A Rope and a Prayer (11 page)

I am slightly amused by the “high tech” recording device that is attached to my phone. It looks like the Sony Walkman I jogged with in junior high school.

I learn the key points:

Cathy assumes the roll of the kidnapper and we rehearse potential phone interactions for about an hour. We work off several scripts, mock conversations. The dialogue has been typed in capital letters and covers many of the talking points we discussed. We spread these out on the floor in front of the sofa. A tall, fair-haired New Yorker, Cathy looks and sounds nothing like a Taliban insurgent, so I hope I will be able to keep as calm when confronted with the real deal.

Cathy forewarns me about the following: “If the captors threaten to chop off a finger or kill David on the spot, don’t believe them. Stay strong. Chances are slim that they will actually do this. Remember, their goal is not to kill David, but to extort money from you. They will play on your emotions to do so. Chances are, David is worth more to them alive than dead. Under the traditional tribal honor code of Pashtunwali—and out of sheer greed—they will treat him well and keep him alive.”

Over time I will come to realize that kidnapping is a global industry. It is as much a business for the consultants as it is for the kidnappers, due in part to U.S. policy on the kidnapping of American citizens. The U.S. government does not pay ransom, release prisoners, or negotiate with terrorists. Yet many of its officials, off the record, advise private citizens to do so. This creates a demand for services that is often fulfilled by contractors. I have taken my first steps into a large and complicated shadow world of public and private agencies devoted to aiding the families of kidnap victims. It can be an extremely lucrative business; whether it is also an effective one, as far as David is concerned, remains to be seen.

The FBI is the lead agency in kidnappings and proves quite helpful in facilitating my understanding of how the situation and negotiations might unfold. Yet they cannot advise on funds, carry them, directly negotiate, or disclose classified information. They cannot declassify information that has been classified by another government agency. They are not even involved in securing the victim’s release. In fact, they are only gathering information in hopes of prosecuting this crime in the future.

Over time our family becomes frustrated with the one-way flow of information. We often feel we’re helping the FBI a great deal more than they’re helping us, and we need someone dedicated to our goal, on our side. For these reasons, the paper along with Lee and I soon decide to hire an outside security firm to conduct negotiations.

I am suddenly thrust into an atmosphere of intrigue that is both political and personal. This is a sharp contrast to my daily life at the magazine, and to my entire world before November 10. My objective is to do everything possible to keep David alive, to leave no stone unturned in this process, and to stay sane and healthy.

Lee and I meet regularly with U.S. government officials, Pakistani officials, security contractors, and private advisers. I develop love-hate relationships with all of them. I eventually form a solid camaraderie with three people: my brother-in-law, the legal counsel for
The New York Times
, and one other individual, who is operating from overseas—a well-connected Irish national who tries to help via his own network in Pakistan.

As Cathy and John depart and my training comes to an end, I reflect on the long day behind me. I have embarked on a journey through uncertainty, intrigue, and duplicity. It will challenge all my previous understanding of what faith, love, and commitment mean. I think about David. My husband is a strong-willed, patient individual. Slow and steady wins the race is a phrase he often iterates. It is a philosophy of sorts. I am also comforted by the fact that David is most likely the sharpest person in the room, possessing a rare understanding of Afghan culture as well as human nature. And he is a cat with nine lives. I know he will do all he can to keep himself and his fellow captives alive. I know he wants to come home. This is my greatest hope.

 

 

Five days have passed since I first heard about the kidnapping, and I’ve made it through the initial shock. I am now on a steady incline—a steep learning curve. Everything seems beyond my control. I feel the need to gather as much information as possible to have some sense of David’s experience and understanding of the region.

David gave me the password to his e-mail account during a recent conversation from Afghanistan before he vanished. He does this periodically, when Internet access is limited, so I can check his account for important e-mails and relay information to him over the phone.

I log in to his e-mail account from my laptop while sitting on the couch. My sense of boundaries, privacy, and personal space are outweighed by the need to figure out what to do. I hope to find some clue about his situation. I look through the most recent e-mails for anything pertaining to Afghanistan or Logar Province, the site of the fateful interview. I am loosely familiar with some of David’s sources. I search for names of people known to be in the region at present and for whom he has expressed trust in the past.

I write to Marin Strmecki, an Afghanistan expert and former adviser to the Bush administration who also has contacts in the Afghan government. I e-mail the Pakistani journalist and Taliban expert Ahmed Rashid, whom I met with David on a trip to Pakistan in March 2008. He has written several books about Afghanistan and Pakistan, including
Taliban
and
Descent into Chaos
. He is moved by our situation and provides his personal assessment of what, perhaps, the motivation of the kidnappers might be. He advises me to keep the case out of the public eye for the moment. He does not think the Taliban will succumb to moral pressure—the argument that holding a journalist is wrong—and he warns that David could become a political pawn or bargaining chip if his case receives media attention.

David’s colleagues at the paper are tremendously supportive. Michael Moss, a friend of David’s and fellow reporter in the paper’s investigations unit, is monitoring David’s biography on Wikipedia. He edits out any reference to his recent abduction. He also adds a section about David’s coverage of Guantánamo Bay prisoners and stories on injustices in the Muslim world, in the hope that it will prove to the Taliban that David is a fair and impartial journalist, motivated to tell all sides of the story. Much to our dismay, someone in cyberspace keeps trying to reedit the page to inform readers of David’s kidnapping.

David’s editors and I begin reaching out to international advocacy groups to get their advice on whether to take the case public or keep it quiet. People from the Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters without Borders, and Human Rights Watch brief us on situations with other journalists who were recently detained around the world. In most cases where the journalist has been held by a government or entity that is concerned with saving face, a public campaign has expedited the process of release. This was true for Alan Johnston, the BBC correspondent who was captured by a small militant group known as the Army of Islam in Gaza in 2007. In his case, Hamas put pressure on the Army of Islam to release him. His family and the BBC waged a global campaign for his release. He was freed four months later. But it appears that in cases where captives are being held by extremists with no direct link to a specific government, remaining private has proven more successful over time. This was true in the recent case of the Canadian journalist Melissa Fung, who was kidnapped in Afghanistan earlier this year. Her employer, CBC, requested a press blackout while negotiations were being conducted for fear that media attention would complicate matters or endanger her life. She was released on November 8—two days before David’s abduction—after Afghan intelligence officials detained the kidnapper’s mother.

One of David’s colleagues, a reporter in Kabul, expresses a strong desire to go public. We speak nightly on Skype. This, the reporter says, is what they would want if they were in David’s position. I have tremendous respect for this journalist, who is well versed in the nuances of Afghan culture. The reporter feels making the case public will pressure the Taliban to release David. The reporter tells me that most Afghans trust journalists and that recently Mullah Omar has declared that the Taliban should refrain from kidnapping journalists. The reporter thinks making a public campaign would speed David’s release. That said, the FBI and government officials believe it is difficult to gauge if, or how, the Taliban will react to public pressure. Even though we disagree, David’s colleague and I remain in close touch over the next few weeks because the bureau remains the point of contact for any initial communication from David’s captors.

The day-to-day tasks and sense of responsibility inherent in managing the kidnapping are overwhelming, and despite many opinions offered, isolating as well. I am desperate to find someone who has navigated this emotional terrain. I immediately think of Mariane Pearl, the wife of Daniel Pearl, the
Wall Street Journal
reporter who was abducted and killed by militants in Pakistan after 9/11. No one around me will actually say it, but everyone fears a repeat of the Daniel Pearl murder.

A copy of Mariane’s book about her husband,
A Mighty Heart
, stares back at me from a bookshelf in my apartment. After days of resisting, I finally pick up the book and flip through the pages. The very last line is a quote from a story my husband wrote after visiting the site of Daniel Pearl’s imprisonment and execution in Pakistan. It is taken from his news account of the July 4, 2003, attack on a Shiite mosque in Quetta, led by the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, in which forty-eight worshippers were killed or mortally wounded. “Saying nothing, looking ‘very relaxed’ walking ‘here and there’ in the words of witnesses, the three unidentified gunmen killed and killed and killed here on Friday afternoon.”

I take it as a sign to contact Mariane.

We speak over the phone.

Calm and straightforward, Mariane immediately tries to console me. She’s heard about David’s case through the grapevine and emphasizes that it is very different from Danny’s.

“There were never any demands for Danny. We always thought it would be an act of terrorism.” At this point, most people assume David’s captors will want money or prisoners, because the captors have not gone public.

“Everyone will tell you not to go to Kabul. This is a personal decision.” With this and all other decisions to be made, she tells me to follow my gut.

The newspaper provides me with contact information for Jere Van Dyk, an American journalist who was kidnapped in Afghanistan last year and held in the tribal areas for forty-five days. He has been free for six months. I hope to learn something from his experience: how he was treated by his captors; how he stayed alive; how he was released. I want to know as much as possible, regardless of unpleasantness and disturbing details. It is better to know what is within the realm of expectation than to be surprised and horrified later.

Two days after my FBI training session, I meet with Jere at his office on a Saturday afternoon. I am a bit anxious, not knowing who or what to expect. He is waiting in front of the building when I arrive. To my surprise and relief, I recognize him immediately. I had met him at an Afghan charity’s fund-raiser several months before with David. Though still shaken from his experience, he is quite lucid in his account of events. Kind and brave, he sets aside his own discomfort in retelling his experience to help me reach a better understanding of what might be happening to David.

Jere was set up by an Afghan colleague, a friend of twenty years who arranged his interviews and served as a translator. He tells me not to rule out the possibility that one or both of David’s fellow captives were complicit in the kidnapping. If they are not involved, he tells me to expect that the captors will threaten to harm or kill them to pressure our family and David. As Afghans working with a foreign journalist, they are viewed as traitors and as such are in greater danger than David. I have never met the two men being held with David. To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time David is working with them.

Jere assures me that David will be treated well. “They won’t hurt him physically,” he says, invoking Pashtunwali, the honor code under which the Taliban must treat prisoners as guests.

“But,” he warns, “the Afghans are master actors and manipulators.” He assures me they will seize every opportunity to rile us up in hopes of eliciting an emotional response. He is very forthcoming about his own experience. I ask him not to hold back.

He confides that during his captivity he was psychologically traumatized as he confronted his own mortality daily. He feared he would be beheaded. His captors joked that they would sell his body parts on the black market if his family and colleagues failed to pay for his release. He was also told that upon his release, a suicide bomber would be present to detonate, killing everyone.

“I guarantee David is thinking about you all the time,” he tells me. “This will keep him going.” He says he invented a wife for himself during his captivity, because the Afghans would find it strange that a middle-aged man was not married.