The Pakistan Conspiracy, A Novel Of Espionage (8 page)

“Then the two
hawalas
settle up accounts at the end of the year,” Stoppard said.

“Yes. If the same amount of money has moved in each direction, then no actual cash or valuables need change hands. This particular situation is different and that’s why it caught my eye. The
hawaladar
in Paris was not willing to provide the $11 million himself. He wanted the cash in hand from Kabul first. That suggests on its face that he’s worried that there is something fishy—or illegal—about the transaction. He won’t proceed on credit alone. He wants to see the actual green so he won’t be out a penny if the money is seized.”

“OK, let’s get more detail on this. I’ll cable the LEGAT in Paris, and you try to work the Kabul angle. This doesn’t sound like a run-of-the-mill drug deal to me. Something more interesting.”

“I agree,” Hill said. “Probably arms.”

“Let’s get more info,” Claire said, “Then there’s a colleague across the river that I want to touch base with.”

Mort Feldman was nearing the end of a 36-year career with CIA. He had served as chief of station at Khartoum and in Riyahd before taking the post in Pakistan.

His seniority within CIA and the importance of Islamabad in the fight against Al Qaeda entitled him to certain perks, including a nice house in the Diplomatic Enclave section of the city.

Feldman’s rambling whitewashed villa was on Margalla Road, surrounded by park-like grounds lush with flowering plants and fruit trees. The house and garden were enclosed by a high wall and fronted by a guard post at the gated driveway. Like many of the residences on Margalla Road, the property was patrolled by Pakistani military police as well as a
chowkidar
, a local night watchman hired by Feldman.

His neighbors were mainly ambassadors, senior diplomats in Islamabad’s large diplomatic corps, and ministers in the Pakistani government. If any of them had guessed that Mr. Feldman was not really Counselor for Economic Affairs at the American Embassy, they kept that knowledge to themselves, though the subject may have come up as gossip at Islamabad’s endless receptions and cocktail parties.

Mort Feldman’s anonymity suffered a blow after the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden. An important Pakistani English-language paper with close ties to the ISI published a scurrilous article blaming CIA for most of Pakistan’s ills, and named one ‘Milton Feldstein’ as the head of the Central Intelligence Agency within Pakistan, alleging also that this individual held more real power than the American Ambassador, (a statement Feldman felt was quite possibly true!).

The newspaper article was a breach of protocol and trust bound to increase the level of tension, already high, between Islamabad and Washington. It also put the CIA station chief’s life at greater risk than usual. This did not register with Feldman, who felt, quite reasonably, that life in Islamabad was safer than in any of his previous postings, especially Khartoum. His only concession to his newfound and unwelcome public profile was to send his long-suffering wife Florence back to their home in Falls Church, Virginia. She did not object.

Feldman traveled freely and without escort within the city even in the worst of times. He enjoyed wining and dining. And he especially favored the bar at the Marriott Hotel, newly renovated with bombproof security walls and HESCO barriers since a terrorist-driven dump truck blasted a 60-foot crater near the entrance in September 2008.

Ever the believer in the notion that lightening never strikes twice, Feldman considered the Marriott to be the safest building in the capital. He visited the hotel once or twice a week, occasionally lunching at Jason’s Restaurant, which made a passable imitation of an American cheeseburger.

More frequently, he came in the evening to drink bourbon at the bar, sometimes in the company of one or more Embassy staffers. Often, he drank alone. One evening a few weeks after the OBL takedown, Feldman was nursing a bourbon and water by himself at a table at the Marriott bar. Well into his third or fourth drink, Feldman was startled to see Brigadier Mahmood Mahmood observing him from a dark corner of the room. Feldman was already slightly drunk, but the roguish mustache and slicked-back hair could not be mistaken. The brigadier was dressed in a Western business suit. When he saw Feldman, Mahmood slowly approached, taking a seat at Feldman’s table.

“My dear friend, I hope I am not intruding,” Mahmood said.

“Are you kidding? I’m dying for some company,” Feldman said, motioning for a server.

“When I was visiting America, I was quite fond of bourbon.”

“Me too,” Feldman said. “And here in Pakistan, I continue to be fond of bourbon. Won’t you join me?”

“I fear I cannot. I am not the same man I was in America.”

Mahmood ordered a glass of club soda when the waiter came by.

“It’s been a while,” Feldman said. “I miss our talks.” He was quickly feeling his native alertness returning. Meetings with ISI flag officers in bars did not occur frequently. In fact, this was a first. The last time he had chatted with Mahmood was in the Serena Hotel the day after OBL’s death. That meeting, behind closed doors, had not gone well. There had been a frosty interval since then.

“I do not want you to feel neglected,” Mahmood said. “Pakistan is a country of contradictions.”

“Meaning that not everyone within the ISI is against us?”

“You grasp my drift perfectly.”

“Well, to be honest, if you guys helicoptered into Texas to take out an enemy of Pakistan in Dallas, you might not be too popular in the American media yourselves, so I have more sympathy for the present situation than you may imagine.”

“I know this,” Mahmood said. “We are both in the intelligence business. Outsiders fail to understand the courtesies we extend one another, assuming wrongly that we are as emotional as they. We have more in common than they know, common enemies.” He paused. “There is also another reason for my coming by to chat this evening.”

Mort Feldman looked up from his drink. He was fully alert now and listening carefully.

“I wanted you to know—we wanted you to know—that the chatter about this bomb that I’m sure you have been listening to as carefully as we…. It isn’t one of ours.”

“It isn’t one of yours?”

“Without equivocation or question. I want you to assure your people back in Washington. This bomb, it isn’t one of ours.”

Mort Feldman slowly put down his drink.

***

After failing to draw out Brigadier Mahmood any further, Feldman took his leave and drove the four miles from the Marriott Hotel to the American Embassy, moving in record time. It was ten o’clock in the evening when he reached his desk, noon at CIA headquarters in Langley.

Rather than write a cable, Feldman decided to call Olof Wheatley on a secure phone.

“I just had the weirdest conversation with Mahmood Mahmood,” he said when Wheatley came on the line. He summarized the brigadier’s enigmatic comments about the nuclear weapons intercepts.

“It’s not one of theirs?” Wheatley said. “So what the fuck does that mean?”

“For starters, it means that they think it’s a real bomb. It means that they are taking this chatter about nuclear bombs more seriously than we are,” Feldman said. “And I hope that scares the shit out of you as much as it scares the shit out of me.”

The silence on the line suggested that it did.

“Were you able to get any details from him?” Wheatley said at last.

“No. He was clearly delivering a message from his boss, General Pasha, though he never mentioned Pasha by name. And he just delivered the message, no more, no less. It was scripted. When I asked him to elaborate, he just repeated that his people at ISI wanted our people to know that this bomb the bad guys have been talking about isn’t one of theirs.”

“So, have you ever suggested to them that we thought it was?”

“No way,” Feldman said. “We haven’t talked about nuclear security in months. In fact, we haven’t talked about much of anything recently. I’m in the doghouse since OBL. But I’ve never been worried about loose nukes in Pakistan. They take this shit seriously. No one outside the military has a chance in hell of getting one of their nukes.”

Wheatley understood that relations between Pakistan and the United States had rarely been frostier.

“Maybe they’re just being extra cautious during this time of heightened tension?”

“Could be, but why are they volunteering this information unasked? It’s inescapable to me that they are taking the recent intercepts as an indication that Al-Zawahiri and his boys have actually got hold of a weapon, something Musharaf and others are on record as saying is next to impossible.”

“Or maybe they’re just afraid that we think that, and they’re trying to head off our concerns, to quash any fears we might have before they fully develop.”

“But why would they go down that road?” Feldman said. “No one here on our side has approached them. They have taken us on tours of their facilities. They know we know they guard their stuff.”

“They’re really pissed at us,” Wheatley said. “Maybe they’re planning some sort of op.”

“You better believe it. They are mad at us. Which makes this evening’s dialogue with Mahmood all the more inexplicable. The only conclusion I can draw is that they have better intelligence on this than we do, and that this is more serious than we thought. They can’t deal with it, and they want us to”

“You’re saying that Al Qaeda has a nuclear weapon?”

“No, I’m saying that the ISI is treating the chatter we’ve been hearing more seriously than we have been. And we better figure out why fast. They have access to information I just don’t have.”

“But that doesn’t help me, Mort. If it’s not just some mid-level Al Qaeda yo-yo making this up, then what is it?”

“I don’t have a fucking clue, and I couldn’t get any further with him tonight. Maybe I can try again in a day or two. And maybe we better start thinking of how we can run this down ourselves.”

Wheatley considered the odds.

“If there is a loose nuke in Pakistan and it’s not of Pakistani origin, then where is it from?”

Feldman paused, thinking of Russia, North Korea, India, Iran...

“I don’t know,” he said finally. “But I would bet first on Russia.”

“Maybe I need to come out there myself.”

“Yes, I think so,” Feldman said appreciatively. “If you do that, we’ll both get in to talk personally with General Pasha. He won’t turn you down, no matter how pissed he is. And if ever we had reason to work cooperatively, it’s now.”

“OK, let me make some arrangements on my end. I’ll be in touch. Meanwhile, go home and get some sleep.”

***

And that was the last Olof Wheatley heard from Mort Feldman.

The portly station chief left the Embassy shortly after concluding his phone call, got in his car, and arrived at his home a little after midnight. The
chowkidar
was not in his guardhouse, but that did not alarm him. The Pakistani protective detail often took ‘breaks’ late at night to visit girlfriends or eat unscheduled meals. Feldman activated the radio-controlled gate opener and pulled into his driveway, heading toward the garage behind the house.

Before the automatic gate mechanism could close, a dark, unmarked panel truck appeared out of nowhere and rammed the back of Feldman’s car hard, jolting his neck and blocking his retreat. Three armed men poured out of the truck and tried to pull open the locked doors of Feldman’s car. When that failed, they shattered both the driver’s side and passenger’s side windows and flipped up the locks, dragging Feldman, who was unarmed, out of the driver’s seat and throwing him hard onto the ground. He felt a searing pain at the base of his neck and he thought he might have fractured a vertebra. One of the men yanked a black cloth bag over his head and tied it loosely beneath his jaw.

Mort Feldman was unceremoniously bundled into the back of the panel truck like a sack of potatoes. The truck roared out of the drive in reverse, tires squealing, and then drove off into the night.

The engine of Feldman’s car was still running hours later at dawn when Pakistani police reported their discovery to the Marine guard on duty at the Embassy. The Marine called the Regional Security Officer who took the precaution of driving out to the house on Margalla Road to see the situation for himself before calling the ambassador at home.

He ruined the ambassador’s breakfast by telling him that Mort Feldman had disappeared, kidnapped by unknown assailants.