“That’s exactly my point. He is shameless and will go to any length. If it suited his purpose, Maqsood would have let Nawaz Chandio fuck him up the ass. He made it a public issue, knowing the UF would pounce on it because they have it in for Dr. sahib. And Maqsood knows that when Dr. sahib is pushed, he is only ever going to turn to you because you’re the only one he can trust to do the job right. In this case, the UF and Maqsood have the same objectives. If the slightest thing goes wrong, they are going to nail you to the wall.”
Akbar sighed. “What can I do, Consendine? Dr. sahib is crawling up the walls. He calls me every two hours for an update. It’s become a matter of prestige for him to at least have Nawaz’s guards arrested, even if he can’t get Nawaz himself. Dr. sahib is either shouting at me, or pleading with me to maintain his izzat. YaAllah, even in the worst days in Orangi, the pressure was never this terrible.”
“Don’t play their game. Don’t get trapped in a situation where there is no escape hatch. They want you to disarm Nawaz Chandio’s gunmen, but you cannot arrest him. You saw what he did to Maqsood when Shashlik was in his custody. You think he is going to stand around politely and allow you to disarm and detain his beloved fidayeen? Akbar, remember one thing—if anything goes wrong, and the chances of that happening are extremely high, none of these barey log are going to support you. Tarkeen, the Bleak House wallahs, all of them are going to refuse to acknowledge you even. Walk away now, while you can.”
“Look, I know Tarkeen isn’t going to help anymore. He’s still sore about me working for the Bleak House wallahs. But Dr. sahib is another matter. He has never backed away from supporting me. Remember that time, back in Orangi, when Hanuman was willing to throw me to the wolves over the killing of Adnan Doodhwala? It was Dr. sahib who stood firm. He didn’t even know me then, but he still supported me and even got me promoted. When he became IG for the second time, he was the one who brought me back from the wilderness and gave me another promotion. How can I say no to him when he needs me the most? As long as he is there, he will watch over our interests. I am sure he will never let any harm come to me.”
“And what if he is no longer in a position to help you. What happens then?”
Akbar looked up at Constantine with a look of bewilderment, as if he had never considered this prospect. His brow furrowed; he took a deep breath and then exhaled. He went back to working on whatever he had been working on, while Constantine sat quietly across from him, more worried than ever. He had always thought Akbar was indestructible, the super policeman who had no weakness. But at that moment, he realized that at last he had finally seen the chink in Akbar’s armor. It was that he had too much faith in the people he held dear. In an imperfect world, in a profession that taught one very early on to become an arch realist, Akbar, by some crazy quirk of fate, had remained an optimist. He wished, in that moment, that Akbar had had some other vice, like booze or women. Optimism was the ultimate sin, as far as Constantine was concerned.
“Look, Consendine, I’ve been thinking. We, uh, have a couple of leads to follow up on tomorrow. We won’t be able to cover all of them unless we split up. See, one informer says he is almost certain to attend this political meeting in Garden. He’s even prepared a speech for the occasion. But on the other hand, there’s another report that he may go and visit the family of one of his old fidayeen. The family lives in a village near Jamshoro. Why don’t you trace down the Jamshoro lead. If he’s there, you can call me and we can set up a checkpoint to stop him on his way back into the city.”
“Isn’t that report out of date and unconfirmed? No one really thinks he’s going to drive out to the middle of nowhere just to pay his respects to the family of one of his retainers.”
“Well, it may be improbable, but we can’t rule it out. I think you should go and check it out while I do a setting for the public meeting in Garden. You know, just in case. I really need you to go.”
“Okay.”
He had pretended to hesitate, pretended that he was trying to digest the logic of the trip to the village. He had thought that his momentary contemplation was a good act that Akbar wouldn’t see through. But his consent had come just a nanosecond too quickly, the inflection in his voice, in spite of his efforts to deliberately make it sound reluctant, was a tad too enthusiastic. He knew that Akbar must have seen through him in an instant.
The truth was that Akbar had thrown him a lifeline out of this mess, and he hadn’t been shy about accepting it. He also knew that if the situation had been reversed, Akbar would never have chosen to leave his side to go on a wild-goose chase in the middle of the desert. But even that wasn’t the worst part of this. The worst part was that, even as he sat in the boiling cabin of the pickup, his guilt at having abandoned his friend eating him up from within like a cancer, he knew that if offered the same choice again, he would still choose the same way. This was not some momentary lapse of courage that overcame him. This was the fundamental difference between Akbar Khan and Constantine D’Souza.
The dust had limited the visibility from inside the pickup. It was hardly a problem though, because no other vehicle was expected to be on this lonely road. That was why both the driver and Constantine were slow in noticing the cloud of dust that was headed towards them from the opposite direction. The driver assumed it was a dust storm, and it was only when the motorcade was barely meters away that the driver realized his mistake. He reacted instinctively, jamming his brakes and swerving the pickup off the road at the same time. Constantine, who had been so lost in his thoughts that he had still not realized what was going on, cursed loudly as they swerved off the metal road onto the ditch, or bund, that ran parallel to the road.
Constantine hit his head on the roof of the car and was disorientated for a second. He looked around the cabin and saw that the windscreen was cracked where his driver had hit his head on it. A trickle of blood was flowing from his forehead. Now caked with dust, Constantine stepped out of the cabin. One of his guards had been thrown off the back of the pickup and had landed clear of the vehicle in the bund. The other was still in the back, clutching on to his rifle desperately. Thankfully, neither seemed to be seriously injured. The dust from the incoming motorcade still lingered on the road, but through it, Constantine could see that there were at least five cars travelling at very high speed. All the vehicles seemed to be filled with gun-toting men. Constantine cursed once again and wondered what sort of self-important son of a bitch was travelling here, in the absolute middle of nowhere, with such a convoy. There were no big landlords or feudals in this area. The only place that Constantine knew of at the end of this road was the small village where Akbar’s informer had claimed that Nawaz was to make an appearance. But that report couldn’t have been true. Nawaz Chandio would never come to such a godforsaken place. Would he?
Constantine turned to look at the motorcade. It was already a blur in the distance, so he couldn’t make out the faces of the men, or the number plates on the cars. But he could see one thing quite clearly, in the distance. The middle car in the motorcade was a fire-engine red Pajero.
The realization of what had just happened struck Constantine at that moment. He rushed to the cabin of the pickup. The driver had gotten himself out and had managed to wipe off the blood from his forehead. But he and the two guards were now bent over the wheel, examining what appeared to be a broken axle. Constantine cursed again and asked them how long it would take to fix the axle. They assured him that they would try their best, but it was no small problem to fix, especially as they were stuck in the middle of nowhere. He took his mobile phone from his pocket and dialled Akbar’s number, but there was no reception this far out in the desert. He tried frantically several times, each time his fingers jabbing the dial pad that much more violently, but to no avail. He was powerless to do anything at this moment. He cursed once again, and sat down in a pile of dirt.
Nawaz Chandio turned in his seat and stared behind at the distinctive blue police pickup now lying in the ditch by the si
de of the road. He was about to berate his driver for his rashness, but then he turned and looked more intently at the pickup. The vehicle’s doors had “Karachi Police” stencilled on them. What was a Karachi Police pickup doing out here? Only then did it occur to him that the only possible reason for that car to be here was to get him.
The day after the storming of Maqsood Mahr’s office, his brother Yousaf had warned him to go underground for a while. The inspector general had not taken kindly to one of his stations being attacked. But Nawaz had done the opposite. He was not some kind of fugitive, hiding in caves or nondescript apartments, constantly on the run. Besides, he was beginning to suspect that there was some truth behind the rumors that Yousaf had become jealous of his popularity and wanted him out of his way, at least for a while.
Every day, newspaper headlines screamed about how the inspector general had vowed to bring to justice those individuals who thought themselves to be above the law. The reference was pointedly at Nawaz, and the press faithfully reported how the police had set up a high-profile team to secure the arrest of his followers. Some of the tabloids had begun to keep day-by-day accounts of the progress of the so-called manhunt. But the funny thing was that, for all the hype created, no one had come to him directly, either to ask for his arrest or the surrender of his men. Nawaz found that more than a little odd, and that’s where he suspected foul play on the part of his brother. For it was only on the CM’s orders that the police would refrain from arresting him directly.
He didn’t have a problem going to jail. That was the best possible thing for his political career. Jail was to subcontinental leaders what Oxbridge or the Ivy League were to their western counterparts—a finishing school where the true pedigree of a leader could be given its final touches. It was a rite of passage without which the public would never quite trust you. Nawaz’s father had been revered for doing it. Even Yousaf, in his own way, had deemed it necessary for his political career to suffer prolonged periods of house arrest. So, in fact, Nawaz welcomed the opportunity.
One of Yousaf’s aides had suggested to him that it would be expedient for him to hand over a couple of his fidayeen to the police. They would immediately secure bail, and it would assuage Dr. Death’s ego. The man who delivered this message had been lucky to escape with all his body parts intact. Such a move was unconscionable to Nawaz. He would enter the prison gates before any of his men. His only condition was that he would not meekly offer himself up for arrest at the local police station. According to his own code, he did not think he had done anything wrong. If Dr. Death wanted him that bad, then he would have to show the balls to come and get him, to arrest him like a real man. Nawaz would not abide by one of those backroom deals that his brother was so fond of.
Therefore, Nawaz was even more surprised to see the police pickup, because it was the first tangible sign in four days that the police were even interested in arresting him. He thought it was a bit silly of Dr. Death to have sent this solitary vehicle with its four or five occupants, to arrest Nawaz Chandio. This battered old pickup could hardly be representative of the elite team of police professionals that the press claimed Dr. sahib had put together to capture him. Perhaps, he thought, it was his overactive imagination working overtime. It could just as well be a coincidence that the pickup was on the same road in the middle of the desert.
For a moment, he considered stopping and turning back to question the police constables. Then he remembered that he had promised his daughter Samar to be home in time for her birthday party. She was turning sixteen today, and she was his pride and joy. Nawaz had attained the joys of fatherhood relatively late in life. And many, including his Swiss wife, thought that a life lived exclusively in the company of violent young men in the wilds of Afghanistan, or worse, amidst the fleshpots of Geneva and Zurich, made him particularly ill-suited to be the father of a young girl. But his heart had melted the first time he saw his daughter’s sparkling blue eyes. He had been a model father, and those who had known him for years felt that baby Samar had made her doting father a more temperate person. Several times, he had only half jokingly suggested to Shashlik Khan that he would give up politics if his daughter so commanded. Such statements always made Shashlik extremely nervous.
He took one more look back at the pickup, then stared at his watch. Karachi was still another couple of hours away, and the sun would have set by the time he got home. He wouldn’t be able to keep his promise to Samar if he stopped now. Besides, as he kept saying, if the damned cops wanted him that badly, all they needed to do was to knock on his door.
“Hello? Hello? Consendine, what are you saying? I can’t hear you, your voice is cutting out . . .”
The no-connection tone that came on was beginning to infuriate Akbar. The phones had been like this since Constantine’s first garbled message two hours ago. Mobile phone signals were iffy that far out in the interior. Akbar had managed to catch bits of Constantine’s conversation, just enough to understand that apparently Constantine had spotted Nawaz Chandio on his way back to the city. Meanwhile, Akbar had been present at the event where Chandio was supposed to have shown up at. He had never thought that Chandio would actually go to a nondescript village just to pay his respects to the kin of one of his old retainers.
Luckily, Constantine had been able to pass on the information. Akbar calculated that it would take Chandio at least two hours to get back to town. The best place to set up a check post was at the toll plaza, just outside the city. Chandio would have to cross from there. Akbar quickly moved his team into place. He stared at his watch. By his estimate they were in time, but the problem was he didn’t know what he was up against. He had no clue how many people Nawaz was coming with, whether they were all armed or not, or whether they would resist arrest.
If Constantine had been around, he would never have let Akbar set up this checkpoint. He had argued that creating a confrontational situation like this would inevitably lead to a violent response from Chandio. Akbar couldn’t deny Constantine’s logic. Chandio was a raging bull. The slightest provocation set him off. And it wasn’t like the old days with the ward bosses. In that case, the department bosses, the Agencies, and the politicians had all been on the same page. Now, no one was quite sure what to do about Nawaz Chandio. Sure, Dr. Death had made his arrest a point of prestige for the police, but Akbar suspected that even the good doctor didn’t quite know how to sort out this mess. What was it Constantine had said last night—What if the Doctor himself isn’t in a position to help us?
For the first time in his life, Akbar actually thought about pulling out of an operation. He was getting a bad feeling about this. He stood on the side of the highway, watching the cars and buses race by, the ash on his cigarette tipping over onto the ground. He was a creature of instinct, always had been. That had been the true secret of his success. He jumped forward where others feared to tread, because he didn’t tie himself up in thinking about what might happen. But today, all his instincts were screaming at him not to go through with this operation.
He shook his head vigorously, as if to shake off the cobwebs of doubt from his mind. The cards had already been dealt. Akbar was a great believer in fate. He believed that fate had brought him to where he stood today. If things were going to go bad, then there was nothing he could do about it.
One of his bodyguards signalled to him. A motorcade was approaching. Even from this distance, the red Pajero was clearly visible. It was in the lead now, having left the other jeeps a little distance behind. The driver seemed to be in a hurry to get home. Akbar saw a glint of hope in that. Maybe this day wouldn’t turn out to be so bad after all.
He ordered his men to allow the Pajero to pass through the checkpoint unmolested. They were to pay no heed at all to the Pajero. At the speed he was going, he would be yards ahead by the time the back-up vehicles found themselves blocked. That way, Akbar’s men could quickly disarm Chandio’s fidayeen. The highway had no U-turns, so Akbar planned to be long gone by the time Chandio’s vehic
le could make its way back to this point. Akbar smiled to himself. When he had just recited it to himself in his head, it had seemed like one of those plans that a kid worked out on the back of a matchbox. It left too many things to chance. But it was the best he could come up with in five minutes, so he would go with it.
As the red Pajero came closer, Akbar recognized the now familiar face of Nawaz Chandio sitting in the back seat. His heart started racing. This plan depended on inch-perfect timing, a quality that the Karachi Police was not famous for. Today, though, for about two minutes it seemed as if Akbar’s men would truly surpass themselves. They dropped the barrier to block Chandio’s backup vehicles with perfect precision. Their weapons were already trained on the cars by the time the fidayeen had figured out what was going on. Akbar cast a nervous glance towards Chandio’s jeep. The driver had almost reached the toll barrier 400 yards ahead. In seconds he would cross the tolls, making it that much more difficult to turn the car around. Once the toll barrier was crossed, Akbar reckoned he had at least twenty minutes to wrap things up over here.
Just then, he heard a whistling sound. Something, a projectile of some sort, hit the pavement near his feet. As Akbar bent to see what the object was, he heard one of his guards shout, “They’re firing at us!” He turned again to look towards the toll barrier. Just centimeters from it, the driver had noticed something was amiss, and Akbar could see the Pajero now hurtling towards him in reverse. He tried to scream, but he couldn’t hear his own voice above the din of the automatic weapons fire. He was in the worst possible spot, stuck right in the middle of the cross-fire zone. He hugged the pavement, frantically waving his arms to get his men to stop firing. He looked towards the Pajero again, to see if it was going to run him over. Its velocity seemed to have slowed down. The fire-engine red body was now riddled with bullet holes, and there was nothing left of the back windscreen except shards of glass.
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