The Bard of Blood Page 5

  Nihar was an expert hacker, amongst other things. He had previously intercepted a message being sent to Pakistan from somewhere in the North-East. Though he could never triangulate the location, he brought this to the notice of the rest of his team. Soon enough, what seemed like an innocent message discussing a Bollywood actor had led to the arrest of Indian Mujahideen leader Yasin Bhatkal.

  Nihar and his team were lauded for their efforts. Besides being good with a computer, Nihar was an extremely good shot. In the basement, where all the agents trained in basic gun combat, Nihar had developed a good eye for the target. Unlike his counterparts in the control room, Nihar could fire at the heart of the paper target at least four times out of five—which was rather unusual for a desk agent. But the higher authorities, who monitored them, knew that with a little polishing Nihar could well become an all-round agent, with abilities both on and off the field. A rarity amongst the rather uninteresting babus at the RAW office.

  ‘I’m going out for a smoke,’ Ivan tapped Nihar on the shoulder as he walked out. Nihar got up and followed him out of the door into the cold veranda. They saw the dry Delhi wind swoop the dust along the streets. Ivan and Nihar each lit a cigarette.

  ‘It’s funny,’ Ivan said, ‘the rest of the world is out there having a great time. And here we are, watching the fun from a fucking balcony.’

  ‘Yeah, anything new?’

  ‘Routine stuff. Unless something serious pops up,’ he continued.

  ‘This is the job we signed up for,’ Nihar said as he exhaled the smoke. His throat was drier than before. ‘I don’t know any other way to earn a living.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Ivan said. ‘Anyway, how are Trisha and the little one?’

  Nihar smiled to himself. Of late, his wife had been complaining about his rather irregular work pattern. He had no time to spend with her and their baby. Sometimes she would break down and behave irrational, and Nihar would sit calmly and explain to her how his job wasn’t the standard nine-to-five kind. He knew that his marriage was on the brink of becoming a strained one. He could decode the toughest of messages and intercept them with ease, but a woman—he thought all men would agree—was the hardest to decipher.

  ‘I promised Trisha we’d go out for dinner. She’s with the baby now.’

  ‘Any first words yet?’ Ivan chuckled as he rubbed his shaved head. ‘Apparently, I had learned to swear before I even said “Maa”.’

  ‘Well, then, you’re not meeting my kid until he says “Maa”.’

  ‘It’s about time you named him,’ Ivan said.

  Nihar’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw that it was his wife calling. It was their anniversary, and he had promised to take her out to dinner.

  ‘Hey, Trisha,’ he greeted her. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll be there at eleven. Why don’t you take the little one over and reserve a table?’

  ‘It’s ten,’ she replied. ‘Why can’t you get back home now? Is your work more important to you than me—even today?’

  ‘I will,’ Nihar said. ‘Don’t worry. Nothing can stop me from spending time with you and our baby.’

  ‘I love you,’ she said softly. She was in a good mood today. Ivan winked at a blushing Nihar.

  ‘You, too,’ Nihar said, smiling.

  ‘No,’ Trisha said. ‘Say it. Say the three damn words.’

  ‘I will when I meet you,’ Nihar replied as he flipped the finger to a laughing Ivan.

  ‘Fine, bye.’

  She disconnected the phone. Ivan held his sides as he laughed.

  ‘Go home now and surprise her. I’ll handle the work on your computer as well.’

  Nihar grinned. ‘For real?’

  ‘Yes, not like I have a wife waiting at home for me.’

  Nihar smiled, and thanked Ivan as he left the veranda and walked into the control room. He picked up his bag from the desk and said goodbye to the others in the room. As he walked out of the control room, he saw Arun Joshi walk towards him.

  ‘Aah,’ Joshi said with a plastic smile. ‘Just the person I was looking for.’

  Nihar was confused as he smiled back at Joshi.

  ‘Sir, I was planning to get home early. The baby is slightly unwell.’

  ‘Oh, you had a baby? Congratulations! But I’m afraid you’re going nowhere, Nihar. I have something important to discuss with you. Your expertise with all things technical will be required over the next few days.’

  Nihar’s heart sank. On a normal day, he would have loved to discuss something important with the Chief of RAW. But today he’d made a promise in a bid to make amends. He wondered how he would make that phone call to his wife. This might just be the end of his marriage. But then again, this was the job he had signed up for.

  31 August 2014

  Helmand Province, Afghanistan

  The night hit Afghanistan earlier than usual. Helmand, located in the southern part of Afghanistan, was amongst the largest of the thirty-four provinces of the country. It was a part of the Greater Kandahar region before it was carved out into a separate province in the twentieth century. The Helmand and Kabul regions were known as ‘White India’ in the days of pre-Islamic Afghanistan, when the Helmand river valley had a large population of Hindus and Buddhists. Currently, it is rather well developed for a province in a country that seems to have all but lost its way. A healthy fraction of its population of 15 lakh people is tribal, with the ethnic Pashtuns forming the majority. The Balochis, Tajiks and Hazaras make up the rest. And then there are the considerable number of NATO troops, which are supposed to pull out by the end of the coming year.

  ‘You can tell me when to take over the wheel, Farid.’

  Farid Azizi nodded as he slowed down the truck and moved it to the side of the road. He left the engine running as he hopped out. He took in a lungful of the cold, dry air of the desert. His head was covered in a black turban and his face wasn’t much visible behind his dense facial foliage. His companion, Abdul Samadi, took his position at the wheel. They were driving from the Lashkar Gah district into Quetta, almost 400 kilometres.

  ‘Thank you, brother. I was beginning to feel sleepy.’

  ‘I could tell,’ Samadi replied in Pashto, as he set the truck into motion again. ‘We should be at the border within an hour and a half.’

  ‘I hope they don’t trouble us too much there,’ Azizi said with a tinge of fear. ‘This is the first time I’m taking a truck across with so much opium.’

  ‘Don’t worry, brother. You haven’t been caught all these years, have you? We just hand over a little something to the Border Police and continue. Tonight should be no different. Besides, it is well known that President Karzai turns a blind eye to our business.’

  Tonight should be no different, Azizi repeated in his head.

  ‘Yes.’ Azizi sounded relieved. ‘We hand the consignment over, stay the night and get back tomorrow evening.’

  ‘Unless we get intercepted by the Americans. There is always a chance, so we cannot afford to goof up.’

  ‘I’ll take a short nap, Abdulbhai,’ Azizi said as he eased himself into a more relaxed position. ‘Wake me up when we approach the border.’

  He shut his eyes, rested his head back and then he saw it again. It happened every time he tried to sleep. There’s no point in trying to block these memories out, he thought. I’ve tried. I’ve tried hard. And then he relived that wretched day in his head all over again. Sometimes, he felt, this was the only reason that he was still able to maintain whatever little he had of his identity. It was the only factor that helped distinguish himself, Veer Singh, from his cover, Farid Azizi.

  The year was 2008, when Veer Singh, a thirty-year-old Sikh, was sent to Kabul along with Brigadier Ravi Datt Mehta on a posting for six months. Mehta had been assigned a key role as defence attaché, serving as part of India’s military and logistical help to Afghanistan. He was an experienced analyst, a sea of knowledge on the counter-insurgency operations in Kashmir and the North-East.

&n
bsp; Veer was a fresh-off-the-bench RAW agent, who had an extremely high level of endurance and a skill set to match. Being a typical Sikh, and six foot five, he was built like the side of a house. His assignment was to shadow Mehta, be his personal security guard and also serve as a link between Mehta and the HQ back in Delhi to exchange intel on a daily basis.

  On 7 July 2008, when Veer drove Mehta and an Indian Foreign Service officer Venkat Rao from their hotel to the Indian embassy in the centre of Kabul, little did he know he would not see them ever again. There was a huge rush that day, as people usually lined up at the embassy gates to apply for visas to India. The meeting that day was supposed to be of high importance and Rao had politely asked Veer to wait it out. Veer decided to take the car for a spin and probably have some morning kahva from a local stall. What happened thence is etched vividly in his mind, frame by frame.

  He drove the car out of the gate and he saw a Toyota Camry speeding towards them from the opposite direction, missing his car by a whisker. He spat out a Hindi expletive and didn’t pay it any heed. He had driven a short distance ahead, when he heard a sound that still resonates in his ear. The ground shook, his windshield shattered and his car skidded into a barricade. He staggered out, pistol ready, as he saw plumes of smoke and dust rising from the centre of Kabul city. He was within the blast radius, but luckily enough nothing seemed to have happened to him. The explosive-laden Toyota Camry was being driven by a suicide bomber and had rammed into two vehicles in the embassy and detonated.

  Veer remembered running into the smoke and seeing some people running away from it. He pulled off his turban and wrapped it around his mouth to minimize the intake of the black smoke from the bomb. He went inside, his eyes burning. He didn’t have to go far to realize that both Brigadier Mehta and Officer Rao had been burnt to a crisp. However, the top floor of the embassy didn’t look too badly damaged. He rushed upstairs, sidestepping the dead bodies and holding his breath to avoid the smell of smoke and burnt flesh, and found a few embassy personnel unhurt. Later that evening, he recalled this incident to Lieutenant General Sadiq Sheikh. He wished he had paid more attention to the speeding Camry and done something about it. If it had struck him early enough, there could have been an outside chance of him preventing the car from reaching its destination, even if it meant sacrificing himself for the well-being of his fellow countrymen.

  ‘Don’t fret over it. You did what you could. Anyway, we have reason to believe that the Haqqani Network and the ISI have a role to play in this,’ Sadiq had said, his voice as calm as ever. ‘Veer, I want you to get the rest of the ambassadors to an extraction point. After which you will await my further orders.’

  Veer did as he was told in the wee hours of the next morning. And then he got his orders. He was to be posted in Afghanistan from then on. He would be on the list of the officially dead, making him the perfect spook. Non-existent and living in the shadows. He was given the choice to accept the long-term mission or return to India. He accepted the challenge.

  The NATO and the American troops had cracked down hard on drug trafficking under the US Agency for International Development programme. Opium had brought in a lot of money into Afghanistan ever since the Soviet occupation. And once the Soviet Army was forced to withdraw, the locals resorted even more to poppy cultivation. However, there was even a phase when a reluctant collaboration between the US forces and Afghan warlords to hunt down drug traffickers spelt more chaos. They used it to settle scores with each other, in order to grow their own businesses. The most significant use of the money generated from the drug trade was the funding of terrorism—or jihad, as the other side chose to call it.

  Mullah Omar, in early 2000, had collaborated with the United Nations to eradicate heroin production in Afghanistan. ‘Allah wouldn’t approve,’ he had said. This phase led to one of the most successful anti-drug campaigns in the world, with almost three-fourths of the world’s supply of heroin being choked out. However, as soon as the Taliban was deposed and it was discovered that funds were required for their insurgency, Allah miraculously seemed to approve.

  Veer moved out of Kabul and spent time in various regions before settling in Helmand. He spent the next few years rebuilding his life. He learnt the finer nuances of Islam and studied the Hadees and the Quran, and changed his personality to blend right in with the Afghans. He was given the cover of being born to an Afghani father and a Pakistani mother, since he never quite looked entirely like an Afghan. It was easy for him to adapt, since in reality, he was an orphan, and orphans like him are quick-change artists. But even so, it took him a while to get used to. He didn’t have too many people in his past, so he was lucky in that sense. The absence of emotional baggage is essential for a good spy.

  So now here he was, an insider to the drug trafficking world of Afghanistan. He learnt the technicalities of converting raw opium into heroin using chemicals, but preferred the job of being the courier of the consignment. The job was of relatively lower risk and paid well, too.

  ‘Wake up, we’re here.’ Samadi tapped Veer on his shoulder.

  Veer got up and looked at the Afghan Border Police inspecting the truck.

  ‘Azizi, pass the bag.’

  It took a while for Veer to recall he was Azizi. It always did upon waking up.

  He passed over a bag with wads of cash and a large bag with opium. The Border policeman smiled a toothless smile as he waved the truck on into Quetta.

  A short distance into Balochistan, where there was no sign of other human beings being around, Veer requested Samadi to pull over. He wanted to take a leak. Samadi stopped the truck and got down to stretch his limbs. Veer went behind to the side of the road. It took Samadi a couple of minutes to realize Veer was taking unusually long to pee.

  He called out: ‘Farid?’

  No response. And then he shouted out louder.

  ‘FARID!?’

  Still no response. He walked towards the side of the road in search of his friend. He suddenly felt a blow to his right temple. He collapsed to the ground, unconscious. Veer kneeled over his body and strangled him with his bare hands. He got up, dumped the body into the truck and drove away. He felt a tinge of remorse, but allowed himself nothing more than that.

  The next morning, the truck, emitting the smell of burnt opium, was found torched in the middle of a deserted road. Abdul Samadi’s body was charred beyond recognition. It was Veer’s signature.

  ‘Farid Azizi here,’ said Veer into a secure line.

  ‘I take it you’re in Quetta now, Veer?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I should be in Gwadar by tomorrow.’

  Joshi had asked Veer to find a way into Balochistan the very night he had spoken to Kabir at the Office. He was instructed to meet the team at Gwadar. Veer had assured him he’d find a way and, sure enough, he had delivered on his word. Sometimes Joshi wondered if they had turned the man into a machine. Even Kabir, at the height of his career, had lacked the ruthlessness Veer possessed. In many senses, Veer was Kabir without a conscience—except taller and stronger. But he needed Kabir’s experience and brains to oversee the team he had assembled. It was the best he could muster at such short notice.

  ‘Your team will arrive shortly.’

  ‘Give me a date. And remember, sir, that I follow the Islamic calendar.’

  6

  1 September 2014

  The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Mumbai

  It is difficult for anyone to look at the Taj Mahal Palace in Colaba without associating it with the horrific attack of 26 November 2008. The hotel always stood proudly in the most elegant area of Mumbai, where the most influential in society mingled over their champagne and slightly supercilious smiles. It was a symbol of power, a power that was primarily born out of one’s wealth. But those few terrorists had wreaked havoc overnight. They had killed with ease, unflinchingly. Some even smiled as they gunned down helpless women and children. The country had been brought to a standstill, and the repercussions were long-lasting. The memory of it was d
ifficult for someone like Kabir Anand, as he thought of the glaring lacunae in the national security infrastructure he had once worked within.

  He walked past the memorial that had been set up for the victims, glancing momentarily at it. In his mind he’d sworn revenge every time he thought of the attacks. At that point there had been absolutely nothing he could have done about it. But now, I will.

  He still recalled vividly the night when it had all happened. He had been asleep, ready to go to work the next day when his cellphone began to buzz constantly with chain messages warning the recipient from stepping out. He had half a mind to call Sadiq, wanting to understand the bigger picture. But he held himself back. Instead, he drove down the next morning and watched the drama unfold from where the news reporters stood. In a reckless moment, he even tried to make a breach past the police barrier claiming to be from an intelligence unit. But he had no proof to back his identity.

  ‘The Presidential Suite on the fourth floor,’ he said to the receptionist. He gazed nonchalantly at his cellphone, while the receptionist called to confirm. He smoothed his hair with his hand and adjusted his tie. He decided to button up his blazer. Must be a media person here to interview that Afghani guy, the receptionist thought. The Afghani guy, on the face of it, was in town to conduct a seminar on terrorism and how to deal with it. The truth, however, was that the RAW chief, Arun Joshi, had requested him to come down to Mumbai for some rather urgently needed assistance. She nodded to him a few seconds later and directed him to the elevator. Kabir thanked her and took the stairs instead.

  Following his brisk climb up, he knocked at the door of the Presidential Suite. A large man, with a set jaw and a crew cut, opened it. Personal security. Afghani, without doubt. He directed him into the room, and asked him to sit on the sofa. The suite was, needless to say, luxurious. There were two pots, one with coffee and one with tea, already waiting on the little wooden centre-table. The large man nodded, and went into another room to inform the person Kabir had come to meet about his arrival.