He asked the hotel switchboard operator to put him through to the embassy, asked for and was patched through to Gerry Byrne and exchanged the usual pleasantries. Yes, the flight had been fine, the hotel was fine, the room was fine, and he would be delighted to come for dinner.
Gerry Byrne was also delighted. He lived in town, in zone F-7, Street 43. It was complex, so he would send a car. It would be delightful. Just a small group of friends, some American, some Pakistani.
Both men knew that there was another party to the conversation who was probably more bored than delighted. He would be seated at a console in the basement of a cluster of adobe buildings set among lawns and fountains, looking more like a university or a general hospital than the headquarters of a secret police. But that is what the complex on Khayaban-e-Suhrawardy Street looks like—the home of the ISI.
The Tracker replaced the receiver. So far, so good, he thought. He showered, shaved and changed. It was late morning. He decided on an early lunch and a nap to catch up on the lost sleep of last night. Before lunch he ordered a long, cool beer in his room and signed the declaration to confirm he was not a Muslim. Pakistan is strictly Islamic and dry, but the Serena has a license, only for guests.
The car was there on the dot of seven, an unremarkable (for a reason) four-door sedan of Japanese manufacture. There would be thousands like it on the streets of Slammy. It would attract no attention. At the wheel was an embassy-employed Pakistani driver.
The driver knew the way—up Ataturk Avenue, across Jinnah Avenue, then left along Nazimuddin Road. The Tracker knew it, too, but only because it had all been in the brief the courier from Langley had given him at the Dubai airport. Just a precaution. He spotted the ISI tail within a block of the Serena and it faithfully followed the sedan past the apartment high-rises and up Marvi Road to Street 43. So, no surprises. The Tracker did not like surprises unless they were his.
The house did not quite have the words “Government Issue” above the front door, but it might have. Pleasant, roomy enough, one of a dozen allocated to embassy staff living outside the compound. He was greeted by Gerry Byrne and his wife, Lynn, who led him through to a terrace in the back, where he was offered a drink.
It might all almost have been a suburban house in the U.S. save for a few details. Each house on Street 43 had seven-foot concrete walls around it, plus steel gates the same height. The gates had opened without any communication, as if someone had been watching from inside. The gateman was in a dark uniform, baseball-capped and with a sidearm. Just normal suburbia.
There was a Pakistani couple already there, a doctor and his wife. Others arrived. One other embassy car, which came inside the compound. Others parked on the street. A couple from an aid agency, able to explain the difficulty of persuading the religious zealots up in Bajaur to permit polio vaccination of local children. Tracker knew there was one man present he had come to see and one not yet arrived. The rest of the guests were cover, like the entire dinner.
The missing man came with his mother and father. The father was forthcoming and jovial. He had concessions in the mining of semiprecious stones in Pakistan, and even in Afghanistan, and was voluble in explaining the difficulties the present situation was causing his business.
The son was about thirty-five, content simply to say he was in the army, though he was in civilian clothes. Tracker had been briefed about him, too.
The other American diplomat was introduced as Stephen Dennis, the cultural attaché. It was a good cover because it would be perfectly natural both for the press attaché to offer a dinner for a star American journalist and for the cultural attaché to be invited along.
Tracker knew he was really the number two in the CIA station. The head of station was a “declared” intelligence officer, meaning that the CIA was perfectly open about who he was and what he did. In any embassy on tricky territory, the fun is working out who the “undeclareds” really are. The host government usually has a number of suspicions, some accurate, but can never be sure. It is the undeclareds who do the espionage, usually using local nationals who can be turned to do a new employer’s bidding.
It was a convivial dinner with wine and, later, drams of Johnnie Walker Black Label, which happens to be the tipple of choice of the entire officer corps, Islam or not. As the guests mingled over coffee, Steve Dennis nodded to the Tracker and drifted to the outside terrace. Tracker followed. The third to join them was the young Pakistani.
Within a few sentences, it became clear he was not only army but also ISI. Because of the westernized education his father had been able to give him, he had been singled out to penetrate British and American society in the city and report back on anything of use that he heard. In fact, the reverse had happened.
Steve Dennis had spotted him in days and done a reverse recruitment. Javad had become the CIA’s mole inside the ISI. It was to him that the Tracker’s request had been directed. He had quietly entered the archive department on a pretext and searched the records under the year 2002 and Mullah Omar.
“Whoever your source was, Mr. Priest,” he murmured on the terrace, “he has a good memory. There was indeed a covert visit in 2002 to Quetta to confer with Mullah Omar. It was headed
by then-one-star-general Shawqat, now commander of the entire army.”
“And the boy who spoke Pashto?”
“Indeed, though there is no mention of that. Simply that in the delegation was a Major Musharraf Ali Shah of the Armored Infantry. Among the seat allocations on the aircraft, and sharing a room with his father in Quetta, is a listing for a son, Zulfiqar.”
He produced a slip of paper and passed it over. It had an address in Islamabad.
“Any further reference to the boy?”
“A few. I checked again under his name and patronymic. It seems he went bad. There are references to him leaving home and going to the Tribal Areas to join Lashkar-e-Taiba. We have had several agents deep inside for many years. A young man of that name was reported to be among them, fanatically Jihadist, seeking action.
“He managed to get acceptance into the 313 Brigade.”
Tracker had heard of the 313, named after the warriors, just 313 in number, who stood with the Prophet against hundreds of foes.
“Then he disappeared again. Our sources reported rumors that he had gone to join the Haqqani clan, which would have been facilitated by his Pashto, which is all they speak. But where? Somewhere in the three Tribal Areas—North and South Waziristan or Bajaur. Then nothing, silence. No more Ali Shah.”
Others wanted to join them on the terrace. Tracker pocketed the slip of paper and thanked Javad. An hour later, his embassy car took him back to the Serena.
In his room he checked the three or four tiny telltales he had laid; human hairs stuck with saliva across drawers and the lock of his wheelie. They were gone. The room had been searched.
5
The Tracker had a name and an address, along with a street map of Islamabad, brought to him by the departed John Smith in the Dubai transit lounge. He was also certain that when he left the hotel the next morning, he would have a tail. Before going to bed, he went to reception and asked for a taxi to be chartered for the next morning. The clerk asked where he would like to go in it.