Zia Rahman - In the Light of What We Know

But I’m not dead. He must know that.

Maybe, maybe not. But who would you tell? Suleiman is not stupid. He knows you couldn’t tell anyone without attracting suspicion, if, that is, you managed not to incriminate yourself. How would you explain that you knew Suleiman had acquired the documents? Killing you would have been neater, but it would not have added much.

I could tell you. Doesn’t he know that?

He’s not worried about you telling me. That’s fine, because he thinks we wanted him to acquire the documents.

And he is right about that.

Yes. But he doesn’t know that we’re working with the Americans on this, at least as of one hour from now. The Americans had been trying for a month to set this trap, but Suleiman had neither the balls nor the ingenuity to copy the documents unnoticed. In fairness to them, if they’d made it too easy for him, it would have aroused his suspicions.

And Crane was part of all that.

We decided to step in—

Without telling the Americans?

They will know soon enough.

And Crane didn’t know the Pakistanis were involved.

You say Pakistanis, but really it was a more limited operation.

And Crane wasn’t in on that.

No.

Won’t the Americans want to know why you didn’t tip them off before Crane was killed?

My dear boy. The only way we learned anything was when a confidential informant, whose identity cannot be disclosed, came to me and told me, and it was too late for Crane then. But the Americans don’t even need to know that.

What informant?

The colonel smiled. He was referring to me.

Did Crane seem like a monster to you? asked the colonel.

Yes and no.

The trouble with Crane, said the colonel, is that he was unable to fully inhabit a new persona — as you’ve just demonstrated. No, our boy Crane is a casualty of war.

Why did you not step in and save Crane?

When you play chess, does it matter whether you were black or white in a previous game? In one game, you are white, in another black.

You believe you need to stay onside with the Americans.

You can be more precise than that.

You, Colonel Mushtaq, retired, want the Americans to believe that you are onside with them. But you, Colonel Mushtaq, also want to see the war end as soon as possible. How is that for precision?

Good enough.

If the object of the exercise was to pique Suleiman’s interest in the documents, why was Crane supposed to maintain the impression he might be a pedophile?

So that Suleiman would have a grudge against him. Politics and religion will motivate the mass, but if you want one man to act, then personal animus is so much more reliable. We needed Suleiman to risk getting at the contents of the envelope.

But that grudge went further than you expected?

The colonel frowned but didn’t respond.

The jeep was later than usual that day, I said.

Yes. That was a difficult decision. You see, if we didn’t deliver that day, albeit a little later, we couldn’t be sure you’d stay in Kabul long enough for the next drop-off.

But it could raise suspicions. It was always on time.

Possibly. But Suleiman went ahead, didn’t he? And after all that trouble, and the fact that he can’t come back, he’s now invested in the idea that the loot is worth something. He himself will be the best advocate for the reliability of those plans.

How did you know it had all played out as you expected?

The torn envelope.

I didn’t imagine the colonel had actually seen the envelope but had heard about it. I thought of Crane. What was it Crane had said when, before we parted, I declined his invitation to watch American football with him? Not your cup of tea, eh? I don’t know if he’d made a conscious connection and I can’t imagine why he’d want to hint anything to me, but still I wondered now if Crane had noticed that Suleiman’s promised tea never materialized.

Suleiman said he wanted me to become the director at AfDARI, I said to the colonel.

He seemed to be waiting for me to finish.

He said the trustees also wanted to see a change at the top. What was that for?

What do you think?

Flattery?

Perhaps, although I’m not sure you present yourself as someone easily flattered. I rather think the purpose was somewhat more subtle. It was misdirection. He was intimating that he himself was anchored to AfDARI, to Kabul, and to the life he was ostensibly leading. He wanted you to take his frame of reference as the narrow one of careerism.

Sounds plausible.

The colonel was looking at me as if considering whether to tell me something.

That evening, said the colonel, after you had dinner with us, the general asked me if I was trying to flatter you with the attention of such top brass.

What did you say?

I didn’t say anything. Why should I? Of course, if flattery worked, then so be it. But I was counting on something else. You have a character trait you must watch out for. I know because I used to have it. If you can rein it in, you’d be very effective indeed.

The colonel paused there, waiting for me to ask.

And what would that be?

You’re not a trusting fellow, but you very much want to trust, and in the right conditions you will do so.

What conditions are those?

When you believe you are taking principled action.

* * *

The outside concourse was in the shade, but there was sunlight beyond, over the cars and buses. Islamabad already felt quite removed and the world far away — a feeling that I knew was quite false, but I hadn’t the stomach to deny even an illusory sense of relief.

So what now? I asked the colonel.

Now I have to ask you to spend three weeks as my guest, he replied.

Only three?

Thank you, my boy. It will truly be my pleasure.

But in three weeks there will be interesting news. The Taliban ambushed somewhere?

Come now, said the colonel, brushing off my question. There will be time for such a word. You do know that you will be safe?

You could have let me go to the café.

Precisely. I really do enjoy your company, you know.

And it’s so hard to get good help these days, I said.

Quite so.

We climbed into the Land Cruiser.

I think we’ll have a bite to eat and play chess.

In the corner? I asked.

In the corner.

You have me cornered.

Only literally, my boy.

* * *

What I never broached with the colonel, of course, was how he’d known what was going to happen at Café Europa. For his part, the colonel had the good grace never to ask me anything about Emily, and I wondered how much he already knew.

* * *

I must tell you the truth , Zafar would come to say, in a phrase whose weight is borne by the word truth , a word that seems to claim the whole of a sentence wherever it appears. Truth is the thing that’s sought, is it not? Remember Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem, which tells us truth is not there always to be found and that we cannot know ahead of the search whether the truth itself is of a kind that can be uncovered. Little wonder, then, that when it is truth that is promised, our ears will prick up, as did mine. Yet as I write now, reflecting again on that phrase after the passage of time, I find myself thinking not of truth but of must. I have read somewhere that we should look to our second thoughts for the deepest wisdom. As I now read Zafar’s phrase, I hear a different stress. Why does a man feel he must speak?

I read Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner when I was at Eton. Part of the English literary canon, it is the kind of poem that is precisely within the writ of a decent English education. I remember the English master, Mr. Humphries, asking us to consider the premise of the poem. A young mariner collars a fellow on his way to a wedding. Against his initial protest, the wedding guest is forced to hear the young mariner’s story. Humphries, I recall, was so vexed by the mariner’s compulsion to tell his story to someone that to the boys in the classroom his interest verged, I think, on the comical. The room failed to take up the question of why the compulsion, so that Humphries, resorting to random selection, singled out me.