Let Bhutto Eat Grass 2

by Shaunak Agarkhedkar

  It took him three minutes to get dressed, most of it spent trying to button his own shirt. The joints in his fingers ached with every button, but he refused to let anyone else—even his own wife—dress him. Not a word was exchanged between the couple.

  Wrestling with the steering to keep the car racing towards Main, Mishra hoped the agents had followed protocol and kept their radio sets switched on at all times. The beeps would tell them they were in trouble, and the innocuous message that followed suggested staying away from Rawalpindi and Islamabad. It was the only help the Wing could give them. They were now well and truly on their own.

  ***

  Kahuta (Pakistan)

  The barking was louder, closer this time. It could have been a pack of strays, but Faisal Baig found it ominous and started to run. The message transmitted by Jalandhar had caught him by surprise. His first thought was to suspect betrayal by the electrician. But if that truly were the case, Baig reasoned a few minutes later while walking away from his house as inconspicuously as he could, the warning wouldn’t have come from India. The local garrison would have kicked his door in and bound him up before he could move a muscle.

  Rawalpindi Road, which ran east-west through Kahuta, was the easiest way out of town and therefore the most obvious. Besides, the radio broadcast had warned against heading for Rawalpindi or Islamabad. The centrifuge facility located north of town was heavily guarded, and even if Baig managed to find a way around it without being detected, the mountains beyond it would take a heavy toll on him. He headed south instead, down a deserted Askri Street.

  For a while, he considered heading to Feroze’s house to warn him. But by the time he reached Kahuta-Kotli Road, his mind was made up. The disgust he felt deep within would go away, or he would learn to live with it. There was nothing he could do for the young man at that hour. If the authorities were aware of his treachery, Feroze was as good as dead anyway. Baig couldn’t take him along and save him. Then there was the possibility that the authorities had no clue about the asset Baig had cultivated, and if Baig sought Feroze out he might, in the process, lead them to him. His first case officer had drilled into him the futility of answering the call of one’s conscience at such moments. That and the fear of Kot Lakhpat kept his feet moving even though his chest burned each time he inhaled. Kallar Syedan was a small town about twelve miles south of Kahuta. Baig hoped to reach it well before dawn, then find someplace to hide till dusk before heading east to Mirpur.

  The road veered sharply left, and he was obliged to leave it. Irrigated early in the evening, the soil in the fields he trudged through was mucky and sucked at his boots. Willing himself with much effort, Baig covered the last two hundred yards and stood on the north bank of the Kalamhan Nullah, a noisily gurgling stream fifty yards wide. He slowly turned around, listening for the sound of barking dogs. It was faint this time, but that did not put him at ease. Steeling himself, Faisal Baig rushed into the freezing water and set off at an angle, hoping to emerge a few hundred yards upstream on the other bank.

  ***

  Sarfaraz Minhas had set off towards the north and was hobbling eastwards along the Ling River. It had claimed one shoe when he waded across it. The second one hung at chest height, a nail poking out from it, shoelaces looped around a thick neck and beginning to chafe.

  Mohri, a small village of maybe twenty families, lay on the way along the north bank. Sarfaraz knew a farmer who lived there. Perhaps the farmer could spare a left shoe. From Mohri, he would head north into the densely wooded mountains, and either hide till things played out or go further and make his way to Murree. He reached down and felt for the six-inch knife strapped under his dark brown salwar to the outside of his shin, a faithful companion that had never left his side in-country. The touch of the cold steel blade through the wet cloth was reassuring.

  He had been half awake when the loud beeps sounded through the tiny radio that the Islamabad Resident had given him. Minhas had few possessions in Kahuta, and he carried none as he set off a minute later. The long hikes he had gone on with shepherds in search of air defence sites came in handy on that dark, moonless night, and he was able to stay on course for Mohri without a flashlight. Every rough stone that found its way underfoot brought forth a sharp prayer from his lips. He had to get away, he told himself over and over. The wind blowing along the river and through flat fields cut deep past wet clothes, chilling him to the bone. If he stopped he might not continue, he thought.

  ‘One more yard, one more yard,’ he kept mumbling to himself over and over.

  The journey to Murree would be long and tortuous, and if he made it to that hill station and then somehow found his way back to India, Minhas swore he would never ever let himself feel cold.

  ‘No more wading through cold water or standing in the wind. I will wrap myself in the thickest clothes I can buy, and sit before a raging fire for the rest of my days,’ he promised himself.

  If firewood became too dear, he would move to a village with hot springs. Cold was insidious. He had seen it take away a person’s senses and rob him of his mind. He had to get away, put one foot in front of the other, relentlessly, yard after yard.

  ***

  On reaching his office at Main, the first thing Mishra did was to send a cable to each Resident in Pakistan.

  ‘Network compromised in Punjab. Mitigating damage. Imperative you avoid contact with own agents till further orders.’

  The counter-intelligence division of the ISI was certain to dedicate extra resources towards embassy and consulate surveillance, hoping to identify which Indian diplomats were panicking. By ordering his men to stand down, Mishra sought to head off those efforts.

  His next act was to call Sablok’s apartment. The young Case Officer would bring Arora in with him. After this flurry of activity, Mishra took a few deep breaths to focus his mind, then rummaged through his safe for files on each of the agents infiltrated into Kahuta. If the deep state hadn’t intercepted them before the warning went through, then there was a chance they could escape. The odds weren’t good, but people had survived through worse conditions. The files would yield a glimpse into the agent’s past behaviour, and from it they could infer the agent’s next steps.

  After a burst of random actions at the beginning meant to throw those in pursuit off their scent, the agent would eventually return to familiar patterns while fleeing certain death or worse. It took exceptional discipline to remain chaotic and avoid people, places, routes, and habits that were familiar and safe, and Mishra reasoned that if any of the agents was capable of that, the Wing had no way of helping them. But perhaps, in that case, they wouldn’t need any. He began with Kishan Lal.

  Upon their arrival, Mishra handed Sablok and Arora a file each and sat them down in a meeting room adjoining his office.

  ‘Our network in Kahuta might be compromised,’ he began once the heavy door was shut to the outside world. ‘Our agents have already been instructed to escape—’

  ‘How?’ Sablok asked.

  ‘Radio,’ Arora quietly ventured, glancing at Mishra who nodded confirmation.

  ‘No, how was the network compromised?’ Sablok probed.

  ‘There will be time enough for analysis, Captain. For now I need you two to go through one file each and have a profile ready for discussion within the hour.’

  Mishra’s reply emphasised the urgency and ended all discussion.

  Arora was quick off the blocks, diving into Sarfaraz Malik’s file before Mishra had even finished speaking. Sablok appeared preoccupied. He sat there with the file still shut and stared at a smudge of someone’s oily palm on the wall opposite him. After Mishra had left, Arora asked why he hadn’t begun yet.

  ‘How did they discover our operation?’ Sablok’s words rushed out. ‘More importantly, how did Chief Mishra receive this news before us? The Duty Officer—’

  ‘Captain, this is not the time,’ Arora replie
d forcefully. This wasn’t the first time a network had blown up on him. ‘Those men in Kahuta need us to do our job. Idle speculation won’t help them right now.’

  Without waiting for a response, the old case officer returned his attention to the file before him. Sablok followed suit a few moments later.

  After half an hour, as each man was beginning to see prospects within a decade’s worth of information, Mishra walked in with the Director in tow.

  ‘I’m not here to give a rousing speech. We are all professionals. The Director of the Bureau has offered the use of their guides should any of our people make it to the border or LoC.’

  ‘Sir, the Pakistanis will begin aggressive patrolling in anticipation,’ Mishra replied.

  ‘Yes, but there are ways to defeat those measures. We will also look to divert attention over the next few days. I’m headed to the PMO to try and convince the Prime Minister to launch air strikes post-haste.’

  Mishra shook his head.

  ‘We have to try, damn it!’ the Director exclaimed, looking pointedly at Mishra. Then, softening the tone of his voice, he added, ‘For now, we focus on enabling escape. But we will also attempt to salvage the networks they built in Kahuta. Questions?’

  There were many, but none were articulated to the Director that night.

  ***

  Faisal Baig was exhausted. Treading upstream was harder than expected: the current was strong, the water cold as ice, and the smooth round stones that covered the riverbed caused him to stumble often.

  In the dark, he was unsure of how far he had travelled. Although the sound of barking had faded, it could have been because the noise of the nullah drowned out other sounds. Baig trudged on, but after stumbling badly twice in the space of five steps, he made his way to the far bank and sank to the ground, gulping a lungful of air with each breath.

  As his breathing calmed, he heard footsteps. It sounded like a single person, tapping a heavy lathi to ward off snakes. There was a crunch underfoot as if he was walking on loose gravel. Peering into the gloom, Baig couldn’t even see the glimmer of a torch. He rose to his feet, unsteady, and felt for the packet he had tied to his waist. It was still there.

  Feeling his way along the steep bank, searching for footholds to climb out of the channel, he scrambled up fifteen feet of wet mud. Thick brush now blocked his path, and it took him quite a while to find a way through without making noise. In the distance, he saw the odd fire flicker on a farm and was tempted to walk over and borrow some heat to sustain himself. Instead, he followed the course of the nullah upstream and came across a gravel road. To his left, it went over a rickety bridge and turned towards Kahuta, which he could identify from the glow of yellow lights at the centrifuge facility. Baig turned right and began walking down the road.

  In the faint starlight, he thought his watch showed eleven.

  ***

  By 2 a.m. the team had finished identifying a list of places where each agent was likely to seek shelter and assets that could be approached. The possibility of providing assistance was being discussed. Mishra had already ruled out involving Residents, so their options were limited. When the Director returned a few minutes after the clock struck two, Arora, Sablok, and Mishra fell silent.

  The Director sank into the plush sofa in Mishra’s office, then leaned forward, elbows digging into his own thighs, palms pressing against his eyes and rubbing them vigorously.

  ‘The Prime Minister ruled out air strikes, didn’t he?’ Arora spoke.

  The Director sat back and looked up. He nodded.

  ‘A drink, sir?’ Sablok asked.

  Mishra shot him a look, but Sablok’s attention remained on the deflated soul sitting on the sofa.

  ‘No, thank you,’ the Director replied a few moments later. ‘Do you mind if I smoke in your office, Mishra?’

  Mishra did not mind.

  ‘Why?’ he finally asked after the Director had taken a few drags.

  His boss exhaled slowly, letting out a ring of smoke. The sight appeared to amuse him. He smiled.

  ‘The almighty risk of escalation, Mishra. The people who would have to find the money to fight it are in agreement that the nation cannot afford war so soon after nineteen seventy-one.’

  ‘Does they not understand that the moment the Pakistanis get a nuclear weapon, our superiority in conventional terms will be nullified?’

  ‘They worry that the cost of defending our conventional superiority may be too great for our nation to bear. In any case they aren’t convinced by the premise.’

  ‘Fulda Gap,’ Arora blurted.

  ‘Pardon me?’ the Director replied.

  ‘If we ever go to war with them and our armoured divisions race across the Thar and Punjab, the Pakistanis may be tempted—if we’re on the verge of victory, of course—to use nuclear weapons to stop our thrusts. Just as NATO plans to stop Soviet tank columns in the Fulda Gap,’ Arora explained.

  ‘Yes, I quite understand that,’ the Director replied, unable to contain his irritation, ‘And evidently the PM does too. But he is unwilling to risk war at this point.’

  ‘Why?’ Mishra asked.

  ‘There are many reasons: economic, philosophical, social. Who knows which ones prevailed?’

  ‘That’s no answer, sir,’ Mishra quipped, then added, ‘With all due respect.’

  The Director paused and took a drag. This time he turned away from them to leisurely blow smoke.

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ he agreed. ‘But all I know is that the PM is convinced action against Kahuta will trigger all-out war. And it doesn’t take an economist to realise that our economy cannot survive another war so soon after ‘71. Which brings me to our networks in Kahuta. What is your assessment about salvaging them?’

  ‘If Jilani Khan’s men were idiots, our chances would be decent,’ Mishra replied, drawing a wan smile from his boss. ‘Perhaps the service chiefs and the RM might prevail upon the Prime Minister to order that strike, sir. The Air Force’s plan banks upon the element of surprise, and that is about to be lost.’

  ‘Forget about the air strikes, Mishra, and focus on getting those men out. If their network survives, we may revisit sabotage.’

  ‘The town will be crawling with counter-intelligence now, sir. That facility will be the most well-guarded piece of land west of the Jhelum. Even if the network survives, re-activating it and supporting it through sabotage will require a series of miracles. I’ve been at this job for nearly three decades now, and I’m yet to see a single one of those occur. Either we press the Prime Minister into ordering action, or we sit back and watch Zia get his hands on a nuclear bomb. It’s as simple as that,’ Mishra protested.

  ‘The Prime Minister cannot be so naive as to not understand the consequences of not acting now, sir,’ Arora chimed in, still hopeful.

  ‘Of course not. The Prime Minister is many things, but he isn’t naive.’

  ‘Then he must be made to see reason,’ Arora sputtered. ‘He cannot stand by and watch as years of hard work gets washed down the bloody drain.’

  ‘The Prime Minister intends to do just that, Mister Arora. It serves his purpose just fine. His concerns are about the economy this year. What Pakistan does in a decade’s time, after it has a working bomb, isn’t his concern, not just yet. And then there are arguments that Mutually Assured Destruction—like in the case of the Americans and the Soviets—would be sufficient to guarantee that war won’t break out in the future.’

  ‘Sir, I know this isn’t the best time but I have a question that only you can answer,’ Mishra said. His voice was cold as ice.

  ‘Now is not the time, Mishra,’ the Director replied, anticipating what Mishra was about to ask.

  ‘I was informed a few hours ago that by far the most critical network I ever helped set up has been compromised. Now is the perfect time to ask: who compromised it? And how did you find
out?’

  The Director said nothing. After a few moments, Mishra continued, ‘Had it been compromised in Pakistan—had one of the assets or our Resident been careless—then the warning would have come in from Pakistan, from Islamabad. The warning would have been in the form of a cable which the Duty Officer would have read and logged. Then he would have called the Chief of the Pakistan Section—me—and I, in turn, would have called you. What happened today, however, was the other way around. You informed me that the network was compromised. At first I didn’t understand what had happened. When I arrived in this building earlier, I was livid at the Duty Officer for having bypassed me and informed you. After I gave these two their tasks, I walked down to the Duty Officer’s room and questioned him. He said there had been no incoming cables from Pakistan. I refused to believe him. Why should I? If my Director knew about an incident that happened in my Section before I did, someone had bypassed the bloody chain of command. I asked him again...in a more persuasive manner this time. Hands trembling, he showed me the Duty Officer’s log—it was empty. I could choose to believe him, or I could have our engineers take that Teletext apart and find out exactly what passed through it these past few hours. I’m yet to make up my mind.’ Mishra paused. The Director stared at him, but wouldn’t speak. ‘Another possibility I entertained was that the Resident had, for some reason best known to him, sent the cable directly to you,’ Mishra continued. ‘So I walked to your office. It was shut. I walked down to Security and checked the entry log. Your name wasn’t on it. You hadn’t entered Main all day today, sir, certainly not before you rang my house. So the message hadn’t come from Pakistan directly to you. Which brings us to the operative question, sir: how did you find out about the compromised network?’

  The Director looked Mishra in the eye. ‘It is not in the interest of this organisation to probe that angle any further, Section Chief Mishra. I’m ordering you to direct your energies towards salvaging that network.’

  ‘And that is exactly what we shall do, sir. But I would like to place before you a hypothesis, sir.’