“I’m sorry, Dr. Parks, but the Messiah’s exact whereabouts are unknown to me, except that he is somewhere in Pakistan walking amongst his people, as he said he would do.”
“With no security?” McGarvey pressed. “Aren’t you afraid that someone might assassinate him?”
“No. It was the people who named him, and it is the people who will protect him from interlopers who wish to harm us, as has happened so many times in the past.”
“Is it your government’s intention to follow the Messiah’s call for an alliance with the Taliban?”
“Perhaps you would allow someone else to ask a question,” Rajput said. He pointed again at someone seated in the front row.
“Thomas Allen, Reuters,” the journalist said. “But I would like to hear your answer to Dr. Parks’s question.”
If Rajput was flustered, he didn’t show it, but Powers was fuming.
“Yes, we are exploring commonalities that we might be able to exploit to prevent any future violence,” Rajput said. “I hope that answers your question.”
“Why aren’t representatives from the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan here today?” McGarvey pressed. “Or from the Lashkar-e-Taiba or the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen? All of them terrorists organizations whose stated purpose was to bring down the government.”
“That will be all the questions for today,” Rajput said.
“The U.S. has helped Pakistan hunt these people down, will that now change, Mr. Powers?” McGarvey asked. “Has the White House issued a new policy that you have come here to present to the prime minister, and perhaps at some point the Messiah? Are you willing to sit down with the Taliban leaders and open a dialogue?”
For a moment Powers was at a loss for words, handicapped because he had been led to believe that McGarvey — as Travis Parks — was a CIA analyst who’d tagged along only to observe.
“My readers would like to know, because it would be a tidal wave change that could have a serious impact on our relationship with India.”
“I’m the ambassador to Pakistan, Dr. Parks, not India.”
“I understand, sir, I’m merely asking if that consideration was in your brief before you left Washington?”
“We have much work to do now, as you must suspect, but another news conference will be scheduled within the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours,” Rajput said. “You will be notified.”
He and Powers walked out, and the aide, clearly distressed, announced that briefing packages were available in the press room, along with secure Wi-Fi connections for those wishing to file their stories from the Aiwan.
“Jesus, you hit them pretty hard,” the woman next to McGarvey said. She stuck out her hand. “Judith Anderson, ABC.”
“Evidently not hard enough,” McGarvey said, shaking her hand.
A mob of other journalists clamoring for attention surrounded them.
“I’m sorry, people, but I don’t give interviews. You can read about it on my blog.”
“Did you actually think that someone from the Taliban would be here today?” one of them asked.
“Why not? This Messiah said they were partners, and except for the nuclear explosion outside of Quetta, Pakistan appears to have gone back to business as usual.”
“I’d say that what’s happening on the ground, at least here in Islamabad and Rawalpindi, is anything but business as usual,” someone else said.
“What do you know about the explosion?” another journalist asked.
“What, you want me to share sources?” McGarvey said, laughing. He turned away and walked out of the room. Before he reached the broad marble stairs, Judith Anderson caught up with him.
“Care to share a late lunch?” she asked.
“I don’t think that it would be such a hot idea to stick close to me. At least not right now.”
Her eyes widened a little. “You think the ISI might send someone to whack you?”
“It’s happened out here before.”
She thought about it for a moment. “I’ll take my chances,” she said.
THIRTY-SEVEN
Judith Anderson followed McGarvey outside, where she hailed a cab. “I’m bunking at the Serena, and lunch and drinks are on me,” she said.
Most of the other journalists had stayed behind to pick up their briefing packages and some of them to file their stories. It didn’t matter much that the ISI was monitoring the Wi-Fi connections in the Aiwan. They did it all over the country. No place was secure.
“What do you want with me, Miss Anderson?” McGarvey asked her.
“My friends call me Judy. But you’ve become the story now, because you challenged the ambassador.”
“He’ll get over it.”
“But you came down even harder on Rajput and he won’t get over it. Aren’t you afraid that he’ll send someone after you? Or at the very least order you out of the country?”
“If that happens it means I wasn’t very far off the mark.”
“No one thought that you were, but everyone else had the good sense not to push it. More than one journalist has been killed in Pakistan.”
A taxi pulled up and Judy opened the door. “Just lunch and a beer, and I promise all I want is a backgrounder. Besides, you’ll stick out if you don’t mingle.”
Otto had warned that journalists, unlike CIA operatives, ran in packs. “I’ll hold you to it,” McGarvey told the ABC correspondent and got into the cab with her.
“Good,” she said.
The Serena, only one of three hotels in Islamabad that served alcohol, was just off Constitution Avenue, and the ride was short. The bar was furnished with low cocktail tables and large easy chairs. A handful of other Westerners were finishing their late lunches and cocktails.
“A civilized oasis in the middle of insanity,” Judith said.
A waiter came with menus and McGarvey ordered a Heineken. She ordered a Pinot Grigio.
“This isn’t your first time in Pakistan, is it,” the woman said as a statement of fact, not a question.
“I’ve been here before.”
“Funny, we haven’t run into each other. You’re provocative, and I tend to gravitate toward the type.”
“It’s a big place.”
“Journalists usually stick together. Same news conferences, same stories, same hotels, especially the same watering holes. I just got back from Quetta, which was a wasted trip, but I didn’t see you there.”
“They had a nuclear event, and they sure as hell weren’t going to share it with a bunch of Western news people. The real story is here.”
“The Messiah tops a nuclear explosion?”
“In my world, yes,” McGarvey said. He’d come with her in part because of Otto’s advice, but also in a large measure to find out what she knew. Whatever it was would be something everyone else in the media knew or suspected. But she hadn’t brought up the attacks on Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal. Incredible as it seemed to him, the raids were still a secret known presumably only by the government and the ISI in Islamabad, the White House and the CIA in Washington, plus the Seal Team Six operators and NEST team.
“Do you know what I think, Travis?”
“No, but you’re going to tell me.”
“Until yesterday I never heard of you. But I should have. Your blog posts are nothing short of brilliant. Right on the mark. And history says that you’ve been around for a couple of years now. Which either means you’ve created something out of whole cloth or I’m a lousy journalist. But I’m damned good. So what gives, Parks, if that’s your real name?”
“Why are you here?”
“You mean here in this restaurant with you or here in Pakistan? Because the answers to both questions is you. You’re not a journalist, your blog is good but it’s a scam, so who are you? My guess would be CIA.”