up. Two or three cars pass through twice a day, but unless they see a murder in progress, they rarely stop. Just last week they lost one of their cars and two officers. And when I say ‘lost,’ I mean they vanished.”
“God almighty,” Chavez said.
“Not around here,” Embling muttered.
For the next twenty minutes they drove ever deeper into the Hayatabad. The streets grew narrower and the homes more ramshackle until they were passing huts of corrugated tin and tarred-over cardboard. Vacant eyes watched Embling’s Range Rover from darkened doorways. On every corner, men stood clustered, smoking what Clark assumed wasn’t tobacco. Garbage lined the sidewalks and blew down the streets, pushed along by dust devils.
“I’d be a whole lot more comfortable armed,” Chavez murmured.
“No worries, my boy. As luck would have it, the Army’s Special Service Group is fond of Range Rovers with tinted windows. In fact, if you look behind us right now, you’ll see a man running across the street.”
Chavez turned around. “I see him.”
“By the time we reach the next street, doors will be slamming.”
John Clark smiled. “Mr. Embling, I can see we’ve come to the right person.”
“Kind of you. It’s Nigel, by the way.”
They turned yet again and found themselves on a street lined with a mixture of cinder-block stores and multistoried homes of unbaked brick and wood, many of whose façades were either fire-blackened or pockmarked with bullet holes, or both.
“Welcome to extremist heaven,” Embling announced. He pointed at buildings as they drove past, reciting as they went the names of terrorist groups—Lashkar-e-Omar, Tehreek-e-Jafaria Pakistan, Sipah-e-Muhammad Pakistan, Nadeem Commando, Popular Front for Armed Resistance, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen Alami—until he turned yet again, where the list continued. “None of these are official headquarters, of course,” he said, “but rather something akin to clubs, or fraternities. Occasionally the police or the Army will come in and conduct a raid. Sometimes the targeted group goes away altogether. Sometimes they’re back here the next day.”
“How many in all?” Clark asked.
“Officially . . . almost forty and counting. The problem is, the ISI is doing the counting,” he replied, referring to the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s version of the CIA. “Military intelligence to some extent as well. It’s the proverbial fox-guarding-the-henhouse scenario. Most of these groups either receive funding, or resources, or intelligence from the ISI. It’s become so convoluted that I doubt the ISI is counting wickets anymore.”
“That damage back there,” Chavez said. “From police raids?”
“No, no. That’s the work of the Umayyad Revolutionary Council. They are without a doubt the biggest dog on the block. Any time one of these guppies swims in the wrong pond, the URC comes in and swallows them up, and unlike with the local authorities, when that happens, the group stays gone.”
“That’s telling,” Clark replied.
“Indeed.”
Through the windshield, a few miles away, they could see a plume of smoke gushing into the sky. They felt the crump of the explosion in their bellies a few moments later. “Car bomb,” Embling said lightly. “Average three a day here, plus a couple mortar attacks for good measure. Nightfall is when things get truly interesting. I trust you can sleep through gunfire, yes?”
“We’ve been known to,” Clark replied. “I have to tell you, Mr. Embling, you paint a bleak picture of Peshawar.”
“Then I’ve given you an accurate portrayal. I’ve been here on and off for nearly four decades, and in my estimation Pakistan is at a tipping point. Another year or so should tell the tale, but the country’s about as close to being a failed state as it’s been in twenty years.”
“A failed state with nuclear weapons,” Clark added.
“Right.”
“Why do you stay?” Chavez asked.
“It’s my home.”
A few minutes later Chavez said, “Back to the Hayatabad . . . What I’m wondering is who doesn’t live there?”
“And a good question it is,” Embling said. “Though it’s a subjective measure the three big players here—the URC, Lashkar-e-Taiba, and Sipah-e-Sahaba, formerly Anjuman—are generally clustered around the Peshawar cantonment—the Old City—and the Saddar area. The closer to the cantonment they are, the more dominant they are. The URC currently holds that title.”
“As luck would have it, we’re primarily interested in those areas,” Clark said.
“Imagine that.” A smile from Embling. “My house is just outside the cantonment, near Balahisar Fort. We’ll have a spot of lunch and talk shop.”
Embling’s houseboy—a term Clark had trouble wrapping his head around, despite knowing it was common here—Mahmood served them a lunch of raita, a yogurt and vegetable salad; lentil stew; and kheer, a rice pudding,