Chaos in Kabul (9 page)

The unspoken question was clear. Malko decided to tell her part of the truth.

“The CIA and Washington asked me to come here to make contact with certain members of the Taliban.”

“That would explain it,” she said. “Contacts between the Taliban and the Americans are Karzai’s nightmare. If the NDS is suspicious of you, watch your step. They can mess you up in very nasty ways.”

Which was pretty much what Warren Michaelis had told him.

“I’ll be careful,” Malko promised, “and we’ll be discreet. Do they have ways to retaliate against you?”

“In Afghanistan, if the president doesn’t like you, anything’s possible. They can expel you from one day to the next, even if your papers are in order. I’d hate if that happened. Anyway, there you have it; I wanted to warn you. I’m going back to work now.”

“Why does the NDS handle this sort of problem?”

“It’s the only agency that hasn’t been infiltrated by the Taliban. The NDS answers directly to Karzai. Its agents are his muscle, and they’re good at their job. If the Taliban ever come back to power, those guys better hop on the first plane out of here. Otherwise they’ll all be hanged, after being tortured.”

Which didn’t tell Malko who had tipped the NDS off about him.

The young South African woman was looking at him anxiously. “I really have to leave you now,” she said. “I need to finish fixing that car, and it’s gonna take me half the night. My driver will take you back. Be careful! You can’t trust anybody here.”

She kissed him, pressing her body against his, and smiled.

“I’d still like to enjoy you a little more while you’re in Kabul.”

Malko had been turning in circles since the previous evening. He’d had no word from Michaelis, and without any money, he couldn’t contact Nelson Berry. He didn’t feel like going out for a stroll, and the Serena’s nonalcoholic bar was depressing, so he spent his time shuttling between his room and the dining room. Finally, his phone beeped: a text message.

A
courier will be at your place in an hour. WM.
That had to be the money destined for Berry. Malko dialed the South African’s poppy palace, and an Afghan answered in strongly accented English: “Commander not here. In Wardak until tomorrow.”

A short time later, a young CIA case officer brought Malko a briefcase full of hundred-dollar bills in plastic wrappers from the Arab Bank in Dubai.

“It’s five hundred thousand dollars, sir,” he announced. “I have a receipt for you to sign.”

Malko initialed the form next to his name. As much as anything, the CIA was one big bureaucracy.

“Did you go to Dubai to get this money?”

“Affirmative, sir. It’s easiest, and we come back through Bagram. There are special flights that aren’t subject to Afghan inspection. I make the trip often.”

Once alone, Malko closed the briefcase, wondering what he was going to do with the money until the next day. The safe in his hanging closet was much too small. He wound up stowing the briefcase inside his suitcase, which he locked. It wasn’t much, but it was better than nothing.

He now had just one meeting left: his dinner with NDS agent Luftullah Kibzai.

Inside, the Sufi was as dark as ever. Malko sat down at the same table as before. There were even fewer people in the restaurant than there had been the last time.

Kibzai showed up ten minutes later.

“I’m taking a big risk by contacting you,” he said in a tense voice the moment he was seated.

“Why?” asked Malko.

“I was able to see part of your file. You were right; you were targeted. We have been tracking you since you arrived. A team was waiting for you at the airport.”

Malko felt an unpleasant prickling on the backs of his hands.

So it wasn’t his visit to Musa Kotak that had sparked the surveillance, he realized. And that raised a lot of questions.

“Why would they do that?”

Kibzai lowered his voice even further.

“I don’t know. Our agents don’t usually follow CIA people; there are too many of them. You were targeted specially. The order came from the head of the agency. I have the feeling they already knew something about you.”

Malko felt a chill. The Afghans didn’t have a crystal ball, so the information could only have come from Washington.

“Do you know anything more?” asked Malko.

“No, and I’m going to ask you not to contact me again, except in an emergency. I could get in very serious trouble. It might already be too late.”

He seemed panicky.

Malko was starting to understand the warning given to Maureen Kieffer. The Afghans were doing whatever they could to isolate him. And this was probably just the beginning. The NDS had surely noted his visit to Nelson Berry. What would they make of that?

This was no longer an impossible mission, he thought. It was a suicide mission. He would have to warn Washington as soon as possible, he decided.

The NDS agent put the menu down.

“Would you mind if I left now? I’m not hungry, and I only came because I promised.”

“That’s all right,” said Malko. He wasn’t hungry either.

After a weak handshake, Malko watched Kibzai slip out like a shadow. There was nothing left for him to do but call Jim Doolittle and be driven back to the Serena.

It was eight in the morning when his cell phone rang. Nelson Berry apologized for calling so early.

“I got in at two a.m. Did you phone yesterday?”

“Yes, I did,” said Malko. “Send me Darius, please.”

Malko would have to tell Berry about the NDS surveillance. It might upset him, maybe even make him back out of the whole project. But he didn’t have any choice.

Malko took the briefcase with the five hundred thousand dollars downstairs and left the hotel. The day was chilly, and he drew his cashmere coat a little tighter. Past the police checkpoint, he spotted the Corolla. He got in and laid the precious briefcase on the floor.

Darius was as silent as ever. They drove down Sharpoor Street, first passing NDS headquarters, then “poppy palace row,” eventually reaching the rutted road that led to Berry’s house. Suddenly Darius slammed on the brakes and uttered a brief curse. The jolt made Malko look up. A car was stopped across the road.

Moments later, both the Corolla’s front doors were yanked open at the same time. Malko saw men with guns, their faces hidden by ski masks.

One grabbed Darius by the arm and threw him to the ground. When he tried to get up, the man pistol-whipped him, and he collapsed. The masked man immediately got behind the wheel, while a second climbed in the backseat and jammed his gun into Malko’s neck. Malko wasn’t even carrying the pistol Berry gave him—not that it would have done much good.

The man at the wheel shifted into reverse, and the Corolla jounced backward out onto Sharpoor Street. Not a word had been spoken.

He’d been kidnapped!

Malko didn’t dare move. At least he hadn’t been shot
immediately. That was a good sign.

Continuing down Sharpoor Street, the Corolla passed any number of armed guards, none of whom paid it the slightest attention. Twenty minutes later, after a complicated route through back alleys, the car entered a small courtyard. Several men immediately surrounded it.

Malko was taken out and searched and relieved of his cell phone.

Another man took the briefcase with the money and led him into a kind of workshop. Once they were sure he wasn’t armed, they sat him in a corner of the workshop and talked briefly in Dari or Pashto, behaving as if he wasn’t there.

One of them came over and slipped a canvas bag over Malko’s head, blindfolding him, then tied his hands behind his back. Two men raised him to his feet, forced him to walk a few yards, and shoved him forward. When his head hit a metal floor and his legs were lifted up, he realized he was being stuffed into a car trunk. The lid slammed. He had trouble breathing and was very cold. He felt the car start and drive out to the street.

Who had kidnapped him?

The car drove on a bumpy road for a while, then on pavement, then on bumpy road again. When it stopped after what felt like half
an hour, he felt both relieved and frightened, wondering what would happen next.

The trunk was opened and two men helped him out. When one removed his improvised hood, he saw the lights of Kabul in the distance. They were at a farm on a hillside, and the air was chilly.

His kidnappers, who were still masked, hustled him around behind what looked like a farmhouse and brought him to a well. They looped a thick rope around his chest, lifted him over the edge of the well, and pushed him out. Malko found himself dangling in space, being lowered along damp stone walls.

The descent didn’t take long. Five or six yards down, his feet touched the bottom of the well. It was dry, thank God!

They untied the loop and pulled up the rope.

In the darkness, Malko could make out a man sitting on the ground: a youngish Afghan with a full beard and deep-set eyes. He gave a surprised look at Malko, who clearly wasn’t Afghan, and said something in Dari. Malko answered in English, but the man shook his head. He didn’t understand. As they sat looking at each other, suddenly everything went black. The kidnappers had covered the well, plunging them in darkness.

Malko shivered. The temperature was icy. He would’ve wanted to talk to his companion in misfortune, but the man crouched against the wall seemed to be dozing.

How long would he be down here?

Why the kidnapping?

And above all, would anyone be looking for him?

His head bandaged, a shaken Darius told Nelson Berry what had happened.

“They were waiting for us,” he said. “They knew we had money. They were bandits.”

“What about the car?”

“They drove off in it.”

The South African couldn’t understand it. There were certainly robbers in Kabul, but how could they know Malko was carrying a lot of money? It was very strange.

Berry was now out five hundred thousand dollars in cash, plus the armored Corolla, which was easily worth a hundred thousand. Why kidnap Malko? There was only one possible answer: ransom. So the kidnappers would be demanding ransom, but from whom? Malko didn’t live in Kabul, and they didn’t know about his connection with the CIA. Nor would the Corolla’s license plate lead them to Berry. The car was registered in the name of an Afghan who lived in the Emirates.

“Darius, we’ve got to get all the people we know working on this,” he said. “I’ll go see my pals in the police. Maybe they’ll know something.”

Warren Michaelis dialed Malko repeatedly, but the calls immediately went to voice mail. He also tried the Serena, but Malko hadn’t been seen at the hotel since that morning. Clearly something had happened to him, but no assaults on foreigners in Kabul had been reported. The local hospitals would have noted the presence of a non-Afghan.

“We’re going to the NDS,” said Michaelis.

That was the only agency with the technical means of locating Malko’s cell phone. Their Russian training would come in handy.

Nelson Berry was in a funk. Despite his many connections, he hadn’t gotten any information. There had been no sign of Malko
since that morning. Just then, his cell rang. Maybe he would learn something, he thought.

A rough-sounding man spoke, in Pashto.

“Is Malko Linge your pal?”

He so butchered the Austrian’s name that Berry had to make him repeat it twice before he could answer yes.

“We have him,” said the man. “If you don’t give us fifty million afghanis, we’ll cut his throat. You have until tomorrow. After that …”

The man hung up.

Berry looked at his cell. They must have found his number in Malko’s phone. But they couldn’t know that Malko wasn’t actually a pal of his.

The South African quickly sized up the situation. He had no intention of paying any ransom, and it probably wouldn’t do any good anyway. There would be bargaining, of course, but Berry wasn’t prepared to waste even a tenth of that sum in a lost cause.

He wondered who could help him. Contacting the Kabul CIA station was out of the question; they would ask him too many questions. There was nothing he could do for Malko except to haggle over the size of the ransom, to gain time.

He tried to call Malko’s number back, but without success. No number had appeared on-screen when the kidnappers phoned him.

Berry walked over to the bar and poured himself a shot of vodka. It was too bad. He liked Malko, and the Austrian could have earned him a lot of money.

Just the same, he decided to try one thing. Using a special phone, he dialed a number in the United States. An anonymous voice instructed him to dial a code, which he did, getting a second voice mail. The first was just a cutout.

“Our friend has been kidnapped and there’s nothing I can do,” said Berry. “You better alert whoever needs to know.”

Clayton Luger would have his own ways of taking action.

The cover on the well was moved aside, admitting a dim, grayish light. Malko looked at his watch, which they’d neglected to take from him.

It was 7:00 a.m.

Next to him, his companion in misfortune was curled up and appeared to be sleeping. Malko felt as if he’d spent the night in a refrigerator. He was shivering. When he looked up he saw something being lowered from the top of the well. It was a cardboard box with two bowls of
palau
—rice mixed with pieces of mutton, the national Afghan dish—and two bottles of water.