Frederick Forsyth - The Afghan

Marek Gumienny had one simple question for the small office inside Langley that runs and maintains the safe houses: what is the most remote, obscure and hard to get into or out of facility that we have?

The answer came from his real estate colleague in no time at all. “We call it ‘the Cabin.’ It is lost to the human race, somewhere up in the Pasayten Wilderness of the Cascade range.”

Gumienny asked for every detail and every picture available. Within thirty minutes of receiving the file, he had made his choice and given his orders. East of Seattle, in the wilds of Washington State, is the range of steep, forested and, in the winter, snow-clothed mountains known as the Cascades. Inside the borders of the Cascades are three zones: the National Park, the logging forest and the Pasayten Wilderness. The first two have access roads and some habitations.

Hundreds of thousands of visitors go to the park every year while it is open, and it is riddled with tracks and trails, the former viable for rugged vehicles, the latter for hikers or horses. And the wardens know every inch of it. The logging forest is off-limits to the public for safety reasons, but it, too, has a network of tracks along which snarling trucks habitually haul the felled tree trunks to the delivery points for the sawmills. In deep winter, both have to close down because the snow makes most movement almost impossible. But east of them both, running up to the Canadian border, is the wilderness. Here, there are no tracks, one or two trails, and only in the far south of the terrain, near Hart’s Pass, a few log cabins.

Winter and summer, the wilderness teems with wildlife and game, the few cabin owners tend to summer in the wilderness, then disconnect all systems, lock up and withdraw to their city mansions. There is probably nowhere in the USA as bleak or remote in winter, with the possible exception of the area of northern Vermont known simply as “the Kingdom,” where a man may vanish and be found rock solid in the spring thaw.

Years earlier, a remote log cabin had come up for sale, and the CIA bought it. It was an impulse purchase, later regretted, but occasionally used by senior officers for summer vacations. In October, when Marek Gumienny made his inquiry, it was closed and locked. Despite the looming winter and the costs, he demanded it be reopened, and that its transformation begin. “If that’s what you want,” said the head of the real estate office, “why not use the Northwest Detention Center in Seattle?”

Despite the fact he was talking to a colleague, Gumienny had no choice but to lie.

“It is not just a question of keeping an ultra-high-value asset away from prying eyes, nor of preventing him from escape. I have to consider his own safety. Even in supermax jails, there have been fatalities.” The head of safe houses got the point. At least, he thought he had. Utterly and completely invisible, utterly and completely escape-proof. Totally self-contained for at least a six-month period. It was not really his specialty. He brought in the team who had devised the security at the fearsome Pelican Bay supermax in California.

The Cabin was almost inaccessible to start with. A very basic road went a few miles north of the tiny town of Mazama and then ran out, still ten miles short. There was nothing for it but to use skyhooks and use them extensively. With the power invested in him, Marek Gumi-enny commandeered a Chinook heavy-lift helicopter from McChord Air Force Base south of Seattle to be used as a cart horse.

The build team was from Army Engineers; raw materials were purchased locally with state police advice. Everyone was on a need-to-know basis, and the legend was that the Cabin was being converted into an ultra-high-security research center. In truth, it was to become a one-man jail.

At Castle Forbes, the regime started intensively, and became more so. Mike Martin was required to change out of Western clothes into the robes and turban of a Pashtun tribesman. His beard and hair were to grow as long as the time allowed.

The housekeeper was allowed to stay on; she had not the slightest interest in the laird’s guests, nor did Hector, the gardener. The third remaining resident was Angus, the former SAS sergeant who had become Lord Forbes’s estate manager, or “factor.” Even if an interloper had wished to penetrate the estate, he would have been most unwise with Angus on the prowl.

For the rest, “guests” came and went, save two whose residence had to be permanent. One was Najib Qureshi, a native Afghan, former teacher in Kandahar, refugee given asylum in Britain, naturalized citizen and translator at GCHQ Cheltenham. He had been detached from his duties and transferred to Castle Forbes. He was the language tutor and coach in all forms of behavior that would be expected of a Pashtun. He taught body language, gestures, how to squat on the heels, how to eat, how to walk and the postures for prayer. The other was Dr. Tamian Godfrey; midsixties, iron gray hair in a bun at the back, she had been married for years to a senior officer in the Security Service, MI5, until his death two years earlier. Being “one of us,” as Steve Hill put it, she was no stranger to security procedures, the cult of need to know, and had not the slightest intention of mentioning her presence in Scotland to anyone ever.

Moreover, she could work without being told that the man she was here to tutor would be going into harm’s way, and became determined he would never slip up because of something she had forgotten. Her expertise was the Koran; her knowledge of it was encyclopedic, and her Arabic impeccable. “Have you heard of Muhammad Asad?” she asked Martin. He admitted he had not. “Then we shall start with him. Born Leopold Weiss, a German Jew, he converted to Islam and became one of its greatest scholars. He wrote probably the best commentary ever on al-Isra, the journey from Arabia to Jerusalem and thence to heaven. This was the experience that instituted the five daily prayers, keystone of the faith. You would have had this at your madrassah as a boy, and your imam, being a Wahhabi, would have believed totally that it was a real, physical journey and not just a vision in a dream. So you believe the same. And now, the daily prayers. Say after me…”

Najib Qureshi was impressed. She knows more about the Koran than I do. he mused. For exercise, they wrapped up warmly and went walking the hills, shadowed by Angus, quite legally equipped with his hunting rifle. Even though he knew Arabic, Mike Martin realized what a staggering amount he had to learn. Najib Qureshi taught him to speak Arabic with a Pashtun accent, for Izmat Khan’s voice, speaking Arabic to fellow prisoners in Camp Delta, had been recorded secretly in case he had secrets to divulge. He did not, but for Mr. Qureshi the accent was invaluable because he could teach his pupil to imitate it.

Although Mike Martin had spent six months with the muj in the mountains during the Soviet occupation, that was seventeen years earlier, and he had forgotten much. Qureshi coached him in Pashto, even though it had been agreed from the start that Martin could never pass as a Pashtun among other Pashtun. But mostly, it was two things: the prayers, and what had happened to him in Guantanamo Bay. The CIA was the principal provider of interrogators in Camp Delta; Marek Gumienny had discovered three or four who had had to do with Izmat Khan from the moment of his arrival onward.

Michael McDonald flew back to Langley to spend days with these men, draining them dry of every detail they could recall, plus the notes and tapes they had made. The cover story was that Izmat Khan was being considered for release under the NFD rules-no farther danger-and Langley wanted to be sure. All the interrogators were adamant that the Pashtun mountain warrior and Taliban commander was the hardest man in detention. He had vouchsafed very little, complained not at all, cooperated to the minimum, accepted all the privations and punishments with stoicism. But, they agree, when you looked into those black eyes you just knew he would love to tear your head off. When he had it all, he flew back in the CIA Grumman and landed right at Edzell air base. Thence, a car took him north to Forbes Castle, and he briefed Mike Martin.