After passing through the gate and surrendering her cell phone, she was given a number and told to wait. At least a hundred other applicants were seated in the outdoor enclosure under whirring fans. As she glanced around her, she saw elderly couples who were hoping to visit children in America, young men who looked as if they had just come off a farm in Haryana, wearing Harvard or Cornell tee-shirts, and IT professionals clutching files that would win them an H-1B visa. Everyone seemed to want a better life.
Two armed marines in camouflage patrolled the area along with Indian guards employed by a private security company. There was tension and fear in the air. Whenever a number was called, everyone’s eyes followed the applicant through the door and into the room where the consular officials would decide his or her fate.
Three hours later, when it was over and Anna had answered a few questions through another pane of bulletproof glass, she stepped back outside onto the street. The interviewer had been a distracted woman who didn’t seem to care if Anna knew anything about Sanskrit poetry or whether her aged mother needed her to come home. The only question she asked was whether Anna had bought her round-trip ticket. After studying the airline printout, she told Anna to come back after 4:00 p.m. to collect her passport.
It was hot outside, and no auto-rickshaws or taxis were in sight. As Anna headed down the access road, her phone rang.
“Sheetalji, may I give you a lift?”
“Where are you?” she demanded.
“Parked at the corner, next to the silk cotton tree.”
Anna spotted a white Honda standing in the shade. The driver pulled onto the street and came toward her. Anna got into the backseat beside Manav, who greeted her with a polite namaskar.
“So?” he said.
“So what?” said Anna, tossing the transparent folder between them.
“Are the Americans going to let you visit their country?”
Anna rolled her eyes. “Why did you have to choose Sheetal Khanna as an alias?”
“Why not?” said Manav with a wounded smile. “Would you have rather been Pooja? Or Kunti? Or Akanksha? I’m glad I don’t have children…. I’d never be able to decide on a name. So many to choose from. A sweet Bangalee girl like you. Would you have preferred Bipasha?”
“Anything but Sheetal,” she said.
“You’re cross with me. And hungry, too, I’m sure. It’s almost two.” Manav leaned forward and spoke to the driver. “Malcha Marg Market. Fujiya.” Then he glanced at her. “I know you like Chinese.”
“Fujiya is Japanese.”
“Same thing,” said Manav. “Here in Dilli, it’s all the same.”
The restaurant was a five-minute drive away, and they were soon seated in a dimly lit booth. Anna and Manav had eaten at Fujiya more times than she could remember. A year ago, they were eavesdropping on a Chinese diplomat who was blackmailing a Member of Parliament. Under Manav’s direction they had set up a listening post in a rooftop barsati apartment on Malcha Marg, not far from the Chinese embassy. It had been a futile exercise, but they’d picked up a lot of chatter in the area, including some awkward phone sex between a Canadian consular official and a priest at the Papal Nuncio. Anna’s estimation of the international diplomatic corps had fallen several rungs after listening in on hours of gossip and hearing the German minister plenipotentiary’s ring tone, the theme song from Skyfall. He also liked to place bets on European League matches with a bookie in Paris, at 2:00 in the morning.
Once the waiter had taken their order, Anna asked if Afridi was still in town.
“No. He flew back up to Mussoorie yesterday,” said Manav.
“He hates Delhi, doesn’t he?” said Anna.
“But he’s very fond of you,” said Manav. “Insisted that he wanted you for this job. Nobody else would do.”
“Should I be flattered?”
Shinde was her superior, but they had established a working relationship that dispensed with rank and formality. Anna knew her place, of course, but she also felt she could speak her mind with Manav. He was one of the few men in RAW who didn’t see her as a threat or an opportunity to ogle.
“I really can’t explain Colonel Afridi’s mind,” said Manav. “Frankly, he’s a bigger puzzle than even our honorable home minister.”
They shared a dislike of politicians, though Manav was a master at dealing with cabinet ministers, employing a combination of obsequious guile and subtle deceit.
“Now, tell me what’s wrong?” Anna asked. “You weren’t just parked outside the US embassy for no reason, were you?”
“Of course not.” He shook his head and tapped his fingers on the chopsticks, as if he were typing a text message. “Actually, I’m concerned about this operation. It’s not like Afridi to act impulsively on unconfirmed reports. He’s usually far more cautious than I am, but this time, he seems to be operating on instinct alone.”
Anna kept silent, studying the chopped green chilies in vinegar, next to a bottle of soy sauce. Shinde seemed reluctant to continue, then lowered his voice.
“Anna, what I’m going to say is totally unofficial. You can take it or leave it. But please understand that I am not trying to undermine Afridi’s authority. Nobody is a genius in our line of work, but he comes as close to it as possible. I have complete respect for his commitment to national security….” The tapping on the chopsticks continued. “However, this time I have serious doubts about his judgment. We know that someone called Guldaar exists, though he’s not as dangerous as Afridi believes. A local warlord in the Khyber Agency, he’s got connections throughout northeastern Afghanistan and the tribal areas, but he isn’t any more powerful or wealthy than a dozen other men in that region. We know that Pakistan is a failed state with rampant corruption throughout the tribal region. The drug trade has raised the stakes considerably. Hawala transactions take place in the billions. The Gulf States and the Saudis are involved. No question about that. The laundering of funds adds up to more than the total GDP of Afghanistan. But to imagine that all of this is being controlled by just one man doesn’t make sense. Of course, there are filthy rich smugglers and arms traders, but nobody comes close to what Afridi imagines Guldaar to be.”
Anna could see it was painful for Manav to criticize his friend and colleague.
“I think he’s making a huge mistake, and I feel, somehow, he’s being trapped. Afridi is so fixed on catching Guldaar, he hasn’t understood that he himself might be the target. It’s very possible the Pakistanis are trying to lure him into a compromising situation to destroy his credibility. I tried to warn him, but he won’t listen.”
“So, what are you suggesting I do?” Anna asked.
“Follow his instructions, of course,” said Manav. “I’m not overruling him just yet. But keep an ear out for trouble, especially from the Americans. This whole operation just doesn’t seem right. If at any point you sense a trap, please contact me at once.”
As if on cue, the spring rolls arrived. Using his chopsticks, Manav placed one on Anna’s plate, then deliberately changed the subject.
Twenty-One
Afridi knew that Shinde would warn Anna about the unsubstantiated nature of his suspicions, but he also knew that she was capable of making judgments on her own. He wasn’t surprised that his interest in Guldaar had been met with skepticism in Delhi. Both the defense secretary and Manav had humored him by allowing Anna to go to Ohio and meet with Daphne Shaw. However, she was under strict instructions not to take any direct action or break any US laws—no weapons, no audio surveillance, no forcible extraction. They also made it clear that asylum would not be given by any of India’s diplomatic missions. If Daphne left the country and came to India on her own, that was another matter, but under no circumstances should it appear that RAW or Military Intelligence facilitated her departure. Relations with the Americans were already prickly, and there was no need to make things worse.
Seated in his office at the Himalayan Research Institute, the morning after he returned from Delhi,
Afridi let his gaze travel over the knotted patterns in the wood paneling. Most of the pictures on the wall were from his earlier days, when he had climbed almost every major peak in India, standing on some of the highest Himalayan summits—Kamet, Nanda Devi, Trishul, and Kangchenjunga. His office window overlooked the mountains, but his eyes remained fixed on a framed map from 1840 that hung between two bookcases. It was a military relic from the first Anglo-Afghan War, with troop placements and routes of advance and retreat marked in a neat hand by an anonymous East India Company officer, long since dead. Reflecting on the creased and yellowed paper pasted to a gauze backing, Afridi considered the map an elaborate maze of contour lines as complex and puzzling as the spiral grains of wood. It charted the fatal retreat from Kabul, in which every officer and soldier would lose his life, except for a lone survivor … one of Britain’s greatest colonial defeats. It seemed as if the contours of the Hindu Kush were inscribed with tragedy, the fatal cartography of futile campaigns.
Almost 175 years later, India and the United States both recognized the strategic importance of the tribal belt that ran along the borders of Afghanistan, though they had different reasons for their interest in this region. The Americans saw it as a no-man’s-land in which the last survivors of Al Qaeda were still hiding out, where they could launch their drones with impunity and claim to have successfully killed another enemy of the free world. India was more practical, for it provided a porous frontier with Pakistan through which they could infiltrate enemy terrain. Having cultivated an alliance with the current regime in Kabul, Delhi’s spymasters were able to support insurgent groups in Baluchistan, Waziristan, and other border areas, in retaliation for Pakistan’s covert activities in Kashmir.
Though he had never visited the Hindu Kush, Afridi knew that his ancestral homeland had a deceptive heritage of lore and legends about mythical races and ancient peoples. The colonel gave scant credence to claims of ethnic legacies and lost Aryan tribes like the Kalash and Nuristanis. Linguists had tried to trace their origins to early invaders who had settled here along the margins of history. Others believed they were descendants of Greek armies under the command of Alexander the Great. The Hindu Kush was a region of perpetual uncertainty, yet people clung to ambiguous truths with absolute conviction.
Guldaar was part of that riddle.
Afridi wheeled himself across to a bookcase and carefully removed a four-volume set of Neville Murchison’s Survey of the Karakoram and Hindu Kush. The heavy, leather-bound books had belonged to his grandfather. Though he was tempted to flip through the pages, he carefully set the volumes aside. Built into the wall behind the books was a small safe. Afridi turned the dial to the right, then back to the left and right again before stopping at the final digit in the combination. The door swung open and revealed the contents: a stack of files, several flash drives, and a yellow envelope, which the colonel removed.
Shaking the envelope’s contents into the palm of his hand, he studied the gold chain and pendant, about an inch long, in the shape of a miniature horse’s head. A single diamond formed the stallion’s eye, and a ring of smaller stones studded the halter. According to an archeologist Afridi had consulted, it was a recent copy of an older piece of Bactrian gold that was in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The archeologist had told him the horse was probably an image of Bucephalus, Alexander’s favorite steed. Beautifully rendered with a flowing mane and flared nostrils, the tiny animal had a wild, untamed expression. A tag attached to the chain bore the stamp and signature of the military comptroller. This chain and pendant were now the property of the government of India, though Afridi held onto it as evidence, from an incident in August 1994.
He had gone to Srinagar for a meeting with regional intelligence officers. They were preparing for the long winter in Ladakh by recruiting Changpa nomads in the northern plateaus beyond Pangong Lake to keep an eye on the Chinese. For once, Pakistan was not on the agenda. Aside from occasional border skirmishes and minor ceasefire violations, conditions were relatively calm along the Line of Actual Control. Afridi recalled his first evening at the Officers’ Mess. Phunsok, a young captain in the Ladakh Scouts, argued that the greatest threat to Kashmir was China, not Pakistan. Nine months later, he was killed in a firefight with insurgents near Baramullah.
On the second day, Afridi was having lunch with the corps commander, when Phunsok arrived just as they were tasting the general’s tsampa halwa. Proud of his culinary skills, the corps commander boasted about having invented this recipe while stationed at an observation point on Siachen Glacier as a junior officer. It was a mixture of toasted barley flour and condensed milk, along with a fistful of raisins. The general also suggested pouring a large peg of Hercules XXX rum over the halwa as a final touch. Afridi was grateful for Phunsok’s interruption, which spared him from finishing the bowl of thick, oversweetened gruel drowned in defense services alcohol.
Phunsok reported that three Greek tourists had been arrested following a road accident near Dhahnu, a village 120 kilometers southwest of Leh. Their vehicle had collided with an army truck. While the Greeks were being taken to the military hospital in Kargil, it was discovered that they were carrying a satellite phone and $35,000 in cash. Trekkers were forbidden from entering Dhahnu, and the villagers themselves discouraged visitors. The people of this region were known as Drogpas, a unique tribe with unusually fair skin, Caucasian features, and a culture distinctly different from the majority population of Muslims and Buddhists. By some accounts, they were related to the Kalash people of Kafiristan. A few years earlier, two German girls had been arrested because they had gone to Dhahnu and the neighboring village of Darchik, hoping to get pregnant with pure Aryan sperm. Afridi knew it was a delicate issue. The people of Dhahnu practiced open marriages. Both men and women had a reputation for promiscuity. Of course, much of it was exaggeration and cultural prejudices spread by outsiders. The Drogpa habit of kissing in public scandalized Indian army officers and made them declare the region off-limits to civilians.
From time to time, parties of tourists had wandered into the valley, and there had been an unpleasant episode with a Spanish photographer, who was badly beaten up. Usually, the trekkers were escorted back to Kargil or Leh and spent the night in a police lockup before being sent on their way. But this time, the authorities in Kargil had grown suspicious about the Greeks because of the sat phone and currency. The villagers reported that the foreigners spoke Urdu among themselves. Captain Phunsok summoned them to Srinagar by jeep, guarded by military police.
Ordinarily, Afridi wouldn’t have wasted his time on a routine interrogation, but the story intrigued him. If they were Pakistanis, it might be useful to learn how they had crossed the border and what they were doing in Dhahnu. He was also looking for any excuse to leave the general’s tsampa pudding unfinished.
When they reached a military intelligence facility near Nishat Bagh, Afridi wheeled himself into a low, windowless room, where the three men were seated. It was immediately clear which of them was the leader, though most of his face was hidden by a bandage, with only one eye visible. The military doctors who administered first aid had reported superficial wounds on the left side of the man’s head but they’d wrapped him up with so much gauze and cotton wool it looked as if he’d had brain surgery. One of the two other men had an injured arm.
The man with the bandaged head appeared to be Afridi’s age. Though it was difficult to see his features, he could easily have been Greek. His passport looked real enough, and his name was given as Theodore Amanatidis, with a permanent address in London. His one visible eye was a dull blue, the color of slate. His skin had a pale complexion except where the bruises had spread beyond the bandage. They studied each other for several seconds.
“Is there anything you require?” Afridi asked in English.
“A cigarette, perhaps,” was the immediate reply, though the man’s voice betrayed no anxiety. His English was fluent, with an Oxbridge accent. Afridi gestured for the guards to grant
them this request. A pack of Charminar was brought in, and all three men lit up at once. The unventilated room was soon clouded in smoke.
“Where in Greece are you from?”
“Thessalonika. But I am based in London,” said the man, who was the only one to speak.
“And why are you here?”
“Tourism. We have been visiting monasteries. Lama Yuru. Thiksey. Hemis.”
“Do you know why you’ve been arrested?” Afridi continued.
The man shook his head as he took a long drag from the cigarette. His one eye remained fixed on Afridi, and he seemed entirely unconcerned, as if the two of them were carrying on a casual conversation between strangers. The bandage was like a mask, making it difficult to read his expression.
Seeing that one of the others had a splint on his arm, Afridi addressed him in Urdu, asking if the bone was broken. For a brief second, the prisoner looked as if he might reply, before glancing down at his arm in silence.
“He doesn’t understand what you said,” the other man replied.
“Do you?” Afridi asked.
“Yes,” he said with a confident smile. “This is my sixth visit to India. I lived in Bombay for a year.”
Something in the man’s attitude puzzled and disturbed Afridi. Despite his injuries and having spent three nights in a police lockup, there was a note of arrogance in the man’s voice that made him suspicious. If he wasn’t who he said he was, then it was going to take a long time to break him. Afridi turned his wheelchair around and excused himself, telling Phunsok to continue with the questioning. As he was about to leave the room, the man spoke up.
The Dalliance of Leopards Page 11