Viking Bay (11 page)

Kay had actually been astounded when Callahan said they were going to give Sahid Khan twenty-five million. Recalling the thirty million the
New York Times
said the Chinese paid the Afghan minister of mines in 2010, she wasn't surprised by the amount, but she was surprised that Callahan was willing to give him all the money up front. She was also surprised that Mercer agreed with her.

“If it was up to me,” Mercer had said, “there's no way in hell we'd be giving a bandit like him that kind of money, but Callahan made the decision. He said he didn't want to get outbid by somebody, and although it won't cost two billion like an American presidential campaign, it's going to take quite a bit. Callahan said he didn't want to start out with some lowball amount and then have to add to it every couple of months when Khan needed to get something done. The main thing, however, is that Callahan can get the money—and it's not like it's
his
money—and in the grand scheme of things, considering the billions the
U.S. has given to Afghanistan in foreign aid, twenty-five million is a drop in the bucket.”

If Ara was shocked by the amount, however, she didn't show it. She simply nodded a couple of times as she considered the number. Kay also wondered if Ara was thinking at all about the issues she'd come to the United Nations to discuss; Callahan may also have underestimated the ardor she felt for those issues. Maybe the only thing Ara was thinking about was that she'd continue to be shod in Dolce & Gabbanas.

“Okay,” Ara said. “Enough business for tonight. I'll be flying home in two days and I'll discuss all this with my father. If he thinks your proposal has merit, I'll contact you and we'll proceed from there. By the way, your company was smart to send someone like you to talk to me instead of some slick corporate bullshitter.”

Before Kay could thank her for what had sounded like a compliment, Ara said, “Now, I didn't come to New York just to attend this conference. I also came to have some fun. I've been working my ass off the last few months, and I deserve some fun. There used to be a place a few blocks from here. I don't know if it's still there, but they used to have two guys that came from New Orleans after Katrina and they play dueling pianos and tell dirty jokes. Would you like to come with me?”

“Sure,” Kay said.

Later that evening, Kay had another thought: Maybe Carolyn Harris hadn't led Ara astray; maybe it had been the other way around.

—

THEY HAD A GREAT TIME
that night. They drank too much; they laughed a lot. Handsome young men bought them drinks, caressed their egos, and tried to get them into bed. She also found out that Ara really was passionate about the causes being discussed at the UN. Maybe some of the money they were offering the Khans really would end up doing some good.

At one point, Kay could tell Ara was genuinely interested in a guy—a
well-built stud who was a utility infielder for the Yankees but saw playing time only when Jeter was injured or needed a rest. Kay waited until they were alone in the restroom together before she said, “Hey, if you want to split with him you won't hurt my feelings, and I swear to God, I won't tell anybody. Really, Ara, you can trust me on that.”

“I believe you, but I think not. I'm having a good time tonight, just the two of us. And I have his number. Let's move on to the next place.”

The hangover Kay had the next day was of historic proportions, but she called Mercer and said, “Mission accomplished. It was easy.”

“Easy?” Mercer said, sounding skeptical.

“Yeah. You and Callahan were completely wrong about Ara Khan. I didn't have to sell her on anything. She and her dad had just been waiting for someone like Callahan to come along. She said she'd call me after she's had a chance to talk things over with her old man. Then, after I told her what we wanted to do, we went out on the town together and had a blast.”

“I know,” Mercer said. “We had someone following you the whole night. He said the karaoke number you two did together was impressive but that Ara has a better voice than you.”

“Well, I don't know about that,” Kay said.

15
|
A week later, when Ara Khan hadn't called Kay back, Eli suggested to Callahan that Kay call her.

“No,” Callahan said. “These things take time. What Ara's father is doing right now is trying to figure out if he can get a better deal from someone else. I don't think he'll find one.”

Callahan turned out to be right. That night Ara called Kay.

“My father can see the merits in your proposal. He wants you to provide documents laying out a timeline for the mining operation, specific milestones that must be met, infrastructure upgrades that will be needed, profit projections, and how profits will be shared between the mining company and Afghanistan. My father didn't specifically ask for this, but I also want to understand how many local people will be employed and a document discussing the environmental impact of lithium mining on a large scale. Finally, you will provide a draft of the contract that defines our relationship. There will be nothing in these documents discussing your support of my father's political aspirations. How long do you think it will take to prepare these documents?”

“I don't know,” Kay said.

“Well, find out and get back to me,” Ara snapped.

Kay almost said:
Yes, ma'am.
“I'll do that,” Kay said.

“Courier the documents to me when they're ready. Don't e-mail or fax them. If the preliminary documents appear satisfactory, we'll meet here in Afghanistan to finalize our arrangement. My father is unwilling to leave the province at this time. There are matters here that require our—I mean his—personal oversight.”

Kay wondered if that meant that Sahid Khan was reluctant to travel because he needed to stay close to home to keep the people he governed in line.

“But there is a problem that needs to be resolved before we go any further.”

“Oh, yeah? What's that?” Kay asked.

“Twenty-five million isn't going to be enough to facilitate what needs to be done.”

“Is that right,” Kay said. “So how much do you want?”

“Twice that amount.” Before Kay could tell Ara that she was just a middleman and in no position to make a decision on the money, Ara said, “We're not trying to hold you up. You've simply underestimated what it's going to take to achieve your objective.”

Kay thought that was probably bullshit. Ara and her old man probably
were
trying to hold them up.

“I'll convey all this to my boss,” Kay said, “and call you tomorrow.”

—

KAY IMMEDIATELY CALLED
Callahan and passed on what Ara had told her, and the next morning Callahan held a meeting with Kay, Eli Dolan, Sylvia Sorenson, and Anna Mercer in attendance.

“Eli, how long will it take you and Sylvia to provide the documents Ara wants?” Callahan said.

“They've been ready for a month,” Eli said, “except for the environmental impact statement. I wasn't expecting that. And we can't give her a real environmental impact assessment, as those take months to prepare—analyzing waste streams, water tables, soil conditions, all sorts of things. But I think I can give her what she wants in terms of generic environmental concerns, with the caveat that an engineering firm will be hired to do a formal assessment later.”

“Yeah, well, give her whatever you think will make her happy,” Callahan said. “Kay, you call Ara back and tell her we'll give her
everything she asked for by the end of this week and that she'll have a week to review the documents. I want to get moving on this. Eli, who besides Kay do you need at the meeting?”

“I don't see why I need to go at all,” Kay said.

“You need to go because I want you to stay connected to Ara. So who else needs to be there, Eli?”

“We need somebody from Glardon Mining in case they want to get more into the nuts and bolts of the mining operation. I think I can handle everything else myself.”

“Will you need me there?” Sylvia asked Eli. “I mean, in case there are legal issues they want to discuss. I'd prefer not to go—I mean, because of my mother—but if I have to . . .”

“No, you won't need to be there,” Callahan said, answering for Eli. “The Khans aren't worried about the legal shit, because Sahid Khan plans to bribe his way through all the legal shit.”

“But we're going to need security,” Eli said. “I mean, if it's okay with you, Thomas, I'd just as soon come back from Afghanistan alive.”

“I've already thought about that,” Callahan said. “We'll use Cannon and Sterling.”

“What are you talking about?” Kay said.

“For the initial meeting with Ara and her father,” Callahan said, “we could send some of our own people with you to keep the Taliban from killing you while you're over there. But the Callahan Group is not in the security business, and when we actually begin mining operations we're going to need a heavy-duty, full-time security company. C&S Logistics is an outfit run by two ex–army colonels named Cannon and Sterling. They've been around for about ten years and they hire good people, all of them previously trained by Uncle. Our plan was to use them when we started mining and doing the infrastructure upgrades, but we might as well bring them in now so they can get the lay of the land. I'll call Cannon and tell him.”

“But what about the money?” Mercer asked Callahan. He'd only
grunted when Kay told him that Ara wanted double what Callahan had initially offered.

“The money's not a problem,” Callahan said.

“You're kidding,” Kay said.

“The Pentagon's budget this year is about five hundred billion,” Callahan said. “Fifty million is point zero one percent of that budget. The money's not a problem.”

Kay wondered what the Pentagon's budget had to do with Callahan's calculations, but didn't ask.

“So,” Callahan said, “Eli, you and Sylvia finish getting the documents together and courier them to Ara. Kay, you call Ara back, set a specific date for the meeting, and find out where she wants to meet. You can also tell her we'll give her the amount she wants, but if she asks for any more, tell her it might be cheaper for us to have her old man whacked and deal with his replacement.”

“Are you serious?” Kay said.

“No. That was a joke. Sort of. Just make sure she understands that I'm not going to let her keep raising the ante.”

—

ALPHA COULDN'T BELIEVE IT!

Alpha had been willing to risk everything for eighteen million as Finley was getting two and Bravo five. But now Callahan was planning to give the Khans
fifty
million instead of twenty-five, meaning that Alpha would walk away—if able to walk away—with over forty million dollars.

This was like winning the lotto without even buying a ticket.

Alpha called Bravo and gave him an update, saying only that the plan was proceeding forward. There was no reason to tell Bravo that the prize had doubled, and there was no way that Bravo would be able to find out.

“As soon as I know where the meeting is, I'll let you know,” Alpha said. “But you won't have much time. You're going to have to really scramble. You'll need to . . .”

“Don't tell me how to do my job,” Bravo said.

And Alpha thought:
This arrogant son of a bitch is going to be a problem.

—

OTHER THAN A COUPLE
of phone calls to Ara Khan, Kay didn't really have anything to do in the two weeks before they left for Afghanistan. All the heavy lifting was being done by Eli and Sylvia. The only thing of note that she did during this period was go to bed with Eli Dolan.

One day, after another meeting to brief Callahan on how everything was proceeding, Eli asked Kay if she'd like to go out for a drink. The last time Kay had drinks with Eli, she'd gone home a bit tipsy—but she'd gone home. This time Eli Dolan charmed the pants off her—literally. Or to put it another way, Kay allowed those pants to be charmed off. She and Eli had two drinks on M Street, and when Dolan asked if she'd like to see his Georgetown town house, she'd called her daughter and said that Mommy had to pull an all-nighter for God and country.

Dolan was everything in bed that he was out of bed: attentive, unselfish, and adroit. She loved his slim body, and she hadn't had sex in so long, she was ravenous. Before they left for Afghanistan, Kay and Dolan managed to find time for a dozen encounters. Kay kept track of the number. Was she in love with Eli Dolan? She wasn't sure. All she knew was she felt more attracted to him than any man she'd met in a long time. She also wasn't sure what the future would bring.

She didn't know if she was going to stay with the Callahan Group—she wasn't enamored at all with her current assignment—and if she stayed, she knew having an affair with a coworker could really complicate things. She also didn't like that Eli preferred to live in New York,
and although he claimed he was okay with her having a teenage daughter and was looking forward to meeting Jessica, Kay knew there was a big difference between being a lover and being a stepfather.

She finally decided she'd worry about the future later, and for now just enjoy having sex with him.

One thing she certainly didn't foresee was Eli Dolan trying to kill her.

16
|
Almost a month after Kay met with Ara Khan in New York, she, Eli Dolan, and two engineers from Glardon Mining flew to Kabul. They spent their first night at the Kabul Serena Hotel. Kay had been expecting a dump, but the place was more than adequate, except for a two-hour power outage, which the staff treated as normal. Dolan didn't come to her room that night; it had been an exhausting trip and they were leaving at dawn for Ghazni Province.

The following morning, Kay dressed in a loose-fitting black cotton
abaya
—a modest, long dress that buttoned up the front and covered her from chin to ankles. On her head was a black scarf to cover her blond hair, and she could wrap it around to hide her face. She didn't like wearing the scarf, but Eli insisted.

The security team from C&S Logistics was waiting in front of the hotel. They had arrived in Afghanistan six days earlier to reconnoiter the meeting place, arrange for transportation, and get whatever supplies they couldn't bring from the States.

The team consisted of ten men, including Steven Cannon and Nathan Sterling, the founders and managing partners of C&S Logistics. Callahan had said that both men were retired army colonels, and Kay learned from Eli that they'd spent their combat time in Iraq and were not as familiar with Afghanistan, which was why both partners had come along on this trip. Sterling and six men would accompany Kay and Eli to the meeting, provide protection during the meeting, and remain with them until they left the country. Cannon would take two of his men and one of the mining engineers to the dry salt lakes; he
wanted to examine the area near the lakes and begin developing a strategy for protecting the mining operation once the work started.

To Kay, Sterling and Cannon looked like bookends. Both men were over six feet tall, about sixty years old, and had close-cropped gray hair. They also appeared to be in excellent physical shape, flat-bellied and muscular. Kay could imagine them training with their men, refusing to give in to the fact that they were half their age, and bragging that they could still fit into the uniforms they wore as butter-bar lieutenants. Sterling had a big nose and a thin-lipped mouth. Cannon's features were rounder than Sterling's, and his hair was thinner, but the main thing that distinguished Cannon from Sterling was that Cannon wore glasses and Sterling didn't. Both men seemed on edge, their eyes constantly moving, looking for potential threats.

All the C&S men were dressed as working-class Muslim men would dress. They had on long shirts—gray, white, and brown in color—that reached their knees and loose, pajama-like pants. Kay learned that this style of dress was called
perahan tunban
and was worn by most Afghan men. Some of the men wore vests or jackets over the shirts, but Cannon and Sterling, maybe wanting to look like bosses, had rough woolen sport coats over their shirts. All the men were unshaven, and several had beards. A few wore brimless hats that looked like beanies, and others a floppy cloth hat called a
pakol
. The security team wanted to blend in with the locals as much as possible and not stand out as Americans. To stand out was to invite attention, which could mean trouble.

The group would travel as a convoy in four vehicles: two SUVs with tinted windows, a full-sized Ford sedan, and a Mazda pickup with a tarp covering whatever was in the bed of the truck. All the vehicles were a bit battered and several years old, but Cannon assured Eli that the vehicles were in excellent condition. A local man, hired as an interpreter, would ride in the lead vehicle.

Kay noticed that C&S's mercenaries were well armed, having a collection of M-16 and AK-47 assault rifles. She didn't know if the men
had brought the rifles with them or obtained them when they arrived in Afghanistan. In a country that had been at war for half a century, weapons weren't hard to get. A number of the men had semiautomatic pistols in holsters covered by their jackets, and Kay was betting that hidden beneath the tarp covering the pickup's bed, in addition to sleeping bags and rations, were a few more lethal items, such as sniper rifles and maybe rocket-propelled grenades.

Kay disliked both Cannon and Sterling the moment she met them. When Eli introduced her, they treated her dismissively, like she was Eli's secretary—or maybe his punchboard. Cannon, in a distracted manner, said, “Yeah, nice to meet you,” immediately followed by “You'll have to excuse me. I need to ask the interpreter something,” and turned and walked away.

Sterling nodded to her, and without looking directly at her—he was focused on cars passing by on the street in front of the hotel—he said, “You need to stay in your vehicle during the trip and keep your face covered with that scarf.”

Instead of responding to his curt command, Kay said, “I want a weapon.” She figured that if everyone else considered it necessary to be armed to the teeth, she wanted to be armed, too.

Now Sterling looked at her. “You don't need one,” he said. “My people will protect you, and I don't like civilians being armed.” Then he said to Eli, “We need to get moving before the traffic gets heavy.” As far as he was concerned, the discussion about her wanting a gun was over.

Had he been more polite, Kay might have been nice about the whole thing. She still would have gotten her way, but she would have been nice. Since he was an asshole, however, she said, “Hey! Let's get something straight. I'm not a civilian and I work for your employer—meaning you basically work for me. Second, I don't really give a shit about what you like or don't like. Now, I want a gun, because I have a lot more confidence in my ability to protect myself than I do in a bunch of guys I don't know.”

Sterling's face reddened, but before he could respond and the situation could escalate, Eli said, “Nathan, give her a weapon.”

Kay didn't really appreciate Eli coming to her defense, either. And the way he said
Give her a weapon,
it was like
Humor her
.

Sterling glared at her a moment longer, his jaw clenched, obviously controlling his anger. He wasn't used to women—or maybe anybody—talking to him the way she'd just done. He turned to one of his men and said, “Give her your sidearm.” Sterling's guy said, “Yes, sir,” and handed Kay a matte-black .45 with a crosshatched grip. She checked the magazine and dry-fired the weapon a couple of times, then said, “I'd prefer a .40 Glock, but I guess this'll do.” Sterling walked away.

Kay lifted up the
abaya
she was wearing—she had jeans and a T-shirt on underneath the long dress—put the weapon in the front waistband of the jeans, and unbuttoned a couple of buttons on the
abaya
to make sure she could reach it in a hurry.

“I really don't think you're going to need that,” Eli said.

She restrained herself from snapping at him and said, “It's better to have it and not need it than to not have it and need it.”

“That sounds like an NRA bumper sticker. The next thing you'll tell me is gun control is using both hands.” Then he smiled—and she forgave him.

—

THE DISTANCE FROM KABUL
to Ghazni is about ninety miles, and if they'd been on a highway in Kansas, the trip would have taken less than two hours. They weren't in Kansas. It took them four and a half hours thanks to traffic jams leaving Kabul, slow-moving construction workers repairing what looked to Kay like bomb craters in a couple of places, and two checkpoints manned by either policemen or soldiers. They negotiated the checkpoints without a problem by paying the expected bribes.

They made their way to Ghazni via the famed Kabul–Kandahar
Highway—famed because the Taliban treated it like a shooting gallery and were constantly blowing up vehicles that used the road. The asphalt highway surface was like a patchwork quilt from repaired bomb craters. The road heading north to Kabul was filled with a seemingly endless line of trucks, tankers, buses, and overloaded cars moving at a glacial pace. Kay didn't know if the amount of traffic heading toward Kabul was normal or an anomaly. The road heading south, the direction they were headed, was busy, but traffic moved at a reasonable speed when it wasn't being stopped for one reason or another.

Young men stood in clumps at various places along the way, smoking, giving hostile looks to the passing traffic. Or maybe it was Kay's imagination that they seemed hostile. She noticed many of the young men—the teenagers—were dressed in jeans and sweatshirts emblazoned with the names of soccer teams as opposed to traditional Afghan menswear. She also noticed that some of the young men were armed—making no attempt to conceal their weapons—and she assumed they were all hanging around doing nothing but smoking because they were unemployed. She couldn't think of anything worse for the stability of a country than thousands of young, unemployed men with guns.

They seemed to pass a broken-down car or truck every couple of miles. The vehicle would have a flat tire or the hood would be up with steam billowing out of the radiator, and the driver would be gesturing wildly as he talked on his cell phone. The buildings they passed were surrounded by concrete walls and security fences, and were boxy and ugly; few bore signs in English that gave Kay any indication as to their function. The only thing worth looking at on the road to Ghazni was a mountain range in the distance with snow-covered peaks.

The landscape in some ways reminded her of a trip she'd once taken through New Mexico, passing through arid desert country with a view of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. That is, the geography in this part of Afghanistan was similar to the part of New Mexico she'd been in, but the country just seemed . . .
tired
. It was as if the decades of
constant warfare had exhausted not just the people but the land itself. Whatever the case, she found it depressing.

Before they reached the city of Ghazni, capital of Ghazni Province, the SUV containing Cannon, his two men, and one of the Glardon engineers peeled off from the rest of the convoy and headed in the direction of the dry salt lakes. The rest of the convoy drove another couple of miles, then took a right and proceeded down a dusty unpaved road. Half an hour later, at about ten in the morning, they stopped in front of a large white stucco house surrounded by an eight-foot concrete wall.

The interpreter went up to the gates, pressed a button, and spoke into a box. A moment later, the double gates opened electronically, the convoy pulled inside, and the gates shut automatically behind them. There was no grass or trees in front of the house—just hard-packed dirt—but the owner had planted spiky plants in a few places in a feeble attempt at landscaping.

Kay asked Eli, “Who owns this place? Ara's father?”

“No. It's owned by a local businessman who owes Ara's father. I imagine Ara wanted to hold the meeting here because it's outside Ghazni and enclosed, and hopefully a large group of Westerners won't be noticed. Ara and her father will arrive after dark, and hopefully they won't be noticed, either.”

“Why are you worried if they're noticed? The guy's the governor, and all we're doing is having a meeting.”

“I'm worried because it's Afghanistan,” Eli said. “I've told Ara to limit the number of people who know about this meeting, but people always talk too much. This means that anybody who opposes what we're proposing—Sahid Khan's local rivals, politicians in Kabul, and, of course, the Taliban—might desire to disrupt what we're trying to do. And in this country, disrupting something often means blowing it up.”

A short old man in his seventies, maybe his eighties, came out to greet the Americans. He was dressed in a loose-fitting white shirt,
baggy white pants, and a white
kufi
—a brimless, round cap. He smiled uncertainly, probably a tad uncomfortable with all the armed men standing in his front yard. He said something in Pashto, and Kay heard the word “Allah” a couple of times. Some sort of God-bless-you-welcome-to-my-home greeting, she assumed.

“Ask him if there's anyone else here, anyone inside the house,” Sterling said to his interpreter.

The old man, in halting English, said he was the only one there, but Sterling wasn't the trusting sort. He sent four of his men into the house to make sure it was empty, and Kay could hear them shouting “Clear” as they went from room to room holding assault rifles. She thought that was a bit over the top. After Sterling's men concluded their sweep of the house, Kay and Eli went into the house while Nathan Sterling remained outside to deploy his men.

Kay was surprised by the interior of the house. In contrast to the concrete wall surrounding the place and the packed-dirt front yard, the interior had warm hardwood floors, Oriental rugs, leather furniture, and modern artwork on the walls. There was also a media room with six theater-type seats, an enormous flat-screen television set, and shelves packed with DVDs. She had no idea what a traditional Afghanistan home looked like, but she was pretty sure that most of them didn't look like this. Kay also couldn't help but wonder if the homeowner—and Sahid Khan—were connected to Afghanistan's best-known industry: opium production. From what Kay had seen, Ghazni was an impoverished area and she figured being its governor wouldn't pay that well—which made her curious about how Sahid had paid for his daughter's expensive education abroad.

The old man who had welcomed them to his employer's home introduced himself to Eli, saying his name was Yasir. He told Eli that if it pleased him, he would prepare lunch and provide them anything else they needed. While Yasir spoke to Eli, he made a point of not looking at Kay, who had removed her head covering the minute she stepped
into the house. She'd always felt that if Muslim women ever wanted to be treated as equals, the first thing they should do was burn all the scarves and veils.

Yasir then showed Eli and Kay to their rooms; only Kay, Eli, the Glardon mining engineer, and Nathan Sterling would sleep inside the house that night after the meeting was concluded. Sterling's men would remain outside, hopefully awake, doing whatever security people were supposed to do.