The Afghan

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Wednesday, February 3, 1988

Langley, Virginia

Joe Johnson glanced across at his colleague Vic Walter, who sat with arms folded tight across his chest. They were perched at opposite ends of a long leather sofa in the director of central intelligence’s office on the seventh floor of the CIA’s Langley headquarters.

In an armchair on the other side of a coffee table sat their boss, Robert Watson, chief of station in Islamabad, where they were all based. The three men had been due to head to Dulles Airport two hours earlier for their return flight to the Pakistani capital, following a routine visit to base. But instead, they were summoned by a call from the director Alfred Meyer’s executive assistant.

Two Democratic senators had hurriedly arranged briefings with Meyer, wanting more details on the now enormous US budget for the Afghanistan program, designed to support the mujahideen in their battle against the occupying Russian forces. The duo, along with several of their colleagues in the Senate, had opposed the budget allocation, approved only a few weeks earlier. This was because most of the money was being distributed via Pakistan, which to the concern of the United States government was known to be developing nuclear weapons.

Meyer wanted Watson and his Islamabad-based team on the ground to help explain in detail to the senators exactly what the money was being used for and why the program was critical. Both Johnson, who had only encountered the director once before, and Walter were surprised to be invited along.

The executive assistant, a tall woman with a black bob, emerged from the director’s conference room and beckoned them. “You can come in now. They’re ready,” she said.

Watson, an angular forty-two-year-old, stood and fixed first Johnson, then Walter, with a stare. “You two just sit and listen and say nothing unless you’re spoken to, understand?”

They nodded and followed Watson into the conference room.

There, sitting on the left side of a long oval birch table, was Meyer. On the right were the two senators, Simon Rudder and Tony Kendall, both dressed almost identically in white shirts, ties, and navy suits.

Penguins, Johnson thought, running his hand through his short-cropped and slightly receding dark hair. He knew that both of them had already argued strongly to stop all aid to Pakistan, and thereby to Afghanistan, given that the Pakistanis controlled all flows of money and arms to the mujahideen. This opposition followed the discovery the previous summer that an agent for General Zia-ul-Haq, the Pakistan president, had been in the US attempting to buy tons of a special type of steel vital to construction of a nuclear weapon.

It would be interesting, Johnson thought, to see how Meyer deflected the senators’ likely onslaught, since that the CIA had been the below-radar driver behind the supply of hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of weapons to the mujahideen—US funding in 1987 had topped $630 million, up from just $20 million in 1980. Only Egypt and Israel were getting more American cash.

The only reason the funding had been approved by the joint House-Senate Appropriations Conference Committee was because of the herculean efforts of Congressman Charlie Wilson, who had championed the cause of the mujahideen. Wilson had persuaded his colleagues on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee to ramp up the Afghan budget year after year.

It was Wilson who had been largely responsible for the most notable addition to the weaponry supplied to the mujahideen—Stingers. These lethal handheld, heat-seeking ground-to-air missiles had over the previous eighteen months wreaked havoc among the Russian helicopter and fixed-wing aircraft fleets operating across Afghanistan.

Even before the trio had taken their seats, Meyer got right to the point. “I’ve explained our strategic goals for Afghanistan—about the need to finish the job, and the geopolitical threat to the States and globally if Russia isn’t finally driven out, that they could simply overrun the region and threaten Pakistan and eventually the Persian Gulf,” he said.

Meyer turned to Watson. “Now, tell the senators exactly what you’re seeing in the villages.”

Watson cleared his throat. “Frankly, it’s nothing short of g******e,” he said, running his fingers through his salt-and-pepper hair. “We think about three million refugees are living in about three hundred makeshift camps along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. They’re dying by the thousands—disease is rife, and there’s nowhere near enough clean water and food. The Soviets have literally shot them out of their homes with their Hinds—they’ve used those choppers to turn it into a goddamn turkey shoot. And it’s still going on. So if we don’t keep the weapons flowing, especially the Stingers, they’ll keep on doing it.”

Rudder didn’t change his expression. Clearly he wasn’t going to be moved by humanitarian tales of woe. The senator glanced at Kendall, then directed his gaze back to Watson.

“In that case,” Rudder said, “you need to make damn sure you’ve got more control over where the weapons are going to. I’m not saying this, of course, but there’s no point for us being in Afghanistan unless we get more dead Russians. And if you can’t be sure that the Pakistanis are going to achieve that, then you need to grab more control of the weapons distribution process yourselves. Make your own arrangements with the mujahideen.”

“We think the ISI has good systems in place,” Watson said. “They know who they’re distributing to. But you’re right—we do need more control and we’re working on that, don’t worry. We’re talking to the British about how we can work below the Pakistanis’ radar to improve things.”

“If you don’t have control,” Rudder said, tapping his fingers on the table for emphasis, “my worry is where all those weapons are going. Who’s to say the mujahideen aren’t going to sell them to terrorist groups—maybe anti-American ones?”

“I don’t think that’s going to happen,” Watson said.

“But how do you know?” Rudder persisted. “Where’s the inventory of who’s taking what and what they’re doing with it?”

Seemingly unsure about how to respond to a question about such highly classified details, Watson looked to Meyer, who said, “We’ve got that in hand, Simon. I’m not at liberty to tell you how, but I can assure you it’s all under control.”

Rudder shook his head. “And while on the subject of Hinds,” he said, “from what I understand, you haven’t even captured a single one intact yet. Neither have you managed to get a Soviet communications van. Isn’t it critical to do that?”

He raised his eyebrows at Watson, whom Johnson could see was visibly struggling to restrain himself. The Agency had been actively trying for some time to do exactly what Rudder was talking about. The intelligence value for both the Afghan program and the wider Cold War would be enormous.

Johnson stroked the dark beard he had grown since his arrival at the Islamabad station in June 1986. How would Watson get out of that question?

But what his boss said next caused Johnson’s jaw to drop.

“We’ve got that under control, actually,” Watson said to Rudder. “We know the importance of that. In fact, my colleague here, Joe Johnson, is running an operation to pull in both a Hind and a comms van. He’s taken responsibility for the project and is quite advanced with his planning.”

What? Johnson thought. Capture a Hind and a comms van? The bastard has to be kidding. It was the first he had heard of it. True, the office as a whole had discussed possible ways of trying to secure both pieces of Russian technology. But Johnson had been little more than a bit-part contributor to the discussions. His main job as a case officer in Islamabad had been something different: to develop sources among the Pakistani intelligence service, the ISI.

Johnson had never liked his boss. Watson had proved himself to be a shifty, highly political, untrustworthy operator who never hesitated to take credit for others’ work and to stab colleagues in the back if he felt the need to divert the blame for mistakes away from himself.

Now, in front of the director and two high-ranking senators, Johnson—aged twenty-nine and with less than three and a half years at the CIA—had been dropped deep in the s**t. He glanced at Vic, who was fiddling with his metal-rimmed glasses, clearly also irritated.

“Okay, that’s good to know,” said Rudder. “You’ll need to get a move on, though, young man,” he added, staring at Johnson. “We’ve got a meeting with members of the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee during the second week of April. If you haven’t got the job done by then, that’ll be the end of your Afghan program if I have anything to do with it. We’ll be discussing the budget for the fiscal year starting in October, and there’s a lot of senators thinking the way I’m thinking.” He stared at Watson, then Johnson and Vic in turn. “Understood?”

Johnson nodded, noticing out of the corner of his eye that although Meyer was already launching into a defense of the Afghan budget, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency was looking straight at him.