The Phoenix Page 12

  ‘He didn’t seem worried at all,’ Asra said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Eymen resumed. ‘He was portraying a false sense of confidence. I could see that about him.’

  Asra didn’t say anything.

  ‘I just caught up on all the news too, Asra. It may have been a small article that could mean nothing, but I read about a police standoff with some criminals. And then I saw a clip too, filmed by locals. Lior’s guard was in it.’

  Asra sat up and drank some water. ‘It’s nothing to worry about. My boss assured me. But, if you must know . . .’

  Eymen held his breath. A shadow of worry began to form on his face.

  ‘Lior was arrested by Turkish officials.’

  Eymen went into a state of shock, cursing out loudly and covering his face with his hands. He punched the bed hard.

  ‘I knew it,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘That son of a bitch had trouble written all over him. I don’t even think he is arrested. He would sell his mother for the right price. He must have sold the information about our attack to the intelligence authorities!’

  Eymen, almost red in the face, was now pacing around the room.

  ‘We have reasons to believe he has been actually arrested,’ Asra said. ‘My boss is certain about that.’

  ‘And how can he be so sure?’

  Asra thought, Maybe I should tell him. After all, the man is committed to his cause.

  ‘You have to tell me now, Asra. Or I go ahead with this attack by myself. As you rightly pointed out, I don’t mind if I die in my mission.’

  Asra got to her feet and walked up to Eymen. She put a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘My boss spoke about an entity, much bigger than all of us combined, that is masterminding this attack.’

  ‘So?’ Eymen asked, fuming.

  ‘So that entity has people everywhere,’ Asra said. ‘And when it wants things done, it sees them through till the end.’

  Signs of exhaustion were visible on Eymen’s face. He sat on the edge of the bed with a sigh, and Asra sat beside him.

  ‘I don’t give a fuck about any entity.’ Eymen’s voice had lowered. ‘This plan will not stop. I won’t let it stop. I have dreamed of the day I make India crumble.’

  There was anger in his eyes but also vulnerability. She placed her hand on his thigh.

  ‘Relax,’ she said. ‘It will be done. Now tell me your story?’

  Eymen watched Asra’s hand sliding up his thigh.

  ‘Or do you want to tell me in a bit?’ She smiled suggestively.

  Asra had received very strict orders during her days at the PIA training camp about not using sex as a tool unless it was absolutely necessary to do so, or unless she was instructed to do so by those in charge. This rule especially came into effect when she was dealing with an asset. There was always a chance that the man, or even she, might form a romantic attachment, which was sure to jeopardize the plan. But this particular case, to her mind, was different. Besides, she had her own needs to fulfil. And she was sure Eymen had those needs too.

  After having made love to her twice, Eymen lay spent on the bed. He had been surprisingly gentle with her. She was discovering something new about him every day. And now, she was about to discover the truth about him.

  He looked at her naked body and then into her eyes.

  ‘Believe it or not,’ Eymen said. ‘I was once a man of service myself. About six years ago.’

  2011: Ibrahim Khalil, between Iraq and Turkey

  Eymen, the head of security at the Ibrahim Khalil border crossing, stood upright in his Peshmerga uniform. The frontier, although an entry point into Iraq, was controlled by the Kurdistan Regional Government. The Peshmergas—the Kurdish word translates to ‘those who face death’—were the military forces of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan. That morning, Eymen was expecting a peaceful protest at the border. He stood below the flag and kept his eye on the Kurdish protestors and on the medial personnel.

  Eymen instructed some of his subordinates to walk over to the protesters and provide them with food and water. He knew his people, the Kurds, all too well. They were simple and straightforward, and they wanted to carve out their own territory, independent of both Iraq and Turkey. The Turks and the Iraqis, predictably, had a problem with this and acted with hostility towards the Kurds. Many casualties were left in the wake of the skirmishes fought over the question of Kurdistan. But Eymen understood that a cause was a cause, and that politics was politics.

  He spotted an elderly couple at the edge of the crowd. As he drew closer, he recognized them instantly. They were his parents. He walked up to them. His father, wizened and grizzled, laid a loving hand on his head. His mother held a placard that read: ‘WE ARE NOT IRAQI!’ Many others held similar placards along with the Kurdish flag—the red, white and green tricolour with a golden sun at its centre.

  Eymen’s eyes were trained to detect things out of the ordinary. The minute he saw one protestor shouting out slogans with a gusto that seemed a touch exaggerated, he knew something was off.

  Eymen excused himself from his parents and began to make his way towards this man, wading through the crowd. The suspect, however, was considerably far away. Eymen began to call out for him. But his voice was drowned by the crowd’s sloganeering. And then, what Eymen saw frightened him beyond measure. The protestor had dropped small pouches on the ground—three pouches to be precise. He then broke away from the crowd and ran. Eymen set off after him.

  The protestor was quick on his feet, but he was no match for Eymen. As he caught up with him, Eymen saw a detonator in the protestor’s hand. He hurled the man to the ground with all his strength. And the protestor, without wasting any more time, clicked the detonator. Within seconds, the three pouches exploded, releasing a thick cloud of smoke and gas. The crowd went into a frenzy of panic, stampeding in all directions. Eymen thought of his parents. He wanted to run back and rescue them, but the man responsible for the attack lay on the ground before him, ready to dash away.

  In a split second, he took the decision. He realized his men would begin to clear out the crowds as soon as possible. So he pummelled the protestor unconscious. He lifted him on his shoulder and ran towards his vehicle, throwing the protestor in the back of the car. Then he drove straight to an intelligence safe house nearby.

  After subjecting the protestor to a few days of rigorous interrogation, Eymen discovered the truth. The gas he had detonated was sarin—a nerve agent that attacked the nervous system and caused excruciating and uncontrollable muscle contractions that made it difficult to breathe, eventually leading to death by asphyxiation. The reason the protestor gave them for the attack came as a surprise to Eymen and his men, and it was far removed from the politics of this part of the world. While the attacker was supposed to pass himself off as a Turkish man with anti-Kurdish ideals, the truth was substantially different. He was an Indian.

  The attack, Eymen was told, was a diversionary tactic used by the Russians who wanted to draw attention to the region. They would, in the meanwhile, smuggle a nuclear warhead into Azerbaijan. Turkey was involved in several shadow wars with the KGB. But with India? They were supposed to be allies. And naturally, when this news reached them, the Indian authorities denied and condemned the attack, although they conceded that the assailant was probably an Indian. But for Eymen, things had become personal, and he was in no mood to go with the narrative that was being forced upon him. Henceforth, he would do what he felt was right in pursuing his vendetta.

  Asra saw Eymen’s eyes welling up. She handed him a bottle of water which he drained in one go.

  ‘What happened to the Indian? Was India involved in the interrogation? Was he proven to be a mercenary or was India in the know?’

  Eymen let out a dry laugh.

  ‘I snapped his neck soon after he confessed. I knew he was politically motivated. Not a gun-for-hire, even though there was no proof to tie him to the Indian government. I was dismissed by my seniors. Let off easily, since they knew I
was right. But I had to leave my motherland. And . . .’

  ‘And?’

  ‘My parents succumbed to the gas,’ he said, choking up. ‘The gas detonated by a fucking Indian. They died a painful death. Disintegrated before my eyes within days. And I will make the Indians go through what they made my parents and my people go through.’

  Eymen held Asra firmly.

  ‘I will carry out this attack. You leave if you have to. Tell your bosses I went rogue. I wasn’t in your control. But nothing can stop me. I will do it their way. An eye for an eye . . .’

  Asra’s phone buzzed. She broke out of his embrace and saw a message from Ashraf Asif. Eymen watched her read it over the next few minutes. She looked at Eymen with half a smile.

  ‘You don’t have to do the attack. You don’t have to die for their sins. This man will do it for us.’

  She raised her phone in the air. There was a picture of Aryaman on the screen.

  17

  Covert IRW unit, Mumbai

  Randheer, with Aryaman beside him, drove past a security checkpoint after flashing his ID card. They were visiting Avantika in a makeshift facility where she was attempting to produce batches of the antidote. So far they hadn’t received any positive updates from her. In fact, the bad news had got them to drive to the facility. They had no idea what they were going to do exactly. Moral support perhaps. But the clock was ticking and even moral support wouldn’t amount for much now.

  Aryaman got out of the vehicle and entered the building that had a grey and drab façade. From the inside, however, the building seemed considerably sleek. Steel walls and wooden flooring adorned its large foyer. Randheer went towards the reinforced-steel door of the laboratory and presented his card to the security guard.

  ‘By the way,’ Randheer said with a slight chuckle. ‘I told my men to be more careful about keeping an eye on your mother and child. Told them she sniffed the two of them out in no time.’

  Aryaman shrugged in response.

  ‘But they had a funny thing to say,’ Randheer continued as they put on their hazmat suits. ‘They said they never tailed her down any street on that particular day. So then I had to give them an earful for not doing their job.’

  Aryaman knitted his brows. ‘What if it was someone else? Ma couldn’t have been wrong.’

  ‘You’re paranoid,’ Randheer said. ‘Anyway, they’ll keep a constant eye on her now.’

  ‘What if they know about her?’ Aryaman said, his face showing signs of panic.

  ‘Who’s “they”?’

  ‘These fucking terrorists,’ Aryaman spat out. ‘What if they identified me after Goa? Or Turkey?’

  Randheer placed a hand on Aryaman’s shoulder. Avantika was here, as was, surprisingly, Bipin Sharma, who was overseeing everything.

  ‘I’m going to talk to my son,’ Aryaman told Randheer.

  They stepped in. When Aryaman greeted Sharma politely, he received a grouchy response and turned his attention to Avantika, who acknowledged him with a cursory nod. There were bottles of various chemicals placed next to her, as well as two dead rats in glass containers.

  ‘Any luck?’ Randheer asked her.

  She pointed at the two dead rats and then at a small metal case. ‘Trying another version of the formula,’ she said. ‘The one we had prepared earlier was slow to battle the virus. We can’t use that. It will spread like wildfire, and no amount of quarantining will help if we don’t have a formula that acts quickly.’

  ‘How long does the previous formula take to work?’

  She scratched her chin. ‘A week, perhaps. I’m trying to reengineer it, so that it can start fighting the virus in a day, tops.’

  Everyone’s eyes were fixed on the steel container in which the more potent antidote was being prepared.

  ‘Third time’s a charm,’ Randheer said.

  ‘Well, let’s hope.’

  Avantika’s hands were trembling as she filled a syringe with the colourless liquid. She walked over to a third rat that was seemingly comatose.

  ‘The genetic and biological characteristics of rats closely resemble those of humans,’ she said tiredly as she injected the fluid into the rat. ‘This little guy is infected by the virus. If he wakes up, we have made the breakthrough.’

  Aryaman glanced sideways at Sharma.

  ‘It takes a while,’ Sharma said in his flat tone. ‘Step out for a smoke?’

  ‘I don’t smoke,’ Aryaman said gruffly, his eyes settling back on the rat.

  Sharma stood up and left the room. Randheer was trying to hold back his laughter. Aryaman first smirked at him, and then the two of them burst out laughing.

  ‘The world is about to end and the two of you are giggling like schoolgirls,’ Avantika said, partly exasperated and partly amused.

  ‘Exactly why we’re laughing,’ Aryaman said. ‘If the world is ending, might as well laugh. Or maybe you can stop it from ending since you started the whole process in the first place.’

  He looked at the rat reacting to the antidote.

  ‘Give it an hour,’ Avantika said. ‘Let’s hope this works.’

  The three of them took their seats in a corner. When Sharma re-entered the room after a few minutes, Aryaman turned to Avantika and asked her, in mock earnestness, ‘Smoke?’

  Randheer turned red in the face, trying to control his chuckle.

  ‘Why not,’ Avantika said.

  They unzipped their hazmat suits and walked out of the facility. He lit a cigarette first for her and then one for himself.

  ‘I’m sorry that you have to go through all this, Avantika. But only you can get us out of this.’

  She blew out a cloud of smoke resignedly, her eyes meeting his.

  ‘Well, if it hadn’t been for you, I would’ve been dead by now,’ she said. ‘Either killed or committed suicide. I don’t think I could cope with this by myself.’

  Aryaman looked at his watch as Avantika placed a hand on his injured shoulder.

  ‘Besides, I haven’t seen someone go to this extent to protect his country. Aryaman, whether or not the attack happens, nobody can accuse you of not trying your best.’

  Aryaman finished the cigarette and turned towards the facility.

  ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘But this antidote had better fucking work. Or this attack will kick-start World War Three.’

  They walked back into the facility, where a horrified Randheer awaited them. Sharma rubbed the bridge of his nose nervously as he pointed at the rat.

  ‘It hasn’t worked,’ he said. ‘The rat’s dead. We’re fucked.’

  Avantika examined the rat, which showed no signs of life. She burst into tears. The pressure was mounting and time wasn’t on their side. Aryaman, too, had a lump in his throat.

  ‘I can try again,’ she said, sniffling. ‘I can try again.’

  ‘Sir,’ Aryaman said to Sharma. ‘Let her give this another shot. But I think we need to get back to the headquarters and rethink our strategy, taking into consideration that there is no effective antidote. The bomb cannot go off at any cost.’

  Dehradun

  ‘Is this happening because of Pakistan?’ Aditya asked his grandmother in his innocent, endearing way. ‘Are they doing this to us?’

  Aarti looked a little taken aback at the suddenness of the question. She had to answer carefully. Aditya was at an age when perceptions are formed. Perceptions that could last a lifetime.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘The Pakistani people want just what we want: peace. And then there are people who want to profit from war. Those are the people who are doing this. They are not followers of any religion and don’t represent the country they are born in. They are enemies of peace and harmony.’

  Aditya nodded. Aarti prepared a hot chocolate for him. They had closed the kitchen for the night and were waiting for the last two customers to leave. After that she would have to clean up and call it a night. She was curious to know what Aryaman was up to after their last call. He had sounded calm and composed. But stil
l, he was her son, and she knew something was worrying him when he asked her whether she had once again spotted anyone tailing her. She told him she hadn’t and that he was being paranoid. She decided to drop Randheer a message, asking him to call whenever they got the chance.

  She watched Aditya sipping his drink. Chor had placed his head on Aditya’s lap and was staring up at him, wagging his tail.

  ‘What are you thinking about, Aditya?’

  ‘I didn’t get a chance to know my dad well enough when Mom was alive,’ he said. ‘But now that he’s here, I am hoping to become like him. Weird as he may be.’

  Aarti smiled at him.

  The two customers placed the money they owed for the meal on the table, waved her goodbye and left the cafeteria.

  ‘Go clear up that table for me,’ she instructed Aditya. ‘Help me clean up. It’s late.’

  She looked at the clock: half past twelve. Aditya did as he was told. Meanwhile, Chor walked up to Aarti, who had just begun to pet him when she heard a scream.

  It was Aditya. She looked up to see the two men, their faces covered, dragging the shrieking boy out of the cafeteria. Aarti picked up the sharpest knife within her reach and tried to get to them as quickly as her aged legs allowed. Chor was quicker. He sprang into action and ran to save Aditya, barking ferociously at the attackers.

  Aarti confronted them and swiped her knife at the one holding Aditya. But the attackers were strong. A gash on the shoulder wasn’t going to change anything. Chor sank his teeth into the other attacker’s thigh. The man yelled in pain and kicked the dog aside. But Chor was unrelenting. He leapt at the attacker who held Aditya and bit into his shin.

  The ruckus caused the elderly Arora couple to wake up and peep outside their window. They were stunned at what they saw.

  ‘I hate to do this,’ one of the attackers said, pulling out a pistol with a silencer attached to it. ‘But I will kill this fucking dog and the rest of you.’

  Aarti pulled Chor away and looked at the Aroras at their window.

  ‘Go get those two who were watching us from the window,’ one of the attackers ordered the other.