by Tariq Saleim
Hawk stopped briefly to look around. The sight was unbelievable. He could never have imagined that such poverty existed.
“Keep walking,” said Nile.
They walked for about fifteen minutes and then stopped at a small hut-like structure. A young child was sitting in front of the door and pooping. Coco, Hawk, and Spike had never seen anyone poop in public before. They were devastated.
Nile noted their frustration. “Public toilets are in short supply.” Then, he knocked on the door.
“Who is it?” asked someone from inside the shelter.
“Nile.” He said his name aloud and after a few seconds the door opened.
“Watch your step,” Nile said, pointing to the child’s excretions. All four of them entered the shelter and Nile locked the door behind him. There was no one inside. Whoever had opened the door had disappeared.
“This way.” Nile led them into a small, dimly lit room. “Wait for me.” He disappeared, leaving his three guests alone.
Spike was the first one to speak. “I do not have a very good feeling about this.” He looked terrified.
“I trust him,” said Coco.
“Of course you do,” said Hawk.
There was a tinge of anger in his voice that amused Coco. So he is jealous, after all, she thought. They heard footsteps and Nile returned, holding a torch.
“I’d like you to meet my friend,” he said, and then his mysterious contact entered the room. Hawk, Spike, and Coco were thunderstruck. He was the last person they wanted to meet. The man from the television reports who had proudly coordinated and broadcast the devastating bomb blast in China, the new face of terrorism, the leader of the ORRF stood in front of them.
Hawk, Spike, and Coco froze, unsure of what to do next. Several moments of silence followed. Then Coco turned to Nile. “The Commander was right. You do work for ORRF.”
“ORRF is nothing but a big lie,” replied Nile.
“That does not mean this man is an angel,” said Hawk.
“Let me explain,” the leader of ORRF said. The trio listened to him intently as he explained his side of the story. According to his version, he had nothing to do with ORRF. He was a carpenter who once ran a small outlet. He was educated, as everyone in the UPF was supposed to be, and was fond of reading about different cultures and religions. Being a citizen of the UPF, this was forbidden, which excited him even more. He was intrigued as to why such studies were prohibited. His nosiness eventually led him to meet someone who had a never-ending supply of the banned material. He now believed that his supplier was working for the UPF and they had planted evidence on him and several others like him.
One day, he heard through the media about the death of ORRF’s leader. He was pleased because he hated violence, especially when done in the name of religion. Religions were meant to promote peace, values, and love. He explained that he had read about all major religions practiced before the war and none of them promoted violence. He maintained that the citizens of the UPF were purposefully fed wrong information, leading to their hatred and aversion from religion.
“A few days later, I saw myself on the news. I was the new ORRF leader,” he explained mournfully. “Suddenly, I was the most wanted man in the whole of the UPF.”
“What?” the three guests shouted in unison.
“Yes, that is correct. The person you now know as the head of ORRF looks like me, but he is not me. They have either made someone to look like me, or…I do not know what it is, but he is definitely not me.”
“How can we trust you? For all we know, you are working with the UPF,” said Hawk.
“Do I look like I am the fucking head of ORRF?” objected the man. “I have been hiding for years. There is a bounty on my head. I live in these villages in disguise. I have gone without food for days. My kidneys are failing and I have no medication. People like Nile help me to survive. I am miserable.”
“I believe you,” Coco said politely.
Hawk and Spike stared at her, not knowing whether to agree or disagree. The most hated and hunted man in the whole of the UPF stood in front of them. Before this night, they had believed he was working for ORRF. Now they suspected he was being manipulated like all of them. They struggled to take sides.
“How does this help us?” Hawk asked Nile.
“No one had any other ideas,” Nile replied, and shrugged his shoulders.
Just then they heard a single gunshot, and blood and bone splattered Nile’s face. The carpenter’s face had exploded like a watermelon hit by a large hammer. His corpse fell at the feet of the three guests.
Coco screamed hysterically. Hawk struggled to understand what had just happened. Before either could react, they heard a loud voice.
“The next person to move gets a bullet in his head.”
Spike started shivering in fear and felt something warm on his legs. He looked down and realized that he had peed his pants.
Suddenly, men dressed in black, wearing night-vision helmets and holding firearms, burst into the room. One of them pointed at the dead carpenter. “Check him.”
A team member collected a few drops of the deceased’s blood in a handheld device. Seconds later, an image appeared on the screen.
“Identity confirmed, sir.”
The leader walked up to Coco and removed his helmet. Coco gasped. “Commander!”
“I told you he was working for ORRF,” he shouted, pointing at Nile. “You dared to question my judgment.” He grabbed Coco’s hair and pushed her toward the dead body. She fell to the ground, inches away from the deceased. “Now I have caught you with the head of ORRF.” He raised his firearm and aimed it at Coco’s head.
“She is innocent,” shouted Nile. He ran and sat in front of Coco, blocking the Commander’s aim. “You will have to shoot me first.”
Coco looked at Nile in amazement.
“Your call,” the Commander said with a casual shrug of his shoulders—and fired. The bullet ripped through Nile’s left shoulder and he fell to his left side. The Commander took aim at Coco again, but suddenly lowered his gun. “The day I let you go, I promised I would strangle you with my own hands. I will not deprive myself of this pleasure.”
He grabbed her throat with his right hand and forced her to stand up, then mercilessly tightened his grip, choking her. Coco struggled to breathe. Nile grabbed the Commander’s leg and tried to push him away from Coco. The Commander was steady as a rock, and continued to strangle the doctor.
Hawk and Spike were frozen in place. The carpenter was dead, Nile was shot, and Coco was being murdered right in front of them. With guns pointed at their heads, any movement would probably result in their sharing the same fate of the carpenter.
“Let her go and I will tell you about our other operatives,” Hawk shouted. “I can lead you to others. Let her go.”
The Commander momentarily loosened his grip on Coco’s throat. He then looked at one of his soldiers, who hit Hawk in his face with the butt of his gun. Hawk fell to the ground, his mouth bleeding.
“You have five seconds,” shouted the Commander. He pointed his gun at Hawk in his left hand while holding Coco’s throat in his right.
Hawk reached for his pocket and retrieved the small card. He held it up so that the Commander could see it. “Deal with us after you have seen this,” said Hawk. He spat blood at the Commander’s feet.
The Commander released Coco, who immediately sank to the ground. She rubbed her sore throat, trying to breathe. Nile comforted her, forgetting his own wound.
“For your eyes only,” said Hawk to the Commander.
The Commander walked into the next room and returned after fifteen minutes. He gestured at the prisoners. “Get them medical attention. This will take some time.” He went back to the room, not emerging until it was almost morning. He looked disturbed by what he had seen. He ordered his team out of the premises and they quickly obeyed, leaving him alone with the captives.
The Commander took out his gun and changed the clip
. “I hate to say this, but all of you need to die.” He pointed the gun at Nile first.
Outside the premises, the team heard four gunshots. One of them checked his watch. It was time to head home.
***
Three days later, the bodies of five ORRF operatives were found in different parts of the world: two in Sector Two, the others in Sector Three. The Commander was praised for his efforts in killing the head of ORRF.
ORRF did not fail to retaliate. It appointed a new leader within days and vowed to avenge the murders of their operatives. There was never a mention of any poor village full of unregistered people. It simply did not exist in the books of the UPF.
CHAPTER 18
Sector 3, Sub-Sector 1 (formerly known as New York City, United States of America)
The Commander sat opposite the chairman’s desk. She looked at him disapprovingly. “It took you three weeks to show me this?” She was referring to the surveillance videos that the Commander had shared with her earlier in the day.
“I was struggling to decide whether or not I should present this to you,” replied the Commander.
“Are you in any way disturbed by my sexual preferences?”
The Commander could not believe what she had chosen to focus on. Of course he was hurt by seeing his ex-girlfriend act like a whore again and again, but there were other things on those surveillance tapes that mattered more.
“A bit, but you are a free woman. We are not together anymore,” replied the Commander.
“You walked out on me. You left a gulf in my life that I have been trying to fill all this time.”
Unbelievable, he thought. He was not interested in talking about their personal affairs. He wanted to understand everything else. Izzy was focusing on this issue only, blaming him for her nymphomaniacal conduct.
“You can fuck the whole army if you so desire,” the Commander replied calmly.
“Then why do you look so depressed?”
“I want some answers.”
“What makes you think I owe you any?”
“You do. Start with ORRF and my appointment.”
Izzy looked at him, trying to decide which way to steer the conversation. She figured giving him some answers would provide him with a sense of closure. She did not want to deny a dying man his last wish, now that she had decided to execute him immediately after this conversation. “What do you want to know about ORRF?”
“Why did you appoint me as the head of Counterterrorism? I had already resigned from Militia’s service. You begged me to come back and take this portfolio. I want to know why.”
Izzy smiled. He was not going to like the answer, but since he insisted on knowing the truth, she decided to answer him. “Because you are an emotional fool,” she replied with a victorious smile.
“Can you elaborate?”
“ORRF is my baby. I created this devil to put fear in the hearts of people. To rule effectively, you need to keep your subjects frightened. When they are afraid they depend on you for support. So I created ORRF. We fund their army, provide them with weapons, and plan their missions. They are our hired guns—we point them in a direction of choice and they shoot. We make them look so bad that people fear the worst and look to us to control them. People need us to save them from ORRF. They do not realize that every single operation of ORRF was approved by me.
“I appointed you as the head of Counterterrorism because I knew you would never be able to trace ORRF back to me. You were blinded by emotion. It does not matter how strong the evidence was, you would never admit that I was involved. A man of your intelligence should have figured it out easily, but you did not. You told me someone from the inside might be involved, but you never figured that it was me.
“I was working on ORRF even before I became the head of Militia. It was a perfect plan—I owned the devil and its subjugator. I knew exactly what you would do and, therefore, ORRF had been always one step ahead of you. You assassinated their previous leader because I wanted it so. People were losing faith in us, so we had to give them hope. Do you think you found him? You fool, we led you to him. You are a toy, boy. I played with you, fucked you, abused you, and dumped you.”
The Commander was fuming on the inside, but kept his composure. He felt betrayed, insulted, and indeed abused. She was right—he had been blinded by love. “And their second leader—the one I killed recently?”
“Some poor innocent bastard,” replied Izzy. “After you killed the real leader of ORRF, we had to create a phony one. We did not want you to kill one of our own every now and then. The footage we relay occasionally of the ORRF leader is made by our Tech team. It is not a real person, but a computer-generated simulation, based on the appearance of the man you shot. I believe he was a low-level worker somewhere in Sector Two. We obtained his DNA through our agents and had your database updated, but he was nothing—a nobody. He kept running around, hiding for nothing, until you put him out of his misery.”
It was impossible for the Commander to control himself any longer. He stood up from his chair and shouted, raising his voice to Izzy for the first time in his life. “You made me kill innocent people!”
“Do not forget that you are talking to the chairman of the UPF,” Izzy said calmly.
“I killed four more people that day. If he was not the leader of ORRF, then they were also innocent.” Including Nile, he now realized.
“Of course they were innocent. I do not even know who they were. They were probably his friends, family, acquaintances—who cares who they were? You killed them without proper investigation. You are the culprit here, not me.”
“One of them was a brilliant doctor. I knew her. She served under me. She was a good woman. The others had families. They died for nothing.”
“Why are you so sentimental about these four people? You have killed so many in your life.” Izzy was rubbing it in hard now. “Were all your killings justified? Did you ever question Shaman when he ordered those killings? Why are you questioning me now? Someone killed your father and sister and you took revenge from hundreds and thousands. How was that justified?
“Joshua, you are as bad as I. Everyone wants something in life. I wanted power; you wanted revenge. I did what it took and so did you. I obtained power and you got your revenge. We are not that different. We were just aiming for different things in life.”
The Commander sank back into his chair. Izzy was partially correct.
“Do you have any more questions?” asked Izzy.
“What is D5?”
"It is a governance code—short, simple, and effective.”
“What does it stand for?”
“Deceit, dependence, drugs, debauchery, and death. The whole system of governance in the UPF is built around these guiding principles.”
The Commander shook his head in disbelief. The more he knew the more he wished he knew nothing.
“Utmost triumph in kingship is making your slaves believe they are free people,” Izzy said. “We wanted to build a nation of slaves, but the trick was to make them believe they were free to choose, make decisions, and live on their own terms. It was only then that we could ensure lasting control and absolute power. When people believe they are being forced in one direction, they retaliate. It does not matter if the direction is right or wrong, they retaliate because they are being forced. However, when they believe they are making their own decisions, they live contentedly.
“I understood this very early on and worked on different governance models with Shaman. D5 is effective today, but it was not like this always. Shaman and I tried different things that eventually, through trial and error, evolved into D5.”
The Commander took a deep, long breath. He had never felt so small in his life. The “deceit” principle of D5 had clearly worked on him. “Explain to me this governance model,” he said.
Izzy looked at him with a blank face, apparently deciding whether or not to divulge more information.
The Commander looked into Izzy’s eyes. “I know
you will have me executed after this meeting. Might as well tell me the whole thing and let me die with a sense of closure.”
“It does not have to be this way.”
The Commander stared at the chairman in silence.
“You can confirm to me that there are no more copies of this,” she said. “Convince me that you will join my team and help me rule the UPF for so long as I live. Commit to me that you will be loyal to me for the rest of your life. Promise to me all this and our story can have a different ending.”
“Did you ever really love me?” The Commander suddenly changed the topic.
Izzy was taken by surprise. “What?”
“Were you ever in love with me?”
It was Izzy’s turn to take a deep breath. She thought for a while and then decided to tell the truth. “I was, briefly, but then Shaman showed me the way to own the world. I gave you up for the world.” She was calm, composed, and not at all ashamed.
“You gave me up for the world.” He repeated her words, slowly and sorrowfully.
“It was not that difficult a choice. You are a good man, but definitely not worth the world.”
“I am not worth the world.”
“No, you are not.”
“But I would have given up this world for you.”
“And that is why you are where you are and I am where I am.”
A moment of silence followed Izzy’s reply.
“Can’t you leave all this?” the Commander asked. “Let’s get married and live like normal people. Two people who are in love, and their love is sufficient for them. Leave the UPF to others. I will forget about these surveillance videos, if you let go of your ambitions.”
“You are such an emotional fool—always were, always will be.”
The Commander stared at the floor momentarily. When he had walked into the chairman’s office this morning, he had hoped that there would be a perfect explanation, a legitimate reason, for everything, including her actions. He knew that if he was wrong, it would be difficult to get out alive, yet he had walked in bravely, trusting his former lover. Now that he had been proven wrong, it was difficult to breathe. A soldier looks forward to a soldier’s death and so did the Commander. However, dying at the hands of his double-faced beloved was insulting and unfair, especially when he had walked into it knowingly. He deserved a better death; an honorable one; a celebrated one.