The Agent Runner (5 page)

But what was the House of War and what kind of threat did it pose? In private they went into overdrive, frantically seeking out information from their network of informants across the tribal areas on this hitherto unheard of entity –
Dar al-Harb
– which was named after the scholar Ibn Taymiyyah’s term for those lands that lay beyond Muslim subjugation and which presumably would be the target of any planned attack. All they uncovered were rumours. It was said of the House of War that its members eschewed all modern forms of communication; that their leader, who was known as Abu Dukhan – “the father of smoke” – lived in a cave that could be sealed by a boulder attached to a hydraulic ram; that they were some kind of millenarian Wahhabi death cult; that they enjoyed the financial backing of a world-weary Gulf sheikh; that, above all, they had dedicated themselves to the acquisition and detonation of a nuclear device.

What of Mehsud and his advisers? Surely they knew of the whereabouts of this difficult-to-pin-down group – all summer thousands of Pakistani troops backed by helicopter gunships swept the Taliban strongholds, picking off forts and hideouts one by one, searching for clues. The number of American drones
increased to such an extent that there was a constant buzzing in the air, like mosquitoes that could never be swatted away. Then on August 5
^th
, Mehsud was killed in a drone attack on the small town of Zahara, a few miles to the east of the Taliban stronghold of Makeen.

With his death all talk of
itami
devices ended. Not a whisper. It was as though the threat evaporated into the air. In Washington and Islamabad they let out a collective sigh of relief. They told themselves that the House of War was a tall tale, an absurd boast by a gang of ill-equipped mountain fighters. But Noman wasn’t so sure. In his book absence of evidence wasn’t evidence of absence. Just because people had stopped talking about them didn’t mean they didn’t exist.

‘I’m thinking of going to look for them,’ Noman said.

‘If you go up there you’re signing your own death warrant,’ Khan told him. ‘You know what happened to Colonel Imam.’

Noman laughed bitterly.

‘You think it’s funny ha-ha?’ Khan snapped. ‘Do you know how you look? You’re sweating alcohol. I can see your eyes. Do you think people in this business don’t know what’s going on with you?’

‘I’ll cease drinking tomorrow.’

‘Ceasing tomorrow!’ Khan shook his head in exasperation. ‘Always there is tomorrow. That’s funny, Noman. You do that.’ He put down his teacup. ‘Come home. Mumayyaz is waiting for you. She loves you very much. Stick with your current responsibilities.’

‘I need a mission. Work is medicine for me.’

Khan leaned across the table and said, ‘You’re protecting the most wanted man in the world. What more do you want?’

‘Oh please,’ Noman hissed, pushing back his chair. ‘Bin Laden’s a toothless tiger. We both know that. He’s a bugbear to frighten the Americans with and to keep the lunch moolah rolling in. He hasn’t left the house in five years. You don’t need me to keep an eye on him and you don’t want me going up there anyway. Anyone could do it. I need real work.’

Khan stared hard at him. ‘Relax. Sober up. Call me in a day or two and we’ll discuss what you should do.’ He called for the bill. ‘Don’t go anywhere until you’re sober.’

They went out to the car park. Khan gripped Noman’s sleeve.

‘People are watching you,’ he said. ‘Evil people who wish you ill are watching you.’

‘What are you talking about?’ Noman demanded.

‘You’re not amongst friends. You should trust no one except me.’

6. The one-legged mullah

Khan spent that evening in Peshawar having dinner with a village mullah at one of the rattletrap gypsy shacks between the Grand Trunk Road and the Kabul River. The mullah was of the Kakar tribe of Uruzgan in Southern Afghanistan. He had joined the Taliban at its inception and served under the warlord Dadullah Akhund, who had a reputation for beheading his enemies. It was said that the mullah had been involved in the massacre of thousands of ethnic Hazara in Bamiyan province and that he had also had a hand in dynamiting the Giant Buddha statues.

These days the mullah scratched a living in the tribal areas. In return for food he performed circumcision rites, officiated at weddings and funerals, and conducted the occasional exorcism. In the recent past he and Khan had collaborated several times in matters relating to the presence of foreign fighters there. Like most Pashtuns, the mullah was convinced that all good things came from Pashtuns and whatever was bad came from aliens (Americans, Russians, Tajiks, Punjabis, Arabs, Uzbeks, Chechens, etc – take your pick), and like all Pashtuns he’d been taught since the cradle that to resist foreign domination was what it was to be a Pashtun.

He was a large intolerant man of few words. With his weathered, outsize features and veins of scar tissue, and his clothes marbled with grease and grime, he looked like he’d been hewn out of the local onyx marble, which only served to make his ill-fitting, pink plastic leg all the more incongruous. He’d lost the original to a Russian anti-personnel mine back in the eighties.

Khan had collected the mullah and his boy from outside a tiny concrete shack in the Tehkal quarter, the filthy flyblown area behind University Road. Khan had tried to persuade the mullah to leave the boy behind but the mullah was having none of it. ‘He is my oath,’ he’d insisted. So they had driven out here, near where the Kabul River met the mighty Indus. The food was good and it was relatively quiet this late in the season. If something went wrong there would be fewer casualties.

The collection of shacks and the elderly ferris wheel alongside them had appeared on the pebble beach when the cold weather lifted, and would last until the river swelled with snow melt from the Hindu Kush and the gypsies moved again.

The open-sided hut where they chose to eat was strung with fairy lights and had rope
charpoys
arranged around rickety wooden tables. The cook had an orange hennaed beard and grunted in approval when Khan chose the largest from amongst several Mahseer with glistening golden bodies and yellow-red fins that were stacked in a white plastic cool box.

While he gutted and cleaned the fish, Khan and the mullah and Khan’s driver sat on the rope beds. The weary mullah removed his leg and rubbed his stump. The mullah’s boy squatted on the pebbles at the edge of the light in his ragged black overcoat with the bulky vest beneath it. This was what it must have been like for Dr Frankenstein, Khan reflected. You start out full of optimism, with a belief in progress, you do your best, but it turns out that all you can do is make monsters. It becomes an issue of damage limitation. You hope you can keep them in the fold so they are useful. But you can't control everything you create.

The cook’s teenage son brought them a tray with mismatched cups and saucers and a metal teapot. The mullah watched the teenager pouring the tea as if he aroused some dreadful appetite, and Khan felt a shiver of distaste followed by a sudden surge of alarm, which he struggled not to show. What if the mullah’s boy was jealous? Was this how it would end, in a fit of murderous petulance? He glanced at the boy. No visible expression. If the boy harboured murderous rage he was keeping it well hidden. The cook’s son finished and went back inside the shack.

I’m too old for this, Khan told himself.

He remembered the first time that the mullah had shown him what was hidden underneath the boy’s black coat – a fabric vest packed with a mixture of potassium chlorate and ammonium nitrate and covered in a coating of ball bearings sunk in epoxy resin – he’d felt a profound sense of disappointment. He’d set out to defend Pakistan from those that threatened its borders. Was this where it got you, sharing dinner with a teenage suicide bomber?

There was a lot of talk of helping bring the Pashtuns into the twenty-first century but Khan regarded this as nonsense. His belief was that a more modest goal was advisable. Dragging them out of the Stone Age would make a start.

The reason the mullah was down in Peshawar was to report to the feudal landowner or
malik
, who provided him with housing and whose tenants the mullah served. The landowner was no longer able to travel up to his land holdings. His reputation had suffered a terrible blow after an assassination attempt against him, which killed one of his guards. He had left town immediately after the attempt and failed to attend the guard’s funeral. He had been too scared go to, which was viewed as the worst crime amongst Pashtuns who valued physical courage above all else. You could not show fear in the tribal areas and remain a
malik
in anything but name.

The mullah poured his tea from the cup into his saucer and drank from that, slurping noisily.

‘There is a situation developing,’ Khan said.

The mullah squinted at him over the saucer. ‘What kind of situation?’

‘Someone is showing an interest in the House of War.’

‘As I said they would,’ the mullah told him.

With Pashtuns, Khan reminded himself, and with tribal people generally, it was a commanding voice and an assured presence that counted. ‘You know your part in this,’ he said, sternly.

The mullah shrugged.

‘If this individual comes looking for the House of War,’ Khan continued, ‘it is possible that he will find his way to you.’

‘Who is he?’

‘His name is Noman Butt. He is a bold, ruthless and ambitious man. He is not to be underestimated. If he finds you, I want you to make sure he doesn’t learn something that might be open to misinterpretation.’

‘Misinterpretation?’

‘We both know what I’m talking about.’

‘You should have had me silenced when you had the chance,’ the mullah said.

‘Who can say for sure what I should have done?’ Khan nodded to his driver, who went and fetched a briefcase from the car. Khan passed it to the mullah, who opened it and stared indignantly, as always, at the bundles of rupees inside. Khan knew that the mullah did not like to talk about money. He did not see himself as a venal man. He lived simply. He did not drink. He did not fornicate (except with the occasional boy, which did not count). He was a crook but a crook from tradition so as not to be thought a fool.

‘I will be deeply hurt if you do not accept this gift,’ Khan told him, in the usual manner.

It had always been said of Pashtuns that they could not be bought only rented for a while.

‘What would you have me do with Noman Butt if he finds me?’ the mullah asked, eventually.

‘Put a halt to his investigation.’

‘How do you suggest that I do that?’

‘You’re not usually this slow.’

The mullah eyed him speculatively. ‘You don’t like this Noman very much do you?’

‘My feelings on the matter are not important,’ Khan said. ‘My priority is the security of the state.’

The mullah nodded solemnly, ‘The security of the state…’ He closed the briefcase and set it down by his side.

The cook brought them their fish on a metal platter. It had been dredged in chickpea flour and spices and fried to a golden hue. They sunk their fingers in the succulent flesh and lifted morsels to their mouths. The mullah ate as noisily and messily as he drank, pausing between mouthfuls to wipe his fingers on a pile of freshly baked flatbread. Khan ate sparingly. He found the prospect of sudden death robbed him of his appetite. The boy in the suicide vest did not eat at all. When they were done, the mullah stretched out on a
charpoy
and Khan’s driver passed around a snuffbox.

The mullah was right, Khan thought. It would have been sensible to have killed him when he had the chance. Even though he was paying him, Khan had little confidence that the mullah would do as instructed. His best remaining hope was that Noman gave up on this foolish idea of searching for the House of War.

They dropped the mullah and his boy back in Tehkal and drove back to Rawalpindi. At Hasan Abdal they left the Karokoram and joined the Grand Trunk Road that stretches for sixteen hundred miles from Kabul all the way to Chittagong in India.

Khan went to bed at midnight, without touching the glass of milk that his daughter Mumayyaz left on his bedside table, as she had done every day since his wife died. There were times when he felt weighed down by mourning – for his beloved wife, for the nobility of the struggle to secure Pakistan and for the man-child that he never had.

7. Fear and loathing in the brandy shop

His mother was the village whore and he had no idea who his father was. Now he over-revved a state-of–the art, turbo-fucking-charged Range Rover, jerked off to
fisting nuns
on a ruggedised Toughbook and hosed miscreants with a Generation 4 Glock pistol, thank you very much. He scared the living shit out of anyone he pleased to.

Noman Butt was born in a one-room hut in a village of low-caste
Saraiki
-speaking Hindus on the banks of the mighty River Indus. The village sat astride the smuggling route that runs through Sindh from Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea, and was just a few miles from the shrine to an ancient Sufi mystic, where drumbeats filled the night air, and uncovered women in red spun like dervishes. The soft aroma of hashish and cooked bread wafted through the tiny alleyways and old men with watery eyes sucked on clay pipes.

In the summer the heat hit you like a five-knuckle wallop. It was on such a day when the temperature reached forty-eight degrees that his mother died. She fell across the door to their hut and trapped him alone inside. He was four years old. It was two days before one of her more impatient and impassioned clients broke down the door. Noman had survived by drinking water from a brass bowl, an offering to a Hindu deity.

He didn’t know which one.

From the village he was taken to an orphanage in Karachi and raised as a true believer, though he was never allowed to forget that he came from Hindu stock. It didn’t seem to matter that the village had disappeared without trace after corrupt local officials diverted floodwaters to protect a prominent landowner’s fields. It wasn’t the kind of past you could so easily erase. There were times when it felt like he carried a mass of Hindu gods on his shoulders, swarming like flies above their sacrifices.