Three Cups Of Tea Part 17

"It was an incredible speech," Mortenson says. "And by the time Syed Abbas had finished he had the entire crowd in tears. I wish all the Americans who think 'Muslim' is just another way of saying 'terrorist' could have been there that day. The true core tenants of Islam are justice, tolerance, and charity, and Syed Abbas represented the moderate center of Muslim faith eloquently."

After the ceremony, Kuardu's many widows lined up to offer Mortenson and McCown their condolences. They pressed eggs into the Americans' hands, begging them to carry these tokens of grief to the faraway sisters they longed to comfort themselves, the widows of New York village.

Mortenson looked at the pile of freshly laid eggs trembling in his palms. He cupped his large hands around them protectively as he headed back toward the Land Cruiser, thinking about the children who must have been on the planes, and his own children at home. Now, he thought, walking through the crowd of well-wishers, over a carpet of cracked apricot husks that littered the ground, unable, even, to wave good-bye, everything in the world was fragile.

The next day, Colonel Ilyas escorted them to Islamabad in the MI-17, where they landed at President Musharraf 's personal helipad, for the heightened security it offered. The Americans sat in the heavily guarded waiting room, next to an ornate marble fireplace that looked as if it had never been used, under an oil portrait of the general in full dress uniform.

General Bashir himself landed outside in a Vietnam-era Alouette helicopter nicknamed the "French Fluke" by Pakistan's military, because it was more reliable than the American Hueys of the same vintage they also flew. "The eagle has landed," Ilyas announced theatrically, as Bashir, balding and bull-like in his flight suit, jumped onto the tarmac to wave them in.

Bashir flew low and fast, hugging the scrubby hillsides, and by the time Islamabad's most noticeable landmark, the Saudi-financed Faisal Mosque, with its four minarets and ma.s.sive, tentlike prayer hall capable of accommodating seventy-thousand worshipers, had faded behind them, they were practically in Lah.o.r.e. The general set the Alouette down in the middle of a taxiway at Lah.o.r.e International, fifty meters from the Singapore Airlines 747 that would carry McCown and his family away from the region that was clearly about to become a war zone.

After embracing Mortenson and Faisal Baig, McCown and his children were escorted to their first-cla.s.s seats by Bashir, who, offering his apologies to the other pa.s.sengers whose flight he'd helped to delay, remained with the Americans until the plane was ready to depart.

"Thinking back on all of it," McCown says, "no one in Pakistan was anything but wonderful to us. I was so worried about what might happen to me in this, quote, scary Islamic country. But nothing did. The bad part came only after I left."

For the next week, McCown was laid up at the posh Raffles Hotel in Singapore, recovering from the intestinal poisoning he got from Singapore Airlines' first-cla.s.s food.

Mortenson returned north toward Haji Ali, catching a ride on a military transport flight to Skardu before sleeping most of the way up the Shigar and Braldu valleys in the back of his Land Cruiser while Hussain drove and Baig bored into the horizon with his watchful eyes.

The crowd standing on the far bluff of the Braldu to welcome him seemed somehow wrong. Then, walking over the swaying bridge, Mortenson felt his breath catch as he scanned the far right side of the ledge. The high point where Haji Ali had always stood, dependably as a boulder, was empty. Twaha met Mortenson at the riverbank and gave him the news.

In the month since his father's death, Twaha had shaved his head in mourning and grown a beard. With facial hair, the family resemblance was stronger than ever. The previous fall, when he'd come to take tea with Haji Ali, Mortenson had found Korphe's old nurmadhar nurmadhar distraught. His wife, Sakina had taken to her bed that summer, suffering agonizing stomach pain, weathering her illness with Balti patience. She died refusing to make the long trip downside to a hospital. distraught. His wife, Sakina had taken to her bed that summer, suffering agonizing stomach pain, weathering her illness with Balti patience. She died refusing to make the long trip downside to a hospital.

With Haji Ali, Mortenson had visited Korphe's cemetery, in a field not far from the school. Haji Ali, slowed by age, knelt laboriously to touch the simple stone placed above the spot where Sakina had been buried facing Mecca. When he rose, his eyes were wet. "I'm nothing without her," Haji Ali told his American son. "Nothing at all."

"From a conservative Shia Muslim, that was an incredible tribute," Mortenson says. "Many men might have felt that way about their wives. But very few would have the courage to say so."

Then Haji Ali put his arm on Mortenson's shoulder, and from the way his body trembled, Mortenson presumed he was still crying. But Haji Ali's hoa.r.s.e laugh, honed by decades of chewing naswar, naswar, was unmistakable. was unmistakable.

"One day soon, you're going to come here looking for me and find me planted in the ground, too," Haji Ali said, chuckling.

"I couldn't find anything funny about the idea of Haji Ali dying," Mortenson says, his voice breaking just trying to talk about the loss of the man years later. He wrapped the tutor who'd already taught him so much in an embrace and asked for one lesson more.

"What should I do, a long time from now, when that day comes?" he asked.

Haji Ali looked up toward the summit of Korphe K2, weighing his words. "Listen to the wind," he said.

With Twaha, Mortenson knelt by the fresh grave to pay his respects to Korphe's fallen chief, whose heart had given out sometime in what Twaha thought was his father's eighth decade. Nothing lasts, Mortenson thought. Despite all our work, nothing is permanent.

His own father's heart hadn't let him live beyond forty-eight, far too soon for Mortenson to ask enough of the questions that life kept piling up around him. And now, the irreplaceable Balti man who had helped to fill some of that hollowness, who had offered so many lessons he might never have learned, moldered in the ground at his wife's side.

Mortenson stood up, trying to imagine what Haji Ali would say at such a moment, at such a black time in history, when all that you cherished was as breakable as an egg. His words came drifting back with an hallucinogenic clarity.

"Listen to the wind."

So, straining for what he might otherwise miss, Mortenson did. He heard it whistling down the Braldu Gorge, carrying rumors of snow and the season's death. But in the breeze whipping across this fragile shelf where humans survived, somehow, in the high Himalaya, he also heard the musical trill of children's voices, at play in the courtyard of Korphe's school. Here was his last lesson, Mortenson realized, stabbing at the hot tears with his fingertips. "Think of them," he thought. "Think always of them."

CHAPTER 20.

TEA WITH THE T TALIBAN.

Nuke 'Em All-Let Allah Sort Them Out.

-b.u.mper sticker seen on cab window of Ford-F150 pickup truck in Bozeman, Montana "Let's go see the circus," Suleman said.

Mortenson sat in the back of the white Toyota Corolla CAI rented for his Rawalpindi taxi driver turned fixer, leaning against one of the lace slipcovers Suleman had lovingly fitted to his car's headrests. Faisal Baig rode shotgun. Suleman had picked them up at the airport, where they'd flown down from Skardu on a PIA 737, commercial flights having resumed in Pakistan, as they had in America by late September 2001.

"The what?" Mortenson said.

"You'll see," Suleman said, grinning. Compared to the tiny Suzuki rustbucket he'd wielded as his taxi, the Toyota handled like a Ferrari. Suleman slalomed through slow-moving traffic on the highway connecting 'Pindi to its twin city, Islamabad, steering one-handed, while he speed-dialed his prize possession, a burgundy Sony cell phone the size of a book of matches, alerting the manager of the Home Sweet Home Guest House to hold their room because his sahib would be arriving late.

Suleman slowed, reluctantly, to present his doc.u.ments at a police barricade protecting the Blue Area, the modern diplomatic enclave where Islamabad's government buildings, emba.s.sies, and business hotels were arranged between grids of boulevards built on a heroic scale. Mortenson leaned out the window to show a foreign face. The lawns of Islamabad were so supernaturally green, the shade trees so lush, in such an otherwise dry, dusty place, that they hinted at forces powerful enough to transform even nature's intentions. Seeing Mortenson, the policemen waved them on. enough to transform even nature's intentions. Seeing Mortenson, the policemen waved them on.

Islamabad was a planned city, built in the 1960s and 1970s as a world apart for Pakistan's rich and powerful. In the glossy shops that lined the edges of the avenues, like rows of pulsing LEDs, j.a.pan's latest consumer electronics were available, as were the exotic delicacies of Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut.

The city's throbbing cosmopolitan heart was the five-star Marriot Hotel, a fortress of luxury protected from the country's poverty by concrete crash gates and a force of 150 security guards in light-blue uniforms who loitered behind every bush and tree in the hotel's parklike setting, with weapons slung. At night, the burning ends of their cigarettes glowed from the greenery like deadly fireflies.

Suleman wheeled the Toyota up to the concrete crash barrier where two of the fireflies, M3 grease guns drawn, probed under the car with mirrored poles and inspected the contents of the trunk before unbolting a steel gate and sending them in.

"When I need to get things done I go to the Marriot," Mortenson says. "They always have a working fax and a fast Internet connection. And usually, when someone was visiting Pakistan for the first time, I'd take them straight to the Marriot from the airport, so they could get their bearings without too much culture shock."

But now, pa.s.sing through a metal detector, and having his jam-packed photojournalist's vest patted down by two efficient security men wearing suits and earpieces, it was Mortenson's turn to be shocked. The ballroom-sized, marble-floored lobby, usually empty, except for a pianist and a few knots of foreign businessmen whispering into cell phones from islands of overstuffed furniture, was a solid ma.s.s of caffeine and deadline-fueled humanity; the world's press corps had arrived.

"The circus," Suleman said, smiling proudly up at Mortenson, like a student demonstrating an impressive project at a science fair. Everywhere he looked, Mortenson saw cameras and logos and the tense people beholden to them: CNN, BBC, NBC, ABC, Al-Jazeera. Pushing his way past a cameraman shouting into his satellite phone with Teutonic fury, Mortenson made it to the entrance of the Nadia Coffee Shop, separated from the lobby by a fragrant hedge of potted plants.

Around the buffet, where he ordinarily ate attended by five underworked waiters who raced each other to refill his gla.s.s of mineral water, Mortenson saw that every table was taken.

"Seems like our little corner of the world has become interesting all of a sudden." Mortenson turned to see the blonde Canadian journalist Kathy Gannon, Islamabad's longtime AP bureau chief, smiling next to him in a conservatively cut shalwar kamiz, shalwar kamiz, waiting for a table, too. He hugged her h.e.l.lo. waiting for a table, too. He hugged her h.e.l.lo.

"How long has it been like this?" Mortenson said, trying to make himself heard over the shouting German cameraman.

"A few days," Gannon said. "But wait until the bombs start falling. Then they'll be able to charge a thousand dollars a room."

"What are they now?"

"Up from $150 to $320 and still rising," Gannon said. "These guys have never had it so good. All the networks are doing stand-ups on the roof, and the hotel's charging each crew five hundred dollars a day just to film up there."

Mortenson shook his head. He'd never spent the night at the Mar-riot. Running the CAI on expenses as lean as the organization's ever-dipping bank balance meant staying at the hotel he'd become partial to since Suleman had first taken him there. The Home Sweet Home Guest House, a solidly built villa abandoned when its former owner ran out of funds before it could be completed, sat on a weedy lot near the Nepali Emba.s.sy. The tariff there, for a room with unpredictable plumbing and sticky pink carpets suffering from cigarette burns, ran twelve dollars a night.

"Dr. Greg, Sahib, Madame Kathy, come," a tuxedoed waiter who knew them whispered. "A table is nearly awailable, and I fear these..." he searched for the right word, "foreigners... will simply grasp it."

Gannon was widely known and admired for her fearlessness. Her blue eyes bored into everything like a challenge. Once, a Taliban border guard, unsuccessfully trying to point out imaginary flaws with her pa.s.sport to keep her out of Afghanistan had been amazed by her persistence. "You're strong," he told her. "We have a word for someone like you: a man."

Gannon replied that she didn't consider that a compliment.

At a pink-clothed table by the Nadia's bursting buffet, Gannon filled Mortenson in on the clowns, jugglers, and high-wire acts who'd recently arrived in town. "It's pitiful," she said. "Green reporters who know nothing about the region stand up on the roof in flak jackets and act like their backdrop of the Margala Hills is some kind of war zone instead of a place to take the kids on weekends. Most of them don't want to get anywhere near the border and are running stories without checking them out. And those that do want to go are out of luck. The Taliban just closed Afghanistan to all foreign reporters."

"Are you going to try to get in?" Mortenson asked.

"I've just come from Kabul," she said. "I was on the phone with my editor in New York when the second plane hit the tower and filed a few stories before they 'escorted' me out."

"What's the Taliban going to do?"

"Hard to say. I heard they held a shura shura and decided to hand over Osama, but at the last minute, Mullah Omar overruled them and said he'd protect him with his life. So you know what that means. A lot of them seem scared. But the diehards are ready to fight it out," she said, grimacing. "Lucky for these guys, though," she said, nodding at the reporters ma.s.sing by the maitre d's desk. and decided to hand over Osama, but at the last minute, Mullah Omar overruled them and said he'd protect him with his life. So you know what that means. A lot of them seem scared. But the diehards are ready to fight it out," she said, grimacing. "Lucky for these guys, though," she said, nodding at the reporters ma.s.sing by the maitre d's desk.

"Will you try to go back?" Mortenson asked.

"If I can go aboveboard," she said. "I'm not going to slip on a burkha burkha like one of these cowboys, and get arrested or worse. I hear the Taliban are already holding two French reporters they caught sneaking in." like one of these cowboys, and get arrested or worse. I hear the Taliban are already holding two French reporters they caught sneaking in."

Suleman and Baig returned from the buffet with lavishly piled plates of mutton curry. Suleman brought a bonus-a bowl full of trembling pink trifle for dessert.

"Good?" Mortenson asked, and Suleman, his jaws working methodically, nodded. Before heading over to graze at the buffet, Mortenson scooped up a few spoonfuls of Suleman's dessert for himself. The pink custard reminded him of the British-style desserts he'd grown up with in East Africa.

Suleman ate with especial gusto any time mutton was on offer. When he was growing up in a family of seven children, in the modest village of Dhok Luna on the Punjab plain between Islamabad and Lah.o.r.e, mutton was served only on very special occasions. And even then, not much fast-dwindling sheep ever survived to reach the mouth of the family's fourth child.

Suleman excused himself and returned to the buffet for seconds.

For the next week, Mortenson slept at the Home Sweet Home, but spent every waking hour at the Marriot, caught up, as he had been five years earlier in war-crazed Peshawar, in the sense of inhabiting the eye of history's storm. And with the world's media camped out on his doorstep, he decided to do what he could to promote the CAI.

Days after the terror attacks on New York and Washington, the two countries other than Pakistan that had maintained diplomatic relations with the Taliban, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, cut them off. With Afghanistan now closed, Pakistan was the only place the Taliban could make their case to their world. They held lengthy daily press conferences on the lawn of their crumbling emba.s.sy, two kilometers from the Marriot. Taxis, which had once happily plied that route for about eighty cents, were now press-ganging reporters into paying ten dollars a trip.

Each afternoon, the United Nations held a briefing on conditions in Afghanistan at the Marriot, and the tide of sunstruck reporters washed happily back into the Marriot's air-conditioning.

Mortenson, by the fall of 2001, knew Pakistan more intimately than all but a few other foreigners, especially the far-flung border areas reporters were trying to reach. He was constantly cajoled and offered bribes by reporters hoping he could arrange their pa.s.sage into Afghanistan.

"It seemed like the reporters were at war with each other almost as much as they wanted the fighting to start in Afghanistan," Mortenson says. "CNN teamed up with the BBC against ABC and CBS. Pakistani stringers would run into the lobby with stories like news about an American Predator drone the Taliban had shot down and the bidding wars would begin.

"An NBC producer and on-camera reporter took me to dinner at a Chinese restaurant in the Marriot to 'pick my brain' about Pakistan," Mortenson remembers. "But they were really after the same thing as everyone else. They wanted to go to Afghanistan and offered me more money than I make in a year if I could get them in. Then they looked around like the table might be miked and whispered, 'Don't tell CNN or CBS.' "

Instead, Mortenson gave interview after interview to reporters who rarely ranged beyond the Marriot and the Taliban Emba.s.sy for their material and needed some local color to fill out their stories about bland press conferences. "I tried to talk about root causes of the conflict-the lack of education in Pakistan, and the rise of the Wahhabi madra.s.sas, Wahhabi madra.s.sas, and how that led to problems like terrorism," Mortenson says. "But that stuff hardly ever made it into print. They only wanted sound bites about the top Taliban leaders so they could turn them into villains in the run-up to war." and how that led to problems like terrorism," Mortenson says. "But that stuff hardly ever made it into print. They only wanted sound bites about the top Taliban leaders so they could turn them into villains in the run-up to war."

Each evening like clockwork, a group of the top Taliban leadership in Islamabad walked through the marble lobby of the Marriot in their turbans and flowing black robes and waited for a table at the Nadia Coffee Shop, coming to see the circus, too. "They'd sit there all night nursing cups of green tea," Mortenson says. "Because that was the cheapest thing on the menu. On their Taliban salaries they couldn't afford the twenty-dollar buffet. I always thought a reporter would be able to get quite a story if they just offered to buy them all dinner, but I never saw that happen."

Finally, Mortenson sat down with them himself. Asem Mustafa, who covered all the Karakoram expeditions for Pakistan's Nation Nation newspaper, often contacted Mortenson in Skardu for the latest climbing news. Mustafa was acquainted with the Taliban amba.s.sador, Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, and introduced Mortenson one evening at the Nadia. newspaper, often contacted Mortenson in Skardu for the latest climbing news. Mustafa was acquainted with the Taliban amba.s.sador, Mullah Abdul Salaam Zaeef, and introduced Mortenson one evening at the Nadia.

With Mustafa, Mortenson sat down at a table with four Taliban, in the seat next to Mullah Zaeef, under a hand-painted banner that read "Ole! Ole! Ole!" The Nadia, where foreign businessmen often ate seven evenings a week while they were in Islamabad, offered theme nights to break up the monotony. This was Mexican night at the Marriot.

A mustachioed Pakistani waiter, looking humiliated under his ma.s.sive sombrero, stopped at the table to ask if they were ordering from the Continental buffet, or if the sahibs would perhaps like to take dinner from the taco bar.

"Only tea," Mullah Zaeef said in Urdu. With a flourish of his brightly striped Mexican serape, the waiter went to fetch it.

"Zaeef was one of the few Taliban leaders with a formal education and a little Western savvy," Mortenson says. "He had children about my kids' age so we talked about them for a while. I was curious what a Taliban leader would have to say about educating children, especially girls, so I asked him. He answered like a politician, and talked in a general way about the importance of education."

The waiter returned with a silver service and poured green kawah kawah tea for the table while Mortenson made small talk with the other Tal-iban in Pashto, asking after the health of their families, who they said were well. In a few weeks, Mortenson thought grimly, their answers would probably be different. tea for the table while Mortenson made small talk with the other Tal-iban in Pashto, asking after the health of their families, who they said were well. In a few weeks, Mortenson thought grimly, their answers would probably be different.

The waiter, whose capelike serape kept falling over the teapot as he poured, tucked the edge out of the way into the imitation ammunition belts he wore across his chest.

Mortenson looked at the four serious bearded men in their black turbans, imagining the experience they had with actual weapons, and wondered what they made of the waiter's costume. "They probably didn't think he looked any weirder than all the foreign journalists standing near our table, trying to hear what we were talking about," Mortenson says.

Mullah Zaeef was in an impossible situation, Mortenson realized, as their talk turned to the coming war. Living in Islamabad's Blue Area, he had enough contact with the outside world that he could see what was coming. But the Taliban's top leadership in Kabul and Kandahar weren't as worldly. Mullah Omar, the supreme Taliban leader, like most of the high-ranking diehards who surrounded him, had only a madra.s.sa madra.s.sa education. Mohammed Sayed Ghiasuddin, the Taliban's minister of education, had no formal education at all, according to Ahmed Rashid. education. Mohammed Sayed Ghiasuddin, the Taliban's minister of education, had no formal education at all, according to Ahmed Rashid.

"Perhaps we should turn in Bin Laden to save Afghanistan," Mullah Zaeef said to Mortenson, as he waved to the sombreroed waiter for the bill he insisted on paying. "Mullah Omar thinks there is still time to talk our way out of war," Zaeef said wearily. Then, as if aware of letting down his facade, he straightened up. "Make no mistake," he declared, his voice thick with bravado, "we will fight to the finish if we are attacked."

Mullah Omar would continue to think he could talk his way out of war until American cruise missiles began obliterating his personal residences. Not having established any formal channel to Washington, the Taliban leader would reportedly dial the White House's public information line from his satellite phone twice that October, offering to sit down for a jirga, jirga, at long last, with George Bush. The American president, predictably, never returned the calls. at long last, with George Bush. The American president, predictably, never returned the calls.

Reluctantly, Mortenson tore himself away from the Marriot and went back to work. At the Home Sweet Home, phone messages had been piling up from the American Emba.s.sy, warning him that Pakistan was no longer considered safe for Americans. But Mortenson needed to visit the schools CAI funded in the refugee camps outside Peshawar and see if they had the capacity to deal with the influx of new refugees the fighting was sure to send their way. So he rounded up Baig and Suleman and packed for the short road trip past Peshawar, to the Afghan border.

Bruce Finley, a Denver Post Denver Post reporter Mortenson knew, was sick of the steady diet of no news at the Marriot and asked to accompany him to Peshawar. Together, they visited the Shamshatoo Refugee Camp and the nearly one hundred CAI-supported teachers who were struggling to work there under almost impossible conditions. reporter Mortenson knew, was sick of the steady diet of no news at the Marriot and asked to accompany him to Peshawar. Together, they visited the Shamshatoo Refugee Camp and the nearly one hundred CAI-supported teachers who were struggling to work there under almost impossible conditions.

Finley filed a story about the visit, describing the work Mortenson was doing and quoting him about the coming war. Mortenson urged Finley's readers not to lump all Muslims together. The Afghan children flocking to refugee camps with their families were victims, Mortenson argued, deserving our sympathy. "These aren't the terrorists. These aren't the bad people." Blaming all Muslims for the horror of 9/11, Mortenson argued, is "causing innocent people to panic.

"The only way we can defeat terrorism is if people in this country where terrorists exist learn to respect and love Americans," Mortenson concluded, "and if we can respect and love these people here. What's the difference between them becoming a productive local citizen or a terrorist? I think the key is education."

After Finley returned to Islamabad to file his story, Mortenson approached the Afghan border post, to see what would happen. A teenaged Taliban sentry swung open a green metal gate and flipped through Mortenson's pa.s.sport suspiciously, while his colleagues waved the barrels of their Kalashnikovs from side to side, covering the entire party. Suleman rolled his eyes at the guns, waggling his head as he scolded the boys, suggesting they show their elders more respect. But weeks of waiting for war to begin had set the guards on a knife's edge and they ignored him.

The sentry in charge, his eyes so thickly chalked with black surma surma that he squinted out through dark slits, grunted when he came to a page in Mortenson's pa.s.sport containing several handwritten visas from London's Afghan Emba.s.sy. that he squinted out through dark slits, grunted when he came to a page in Mortenson's pa.s.sport containing several handwritten visas from London's Afghan Emba.s.sy.

The London Emba.s.sy, run by Wali Ma.s.soud, the brother of slain Northern Alliance leader Shah Ahmed Ma.s.soud, was dedicated to overthrowing the Taliban. Mortenson often had tea with Wali Ma.s.soud when he pa.s.sed through London on his way to Islamabad, discussing the girls' schools he hoped to build in Afghanistan if the country ever became stable enough for him to work there.

"This is number-two visa," the sentry said, tearing a page out of Mortenson's pa.s.sport, instantly rendering the entire doc.u.ment invalid. "You go to Islamabad and get number-one visa, Taliban visa," he said, unslinging his gun, and with it, waving Mortenson on his way.

The American Emba.s.sy in Islamabad declined to issue Mortenson another pa.s.sport, since his was "suspiciously mutilated." The consular officer he made his case to told Mortenson he'd issue a ten-day temporary doc.u.ment that would allow him to return to America, where he could apply for another pa.s.sport. But Mortenson, who had another month of CAI business planned before returning home, refused. Instead, he flew to Katmandu, Nepal, where the American Consulate was reputed to be more accommodating.

But after waiting his turn hopefully in line, and explaining his situation to an initially polite consular official, Mortenson saw a look flit over his face as he inspected his pa.s.sport that told him coming to Katmandu wasn't going to make any difference. The official thumbed past dozens of the imposing black-and-white visas from the Islamic Republic of Pakistan that were glued onto every other page, and scrawled Afghan visas issued by the Northern Alliance, the questions in his mind mounting, and left Mortenson to speak to his superior.

By the time he returned, Mortenson already knew what he would say. "You need to come back tomorrow to talk to someone else about this," he said nervously, not meeting Mortenson's eyes. "Until then, I'm going to hold on to your pa.s.sport."

The next morning, a detachment of Marine guards escorted Mortenson across the lawn of the American diplomatic compound in Katmandu, from the consular office to the main emba.s.sy building, deposited him in an empty room at a long conference table, and locked the door on their way out.

Mortenson sat at the table for forty-five minutes, alone with an American flag and a large portrait of the president who'd taken the oath of office ten months earlier, George W. Bush. "I knew what they were trying to do," Mortenson says. "I've never watched much television but even I could tell this was a scene straight out of a bad cop show. I figured someone was watching me to see if I acted guilty, so I just smiled, saluted Bush, and waited."

Finally three clean-cut men in suits and ties walked in and pulled up swivel chairs across the table from Mortenson. "They all had nice American names like Bob or Bill or Pete, and they smiled a lot as they introduced themselves, but this was clearly an interrogation and they were obviously Intelligence officers," Mortenson says.

The agent clearly in charge began the questioning. He slid Mortenson a business card across the polished tabletop. It read "Po-litical-Military Attache, Southeast Asia," under the name the agent used. "I'm sure we can clear all this up," he said, flashing a grin meant to be disarming as he took a pen out of his pocket and slid a notebook into place like a soldier ramming an ammunition cartridge into a military sidearm. "Now why do you want to go to Pakistan?" he asked, buckling down to business. "It's very dangerous there right now and we've advised all Americans to leave."

"I know," Mortenson said. "My work is there. I just left Islamabad two days ago."

All three men scribbled in their notebooks. "What sort of business did you have there?" BobBillPete asked.