Firefight (4 page)

Pankhurst sat back in his chair, scanning Will's face for signs
of interest. Will was careful to give him none.

'Perhaps I should take over, Lowther,' Priestley said, and
Pankhurst nodded his agreement.

The CIA man walked to the window and looked out
over London for a moment as though collecting his thoughts.

Then he turned round and addressed the room. 'Some of
what I have to say will be familiar to you already, Will, but
please bear with me.'

Will shrugged.

'Faisal Ahmed, as Lowther has already said, was born in
1969 in a village just south of Kandahar in Afghanistan. His
parents grew tobacco. They weren't wealthy, but they weren't
especially poor either. They got by - quiet people, not political.
Just typical, hardworking Afghans. Their village, though,
was home to a number of Afghan mujahideen, fighters
opposed to the Afghan government. When the government
invited Soviet forces into their country to deal with the
mujahideen in 1979, Ahmed was ten years old. He watched
as the Soviets entered his village in order to hunt out
mujahideen supporters. They were - how can I put it -
indiscriminate in their investigation techniques. Ahmed and
his older sister watched soldiers raping his mother. They
then shot her in front of his father, telling him that unless
he confessed to being a member of the mujahideen, they
would kill him too. He refused and the soldiers carried out
their threat, leaving Ahmed and his sister to fend for themselves.'

Silence fell on the room as Priestley's words sank in.

'The Soviet-Afghan war lasted, as you know, for nine
years. The policy of the American government at that time
- under President Carter and President Reagan - was to
support the mujahideen. Reagan even went so far as to
publicly refer to them as freedom fighters. We funded them,
both with money and armaments, and we encouraged them
to bring about regime change in that country.

'Ahmed's experiences of the Russians engendered a fairly
predictable response. Days after his parents' death, he hunted
out the leaders of the local mujahideen faction and told
them he wanted to become one of their number. His youth
was not an obstacle; in fact, it was a positive advantage.'
Priestley gave a small smile. 'Groups like this like to get
them young, I've noticed. So, aged ten, Ahmed was given
a Kalashnikov; by the time he was twelve, he was picking
off Soviet soldiers with a rare skill. He learned how to use
hand grenades and other explosives. He learned how to arm
and defuse land mines. He became part of the sorry military
apparatus of that unfortunate country.

'The CIA, of course, were involved in what was going
on in Afghanistan. The US, you see, wasn't funding the
mujahideen without wanting anything in return. A weakening
of the Soviet armed forces was one of those things;
but it was clear to anyone with half a brain that the region
would be unstable for some time to come. My predecessors
understood the importance of having our own eyes in
Afghanistan; but, of course, it's difficult for a Westerner to
operate effectively over there without attracting suspicion.

'So we started to cherry-pick a few of the mujahideen
who were most interesting to us. We wanted them young,
so that we could bring them round to our way of thinking.
That wouldn't have been too difficult, of course - strange
as it sounds, the Americans were considered allies of the
mujahideen back in the Eighties, not enemies. Most of all,
we wanted people that displayed an aptitude for the kind
of work that would be expected of them. Faisal Ahmed
ticked all the boxes.

'In 1985 our agents in Afghanistan approached him. He
was sixteen years old at the time and by all accounts filled
with a brutal hatred of all things Russian.'

'I don't blame him,' Will interjected, getting caught up
in the story despite himself.

'Nor do I,Will,' Priestley agreed. 'But this Afghan teenager
killed more Soviet soldiers before his sixteenth birthday
than most special forces kill in an entire career. He seemed
driven to avenge his parents' death on an almost daily basis
and he was very, very good at it. The CIA made him an
offer. He was told he could leave Afghanistan and come to
America for five years. We would train him - channel his
raw aggression and undeniable talent, and pay him. The sort
of money we were talking about would have made him a
wealthy man in Afghanistan. When he was twenty-one, we
would return him, fully trained, to his own country. We
would continue to pay him and he would be free to fight
for his country in whatever way he saw fit. The only proviso
was that he would agree to pass intelligence on to us about
what was happening on the ground, within Afghan factions
that we had no hope of infiltrating in any other way.'

'So what you're trying to tell me,' Will said, 'is that you
manipulated a sixteen-year-old boy into being a spy.'

For a moment Priestley didn't respond. He stared at
Will, his blue eyes wide and his face surprisingly open
and honest. 'Yes,' he said finally. 'I guess that is what I'm
trying to tell you. Ahmed was shown pictures of the Empire
State Building and the White House. He was told he would
be able to visit Los Angeles and Florida. We manipulated
him; we played to his youth. It's not really something to
be proud of, but you know as well as I do, Will, that pride
is a luxury we are sometimes not allowed. And it would
be wrong of me to suggest that Ahmed's reasons for coming
to America were entirely patriotic. He was a young man
being offered a chance to see the world. He accepted
keenly.

'There was only one thing that could potentially cause
problems. If the sixteen-year-old Faisal Ahmed had disappeared,
only to reappear five years later, it would have
caused suspicions. We needed, therefore, to stage his death
so that he could be reinserted into the region under a new
identity. Clearly, nobody in Afghanistan could know about
this. Ahmed, however, was firm on one point: he would not
keep his plans a secret from his sister, Latifa. She had looked
after him when their parents died and she was, in many
ways, the only thing he had left in the world. It would
destroy her, he insisted, if she believed that her brother, her
last remaining relative, had died.

'Rightly or wrongly, the CIA agreed to his condition, so
Latifa Ahmed was the only person apart from his handlers
who knew what was about to happen. Ahmed made the
plan himself. He captured a Russian soldier, took him back
to his village and killed him with his bare hands. A gun
would have been easier, but it was important that no bullet
was found in the soldier's body. He stripped off the Russian's
uniform, replaced it with some of his own clothes, then
put the corpse in the driving seat of his own car. He then
constructed an explosive device, placed it under the vehicle
and, under cover of night, detonated it.

'Immediately after that, he disappeared. The soldier's body
was too mutilated to be recognisable and everyone assumed
it was Ahmed. Latifa herself led the mourning at his funeral,
but by the time his burial ritual was over, the boy was on
a plane to the US.

'His military transport landed him in a deserted part of
the Midwest, where he was given four American passports,
each with a different identity.'

'What the hell did he need four different identities for?'
Will asked.

'What he needed,' replied Priestley, 'was the ability to
switch identities at ease. During his five-year training period,
he memorised more than fifty different identities, each with
their own personal history. It took him six months to learn
good English and a year to learn everything our special
forces could possibly teach him about surveillance and espionage
techniques. He was already good with a gun, but by
the time the CIA had finished with him, he was a worldclass
marksman. He underwent gruelling torture sessions
and by the end of his training he could withstand pretty
much anything we threw at him. We taught him about
bomb-making, escape and evasion. He became expert in
intelligence techniques. In every area of warfare, espionage
and counter-intelligence, he learned everything that we
could teach him, soaking it all up like a sponge. He became,
quite simply, the best of the best.

'I held a much more junior position in the CIA at the
time, but I had the opportunity to meet Faisal Ahmed when
he was in the US. I also met several other Middle Eastern
operatives who were undergoing the same treatment. None
of them had anything approaching the same kind of aptitude
as Ahmed. He struck me as being markedly more
intelligent than the others, but also completely determined.
I don't mind admitting that I found him pretty scary.'

Priestley paused, poured himself a glass of water from the
jug on the cabinet and took a thoughtful sip, all the while
keeping his eyes on Will. It made Will a bit edgy and he
looked down at the picture of Ahmed that was still in his
hands. Determined, Priestley had said. He certainly looked
that, if you could tell anything from a photo. Scary? Well,
maybe, if you were easily scared. Will wasn't.

'While we were training Ahmed,' Priestley started up
again, 'the situation in Afghanistan changed. In 1989 the
Russians withdrew. What followed was close to anarchy -
mujahideen factions all across the country started fighting
each other under the command of their various warlords.
We may imagine that Ahmed watched what was happening
in his country from afar with increasing horror. At the
same time, of course, he was becoming Westernised. He
grew to believe that the American way of life had much
to recommend it and while he was keen to return to his
home country, he seemed to have a genuine loyalty towards
the authorities who were training him. I don't deny that the
fact he was being well paid probably helped, but from our
perspective, by the time the twenty-one-year-old Faisal
Ahmed was ready to be introduced back into Afghanistan,
we knew that he was as near as we would ever get to the
perfect spy.

'He did not disappoint us. As soon as he returned to his
home country, he went about insinuating himself into the
ranks of a group of mujahideen that was being heavily
funded by a Saudi Arabian benefactor. His name was Osama
bin Laden.'

Will's eyes widened and he couldn't help notice that
Priestley seemed pleased that this last nugget of information
had finally elicited some kind of response from him.

'Of course,' Priestley continued, 'back then Bin Laden
was not the bête noir he is today. Al-Qaeda was yet to be
formed, although he had led a group called Maktab al-Khidamat,
which channelled money into the mujahideen
for the Afghan war. The CIA were interested in Bin Laden
anyway, because even though we were kind of on the same
side back then, his anti-American stance was no secret.

'In the early 1990s the Taliban started to emerge as a
powerful force in the country, then al-Qaeda. Ahmed was
effectively Westernised by then; certainly he had no sympathy
for the Taliban or al-Qaeda. He was able to infiltrate the
higher echelons of both those groups - he even met Bin
Laden a couple of times in the mid-Nineties - and even
when American policy towards the mujahideen changed,
he remained loyal to us. He was an intelligent guy and I
guess he saw what was happening, saw that the Taliban
could only ever be bad news for his country.'

'And, of course, you were still paying him,' Will observed
flatly.

Priestley nodded. 'We were, as you so rightly point out,
still paying him,' he agreed. 'And we got our money's worth,
Will. You don't need to know the details, but let me tell
you - the kind of information that was fed to us by
Faisal Ahmed during the late 1990s was pure gold dust.
Information of al-Qaeda plots, details of their rank and file,
their structure. If it weren't for him, we'd have been in the
dark. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that his information
directly saved thousands of lives. Thousands, Will. And
you know what? If he'd still been with al-Qaeda at the
time, there's a very good chance that 9/11 would never
have happened. That's how important he was to us.'

'So what went wrong? 'Will asked.

Priestley shrugged a little sadly. 'His cover was blown.'

'Who by?'

Priestley and Pankhurst glanced at each other. 'We don't
really know, Will,' the American admitted. 'But it seems
likely that it was someone in our own ranks.'

'You're telling me that al-Qaeda infiltrated the CIA?'

'No security service is impregnable, Will,' Priestley said
quietly. 'We've shown that by infiltrating enough ourselves.

You'd be surprised if I told you some of the places where
we have agents.' He smiled. 'Which I'm not going to do,
of course. Anyway, Ahmed was taken over the border into
Pakistan, to an al-Qaeda training facility. He was tortured
for three days - brutal torture, Will, sickening torture. Physical
and mental. The skin on his back was flayed and allowed
to go septic. He was beaten and branded. But as far as we
know, he didn't crack. And at the end of it, more dead than
alive, he managed to escape. He fled west into Iran, from
where he managed to make it to the United Arab Emirates.
Ten weeks of escape and evasion, horribly wounded. It was
something else.'

Will nodded.

'It was in the UAE that he contacted us and we picked
him up. For someone who had been through such a lot,
he was still remarkably calm and focused. We offered him
safe passage to the US, but he declined.'

'I'm not surprised,' Will commented.

'Why's that, Will?'

'Because governments aren't exactly famous for treating
their ex-soldiers well,' he said. 'And with everything he
knew, he could easily have become a potential liability to
the US. He was probably scared that someone would come
up to him in a dark alley and put a bullet in him.'