Bloodmoney (45 page)

He turned and walked away, back toward the hotel lobby.

“You’re lying,” she muttered. But she wasn’t sure that she knew where the truth lay anymore. Sometimes it was indeterminate; the closer you got to it, the more you disrupted its pieces, so that it changed its shape and position. The truth wasn’t straight. It had bends and curves.

ISLAMABAD

How do wars end?
That was the question that had vexed Omar al-Wazir since he was a boy, when the time of the big wars was beginning in his part of the world. He could see well enough how they started, but how did they ever stop? He thought about it now as he sat in an air terminal waiting to board his Pakistan Airlines flight to London. It was a jumbo jet, and the waiting room was hot and crowded with Pakistanis of every age, old grandmas off to see their children in Manchester and young families going home to Neasden or Wandsworth, all tired and sweaty in the gritty seats of the boarding lounge.

The professor’s face was clean-shaven, as always. He was wearing a gray suit of light summer wool and a white shirt. His glasses rested on the top of his big nose. It was the face of a doctor of computer science, a modern man, as he always insisted. In the simplicity of his demeanor, there was an invitation to trust. That was why he had been so adept at recruiting others: They wanted to believe that he was their ally; they felt more confident in battle if someone like him was on their side.

A part of the answer to this question of ending wars, the professor thought, was that the fighters on both sides got tired. They were exhausted by battle, bled white from their wounds. They had run out of troops and money, and so it was time to go home. That was what had happened to the Russians, certainly. Their Afghan war ended because the nation was bankrupt, economically and ideologically. A regime fell because of an unwinnable war, just as had been the case in 1917. Other wars ended because of political exhaustion or simply impatience; a nation still had the money and the weapons to fight on, but its will was gone. That was the story of America in Vietnam, the books all said. The war had been lost back home; events on the battlefield were of secondary importance.

But wars that ended in such ways did not bring a good peace; the professor knew that from his study of history. They brought dishonor, shame, a simmering desire for revenge. The Germans had gone from the humiliation of Versailles to the brazen assaults of the Nazis in less than two decades. The start of the second war was contained in the end of the first. That was what people in the professor’s part of the world understood better than more “civilized” people: The victor in war must find a way to salve the dignity of the vanquished; otherwise, there would just be another war.

An old grandfather sitting next to the professor in the waiting lounge had fallen asleep. He was snoring loudly, and some of the children nearby were pointing at him and laughing. It was undignified. The professor gently nudged the old man until he was awake and the loud nasal percussion ceased. He went back to his reverie about war and peace, which helped him to forget about the unpleasantness of the airport waiting room.

The tribal code for restoring harmony was called
nanawatay
in the Pashto language. That was how wars ended among honorable men. The vanquished party would go to the house of the victor, into the very heart of his enemy, and look that man in the eye and request forgiveness and peace. The defeated man was seeking asylum, and the victor could not but grant him this request. To refuse would be dishonorable and unmanly. When a man is asked to be generous, he can unburden himself of his rage toward his enemy. He can be patient in forgiveness and let go of the past. The defeated man will have brought a buffalo, or some lambs and goats for slaughter. In this gift is his dignity. A feast is held. The war is over.

There were shouts in the terminal suddenly, and a frantic rush. They were calling the flight now, and people were crowding toward the door, pushing and shoving. The professor sat where he was. He had his ticket in his hand, with the seat number printed on it clearly. The plane would not leave without him. It was a sign of the immaturity of people in the East to jostle like this every time there was a queue. A Pashtun man would never do this. Better to miss the flight than to act like a woman.

The professor thought again of his problem: In the old days, it was said, the defeated man would come to the house of the victor with grass in his mouth and a rope around his neck as a sign of his humbleness. He was as meek before the victor as an animal of the field. Other times, the supplicant would attend a funeral for someone in his enemy’s family. He would come to his rival’s village and somberly enter his house, to share the grief. And once inside the house, he could ask for asylum and forgiveness. It was unthinkable to refuse such a plea; only a coward would do so.

The professor thought of the Americans. This culture of asylum was what they had never understood: They had made war in the years after 2001 because the Pashtuns would not refuse the asylum request from the Arabs fleeing across the mountains. The Americans demanded something the people of these mountains could not grant without great shame. You could say that it was a war about hospitality.

Even smart people could be stupid in this way. It was true of the British. The professor had at home somewhere a history of a terrible war the British had fought in the 1870s with the Jowaki clan, which was part of the Afridi tribe. The Jowakis had given asylum to two fearsome outlaws. The British demanded their return, but that was impossible for the tribesmen; better that they all should die. So they fought a bloody war, and it was reported by a British historian of the time, George Batley Scott: “Every glen and valley of the clan was occupied, every tower destroyed, many cattle died, the families suffered in the wintry cold, only then did the chiefs come into camp and ask for terms.”

But the British hadn’t understood how wars end. They had proposed what they thought was a proper settlement—payment of a fine, giving over weapons and, of course, return of the outlaws. The Jowaki chief answered in the only way that was consistent with tribal honor: “We will pay the fine, we will surrender our arms, but those two men who have taken refuge with us, we will not give them up. You are in possession of our country. Keep it, we will seek a home elsewhere, but those men we will not give up. Why will you blacken our faces?”

History was a recording that played continuously, so that you did not realize it was the same song, over and over.

The waiting lounge was nearly empty now. It was possible to board the airplane in a dignified way. Professor Omar collected his computer bag and the book he had been reading and walked to the gate, where a frazzled attendant collected his ticket. When he thanked her for this service, the woman looked astonished.

On the plane, there were families with young children in front of the professor and behind him. He put the buds of his music player into his ears so that the world would disappear and he could listen to Kinan Azmeh, a Syrian clarinetist who played in the classical way of the traveling musicians who had visited his town when he was a boy, who could make their instruments sound like human voices, but sweeter.

The professor was not flying to London with grass in his mouth or a yoke about his neck, it was true. And it could not be said that he had been defeated. But in traveling to Britain, he was entering the house of his enemy, certainly, or his enemy’s best friend. He was seeking the balance, as he had come finally to understand it. He was giving his counterpart the opportunity to forgive—and thereby regain a measure of honor. Surely that would be understood: Just as it was necessary to fight, to avenge the insult, so it was also necessary to forgive. Otherwise the wars continued until there was no one left.

The plane was taking off. The professor could hear the roar of the engines against the sinuous notes of the clarinet. He fell asleep thinking of his favorite word in the Pashto language,
melmastia,
which meant “hospitality.” That was the way wars ended.

Another plane was waiting to take off to the north, in Islamabad, heading for the same destination of London. This one was a military jet carrying Lieutenant General Mohammed Malik, the director general of Inter-Services Intelligence. It was an unlikely journey, in some respects. The general normally did not like to travel to foreign countries unless he had official business with their intelligence service chiefs. He was not a mere case officer or a brigadier; there were questions of protocol and status. But in this case he felt he had no choice.

General Malik had a private cabin on the military plane. It was a small compartment, with a portrait of the president on one wall and one of the chief of army staff on another, but it had a bed and a desk, and a door you could close, so that you did not have to make conversation when you had nothing to say.

The general was a fastidious man. His orderly had packed his uniforms in the hanging locker, protected in their zippered suit bags. His dress shoes were already polished to a high shine, but they would be buffed again before the plane landed. The orderly had laid out his pajamas, too, on the bed, along with his felt slippers and his dressing gown. The general would change after the plane had taken off. It would be undignified to be dressed in bedclothes if the steward knocked before takeoff to offer tea or a cold drink.

General Malik had been contacted by his old friend Cyril Hoffman the day before. Usually there was a roundabout indirection to Hoffman’s manner; he could be as Oriental in his ways as a pasha. But this time he was more direct. When the phone rang, the general had been in the garden adjoining his headquarters in Aabpara, sitting in his Adirondack chair, having his tea in the late afternoon and reading his cables, and trying to sort out the tangle of operations that was knotted too tightly now to be easily undone. The duty officer said that Langley was on the line, and that was a call he could never refuse.

The Pakistani general left his garden chair and walked up the stairs through the open doors into his office. It was Hoffman on the line, coming immediately to the point without the usual patter.

“We know who he is,” said the American. “So do you.”

“That is an unpleasant way to begin a conversation, Cyril, out of the blue. Whatever do you mean?”

“We know the identity of the bomber who has been killing my American colleagues. The gentleman’s name is Dr. Omar al-Wazir, as you surely must be aware by now. He’s on our target list. But I don’t think the time is ripe quite yet.”

“I am the one who should be making the protests, Cyril.”

“About what, pray tell?”

“There were bombings last night in Peshawar and Karachi. Our analysts think they were connected to the gentleman you mention, a distinguished scientist, I might add, well known to our military service. If we thought there was the slightest connection between those bombings and the United States government, it would have the most serious repercussions.”

“You won’t find any connection, I assure you.”

“Less than a ringing denial, but certainly welcome. Let me repeat that the government of Pakistan will not tolerate any violation of its sovereignty.”

“Noted.”

“As for Dr. al-Wazir,” the general continued, “present us with the information of his culpability, if there is any, and we will as always be prepared to take appropriate action.”

“That’s why I’m calling, actually. We’ve learned some things about Dr. al-Wazir that I thought you would want to know. Not that you have any interest in him, other than as a Pakistani citizen.”

“That is the second time you have made the insinuation that we have some kind of illicit contact with the man, Cyril. I will ignore it, again, but it is tedious. What is the information that you wish to share?”

“I thought you might want to know that Dr. al-Wazir has been in contact with a certain rogue element of American intelligence; the very element, as it happens, that has been seeking to bribe your good countrymen. The professor is not what he appears. He is spreading the money, and also killing the people who distribute it. He thinks he’s a Pakistani Robin Hood. This is getting much too complicated; it’s trouble all around. It needs to be set right, don’t you think?”

The Pakistani general put the phone away from his ear. Of all the things that Hoffman might have said, this was one he could not have anticipated. Surely it was a ruse or a trick; that was so often the way with Hoffman.

“I don’t believe you,” said Malik. “He is a Pakistani who, according to you, is part of a terrorist plot to kill Americans. How could he possibly be in touch with your intelligence agencies?”

“Yes, I know what you’re thinking: How can he be one of yours? He’s one of ours.”

General Malik snorted. “This is all bosh.”

“Stranger things have happened, Mohammed. Good and decent Pakistani patriots share information with the United States. Why not terrorists? I don’t want to get personal. But you, of all people, should know that the United States of America has a long reach.”

“Whatever are you talking about?”

There was an edge of anxiety in the Pakistani’s voice. He wasn’t used to the normally genial American speaking this way.

“Let’s be honest, for once, Mohammed. I am thinking of a young Pakistani Army officer in the United States for training, at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, to be precise. That gentleman certainly enjoyed the hospitality of the United States, yes, he did. It was good for his bank account, too, helped get him started up the ladder. You should see his 201 file. I have, and I can tell you, it makes very interesting reading after all these years.”

General Malik put the phone down for a moment. His hand was trembling slightly, and his face had gone ashen. He was a military man, and his life had been an exercise in self-control.

“This is intolerable, Cyril. You are a scoundrel.”

“You flatter me. I’m just doing my job, a humble civil servant; I’m a patriot, too, like yourself. But I got off the subject. I was talking about the good Dr. al-Wazir and his surprising contacts with the United States. I thought that might concern you.”