The Old Boys (40 page)

He said, “So why are you telling me this?”

“Let’s just say I’ve learned to like you,” I said.

“Horace, I do believe you’re trying to recruit me.”

“On a temporary basis, yes.”

Frankness pays. Kevin smiled. It was nice to see the Ohio quarterback again. He said, “You’re crazy.”

“I am? Why?”

“Why on earth would any sane person think I’d be open to such an offer?”

It was my turn to smile. If Kevin hadn’t been open to the offer he wouldn’t have asked that question. He would have jumped to his feet, denounced me for an enemy of all that was good and decent, and walked away in a dudgeon.

“Let’s just say I have a feeling about you,” I said. “I think you’ve got a sneaking sympathy for us. I also think you’re not entirely happy with the people you work for.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m ready to betray them.”

“What does betrayal have to do with it?”

Kevin said, “Don’t tell me, let me guess. I’ve got you all wrong. You’re giving me an opportunity to do something really special for humanity.”

Such cynicism! Who would have guessed that such bitter wit lurked behind that wonderful all-American smile?

I said, “No, I’m giving you a chance to make the Outfit look like a bunch of jackasses.”

“Why?”

“For the satisfaction of the thing. You say yourself that you think us old fogies are right about Ibn Awad and the Outfit is wrong. Think about the consequences if you take the easy way out
and go along with these dopes and this man of God blows up a dozen American cities.”

A silence. Under the rules of recruitment I couldn’t be the first to break it. Kevin had to speak first. And if he did, I was across the goal line.

Finally he said, “Okay, let’s take this a step further. What do you want from me?”

Hallelujah. I said, “Two things. Your commando skills and cover.”

“What do you mean by commando skills?”

“I want to take Ibn Awad alive. He has bodyguards, lots of them. I hope that you and your men can kidnap the old fellow in the night and be gone before his people wake up.”

“You think we can do that?”

“I’ve seen what you can do. The question is, will you do it?”

Kevin answered as though his mind was already made up on that point and he had moved on to practicalities.

He said, “Take him alive? I can’t promise that.”

“I know that. But do you think it’s possible?”

“It depends on the circumstances. And what you have in mind for him afterward.”

“Not torture or death,” I said.

“Why the change of heart?”

“We live and learn. This time I mean the old lunatic no harm. All I want to do is stop him and find his bombs and disarm them. Really.”

Kevin thought this over and decided to answer the question. He said, “Yes, it’s theoretically possible to take him alive, assuming that we can find him and assuming that his men aren’t under orders to kill him to save him from capture.”

“Understood.”

“I have another question,” he said. “You want me to provide cover for you. Exactly what does that mean?”

I thought he’d never ask. I said, “Somebody has to take the credit. We don’t want it.”

“What if I don’t want it, either?”

“Then
you’ll just have to depend on Washington to take all the credit for themselves.”

Kevin was smiling again, but this time to himself.

He said, “And I will have the deep satisfaction of having saved the world. Is that the deal?”

“What more could you want?”

Kevin laughed out loud. “Okay,” he said. “What’s the timetable?”

We settled the details then and there.

That left the budgetary questions. I discussed these with the Old Boys. We had plenty of money in the bank—almost $900,000, plus a few thousand left over from the $25,000 advanced to each of us at the beginning of the operation. These weren’t government funds, meant to be scattered to the winds before the end of the fiscal year. It was real money, Paul’s money, and everybody understood this. It doesn’t cost much to fly tourist class. Staying at cheap hotels and monasteries and eating mutton in backstreet restaurants in remotest China consumes very little cash.

Charley said, “How many people is your friend Kevin bringing with him?”

“Half a dozen,” I replied. “Not his own men. Independent contractors. Former special-ops types. He’s recruiting them as we speak.”

“We’ll have to pay them?”

“They want Ibn Awad. I said they could have him.”

“Handsome gesture, Horace.”

I handed Charley the list of arms and equipment Kevin wanted. It was detailed and specific. He looked it over.

“Saints preserve us,” he said. “Belgian assault rifles with grenade launchers and grenades, sniper rifle with scope, Swedish 74U
submachine guns, nine-millimeter Beretta pistols, hand grenades, Semtex explosive, detonators, ammunition, knives. A month’s ration of Meals-Ready-to-Eat. Medical kit. Two-way low frequency radios. Satellite phones. GPS whatchamacallits.” Charley peered over his reading glasses. “I thought the idea was to take Ibn Awad alive.”

“It is. The firepower is for those who might try to prevent us from doing that.”

Charley didn’t like guns. Neither did the rest of the Old Boys. In our day gunfire was regarded as the sound of inexcusable failure. The mission back then was to tiptoe in and tiptoe out, leaving no one the wiser. The adversary (never rudely called
the enemy
) wasn’t supposed to find out what you’d done to him until it was too late, if ever.

“I have no idea where to find this stuff or what it costs,” Charley said. For once he wasn’t the smiling volunteer.

“Kevin will take care of all that,” I said. “It will be cheaper than you think. Figure fifty grand up front, not including vehicles.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” Charley said. “I’d rather not know.”

“But you do know,” Jack Philindros said. “Don’t be such a liberal, Charley.”

Jack was now fully on board. So was Ben. Washington etiquette applied. After the decision is made, the time for criticism is past. You support the plan or resign and keep your mouth shut. This didn’t mean that the worrywarts weren’t nervous about the ad hoc nature of my plan. Improvisation didn’t come easily to either of them. But in the absence of a cast of thousands, improvisation was our only option. Neither spoke the thought that was uppermost in both their minds: By involving Kevin we were opening the gates of Troy to a wooden horse. Who knew what and who might be inside it? This
was
a risk, no question about it. But how refreshing of Jack and Ben not to point that out to the rest of us, who already knew it. The others, needless to say, were all in favor of the rousing game of dirty tricks that lay ahead. They hadn’t had this much fun in years.

We
were back in Italy—this time in Florence, in a different apartment near the Ponte Vecchio. This place was far more elegant than the walk-up in Rome and much farther removed, thank goodness, from church bells. After the Restaurante Mexicano, I needed a good dinner, so I did as Disraeli used to do when he wanted to read a good novel. I cooked one. Prosciutto and asparagus, spaghetti with clams, a whole roasted sea bass, and more Tuscan wine than was good for the old pipes inside the assembled company. Harley proposed a toast.

“To the life in the Old Boys yet,” he said.

Everyone drank to that. But it was late. Quite soon the conversation stalled, the laughter dwindled. Charley and I did the dishes. The rest were all in bed by ten. Sometime during the night I woke up from a dream. Every single one of the Old Boys was snoring—tenors, baritones, an “Old Man River” bass. On a still night in the desert, with the constellations wheeling overhead, these old fellows could have been heard for miles.

In the morning we scattered, each to his own task. David Wong and I headed east, toward Xinjiang.

We met Zarah in Karakol, close to the Chinese frontier with Kyrgyzstan. The three of us breakfasted on tea and yogurt in the tiny dining room of the guest house where we were staying. Men in peculiar felt hats, shouting at each other in Kyrgyz, filled the other tables. The smell of dung fires permeated their clothes and this pungent odor mixed with the aroma of the warm sheep’s milk they were drinking and the smell of horses and wet fleece and their own bodies. The guest house was badly out of plumb. Slivers of daylight shone through its window frames and door jambs. You could imagine its being built long ago by people with fingers numbed by cold who lacked all but the most primitive tools. Through its isinglass windows we had a smeared view of the Ala Tau Mountains, snow-clad peaks pink in the early light. American eyes had not beheld such a sight and lived to tell the tale in my lifetime—until recently. Now all you had to do to visit places that had been forbidden to outsiders for three generations was click a few computer keys and take a plane. In summer these mountains crawled with American and European backpackers. Capitalism! How right the apparatchiks had been to fear it.

I told Zarah about Kalash, about Mubarak’s GPS readings, about Charley’s research.

“Then Ibn Awad
is
a falconer.”

“So
it would seem, unless we’re being set up. To the suspicious mind it all fits together a little too neatly.”

Zarah gave me a wry look. She said, “A man I know is a dealer in contraband falcons. He says that the falcon of choice for hunting the houbara bustard is not the peregrine but the Saker falcon.”

“And why is that?”

“The Saker is larger than the peregrine, with a much broader wingspan,” Zarah said. “It lacks the peregrine’s big talons but it has an uncanny ability to fly very low to the ground. This means that it finds the houbara bustard on its own, chases it when it runs and flushes it into the air, where it finishes it off. Because of its smaller talons it does much less damage to the carcass when it kills than the peregrine. This is important if you’re going to eat the houbara.”

“And?”

“It’s an endangered species,” Zarah said. “Because of its rarity, the Saker falcon is coveted by Arab falconers. Sakers come in all colors from dark brown to blond, from ash to white. White is the rarest color.”

“It must be difficult to find one.”

“Very. Also illegal. But not impossible. A pure white, wild female Saker falcon could be worth up to a hundred thousand dollars.”

I said, “Let me guess. Your friend knows where you can buy one.”

“Yes. A pure white female. It’s in a village not far from here.”

“I’d love to see it. But what are we going to do with a pure white wild female Saker falcon?”

“I thought it would make a nice present for Ibn Awad,” Zarah replied. “Something that would catch his eye, bring him to us.”

After breakfast David Wong went off to find a Kyrgyz friend who would drive us to the village where the Saker falcon and its owner awaited. The Kyrgyz friend turned out to be Askar, the revolutionary we had met in the Tajik village after the buz kashi, the man who had told us that Lori had been living among the Kyrgyz.
He was the same jovial customer as before, full of patriotic fervor, glowing with heroic reputation. He knew exactly who Zarah was, and after telling her how much she looked like her grandmother, he recited his entire genealogy.

“My grandfather and your great-grandfather were first cousins,” he told Zarah. To me he said, “Zarah is your first cousin’s child. So you and I are cousins, too.”

In my case the blood-tie was honorary, but this was a moment that called for a gesture. I offered my hand. Askar took it and very nearly crushed its bones.

Askar and David had arrived in a Subaru pickup truck. Zarah and David rode in the cab with Askar. For the sake of the legroom I chose to ride in the truck bed. This was an unwise decision. The combination of Askar’s driving—he could have gotten work as a stunt man in Hollywood—and the road, built to the most dismal collectivist standards, made me regret it before we had traveled a mile. It was very cold. Snowflakes swirled in the vortex of the truck’s passage.

The village, when at last we reached it, turned out to be a collection of stone huts huddled against a mountainside. Just above the jumble of houses, a hot spring bubbled from the rocks, giving off wisps out of steam. Askar told us that there were caves nearby where, in the good old days, he and his men had hidden after raids into China. During the struggle to unite the Kyrgyz people the village had been a nest of lookouts, warning Askar and his partisans of approaching Russians. And what had Askar and his men done when Soviets troops came looking for them?