After a moment, Johnson motioned that he had the connection. Dan asked for him to put the conversation on the large control room speakers.
“What do you have?” came the booming voice of Admiral Jackson. “We’re in the briefing room right now.”
Dan outlined Turbee’s theory, and the evidence supporting it. “Give us a few minutes, would you,” came Big Jack’s reply.
Dan muted the speaker and told his crew that Jackson was probably briefing the President, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and other military or Intelligence leaders at that very moment.
The reply was not long in coming. “Dan, Richard Lawrence is apparently at the Islamabad Embassy right now. Call over there, and check with him and the station chief on what our next move should be. The station chief is Michael Buckingham, and Jennifer Coe is one of his main researchers. They know more about the drug trade in Afghanistan and Pakistan than anyone else. If the Karachi Star Line is owned by heroin dealers, we have it nailed. Get back to us.” The line went dead.
Dan motioned to Johnson. “Islamabad, now,” he snapped. Within seconds, Michael Buckingham’s voice crackled across the conference room speakers. He was a career civil servant, having spent a lifetime in the Middle East Intelligence business. He was 55 years old, and had been part of the 1980 operation that armed the Afghani rebels against the Soviets. Buckingham was very familiar with the geography, tribal politics, and languages of Afghanistan, and knew more about that country than most of its citizens. The stress of his job had led him into chain smoking and heavy drinking at an early age, and he was trying to quit both. Aside from those bad habits, he had a sterling reputation as a man who could get the job done in the Middle East.
“Let me get Jennifer and see what I can do about Richard,” he said, once they had him on the phone. “Is Khasha around?” he added as an afterthought.
“I’m right here, big boy,” said Khasha. She had worked for a few years with the Islamabad desk, and knew Buckingham well. Jennifer Coe had taken over her duties when she moved to TTIC.
“Is Richard around?” asked Dan.
“He’s around, Dan, but not exactly available,” replied Buckingham.
“Meaning?” asked Dan.
Buckingham sighed. When a body had shown up in front of the Embassy, he’d been the one in charge of inspecting it. He had known Zak Goldberg and his parents personally, so it had been extremely upsetting when he’d recognized Zak’s ring on the hand they’d received. Declaring the body parts to be those of Zak Goldberg had been one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. Talking about it wasn’t getting any easier.
“Well it’s a bad situation,” he began. “And it starts with an unpleasant coincidence.”
“Go on,” urged Dan.
“The CIA wanted Richard back in Islamabad, because they thought he would be of value to them, given his involvement in the Semtex case. And you know how Langley is. When they finally decide to do something, they want it done yesterday.”
“Yeah, we know,” came the refrain from several workstations at TTIC.
“So they put him on a Super Hornet with a Captain Trufit, to get him back here in record time. At about the same time, a bag of body parts was found in front of the Embassy. I looked them over, and I believed that they belonged to Zak Goldberg. But Langley wanted a top notch forensic analysis done, and the closest decent and friendly lab is in Tel Aviv. Since he was going to be in the area, Langley assigned Trufit to the mission. Let me tell you, he was not happy about it.”
“Can you blame him?” asked George, disgusted.
“Not really,” said Buckingham. “Anyway, Trufit bitched at the only person he could when he found out. That person happened to be Richard, sitting in the copilot’s seat. Trufit didn’t know that the remains were Zak’s, but he did know that they came from an undercover agent, and evidently he said so. Richard got curious, and when he deplaned, he met the ground crew, who had these plastic bags. They didn’t even put them in freezers. Just here you go my good man, here’s your body parts. Richard got suspicious of all the weird treatment, and opened one of the bags. Out drops this severed hand, with a ring on it. He ID’s the ring — it’s very rare, and you can only buy it in the Peshawar marketplace. He knew Zak was undercover here. And he knew the ring. Zak had it on most of the time, and it’s actually how I made my initial ID of the body. It didn’t take long for Richard to make the same connection.”
“Okay, so?” asked Dan.
A few of the TTIC employees stared at him, shocked. For anyone who knew Richard and Zak’s history, the conclusion of this scene was obvious.
“Jesus, Dan, what do you think?” Buckingham snapped. “He started rooting around in the bags, looking at the various body parts, most of which showed signs of the most brutal torture. Then he sat down on the tarmac and started to just blubber. It was pretty bad. He seems to be in some kind of shock. The medics here are with him now. They’ve shot him up with a bunch of tranquillizers.”
“Oh my God,” breathed Lance. “He’s going to need to decompress. He needs a whole staff of doctors looking after him, Michael.”
There was some murmuring around the TTIC control room. Many of the people there knew Richard, and were concerned over his physical and mental well-being. At length, Dan pulled them back together, asking several people to help outline what they knew so far for Buckingham and Jennifer Coe.
“The Karachi Star Line is an interesting creature alright,” said Buckingham. “It seemed to come out of nowhere. We’re not even sure who owns it, but we think it’s probably a gentleman by the name of Omar Jhananda. His father was an old Indus River ferryman, who probably smuggled more than his fair share of heroin from Rawalpindi to the saltwater, though no one’s really sure. We’ve always thought that the company was involved in drugs in some way, but no one has been able to prove it for sure. If you’re asking for my gut feeling on it, yeah, I’d say that they’re in the trade.”
Buckingham’s gut was seldom wrong on these things.
“What about you, Khasha? You grew up there. What’s your take on it?” asked Dan.
She shrugged. “I think they’re in the business. When I was going to school there, they were called the Indus Star Cargo Company. They ran goods up and down the river. They paid their employees in cash. They grew really fast. Everyone knew about it. The people who run it are from the border areas of the Northwest Frontier Province. I agree with Michael, but it’s only an educated guess.”
“Jennifer, what about you?” asked Dan.
“I’m too damn tired to think,” came the reply. “I knew Zak personally, and let me tell you, it’s harsh to see his body so beat up and ruined. All I can say is the timing works out. But it’s all circumstantial. It’s intelligent speculation.”
“What do the locals think about this, Michael?” asked Rahlson.
“I’m not sure. This is unraveling pretty quickly,” Buckingham replied slowly. “We haven’t really had a chance to do any research on it yet.”
“Let’s find out, people,” said Dan.
“Can you hold off a minute?” responded Buckingham. “I want to get the Deputy Commander of the Pakistani Interior Police on the line. His office is here, in Islamabad, and I know him well. His office has been spectacularly successful in drug arrests in the past ten years or so. They’ve almost single-handedly destroyed the Peshawar-to-Karachi drug pipeline. He knows more about this than anyone else I know. Give me a few minutes, and I’ll get in touch with him. His name is Marak el Ghazi. If I can I’ll get him to call you personally.”
18
In a dark cell buried under the mountains in the Sefid Koh, Zak lay very still on a pile of straw. He thought he’d been there almost 24 hours. It had been hours now since the guards had brought him back to his cell, minus one hand. He was trying hard not to think about his left hand, or what had happened in the room down the hall. Instead he was focusing on his chances of escape, and formulating several different plans.