The Afghan

In less than thirty minutes, the first scattered lights of the Persian coast were visible to port, and the smuggler raced east toward Gwadar and Pakistan. This was the route Martin had covered under the sedate sails of the Rasha a month before. Now he was returning at ten times her speed. Opposite the lights of Gwadar, the crew slowed and stopped. It was a welcome relief. With fu

Faisal bin Selim had told Martin these smugglers could get from Omani waters to Gwadar in a single night and be back with a fresh cargo by dawn. This time, they were clearly going farther, and would have to travel in daylight as well. Dawn found them well inside Pakistani waters, but close enough to shore to be taken for a fishing boat going about its business, save that no fish can swim that fast. However, there was no sign of officialdom, and the bare, brown coast sped past. By midday, Martin realized the destination must be Karachi. As to why, he had no idea.

They refueled at sea one more time, and, as the sun dipped to the west behind them, were deposited at a reeking fishing village outside the sprawl of Pakistan ’s biggest port and harbor.

Suleiman may not have been there before, but his briefing must have been by someone who had done a recce. Martin knew that Al Qaeda did meticulous research, regardless of time and expense; it was one of the few things he could admire. The Gulf Arab sought out the only vehicle for hire in the village and negotiated a price. The fact two strangers had come ashore from a smuggler craft with no suggestion of legality raised not an eyebrow. This was Baluchistan; the rules of Karachi were for idiots.

The interior stank offish and body odor, and the misfiring engine could manage no more than forty miles per hour. Neither could the roads. But they found the highway, and reached the airport with time to spare. The Afghan was appropriately bewildered and clumsy. He had only twice traveled by air, each time in an American AC-130 Hercules, and each time as a prisoner in shackles. He knew nothing of check-in desks, flight tickets, passport controls. With a mocking smile, Suleiman showed him.

Somewhere in the vast sprawling mass of pushing and shoving humanity that comprises the main concourse of Karachi International Airport, the Gulf Arab found the ticket desk of Malaysia Airlines and bought two single tickets in economy class to Kuala Lumpur. There were lengthy visa application forms to fill out. which Suleiman did, in English. He paid in cash American dollars, the world’s common currency.

The flight was on a European Airbus A330, and took six hours, plus two for time zone change. It landed at half past eight, after the serving of a snack breakfast. For the second time, Martin offered his new Bahraini passport, and wondered if it would pass muster. It did; it was perfect. From international arrivals, Suleiman led the way to domestic departures and bought two single tickets. Only when Martin had to proffer his boarding pass did he see where they were heading-the island of Labuan. He had heard of Labuan, but only vaguely. Situated off the northern coast of Borneo, it belonged to Malaysia. Though its tourist publicity spoke of a bustling cosmopolitan island with stu

It was once part of the Sultanate of Brunei, twenty miles across the water on the Borneo coast. The British took it in 1846 and kept it for 115 years, barring three years under Japanese occupation during World War II. Labuan was handed by the British to the state of Sabab in 1963 as part of decolonization, then ceded to Malaysia in 1984.

It is one of those oddities that has no visible economy within its fifty-square-mile oval territory, so it has created one. With a status of international offshore financial center, no-tax free port, flag of convenience and smuggling mecca, Labuan has attracted some extremely dubious clientele. Martin realized he was being flown into the heart of the world’s most ferocious ship-hijacking, cargo-stealing, crew-murdering industry. He needed to make contact with base to give a sign of life, and he needed to work out how. Fast. There was a brief stopover at Kuching, first port of call on the island of Borneo, but nonalighting travelers did not leave the airplane. Forty minutes later, it took off to the west, circled over the sea and turned northeast for Labuan. Far below the turning aircraft, the Countess of Richmond, in ballast, was steaming for Kota Kinabalu, to pick up her cargo of padauk and rosewood.

After takeoff, the stewardess distributed landing cards. Suleiman took them both and began to fill them in. Martin had to pretend he neither understood nor wrote written English, and could speak it only haltingly. He could hear it all round him. Besides, though he and Suleiman had changed into shirts and suits at Kuala Lumpur, he had no pen, and no excuse for asking for the loan of one. Ostensibly, they were a Bahraini engineer and an Omani accountant heading for Labuan on contract to the natural gas industry, and that was what Suleiman was filling in. Martin muttered that he needed to go to the lavatory. He rose and went after where there were two. One was vacant, but he pretended both were in use, turned and went forward. There was a point. The Boeing 737 had a two-cabin service: economy and business. Dividing the two was a curtain, and Martin needed to get beyond it.

Standing outside the door of the business-class toilet, he beamed at the stewardess who had distributed the landing cards, uttered an apology and plucked from her top pocket a fresh landing card and her pen. The lavatory door clicked open, and he went in. There was only time to scrawl a brief message on the reverse of the landing card, fold it into his breast pocket, emerge and return the pen. Then he went back to his seat.

Suleiman may have been told the Afghan was trustworthy, but he stuck like a clam. Perhaps he wanted his charge to avoid making any mistakes through naivete or inexperience; perhaps it was the years of training in the ways of Al Qaeda, but his watchfulness never faltered, even during prayers. Labuan airport was a contrast to Karachi: small and trim. Martin still had no idea exactly where they were headed, but suspected the airport might be the last chance to get rid of his message, and hoped for a stroke of luck. It was only a fleeting moment, and it came on the pavement outside the concourse. Suleiman’s memorized instructions must have been extraordinarily precise. He had brought them halfway across the world, and was clearly a seasoned traveler. Martin could not know that the Gulf Arab had been with Al Qaeda for ten years, and had served the movement in Iraq and the Far East, notably Indonesia. Nor could he know what Suleiman’s specialty was. Suleiman was scouring the access road to the concourse building that served both arrivals and departures on one level, and he was looking for a taxi when one appeared heading toward them. It was occupied, but clearly about to deposit its cargo on the pavement.

There were two men, and Martin caught the English accent immediately. Both were big and muscular; both wore khaki shorts and flowered beach shirts. Both were damp in the blazing sun and moist, eighty-six-degree, premonsoon heat. One produced Malaysian currency to pay the driver, the other emptied the trunk of their luggage. They were scuba divers’ kit bags. Both had been diving the offshore reefs on behalf of the British magazine Sport Diver. The man by the trunk could not handle all four bags, one each for clothes, one each for diving tackle. Before Suleiman could utter a word, Martin helped the diver by hefting one of the kit bags from the pavement to the curb. As he did so, the folded landing card went into one of the side pockets, of which all kit bags have an array.