grove of trees and came to a security checkpoint, where a guard waved him through. The Toyota stopped at the road’s end at a guesthouse on the banks of a large body of water, which Marx knew from her maps must be Rawal Lake.
In the heat of midmorning, nothing was stirring. The surface of the water was smooth as glass, and the air was thick. The trees were barely green, more a light tan, their leaves baked like chips in the oven. Even the birds had gone silent. The driver escorted Marx to the guesthouse and opened the door, beckoning her to take a seat on the couch. The room was cooled by a noisy window box that throbbed and rattled against the heat. The driver brought a cool drink from the pantry and set it before the guest. Then he retreated out the door and locked it from the outside.
Marx waited for more than an hour before the general arrived. She searched for something to read and found only one book, The Defense and Foreign Affairs Handbook on Pakistan. She opened to the first page: “Pakistan is, indeed, a nation on the edge. Many of the critical challenges facing Pakistan today, however, are not of its own making.” It was America’s fault, India’s fault, somebody’s fault. She put the book aside.
She debated calling Cyril Hoffman to tell him where she was, but decided against it. The call would surely be monitored, and there was nothing Hoffman could do now, in any event. It was easier simply to admit that she was helpless.
Rain clouds gathered, and there was a brief shower, the raindrops falling straight down into the water on this windless day, perforating the surface of the lake with tiny dots. The shower ended as quickly as it had begun, and in an instant the bright sun returned. It was like being in a terrarium. Her hair felt wet and matted against her neck; she pinned up her ponytail so that it formed a bun.
General Malik arrived just after noon, accompanied by an aide carrying a laptop computer. The general was a courtly man, trim in his uniform, handsomer than Marx had expected. The aide placed the laptop on a table at the far end of the room; he plugged it into the wall, powered it on and then disappeared out the door.
“I am so very sorry to be late,” began the general. “It must appear that this was a deliberate slight, but I assure you it was not intentional. I was talking with Cyril Hoffman, to be quite frank with you.”
Marx nodded but said nothing. It was always a mistake to be ingratiating, especially for a woman. Better to let the general say what he wanted. When she didn’t answer, the general arched his thick black eyebrows curiously and then continued.
“I was talking with Cyril about you, as a matter of fact. I am a bit worried, you see.”
Marx kept her silence for another moment, but she needed to understand what he was telling her.
“Why are you worried, General? Here I am, ready to do business.”
“Because I think it is possible that others know you are here in Pakistan. To be more specific, madam, I am concerned that your presence here is known to the Tawhid organization that is responsible for the deaths of the other American intelligence officers.”
Marx studied him. This clipped and controlled man was famous for his dexterity at lying, but in this case she thought he was being truthful.
“How could they possibly know I am here? You must have told them.”
“Certainly not, madam. That is why I called Cyril. I wanted to inform him of this danger, you see, and to assure him that I had played no role in disclosing the fact of your visit. No, I am sorry to say that they learned of your travel quite on their own. That is the problem, you know. They have found you out.”
“How can you be sure they know, if you didn’t tell them yourself?”
“Please, Miss Marx. Do not let us trifle with each other. I know because it is my job to discover the secrets of these miscreants. I have agents among them. I overhear their conversations. I watch and listen. And I am telling you, with the greatest of regret, that based on this intelligence I am quite certain that they are aware of your travel to Pakistan.”
“Can you control them? Can you keep them from harming me?”
“ Achaah! ” He tapped his forehead with his hand. “That is what you Americans can never understand. To know is not to control.”
Marx thought a long moment. She didn’t want to be panicked or rushed. She watched the general’s eyes. They were dark brown, with a sparkle of light at the center. It was an intelligent face, if not quite an honest one.
“I believe you, General,” she said.
“Thank you.”
The tightness in his cheeks eased. He tried to smile.
“So I must ask you,” she continued, “how do they know that I am here? What is this methodology that allows them to monitor our movements? Mr. Hoffman told me that you have ideas about how they are targeting our officers. He said that it involves our financial networks. He said you would help. That’s why I came. Now the matter is a little more personal. I am quite in your protection.”
“You touch me, madam.” He put his hand on his heart. “Come, sit down with me at the computer and I will explain what I can.”
He gestured for her to join him at the table at the far end of the bungalow, where the screen of the laptop was glowing faintly. She rose and followed him across the room. He removed a small object from the pocket of his uniform. It was a computer flash drive. He fumbled with the drive, attempting to insert it in the USB port at the back of the machine.
“I am not very good at this, I am afraid. That is the problem with being a general. There is always someone younger and cleverer to do such things for me.”
Eventually he got the drive in place. He sat down at the computer and manipulated the mouse until he had clicked open the file from the external drive. A four-line Excel spreadsheet came up on the screen.
“This is what I wanted you to see,” said the general. “Mumbo jumbo, you will say. But look, please, and then we can talk about what it all might mean.”
He turned the computer screen toward her, so that she could read the document more clearly. It displayed the four strings of letters and numbers:
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.
He handed her a piece of paper that contained the same brief burst of information. That was his gift, for which he had summoned her, at considerable danger, from across the sea.
Marx studied the screen, trying to break the code. At length, she turned back toward the Pakistani officer. She was shaking her head.
“I want to understand what this means, General, but I am having trouble. It looks like bank routing numbers. Can you decipher it for me?”
“Perhaps I can,” he answered. “Not because I am smart about such things, which is very far from true. But I have a young major on my staff who is quite the computer buff. He has been helping me, you see, so that I could make some sense of this bloody nonsense.”
She took his hand and held it for a moment. It was a forward gesture for a woman in a Muslim country, but it was spontaneous and genuine.
“Please tell me whatever you can. I don’t mean to be overly dramatic, but it’s a matter of life and death.”
The general nodded, in deference to the woman’s distress.
“I will tell you everything, then, madam. I was not sure that I would do so. This is a complicated business for us. I do not need to explain. But now that I see you, and understand the risk you have taken to come here, I am quite ready to be helpful.”
“You are very generous. Thank you.”
“The first thing you need to know, madam, is that I obtained this computer device from a Tawhid courier we captured in the Tribal Areas just over a week ago. He was on his way into Afghanistan. During interrogation, he stated that the information on this device would help his group to kill American agents.
“The American agents are dead,” she said. “The latest victim was just killed in Kabul. I was notified before I left London.”
