The Agent Runner (7 page)

Her toes described slow spirals around his groin. He felt himself stirring, despite himself. She knew exactly how to play him. She could coax an erection out of him in even the most trying circumstances.

‘And do you tell him everything?’ Noman managed.

‘Everything, darling.’

She hooked a heel behind his thigh and pulled him towards her, rising from the bed so that she was level with his groin, her busy henna-stained fingers unbuckling his belt and unbuttoning his jeans. She could move fast when the fancy took her.

‘I tell him that you are a man of vast appetite and uncommon desires,’ she said, scooping out his cock and balls. ‘I tell him you are a lion who must have red meat. I tell him that you will let nothing stand in the way of getting what you want. You’re not a psychopath, my love. You’re so much more than that. You’re an
afreet
. A demon!’

She tossed her head to throw her hair back and made her mouth into a humid jungle cave and he went barrelling in. He groaned and extended his hands under her nightgown and down her broad pale back. She was a magnificent woman. If he was a lion then she was easily a lioness. As she went up and down, she never lost eye contact; her flashing eyes a beacon of promise.

‘Yes,’ he said, urging her on, ‘Yes! Fuckin yes!’

Then he was gripping her hair, knotting the curls, while escalating spasms racked his pelvis and the backs of his legs, and his arse began to throb.

‘Yes! Yes! Yes!’

She didn’t let him come though. With a popping noise, like a vacuum seal broken, she abruptly released him. He staggered backwards, wild-eyed and stiff as a tightly drawn bow, his arse vibrating and his face flushed with blood.

‘What the fuck?’ He yelled.

Mumayyaz smacked her lips and wiped them with the tips of her fingers.

‘Your phone’s ringing,’ she said.

‘What?’

She shook her hair out.

‘It’s in your back pocket.’

He grabbed the phone and held it to his ear.

‘What?’

It was the duty officer in the watch room at ISI headquarters. He sounded terrified. He told Noman that the Americans had crossed the border in helicopters and killed bin Laden.

‘When?’ Noman demanded.

‘At least an hour ago.’

‘An hour! What the fuck? Why so long?’ He should have been informed within minutes of any assault on the Abbottabad house. ‘What about the bloody surveillance team?’

Silence.

‘Dammit man, tell me!’

9. The Abbottabad raid

They began amongst the debris in the animal pen where the Black Hawk had come down. The Americans had destroyed it with thermite grenades before leaving, and the heat of the fire had warped the helicopter’s rotors so that it resembled the charred husk of a mutilated spider.

‘We have spoken to Haqqani’s people who have watchers in Jalalabad,’ Noman explained in a steely monotone. ‘They say that just after eleven o’clock last night two MH-60 Black Hawk helicopters lifted off from the airfield there. Shortly afterwards they crossed into our airspace undetected.’

‘Why undetected?’ Khan demanded.

‘Because our principal air defences are pointing east at India,’ Noman told him, ‘and the Americans have radar-dampening and noise-reduction technology. We were wide open. We always have been.’

Noman had never seen Khan look so unsettled. The old man was standing with his mouth hanging slightly open and his shirt miss-buttoned, looking all of his seventy years. He’d rushed up here as soon as he’d heard the news, arriving not long after Noman. It was clear that whatever outcome Khan had expected from bin Laden’s long confinement, it had not been this – an American raid.

‘Forty-five minutes after the Black Hawks, four Chinooks took off from the same airfield in Jalalabad,’ Noman told him. ‘We’re not sure but we believe that at least two of them crossed the border into Pakistan.’

‘We think the Chinooks put down in the tribal areas,’ Raja Mahfouz added, ‘we’re talking to some of our sources in the villages and trying to identify the exact location. We think the Chinooks were kept in reserve with their engines running as back-up in case of complications.’

Major Raja Mohammed Mahfouz, Chief of Staff of SS Directorate and Noman’s deputy, was a shaven-headed giant with a thick ridge of bone running across his brow and a black bushy beard that covered his chest. He was a gruff, melancholy Pashtun from the North-West Frontier who had commanded one of Noman’s companies in Seventh Commando Battalion and Noman had brought him with him to the ISI. Like Noman, he had been up all night.

‘Meanwhile, the Black Hawks circled the city to the north following the ridgeline there and came in from the east,’ Noman said, pointing at the Sarban Hills. He was standing beside a detached helicopter wheel, ‘As you see one of them crashed here.’

‘Why?’ Khan demanded.

‘We don’t know yet. I’ve requested an air-crash investigation team from Mushaf Air Force base. They’re on their way. We don’t think that any of the Americans were injured in the crash and the setback doesn’t appear to have slowed them down. They used explosives to blow open the gate there.’

He led them through the metal gates that were hanging off their hinges and into the alley that ran alongside the main building. A second locked gate had also been blown open. They entered the small courtyard where the courier lived with his wife and four children. There were crimson bloodstains in the dirt and flies feasting on them.

‘The courier Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti was shot dead here and his wife beside him. The discarded shell casings are NATO standard 5.56 mm.’

‘What about the neighbours?’ Khan asked.

‘They undoubtedly heard the noise,’ Noman replied.

‘One of the locals posted on Twitter,’ Raja Mahfouz added, squinting at the Blackberry that was tiny in his hands, ‘
Helicopter hovering above Abbottabad at 1 AM
…then in brackets…
is a rare event
.’

‘Did no one investigate?’

‘Anyone curious enough to come outside was told by a Pashto speaker that a security operation was underway and that they should go back inside their houses and turn their lights off,’ Noman said. ‘It was dark. There was no moonlight. The Pashto speaker was dressed in a
shalwar kameez
and flak jacket and could easily have been mistaken for a plainclothes policeman.’

‘And our surveillance team?’ Khan asked.

‘Your surveillance team,’ Noman said, grimly.

Khan blinked myopically. ‘My team?’

‘We’ll come to that.’ Noman led them to the paved patio at the front entrance to the house, where the courier’s brother Abrar and his wife had been shot, and together they went inside. There was a large unfurnished room with un-rendered walls and a crumpled gate that had once blocked the base of the staircase leading to the second floor. Near the top of the staircase there were more bloodstains and bullet holes in the concrete, marking the spot where Khalid, the Sheikh’s twenty-three-year-old son, had been shot several times and died.

‘They jumped over Khalid’s body,’ Noman explained. ‘Blew open the cage leading to the third floor and advanced to the landing.’ He climbed to the next level, swivelled at the top of the stairs and pointed to the nearest bedroom. ‘The Sheikh was in there with two of his wives.’

He pushed open the door. More bloodstains.

‘The women resisted arrest,’ Raja Mahfouz said. ‘They attempted to shield him. The Americans shot one of them in the leg.’

‘Which one?’ Khan asked.

‘The Yemeni.’

‘Where is she?’

‘In the military hospital,’ Raja Mahfouz told him.

‘So?’

‘The women were pushed aside. The Americans shot the Sheikh in the chest and in the head. He died there on the floor.’

In silence they contemplated the ransacked room. Nine years and seven months after the Sheikh’s emissaries had brought down the Twin Towers and enraged a nation, the Americans had finally got their man. It wasn’t much of a place for the founder of Al Qaeda to die – a bare room with cheap nylon curtains and threadbare mattresses in a half-finished, shoddily constructed house.

‘They put the corpse in a black body bag and cuffed the women and escorted them down the stairs,’ Noman continued. ‘For the next twenty minutes or so they searched the house, gathered the surviving women and children against an outside wall and questioned them in Arabic, and then they destroyed the crashed helicopter with explosive charges and thermite grenades. They were careful to ensure that nothing was recoverable from it. In that time one of the rescue Chinooks arrived. The Americans were on the ground for less than forty minutes and we know from our allies in Jalalabad that the helicopters returned
there at 3 am. The Sheikh’s body was sent from there to Bagram and then at dawn it was flown to the US Aircraft Carrier Carl Vinson and buried at sea.’

‘You’re a hundred percent sure about that?’ Khan demanded.

Noman shrugged. ‘The Americans called our friends in Saudi Intelligence and warned them what they were about to do. The Saudis informed us immediately.’

‘And our response?’

‘We have arrested five locals on suspicion of collaboration,’ Raja Mahfouz told them, ‘including a doctor who was running an immunisation drive in the town.’

‘And the surveillance team?’ Khan said, repeating his earlier question. ‘Why didn’t they report this?’

‘You had better follow me,’ Noman said, grim-faced.

*

A bundle of fur and a dark crimson smear on the concrete marked the spot where someone had clubbed the monkey to death. They stood in the hide by the window and stared back at the compound they had just vacated. Black soot scorched the wall of the pen and part of the Black Hawk’s tail hung over it.

The tripod and telescope was on its side, as if tipped over in a struggle. Omar was lying beside it with a bruised and puffed-up face, the belt that had been used to strangle him still looped around his neck. Tariq was gone.

‘Everything has been left the way it was found,’ Raja Mahfouz said.

‘According to the logbook, Omar was on watch here and Tariq was sleeping over there.’ Noman explained, pointing at the bedroom. He could feel Khan watching him. Yeah I fucked him here, he wanted to yell. But he was your boy. A traitor. ‘Gunfire. Explosions. Tariq must have woken up as soon as it kicked off.’

‘You’re saying he wasn’t expecting this?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Noman said. He squatted down beside the body and loosened the belt, revealing the dark lesion on the neck. The blood vessels in Omar’s eyes had burst and were bright red. ‘Using a belt doesn’t suggest premeditation. I think Tariq reacted to the situation. In my opinion he woke up and as soon as he realised what was happening he recognised that his cover was blown. Or at least it soon would be. He knew we’d be digging around trying to understand this thing for years to come. No cover would withstand that. And he must have realised that he had to stop Omar reporting events if he was to have a chance of escape. So he killed him and fled.’

Khan was frowning. ‘And the Americans took him with them when they left?’

Noman shook his head. ‘We don’t think so. A witness claims to have seen someone fitting Tariq’s description leaving this house and approaching the Pashto speaker at the gate of bin Laden’s house. There was a heated exchange. The man we think was Tariq was shouting,
“Zamaa num bulbul dai
.”’

I am
Nightingale
.

‘He went on shouting until one of the Americans hit him with a rifle.’

‘You’re sure about this?’ Khan asked.

‘The police arrested Tariq’s wife and parents this morning in Lahore,’ Raja Mahfouz said. ‘The wife is denying all knowledge. She’s insisting he was loyal.
The parents are singing, though. They were promised relocation to England and an annual stipend for the rest of their lives.’

‘The boy was a British spy,’ Noman said, accusingly. ‘He must have been recruited when he was stationed in England. All the time he was working for you he was working for them.’

‘The Americans didn’t wait,’ Khan said, ignoring him. There was a hint of grudging admiration in his voice. ‘They didn’t tell anyone, not even their allies. They went and did it and to hell with the consequences.’ He glanced at Noman. ‘Have you apprehended Tariq?’

‘He’s still missing,’ Raja Mahfouz said.

‘We’re hunting high and low,’ Noman growled. ‘Airports, train stations and bus terminals are all on high alert. There are checkpoints the length of the Grand Trunk Road. We’ve closed the border crossing at Torkham Gate and we’ve mobilised helicopter patrols in Mohmand and Bajaur.’

Khan pursed his lips and stared down at the dead monkey at his feet.

‘Did you suspect him?’ Noman demanded. ‘Did you know Tariq was a spy?’

Khan looked at him. After a pause he led him across the room and out of earshot of Raja Mahfouz. ‘Who knows you came up here?’ he asked in a low voice.

Noman stiffened. ‘What?’

‘Who knows you came up here the day before yesterday?’ Khan repeated.

‘What are you suggesting?’

‘If Tariq is arrested he will be questioned and undoubtedly he will reveal that you were here two days ago.’

‘And what if he does? I told you I didn’t trust either of them.’

‘Keep your voice down,’ Khan told him. ‘I’m trying to protect you. Who else, apart from Tariq, knows that you came here?’

10. Waiting for Nightingale

The Americans called it the Valley at the Edge of the Known World. The soldiers joked that they were so close to it they might fall off at any moment.

They lived in narrow crawl spaces behind battle-scarred ramparts of sandbags and cedar logs, staring out at an implacably hostile and alien world through fire-ports as narrow as the arrow slits in Crusader castles. It was considered one of the most dangerous postings in Afghanistan and in some quarters one of the most dangerous places on earth. It had a reputation for messing with your head. More than forty American servicemen had died defending the Forward Operating Base and several times it had come close to being completely overrun. It was a haunted battleground built on the remnants of a long-abandoned Soviet hilltop fortification that had claimed as many Russian lives and come just as close to being overrun. It looked east down the valley across a rock-strewn landscape where an elusive and ever-moving enemy lurked amongst the boulders and bushes –
dukhi
or ghosts was what the terrified Russian conscripts had called them – men in dusty turbans and blankets, wearing shoes without laces, possessing nothing of any significance but their guns.