Chaos in Kabul (24 page)

“I know,” said Luger, “but in that case it won’t be our problem anymore.”

“Have you heard anything from Malko?”

“Not a peep. He hasn’t called me, I haven’t called him, and the Kabul station doesn’t have any news. Since the attempt, he’s simply disappeared.”

“You think he could have left Kabul?”

The CIA man shook his head. “If he’d done that and was in a safe place, he would’ve given some sign of life. We don’t know what really happened, except that Malko almost certainly didn’t pull the trigger. That was much more likely to have been Nelson Berry. He hasn’t called either, but I’ve disconnected the voicemail box he used to reach me. That’s less important, because there’s no direct connection between Berry and us. Which isn’t the case with Malko.”

“Right now, Malko’s a problem for us,” said Mulligan soberly. “We absolutely have to find out where he is. Do you have any way of knowing if the NDS has picked him up?”

“I’ll see what the station people can find out, but it won’t be easy. The NDS isn’t going to shout it from the rooftops.”

“If they capture Malko and make him talk, we’re going to be in deep shit vis-à-vis Karzai,” said Mulligan with a sigh.

“Malko is a first-class mission leader. He’ll find a way to go to ground and send word.”

“I hope to hell that’s true. We were crazy to try this thing.”

A hush descended on the men, hiding its face in shame.

Mulligan spoke again. “What I’m about to say is awful, but I would rest easier if Malko were dead.”

The deputy CIA chief didn’t blink. “It
is
awful, but I understand you,” he said. “If Karzai ever got a confession out of him, he’d have us by the short hairs.”

“Still, heaven help him. He’s a good guy and has always served the Agency loyally.”

The two men knew that when it came to reasons of state, one man’s life didn’t count for much. History was full of such examples. The people sacrificed were rehabilitated, of course, but posthumously.

“Let’s wait until tomorrow,” said Mulligan, standing up. “And find a way to contact Malko. We have to know!”

“I’ll put together a communications hookup through Austria that can’t be traced to us.”

“Here’s hoping you reach him.”

Luger said nothing, well aware that the national security advisor thought exactly the opposite.

Dead, Malko was a hero. Alive, he was a liability.

Malko watched the falling rain through the high window
that illuminated his room. The streets near the house had turned from muddy paths into running streams.

After two days of inaction and anxiety, he was feeling as if he’d been exiled to another planet. Morning and evening, a figure in a blue burqa came in and bustled about in the kitchen. In the morning she made him tea and chapatis with honey and ghee, and sometimes a kind of yogurt.

In the evening it was
palau
—spiced rice with chunks of lamb—or flat
chelow kebab
, served with rice and fruit.

The woman never spoke to him; besides, she almost certainly didn’t know English. Meanwhile, Kotak’s nephew Nadir hadn’t given any sign of life.

Malko was cut off from the world. The house didn’t have a radio or TV, of course. He was feeling bored, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was safe, and the NDS agents must be wondering where he’d disappeared to. But he was getting anxious to leave Kabul, dangerous though that might be.

To pass the time, he daydreamed.

Suddenly his cell phone rang, and he jumped.

It hadn’t rung in the last two days, and when he looked at the screen, his heart began to pound: Alexandra’s number!

He was so flabbergasted, he let the phone ring and ring.

Alexandra
never
called him when he was on assignment. It was an absolute rule.

Finally he roused himself and grabbed the phone. “
Putzi
?”

The connection wasn’t very clear, but through the static he heard a man’s voice. “Malko?”

“That’s me. Who are you?”

“We’ve been worried,” said the unknown man. “We haven’t heard from you.”

Malko immediately understood: the CIA had routed the call through Alexandra’s cell phone or was using her number. In a way, it cheered him; he hadn’t been completely abandoned.

“I’m fine,” he said.

“Do you plan to come home soon?” the man asked in a level tone. “Where are you?”

“I’m still in Kabul, but not at the same place.”

He didn’t want to say more on the phone. There was a long silence on the other end; then the man ended the conversation:

“Very well. I’ll call you again.”

The message was clear: Malko was not to phone, either Langley or the White House.

He gazed at his now-silent phone. He would have loved to talk to Alexandra, but the call was a trick that she surely didn’t know about. Her number was in his CIA personnel file, and they must have used it without her knowledge.

Malko stretched out on the bed and let his mind wander. People at the CIA were worried about him, but probably more worried about themselves. On the loose in Kabul, Malko was a live hand grenade: the link between the United States and the attempt on President Karzai. If he hadn’t answered, his CIA backers would probably be resting easier, but when he saw Alexandra’s number, he couldn’t resist.

Hearing footsteps downstairs, he figured the blue burqa was back. But then the steps creaked on the wooden staircase, and Kotak’s nephew Nadir appeared. His arms were full of presents, which he tossed onto the bed: a new suit of Afghan clothes, heavy boots, and a long brown coat.

“We are leaving tomorrow morning at six!” he announced. “We are going to Ghazni, the first stage in your trip.” This was a town about ninety miles south of Kabul, a Taliban stronghold.

“Won’t it be risky, with the checkpoints?”

“No,” said the nephew with a slight smile. “Taxis drive that route all the time, and the soldiers at the checkpoints do not bother them. With your clothes and turban, they will not even realize you are a foreigner, and you will not be noticed. In Ghazni you will be taken in by a cousin who will handle the rest of your voyage.”

John Mulligan stared at the encrypted message that Clayton Luger had just sent him. So Malko was alive and still in Kabul! The national security advisor felt reassured, because he liked Malko, but also anxious. How would he survive in the Afghan capital? Also, what would happen if he were captured?

Parviz Bamyan still hadn’t located Malko Linge, and Nelson Berry was out of reach. There was no question of going after him in Logar Province, and interrogating his staff hadn’t produced anything. Maureen Kieffer was busy at her workshop, where surveillance continued. And word had come back from the CIA. The station claimed it had had no contact with Malko. It was as if he’d vanished into thin air.

Hunkered down in his palace, President Karzai exploded when he learned that the investigation wasn’t making any progress.
On his orders, security measures on every road out of town were reinforced, and NDS informers constantly patrolled the few restaurants and guesthouses frequented by expats.

Without result.

Nor did Bamyan know quite what to make of a piece of new information from the Kabul police. The day after the assassination attempt, a man named Sangi Guruk had been shot at home along with his two wives and one of his children. No one had seen or heard anything. The police figured the killer must have used a gun with a silencer.

Guruk had been in charge of the palace garage and vehicles, and whoever shot at the president’s Mercedes must have had information about his motorcade. The murdered Guruk could have tipped the person off, which was probably why he’d been killed.

By whom?

The NDS chief couldn’t imagine Linge venturing out to Guruk’s neighborhood, so it must have been whoever had fired at the president.

The party was in full swing.

There were only men in Baber Khan Sahel’s house, along with a covey of adolescent singing and dancing boys. Dressed like women, with bright clothes and sequined bracelets at their wrists and ankles, they swayed to the rhythms of a tambourine trio, entertaining the lord of the manor and his guests.

Baber Khan Sahel was the biggest drug lord in Pul-i-Alam, the capital of Logar Province, and he had a good reason for throwing this party. He had just bought a large share of the poppy crop and was reselling it to traffickers. Their laboratories were located to the south, along the Pakistani border, as the chemicals needed to turn poppy into heroin came from Pakistan. Because
of the rapacity of the participants, these transactions occasionally turned violent.

So Baber Khan Sahel hired Nelson Berry to make sure everything went smoothly. Berry and his partners, Rufus and Willie, were professionals, in no danger of being turned or intimidated, and they had enough firepower to keep even the most vicious traffickers in line. The guests included two representatives of the local Taliban, which levied a tax on the lucrative trade.

Outside, the house was guarded by Baber Khan Sahel’s sentinels, and no one would have thought to disturb this family get-together.

In the euphoria, the master of the house gave an order and the young dancers obediently stepped onto a large table to continue dancing to the sound of the tambourines.

One of the boys started gyrating in front of Berry, who was leaning on a bench strewn with cushions. He immediately started clapping in time with the young dancer’s undulations. Flattered at having caught this
khareji
’s attention, the boy thrust out his hip and clicked his ring cymbals. His eyes made up with kohl, he had slender arms and legs and moved with a kind of feminine grace. In Afghanistan it was said that women were for making babies, but boys were for pleasure.

The eyes of the guests were beginning to glisten. Though Berry was the only person drinking alcohol—and discreetly, at that—the men sitting around the table didn’t hide their mounting excitement.

Somewhat reluctantly, the local Taliban representatives quietly left the party.

The boy was now dancing for Berry alone, swinging his hips like a woman, thrusting his stomach out, and giving the South African ever more explicit glances.

In turn, Berry could feel his senses coming alive. It was almost
impossible to find an available woman in Afghanistan, but there were any number of accommodating, handsome young boys. It wasn’t politically correct to say so, but parties like this one happened in every village, sometimes organized by the local mullah. Raping a woman was a crime punishable by death, but sodomizing a teenager was a minor sin. After all, it didn’t have any consequences.

On a final note, the three musicians finished playing.

A hubbub followed.

Some of the guests left, for various reasons. Others hastened to help the young dancers down from their improvised stage. Baber Khan Sahel didn’t have to move. The most heavily made-up boy gracefully jumped to the floor and came to kneel in front of him. The dancer who had excited Berry did the same, curling up at the South African’s feet while giving him a seductive look, well aware of what would happen next.

Soon every turbaned, bearded guest had his boy. The only light in the room came from thick, smoky tallow candles.

Berry and the young dancer exchanged a long look. They didn’t need to speak. The South African calmly stood and took the boy by the hand, leading him to the bedroom Baber Khan Sahel had provided. It was pretty basic, furnished only with a
sharpoi
bed with a blanket, clothes hooks on the wall, and a copper tray on a tripod. The dancing boy went to sit cross-legged on the bed.

Berry left him for a few moments to open the shutter and look out at his SUV parked in the courtyard. Darius had rigged a bed in the back and was asleep, guarding a leather bag with half a million dollars that no one else knew about.

Which was just as well.

The South African closed the shutter and stretched out on the bed. He didn’t have long to wait.

The boy crawled over and slipped a small hand into Berry’s open shirt, stroking his chest and nipples with feminine delicacy.

Berry happily closed his eyes and started thinking hard about Elena, one of the Russian waitresses at the Boccaccio who sometimes sold her charms to him.

When it was over, Berry gave a sigh of delight.

All in all, it was just as good as with Elena.

Drained and happy, he took a thousand-afghani bill from his trousers and stuffed it into the boy’s hand.

“Now, get out!” he said in Dari.

The young dancer didn’t need to be told twice. Clutching his clothes in one hand and the money in the other, he silently disappeared.

They hadn’t said a word to each other, but what would have been the point? They came from two different worlds.

When he was alone, Berry became thoughtful. The glow of pleasure gradually faded as black clouds of anxiety moved in. He couldn’t stay in Logar Province forever. Eventually he would have to go back to Kabul—a Kabul where Hamid Karzai was still president and where Berry might well be a suspect. He knew the Afghans. Even without any proof, they could still stick him in an NDS cell.