The Main Enemy Milton Bearden (read full novel .txt) 📖

deployed positions right up until the last minute. And he made sure the Indians knew what he was doing by letting them intercept his communications! It was masterful.”

“Sure it was masterful,” I said, “but I still haven’t found the logic in why it almost came to war. What was that all about?”

Akhtar motioned to Riaz to stop taking notes and leave the room. When we were alone, he lowered his voice and leaned toward me as he spoke

“Rajiv Gandhi,” Akhtar said after Riaz had left, “is a playboy, a joker who lost control of his Army chief of staff. The president signaled to New Delhi as far back as October that the Brasstacks exercise was provocative, and would be responded to in kind if they didn’t back things down. But Sundarji must have thought he could ignore our concerns, and Gandhi wasn’t paying attention until two weeks ago when his own press started talking of war. Then he tried to catch up.”

“Yeah,” I said, “and almost too late. Was it just provocation gone wild, or was there something else going on?”

“It was Sundarji,” Akhtar said as if sharing a profound confidence. “He wanted a war. He thought he could provoke President Zia into taking the first step, making the first mistake. He thought he could roll into Pakistan and have it all cleaned up in a week. Then Zia moved his forces around a bit in Bahawalpur, particularly his armor, and Sundarji got a different picture. It was Pakistan who might have things tidied up in a week!”

“This heated up so fast and cooled down so fast that we still haven’t figured out how close you came to war. How close was it?”

Akhtar held up his hand, forming a trigger finger. “It was that close,” he said, pulling the imaginary trigger. “All it would have taken was some junior commissioned officer along the border—their JCO or ours—getting nervous, pulling his trigger, and setting it all off. Zia knew that, and he knows the Indian mind. He backed them down.”

“It’s a hell of a way for a couple of potential nuclear powers to deal with each other,” I said.

Akhtar bristled at the word nuclear. “But Pakistan isn’t a nuclear power, and you, more than most, know that.”

The subject, and the atmosphere, had changed. The most serious point of friction between the United States and Pakistan centered on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, a secret arms race with its neighbor that had been under way since India detonated its first test device in 1974. There were a handful of congressional mandates sanctioning Pakistan for developing nuclear weapons, but most were subject to a presidential waiver. And up until now, Reagan had been able to certify that Pakistan had not crossed the proliferation threshold. So any mention of Pakistan and nuclear development to Zia’s intelligence chief was likely to set him on edge. I’d asked the question to see if Akhtar thought Sundarji might actually have been staging the whole Brasstacks exercise to provide cover for a preemptive strike at Pakistan’s nuclear centers near Islamabad. He didn’t bite.

“That’s encouraging, General,” I said, sensing that Akhtar had decided to end the meeting, which he did, as usual, with an abrupt change of subject.

“How is Mr. Casey doing?” he asked. “The president is concerned about him.”

Word of Casey’s worsening condition was out, and few in the international intelligence club expected the DCI ever to return to Langley. Who might succeed him was the subject of whispered speculation both in Washington and abroad. “He’s not doing too well, I’m afraid. But he’s alert and knows what’s happening in all his favorite places, including Islamabad.”

Akhtar softened. “Well, please see that he knows we appreciate all he has done for us over the years. And please pass along our appreciation to Mr. Gates for whatever role he played behind the scenes in defusing the little problem we had here.”

“I will, and please pass Mr. Gates’s regards to the president for his cool handling of the crisis over the last month. It didn’t have to work out as well as it did.”

Akhtar rose and escorted me to Riaz, who was standing right outside his door.

The Kremlin, February 27, 1987

It seemed that Gorbachev had his consensus, Anatoly Chernyaev said to himself as he reviewed the minutes of a series of Politburo meetings over the last five weeks on the question of Afghanistan. Muhammad Najibullah had made his visit to Moscow in December, and he had made a good impression. The word in Moscow was that he was a serious-minded man who could take the difficult first steps of preparing for the day when he would not be supported by the Soviet army.

There was no turning back from the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, though the Kremlin was still reluctant to declare to the world that its policy of intervention had been flawed from the start. Such sentiments had not, however, prevented frank comment among Politburo members on past errors. At sessions held on January 21 and 22, Eduard Shevardnadze had made it clear that the decision to exit was the right one and pulled few punches when it came to where he thought the blame for the Afghan debacle should lie.

“I won’t discuss right now whether we did the right thing by going in there,” the Foreign Minister declared, easing into exactly the criticism he said he would avoid. “But we did go in there absolutely without knowing the psychology of the people and the real state of affairs in the country. That’s a fact! And everything we’ve done and are doing in Afghanistan is incompatible with the moral character of our country.”

“It was incompatible that we went in?” Gromyko asked pointedly.

“Yes, this, too,” he said. “The attitude toward us is more negative than it seems. And we’re spending a billion rubles a year for this. An enormous sum, and responsibility needs to be taken for it. Let us add up again in every detail how much Afghanistan needs to