The Company: A Novel of the CIA (114 page)

"You are a remarkable man," Maria had said. She looked at him intently. "Why don't you let me interview you?"

"Interview me?"

"Well, that's what I do for a living. You have all this gear around—surely you can come up with a television camera."

Ibrahim seemed interested. "And what would you ask me in such an interview?"

"I would ask you where you come from and where you're going. I would ask you about your religion, your friends, your enemies. I would ask you why you fight the Russians, and what will be your next jihad when the Russians are gone."

"What makes you think there will be another jihad?"

"You are in love with holy war, Commander Ibrahim. It's written on your face. Cease-fire, peace—they bore you. I've met people like you before. You will go from one war to the next until you get your wish—"

"Since you know so much about me, what is my wish?"

"You want to become a martyr."

Maria's comments had amused Ibrahim. "And what would you do with the tape of an interview if I consent," he had asked.

"You could arrange for it to be delivered to my office in Peshawar. Within twenty-four hours it would be on the air in New York—what you say would be picked up and broadcast around the world."

"Let me think about it," Ibrahim had said. And with his Shadow trailing two steps behind him, he had stridden past the knife-sharpener and out of the compound in the direction of the barracks at the edge of the hamlet below.

Maria had turned to Anthony. "Well, he didn't say no, did he?" At dusk Ibrahim had sent word that he consented to the interview, which would take place in the room under the attic at midnight. Included in the note was a list of things he would refuse to talk about: questions concerning his real identity and his past were prohibited, along with anything that might reveal the location of the mountaintop he called Yathrib.

When Maria and Anthony climbed down the ladder at a quarter to midnight, they found that the communal kitchen had been transformed into a crude studio. Two kleig lights, running off a generator humming away outside the house, illuminated the two kitchen chairs set up in front of the chimney. A beardless young man holding a German Leica motioned for the two prisoners to stand with their backs to a poster of the Golden Dome Mosque in Jerusalem and then snapped half a dozen shots of them. (It was this photo that turned up on front pages around the world a few days later.) Maria regarded the camera with an impatient smile; she was eager to get on with the interview. Anthony managed an uncomfortable grin that editorialists later described as sardonic. With the photo op out of the way Ibrahim, wearing an embroidered white robe that grazed the tops of his Beal Brothers boots, appeared at the door and settled onto one of the chairs. His long hair had been combed and tied back at the nape of his neck, his short henna-tinted beard had been trimmed. A bearded mujaheddin wearing thick eyeglasses fiddled with the focus of a cumbersome Chinese camera mounted on a homemade wooden tripod. Maria, pulling the Sindhi shawl over her shoulders, took her place in the second chair. A red light atop the camera came on.

Maria looked into the lens. "Good evening. This is Maria Shaath, broadcasting to you from somewhere in Afghanistan. My guest tonight—or should I say my host, since I am his guest, or more accurately, his prisoner—is Commander Ibrahim, the leader of the commando unit that kidnapped me and the American diplomat Anthony McAuliffe from the streets of Peshawar in Pakistan." She turned toward Ibrahim and favored him with a guileless smile. "Commander, it's hard to know where to begin this interview, since you have given me a list of things you refuse to talk about—"

"Let us start by correcting an error. Anthony McAuliffe is posing as an American diplomat, but he is actually a CIA officer attached to the CIA station in Peshawar at the time of his... apprehension."

"Even if you're correct, its still not clear why you kidnapped him. I thought the American Central Intelligence Agency was helping Islamic fundamentalist groups like yours in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan."

Ibrahim's fingers kneaded the worry beads. "The American Central Intelligence Agency could not care less about Afghanistan. They are supplying antiquated arms to Islamic fundamentalists in order to bleed the Soviet enemy, much as the Soviets supplied arms to the North Vietnamese to bleed their American enemy in Vietnam."

"If the situation were reversed, if you were fighting the Americans, would you accept aid from the Soviet Union?"

"I would accept aid from the devil to pursue the jihad."

"If you drive out the Soviet occupiers—"

"When we drive out the Soviet occupiers—"

Maria nodded. "Okay, will the war be over when you drive out the Russians?"

Ibrahim leaned forward. "We are engaged in a struggle against colonialism and secularism, which are the enemies of Islam and the Islamic state we will create in Afghanistan, as well as other areas of the Muslim world. The war will go on until we have defeated all vestiges of colonialism and secularism and inaugurated a Muslim commonwealth based on the pure faith—the Islam— of the Prophet you call Abraham and we call Ibrahim. Such a state, governed by Koranic principles and the example of the Messenger Muhammad, would be characterized by total submission to God. This I believe."

Casey and his deputy, Ebby, stood in front of the enormous television set in the Director's office on the seventh floor of Langley, drinks in their fists, watching the interview.

On the screen Maria was glancing at her notes. "Let me ask you some personal questions. Are you married?"

"I have two wives and three sons. I have several daughters also."

Casey tinkled the ice cubes in his glass. "Surprised the son-of-a-bitch even bothered mentioning the female children."

Maria could be heard asking, "What is you favorite film?"

"I have never seen a motion picture."

"He's trying to qualify for Islamic sainthood," Casey quipped.

"Which political figures do you admire most?"

"Living or dead?"

"Both. Historical as well as living figures."

"Historically, I admire and respect the Messenger Muhammad— he was not only a holy man who lived a holy life, he was a courageous warrior who inspired the Islamic armies in their conquest of North Africa and Spain and parts of France. Historically I admire, too, Moses and Jesus, both prophets who brought the word of God to the people but were ignored. I also hold in high esteem the sultan of Egypt, Saladin, who defeated the first colonialists, the Crusaders, and liberated the sacred city of Jerusalem."

"Too bad he's holding one of our people," Casey decided. "This is the sort of guy who could really bloody the Russians."

On the television screen Maria asked, "How about living figures?"

"She is certainly a handsome woman," Reagan said as he and his National Security Advisor, Bill Clark, watched TV on the second floor of the White House. "Remind me what her, uh, name is?"

"Maria Shaath," Clark said. "The Ibrahim character is the one who thinks we've agreed to trade Shaath and the CIA fellow for fifty Stingers."

"Living figures," Ibrahim was telling Maria, "are more difficult."

"Why is that?" she inquired.

"Because it will be fifty or a hundred years before you can have enough historical perspective to weigh what a leader has done."

"You take a long view of history?"

"I measure things in centuries."

"Go out on a limb," Maria insisted. "Give it your best shot."

Ibrahim smiled faintly. "I admire Qaddafi for not being intimidated by the colonial powers. I respect Iraq's Saadam Hussein and Syria's Hafez al Assad for the same reasons. On the other hand, I despise Jordan's King Hussein and Egypt's Mubarak and Saudi Arabia's entire royal family for their failure to stand up to the colonial and secular West. They have in fact been co-opted by the secular West. They have become agents of secularism in the Islamic world."

Reagan asked, "What did I, uh, decide about those Stingers, again, Bill?"

"You felt it would be a mistake to supply them to Islamic fundamentalists like this Ibrahim character. So the Stingers we're sending in with the Israeli raiding party have had their firing mechanisms removed."

"You speak often about colonialism and secularism," Maria was asking on the screen. "What about Marxism?"

"I hate Marxism!" Reagan muttered to himself.

"Marxism is as bad as capitalism," Ibrahim replied. "Marxism is colonialism with a secular packaging."

Reagan perked up. "Well, he's not a Marxist!" he decided.

"He certainly isn't," agreed the National Security Advisor.

"I don't see what we have to lose by arming him with, uh, Stingers if he uses them against the Marxists," Reagan said.

"A lot of Senators are saying the same thing," Clark observed.

Reagan stared with troubled sincerity at his National Security Advisor. "Are you suggesting that supplying Stingers to the, uh, Afghan freedom fighters would be popular in Congress?"

"I suppose it would be," Clark conceded.

"Well, maybe we need to take another look at this, uh, Stinger business, after all," Reagan ventured. "I'm not saying we should give them Stingers. On the other hand, if they use them to shoot down Russian planes— Hmmmmmm."

Leo Kritzky had just returned from Baltimore, where he'd personally debriefed Hippolyre Fet, the former KGB rezident in Peshawar who had been spirited out of Pakistan immediately after his defection, flown to America and installed in a Company safe house. Pulling into his Georgetown driveway after dark, Leo was surprised to see a familiar gray Plymouth already parked there. Jack was slouched in the driver's seat, the radio on and tuned to a station that gave the news every hour on the hour. Both drivers emerged from their cars at the same moment.

"Jack," Leo said. "What brings you out at this hour?"

"I badly need a drink," Jack moaned as they headed toward the front door of Leo's home. He glanced at his old Yale roommate and scull-mate. Physically, Leo had pretty much recovered from Angleton's draconian inquisition nine years before; his hair had grown back ash-colored and was worn in a brush cut popular with Army officers. The gauntness had given way to a sturdy leanness. If there were vestiges of the ordeal, they were to be found in Leo's dark eyes, which still looked haunted, more so tonight than usual, or so it seemed to Jack, who said, "You look as if you could use a dose of alcohol, too, old buddy."

"We've both come to the right place," Leo said. He let himself in with a latch key and flicked on lights. The two men threw their coats over the backs of chairs. Leo made a beeline for the bar across the living room. "What's your pleasure, Jack?"

"Whiskey, neat. Don't stint."

Leo half-filled two thick jelly glasses (Adelle had taken the crystal after the divorce) with Glenfiddich. "Any news from the raiding party?" Leo asked, handing one glass to Jack, hiking his own in salute.

"The last we heard they'd transited the Nameh Pass, north of the Khyber." Jack frowned. "They're crossing unmarked mountain trails now and maintaining radio silence, so we won't know more until they've reached Ibrahim's hilltop."

"When's D-day?"

"Hard to say how long it will take them to get over the mountains with pack animals. For the rendezvous with the helicopters, we're calculating a minimum of five, a maximum of eight days."

"Must be tough on Millie," Leo guessed.

"Tough is not the word," Jack said. "On the other hand, if it ends well..."

"It will, Jack."

"Yeah, I keep telling myself that but I haven't been able to convince myself." He took a sip of whiskey and shivered.

"Did you catch the Shaath interview?" Leo asked.

"They supplied us with a preview tape. We ran it in the office."

"I heard it on the radio driving back," Leo said. "The part where Ibrahim says he'll defend Islam from colonial oppression in other parts of the world once the Russians are out of the way—it made my hair stand on end."

"Yeah. The Shaath woman didn't beat around the bush with him, either."

"You mean when she asked him if he was issuing a declaration of war?" Leo said. He waved Jack to the sofa and settled tiredly onto a rocking chair at right angles to him. "Ibrahim's talking about Saudi Arabia, of course," he added. "That's next on the fundamentalists' menu when the Russians cut their losses and pull out of Afghanistan." Leo drank his whiskey thoughtfully. "Its not a pretty picture. About this Fet fellow—"

"Yeah, I meant to ask you. What goodies has he brought with him?"

"Mind you, Jack, we haven't fluttered him yet so we can't say for sure he's not feeding us a load of bull. On the other hand—"

"On the other hand?"

"He claims that the guys who run the KGB are ready to write off Afghanistan. Inside the KGB this information is being closely held. As far as they're concerned the war is lost—its only a matter of time, and casualties, before the Soviet military gets the message and figures out how to wind down the war."

"Wow! If it's true—"

"Fet claims he was under orders to open back-channels to the various fundamentalist splinter groups—the KGB is already looking beyond the war to the postwar period when the fundamentalists will have taken over Afghanistan and turned their attention elsewhere." "Elsewhere being Saudi Arabia?"

"The KGB, according to Fet, thinks it can harness the hatred the fundamentalists have for America and turn it against American interests in the Middle East. If the Saudi royal family is overthrown—"

Jack filled in the blanks. "The Russians are an oil-exporting nation. If the fundamentalists tighten the spigot, Moscow will be able to buy the allegiance of European countries that rely on Saudi oil."

"The possibilities for manipulation are limited only by a lack of imagination," Leo said.

"And the KGB's schemers have never been known to lack imagination."

"No," Leo said, frowning thoughtfully. "They haven't." Something was obviously disturbing him. "They are far more cynical than I imagined."

"When Fet says he was under orders to establish contact with fundamentalists, what exactly does that mean?"