C
HAPTER
13
M
organ had not been to Kabul since shortly after the rise of the Taliban. It had been a dreary city then, worn down by constant war and terrified of recent repression. The city now seemed to be bursting with new life; people and cars moved chaotically through streets of market stalls, which seemed to have popped up like mushrooms after a rain. There were construction sites rising all around the city, and the mood among the citizens was one of guarded optimism. But many of the buildings were at least as old as the Taliban and still bore bullet holes to prove it.
“How do you like our beautiful city?” asked the man driving the taxi.
“Always thought there’d be more sand,” Morgan said, looking out the window through his sunglasses. The man smiled, showing a mouthful of white teeth. His name was Baz. He was clean-shaven and wore a white, Western-style, button-down shirt and mirrored Ray-Bans. He chain-smoked Marlboro knockoffs and drove one of those boxy Russian-made cars, colored powder blue.
They had just left Baz’s safe house, which was really just a room in the back of a tea shop. Morgan had changed into traditional local clothes and applied a fake beard. He had never felt at home in foreign dress, and while the loose, pajama-like pants and tunic shirt Baz gave him might have been a comfortable cut, this set was made from a rough and scratchy material. At least the flowing
khameez
shirt was perfect for concealing his shoulder holster.
“You got everything else that I asked for?” Morgan had asked back at the safe house, as he applied the gray and scraggly beard in front of a wall-mounted, stained mirror shard.
“With Baz, there are no problems. You remember to tell your friend that. Never problems.”
“The gun?”
“I could not find the Walther, but I got you one just as good.” Baz handed him the pistol.
Morgan examined it: a Glock 17. He pulled back the slide, feeling its weight in his hand. It had the characteristic sleek, square muzzle, not quite as short as the PPK, and, of course, the most obvious feature: the plastic casing, which Morgan knew had been met with skepticism when the gun was first introduced. But the Glock had long since proved its worth. It was tough, reliable, and packed a nice punch with little recoil. He deftly took it apart on the table and checked each piece before putting it back together.
“Yeah,” he said. “This’ll do.” He strapped on the holster under his
khameez
and tucked the gun away.
Baz also produced a tactical knife, used but well-honed, which Morgan strapped to his ankle; a disposable cell phone, from which Morgan extracted Baz’s number before removing the battery; a first-aid kit; a roll of Afghan money in mostly small bills; and a blank EU passport to get this Zalmay person out of the country. This mission was of the quick-and-dirty variety, with little time for planning and, of course, with no real-time support.
“So where are we going, baby?” Baz asked, after they drove away in the cab. Morgan gave him a sidelong glance.
“Kabul Zoo. Can you get us there by noon?”
“You got it, boss.”
This was the location of the rendezvous, according to Conley’s letter. The clue had been in the phrase
the daily ritual.
The reference was from their early days as partners, when they often went to the Stone Zoo in Massachusetts—the mention of
Stoney
confirmed it, and also put the time of the rendezvous at noon: because at noon, without fail, a couple of orangutans put on an elaborate mating ceremony and went at it on the cage floor, to the consternation of parents and the delight of teenage boys. It had become a running gag between them over the years.
Baz steered them along a busy thoroughfare, where pedestrians and jingle trucks vied for space with cabs—the city’s cab fleet, for some reason, seemed to be made up almost entirely of old-model Toyota Corollas. Baz negotiated this anarchy with the effortless ease that only a professional could pull off.
“The Kabul Zoo,” Baz said, pensively, his eyes on the road. “You know, it is too bad you did not come some years ago, when Marjan the lion was still alive. Do you know of Marjan, the world-famous lion of the Kabul zoo?”
Morgan grunted noncommittally. He had to focus on the mission now, to mull over every possible scenario. He struggled to keep his mind in the game and ignore his latent uneasiness about the whole affair—the sketchiness of the information on his end, the lack of preparation and support, and, of course, more than anything, the possibility of a traitor working in the CIA—the only reason he could think of why Conley would want to keep that information from the Agency
He looked askance at Baz, who was still prattling away. Morgan had remained on his guard around him. Running missions halfway around the world forced him to rely on local assets as guides, but Morgan made a habit of distrusting them—a practice that had saved his life on more than one occasion.
Instead of dwelling on his apprehension, he continued to ignore Baz’s story about the lion and tried to focus on practical issues, mentally rehearsing the call-and-response that was indicated in Conley’s letter. His own line, which he would say when he met Zalmay, was the opening of the letter: “A fruit vendor in Kabul once said to me, Afghanistan is always the same; it is only the invaders who change.” The next line of the letter read,
Well, you know what they say: variety is the spice of life.
This was a decoy, a plausible response that was meant to throw off anyone who might have intercepted the communication. The correct response was, according to their code, the final line in the letter: “Let it never be said that the Afghans are not a resilient people.” He repeated his and Zalmay’s lines under his breath until he was satisfied that he knew them through and through.
“. . . and then his brother comes back the next day with a hand grenade! Do you believe it?” The cab was lazily weaving through traffic down an arterial road, which seemed to be leading out of the city. Morgan checked his watch: a sliver past 11:45.
“Yeah, that’s nice. How are we doing, Baz?”
“Not far. Here, you see? Mountains on both sides. We are passing into Deh Mazang. We are close. The zoo will be on this road, on the left.”
They drove for another few minutes, and Baz said, “Here,” pointing to a gated area on the far side of the road. “That is it right there.” He circled back around a rotary a few blocks down and pulled over to an unofficial drop-off area. There, a collection of taxis and cars sat parked, their owners in the driver’s seat or leaning against the driver’s door.
“I will wait here,” said Baz.
Morgan nodded. “Keep the motor running.” He got out of the car, feeling the reassuring weight of the gun against his chest, and walked purposefully to the entrance of the zoo. There, a concrete lion stood perpetual watch, and a sign announced that the admission price was ten Afghanis for locals—about twenty cents—and ten times that for foreigners.
Here was the first test of his disguise. It would hold up to a cursory glance, but anyone who examined him too closely might notice that his skin tone, his facial features, and his mannerisms were a bit off. Although he was hardly inconspicuous, with his wide shoulders and relative height, he knew the secret to passing unnoticed was in his bearing: avoiding eye contact, not speaking, and adopting a timid gait. All of which were entirely unnatural for him, but after years of practice, he was able to switch into the mode effortlessly. He joined the short line at the entrance and, when he reached the booth, laid two coins on the counter. The attendant waved him in without a second look.
The zoo—a dingy collection of bored, lanky animals—turned out to be a bad location for a rendezvous. It was busy but not enough so that he could disappear into a crowd if he had to. Also, the people were there in groups and families—boisterous young fathers, barefoot children, even women in pale blue burqas, hard to tell apart in a flurry of the indistinguishable. As a lone man, he not only stuck out but was likely to draw stares.
Despite himself and all his apprehension at the poorly planned mission, Morgan couldn’t suppress his excitement. The danger awoke in him an animal alertness that he had not felt since his days in the Clandestine Service. It was a feeling that, in his suburban life, he could only approximate, shooting at the firing range or speeding down the highway in his classic GTO. But even these were pale parodies of what he felt at that moment.
Morgan looked around for a visitors’ map and didn’t find one that he could understand, so he walked around, looking at the cages and forming a mental layout of the place. He spotted the orangutan enclosure close to the far end of the zoo. It was a tall cage that bordered two others on either side, with the service access in the back wall. It held two unhappy-looking apes that several teenage boys were trying to taunt into activity.
He walked over to the cage and leaned against the railing, scanning the crowd discreetly every few seconds. He soon spotted a young man, twentysomething, walking in his direction with a little too much nervous resolution. He was not tall, but Morgan could tell that he was very strong even through his baggy
khameez
shirt. They made eye contact and broke it almost immediately. With affected nonchalance, he pretended to be interested in the apes and planted his feet next to Morgan.
Anxiously, expectantly, Morgan said, “A fruit vendor in Kabul once said to me, ‘Afghanistan is always the same; it is only the invaders who change.’”
The youth gave Morgan a knowing look and responded in stilted, accented English,
“Well, you know what they say. Variety is the spice of life.”
The wrong response. It was the wrong goddamn response.
Morgan stiffened slightly and hoped the other man hadn’t noticed. His mind raced. Had he made a mistake in deciphering the code? It had been so long, maybe he had misread it. Maybe Conley had gotten it wrong. Maybe—no, he stopped himself. He hadn’t remained alive so long by doubting himself. This man had just failed the only possible test of his identity. He was an impostor. The question that remained now was what to do about him.
“Cougar sent you?” the man asked, still pretending to look at the two orangutans, who sat picking at each other’s nits. “You are Cobra?”
Morgan nodded. “I assume that he sent you, too?”
“That is right. I am Zalmay.”
“Nice to meet you, Zalmay. Is there any chance you can tell me what was so important that Cougar sent me here to get you?”
“I would prefer to do it once we leave this place, if that is acceptable to you.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” Morgan assured him. “We can go. I just need to show you something first.”
“It cannot wait?” The young man began to look nervous.
“It needs to be now. Somewhere private.”
Morgan led the way along the zoo path. He had to act fast. For all he knew, the real Zalmay was still coming, and he needed to get back to the orangutan cage before someone else beat him to it.
As Morgan led the impostor toward an out-of-the-way bathroom, each man was careful not to turn his back on the other. Did the man know that he knew? Were both of them walking with feigned cordiality, only prevented from turning on each other by the public location, knowing full well that they would attack each other as soon as they were out of sight? Morgan had no way to know for sure—but neither did the other man. This made the timing extremely tricky. Making a move too early might be a mistake, but making it too late could be fatal. The situation was a boulder teetering on a precipice, where even the slightest nudge would send it hurtling over the edge.
In their tentative walk, they reached the bathroom. It was more of a hut with two small external niches, each formed by an L-shaped wall that hid its respective door from the sight of anyone walking along the path. Morgan walked to the men’s side, kicked the door to the lavatory lightly to make sure no one was inside, and motioned for the impostor to follow him.
“Cougar told me to give you this,” Morgan said as soon as they were out of sight, reaching into his shirt for his gun. But the impostor caught on too quickly, rushing him and slamming him against the wall before he could take aim. The gun flew from his hand, falling out of close reach. Morgan caught a glint of steel in the man’s right hand—a small switchblade. He deflected the man’s thrust but felt a sharp pain as it made a glancing slash in his torso. Morgan struck back with an open-handed blow that smashed the man’s nose, then grabbed the impostor’s right hand, knocking it twice against the wall so that the knife fell to the ground. Morgan kicked it away and then threw a lateral hook that was thwarted by the close quarters: his elbow hit the wall, and the punch landed ineffectively on the man’s arm. The response came quickly: the impostor punched Morgan in the gut, causing him to double over. The man maneuvered himself behind Morgan, who felt a thick, beefy arm wrap around his neck.
Morgan elbowed him as hard as he could, but the impostor just tightened his hold. The lack of circulation to his brain began to take its toll, and Morgan knew he was as good as dead if he didn’t somehow get free. He had one last idea. Pushing against the man, he swung both his feet upward and rested them against the wall only long enough so that he could reach his hand into his right boot and grasp the hilt of his knife. He then pushed off the wall as hard as he could. The man staggered backward into the tiny bathroom, and his hold loosened just enough for Morgan to free himself, spin around, and plunge the knife, now in his hand, deep into the man’s gut. The man gurgled, slumped against the wall, and crumpled to the floor.