In the satellite image, the symmetry was clear. For once, the air over Delhi had cleared, and Afridi was able to look down on the mausoleum and admire its architecture. Near the main entrance of the garden, he could see two small figures walking toward the emperor’s tomb. It being midmorning, their shadows followed behind them.
Anna was wearing a headset and answered his call on the second ring.
“Good morning, sir,” she said. “We’re at the site.”
“Yes, I can see you,” Afridi replied.
“We’ve checked the entry point. They’re setting up metal detectors. It seems secure enough, and I’ve got technicians positioning the cameras. We’ll test them at noon and do a final check at 5:00 p.m.”
“Good. Now, make sure you have clear sightlines to the VIP enclosure. It should be to the center left of the stage.” As Afridi spoke, he could see them approaching the concert area directly in front of the mausoleum, where dozens of workers were erecting a raised platform and arranging rows of chairs. Others were hooking up speakers and wiring for the sound system. Seen from above, the workers looked like a colony of termites constructing a boudoir for their queen. Afridi gestured for his technician to move in closer. As the magnification increased, he recognized Anna as she pointed toward the main plinth of the tomb, which rose above the stage. The man with her walked forward another forty feet.
“How is our friend Major Yaqub?” Afridi asked. “Not having second thoughts, is he?”
“No, sir,” said Anna. “He seems very professional.”
“This evening, I want you to stay near him at all times. We’ll keep an open line on your phone, and if there’s anything I need to communicate to him, I’ll do that through you.”
“Understood,” said Anna.
“Make sure you check the perimeter of the garden for any recent construction or damage to the walls. We don’t want Guldaar coming through an entrance we aren’t watching.”
“We’ll do that, sir. The National Security Guard is posting guards every thirty meters around the tomb. It will be impossible for anyone to enter undetected,” Anna reported.
“Yes, but it might make things complicated afterward,” said Afridi. “NSG obviously doesn’t know anything about this operation. They’ll have orders to stop unauthorized individuals from leaving the venue, except through the main entrance and exit.”
“We’ve been discussing that,” said Anna. “We can create a diversion to distract the guards, if necessary. On the eastern side of the garden, there’s a small pavilion and a nursery, facing the railway tracks and the river. There’s a boundary wall with a drop of about forty feet and a road below that cuts across to Nizamuddin Station. We’ll have a car waiting at that point. From there Yaqub can take any one of three escape routes.”
“Does he seem capable to you?” Afridi asked.
“I believe so, sir. We’ve already got his weapon inside. I’ll be armed as well.”
“But remember, Anna, I don’t want you getting into a firefight,” said Afridi, as he saw Yaqub’s figure disappear up the staircase to the main plinth of the tomb. “You’re there to provide liaison and communications. You may carry a concealed weapon for your own protection but nothing more than that. Yaqub will execute the mission on his own. Either he takes Guldaar captive or he kills him outright. You’re not to get involved. Do you hear me?”
“Yes, sir. Understood.”
“Good. I’ll speak with you again at 17:00 hours.”
Hearing the digital click of his phone switching off, Anna imagined Afridi sitting in front of the screens at HRI, watching every move she made. Instinctively, she shaded her eyes and looked up at the sky, where dozens of kites were wheeling in the air. She followed Yaqub and found him standing inside the mausoleum. Tourists were wandering about the main chamber where the marble tombstones lay. The monument would close early today, at 4:00 p.m. After that only invited guests for the concert would be admitted, once the garden had been swept and secured.
Inside the tomb it was at least five degrees cooler than outside. Anna removed her dark glasses and watched Yaqub standing in front of the western screen, facing Mecca. For a moment, she thought he might be praying and didn’t disturb him, but he turned almost immediately and looked at her, with a guarded frown.
“The actual graves are down below in catacombs under the plinth,” Anna said.
“I know,” he said. “You don’t need to be my tour guide.”
“Okay,” she apologized, raising both hands. “I was just wondering if any of the entrances to the burial chambers were open. Usually the archeological survey keeps them locked.”
“It might be useful if one or two of them were accessible in an emergency. It gives us additional options.”
“I’ll see what we can do. They’re full of bats,” Anna said.
He glanced at her abruptly, and she could see the alarm in his eyes.
“On second thought,” he said, “let’s not worry about opening those up.”
She laughed. “You’re scared of bats?”
“Terrified,” he confessed. For the first time since they’d met, Yaqub seemed to let down his guard. “It’s a phobia I’ve had since childhood.”
“Are you scared of anything else?” she asked teasingly.
“Nothing else that matters here,” he said.
Sensing that he was more willing to talk, Anna asked. “What is it about Guldaar that makes you so determined to kill him?”
“I’m just following orders,” he said.
“Whose orders?” she asked. “Afridi’s or your handlers at ISI?”
“I don’t take orders from Colonel Afridi.”
“This could cost you your career, perhaps even your life,” Anna said.
Yaqub waited for a couple of tourists to pass, staring up at the inside of the dome where pigeons were roosting in the niches. Anna thought she could see an expression of uncertainty beneath the confident mask.
“Why do you care?” said Yaqub. “I’m doing your shit work for you. That’s all that matters, isn’t it?”
“If I’m going to back you up, I need to understand your motives,” Anna said.
“Guldaar is an evil man who is destroying my country,” said Yaqub. “Isn’t that reason enough?”
“I suppose,” said Anna. “But I get a feeling it’s personal.”
“So what?” said Yaqub, turning away from her toward the marble screen, which filtered the sunlight into a carpet of shadows on the floor.
“When I was training to become an intelligence officer,” said Anna, “one of the first things they taught me was that you must ignore your emotions and approach each assignment with complete detachment, as if you were simply boiling an egg.”
Yaqub laughed, but she could tell he was not going to open up any further.
“Then let’s get on with it and boil this egg,” he said, brushing past her and heading outside. “We need to check the escape route.”
After the shadowy interior of the mausoleum, the glare outside was blinding. Both Anna and Yaqub put on sunglasses and headed toward the eastern edge of the plinth. Anna wondered if Afridi was still watching. To anyone else, they must have looked like a pair of tourists. When they reached the parapet wall, Anna pointed out the pavilion and the nursery.
“When this tomb was built, the Yamuna would have flowed past these walls, but now it’s changed course and you can barely see the river from here,” she said.
They went down the steps and across the garden. Anna remembered how Afridi had met her here three weeks ago and laid out the plan, though she had never imagined it would all end at Humayun’s tomb. When they reached the pavilion, a slow passenger train passed by, the rattle and click of its wheels on the tracks clearly audible.
“Where does this line go?” said Yaqub, as a faster freight train passed in the other direction.
“It crosses the Yamuna and connects to the main line into Punjab. Southward, it goes all the way to Mumbai.”
&
nbsp; Yaqub scanned the terrain, a scrub jungle of acacia trees between the walls of the garden and the railway tracks. Just outside the northeast corner of the tomb stood a gurdwara. To the south was another Mughal tomb with the remnants of blue tiles on its dome. Farther south he could see Nizamuddin railway station and the rooftops of the adjacent colony. Looking down, he studied the narrow road that ran along the base of the wall.
“We can have a rope or a ladder here, so you don’t have to jump,” said Anna. “A car will be waiting for you just over there to the right.”
“A rope should be fine,” said Yaqub. He seemed uninterested in the escape route.
“The only problem will be if you’ve got Guldaar with you. How are you going to get him down without a ladder?” Anna said.
Yaqub measured the drop with his eyes.
“You might as well know,” he said. “I’m not planning on taking him out of here alive.”
Anna could see the conviction in his eyes.
“That makes things easier,” she said.
“He deserves to die,” said Yaqub. “Guldaar killed my father because he wouldn’t take a bribe.”
Anna held her breath for several seconds then asked, “Was your father in the ISI?”
“He was decorated for his bravery in the 1971 war, when he was working as a junior intelligence officer in Chittagong. My father refused to surrender to the Indian army and kept radioing reports to Rawalpindi, even after General Niazi laid down his sword. Your soldiers tried to catch him, but he escaped into Burma and eventually made his way back to Pakistan. For almost a year, my mother thought he was dead.”
Another train went by, but Anna barely heard the sound of its wheels as she listened to Yaqub’s story.
“Ten years later, he was posted in Peshawar, when the Americans were supplying the mujahideen with weapons back in eighty-two.” Yaqub spoke quietly, but anger underscored every word. “Guldaar was working with the CIA, and he had become one of their main conduits. My father had contacts amongst the Pakhtun fighters, and he traveled into the tribal districts. There were complaints that many of the weapons weren’t reaching the mujaheddin, and middlemen were selling off some of the guns and ammunition to people who were supporting the Russians. The Americans didn’t seem concerned, but my father wrote a confidential report that was circulated within the ISI, saying it was undermining morale and eroding Pakistan’s support for the mujahideen. He was a man of principle and didn’t care whose feathers got ruffled. Though the report was supposed to be secret, Guldaar got hold of it. He sent one of his men to meet my father and offered him twenty lakhs to retract his report and say nothing more. My father sent the man back with an empty rifle cartridge and the message that once a bullet is fired it cannot be retrieved, not for any price.”
Yaqub’s words were punctuated by the sudden wail of a whistle as an express train roared by on a through line, its carriages shooting past, the clatter of wheels like prolonged applause.
“What was Guldaar’s response?” Anna asked.
“He tried once more, offering thirty lakhs this time. My father told him to go fuck himself. He then wrote another report, describing the attempted bribe. All of this, I learned much later, when I was able to read his reports. They were suppressed by his superiors, but one of his colleagues kept a carbon copy, neatly typed on a foolscap sheet of paper. Back then, I was only five years old. My mother had taken me to Karachi to visit her parents. My father was alone in Peshawar. One day, after work, he went out in the evening, walking our dog near Garrison Park. Two men on a motorcycle came by and gunned him down, along with our golden retriever. He had five bullets in his chest, but it took him three days to die. He’s buried in Peshawar, and I swore on his grave that someday I would take my revenge.”
Turning his back on the railway tracks, Yaqub set off toward the entrance of Humayun’s tomb. Anna followed at a distance. As she watched his figure moving ahead of her in the bright sunlight, he looked like a shadow of himself. She didn’t try to stop him, knowing that he would return in the evening to keep his promise.
Before she left the garden, Anna stopped to check where the weapon had been cached in a locked shed near the nursery. After hearing Yaqub’s story, she realized how personal the operation was for him. For both Yaqub and Afridi, this was obviously more than just boiling an egg.
As she left the main entrance and walked toward the outer gate, which led to Isa Khan’s tomb and the parking lots beyond, Anna could see more tourists arriving, a large group of Japanese and several Europeans. One man was standing to the side of the path with his camera focused on Humayun’s tomb, though Anna felt as if he were zeroing in on her with his zoom lens. She was immediately aware of being watched. Approaching the tourist, Anna kept him in her peripheral vision, though she stared straight ahead. The lens was definitely pointed at her. A gaggle of Japanese came past him, and she deliberately slowed down as they approached and went by, talking and laughing among themselves.
As Anna came abreast of the man, he lowered his camera and she saw who it was. In the bright sunlight, the tinted lenses on his glasses had darkened to the point where she could not see his eyes. Carlton Fletcher smiled as she recognized him. His face was flushed with the heat, and the blood vessels in his pitted cheeks and nose were a virulent red.
“Good morning, Miss Khanna,” he said. “Or is it Miss Tagore?”
Fifty-Seven
PAK DELEGATION ARRIVES TODAY
BILATERAL TALKS FOR DEMILITARIZATION OF SIACHEN GLACIER
Afridi glanced at the headline without bothering to read the story and passed the newspaper across his desk to Daphne.
“Virtually meaningless, at least on a strategic level. Two or three years back there were secretary-level talks that failed completely, though they put a positive spin on it to say the deliberations resulted in an ‘enhanced understanding of each other’s position,’” he said.
They were sitting in Afridi’s office, after having listened to dozens of audio surveillance tapes, hoping that Daphne would recognize Guldaar’s voice. So far, she hadn’t been able to identify any images of him from the CCTV videos or photographs, and all of the phone tappings and other recordings produced no result. It was like trying to find a ghost.
Daphne skimmed the story about the negotiations between India and Pakistan.
“It seems so pointless,” she said. “Soldiers fighting over a wasteland of ice.”
“The last time they had these talks,” said Afridi, “Pakistan handed over a so-called ‘non-paper,’ unofficially outlining their demands, and India agreed to study this document. But nothing has changed on the ground. It was all a bureaucratic charade. This time around, it’s been booted up to the level of junior ministers, who will be talking to each other, shaking hands for the cameras, and attending a Qawali performance, after issuing a joint press statement that says nothing except that they agree to keep on talking. Essentially, both sides are intent on maintaining the status quo. A stalemate.”
“While soldiers keep dying for a line in the snow,” said Daphne.
“I suppose it’s better than not talking to each other at all,” said Afridi, “but I’m cynical about these kinds of meetings because it’s all posturing and public relations.”
“Why would Jimmy want to be a part of it?” said Daphne.
“That’s the other side of the game,” Afridi replied. “What happens away from the cameras in the back rooms of the conference center. That’s where commerce takes over from politics and diplomacy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ever since India and Pakistan joined the nuclear club, the standoff between them has generated a huge amount of business for third parties. The United States gives Pakistan a hundred million dollars to protect its nuclear processing facilities from falling into the hands of terrorists. At the same time, American arms manufacturers are eagerly selling missile shield defense systems and early warning capabilities to India. It’s all about deterrence, which was the d
riving force behind the US and Soviet economies during the Cold War. Now that same scenario is playing out in South Asia. There’s nothing like the threat of mutual annihilation to get a country to increase its military budget. The people who benefit are the arms manufacturers and contractors, what used to be called the ‘military industrial complex.’ It’s a competition, and most of the negotiations are conducted by middlemen like Guldaar, who operate outside the maze of policy restrictions and international conventions. Basically, he manages the corruption that is part of every arms deal.”
“But if the talks between the two ministers end in a stalemate, how does he benefit?”
“Guldaar represents Peregrine, in which he owns a controlling interest. His holdings may be hidden behind layers of phantom investors, but essentially he’s taken over the company in the past six months. When Guldaar came to see you three weeks ago, he flew into their testing facility in Eggleston. He met with Roger Fleischmann and several of their top executives, though they would be the first to deny it.”
“He didn’t say anything about it to me,” Daphne admitted.
“Of course not. There’s no official link between him and Peregrine, but he must control the board of directors, and the new acting CEO is probably his man. He also has his contacts in Washington and Langley, and nobody plays that network better than Guldaar.”
Afridi paused for a moment.
“Both India and Pakistan are very keen to acquire drones from Peregrine, because they can carry nuclear warheads. Unlike cruise missiles and bombs, these are light and maneuverable, relatively easy to operate, and difficult to detect. Nuclear weapons systems are no longer huge unwieldy rockets pointing at the sky. They can be operated by one or two technicians using remote control like a video game. Peregrine has two variations of the same system, UMA VII and VIII, known as Kestral and Merlin. These drones are under five feet long, with a range of five hundred kilometers. They can carry a warhead that will deliver the explosive force of the bombs that were dropped on Hiroshima. Half a dozen drones could decimate Islamabad or Delhi. NATO has been using them extensively with conventional warheads, targeting Taliban assets in the tribal areas. They are extremely accurate and virtually invisible, even with the most sophisticated radar. These are the ultimate birds of prey.”
The Dalliance of Leopards Page 28