no name or formal existence. It was an offer so lucrative that the Pakistani could not refuse-dared not refuse-and so he had returned to the secret fold.
Where did Akbar’s name come from? Gertz had him on a list of prospects; he never said how it was assembled. Gertz gave Egan a Pashtun proverb to share with Akbar at the first meeting: Awal zaan resto jahan. First yourself, then the universe. Gertz didn’t say where he got that gem, either.
Akbar’s value as an asset lay in his family contacts. His uncle was a leader of one of the Darwesh Khel clans that ruled the western border. Like many tribal chiefs, this uncle had become a bit soft and citified, coasting along on rents and levies. The political officer of the South Waziristan agency took him for granted, and so did the Interior Ministry, the Frontier Corps and Inter-Services Intelligence. That made him an ideal target: He was an influential man whose value had been overlooked by others.
“Uncle Azim” was the name Akbar used for his well-connected relative, or sometimes the honorific “Azim Khan.” At Egan’s request, the two Pakistanis had traveled to Abu Dhabi for a get-acquainted meeting. The American had outlined the financial benefits of a relationship; what Gertz told Egan to request in return was help in pacifying the border areas. Uncle Azim asked for several months to think about it.
And now it was time. Akbar was to arrange a rendezvous spot. Gifts would be exchanged.
Jeff Gertz loved the operation. It was a demonstration of what his new organization could do. Some of the old-timers who had joined The Hit Parade worried that the plan was half-baked, but Gertz insisted that it was solid. Somebody just needed to deliver the loot. He told his colleagues the same bromide he had offered to Egan: The thing about winners is that they know how to win.
Gertz was a winner, for sure. Egan was afraid of him, but he did as he had been instructed.
Egan called Hamid Akbar’s office to confirm the next day’s meeting. There was a delay as the Pakistani came on the line.
He coughed before he said a word. “I am sorry,” said the Pakistani. “There is a problem tomorrow. It is not convenient.”
Egan’s palm was damp as he held the phone, waiting.
The Pakistani came back, cheerier.
“Could you come to see me tonight at Habib Bank Plaza? It will be cooler.” He sounded a bit flustered, or tired, or perhaps it was just Egan’s imagination.
“Can we do the business tonight?” pressed Egan. “It can’t wait.”
“Yes, I think so.” Akbar coughed again, a dry cough as if something were caught in his throat. “Wait one moment. I will check.”
The Pakistani made a call on another phone.
Egan didn’t like it. He wanted to stop, right there. Check out of the Sheraton and catch a flight to anywhere. He hated any changes in the agreed routine.
Akbar came back on the line. His voice was thin, stretched. “This evening is fine,” he said. “Come to my office at seven o’clock.”
Egan deliberated what to do, but only for a moment. He couldn’t just break it off. What possible excuse could he give to his superiors in Los Angeles? Even Sophie Marx would think he had panicked.
“I’ll be there, and then, you know…” Egan let the words trail off so that the silence encompassed the rest of the plan.
When the call was over, he sent a BlackBerry message to the operations room, telling the duty officer that the timetable had been moved up. It was the middle of the night in Los Angeles. Would anyone at The Hit Parade even care?
Egan took a fitful nap and then went to the hotel gym. He spent nearly an hour on the elliptical trainer, watching a cricket match on the little television to take his mind off what was ahead. It was a one-day international against South Africa. The star batsman for Pakistan looked like a mullah, with a woolly beard and no mustache. He was bowled out, leg before wicket, just shy of his half-century.
Egan went over to the free weights. A fleshy Turk was using the bench, but he went away when Egan picked up the barbells.
His mind wandered as he lay on the bench between repetitions. He was supposed to go to the Lake District the next weekend with his girlfriend. He had booked a room at an expensive inn. Had he spent too much? Should he buy London property before the markets took off again? Was his hair thinning in the back? How many more reps should he do with the barbells to be tired enough to sleep that night?
When Egan returned to his room, he saw that it had been tossed. The hard drive of the computer had been drilled. That, at least, was predictable; they hit the laptops of most Western travelers. Egan showered and lay on the bed in his boxers for a while, watching more cricket. The South Africans were batting now. It was a soothing game, normally, all that green grass and so little action, but today he had the butterflies. His bowels were soft, and he hadn’t eaten anything in Pakistan yet.
4
The afternoon was burning itself out in the old quarter of the city known as Saddar Town. The pink hazy light of dusk suffused the stucco buildings, but it would be gone before long. Howard Egan took a taxi to Mohammad Ali Jinnah Road, a mile north of the hotel, and wandered around the market where the old textile weavers hawked their goods. He didn’t turn to look for watchers, not even once. That was the hardest part before a meeting, to suppress the instinctual desire to see who might be following you.
Egan surveyed the old stock exchange; garlands of twinkling bulbs were draped from the roof like strings of pearls. To the southeast, past the “salty gate” of Kharadar, a half-moon was rising over the Arabian Sea. Pedestrians were spilling into the road, careening away like gulls at the approach of every car.