The Main Enemy by Milton Bearden (epub e reader txt) 📕

“Milt, it’s Susan. We just got an odd call saying that President Zia’s plane has crashed.”

“Is there any more than that?” I had an instant sinking feeling that what Susan had just reported was true.

“No, they’re trying to check it out now.”

“I’ll be right in,” I said.

I was back in the office in ten minutes, by which time there was no longer any doubt about the crash. The reports coming in from Bahawalpur also placed Arnie Raphel on the plane with the president, as well as Brigadier General Herb Wassom, a fine Army officer and a good friend who ran the military cooperation office in the embassy. Fragments of information were coming in by the minute, and the early assessment was that there had been a catastrophic loss of life among senior officers in the Pakistan Army. The first thing I did was send a “Critic” message with worldwide distribution, outlining the facts as we knew them. The Critic message is called for whenever events occur in an area of interest to the United States that might even remotely deteriorate into a military confrontation. The assassination of a major world leader fell into that category, and there were already whispers, soon to be shouts, that Zia’s plane had been brought down by an assassin’s hand. This could only add tension to the always tricky standoff between Pakistan and India, particularly if a leadership vacuum in the Pakistan Army was perceived by the Indians as an opening for mischief.

With the ambassador dead, the management of the U.S. embassy fell to the deputy chief of mission, Elizabeth Jones, one of the Department of State’s finest foreign service officers. Beth, as everyone called her, had just arrived in Islamabad and had hardly unpacked before the disaster struck. Yet within the first hour after the news came in, she had put in motion a crisis management plan that worked flawlessly until she was replaced by Robert Oakley, who arrived in Islamabad a few days later with Secretary of State George Shultz for President Zia’s funeral and to accompany the remains of Ambassador Raphel and Herb Wassom back to the United States.

As the drama unfolded in Bahawalpur, the list of the dead on Zia’s plane continued to grow. An hour after I had returned to the embassy, I learned that General Akhtar was among those presumed dead, which now included eight Pakistani general officers, several brigadiers and colonels, and a number of civilians, for a total of thirty-one persons aboard the president’s C-130. It was later learned, after the arrival in Chaklala of the second C-130, this one carrying Vice Chief of Army Staff General Mirza Aslam Beg, that Ambassador Raphel and General Wassom had only at the last minute been invited by the president to join him in his VIP compartment inside the C-130 for the flight home. Another American Army officer, Brigadier General Mike Pfister, returned to Islamabad alone in the embassy aircraft. I had assumed Mike had also been killed with the others and was delighted to see him show up late in the day.

The sun had not set on the day of the crash before substance was added to the rumors of foul play. Apparently the president’s C-130 had begun diving and climbing in a porpoise fashion immediately after takeoff and continued to fly in this erratic manner until it finally dove straight into the ground, with all engines at full throttle. The impact was tremendous, and the fire was intense. Early evidence of a conspiracy centered on crates of Multan mangoes that had been loaded aboard the aircraft as gifts at the last minute. And, as usual, eyewitness reports had the C-130 exploding in midair before the crash. There had obviously been a bomb in the mango crates, was the conclusion of the day. That story was followed quickly by another suggesting that a gas had been released in the cockpit, incapacitating the crew. Soon began the search for likely plotters of what had already been accepted as the assassination of President Zia.

General Beg, who by sudden default was now the man in charge in Pakistan, was the first name on the short list, if for no other reason than that he was not on the plane with Zia. General Beg paid a condolence call the evening of the crash on the ambassador’s wife, Nancy Ely-Raphel, a foreign service officer and attorney who had taken a leave of absence to accompany her husband during his posting to Islamabad. Someone later observed that the general seemed edgy and uncomfortable in her presence. Before the day was over, there were whispers that Beg was behind the crash—certainly he stood to gain the most from the sudden departure of Zia from the scene, and certainly he was a man of ambition. Rumor fed rumor, and as the conspiracy theories thickened, others would soon be added to the short list of probable assassins, including me.

First Chief Directorate Headquarters, Yasenevo, 0800 Hours, August 18, 1988

Leonid Shebarshin wondered how long it would take before fingers began pointing to the KGB as the evil genius behind the crash of Zia’s plane. He had already passed up the proper assurances that the KGB’s Afghan allies in Khad had nothing to do with the crash, and there had been no real questioning from above as to whether the KGB had a hand in it. But there was, to be sure, interest in determining if there was foul play, and if so, whose.

Shebarshin himself thought that the crash, if not just plain bad luck, was probably the result of internal disputes in Pakistan. He’d lived there long enough to know that old feuds live on forever and that sooner or later someone would seek retribution for the execution of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto; sooner or later someone would have to pay Zia back. Either way, Shebarshin knew he’d have to keep his eye on the how and why of Zia’s death.

Islamabad, 0700 Hours, August 18, 1988

Early the