A Case Of Exploding Mangoes Part 5

Arnold had abandoned his search for olive oil and was taking a Budweiser out of the fridge while humming the Redskins' anthem when the red phone rang. There were only three people who could call him on this phone and he couldn't pa.s.s any of them on to his First Secretary. It was most probably his boss from Washington, George no-lunch Shultz. It was lunch hour in Foggy Bottom and the Secretary of State kept his calls brief so Arnold picked up the phone without thinking, ready for a quick diplomatic update.

It was General Zia ul-Haq, the President of his host country, on the line, polite and pointless as ever: how's Nancy's health, how was she adjusting to the local weather, was she getting along with the servants, were they planning to have babies soon? Arnold went along: Nancy loved Islamabad, she had started taking Urdu lessons, she was getting used to having so many servants, she would love to call on the First Lady sometime.

"Arnie, why don't you bring her over?" When General Zia called him Arnie, he always wanted Arnold Raphel to do something beyond the call of his diplomatic duty.

"Sure, Mr President. No true diplomat should ever eat at home. Just waiting for your invitation."

"I know that these things should be arranged in advance, but we are having another American friend over for dinner and he would like to see you very much."

Arnie looked at his Hawaiian steaks and panicked. Not another brainstorming session with a visiting delegation of the Pakistani a.s.sociation of North American Doctors, Arnie thought. Not another wasted evening discussing models for some proposed mosque in some G.o.dforsaken New Jersey neighbourhood. Not another debate about how a minaret can be adapted so that it reflects true Islamic architectural sensibility without clashing with American aesthetic values. He was wondering how to make it clear to the General that his brief as the amba.s.sador didn't include being used as a guinea pig for spreading Islam in North America. He was thinking about a diplomatic enough excuse, something about Nancy having a stomach bug or entertaining a group of local newspaper editors; both useless, he knew. His domestic staff had probably already reported to the General that Amba.s.sador Sahib was planning a honeymoon at home, and the General himself would definitely know who was entertaining local editors and where.

Before Arnie could come up with something, General put an end to his dreams of a cosy domestic evening. "Bill is coming over for dinner," he said.

"Bill Casey?" Arnie asked, feeling very unlike the Amba.s.sador of the United States. He wondered whether his friends in Langley were planning to put the boot in after entrusting him with the biggest a.s.signment since Saigon. "The only difference is you'll be managing victory rather than a defeat," Bill had told him. The emba.s.sy was full of Bill's people anyway, from the trio of cultural, commercial and military attaches to the political officers and the communication a.n.a.lysts. Sometimes Arnold wondered whether his cook was also getting his recipes from Langley. He realised the need for this, as Bill always kept reminding him that the CIA was running the biggest covert operation against the Soviets from Pakistan since their last biggest covert operation against the Soviets from somewhere else. Bill kept reminding everyone that he had the Russkis by their b.a.l.l.s in Afghanistan. Bill was always telling his old chum Ronald Reagan that it was the Wild West all over again, that the Afghans were cowboys with turbans and that they were kicking Soviet a.s.s as it had never been kicked before.

But Arnie was the amba.s.sador around here and he shouldn't have to find out about Bill's imminent visit from General Zia. The Director of the CIA could visit wherever he wanted and whomever he wanted, but even the Director of the CIA had to inform the amba.s.sador who was, technically, his host. But what can you do about Bill, or as Nancy always called him, Bill get-Ronnie-on-the-line Casey?

General Zia laughed. "Don't worry, it's just an informal visit. When Bill gets together with Prince Naif they do crazy things, you know. They called from Jeddah an hour ago and said they felt like eating that bitter-gourd, mutton-curry combination that the First Lady made last time they were here. And I said, 'My wife is your sister and you know sisters love to feed their brothers.'"

"I'll receive him and bring him over," Arnie said. He had no idea where and when Bill was arriving.

"Don't worry," General Zia said. "They were racing their planes from Saudi to here. The Prince won and is already here. General Akhtar is picking Bill up. His plane should be landing now. You come over and if Nancy likes bitter gourds, bring her along as well."

The Chief of Inter Services Intelligence, General Akhtar Abdur Rehman's devotion to his duty was not the ordinary devotion of an ambitious man to his work. General Akhtar approached his work like a poet contemplating an epic in progress; conjuring up battles in his imagination, inventing and discarding subplots, balancing rhyme and reason. His work could take him in a single day from an interrogation centre to a state banquet to an unlit tarmac runway at an airport, where he would receive a guest whose arrival time he never knew. Pakistan's second most powerful man didn't mind waiting in the dark if the visitor happened to be the second most powerful man in United States of America.

The next time General Akhtar stood on an airfield, he would be in a uniform, he would not want to board the plane but would be forced to do so, out of sheer reverence for his chief. And that would be the last order he would ever obey.

General Akhtar looked into the orange-tinged Islamabad sky and wondered what was taking his guest so long.

Bill Casey's C141 Star Lifter, carrying him from Saudi Arabia, circled over the military airbase outside Islamabad. The clearance for landing had been given, but Bill was still freshening up after a two-hour nap. The interior of this plane was part hotel room, part communication bunker; a flying command centre carrying so much black metal with blinking lights that a team of three sergeants worked full time monitoring and decoding the incoming and outgoing messages. There were modular frequency jammers to override all other transmitters working in a ten-mile radius, digital deflectors to misguide any missiles lobbed at the jet, double jammers to counter-jam any other jamming equipment operating in the area. It could also fly under five different ident.i.ties, switching from one call sign to another as it crossed continents. It was Duke One when it took off from Saudi Arabia. Somewhere over the Arabian Sea, it had become Texan Two.

Bill's suite on the plane was a basic budget-hotel affair, a double bed, a shower and a small television. He shaved and repacked his bag to while away some time so that Prince Naif could win the race. Five years of dealing with his Saudi counterpart had taught Bill one lesson: you can take a Bedouin out of a desert, you can take him off his camel and give him the most expensive flying machine in the world, but there was no point trying to take the camel jockey out of him. If the Prince wanted to race his plane on his way to dinner, the CIA chief would oblige.

As Bill's C141 made its final approach to the runway and the pilot started communication with air traffic control, the counter-jammers went to work. Thousands of listeners tuning into Golden Oldies Golden Oldies from Ceylon Radio heard their favourite songs interrupted by a chorus of bagpipes issuing from the cover pulse generators on the plane. The arrival was so secret that even the air traffic controller, used to the arrival of American military planes at odd hours, didn't know that he was communicating with a VIP flight. Giving respectful instructions to the pilot, he thought, Here comes another plane full of booze and pig-meat for those American spies at the US Emba.s.sy. from Ceylon Radio heard their favourite songs interrupted by a chorus of bagpipes issuing from the cover pulse generators on the plane. The arrival was so secret that even the air traffic controller, used to the arrival of American military planes at odd hours, didn't know that he was communicating with a VIP flight. Giving respectful instructions to the pilot, he thought, Here comes another plane full of booze and pig-meat for those American spies at the US Emba.s.sy.

The plane taxied to the furthest end of the runway and the runway lights were switched on only when it had come to a complete halt. Six identical black Mercedes limousines were parked close to the runway. Four motorcycle outriders-or pilots as they are called in the VIP Security Unit-waited on their Kawasaki 1000 motorcycles in front of the convoy, their helmet earphones on standby for instructions. General Akhtar Abdur Rehman saluted Bill Casey, a salute complete with stamping of the heel and his straight palm parallel with his right eyebrow.

"Welcome, Field Marshal," he said. The tableau had started as a joke when Bill, in his first meeting with Akhtar, kept calling him Generalissimo. "Well, if I am a general, you must be the field marshal, sir," Akhtar had said and now he insisted on the role play whenever Bill visited.

"d.a.m.n, Akhtar," Bill Casey raised a limp hand to his eyebrow. "I'm dead tired."

As the outriders switched their sirens on one by one, General Akhtar and Bill Casey got into the fourth limousine, a posse from CIA's Special Operations Group, wearing suits and carrying no visible arms, and a group of Pakistani commandos with their sleek little Uzis, got into the other limousines and the journey to the Army House started. It was a forty-minute drive for civilians. The VIP convoy, with all traffic and pedestrian crossings blocked, could make it in twelve minutes, but General Akhtar seemed to be in no hurry.

"Would you like a drink before dinner, sir?" he asked, with both his hands in his lap.

"Are we going straight to dinner?" Bill asked wearily.

"Prince Naif is already there, sir."

"And my friend," Bill mimed General Zia's moustache with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, "is he really having these visions?"

General Akhtar smiled a coy smile, puffed out his chest and said in a very concerned tone. "Eleven years is a long time. He's a bit tired."

"Tell me about it." Bill slumped into his seat. "Go ahead. Get me drunk." General Zia never served alcohol at his dinners, even state dinners, not even for known alcoholics. General Akhtar Abdur Rehman considered it his duty to keep his guests in good humour, either at his office or during the drive Co the Army House. He tapped the driver's seat, and without looking back, the man pa.s.sed him a black canvas bag. Akhtar produced two gla.s.ses, a silver ice bucket, a bottle of Royal Salute whisky and poured Bill half a gla.s.s and himself a gla.s.s of water; he asked the driver to slow down and said, "Cheers."

"Cheers," said Bill. "Cheers to you, General. Nice country you got here." He flicked open the curtain on the limousine window and watched the crowd gathered along the roadside, straining against the security police and waiting for this convoy to hurry up and pa.s.s so that they could get on with their lives.

"Sad, though, you can't sit down somewhere and have a G.o.ddam drink. Cheers."

Behind the cordons set up along the road by the police for this VIP procession, people stood and waited and guessed: a teenager anxious to continue his first ride on a Honda 70, a drunk husband ferociously chewing betel nuts to get rid of the smell before he got home, a horse buckling under the weight of too many pa.s.sengers on the cart, the pa.s.sengers cursing the cart driver for taking this route, the cart driver feeling the pins and needles in his legs begging for their overdue opium dose, a woman covered in a black burqa-the only body part visible her left breast feeding her infant child-a boy in a car trying to hold a girl's hand on their first date, a seven-year-old selling dust-covered roasted chickpeas, an old water carrier hawking water out of a goatskin, a heroin addict eyeing his dealer stranded on the other side of the road, a mullah who would be late for the evening prayer, a gypsy woman selling bright pink baby chickens, an air force trainee officer in uniform in a Toyota Corolla being driven by a Dunhill-smoking civilian, a newspaper hawker screaming the day's headlines, Singapore Airline's crew in a van cracking jokes in three languages, a pair of home-delivery arms dealers fidgeting with their suitcases nervously, a third-year medical student planning to end his life by throwing himself on the rail tracks in antic.i.p.ation of the Shalimar Express, a husband and wife on a motorbike returning from a fertility clinic, an illegal Bengali immigrant waiting to sell his kidney so that he could send money back home, a blind woman who had escaped prison in the morning and had spent all day trying to convince people that she was not a beggar, eleven teenagers dressed in white impatient to get to the field for their night cricket match, off-duty policemen waiting for free rides home, a bride in a rickshaw on her way to the beauty salon, an old man thrown out of his son's home and determined to walk to his daughter's house fifty miles away, a coolie from the railway station still wearing his red uniform and in a shopping bag carrying a glittering sari he'd change into that night, an abandoned cat sniffing her way back to her owner's house, a black-turbaned truck driver singing a love song about his lover at the top of his voice, a bus full of trainee Lady Health Visitors headed for their night shift at a government hospital; as the smoke from idling engines mixed with the smog that descends on Islamabad at dusk, as their waiting hearts got to bursting point with anxiety, they all seemed to have one question on their minds: "Which one of our many rulers is this? If his security is so important, why don't they just lock him up in the Army House?"

SEVEN.

I stare through the windscreen with such intensity it's as if I am the one driving the car. I can only admire how Major Kiyani doesn't believe in giving anyone the right of way on this narrow, potholed road. He maintains his speed in the face of an oncoming truck, flicks the car headlights to full beam, his fingers tap to the music on the steering wheel and at the last possible moment it's the truck that swerves and pulls off the road. Major Kiyani's Corolla seems like an extension of his powers, unblinking, unlimited and needing no justification. stare through the windscreen with such intensity it's as if I am the one driving the car. I can only admire how Major Kiyani doesn't believe in giving anyone the right of way on this narrow, potholed road. He maintains his speed in the face of an oncoming truck, flicks the car headlights to full beam, his fingers tap to the music on the steering wheel and at the last possible moment it's the truck that swerves and pulls off the road. Major Kiyani's Corolla seems like an extension of his powers, unblinking, unlimited and needing no justification.

A child bolts out of a golden, harvest-ready wheat-field and Major Kiyani presses the car horn and keeps it pressed for a mile.

The traffic is thin at this time of the evening, mostly trucks and night buses, an occasional tractor with a few tonnes of sugar cane on an overloaded trolley with some urchins following along, trying to pull out a sugar cane or two. We pa.s.s a bull cart crawling along the side of the road; the pair of bulls pulling it are blinded by our car's headlights; the dog walking by the cart yelps just once before ducking to avoid the speeding monster.

Slowly, very slowly, answers begin to emerge in my head, answers to the questions that Major Kiyani will inevitably throw at me. He needs to find out what I know. I need to make sure that every bit I give him widens the gap between what he knows and what he would like to know. The premise for my optimism is a philosophical notion: Major Kiyani would not be taking me away if he knew knew. I wouldn't be sitting on a starched white cover of the comfy seat of this Corolla listening to ghazals, if he knew. I would be in the back of a jeep, handcuffed and blindfolded and charge-sheeted and sentenced by now. Or maybe hanging from my own bed sheet in my own dorm.

Where is Major Kiyani from?

Inter Services Intelligence.

What does the agency do?

Investigate.

What do they investigate?

What they don't know.

Before falling off the edge of the cliff, I am sure, everyone tells himself a story which has a happy ending. This is mine.

The optimism goes straight to my bladder and I want Major Kiyani to get us to our destination, wherever it is. The road signs tell me that we are headed towards Lah.o.r.e, but there are half a dozen turns in the road leading to various parts of the country and Major Kiyani probably travels in the opposite direction to where he wants to take you. We sit for a long time in a traffic jam caused by roadblocks set up by the police, as a convoy of black limousines crawls past.

"Everything I know about this profession your dad taught me," he says, looking ahead. "But it seems you never learned anything from him. Americans are trouble. I know your friend Bannon is behind this mad adventure."

"Then why isn't he travelling with you instead of me?" I ask.

"You know why," he says. "He is an American, our guest. He shouldn't be mixed up with the likes of you. Drill is for the parade square. What he does off the square is my business."

"Have you found the plane?" I say, careful not to mention Obaid.

He turns his face towards me; a truck comes at us; I jump in my seat and hold the dashboard. With the slightest movement of the steering wheel, he swerves the car into a service road and parks at a roadside restaurant. He opens the glove compartment, takes the gun and tucks it under his shirt.

He opens the car door then looks back at me. "You and your friend probably think you invented b.u.g.g.e.ry, but it existed long before you started wearing this uniform."

He orders food. I order dal, he asks for chicken karahi. "Make his special," he tells the waiter. "Our young man needs nourishment." We eat in silence. The food is too spicy for my mountain tastes. I need to go to the loo. I am not sure whether I should just get up and go or ask for his permission.

I get up, pointing towards the loo. He signals with his eyes for me to keep sitting. "Maybe you should wait. We won't be long."

I look at the turbaned man guarding the restaurant loo and think maybe he is right. Roadside restaurants' loos are generally filthy and I'd rather be relieving myself in an open field under a star-filled sky rather than in a room full of p.i.s.s and the smell of spicy s.h.i.t.

A waiter hovers around us after we finish our dinner, expecting further orders. Major signs his name in the air, the waiter brings the bill, Major scribbles something on it and gets up to leave without paying anything.

He must be a regular here, I think. He must have an account with these people.

The rest of the journey is a battle between the muscles that control my bladder and Major Kiyani's sudden fit of patriotism. I nod my head enthusiastically when he reminds me that the last time anyone tried to disappear with a plane the country broke into two. I squeeze my thighs and practically jump in my seat when he talks about my dad's ill.u.s.trious career. "You know what they said about your dad? That he was one of the ten men standing between the Soviets and the Free World." I nod my head enthusiastically when he goes on and on about the sacrifices that invisible soldiers like him and my dad have to make for the sake of national security.

I squeeze my thighs. I want to say, "Can I pee first and then we can save the world together?" Our car takes its final turn into a narrow road that leads to the majestically sombre gate of the Lah.o.r.e Fort.

In the historic city of Lah.o.r.e, the Fort is a very historic place. It was built by the same guy who built the Taj Mahal, the Mughal King Shahjahan. He was thrown into prison by his own son, a kind of forced premature retirement. I have never been to the Fort but I have seen it in a shampoo ad.

Do I look like the kind of person who needs a lesson in history at midnight? The Fort is clearly closed to tourists. I am sure the Major can get after-hours access anywhere, but shouldn't he be taking me to an interrogation centre or a safe house or wherever it is that he takes people when he wants to have a chat?

As the car approaches the gate two soldiers emerge from the shadows. The Major slides his window down and stretches his neck out but doesn't speak. The gate, probably built to accommodate an elephant procession, opens slowly and reveals an abandoned city dreamed up by a doomed king.

Parts of the Fort are dimly lit, revealing bits of its stone walls so wide that horses can gallop on them, gardens so vast and green that they disappear and appear again after you have driven for a while. The Court for the Commons and the Ladies' Courtyard stand in their crumbling, faded glory. I wonder where the famous Palace of Mirrors is. That's where they did the shampoo advert.

The only signs of life in this deserted sprawl of useless splendour are two army trucks with their headlights on and engines idling. Major Kiyani parks the car beside these trucks. We get out of the car and start walking towards the Court for the Commons. It's dimly lit and I can't really see the source of the light. I expect spear-carrying Mughal soldiers to appear from behind the pillars to take us to the King, who, depending on his mood, would either ask us to join in his late-night debauchery or have our heads chopped off and thrown from the walls of the Fort.

Major Kiyani takes an abrupt turn and we start descending a stairway made of concrete, definitely not built by the Mughals. We enter a vast, empty hall that looks eerily like an aviation hangar. Right in the middle of the hall, sitting under what must be a thousand-watt bulb, is a subedar major who gets up and salutes Major Kiyani as we approach his metal table, which is piled high with heaps of bulging yellow folders.

Major Kiyani nods his head but doesn't speak a word. He pulls up a chair, grabs a file and starts flicking through the pages as if oblivious to my presence.

Then he remembers.

"Show Under Officer Shigri to the toilet," he says without looking up from his file. I walk behind the Subedar Major down a well-lit corridor lined with iron doors on both sides, with stencilled white numbers on them. There is absolute silence in the corridor, but behind the doors I can hear the muted snores of dreaming men. At the end of the corridor there is a small rusted iron door without a number. The Subedar Major produces a key, opens the lock and moves aside. I open the door and take a step inside. The door hits my back and is locked behind me. That terrible smell of the closed toilet which has not seen a drop of water for ages welcomes me, my head hits the wall, a thousand-watt bulb is switched on. So bright is the light, so overpowering the stench, that I cannot see anything for the first few moments.

It is a loo, that much is clear. There is a hole in the ground so full of indistinguishable faeces that bubbles are forming on its surface. The floor is covered with a thick slimy layer of some garish liquid. There is a water tap one foot above the ground but it has stayed dry for so long that it's rusting. There is a grey WC with a broken chain, I open it and take a peek inside. There is two inches of water at: the bottom, reflecting its inner rusted orange surface.

My need to pee has disappeared forever. The stench is so strong that it's difficult to think about anything else.

I stand against the wall and close my eyes.

They have a file on me somewhere, which says Under Officer Shigri can't stand dirty bathrooms. I have done my jungle survival course, I have learned how to hunt snakes in the desert and quench my thirst. No one ever thought of designing a course on how to survive stinking bathrooms.

I charge at the door and start banging with both my clenched fists. "Open this b.l.o.o.d.y door. Get me out of this s.h.i.thole. This place stinks."

I bang my head on the door a couple of times and the stupidity of my actions becomes obvious to me. All the shouting takes the edge off the stench. It's still the smell of p.i.s.s and s.h.i.t but somehow it's become subdued. Or am I already getting used to it?

They are in no mood to interrogate me at this hour. This is going to be my abode for the night.

My back goes to the wall, I clench my toes in my boots and resolve to spend the night standing up. There is no way I am going to give these butchers the pleasure of watching me lie down in this pool of p.i.s.s. There is scribbling on the wall but I can't be bothered to read it. I can make out the words General Zia and his mother and sister, my imagination can connect the dots.

The idea that this place has hosted people who were angry enough at the General to write things about his mother and sister is puzzling. I might be down on my luck but the last time I checked I was still a trainee officer in uniform and the fact that they have put me in this s.h.i.thole for civilians is the ultimate insult.

Colonel Shigri had tried to talk me out of joining the armed forces.

"The officer corps is not what it used to be," he said, pouring himself the first whisky of the evening after returning from his umpteenth trip to Afghanistan.

"People who served with me were all from good families. No, I don't mean wealthy families. I mean respectable people, good people. When you asked them where they were from, you knew their fathers and grandfathers were distinguished people. And now you've got shopkeepers' sons, milkmen's boys, people who are not good for anything else. I don't want those half-breeds f.u.c.king up my son's life."

Daddy, you should see me now.

He knew in his heart that I was not convinced. He called me again when he was pouring his last whisky, his seventh probably. He was a three-whiskies-an-evening man but he felt unusually thirsty when he returned from his Afghan trips. There was bitterness in his voice now that I wasn't familiar with at that point but which would become permanent.

"I have three war decorations, and wounds to prove them," he said. "You go to any officers' mess in the country and you'll find a few people whose lives I saved. And now? Look at me. They have turned me into a pimp. I am a man who was trained to save lives, now I trade in them."

He kept twirling his whisky gla.s.s in his fingers and kept repeating the word 'pimp' over and over again.

I doze off and dream of p.i.s.sing in the cold clear stream that runs by our house on Shigri Hill. I wake up with my knees trembling and the grime from the floor seeping into my toes. The left side of my trousers is soaking wet. I feel much better.

Stay on your b.l.o.o.d.y feet. Stay on your b.l.o.o.d.y feet.

That is the first thing I tell myself before taking stock of my situation. What did they do to the renegade soldiers of the Mughal Army? A swift decapitation or being scrunched under the foot of an elephant would probably be a better fate than this.

The stench has grown fetid and hangs heavy in the air. I close my eyes and try to imagine myself back on Shigri Hill. The mountain air wafts in despite the iron doors and the underground prison and the walls of the Fort. It swirls around me, bringing back the smell of earth dug by goats' hooves, the aroma of green almonds and the sound of a clear, cold stream gushing past. The silence of the mountains is punctuated by a humming sound, coming from a distance but not very far away. Somebody is singing in a painful voice. Before I can identify the voice a bucket of water is poured over my head and my face is pushed so close to a thousand-watt bulb that my lips burn. I don't know who is asking the questions. It could be Major Kiyani. It could be one of his brothers without uniform. My answers, when I can muster them, are met with further questions. This is not an interrogation. They are not interested in my answers. The b.u.g.g.e.rs are only interested in s.e.x.

Did Lieutenant Bannon and Obaid have a s.e.xual relationship?

They were very close. But I don't know. I don't think so.

Did you and Obaid have a s.e.xual relationship?

f.u.c.k you. No. We were friends.

Did you f.u.c.k him?

I can hear you. The answer is no, no, no.

He wasn't in his bed the night before he disappeared. Do you know where he was?

The only person he could have been with is Bannon. They went on walks sometimes.

Is that why you marked him present in the Fury Squadron roll call?

I a.s.sumed he would come straight to the parade square. He did that occasionally.

Did Obaid have any suicidal tendencies? Did he ever talk about taking his own life?