Black Skies (8 page)

T
he sun had risen high in the sky when Harun pulled into his own parking space in the Intelligence Bureau. They walked a few blocks toward their destination. Conley felt the clothes he’d changed into back at the house already getting damp with sweat.

The street was moderately crowded, and a nervous energy pulsed through the people. Driving over there, they had passed a protest in front of a government building, maybe a hundred mostly young men full of rage that they couldn’t contain. Anti-American signs abounded, and Conley felt nervous for his safety. Although it helped to be with Harun, he wasn’t exactly blending into his surroundings, and tensions were high.

The information they had gotten out of their prisoner was disheartening, but it was a lead. The man who had hired them was a Deputy Director of the Ministry of Narcotics Control, a man by the name of Iftikhar Ali. Harun had confirmed that the man was at work that day, but hadn’t made an appointment—they’d decided it was best to show up without advance warning. No need to give the bastard time to disappear before they could get to him.

Within fifteen minutes they reached the ministry, an unimpressive squat whitewashed building. Harun flashed his badge and exchanged words with the man at reception, and they were waved in without ceremony. Harun led the way down dimly lit halls to the office marked as Ali’s. They walked in, paying no mind to the admonishment of a secretary who was sitting at a desk by the door, and Conley closed the door behind them.

Iftikhar Ali sat behind a large, ornate wooden desk in a large office. He got up in alarm as he found the two strange men in his office, his waxed moustache twitching and his bald head glistening with sweat. “You do not have an appointment,” he stammered in Urdu. “What is this?”

Conley sat down in a heavy hardwood chair. “We need you to answer some questions,” said Harun, sitting down next to him.

Ali raised a bushy eyebrow. “You are in
my
office, you answer
my
questions.” He looked at Conley and narrowed his eyes. “American?”

“Yes,” Conley answered in Urdu. This seemed to surprise Ali.

“It would be in everyone’s best interest if you cooperated,” said Harun.

“I’m sure it would,” said Ali, shaking in an apparent mixture of rage and anxiety. “But you see, I am not in the mood for questions from a man from the Intelligence Bureau today. I am in even less of a mood to talk to an American. Good day, gentlemen.”

“I really think it would be best if you answered our questions,” said Harun, leaning over Ali’s desk to match his eye level.

Ali stood up. “I will not hear threats in my own office,” he said.

“Look, I don’t have time for bullshit,” Conley said in English, “so we’re going to have to make this quick.”

“What is this?” Ali replied in English, outraged. “You come into
my
office and talk to me this way? Get out! Get out now!”

“Like I said, not a lot of time,” said Conley. “The American Secretary of State,” he said. “I want to know what you know, and I want to know in the next five minutes.”

“I know nothing about the abduction of the Secretary!” he said, his anxiety replaced by pure righteous indignation.

“Now, you and I both know that’s not true.”

“I will not stand for these allegations!” he exclaimed.

“I don’t care if you stand or sit,” said Conley, “just listen. I know you’re involved. You haven’t called security yet, because you want to know how much we know. I can tell you that. Your man, who you sent to kill the ambulance driver and the EMT? He talked. I know—can’t find good goons anywhere these days. Anyway, look, I don’t really care about you. You’re not a big enough fish in this. You’re not the one who planned this, and you don’t have the American Secretary of State. But I think you know who took him. As I see it, you’ve got two choices here. I can share this information with the CIA and everyone in Pakistani intelligence, and you can bet that the rest of your life will be nasty and short. Or, you can cooperate, and I give you the chance to get lost. Disappear and never come back. And then no one finds out your dirty little secret. Are we understood?”

“You have nothing on me,” he said. “The word of a hired gun? Ha! No one will believe it. Not for a second.”

“Maybe not by itself,” said Conley. “But it sure will be enough to get people interested. Poking around your affairs. Now, I ask you, how well did you cover your tracks? Well enough that the combined efforts of the CIA and Pakistani intelligence won’t be able to find a scrap against you? Seriously now, how long do you really think you’ll last in the spotlight?”

“You are bluffing,” he said derisively.

Conley took out his cell phone. “This city is crawling with American intelligence personnel. I know of at least two who are close personal friends of mine. I think they’d be very interested to hear what I have to say.” He picked a name at random from the contact list on his phone and made a call.

“No!” Ali was sweating now, looking down at his desk. He was perfectly motionless. Conley knew he had gotten to him.

Conley turned the phone for Ali to see, and ended the call. “Your turn to talk, then.”

“If I tell you what I know . . .” Ali said.

“You step down, tell everyone you want to spend more time with your family, disappear from public life, and scout’s honor, nobody finds out,” said Conley. “Added bonus is that you never see me again. Do we have a deal?”

“Why should I trust you?”

“You thought you were having a nice swim in the ocean, but you got dragged away from shore by the undertow and now you’re about to drown, Ali. I just threw you a life jacket.”

Ali sat back down on his chair, deflated. “Okay,” he said, exhaling heavily, shoulders slumping. “I will take your deal. I will give you what I know.”

“I’m all ears, Mr. Ali.”

Ali drew nervous circles with a pencil on a pad of paper and spoke without looking either Conley or Harun in the eye. “The United States Secretary of State is being held in a compound outside the city of Zhob.”

“Where exactly?” asked Conley.

“I do not know!” he exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “I did not make these arrangements, all I know is that they were headed there.”

“Okay,” said Conley. “I’ll take that. But if it doesn’t pan out, if I discover you’re lying to me . . .”

“I swear that I am not! I do not play games with men who have swords poised over my head, ready to strike.”

“Wise man,” said Conley

“So are you satisfied?” asked Ali nervously. Conley could tell there was something he was afraid Conley would ask. And Conley knew what it had to be.

“Not quite,” he said. “This abduction was not your idea. We know you didn’t plan any of this. I want your boss. The person you did this for.”

Ali swallowed hard, and seemed to go paler than before. “I have already told you what you wanted to know.”

“Ali,” Harun said menacingly in Urdu. “Answer the question.”

Ali seemed to be on the verge of getting sick. “I have a family,” he said weakly.

“Imagine how much they would suffer if this became known,” said Harun.

“Please. They will be killed. It was just money.” Ali’s voice was cracking, and he was nearly in tears.

Conley pulled on his partner’s arm. “Come on, Harun, let’s get out of here.”

Harun looked at him with irritated surprise, as if to ask,
What are you doing?

“He’s not going to talk,” Conley whispered. “Or he’ll lie.”

“He’ll break,” Harun insisted.

“He’s obviously more scared of whoever is behind this than he’s scared of us. Just look at him.”

That seemed to convince Harun, who bit his lip and gritted his teeth. “All right,” he said to Ali. “We’re going to go.”

“You stick around,” said Conley. “We want to be able to reach you if we have any more questions. And if I find out you lied to me, the CIA will be the least of your worries. Do you understand?”

Ali nodded, pale.

Harun and Conley walked out of Ali’s office, leaving him behind, stunned. They walked out of the Ministry building and into the bright afternoon sun.

 

“Do you think he told the truth?” Conley asked Harun.

“You don’t get as far as he did without learning how to lie like it’s your mother tongue,” said Harun. “But I think you were very persuasive. What now?”

“Now we go check out this lead,” he said. “After I get this information to my people.”

They reached Harun’s car and drove back to the safe house. Conley called Zeta and asked for Bloch.

“I have a lead,” he said. “Possible location for the Secretary. I’m going to go check it out.”

“Who’s your source?” she asked.

“Local bureaucrat,” he said. “Just a flunkie, and he wouldn’t tell us who his boss was. He’s worth looking into—you might find a connection. I’ll send whatever I have on him as soon as I hang up. In the meantime, we’re going after Wolfe and the people who took him.”

“Nonsense,” said Bloch. “There are SEAL teams standing by, it’s just a matter of giving them a target.”

“We need confirmation,” said Conley. “We’ll call less attention to ourselves if it’s just me and Harun.”

“Okay. See what you can find, but
go no further.
I don’t want you getting yourself killed over this.”

“I know what the risks are,” he said.

“I know you do. I’m telling you not to take them.”

C
hapman woke with a start from uneasy dreams and realized he was in his office. There was a gentle but persistent knock on his door. He looked at his watch. 8
A.M.
He’d slept for four hours. When he went to sleep, all he could see through the half-closed blinds of the windows to the outer office were the screens of other night owls tapping away at their keyboards, but now it was bustling with activity. He felt a vague sense of dread, and then remembered the conversation he’d had with Schroeder the night before. It made him sick to his stomach.

“Come in!” he called out. It was Cynthia Gillespie. “Morning, Cyn.” He rubbed his eyes, and couldn’t mask the sleepy thickness of his voice. “What’s up?” She was wearing a button-down shirt with one button too many undone, and he shamed himself into looking intently into her eyes to the point that she had to hold up a file in her hands for him to notice that that’s what she was bringing him.

“The dead attackers,” she said, dropping a thin packet of papers on his desk where his head had been resting, covering up what he had noticed too late was saliva that had dribbled from his mouth in his sleep. “We’ve got positive IDs on two of them. Martyr’s Brigade. Looks like Raza’s definitely our guy.”

“Is this for sure?” asked Chapman as he leafed through the translated rap sheets and scanned IDs. “Where’s it coming from?”

“The Pakistanis had them in a database. They were both arrested in connection with terrorist acts with Raza’s group a couple years back. Both got broken out of prison last year, presumably by Raza’s people.”

“All right, this confirms what we already knew,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “What does this change, then? Our efforts were already on finding Raza.”

“At least we know we’re not barking up the wrong tree,” she said. “That’s something, right?”

His phone rang.

Chapman fumbled for the phone. His regular cell was sitting on the desk in front of him, silent as a stone. It was the other one, then. “I gotta take this,” he said, and she edged out of the room. He found the phone in the pocket of his jacket, which was draped over the back of his chair.

“Chapman,” he then said, picking up.

Smith began speaking without hesitation, in his usual deliberate voice. “I need you to look into someone. I will be sending you the name and what personal information I have.”

“Look into?”

“He is a functionary in the Pakistani government,” he said. “We believe he may be involved in recent events. We need you to find out whatever you can about him. Pay special attention to financial transactions. Money is likely his motivation in this case. I need whatever documents you can get your hands on.”

“All right,” said Chapman, jotting things down on a yellow legal pad as Smith spoke. “What kind of involvement are we talking about?”

“He ordered the death of the surviving attacker,” said Smith. “And the witnesses to that assassination. You will receive the information on your telephone in less than one minute.”

Smith hung up without another word. Chapman swore silently to himself. His phone beeped, and he looked down at the screen. The message had arrived. He opened it, and at the top of it saw the name
Iftikhar Ali.
It was something. A silver lining.

He got up with sudden resolve. There was work to be done. He emerged from his office and yelled out to the twenty-two people who composed his taskforce. “Listen up! We’ve got a lead! I’m tossing a name into the network. I want everyone who’s not putting out a fire to get on this. Pull up whatever we already have on him, and work on getting what we don’t. I want assets, bank statements, travel visas, family, known associates, and the name of his childhood pet.”

“Can we coordinate with Pakistani Intelligence?” asked Gillespie from her workstation, loud enough for the entire room to hear.

“No. He’s a government official. We have to fly under their radar. This needs to be fast and quiet.”

“That’s practically our motto,” said Gillespie.

C
onley sat in the passenger seat of Harun’s car, trying and failing to sleep. The sun was rising, but he knew that he’d had to take the wheel again in a couple hours. He and Harun were making the nine-hour drive from Islamabad to Zhob in one go, so it was important to get whatever rest he could. The highway was well-kept enough, running through rocky terrain that was not particularly interesting to look at, and so favored sleep.

Harun had loaned Conley some of his own clothes, which were a bit short, tight and itchy, but were convincing enough as his own. He always avoided getting new clothes when he had to blend in. Someone in all brand-new clothes was an unusual sight, and a trained eye could spot it a mile away. He had also made a fake beard for himself—he’d had enough practice to be able to make it very convincing—to mask his features and thus his identity as an American.

Conley watched the uniform terrain and felt his consciousness fading. When he came to again, they were in a town, surrounded by mud-brick buildings, and the sun was nearing its high point in the sky. “We are here,” said Harun.

“I thought I was supposed to drive for a few hours,” said Conley.

“You were sleeping like a baby,” Harun said with a laugh. “I felt sorry to wake you. We are coming up on the police station now. We will begin our investigation there.”

Harun stopped a couple of times to ask locals for directions. Conley had been to this kind of town before, and it always made him nervous. It was a bad place for him, as a Westerner.

They soon reached the police station, which was small and dingy. “Now you don’t say a word,” said Harun. “Just let me do the talking. They don’t like strangers here, and they will suspicious of you if you speak.”

The police station was a small, low building with an even lower wall around it, and seemed like a repurposed home. They walked through the iron gate and into the front door. Behind the desk, were two men in the gray uniforms with the standard police caps on their heads. One was young and skinny, with an incipient beard and large Bambi eyes, while the other was just bordering on the status of “old.”

Harun greeted them and introduced himself. When Harun showed him his ID, the younger policeman straightened up and grew rigid. Conley didn’t imagine they got many intelligence types so far out from the capital, and it seemed to have made an impact. The older one was less impressed, but seemed to welcome them nonetheless.

“We’re looking for outsiders who might have come here,” said Harun. “From Islamabad, probably. There would be at least ten.”

“We do get trucks coming in and out,” said the older policeman. “Not too many, but some. That’s the only outsiders that we see around here, usually. But I don’t know. The town is not so small that we would always know when a stranger arrives.”

“It would not be a passing truck,” said Harun, “though they might have come in a truck. They would need a house. A compound, actually. Walls, lots of space, not too many nosy neighbors.”

“I don’t know if I can help you . . .” said the policeman. “Perhaps you should talk to the chief. Today is his day off, but he will be back tomorrow.”

“I will do that,” said Harun. “Thank you for your help.”

Harun turned to go, and Conley followed, trying to imitate everything about the Pakistani’s body language—another dead giveaway to the trained eye.

“One more thing,” said Harun, turning back toward the policemen. “Where can we lodge around here?”

The older policemen sent Harun and Conley to a guest house that was run by his cousin. It was a simple two-story house where the three upstairs bedrooms were available for rent. They were greeted at the door by Khalol, the owner of the house, and his wife, both of whom smiled and waved them inside. Conley kept silent, merely making the gestures of greeting without the accompanying words. Harun asked to take dinner in their room, to save Conley from having to speak and giving himself away. If he had to speak, they had already gotten their stories straight that Conley was originally from India, and hope that the interlocutor could not recognize an American accent.

Harun asked if they could borrow a radio for their room, and their host happily obliged. Harun tuned it to a local pop station. It was a small radio, so he had to set the volume almost all the way up to get the effect he wanted. He then closed the door. Conley stretched out on the bed’s cheap foam mattress, resting his muscles, which ached from the prolonged journey.

“So what’s the plan?” he asked Harun as the Pakistani sat on his own bed. They spoke in Urdu. Even with the music, they couldn’t take the risk of someone picking up the cadences of the English language in their speech.

“Let’s rest a while,” he said. “But before dawn, we take the car and get the lay of the land and map the likely locations for their safe house. Going out at night will make our hosts suspicious, but that can’t be helped. We need to get out there as soon as possible. But the first order of business is dinner.”

Conley noticed the smell of stewing meat wafting into the room from under the door and realized how hungry he was. He hadn’t eaten since morning, and even then just a pastry. The mere thought of whatever was on the stove made his mouth salivate and his stomach growl.

Their hosts served hard flat bread and stewed lamb. Harun told Khalol that they would be going out very early in the morning, while it was still dark, explaining that they would be scouting properties for possible real estate ventures. Khalol seemed satisfied with this, and so Conley and Harun turned in. Harun opened the window to the warm night air, and they fell asleep to the silence of the small Balochi town.

Conley awoke to Harun’s gentle nudging. “It is past four,” he whispered. “Time for us to go.”

They left the house and drove off in Harun’s car. He drove down the empty narrow streets, along rows of storefronts with their grates down, while Conley navigated with a satellite map on a tablet computer. He marked down a few locations that might have been but probably weren’t what they were looking for, and soon they left the urban limits of the town. On the satellite photos, Conley identified six possible locations where the Secretary of State might have been held.

They parked at a safe distance from each and ran surveillance with night-vision binoculars. They ruled out the first two and fourth locations, while listing the third as a possibility. They then made their way to the fifth house on their list. Harun parked about a mile away, on slightly higher ground in the cover of an outcropping of rock. They exited the car. Conley, with the binoculars in his hand, and with his body partly obscured behind a stone, surveyed the house. This was a large country villa with high white walls. All the lights were off, but over the wall, Conley could make out the roofs of two Jeeps.

“I think this is it,” said Conley. “Take a look.” He held out the binoculars for Harun.

“That is definitely the one,” he said. “What do we do about it?”

“Call it in,” said Conley. “Let’s send in the cavalry.”