The Bard of Blood

by Bilal Siddiqi

  Bugti held a key in his raised hand. He beckoned to one of his men. The man dragged a medium-sized metal crate along the ground. Bugti leaned over and whispered something in his nephew’s ear. The boy nodded promptly and took a few wary steps towards the tied-up man. He bent over and pulled the jute bag off Shehzad’s face.

  Shehzad’s eyes were half open. His mouth was caked with dried blood. He looked confusedly at the young boy as if it were all a dream. He squeezed his eyes shut . . . The silence around him was unearthly. He couldn’t figure out if he was in a quiet place, or if it was all happening in his head. He opened his eyes again, slowly, and blinked them back shut. He saw the distant orange sunset . . . A whole lot of people . . . mountains . . . and a man pulling a metal crate towards him . . . A metal crate . . .

  ‘Do you think we should have another crack at him? Maybe we can get something about Sadiq’s killer?’ Nihar whispered to Kabir.

  ‘He’d talk if he knew there was a chance out of this. And even then, it would all be a lie. That’s what I would’ve done if I were in his place.’

  Veer rested against the car, smoking and looking at the scene with a hint of interest.

  ‘Thanks to these men,’ Bugti said, pointing towards Kabir and his team, ‘I can finally quench my thirst for revenge. And because of them, I will do to Tanveer Shehzad what he did to my father.’

  Bugti walked over the crate and opened it. It made a creaking sound.

  ‘But there is a small change,’ Bugti said, pinching two fingers together on his raised hand. ‘My nephew, Azaan, will elaborate.’

  ‘Chachu is going to lock this man alive in the crate. And then I will go with him to the top of that mountain and throw away the key.’

  Shehzad shook violently. Fear was beginning to get to him. He didn’t mind death at all. But he had always pictured himself dying a quick one. A bullet to the head, perhaps. But this was going to be quite the opposite. He mustered up enough strength to turn and face Nabil’s bloodshot eyes.

  ‘Kill me now, Bugti.’

  Bugti’s ferocious, unforgiving eyes showed that he could’ve ripped Shehzad’s heart out of his ribcage with his bare hands. But he remained silent and swallowed his anger. He caught a handful of Shehzad’s hair and lifted him up. He clenched his large, clammy hand into a fist and punched Shehzad in the face. He lifted him off his feet and thrust him into the crate. Shehzad’s entire body didn’t fit, so Bugti forcefully turned and twisted Shehzad’s legs until he was all boxed in. Shehzad rattled against the walls of the crate as Bugti slammed it shut. He took the key and locked the violently shaking box. Bugti himself was trembling with an uncontrollable rage. He held the key up to show his men, who were still uncharacteristically silent, and then dropped it into his nephew’s hand. The boy held it indecisively for a few seconds, looked at the box and then turned and began to run towards the hill.

  That evening, the Director-General of the ISI, Azhar-ul-Islam Tayyab, had been busy attending several phone calls at the same time, trying to figure out what had happened in Balochistan. Omar was safe, luckily. But he hadn’t yet received a proper debrief from his main man on the spot, Tanveer Shehzad. He was about to light a cigarette as he swivelled around in his chair impatiently, staring at the portrait of Mohammad Ali Jinnah on his office wall. There was an urgent knock at the door. The man from his front desk stormed in and placed a crumpled envelope on his desk. Tayyab opened it quickly and pulled out a folded note.

  Tanveer Shehzad’s body lies in this coffin. Inshallah, his soul will find its way to the pits of hell.

  Tayyab dropped the letter and pulled out a fresh, glossy photograph from the envelope. He let it drop to the floor as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. He looked at the picture of the lifeless metal crate again.

  12 September 2014

  Indira Gandhi International Airport, New Delhi

  They should be here any moment now. By the look of things, the operation went all right. The news describes it as a little skirmish between the Pakistanis and the Balochis. There will be a lot of questions thrown at me very soon. They’ll ask me about our involvement, and I’ll have just one thing to say. If I say anything at all, it’ll be about ‘non-state actors’. Isn’t that what they had said after 26/11? He wished he could claim credit for this act of daredevilry on his team’s part, but as is the norm with all covert operations, victories are celebrated silently.

  Arun Joshi had his arms crossed as he glanced at the clock. It was close to midnight. He was waiting for Kabir and his team to get back. The last he had spoken with them, they had been boarding the flight back from Chabahar.

  They should be here any minute . . . Should I tell Kabir? Or has he figured out enough himself? I could have captured that snake that moment and grilled him thoroughly . . . But that would’ve definitely rubbed Kabir the wrong way. I may not know Shakespeare that well, but who’s not a fan of poetic justice? Kabir will kill him on his own. Let the son of a bitch die.

  There was a quick rattle at the door. A guard stuck his head in.

  ‘Sir, they are about to land.’

  Joshi got up gracefully and put on his coat. He walked out of the door and towards the runway. Through the glass wall he saw the plane landing smoothly. He walked outside into the chilly night, watching the door of the plane open. Isha was the first to step out, followed by Nihar. They walked down the short metal staircase and turned around to wait for Veer and Kabir. Veer, who was limping a little himself, helped Kabir out of the aircraft by letting him rest his arm on his shoulder.

  Joshi looked at all of them, allowing himself a small smile. It’s just been a few days, but they look much older than their usual selves. He looked at Veer in particular. The man had become a shadow of himself—if one looks at the file pictures we have of him on record.

  Veer looked back at Joshi and nodded. He breathed in deeply and looked up at the sky. Looks just the same as it did there. Then why does everything feel so . . . different? He shut his eyes. Let it sink in . . . You’re back where you belong. He opened his eyes and they fell on the Indian tricolour fluttering wildly from the side of a parapet.

  Joshi strode up to them and shook hands with Isha and Nihar. His gaze moved on to Veer and Kabir. He noticed that Veer’s homecoming had moistened the corners of his eyes.

  ‘It’s good to have you back, Veer.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  Joshi looked at Kabir’s gaunt face.

  ‘Before we exchange pleasantries,’ Kabir said, ‘the prisoners are still in the plane, too drained to move. Send in the medics to get them out.’

  ‘Good job, Kabir.’

  Kabir glanced sideways at his team.

  ‘It would’ve been impossible without them.’

  Joshi patted Kabir on the back. ‘I have something important to discuss. We will have a debriefing session soon.’

  Kabir groaned.

  ‘Trust me, it cannot wait.’

  ‘We can do it next week.’ Kabir sighed. ‘I need some rest. I’m an old man now.’

  ‘The day after tomorrow, then,’ Joshi said with finality. ‘I have a lot on my plate. There is unrest in Ladakh. Chinese troops have breached the Line of Actual Control. There is a major face-off between us and them in Chumar. The Chinese President is coming down to Ahmedabad soon to meet our prime minister and sort out certain issues.’

  ‘If you insist,’ Kabir said resignedly.

  ‘Sir,’ Nihar said, ‘we have managed to lay our hands on something extremely useful. Kabir got hold of Shehzad’s phone, and I managed to get—what I think may be—Omar’s laptop. It’s damaged, but I may be able to recover some data.’

  ‘That’s great. Get on it ASAP.’

  ‘I’m going back to my wife and son, sir. First things first. If I stay away any longer, she’ll be a threat to national security.’

  Everyone laughed as they entered the air-conditioned airport building. Isha turned to Kabir. He looked back at her, his gaze softening.

  ‘I wonder
if you saw the obvious reference to Shakespeare today?’

  ‘No.’ Kabir shrugged.

  ‘It took us twelve days in Balochistan. And we’re back home on the twelfth night. The twelfth night, get it?’ she said playfully.

  Kabir smiled, letting the lame joke pass.

  In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man

  As modest stillness and humility

  But when the blast of war blows in our ears

  Then imitate the action of the tiger . . .

  PART III

  The Crack of Doom

  21

  14 September 2014

  RAW HQ, New Delhi

  ‘Bro, there’s a lady outside waiting to talk to you.’

  Ivan had broken Nihar’s concentration. It was eight in the evening. Nihar had been fixed to his chair in the dim control-room since the past few hours. He had made many attempts to recover every bit of data he could from the damaged laptop. He had failed initially, but had managed to find a way through by extracting solely the hard disk, opening it up and examining it further. He decided not to do it in a hurry, lest he lose something vital. He had utilized all the software at his disposal, but the procedure was painstakingly long. He had searched thoroughly for any viruses, just to be doubly sure. Once he realized that he hadn’t found any threatening malware, he decided to initiate the recovery program. The process had taken up a chunk of his time and wasn’t even halfway towards completion.

  ‘Lady?’ he asked, sounding disoriented.

  ‘Her name’s Isha. She’s quite . . .’

  ‘Pretty? I know,’ said Nihar, completing Ivan’s sentence. ‘Call her in.’

  ‘I was going to say “impatient”, but you decided to fill in the blank. Good to know, I wonder what your wife will think though!’ Ivan sniggered.

  ‘Send her in and get back to cracking the phone I gave you,’ Nihar said with an embarrassed smile.

  Ivan laughed and called Isha in. She was elegantly dressed in a black shirt and black trousers. She pulled up a chair and sat down beside Nihar. Ivan tried hard to catch Nihar’s attention, to pull a face or make an inappropriate gesture. Nihar saw this from the corner of his eye and ignored him. Gosh, how I’ve missed my little control room and its little eccentricities.

  ‘Any progress?’

  ‘Just a few documents here and there,’ Nihar said. ‘I’m afraid of opening them now, in case it interferes with the backup.’

  ‘How long will that take?’

  ‘I’ve been at it since morning,’ Nihar said. ‘Might take a couple of hours. Maybe more.’

  ‘What about Shehzad’s phone?’

  ‘It’s password-protected. Plus it has additional software which the ISI seems to have installed on the Android device, which could wipe out the data on the phone if you get the password wrong more than five times. Ivan’s working on it. There’s a special software to jailbreak such phones.’

  Ivan swivelled around in his chair and held the phone up. It was attached to a cable that led to a device, which in turn was connected to a laptop.

  ‘So far, I’ve managed to back up a little bit of the data from the phone,’ Ivan said. He clicked on a document that had links to four websites. ‘Looks like your spymaster Shehzad was fond of Bollywood films. His browsing history shows that he was looking for illegal torrent links.’

  ‘He had these on the phone?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Ivan said, clicking away on his computer. ‘Let’s open them up with the browser.’

  There were five links in all, and all of them opened on separate pages.

  ‘Ha! So he wants to watch Life in a Metro,’ Ivan said, looking at the poster of the film. He clicked on another link. This time the poster of the film Murder popped up, and with it was a huge sequence of numbers in a document. Once he clicked on the document, under a random sequence of numbers, there was another link to download a document.

  ‘That looks like another file,’ Isha said, rolling her chair towards the computer. ‘Click on it.’

  ‘It could be a virus,’ Ivan warned her. ‘But what the hell . . . I have a backup of the data.’

  The file downloaded. Another random sequence of numbers opened up. Nihar squinted at the screen. ND28617720.

  ‘Open the other links,’ Nihar said. ‘We’re on to something. This is a smart way to share information. Since most people around the world are busy downloading movies or music from torrent sites, you can slip in a document totally unnoticed along with a film.’

  Another link opened up. It had an image from the Michael Jackson album Bad, released back in 1989.

  ‘Well, I’d never imagine a Paki spy moonwalking,’ Isha said. ‘Scroll down . . .’

  Ivan downloaded the file. Within minutes, the entire music album was on the computer. He skimmed through each song to see if it was another audio file disguised as music. It wasn’t.

  ‘Well, at least he had good taste in music. There’s another image here, probably of the cover of the album.’

  He clicked on it and up cropped an image of a line going straight and taking a right. There was a red dot on the line before it turned to the right. They looked at each other and shrugged.

  ‘That has to be something,’ Nihar said. ‘Download all the films. Maybe there’s some encoded data on the video. Maybe those numbers above are the durations at which the message will be revealed. Or maybe there’s something that tells us what this line is.’

  ‘Well, maybe this is just Shehzad’s torrent wish-list. We are barking up the wrong tree.’

  ‘Do as I say, Ivan. Enough of your fucking around.’

  Isha raised an eyebrow at Nihar. Ivan didn’t seem too perturbed.

  ‘Well, it’ll take ten–fifteen minutes to download the films,’ he said, lighting up a cigarette.

  Nihar walked back and slid into his chair. Isha followed suit. ‘You done with your debriefing?’

  ‘I was the first to go,’ Nihar replied. ‘What about you?’

  ‘Joshi’s busy right now,’ Isha said.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ Nihar said. ‘He’s expecting Kabir here. They’ll be discussing something really important, apparently. Maybe it’s something on Sadiq’s killer.’

  Isha nodded thoughtfully. Nihar asked her if she’d like some coffee. She said she would, and they walked down to the end of the corridor and got themselves a cup each. Nihar got one for Ivan as well. They walked back into the control room and Nihar placed Ivan’s cup in front of him.

  ‘Thanks, man.’ Ivan smiled. ‘The movies have downloaded. There are five in all. And each one of them has an attachment with a random line.’

  He opened the photos and scratched his shaven pate. Isha leaned forward and looked at them. Then he dragged the cursor to the video itself and clicked.

  ‘Play them,’ Isha said. ‘Note down any text you see that has been added externally.’

  The cult film Enter the Dragon began to play. The first thing to pop up in the movie, right under the credits, was this sentence:

  Torrent uploaded and seeded by AngeliqueX123

  ‘That’s French for “Angelica”,’ Ivan said quickly. He added, ‘Let me check the other video.’

  The Hindi movie Murder played, and in very tiny font they noted the words on the top-right corner of the screen:

  hooray

  ‘That term is synonymous with “yahoo”,’ said Ivan instantly. ‘They’re probably using a Yahoo email address! AngeliqueX123 must be their username! We need the password!’

  Nihar and Isha frowned at each other. Ivan held his breath as he opened all the images they had obtained. They were beginning to enjoy the puzzle, but feared, slightly, what they’d end up finding. Ivan jumped up hurriedly and pulled out three loose A4 sheets from his printer. He kept one for himself and handed one each to Nihar and Isha. He printed the random lines and separated them out.

  ‘Write down all the words we just saw,’ he said. ‘And everything they could possibly mean. Clearly, there’s some code. And these lines defini
tely have something to do with it.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll get a better idea if there’s a connection between the data from the laptop and this,’ Nihar said. ‘Let’s just wait it out.’

  Ivan ignored him and started scribbling things on his sheet of paper. Isha chewed the end of her pen thoughtfully. Nihar sipped his coffee, trying to join the dots in his head.

  One hour later

  The atmosphere in Arun Joshi’s cabin was tense. Joshi examined Kabir. The last time they had met in his office, before Kabir embarked on the mission, he had looked rather different. But today, even though he was less scruffy, Kabir looked exhausted. He had shaved off his beard to expose his pale sunken cheeks, and had chopped off his hair to match the side that Baradar’s machete had clipped off. He smelled heavily of muscle-relaxing balm. He had suffered a muscle tear in his lower back, a severe sprain in his right shoulder, and inflammation in his right elbow and biceps, which had forced him to put his arm in a sling. There were several bandages covering the cuts. With his free hand he lifted his cup of black coffee and sipped it, thoughtfully chewing on what Arun Joshi had just told him.

  ‘So where is he now?’

  Joshi told him.

  ‘How did he get there?’

  ‘We know for a fact that the ISI has played a role in getting him out of the country.’

  ‘Ridiculous!’ spat Kabir. ‘You guys didn’t do anything about it?’

  Joshi smiled. He clasped his hands together, leaned forward and spoke. ‘I let him go, Kabir. He has always been under constant surveillance. I could’ve picked him up any time I wanted.’

  ‘So you let him live . . . for me?’ Kabir raised his arched eyebrows.