pacifying the border areas. Uncle Azim asked for several months to think about it.
And now it was time. Akbar was to arrange a rendezvous spot. Gifts would be exchanged.
Jeff Gertz loved the operation. It was a demonstration of what his new organization could do. Some of the old-timers who had joined The Hit Parade worried that the plan was half-baked, but Gertz insisted that it was solid. Somebody just needed to deliver the loot. He told his colleagues the same bromide he had offered to Egan: The thing about winners is that they know how to win.
Gertz was a winner, for sure. Egan was afraid of him, but he did as he had been instructed.
Egan called Hamid Akbar’s office to confirm the next day’s meeting. There was a delay as the Pakistani came on the line.
He coughed before he said a word. “I am sorry,” said the Pakistani. “There is a problem tomorrow. It is not convenient.”
Egan’s palm was damp as he held the phone, waiting.
The Pakistani came back, cheerier.
“Could you come to see me tonight at Habib Bank Plaza? It will be cooler.” He sounded a bit flustered, or tired, or perhaps it was just Egan’s imagination.
“Can we do the business tonight?” pressed Egan. “It can’t wait.”
“Yes, I think so.” Akbar coughed again, a dry cough as if something were caught in his throat. “Wait one moment. I will check.”
The Pakistani made a call on another phone.
Egan didn’t like it. He wanted to stop, right there. Check out of the Sheraton and catch a flight to anywhere. He hated any changes in the agreed routine.
Akbar came back on the line. His voice was thin, stretched. “This evening is fine,” he said. “Come to my office at seven o’clock.”
Egan deliberated what to do, but only for a moment. He couldn’t just break it off. What possible excuse could he give to his superiors in Los Angeles? Even Sophie Marx would think he had panicked.
“I’ll be there, and then, you know…” Egan let the words trail off so that the silence encompassed the rest of the plan.
When the call was over, he sent a BlackBerry message to the operations room, telling the duty officer that the timetable had been moved up. It was the middle of the night in Los Angeles. Would anyone at The Hit Parade even care?
Egan took a fitful nap and then went to the hotel gym. He spent nearly an hour on the elliptical trainer, watching a cricket match on the little television to take his mind off what was ahead. It was a one-day international against South Africa. The star batsman for Pakistan looked like a mullah, with a woolly beard and no mustache. He was bowled out, leg before wicket, just shy of his half-century.
Egan went over to the free weights. A fleshy Turk was using the bench, but he went away when Egan picked up the barbells.
His mind wandered as he lay on the bench between repetitions. He was supposed to go to the Lake District the next weekend with his girlfriend. He had booked a room at an expensive inn. Had he spent too much? Should he buy London property before the markets took off again? Was his hair thinning in the back? How many more reps should he do with the barbells to be tired enough to sleep that night?
When Egan returned to his room, he saw that it had been tossed. The hard drive of the computer had been drilled. That, at least, was predictable; they hit the laptops of most Western travelers. Egan showered and lay on the bed in his boxers for a while, watching more cricket. The South Africans were batting now. It was a soothing game, normally, all that green grass and so little action, but today he had the butterflies. His bowels were soft, and he hadn’t eaten anything in Pakistan yet.
4
The afternoon was burning itself out in the old quarter of the city known as Saddar Town. The pink hazy light of dusk suffused the stucco buildings, but it would be gone before long. Howard Egan took a taxi to Mohammad Ali Jinnah Road, a mile north of the hotel, and wandered around the market where the old textile weavers hawked their goods. He didn’t turn to look for watchers, not even once. That was the hardest part before a meeting, to suppress the instinctual desire to see who might be following you.
Egan surveyed the old stock exchange; garlands of twinkling bulbs were draped from the roof like strings of pearls. To the southeast, past the “salty gate” of Kharadar, a half-moon was rising over the Arabian Sea. Pedestrians were spilling into the road, careening away like gulls at the approach of every car.
On the main streets, under the glare of the streetlights, the merchants and beggars were shouting for attention, and the car drivers were squawking their horns. But in the lee of the traffic, in the old shop stalls, there was a muffled quiet and you could hide yourself, as if in the folds of time.
The briefcase was heavy on Egan’s shoulder, and he was beginning to sweat through his shirt. That wouldn’t do. He sat in an air-conditioned coffeehouse on Jinnah Road until he had cooled off. At six-thirty he hailed a cab and traveled down Chundrigar Road to the Habib Bank Tower. Once, this had been Pakistan’s tallest building; but after thirty years of baking in the sun while other giant buildings sprouted nearby, it had become just another ziggurat of bleached concrete.
Egan sat in the air-conditioned lobby to cool off, and a few minutes before seven, he took the elevator to the eighteenth floor. Hamid Akbar’s secretary nodded in humble recognition. Egan had visited only a few months before. Akbar came out of the office to greet him.
“How do you do? How do you do?” Akbar took the American’s hand. “Beastly weather.”
Akbar was sweating, too. There were damp crescents under the arms of his tan suit, and the top of his shirt collar was moist. Well, why not? It was June. His face was soft and pudgy in the cheeks. He didn’t wear a mustache. He looked like the sort of ambitious young man who might join the Karachi chapter of the Young Presidents Organization: a man who wanted to meet foreigners, exchange business cards. He was a generation removed from the heat and dust.
Egan began his patter about Alphabet Capital’s new fund. It was called Oak Leaf II. Its predecessor, Oak Leaf I, was doing splendidly. Second-quarter returns could top 30 percent, on an annualized basis. It was an excellent new opportunity for clients such as Mr. Akbar.
“Tip-top,” said the Pakistani. “Very impressive, I am sure.”
Akbar listened politely to the rest of the presentation, but he was distracted. When Egan finished, there was an awkward pause.
“It’s just that I am a bit strapped now,” said Akbar. “It’s not possible.”
Akbar cleared his throat. He opened his desk drawer and removed a piece of paper, which he pushed across the teak desktop toward Egan. It had an address in a suburban district of northwest Karachi. “11-22 Gilani Buildings, Sector 2, Baldia Town.” Below that was a time. “2100.”
Egan studied the paper and committed the information to memory. He took his pen from his coat pocket and wrote on the note:
“Tonight?”
Akbar nodded. He let the paper sit. He didn’t want to touch it. Egan pointed toward the message and crossed his hands in an X. Get rid of it. Akbar took the note and excused himself. Thirty seconds later there was the sound of a flush, and the Pakistani emerged from the toilet adjoining his office. He had combed his hair, but you could see the beads of sweat on his scalp.
Egan went back to his investment pitch. He talked about flexible minimums and alternative investments, just to finish out the time for anyone who might be listening. The Pakistani looked relieved when it was over.
Egan took the first taxi in the queue outside Habib Tower Plaza. He settled into the musty cabin of the Hyundai and pulled his BlackBerry from the briefcase. He sent the rendezvous address to the operations room in Los Angeles. They wouldn’t like that neighborhood. It skirted Ittehad Town, the district where migrants from the tribal
