distance it looked like a small hill with a garrison arrayed across the flat-top summit. This was the Bala Hisar fort, which since the sixteenth century had controlled the entry to the Khyber Pass, thirty miles to the west, and thus the gateway between Afghanistan and the great Indus Valley that contained the modern nations of Pakistan and India.
The general’s convoy was waved through a checkpoint and took the steep road up this man-made hillock. In the courtyard atop the fort, a company of Frontier Corps guards mustered for his welcome. They wore the tunics and daggers of the British Raj, and their units were still called by the same names: the Khyber Rifles, the South Waziristan Scouts, the Bajaur Scouts and a half dozen others.
The corps commander greeted him. He was a big man, well over six feet, with a large belly and a growth of stubble on his face. He was a Pashtun himself, the descendant of the princely family that had ruled the ancient trading city of Bannu, a stopping point between Peshawar and Quetta. He knew how to run the frontier in the old- fashioned way, but he was not a man suited for the ISI’s intelligence game. If he encountered an adversary, his instinct was to shoot him, rather than recruit him.
General Malik pumped for information about Al-Tawhid. Was the group still growing in Bajaur and the Waziristans? Was the Tawhid content to attack the Americans and their Afghan allies across the border, or was it threatening Pakistan? The general would never have admitted it to the outside world, but the ISI was prepared to tolerate the Tawhid so long as it didn’t directly challenge the government. A double game was manageable, but not a triple game.
The Frontier Corps commander answered as best he could: Al-Tawhid lived village to village, operation to operation. It had not attacked the Frontier Corps yesterday, or for six months of yesterdays, but it could do so easily tomorrow. Its operatives were here on the frontier, but they were in the settled areas, too: in Karachi and Lahore and Quetta, and in Islamabad itself. General Malik nodded his agreement; he knew the reach of this “brotherhood” too well.
“These Tawhid are cocky buggers,” said the corps commander. “To rule the frontier, you need a big wallet and a big gun. These miscreants have neither, and they have been punished by the drones. But still they think they can take on America. I do not see it. Under their turbans, they are just men. They pretend to know, but what can they know? They are little men with big Korans.”
The corps commander, with his protruding gut and his rough speech, had unwittingly stated the problem that concerned General Malik. What did the Tawhid know? Where did these “little men” get the information that allowed them to poke the giant? The ISI had picked up the chatter, about a learned professor and his secretive ways. But the analysts didn’t understand what it meant, and that troubled the general. There were so many professors on the ISI payroll already; was this master miscreant one of them?
The ISI chief continued in his convoy toward Malakand. They traveled north through the dusty plain of Mardan, lined with roadside stalls and small shops. The general smiled every time he saw a billboard depicting a Kalashnikov rifle. It was the insignia of a laundry powder bearing the same name. Only the Pashtuns would make an assault rifle the symbol of cleanliness.
As they pressed on, in the lee of Mohmand Agency to the west, the road began to rise toward the mountains. The gaily decorated trucks, laden with their cargos, slowed nearly to a crawl and the general’s convoy weaved back and forth on the two-lane road, narrowly missing cars in the descending lane. As the switchbacks grew steeper, the traffic sometimes halted altogether, while the general’s driver beeped indignantly on his horn and muttered Punjabi curses.
They eventually reached Malakand Pass, and just beyond it they came to the old fort that guarded this portal through the mountains. It was a tidy garrison, little changed in the sixty-five years since the British had left. The convoy drove past a company of infantry soldiers mounting their vehicles for patrol and continued on to a small brick house at the edge of the compound. A man in civilian clothes was waiting. This was Major Tariq, the local ISI officer who had summoned General Malik.
The major led his boss over a hill and down a path lined with blue pines and cedars. On this downward slope, the view opened to a magnificent valley in the distance: the Panjkora River rushing south through Dir District to meet the Swat River. It might have been an alpine vista in summer: the peaks framing the lush ground; the riverbanks lined with graceful alder and willow trees; the farms rich and green.
The major continued down the hill till he reached a pair of red-brick buildings. This was the local ISI station and, next to it, the combination guesthouse/stockade, depending on whom it contained. Today it was a stockade, and inside it was the man General Malik had come to see.
“Haj Ali” was the name the prisoner had given to Major Tariq. He had been captured in Bajaur two days before, trying to make his way across the frontier into Afghanistan. When he had searched the man, Major Tariq had found a flash drive, a portable data-storage device that could be plugged into the USB port of any computer. The major had installed the device on his laptop and examined the information. He hadn’t understood what it meant, other than that it looked important, so he had summoned the chief of his service.
General Malik entered the building that served as the local ISI station. On the wall he saw his own picture, neatly framed, along with portraits of his recent predecessors. Directors came and went, but the ISI was a permanent fixture in these parts; visitors to the major’s office might have been recruited by different ISI regimes, but the message was that they were all knitted into the same web.
Major Tariq unlocked the secure area at the rear of the room, where he kept his sensitive materials, and bade the general enter.
General Malik took a seat before the computer. The flash drive was already installed, and in a few moments the screen was alight. The drive contained just one brief document, an Excel spreadsheet that was designated “Registry.”
The general clicked on this document and the screen displayed four entries each with a difficult string of letters and numbers. There were no markings at the top to identify what each column represented, and they presented a confusing array.
The four entries were divided into two pairs and read as follows:
1) BANK JULIUS BAER BKJULIUS CH12 0869-6005-2654-1601-2 BAERCHZU 200 71835 BANK ALFALAH ALFHAFKA 720 34120
2) BARCLAYS BANK BARCLON GB35 BARC-4026-3433-1557-68 BARCGBZZ 317 82993 AMONATBONK ASSETJ22 297 45190
General Malik studied the short document, making a few notes to himself on a pad. At length, a puzzled general turned to his subordinate.
“What is this hallahgullah, Major?” he asked, using a local slang word that means confusion. “Is this what you brought me all the way to see? This is just numbers and letters. It is a banking directory.”
“Yes, sir.” The major bowed his head submissively. “But it means something, I am quite sure.”
“Everything means something, babu. But what? Have you questioned the man who was carrying it?”
“Only a little, sir. I was waiting for you.”
General Malik printed a copy of the document. Then he logged off the computer and removed the flash drive to take back with him to Islamabad. He asked the young case officer to stay behind while he walked to the other building in the compound, where the courier was confined.
The ISI chief stooped to enter the low-ceilinged room. It had the musty animal smell of a century of prisoners. The general swung open the shutters, and a bright shaft of light illuminated the form of Haj Ali. He was a young man, handsome even in the suffering of his confinement. He had an unmistakable Pashtun face: prominent nose, hard cheeks, thick black hair and beard and sharp, hooded eyes. He was shackled, his hands and legs bent tight against the frame of a wooden chair.
General Malik took a chair next to the window, so that the prisoner had to squint into the sunlight to see his visitor. For a long while, perhaps five minutes, the general didn’t speak. The captive courier strained against his shackles, making the muscles of his neck, face and arms taut with his resistance.
The general’s first word was a call to the major to come and unlock the metal cuffs. When the prisoner’s hands and feet were free, he stood for a moment, arched his back and then sat again in his chair with dignity. Major Tariq asked the general if he wanted a guard for protection, and the general said no, that he wanted to be left alone with the man.
The silence resumed, and as it continued, five minutes, ten minutes, it was the Pashtun man who became restless. He looked away, he cracked his knuckles, he coughed, he scratched his head. He was the one finally to
