Local time – 4:45pm, Sunday 17th June, 2011.
Islamabad, Pakistan.
Alex watched her bird’s eye view of Islamabad grow steadily larger through the plane window. The sprawling city below was not what she expected to see in Pakistan – everything looked modern and structured. Huge areas of red roofed buildings were cut into grids by wide multi lane motorways, which disappeared across the flat land into more sprawl. She had expected it to look more like Beirut, which was the only Middle Eastern city she had visited. But Islamabad didn’t have acres of sky scrapers, and was full of greenery, all the way to the surrounding mountains. There were probably slums somewhere but from this view, she couldn’t see them.
The jet wasn’t heading to the heart of the city, instead veering southwest, towards the Gandhara airport in Fateh Jang. Phil had arranged with the pilot to radio ahead and change their final destination from Karachi to land at the private airstrip, which was part of the Islamabad International Airport. They were all now strapped into their seats for landing and Alex felt the safety of the sky retreat every second that they came closer to touching down. Her stomach lurched with the plane, as it dropped suddenly, lining up with the runway.
They had made their decision where to land thanks to the only clue hidden in Bernie’s mSecure app on his iPad. The Pdf document was his flight itinerary, outlining his booking on a flight from Prague, to Istanbul, to Islamabad. It was of course helpful to narrow down their search within Pakistan, and it gave them time to change the flight plan by calling ahead to Islamabad air traffic control. But knowing only the city where Bernie was going didn’t help them get any further in identifying where a nuclear weapon might be hidden.
The sense of anticlimax had exhausted the team. Henry had been the most optimistic about their find, and did his best to shield Alex from Phil’s irritation. Josh had gone back to his noisy iPod, refusing to help brainstorm how else the iPad might help. Phil hovered around, while Alex and Henry tried to work out if there was anything else hidden in the itinerary.
Bernie seemed to be travelling under the name ‘John Stiebel’, which Alex felt sure must hold some clue. But Henry reasoned it was more than likely a passport he was able to procure, and had no other purpose than to bring him to Pakistan safely. Alex even tried to rearrange the letters in the name, desperate to find some meaning. But there was no secret to be found. Wherever Bernie was going in Islamabad, it was not evident from the itinerary. When they were sure there was nothing else saved on the iPad, and had exhausted all avenues apart from Bernie’s Conspiracy Bible, Alex went back to reading it, page by page. Her heavy eyelids had begged her to sleep, but she forced them to stay open so she could plough through the document. But now they were landing, and she still had absolutely no idea where Bernie was going in Islamabad. There was still about a third of the document to check through, but Alex was having trouble keeping it steady enough to read as the plane’s wheels touched down and the pilot started to break heavily to bring the plane to a halt. She pulled her finger down on the page, checking how much further she had to read. When she reached the final blank page, she once again wondered what Bernie was going to write under the heading ‘Save one life, save the world’. She didn’t have a chance to ponder it for long, as Phil started directing everyone off the plane. The pilot must still be in the cockpit; Alex hadn’t seen him again.
‘I’ve decided we should go to Kahuta,’ Phil announced.
‘Why’s that?’ Henry asked as he packed up his backpack and stood waiting for Alex to put the iPad away.
‘It’s a couple of hours west of here. We don’t have any other ideas. It’s the site of the main nuclear facility, so I reckon we go there and speak to some locals.’ Alex stared at Phil, speechless at his suggestion. She couldn’t think of anything that could expose them to greater danger. This was a nation paranoid about nuclear security. Four Caucasian tourists would be the last ones to extract any useful information from the locals. But she said nothing. Henry looked similarly perplexed at Phil’s plans, but apparently lacked any alternative, because he didn’t protest either.
Henry held out a hand to help Alex down the stairs. The cool air-conditioned plane felt relatively cold compared to the blast of humid air blowing through the open door. She stepped down onto the tarmac and felt instantly sticky from the humidity. Josh was the last off the plane, still wearing his iPod, and Alex noticed his eyes skidding around, searching for trouble. She gave him a quick smile, hoping to settle his nerves. He smiled back, but his tight expression told her he was frightened.
They walked in a close bunch across the tarmac, led by Phil, towards the terminal. The lounge they entered was busy with people departing on international flights, so they easily slipped into the crowd and moved slowly with the mass of travellers headed for customs. As they got closer to the gates, Alex realised they would need their passports to get through. And also visas. Why hadn’t they thought of that already? She was about to ask Henry whether he had a French passport for her to use, but just as she opened her mouth, he put his finger to his lips, enjoining her to silence. Phil walked quicker now and they had to hurry to keep up. He seemed to make a sign to Henry and Josh, touching his nose while staring straight at them. Henry pulled Alex towards a row of chairs by the wall, and they sat down. His face was tense, but he managed a quick smile, telling her everything was OK. Josh and Phil disappeared in the crowd.
Alex sat close to Henry, mourning her lost shawl that worked so well as a disguise. Most of the women she saw were wearing a headdress of some kind and the men wore long cotton shirts and cotton pants. Her blonde hair stood our like a beacon. After ten long minutes of waiting for something to happen, Phil and Josh strode past. A Pakistani man walked with them, and from his uniform it was clear he was an official at the airport. Henry and Alex hurried after them. The man acted as if he were oblivious to the four people following him. He led them through a staff exit, where the security desk was strangely unattended, through a maze of corridors and then through another door that opened into the duty free area near the entrance to the terminal. It happened so quickly that Alex took a moment to understand what was happening. She caught herself before asking Henry; the answer to her question was obvious. Phil had bribed the man to let them through without questions. And it worked like a charm.
Alex walked more confidently now. Henry also seemed more relaxed, though he still held her hand tightly and seemed to discourage talking. They waited again when Phil stopped at a rental car desk to hire a four wheel drive. Alex overheard him speaking to the attendant with a broad Southern American accent, and he used a fake name. He seemed completely in control of their plans, as if every step were pre arranged.
The heat hit them again as they left the terminal. It was a short walk to the hire car. Phil got in the driver’s seat and Josh sat in the front, leaving Alex and Henry in the back. Once they were all safely inside, Alex gave Henry’s hand a quick squeeze of relief. The car was a new Land Rover with black tinted windows. It was fairly noticeable amongst the sea of yellow taxis slowly moving out of the airport. But once they joined the traffic on the motorway, they melted into the mass of vans and multicoloured sedans.
Phil wore the same expression as he had the day before on their way to Paldiski. There was no GPS on the dashboard, so he barked at Josh to bring up a map on his iPad.
‘I chucked my SIM in case it got tracked. I can’t get a 3G connection.’ Phil glared at him, but before he could say something unpleasant, Alex jumped in.
‘Bernie’s iPad has 3G, I’ll bring up a map.’ Phil glanced over his shoulder and told Alex what to search for. The Google map showed Kahuta was one hour and forty minutes away.
‘We need to stay on this road for about an hour. I’ll let you know when to exit.’ Alex could feel Phil bristle at taking instructions from her. She kept her face neutral, meeting his eyes in the rear view mirror. The more she got to know him the more she disliked him. Picturing him as a friend of Bernie’s wasn’t easy. But Bernie would no doubt have made a lot of strange friends in his career.
‘I was thinking,’ she said quietly to Henry, ‘do you think it’s possible that the Mossad agents who got Bernie, and are after his iPad, do you think they knew he was going to Islamabad?’ Henry shrugged.
‘It’s hard to say. Are you worried they’re already here, waiting for us?’
‘Yes, of course I’m worried about that. But if they’re as desperate to get their hands on the iPad as we think they are, isn’t it possible they have no idea where the weapon is? Could they be following us to see if we find it first?’ Henry shrugged again.
‘I have no idea what they know and what they don’t. But it’s highly unlikely they’re following us now. There’s no way Ryan would have told them where we were going. We didn’t even know ourselves until we got Bernie’s itinerary. He must have password protected it in case it fell into the wrong hands. That’s a fairly big clue no one knew where he was going.’ Alex nodded.
She looked out the window and noticed a family in the battered old car next to them. The father was driving, and the mother sat in the front seat with a baby in her arms. There were four young children in the back, a mass of smiling faces, flailing arms and kicking legs. The mother was trying to turn around in her seat to keep the peace, but the children in the back were happily ignoring her. They seemed oblivious to the worried looks on their parents’ faces. The father, in particular, looked ill at ease. It was his expression which reminded Alex of the news story she read on the plane.
She pulled up another browser on the iPad and opened ‘The News’ online to see if there were any updates. The headline read: Assassination Attempt on Pakistani Prime Minister. The first paragraph explained that a bomb had exploded that morning at Muhammad Bhutto’s residence, and he had been injured. The Minister of Defence Production and the Health Minister had been killed in the blast.
‘Henry, look at this. I read about it on the plane.’ She handed him the iPad and he scanned the article, reading snippets aloud to Phil and Josh. When he was finished, he handed it back.
‘What do you think it’s about? Could it be anything to do with, well, you know.’
‘I doubt it. Shit like this happens all the time in Pakistan. It was probably Al-Qaeda,’ Phil said tersely, spitting the words Al-Qaeda as if they were painful to say aloud.
‘Don’t Al-Qaeda usually take responsibility? It says here no one has yet.’
‘Look, we’ve got bigger problems. Terrorism will always exist. It’s when government uses terror against their own citizens that you really have to worry.’ Phil ended the conversation there. Alex watched the family in the car next to them turn off a slip road and disappear into the suburbs. She couldn’t lose the feeling that this bombing had something to do with the Bilderbergers’ plans. Maybe it was just the journalist in her, linking everything to a central conspiracy. Either way, she was now even less keen on questioning Pakistanis about a hidden nuclear warhead, after what had happened to their government that morning. But, unless she said something soon, they were getting ever closer to carrying out Phil’s stupid plan.