THE HUNT FOR KOHINOOR BOOK 2 OF THE THRILLER SERIES FEATURING MEHRUNISA (9 page)

Sarhad, Northern Afghanistan

Monday 1:06 p.m.

There was a reason R.P. Singh had such success
fighting insurgents in India: he could think like the enemy. Mehrunisa was safe until she located the Kohinoor. Lahore would just be the start of the hunt. And if he had to protect her he would have to be furtive enough to stay hidden from the eyes of her enemies. But time was of essence.

However, Singh couldn’t have found himself in a more inconvenient location. To the south ranged the piercing peaks of the Hindu Kush. In the north the Pamirs framed the border with Tajikistan. Beyond lay China. Down this very remote and beautiful road Marco Polo had travelled in the thirteenth century as he navigated the Silk Route. That great explorer, though, had had all the time in the world. Singh pursed his lips as he consulted the map again. He had spent the previous night in a tent pitched at the edge of a lake. Safdar, his guide, had taken shelter with the local Kirgiz nomads. They awoke to a light snow and icy wind, ploughing through which for six hours had brought them to Sarhad-e-Borghil, 3265m above sea level and at the end of the Wakhan Valley.

Sarhad was meant to be the starting point of the trek. The plan was to cover at least two passes, the 4887m-high Uween-e-Sar Pass being the biggest challenge. Now an abrupt change of plan was needed. Instead of east he would head south to a path that wound up to the Boroghil Pass that continued further into Pakistan. As Singh discussed the change of plan with Safdar, dust devils spiralled in the desolate valley.

The puzzled guide agreed that, yes, the fastest way to reach Pakistan was to trek up to Boroghil Pass on the border with that country and sneak in – it was closed to visitors. But it was a six-hour hike, at the least, and by the time he reached the pass, temperatures would have dropped below freezing. And then he would encounter hostile border sentinels.

Misreading Singh’s change of plan for cold feet, Safdar finally offered: Nature is brutal, sure, but the Pamirs aren’t half as dangerous as those trigger-happy border guards. Choose what you must.

Srinagar, India

Monday 2:53 p.m.

Lunch was a modest affair in another sparsely
furnished room in the building. Mismatched chairs were drawn up at a table covered with a white sheet. The food consisted of steaming yellow dal, fresh rice, spicy jeera aloo, plain curd and sliced onion.

Mehrunisa, however, wasn’t up to eating. The events of the day had hollowed out her stomach and her mouth was acrid, whether from throwing up earlier or from the disorienting revelations.

Raghav, noticing that she had barely touched her food, urged her sotto voce to eat. ‘On the field you don’t know when your next meal will be. Eat, if only to give you energy.’

Mehrunisa tried the dal. It was light, garnished with lemon, and tasty. She took another spoonful. Jag Mishra was working through his plate slowly but surely. He had helped himself to a small portion of rice, dal and curd, eschewing the potatoes and onion. He seemed to spend an inordinate time chewing, as if the mastication aided contemplation. Saby and Raghav seemed untroubled as they chomped heartily. Saby, in fact, was wolfing his food down. Finishing his meal, he wiped his mouth on a napkin and addressed Mehrunisa from across the table.

‘Excuse me for starting this while you are still at lunch. But,’ he glanced at his wristwatch, ‘we don’t have much time. I want to tell you a bit about the crypto phone that you will need for your mission.’

‘Crypto phone?’ Mehrunisa enquired.

Saby wagged his head. ‘Let me explain. The question that had been haunting the security establishment for years was whether the telephone conversations of the men and women who occupied the highest posts in government were free from interception. The situation had become complicated with most VVIPs switching to cell phones for daily, yet sensitive, communication. The option to purchase secure network solutions from foreign vendors was rejected, for reasons of both national security and the fact that in-house talent existed in the country.

‘After several rounds of trials the task of making landline and cell phone networks used by VVIPs – including the Prime Minister himself – was finally entrusted to the NTRO, which in turn culled several top-notch scientists from the organizations where they were working and swore them to secrecy. This team of twelve brainiacs,’ he said with animated hands, ‘have worked round-the-clock on the project. After successful trials the NTRO has handed over a hundred crypto phones to people handling sensitive portfolios. Here,’ Saby slid a phone across the table.

Mehrunisa frowned. It looked like a regular cell phone.

‘Secure phones are so called because we use a highly encrypted channel for calls. And, as you see, this phone looks like any other mobile phone – so it won’t draw attention either. All you have to do is use it as a regular phone and the communication is fully secure.’

‘That simple?’ Mehrunisa asked with genuine surprise.

‘Yup!’ Saby nodded happily. ‘We are in the amazing business.’

Jag Mishra cleared his throat in a very obvious manner. Taking the hint Saby announced that he should be going and held out his hand to her, ‘Good luck!’

Once the scientist had shut the door behind him, Jag Mishra said without preamble, ‘Your mission starts in fifteen minutes. You have ninety hours to deadline. We should discuss timelines.’ When they were back in his office and seated around his table, Jag Mishra brought an envelope out of his drawer and placed it in front of Mehrunisa. ‘For you,’ he said simply.

At Mehrunisa’s raised brow, he added, ‘It belongs to Harry. When he suffered the concussion in ’94 and was hospitalized, we found it around his neck. Apparently, it was a gift from your mother.’

Mehrunisa’s mouth was a tight line. She bagged the envelope, her eyes on the Director, Pakistan Desk. ‘A personal item you didn’t see fit to return – after all, what use would it be to a resource like the Snow Leopard.’

‘Correct,’ Mishra answered, unflappable, as he handed her two additional items: a burqa and an all-weather jacket. ‘It’ll be cold on the field.’

‘I’ll require a backpack.’ Mehrunisa unslung her Birkin and deposited it on Jag Mishra’s desk. ‘This will go to my father’s room.’

US Base in Bagram, Afghanistan

Monday 3:09 p.m.

General McCormick needed a man on the ground
in
Pakistan, quickly. A man with the necessary skills – stealth, intelligence, courage – who was beholden to him. Not an easy task for a General stationed in Afghanistan. The icy peaks of the Hindu Kush glistened on the horizon as McCormick gazed out of his office and reflected on his situation. He probed a corner of his mouth as the shuffling rolodex slowed and stilled over a particular card: Sergeant Travis Argento.

Travis Argento did not have the physique of a typical US Special Forces man. At five-foot nine, he was of medium height, and his biceps did not scream bench press. Indeed the only riveting feature in his persona was his lantern jaw that gave him the appearance of a man subsisting on limited rations. No reason then for him to come to the notice of a 1-star General.

His elder brother, a CIA operative and a frequent point man for General McCormick, had worked in Afghanistan for three years. Recently, he was repatriated to the US where he was receiving treatment for heroin addiction. Afghanistan produced more than ninety per cent of the world’s heroin, and bored or traumatized soldiers did not have to venture farther than Bagram Bazaar. Argento Sr. had started off with cheap heroin as bait to procure information from locals, and somewhere en route succumbed to it himself. McCormick, keen to avoid a scandal, had quietly arranged for his relocation and treatment at a methadone clinic. During that critical transition period Argento Jr., assisting with his older brother’s rehabilitation, had engaged with the General frequently.

How would Argento get into Pakistan? Time to call in Aqua Raven, the security consulting firm based in Karachi – he had a fresh employee for them.

Sarhad-e-Boroghil, Wakhan, Afghanistan

Monday 4:08 p.m.

R.P. Singh had a new guide, a young lad called
Meharban. Safdar, with the yak, food and equipment to take care of, had arranged a Wakhi boy to guide Singh up the relatively easy pass. Now, Meharban walked ahead, identifying the best point to cross the Wakhan River. There were no bridges and wading through shallow freezing water was the norm.

At Sarhad the Wakhan riverbed was at its widest and shallowest. On the opposite side, to the south, a new valley opened up which led to Boroghil Pass across which lay Pakistan and Chitral. This point was the furthest that Lord Curzon reached in 1894 when he was tracing the origin of the Amu, erstwhile Oxus River, his
Lonely Planet
informed Singh. Curzon was to cross, turn south and return to India. Singh, however, had to sneak into Pakistan through an illegal border crossing.

Sarhad to Boroghil Pass was a six-hour hike, Meharban informed him, not in the least surprised at the attempt on the pass that late in the day. By his reckoning, which he happily broadcast to R.P. Singh as he climbed, any hiker keen to trek through the Pamirs when winter snow was on the ground was mad enough. However, Singh was paying him handsomely and in this remote region that meant a lot.

Temperature was already close to freezing, as the sky started to grey.

‘No snow today, hunh,’ Meharban grinned, ‘you should be happy.’

Singh nodded – that was enough impetus for the boy to keep going.

‘Till September we see trekkers in the valley but this late,’ Meharban flicked his wrist mid-air, ‘no season for anyone but the natives or the foolhardy.’ He flashed a quick grin again.

Singh dug into the chill wind, his face lowered. His young guide seemed unaware of the frost as he continued to chatter. An abrupt baa-ing came through the air. Soon enough a herd of Marco Polo sheep trundled by, their dark wool with white underbelly camouflaging them in the grey dusk on the flinty mountain.

Meharban pointed out with delight. ‘You know, they hold the world record for the longest horns of any sheep!’

Singh admitted the splendid curved horns were a majestic headgear indeed.

When his young guide finally started to fall quiet, R.P. Singh began the process of discreetly enquiring about the Boroghil Pass. To his surprise, the boy nodded vigorously.

‘We Wakhis cross the border all the time,’ Meharban said matter-of-factly. ‘And don’t look surprised Sahib, why do you think Safdar picked me? By the time we reach it’ll be too late to go anywhere. I have a Chitrali cousin whose house you can rest in.’

Quietly Singh thanked Safdar and his foresight. However, once he reached that remote border hamlet of Pakistan, he had to find a way to get to Lahore. ‘So the nearest town from the pass is Chitral, right?’

Meharban nodded.

It was impossible to reach Lahore in time with Mehrunisa’s expected arrival, but he was hoping to intercept her at some point thereafter. A flight would be ideal, but at close to midnight in Chitral that would be asking for the moon – even that would be closer. And first, he had to get to Chitral town from Boroghil Pass.

‘What transport would be available, once we reach your cousin? I’ll pay him well.’

‘Yak,’ Meharban replied.

US Base in Bagram, Afghanistan

Monday, 4:16 p.m.

Aqua Raven’s work for the US Joint Special
Operations Command (JSOC) in Karachi was run out of a task force in Bagram. Since the US was officially not at war with Pakistan, the operations against suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda forces in Pakistan were to be conducted with stealth. That was where Aqua Raven came in.

The porous AfPak border and the fact that Pashtunistan, or the homeland of Pashtuns, spilled both sides of the Durand Line – the official border between Pakistan and Afghanistan – mandated an outfit like Aqua Raven that could plan drone operations and seek out the Talibs hiding in Pakistan. Aqua Raven was a sizeable force in Pakistan, its contracts were secret and shielded from public oversight. What made this possible was that contracts were not done through the state department or publicly-identified defence contracts but via JSOC. It operated out of a bare-bones set-up: three trailers loaded up with generators, computers, and satellite phones, and drew hardly any attention.

Also what was not public knowledge was the fact that in 2006 the US struck a deal with Pakistan whereby JSOC could enter Pakistan to hunt terrorists with the understanding that Pakistan would deny it had given permission.

The sound of a jet taking off rippled through the air as McCormick strode to his desk telephone. It was time to call in a favour. He summoned Sgt. Argento to the building where the task force was housed.

Lahore, Pakistan

Monday 4:12 p.m.

The hustle-bustle of a teashop in Anarkali Bazaar
was
a good place to reminisce. Amidst the familiar flavours of frying kebab and brewing tea and loud chatter, he liked to stoke his memories, to refine his story that was slowly becoming a legend.

The legend of an all-American boy who was once scrubbed clean of his Islamic heritage, even his name. Who became Bob, played baseball, ate sausage and fought as a US soldier against his co-religionists. So thoroughly was the boy brainwashed that it had taken a flight to Afghanistan and a battle with his people for the irony of his predicament to become lucid to him.

He was posted in Baqwa province in remote south-western Afghanistan with the India Company of the 3rd battalion, 8
th
Marine Regiment. One night they got information about a group of Taliban fighters that had holed up in the middle of a village. Their orders were to verify the information and take out the insurgents, if any were found. They had set out for the cluster of forty mud houses that formed the village. All houses belonged to one clan and clan loyalty often worked as a strong coercive in providing shelter to the Taliban fighters. A house-to-house search commenced and took the better part of the night. However, no insurgent was discovered.

The very next day, rockets were launched at the US army base from an area that corresponded with the village. Likely the Taliban fighters had got wind of the approaching US soldiers and fled to the surrounding mountains from where they were now shooting. A patrol was sent to investigate. They reported back that the fighters were holed up in a cave that they were using as a rocket-launching site. Acting on this information, a missile-firing drone was dispatched. It killed five militants holed up in the cave. However, two missiles also hit a compound in the nearby village.

News reached the US base that eight members of a family had been wiped out in the missile attack. He was a member of the patrol that was sent to investigate and promise aid to compensate for the collateral damage. Little did Babur suspect that his life was set to change forever.

The house was completely incinerated with charred bodies still lying in the skeletal metal folding beds. The head of the clan, an elderly Pathan with a long beard and rutted face, sat quietly in one corner. Babur was asked to have a word with him, on account of his proficiency with the language. The all-American boy had grown up in a household where his rapidly-Americanizing parents had, through some anomaly, persisted in speaking to him in Urdu and Pashto. His mother taught him Arabic when she tutored him in the Quran. Babur, therefore, had grown up with an understanding of three other languages, though he chose to speak English most of the time.

The man listened to him wordlessly. When Babur finished he looked into his eyes and said, ‘You are Muslim, son?’

Babur mumbled, ‘Yes.’

‘Then why are you on the side of the infidels?’

The US marine was not looking to engage in a theological debate with a grieving man.

‘Have you read the Quran?’

Marine Babur stayed quiet.

‘Read it,’ the man advised. ‘It will help you find your way.’

That was all. Babur paid no heed to it. He had grown up seeing his mother read the Quran daily but was a disinterested pupil. Now as he strolled through opium fields and barren countryside and came across more charred bodies of suicide bombers and Taliban fighters, he wondered what it was that drove them. Perhaps the book would enlighten him? So, unknown to his mates, a copy of the Quran hidden in covers, Babur began to read. And he took to going down to the village and conversing with the elderly clan leader on points that he needed to discuss. The older man surprised him with his breadth of knowledge. Babur did not know then that Gulbuddin was a spiritual leader of suicide bombers, whose lethal combination of religious conviction and silken tongue had sent many young boys to their deaths.

And Gulbuddin used his own life story as illustration. As a mujahidin fighting the Soviet occupation, he had come into his own. At six-foot seven he had the build of a natural leader, and with his knowledge of the Quran he commanded the respect of his men. The Pakistanis found in him a natural ally and he became the point man for when the Americans came to Afghanistan for their field visits. The Americans were looking to kick out the communists and Afghanistan was to be the place where they would draw the Soviet commies into a long-drawn battle by arming the Afghan guerrillas or ‘Muj’, as they called them. That support ultimately changed the course of the war and the mujahidin were successful in driving the occupiers out of the nation. But with the departure of the commies, came the disappearance of the
Amrikaayi
as well.

‘America had kicked the butt of the communists, there was no reason for them to hang around anymore,’ Babur said as he understood where Gulbuddin was leading.

‘So the two world powers left Afghanistan a destroyed nation of rutted fields with no crops but land mines, no administration but warlords.’ Gulbuddin stroked his long beard and went silent.

Babur completed the thought. ‘Since then Afghanistan has been a battlefield, the mujahidin, then the Taliban, then Al Qaeda. And now the invaders are back, except in different clothes.’

Gulbuddin gazed into the distance where a goat was nosing the ground. ‘The Afghan is a fool. He is brave and loyal and steadfast, he will go to any length to keep his word. Pashtunwali, that’s what we call it. But the world has no place for Pashtunwali. The Americans are imperialists like the angrez two hundred years back – here for their personal gain. Their anti-war President has launched more drones than his predecessor as they fight the good war in a medieval land. But we have sent back enough coffins draped in US flags, haven’t we?

‘Young men like you come here to serve in this battle between good and evil. But you are fighting the same men who were your allies once, who are fighting with the weapons you supplied once.’ He shook his head.

‘The Americans don’t understand, but all they need to do is rewind. When the angrez first marched into our land a tribal chief asked them: You have brought an army into the country but how do you propose to take it out? When they departed after two years only one survivor made it. The Soviets, after a ten-year occupation, left beaten. The US is nearing its ten years of occupation. Time to recall a history lesson: Afghanistan always beats its invaders.’

With that Gulbuddin turned to the Quran for his noon prayers. Babur made to go. At the door, the old man’s voice followed him, ‘Son, the question you have to ask yourself is: are you a native or are you a feringhee?’

The Pathan blood that coursed through his veins sang in that mud house to Gulbuddin’s history lessons; it quickened at the sight of towering hills and craggy ravines; it pounded in the midst of his poor but proud tribesmen.

All his life he had been restless, trying to fill out the Bob of his American life. This was his land, these were his people. It was time for the prodigal son to return home.

One day, after he had gone to visit Gulbuddin – without informing his mates as was his custom – he spent hours in the company of a man whom the US army was hunting. He had come to meet the young man who was returning to the fold. Over several cups of green tea and many draws of hookah, Bob morphed into Babur.

Proud to be reborn, Marine Bob of the India Company went AWOL from that day.