“Where exactly are you stationed?”
“Do you know Pakistan?”
“Not really.”
“Then what good would it do for me to tell you?”
“Just curious. Tell me about your career, from training to where you are now. How does it work there? You know, promotion, job selection, that kind of thing. Where you’ve been stationed, the kinds of airplanes you flew—all of that.”
Khan was on guard. “Why would you care about that?”
“Just curious.”
“I am a Major in the Pakistani Air Force and am based at the Air Force base near Islamabad.”
“Where were you stationed before that?”
Khan looked at Hayes differently than before. “Why the sudden interest?”
“Just curious,” Hayes repeated.
Khan folded his hands behind his back and pushed his chest out slightly. “You are an intelligence officer.”
“Was.”
“That is your job at NFWS, yes?”
“Sort of.”
“Is it part of your job to check out the students? To see whether you trust them?”
“No.”
Khan glanced at Rashim, who was concentrating on the smells coming from the kitchen, leaning toward them as if he were about to be drawn to the dinner table against his will. Khan faced Hayes and looked him directly in the eyes. “You don’t trust me, do you, Mr. Hayes?”
Hayes was unruffled. “What reason would I have to not trust you?”
“Have you been checking up on me? Have you been asking about me?”
“Why in the world would I do that?” Hayes responded, his mouth growing progressively drier.
“I don’t know,” Khan admitted. “Just a feeling that I have. Whenever I am talking to someone else, you watch me like you are trying to discover something about me. You have seen others do that sort of thing?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, I have noticed it in you. It is disturbing, to be at a school and have the intelligence officer be suspicious of you. You wanted to know what it was like in Pakistan? Well, in Pakistan you don’t want the intelligence officers to be suspicious of you—of that you can be sure. If they are, you must do something about it.” Khan’s eyes bored into Hayes’s until Hayes felt as if he were under physical assault. He’d never encountered such energy, such hostility.
Thud watched Khan, afraid he was about to attack Hayes.
Finally Brian answered Khan. “That would be bad. It’s not like that in the U.S. Intelligence officers just collect data and sit in dark rooms thinking. They’re your best friends.”
“I think not,” Khan replied.
“Dinner!” Katherine called from the dining room.
Brian cursed under his breath. Then he reached into his pocket and turned off the microcassette recorder.
Renee’s dark skin fitted in well with her look. She had dressed to make herself invisible, wearing a burkha. Her face was completely covered, except for her deep brown eyes, deep brown only because of the colored contact lenses she was wearing. She had the look of someone of the lower middle class in Islamabad, perhaps the lower class clawing to become lower middle class. The kind of woman anyone of substance would not even look at even if she spoke to them, a woman with a frayed burkha and dirty hands.
She walked into the mandi—the marketplace—thirty minutes before the scheduled rendezvous. She looked around carefully for indications of intelligence activities, for someone who might be expecting her, other than her contact. It was an extraordinarily busy square, far from the center of town but near many residential areas. It was where people went to do their daily shopping for produce, as well as to eat—on the rare occasion when they might go to a street vendor.
Renee stood hunched over, working her way down the rows of vegetables while flies circled. She shooed a swarm of them from a bunch of carrots and dropped the carrots into her plastic net bag. She glanced around as if looking for a friend and quickly surveyed where she was to meet her contact. She continued purchasing produce and made her way around several tables, in the process getting numerous wide-angle views of the mandi.
After twenty minutes of meticulous shopping she had selected five items and went to the clerk to pay. She pulled out a thin wad of rupees, took two bills, and handed them over. The clerk spoke to her sharply. She replied in a hoarse, tired voice. She put the change in the bottom of her large bag.
She shuffled across the square toward a street vendor who was selling unidentified meat on sticks, and out of the corner of her eye she saw her contact. He didn’t recognize her and stood waiting at a table where a woman was selling small rugs. He chewed on a tough piece of meat and sipped a drink as he pretended to examine the rugs. There was a sign on the table telling prospective patrons the woman vendor was deaf.
Renee walked to the end of the table and poked at the cheap rugs. She spoke to the man softly in fluent Urdu. “Thank you for coming.”
He replied, “I told you I do not like meetings. Why is this necessary?”
“Did you find anything?”
“Some. Why does this matter?”
“It may not.”
“Then why do you want to know?”
“I don’t.”
The man bit down angrily on the dry meat. “Then why did you ask these questions?”
“Have you found anything?”
“The records go back only five years. Before that, nothing.”
“Is that unusual?”
“They’re very careful about military records. His are incomplete.”
“If you’re writing false records, wouldn’t you be complete?”
“I would.”
“Who is he?”
“An Air Force Major.”
“Is there more to it?”
“Not according to the records.”
“Where is he from?”
“The records say Islamabad.”
She listened carefully. “You don’t think so.”
“I doubt it.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. If you were hiding your origins, you would say you were from here. It is easy to disappear in Islamabad. Our records are poor. We don’t have—what do you call them?—social numbers.”
“Social Security numbers.” She coughed as if she were tubercular, then paused, leaning over the table in apparent pain, still hunched over. Those around glanced at her, then looked away. “But you found other things. What have you found?”
He looked at her in disgust. “Are you ill?”
“No.”
He went on reluctantly. “He seems to be well known. He is thought to be many things by many different people.”
“Explain.”
“Those who are in favor of the government believe he is a threat to the government. Those who are against the government believe him to be a threat to them, and pro-government. The Islamic fundamentalists believe he is an intelligence agent who will be their undoing. Those who are the secularists, and afraid of the Islamic militants, fear he is an Islamist.”
Renee thought about what he was saying. It troubled her deeply. He sounded like a professional intelligence operative. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know. It sounds disturbing. He sounds like someone that you do not want to be on the wrong side of, and an awful lot of people believe themselves already to be on his wrong side.”
“Does he have a particular cause?”
The man finished his drink and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. “If he does, it is unknown. You can find someone who will tell you what he thinks this Khan’s cause is, but it will just be whatever the person telling you most fears.”
“Any associates?”
“Many associates, but few of them are known. Even fewer are recognized.”