THE HUNT FOR KOHINOOR BOOK 2 OF THE THRILLER SERIES FEATURING MEHRUNISA (2 page)

Interior Afghanistan

Sunday 7 a.m.

Even the hens knew something was amiss.

In the beginning they had clucked alarmingly as they skittered across the mud floor of the coop. Then went quiet, deathly quiet, as they realized, with that peculiar animal instinct for danger, that safety lay in being mute witnesses. They sat in a tight huddle, feathers fluffed up in defence, as two men dug the earth around the coop whilst several clustered behind them watching.

A short distance to the right of the coop stood the owner’s house, a single story mud dwelling common to the area, the wall enclosure overhung with pomegranate trees. In front of this house a string cot was pulled up and a lone man sat on it. Despite the available seating space on the cot two other men flanked it standing, their faces immobile as they watched the digging in silence. One of the men had a dohol, a cylindrical drum with two skinheads, slung around his neck.

The man on the cot was dressed like the others in a baggy shalwar but sported a bomber jacket over his kameez instead of the wool shawl the others had draped. He wore a white turban in crinkled cotton, one end loosely hanging over his left shoulder. His face was fair, eyes deep-set, hazel, with an unblinking stare that gave the distinct impression of being able to read another’s thoughts. Of medium build – at five-foot nine, he was shorter than the average strapping man the mountainous region produced – his scraggly whiskers were an apology in a land of flowing beards. Yet, the man had presence. To what exactly it could be attributed was difficult to ascertain. Perhaps it was the deep baritone voice, unexpectedly emerging from an average frame, or the manner in which he spoke, head tipped down, measured, giving an impression of a learned man in a land scarred with illiteracy. Perhaps it was the erect bearing that saw him sit upright even on a string cot, or the intensity emanating from him, the light-footed gait, the flinty vigilant demeanour… Whatever the factor, the force field of his presence was real; otherwise men twice his size would not be standing to attention. His name was Babur Khan.

A chill wind picked up and the men burrowed their faces deeper within their shawls, all except Babur Khan. He continued his impassive survey of the proceeding. The rustling subsided, stillness returned to the gathering, the only sound pickaxes gouging earth as a fruity fragrance of ripe pomegranate wafted above. When the hole was two metres deep beneath the chicken coop, one man broke away from the crowd of onlookers and approached the cot. He bowed to Babur Khan and spoke softly. Receiving a single nod in response, he straightened up, beckoned to another man and the two proceeded to the mud house. A few minutes later they reappeared with a girl shrouded in a blue chador. They gripped her upper arms and shoved her forward. Her hands were tied behind her back, her walk jerky.

The sixteen-year-old girl had befriended a male neighbour and was caught by her father in conversation with him as she picked eggs from the chicken coop. Deeming it inappropriate, the enraged father sought the counsel of the elders in the village. They, in turn, decided to consult the new Pathan leader of the area, a man who was both literate and versed in the Quran, and had developed quite a following of late. In a short span he had become a legend and stories of him abounded: he had slept with the enemy, he was the best sharpshooter the Amrikaayi army ever had, and since he had crossed over from the other side, he was privy to all of their secrets and thus was stronger than them…

Babur Khan, the prodigal son, had returned to fulfil his destiny, the country’s destiny; and he had a vision for his countrymen. This vision was in resonance with his name – Babur meant tiger – and he transmitted it through his well-attended sermons: Afghanistan was in ruins not because of the invaders alone, the enemy was also within, the Poppy Palace Pashas.

Poppy Palace Pashas were the drug lords whose grandiose houses stood out in a land of unadorned mud dwellings like opium poppy flowers in a cotton field. The inflow of US dollars and the burgeoning opium trade had widened the chasm between the haves and have-nots. Babur Khan had seized on the frustration and angst of a people, one-third of whom lived in absolute poverty. The candy-coloured mansions had sprouted beside cratered streets – all Babur Khan had to do was to point at the evident disparity. He exhorted the men to spurn the joint hegemony of American invaders and Poppy Palace Pashas, to arise and rebuild their ruined land. He ended each sermon with a popular Pashtun saying –
He is not a Pathan who does not return a blow for a pinch
– and his followers multiplied because he had personally demonstrated that maxim.

For a game of buzkashi, Babur Khan had used the severed head of a drug baron. The skin of his drum came from a US soldier. Parangays and Poppy Pashas were both hunting him, yet Babur Khan managed to evade them. A combination of his own skills and the Pakhtoonwali code that guaranteed the safety of a guest aided him. And Babur Khan was not just a guest of the Pathans – he had earned from them the sobriquet of
Badshah Khan
.

A hundred years back, another Pathan had similarly roused his countrymen to throw off the yoke of the British. His followers called him Badshah Khan, the King of Khans. Now, in a time when their land was under military siege from another Western power, and reeling in poverty, the Afghans flocked to the young Pathan with his powerful message of rebuilding a self-reliant Islamic society, picked up the echo from a century back, and in a fitting resonance to their revered hero, esteemed the young Pathan with the same honorific.

But memory is a tricky thing, especially the memory of a people ravaged by brutality, war and privation. The essential lesson of the legendary Badshah Khan had been non-violence; his contemporary avatar was a man who had flayed alive a captured US soldier and used his skin to craft a drum. This same drum was beaten at the start and end of each of his sermons.

When the agitated father brought the case to him, Babur Khan delivered a deliberation in which he did not touch on the specifics of the case. He chose instead to speak about revolutions.
Revolution is not a ripe apple that will fall. You have to make it fall. The land is crying for an Islamic jihad. And transgressors will be punished appropriately.

Following Babur Khan’s sermon the mullah in the religious court denounced the girl’s un-Islamic behaviour and read out the verdict. She wailed in defence. For the sin of raising her voice shamefully in an august council, Babur Khan thundered, she would be punished in a manner that would serve as a warning for all women: she would be buried alive.

Now as they prodded the girl forward she resisted, struggling through her voluminous blue tent like a trapped bird. One of her escorts lost his grip and she lurched away. Immediately the men were upon her, and as they wrenched at the impeding veil her face was exposed. Her haunted eyes scoured the landscape, her head swung rapidly, and the hair that had escaped from her braid whipped in the wind. Her eyes found Babur Khan seated on the cot. A primeval moan burst from her as she lunged towards him. But the men caught up with her before she reached the cot and jerked her back. She stumbled. Only the spittle that she had volleyed was carried by the fierce wind and smacked Babur Khan in the face. Grimly he wiped it off with the back of his hand.

Restrained in the vice-like grip of two men the wriggling girl was hauled to the dugout. Several men started shoving handfuls of dirt down her throat. Goggle-eyed, she thrashed with all her might. But the strength in her slim frame was puny and soon her mouth was muffled with a cloth. Then the male pincers hoisted her up and deposited her on the floor of the hole. No sooner was this accomplished than clods of earth began to fly into the hole, and upon the prone girl. Within minutes the newly dug grave was level with the ground.

Not a cluck from the chickens.

The man with the dohol rapped a pair of wooden sticks against the skinheads of his drum in a summoning beat and the men peeled away from the hole towards Badshah Babur Khan seated on the cot. A customary sermon would mark the end of the occasion. The men took turns to bow to him before hunkering down in a rough circle, their faces upturned. Babur Khan held forward a dull white ceramic bowl in which pomegranate seeds glistened, and said, ‘Allow me to introduce to you a secret.’

The men looked befuddled: pomegranate, after all, was a common fruit in the land. They eyed the clutch of pomegranate trees in the distance, their branches laden with ripe red fruit.

‘Yes,’ Babur Khan nodded, ‘a secret of the West. This, the humble pomegranate that you grow in your garden, is the superfood available in the superstores of the Americans. They call it superfood.
Superfood!
’ He snorted. ‘Hyperbole and Americans go hand in hand. Nevertheless, if it’s superfood they covet, superfood they’ll get. We shall provide it to them, and in the process change our fortunes. Poppy was good, but this is better.’

He looked at the unsure crowd, could see their disbelief: poppy was what the average farmer maintained his savings in. Poppy was central to Afghan economy. And poppy would stay – in a reduced form – but other plants and fruits had to thrive.

He took several seeds and tossed them into his mouth before handing the bowl to an attendant who savoured the fruit and passed it along. As they ate Babur Khan expounded on the economics of pomegranate, and how export of the fruit would yield the same earnings per acre as poppy. The gathering listened with initial disbelief as he elucidated his argument with examples, warmed up as he weaved in anecdotes from his American experience, and as his resonant voice washed over them, they were nodding to the idea that yes, perhaps the Kandahari pomegranate
was
mightier than any drug.

‘Weakness is a disease, and unless controlled, it spreads. Poppy has become our disease, the disease of Afghanistan. As proud Afghans let us not tolerate any weakness. Let us arise and rebuild our land. Remember the race to which you belong, and deliver a blow for every wrong!

‘Destiny, as you know, is a saddled donkey. He goes wherever you lead him. Are the Amrikaayi and Poppy Pashas our destiny?’ The men shook their heads in response. ‘Then what are you waiting for? The time has come to kick the donkey from our door!’ With his chin Babur Khan indicated the drum slung around his drummer’s neck. ‘We will make the Parangay and the Poppy Pashas sing our tune.’ On a flick of his right hand the drummer started to beat his instrument, and the gathering whooped lustily.

New Delhi, India

Sunday 8 a.m.

Jag Mishra straightened his tie and looked up. The
multi-storey red brick building off Lodi Road was like any of the nondescript bureaucratic complexes scattered through the capital city. However, access to this particular building was forbidden to anyone not sporting a RAW identity card. India’s premier external intelligence agency, Research and Analysis Wing, or RAW as it was popularly known, was a forbidding landmark in a country with a pervasive sense of ‘anything goes’. It operated on stealth – a trait that had allowed the agency to function below the radar in an age of increasingly intrusive media.

As his card was scrutinized at the entrance gate, Mishra cast a habitually watchful look around. Early-morning activity in the area, which housed several Central government offices, was a rarity. It being a Sunday, even the street dogs sprawled about would not stir before noon.

On the ride up the elevator Jag Mishra collected his thoughts. He was due to brief his boss, the Director of RAW, and he had twenty minutes in which to apprise him of the situation and get his authorization for the plan he was to propose. Admittedly it was not much of a plan, more of a bold gamble. However, a ticking timeline and the unexpected fallout of the morning’s event had handicapped him. Mishra glanced at his watch. Five minutes to go. The lift doors opened and Mishra stepped into a familiar dim-lit hallway. Across was a wall with thick block glass meant to provide light. However, the dust of an arid city had settled in layers upon the pane, rendering the interior murky. On either side the corridor breached into a phalanx of rooms. Another glance at his wristwatch and Mishra started to walk down the corridor to the Director’s office.

The nameplate outside the door said: K.K. Verma, Secretary (R). The Director of RAW was designated Secretary (Research) in the Cabinet Secretariat. The current holder of the staid bureaucratic designation was one of the shrewdest brains in intelligence. Fifty-five-year-old Verma was not a career spy but a police officer, with several gallantry awards to his credit. As Director General of Police for Bengal state, K.K. Verma had successfully contained the Naxalite threat. The Prime Minister had handpicked him to lead the intelligence agency.

After the post-Cold War respite, the world was once again going through an upheaval, nervous nations across the globe doubling military budgets and beefing up intelligence gathering. India was in the midst of its own geo-political maelstrom: a Hindu-majority nation beached to the Islamic landmass of the Middle East and Central Asia, it had for neighbours a hostile Pakistan, a war-torn Afghanistan overrun by the US army, and a powerful China that turned belligerent at will over contentious border areas. In such an environment, intelligence infrastructure was a strategic priority, and had to be led by a man of unimpeachable integrity, commanding acumen, and zero political connections. In his job as chief spy, K.K. Verma reported directly to the Prime Minister of India. Jag Mishra straightened his suit and, with a knock on the door, let himself in.

K.K. Verma – he preferred to be called KK in his direct, no-nonsense style – was seated behind a large glass-topped walnut table studying some papers. Without looking up he indicated with his right hand for Mishra to sit. A couple of minutes later the Director of RAW looked up. ‘Well?’

Jag Mishra nodded. ‘Confirmed, Sir. The President of Pakistan, General P. Zaidi, is dead.’

‘And the Pakistan government’s official line on his death?’

‘That he was killed by a suicide bomber when he stepped out of his home. The bomber was a personal security guard.’

KK looked Jag Mishra in the eye. ‘When does the news become public?’

‘It has, as we speak.’

‘Did Operation Karakoram cause the General’s death?’

KK was referring to the secret high-level talks that had been ongoing for the past two years. It was an attempt by the leaders of India and Pakistan to achieve a historic breakthrough in the two countries’ decades-old conflict over Kashmir. The negotiations had produced the outlines of an accord that would allow a gradual demilitarization of the disputed Himalayan province, a flash point in relations between the rivals since 1947. The impetus for reconciliation was strong on both sides. India’s economy was booming and a resolution on Kashmir would pave the way for the beleaguered state’s progress. For Pakistan’s General, who was facing increasing fire from both the Afghan Taliban and the home-grown Taliban, it was imperative that relations with India be normalized. To that end the two leaders had been working on signing the accord. However, somebody had seen fit to dispatch the General to the unseen world. He was probably crossing the bridge over hellfire now.

‘There is a very strong possibility. We have two prime suspects: one, the Tehriki-i-Taliban Pakistan. As you are aware, the TTP comprises the Taliban, both Afghan and Pakistani, who are unhappy with the General for allowing access to the US army to bomb them. Second, a rogue ISI member who does not want a resolution on Kashmir. There could, of course, be a combination of the two. The ISI owes its existence to Kashmir, which is also a jihadi magnet.’

‘And your finger of suspicion points to?’

Jag Mishra cleared his throat. As Director, Pakistan Desk, he had been overseeing India’s hostile neighbour, and the world’s most volatile region, for well over a decade.

At the long pause Verma raised his brow.

Evenly, Mishra said, ‘The briefcase held the answer.’

As proof of his commitment, the General was to exchange with his Indian counterpart a top-level secret on the day that the historic accord was to be signed in Dras. A secret so significant that its revelation would not only seal the Indian Prime Minister’s faith in the Pakistani leader, it would also equip India to avert the next big terror attack being planned on its soil by a rogue militant outfit based in Pakistan. The dreaded Lashkar-e-Taiba had previously in November 2008 launched a deadly strike in Mumbai – a shocking bloodbath that created terror in India’s financial capital. Now another audacious plan was in the offing. RAW was anticipating an attack, but the General was to share specific details that would help plug it. Those details were in the briefcase the General was clutching in his right hand when the grenade exploded. A concussion type, it was designed to damage its target with explosive power. The case, with the General, had been incinerated.

‘Aziz Mirza, the General’s aide and Harry’s counterpart, was outside the casualty range and largely unhurt. He decamped at once in the chopper. We managed to establish contact with him briefly before he went underground.’ Mishra paused. ‘He claims the President made a copy of the plans he was to share with our PM and hid them in a secret location. Mirza says the General joked that even if he were to die with the briefcase, at least the plans would be safe and could be retrieved so the process of peace could be completed.’

‘Rather dramatic, huh? The General was an old fox!’

‘True. Yet, he had been living with terror threats for almost a decade. And this was not the first attempt on his life.’ Mishra leaned forward. ‘Mirza claims that the General had a secret location where he stored a few critical documents. He called it,’ Mishra snorted, ‘his Kohinoor!

‘A throwback to the historic tangle between India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Britain, over the world’s most famous diamond. The General called the documents his “lifelines”, and joked that he had one for each of the parties he dealt with: India, the US – even the Taliban.’

‘What do we know about the expected terror attack?’

‘There’s been a spike in intelligence in the past week. We intercepted a phone call yesterday after the General’s assassination. That, coupled with the intel from the CIA, points to an attack on this Thursday, the seventh.’

‘Where?’

‘No indication yet.’

‘Thursday, the seventh... Any significance to the day and date?’

‘The symbolism adds up: Thursday, Jumeraat, is holy, and seven, the number of divine power. An attack in Allah’s name.’

KK tapped the glass paperweight on his table. ‘The briefcase is as dead as the General. The hidden documents – Kohinoor – are the key. Four days to get our hands on it. We need someone who has intimate knowledge of Pakistan, old connections on the field, intelligence and skills of a master spy, and is both brave and foolhardy enough to venture into the enemy’s labyrinth.’

KK’s fingers came to a stop above the paperweight as he levelled his gaze at his Director, Pakistan Desk. ‘Looks like your hands are tied Mishra. You have only one snow leopard.’

Jag Mishra looked back. The bald shiny pate with its fringe of grey hair, and his long ears with distended earlobes added to the look of calm. The only sign of belligerence was the slight outward thrust of his lower lip. There was a reason he was called Chanakya, the honorific usually handed out to an Indian Machiavelli, although Chanakya had predated the Italian politician by almost two millennia.

The Chanakya of RAW, in his four decades of intelligence work, had witnessed several transmutations through which he had developed an abiding self-mantra: calm is wisdom. He had seen the country move from a socialist order to an open-market economy, the swell of many separatist movements and their subsequent suppression, the perennial tango with Pakistan interspersed with on-off warming, the transition of China from brotherly neighbour to overt aggressor to uneasy partner in a regional economic powerhouse. Through it all Mishra’s stoicism had held him in good stead. He believed in karma, the doing of one’s duty, and for guidance he turned to one thing only, the
Bhagavad Gita
. Mishra knew the seven hundred verses by heart – his training had started early at the feet of his father, a priest. While the world regarded the
Gita
as an important philosophical treatise, to Mishra the ‘Song of the Divine’ was the essential guide to life. It was not bullet-pointed and did not offer pop philosophy like modern self-help guides. Yet, whenever at a crossroads, he had turned to the text and an answer had come to him.

Mishra returned his boss’s gaze with unblinking brown eyes. The grey hairs at the edge of his eyebrows tended to curl outwards, adding to his wizened look. ‘You are right, Sir, the snow leopard is an endangered species. With Harry indisposed, there is no other operative who is capable of this feat.’ He paused. ‘Yet, the snow leopard has a cub. A cub we have had under our surveillance for quite some time.’

As KK’s mouth puckered, Mishra started to outline his gambit.