“That’s a fucking awful codename for a terrorist.”
Harold chuckled weakly. The sound seemed wrong in the conversation they were having. “We ran A through V.”
Krivi loosened his grip on the phone. Looked at the blinking red light that indicated call active on the satellite phone. He thought about the last four years and the six months before that.
He thought about all those days and nights when he had sat and thought about nothing else but finding the person responsible for killing Gemma.
“I pull the trigger,” he said.
“Now, Krivi—"
“I come back, I ID the bastard so I get to pull the trigger and watch the life bleed out of him. Do we have a deal?”
“Krivi, I don’t think—"
“See you in another life, Harold.”
He made to press the end call button when Harold said, quickly, “Goddammit. Wait.”
Krivi waited.
“Fine. You come back, run the op and we will see where we end up. Deal?”
“I come back, run the op, ID the female, find out her connection to him and when we get the bastard; I put a bullet between his eyes. Deal.”
Harold sighed. “You always were so stubborn, Iyer. Fine. Come back and we have a deal.”
Krivi smiled. And it was a terrible thing to see. “Good. I’m glad I have the company backing me up for this. It would have been pretty messed up if I’d had to go in alone.”
“You couldn’t have done that.”
“I would have, Harold. I don’t have any other choice. I’ll see you tomorrow. All loose ends tied up. Send me the packet at the—"
“Holiday Inn, Ladakh. Yeah, I know.”
Krivi shook his head, the call ended. And every muscle in his body loosened just as his brain sharpened.
The Woodpecker. It was an awful name for a cold-blooded murderer. But there was no name suitable enough for a monster like that. And he was going to kill this monster and pay his blood debt once and for all.
Krivi took out his cellphone, the one provided by his employers and punched in speed dial two.
When his boss at the security agency picked up he said, very briefly, very clearly, “Jim. Krivi Iyer. Yeah, everything went down okay. The girl’s okay. I am calling to let you know I am done. I quit.”
Jim asked something and Krivi answered, “Why? Just something I have to take care of. No, it’s not a woman. I quit, Jim. You can wire the rest of my funds to Kashmir. Thanks.”
He shut the phone off and murmured, “It was nice working for you too.”
Three
Srinagar
May 2012
Ziya Maarten had never looked forward to early mornings till she came to Srinagar, the heartland of some of the most beautiful country she had ever seen. She’d backpacked through Europe before starting her MBA at London School of Economics, saving up for her grand adventure by working two jobs to see the Eiffel Tower, Pisa, The Coliseum and more.
Kids who bounced from foster home to foster home, quickly learnt the value of being grounded to places rather than people, early on in life. People came and went, they left you more often than not.
But places, places that you had been to, places that you dreamed about, were something else altogether.
They were permanent, forever.
People, on the other hand, were so much more inconvenient to love. They always left in the end.
And she’d experienced loss in her twenty-nine years.
In her previous job, Ziya traveled extensively for an organic chemical fertilizer company that operated out of England and had ties in China. But there had been a sense of disconnect, even though it was a largely enjoyable job.
By a stroke of luck, or fate, depending on how you viewed it, her college roommate from Trinity – Noor Saiyyed, a Kashmiri princess via Mayfair – had told Ziya that one of her distant relations had an interesting job opening back in Kashmir.
That of managing a fairly large estate and the various business concerns that made up Goonj Enterprises, one of which was manufacturing cricket bats, the most popular sport in the sub-continent. Ziya had been hard-pressed to not at least give the interview a fair shot.
She had flown into Srinagar Airport, after a connecting journey filled with innumerable delays.
Ziya had been fully prepared to turn down the job, because she didn’t think she was suited to just settle down in one place, no matter how interesting and challenging the running of it was.
She had not counted on Kashmir.
Her first view of the mountains that ringed the hilly terrain of Srinagar made her catch her breath. Her second view of the Dal Lake, totally frozen in winter, with the houseboats moored in for the duration like soldiers hunkering down for the long haul, had clutched at her heart. And she’d wanted this job, the managing of an estate she knew almost nothing about, with a desperation that still worried her.
Kashmir was a place, you could love a place.
But, she loved Goonj too. The house of wood and stone, set high up in the hills, overlooking the lake, which flickered like bright jewels on a clear spring night that she could see down her bedroom window. It was a challenging job, overseeing the different business interests of the Akhtar family, all of whom were settled in other parts of the world and wanted nothing to do with the house and the business.
She loved the owner of Goonj too – Dada Akhtar.
Ziya sighed as she looked out her bedroom window and saw Dada Akhtar puttering around with his beloved rose bushes, his tiny gardening scissors going snip-snip on the bad leaves. His beady eyes large behind the large glasses he wore with obvious pride. He was nearing eighty now, a retired military man, who was now content with looking after his roses and holding court over his family when they deigned to visit him.
He was the grandfather she’d never had.
Dada Akhtar could have moved to anywhere in the world but Goonj was his resting place, and he would die here; just as he’d always wished it. Laid to rest next to his beloved Saira, underneath an apple tree in the very first orchard that his grandfather Imran had planted with his own hands.
Ziya pressed a hand against the chilled glass of her window and called out, “Good morning, Dadaji.”
Dada Akhtar, still spry, whipped his head up and smiled. “Good morning, Ziya. It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?
Ziya smiled, pushed a swathe of tousled hair away from her face and answered, “Absolutely. Isn’t it a little too early to play with your roses?”
He held the pair of scissors in a kind of salute and touched one vivid, blood red bloom with something close to reverence. “It’s never too early to play with gulaabein, Ziya beti.”
She laughed, shook her head and was about to close the window when he called out her name.
“Yes, Dadaji?”
Dada Akhtar smiled, a crafty glint in his still-sharp eyes. “Krivi’s coming over for breakfast. I think he has the data for the new venture you were talking about.”
Ziya caught herself before her smile slipped and irritation took its place. There was no reason to be irritated, therefore she wasn’t. The logic always worked for her.
She nodded and said, “I’ll set an extra place for him then.”
She shut the window on Dada Akhtar’s boom of knowing laughter, as if watching Ziya squirm was a source of particular amusement for him. She tied her blond highlighted hair back in a tiny stub, because it barely brushed her shoulders as it is.
Less maintenance, less hassle she’d always claimed. But secretly, she was vain enough to know that short hair went particularly well with her face and accentuated her best features – great cheekbones and grey eyes - while minimizing her flaws, a wide mouth and stubby nose which she tried to play up by wearing a clip-on nose ring.
Ziya went through her mental checklist as she showered and dressed.
Spring was the best time to get a lot of traveling and work done, because it ended so quickly. And she had several inspections sch
eduled for the next few weeks over the fields and the cricket-bat manufacturing plant and the lumber lot too. The lumber union was demanding a renegotiation of their contract and that was one particular headache she was eager to solve.
Her plate was full, and breakfast had to be made for five people.
She brushed her teeth, annoyed at herself for being annoyed.
Because of him, the answer came to her mind immediately.
Krivi Iyer, the new manager Bashir Akhtar had hired to help her around with the management of the estate. She hadn’t been present at his interview, hadn’t even been aware that a position was open for someone to interview for.
All she knew was that he’d shown up one day six months ago in a battered Jeep with a duffel bag full of clothes and unreadable black eyes. They’d barely spoken ever since.
True, she got on well with people as a rule, it had been drummed into her in B-School in the HR classes that she’d always tried to ditch, and before that…in her various foster homes, the early ones…when she’d tried so hard to be the kid, the one kid they would keep and not send back after six months or a year or two weeks.
Agreeability was a learned nature for her.
Yet, she couldn’t make herself look Krivi Iyer in the eyes long enough to make herself agreeable to him. And he, strangely enough, kept to himself too.
They never spoke unless there was a business matter to attend to. Sometimes she’d even wondered if he was all there in the head, then she would look into those pitch-dark eyes and know. He was all there in the head all right.
He just ignored her.
So she made an effort to ignore him as thoroughly and effortlessly as he ignored her.
So far, the plan was working splendidly.
Ziya dressed in jeans and a pullover and walked downstairs to the kitchen to prepare breakfast, smartphone in hand. She added making breakfast for five to her to-do list.
~~~~~~
Goonj had a huge living room which also served as the dining room when the occasion warranted it, the kitchen was next to it, with a storeroom just off the back. A simple wooden staircase with ornate banisters led to the two upper floors, where all the bedrooms and Dada Akhtar’s study and office were.
Ziya’s own rooms were on the second floor because Dada Akhtar had insisted a single woman was not staying by herself in the gamekeeper’s cottage, just at the edge of the gardens that surrounded Goonj.
The cottage had been unoccupied till Krivi Iyer had arrived and parked his second-hand Jeep and duffel bag there.
Till date, Ziya had found reasons to never visit him at his own place. Any off-hours business that had to be conducted was done either over phone or in Dada Akhtar’s home office.
Ziya muttered to herself. “You’re a grown-ass woman, Ziya. You’re strong and powerful and awesome.”
“Talking to yourself is only sexy in some women, not you.” The woman who spoke handed a cup of coffee to Ziya.
~~~~~~
Dressed in organic cotton pajamas and a tank top, sexy sleepy attire with an opened hot pink hoodie thrown on for fashion as much as modesty, she had the kind of face that stopped traffic. Heart-shaped, with sharp green eyes that could turn sultry or be as razor-sharp as diamonds, and a mouth that was made for sex.
Add in a killer body that she dressed to maximum effect and Noor Saiyyed was a heartbreaker in bedroom slippers. She could have been a supermodel but she had chosen academia as her calling.
Noor had only spent Britain summers in India till her twenty-seventh birthday which was this year, had simply refused to let Ziya be alone the moment they became roommates back at Trinity College, ten years ago.
She had cajoled and laughed and giggled and pushed her way into Ziya’s life, until they really were Best Friends Forever. Last year Noor had even given Ziya those goofy, tacky matching BFF bracelets as a gag gift. And this, from a woman with an IQ in the triple digits, and who had made the Dean’s List all four years of her undergrad as a Lit Major at Trinity.
How could Ziya hold out against someone with so much love and sunniness and eternal optimism, even though she was as impulsive as Ziya was methodical and pragmatic?
“Shut up, Noor,” Ziya said sweetly. “We’re having scrambled eggs today. It’s all I have time for.”
She fired up the gas and placed the iron skillet dropping in a healthy pat of butter inside while she scrounged the refrigerator for eggs.
Noor shuddered, and the sweatshirt slipped a little to show one tanned shoulder. “No way. It’s too many carbs. I don’t want to bloat before my wedding like one of those models on a binge. And, you shut up, Ziya.”
Ziya broke open the eggs and mixed in the milk, salt and pepper, the chopped tomatoes and onions were already frozen in a Tupperware box. She added them and sliced a green chili open right down the middle and added that too. Whisked everything together and poured it over the skillet.
“Don’t just sit there,” she said mildly. “Put some bread in the toaster. Make extra. Krivi’s coming over for a breakfast consult.”
Noor laughed huskily and whistled. “Ooh. Krivi’s coming over for a breakfast consult, is he?”
Ziya didn’t bother replying.
So Noor sing-songed, “Let me love you, let me love you.”
Ziya removed a toasted bread slice from the pile Noor was adding to and stuffed it in her opened mouth.
Noor’s lovely green eyes rounded in indignation and she munched on the slice before she removed it out with a sputter.
“That was low, Zee.”
“Really? It looked pretty justified to me.”
Noor’s bread dropped out of her hands as she squealed and turned around at the man who’d just spoken.
Ziya watched indulgently, affectionately as her best friend launched herself on the soldier who’d walked in from the back. He topped at about six feet, and was leanly muscled as befit an officer of the Indian Army. His drop-dead good looks and hazel eyes complemented Noor’s own beauty.
She was kissing him quite enthusiastically, winding her long legs around his lean waist. And he kissed her back, pressing her closer to him for just a second, a second too long before he slid her off his body.
Noor grinned back at Ziya. “My piya’s home, Zee.” Her upper crust Brit accent sounded out the Hindi words in a decidedly sexy way.
“I told you not to call me that, baby,” Major Sameth Qureshi murmured.
Ziya watched affectionately as he brushed a tender hand over his beloved’s tumbled hair. She knew the conflict Sameth faced every moment he was with Ziya - the life of an Army man’s wife was not for Noor Saiyed, impending PhD from Oxford, the most respected educational institution on the planet.
According to Sam, Noor was better off without him.
Right now, that beauty queen face softened “I didn’t want to give myself that much credit. Zee would accuse me of having a bloated head,” Noor stage-whispered.
“Zee doesn’t have to accuse,” Ziya pointed out dryly. “She already knows about your bloated head, honey. Morning, Sam. Are you staying for breakfast too?”
Sam nodded and stepped fully back from Noor. He dragged his eyes away from her face and smiled at Ziya. A big brother smile. “Morning, Ziya. Yes, I came here for your breakfast actually. Not Noor’s supposed lures,” he added with a wink.
Noor rolled her eyes and punched him in the arm before strolling away to pour him coffee. Ziya followed Sam’s eyes as they watched his girlfriend with a kind of helpless fascination.
“I hate both of you. Why do you always tease me?” Noor sulked as she dumped the mug in Sam’s surprised hands.
Ziya leaned down and picked up the fallen bread slice. “You make it so easy, honey. How can we resist? Right, Sam?”
Sam dropped a kiss on top of Noor’s head and slid into a chair next to her. “If I answer that, she will skin me alive.”
Noor brightened and leaned into Sam and said, “Nope. If you answer that, I will make you marry me.”
&
nbsp; Sam’s dark eyes shuttered and his face hardened into the soldier that he was. “We have discussed this already, Noor and—"
“We didn’t discuss anything,” she cut in icily, while Ziya fanned the gas flame higher in an effort to drown out the conversation. “You just keep saying no like it’s your favorite dialog.”
“Noor, I told you already, the Army is my career. And it’s a dangerous one, a terrible one. I won’t make you a war widow.”
Noor’s face took on a pugnacious look. Even though they’d had this same argument, practically every day since she’d come back three months ago in order to claim him. Thirty-one, in the Rulebook of Noor, was the right time for a bachelor to settle down.
And she was damn well not going to celebrate another birthday as a single woman.
“And I told you, there are millions of women all over the world who do the same every day. If they can, why can’t I?”
“Because.” He raked a hand through his buzz cut hair and exhaled loudly. “Those women are not the love of my life. Besides, what about Oxford and your PhD?”
Noor shook her head. “You cannot sway me with that line, Major. Do not make this about saving me from yourself. This is about you and your inability to commit to a woman, as I am discussing in detail in my doctorate. I tell you, Ziya. Be it Victorian times or post-post-modern, the male as a species prefers to hunt alone than find a mate.”
“Noor.” He reached for her hand and she used it to cradle her coffee mug. “It is not as simple as that…”
“Sam, I love you,” Noor said, implacably. “You’re the love of my life and I want to spend the rest of my life with you. It’s as simple as that. We’ve been doing this for almost a year now. I can’t wait anymore, I won’t. You should understand that and you’re going to regret not saying yes to my proposal because pretty soon I won’t want you anymore.”
Sam shook his head and looked helplessly at Ziya. “Help, please.”
Ziya shook her head too. “I have a call. I have to take it right now.” She held her phone out like a weapon and backed out of the kitchen.
Noor’s laughter made her smile and she still had that same soft smile on her face, as she entered the living room and collided into a wall of sheer, hard muscle. Terrifyingly hard arms came around her and held her steady when she would have dropped her beloved cell phone.
Warrior Knight Page 3
