“It’s early yet,” Embling said. “How do you chaps feel about cricket?”
46
NOT WANTING TO RISK being seen placing the pickup mark, Clark and Chavez woke well before sunrise the next morning to find Embling already up, making coffee and putting together a cooler of rations for the day. So armed, they set out for the cantonment, this time in Embling’s other car, a shabby blue 2002 Honda City, and arrived at Chowk Yadgaar fifteen minutes later, where they split up in the predawn gloom—Clark and Chavez taking a walk to refamiliarize themselves with the area and to test the new earpiece/mic/push-to-talk portable radios with which Gavin Biery had equipped them; Embling surveying the Kohati Gate location and placing their mark. Forty minutes later, they met back at Chowk Yadgaar.
“Bear in mind,” Embling said, “there’s a police station a couple hundred yards down the square. If you’re stopped—” He paused and laughed. “Listen to me prattling on. I imagine you two have done this sort of thing before.”
“Once or twice,” Clark said. Or a hundred. Working dead drops wasn’t all that common a task, but the universal surveillance/ countersurveillance methods still applied. As they were waiting for their quarry rather than already tailing him, boredom would be their most potent enemy. Get bored, lose focus, miss something. In the back of Clark’s mind was a ticking clock; how long did they stay in Peshawar waiting for someone to service the drops before deciding the network was dead?
“Right, then,” Nigel said. “I’m going to move the car closer to Kohati Gate. I’ll be about with my mobile.”
As the day’s first vendors arrived to lift their awnings and put out their kiosks and carts, Chavez took up the first shift. “In position,” he radioed.
“Roger,” Clark replied into his collar mic. “Let me know when you see Nigel pass by.”
Ten minutes passed. “Got him. Just passed Kohati Gate. Parking now.”
Now we wait, Clark thought.
As the Old City came to life and the tourists and locals began streaming in, Clark, Chavez, and Embling rotated through the Kohati Gate area, smoothly and without so much as a glance, transferring surveillance to the next man, who did his best to loiter without making it obvious: stopping at nearby kiosks to haggle with the owners over a bead necklace or carved wooden camel, taking pictures of the architecture, and chatting with the occasional local who was interested in where he was from and what had brought him to Peshawar—all the while, keeping half his attention focused on the chalk-marked clay brick in the alley wall opposite the gate.
At 11:15, Clark, who had the watch, felt a tap on his shoulder and turned to see a cop. “American?” he asked Clark in broken English.
Clark gave him a disarming smile. “No, Canadian.”
“Passport.” Clark handed it over. The cop studied it for thirty seconds, then snapped it closed and handed it back. He nodded to Clark’s digital camera. “What pictures?”
“Pardon?”
“You photograph. What?”
Clark waved his arm at the nearby buildings. “Architecture. I’m with National Geographic. We’re doing a story on Peshawar.”
“You have permit?”
“I didn’t know I needed one.”
“Permit.”
Clark understood. Baksheesh. In the Muslim world, the term could mean either charity to beggars, tipping, or flagrant bribery, which was the case here. “How much is the permit?”
The cop looked Clark up and down, assessing his worth. “Fifteen hundred rupee.”
About twenty dollars. Clark pulled a wad of crinkled bills from his “light” pocket and gave him three five-hundred-rupee bills.
“Only day be here?”
“I might be back tomorrow,” Clark said with a friendly smile. “Can I pay for that permit in advance?”
This offer brought a smile to the cop’s face, which had so far remained stony. “Of course.”
“Is there a discount for paying in advance?” Most commerce-minded Pakistanis were slightly insulted if their marks didn’t haggle a bit.
“Fourteen hundred rupee.”
“Twelve.”
And then, predictably, “Thirteen.” Clark handed over the notes, and the cop nodded and walked off.
“What’d he want, boss?” Chavez radioed from some unseen location.
“Shaking me down. We’re good.”
Embling’s voice: “We have a nibbling fish, John.”
Clark raised his camera to his eye and turned slowly, a tourist looking for a good shot, until the alley and Kohati Gate were in frame. A boy of seven or eight, wearing filthy white canvas trousers and a blue Pepsi T-shirt, was stooped beside the chalked brick. After a moment he spit into his hand and vigorously rubbed the brick clean.
“He bit,” Clark reported. “He’s heading out the gate. White pants, blue Pepsi T-shirt.”