'The CIA, of course, were involved in what was going on in Afghanistan. The US, you see, wasn't funding the mujahideen without wanting anything in return. A weakening of the Soviet armed forces was one of those things; but it was clear to anyone with half a brain that the region would be unstable for some time to come. My predecessors understood the importance of having our own eyes in Afghanistan; but, of course, it's difficult for a Westerner to operate effectively over there without attracting suspicion.
'So we started to cherry-pick a few of the mujahideen who were most interesting to us. We wanted them young, so that we could bring them round to our way of thinking. That wouldn't have been too difficult, of course — strange as it sounds, the Americans were considered allies of the mujahideen back in the Eighties, not enemies. Most of all, we wanted people that displayed an aptitude for the kind of work that would be expected of them. Faisal Ahmed ticked all the boxes.
'In 1985 our agents in Afghanistan approached him. He was sixteen years old at the time and by all accounts filled with a brutal hatred of all things Russian.'
'I don't blame him,' Will interjected, getting caught up in the story despite himself.
'Nor do I,Will,' Priestley agreed. 'But this Afghan teenager killed more Soviet soldiers before his sixteenth birthday than most special forces kill in an entire career. He seemed driven to avenge his parents' death on an almost daily basis and he was very, very good at it. The CIA made him an offer. He was told he could leave Afghanistan and come to America for five years. We would train him — channel his raw aggression and undeniable talent, and pay him. The sort of money we were talking about would have made him a wealthy man in Afghanistan. When he was twenty-one, we would return him, fully trained, to his own country. We would continue to pay him and he would be free to fight for his country in whatever way he saw fit. The only proviso was that he would agree to pass intelligence on to us about what was happening on the ground, within Afghan factions that we had no hope of infiltrating in any other way.'
'So what you're trying to tell me,' Will said, 'is that you manipulated a sixteen-year-old boy into being a spy.'
For a moment Priestley didn't respond. He stared at Will, his blue eyes wide and his face surprisingly open and honest. 'Yes,' he said finally. 'I guess that is what I'm trying to tell you. Ahmed was shown pictures of the Empire State Building and the White House. He was told he would be able to visit Los Angeles and Florida. We manipulated him; we played to his youth. It's not really something to be proud of, but you know as well as I do, Will, that pride is a luxury we are sometimes not allowed. And it would be wrong of me to suggest that Ahmed's reasons for coming to America were entirely patriotic. He was a young man being offered a chance to see the world. He accepted keenly.
'There was only one thing that could potentially cause problems. If the sixteen-year-old Faisal Ahmed had disappeared, only to reappear five years later, it would have caused suspicions. We needed, therefore, to stage his death so that he could be reinserted into the region under a new identity. Clearly, nobody in Afghanistan could know about this. Ahmed, however, was firm on one point: he would not keep his plans a secret from his sister, Latifa. She had looked after him when their parents died and she was, in many ways, the only thing he had left in the world. It would destroy her, he insisted, if she believed that her brother, her last remaining relative, had died.
'Rightly or wrongly, the CIA agreed to his condition, so Latifa Ahmed was the only person apart from his handlers who knew what was about to happen. Ahmed made the plan himself. He captured a Russian soldier, took him back to his village and killed him with his bare hands. A gun would have been easier, but it was important that no bullet was found in the soldier's body. He stripped off the Russian's uniform, replaced it with some of his own clothes, then put the corpse in the driving seat of his own car. He then constructed an explosive device, placed it under the vehicle and, under cover of night, detonated it.
'Immediately after that, he disappeared. The soldier's body was too mutilated to be recognisable and everyone assumed it was Ahmed. Latifa herself led the mourning at his funeral, but by the time his burial ritual was over, the boy was on a plane to the US.
'His military transport landed him in a deserted part of the Midwest, where he was given four American passports, each with a different identity.'
'What the hell did he need four different identities for?' Will asked.
'What he needed,' replied Priestley, 'was the ability to switch identities at ease. During his five-year training period, he memorised more than fifty different identities, each with their own personal history. It took him six months to learn good English and a year to learn everything our special forces could possibly teach him about surveillance and espionage techniques. He was already good with a gun, but by the time the CIA had finished with him, he was a worldclass marksman. He underwent gruelling torture sessions and by the end of his training he could withstand pretty much anything we threw at him. We taught him about bomb-making, escape and evasion. He became expert in intelligence techniques. In every area of warfare, espionage and counter-intelligence, he learned everything that we could teach him, soaking it all up like a sponge. He became, quite simply, the best of the best.
'I held a much more junior position in the CIA at the time, but I had the opportunity to meet Faisal Ahmed when he was in the US. I also met several other Middle Eastern operatives who were undergoing the same treatment. None of them had anything approaching the same kind of aptitude as Ahmed. He struck me as being markedly more intelligent than the others, but also completely determined. I don't mind admitting that I found him pretty scary.'
Priestley paused, poured himself a glass of water from the jug on the cabinet and took a thoughtful sip, all the while keeping his eyes on Will. It made Will a bit edgy and he looked down at the picture of Ahmed that was still in his hands. Determined, Priestley had said. He certainly looked that, if you could tell anything from a photo. Scary? Well, maybe, if you were easily scared. Will wasn't.
'While we were training Ahmed,' Priestley started up again, 'the situation in Afghanistan changed. In 1989 the Russians withdrew. What followed was close to anarchy — mujahideen factions all across the country started fighting each other under the command of their various warlords. We may imagine that Ahmed watched what was happening in his country from afar with increasing horror. At the same time, of course, he was becoming Westernised. He grew to believe that the American way of life had much to recommend it and while he was keen to return to his home country, he seemed to have a genuine loyalty towards the authorities who were training him. I don't deny that the fact he was being well paid probably helped, but from our perspective, by the time the twenty-one-year-old Faisal Ahmed was ready to be introduced back into Afghanistan, we knew that he was as near as we would ever get to the perfect spy.
'He did not disappoint us. As soon as he returned to his home country, he went about insinuating himself into the ranks of a group of mujahideen that was being heavily funded by a Saudi Arabian benefactor. His name was Osama bin Laden.'
Will's eyes widened and he couldn't help notice that Priestley seemed pleased that this last nugget of information had finally elicited some kind of response from him.
'Of course,' Priestley continued, 'back then Bin Laden was not the bête noir he is today. Al-Qaeda was yet to be formed, although he had led a group called Maktab al-Khidamat, which channelled money into the mujahideen for the Afghan war. The CIA were interested in Bin Laden anyway, because even though we were kind of on the same side back then, his anti-American stance was no secret.