Good boys, they are.
We can begin.
All the bullshit about the sound of silence is just that, bullshit. Silence is silence and our Silent Drill Squad has learned that by now. We have done this for one hundred and ten days, seven days a week. The ones with malfunctioning internal clocks, those in the habit of glancing sideways to get their cues, those counting silently to coordinate their manoeuvres and those twiddling their toes in their shoes to keep their blood circulation going, have all been eliminated.
Here, my wish is their command.
Bannon, who has appeared quietly during my inspection, comes to attention with an exaggerated bang of his boot on the concrete, a sign for me to start. I ignore the red ropes unfurling under his drooping eyelids, execute an about-turn and draw my sword; holding it in front of my chest, I bring the hilt level with my lips. Salute performed and accepted in silence, I turn back and march four steps towards the silent squad. As my heel lands at the fourth step, the squad comes to attention in unison.
Perfect start.
My sword goes back into the scabbard and as the hilt clicks into place there is a swish in the air. The rifles leave their left hands with bayonets up in the air, complete a circle above their heads and land safely in their right. Then both hands grip the rifles, hold them in front of their chests and bang the magazines thrice. My rifle orchestra plays for five minutes, rifles swoon and circle in the air. Their hands clapping the magazines are perfectly timed. Ten pounds of metal and wood moulds itself to my silent commands.
My inner cadence rules.
The squad divides itself into two, both flights march ten steps in opposite directions, come to a halt, turn back and, with easy elegance, dissolve into a single row.
Time to show the buggers how it’s done.
I stand three feet from the file leader. We are eyeball to eyeball. A single blink or a sideways glance can be fatal. The file leader brings his rifle to chest level and throws it at me. The rifle makes a semi-arch and my practised right hand receives it. One. Two. Three. My right hand throws it spiralling over my head and it lands in my left. For the next sixty seconds it leaps and dances over my head and around my shoulders. For onlookers, the G3 rifle is a blurred swirl of metal and wood, at one with me before it does a triple loop and lands in the file leader’s hand.
For the finale, the squad lines up in two rows again and I start my slow march down the middle, sword held straight in front of my chest. Every step I take is a command for both files to throw their rifle to the guy standing opposite them. It’s like walking through a calibrated assault of flying swords. Throw. Catch. You miss a beat and your bayonet can lodge itself in your partner’s eye. I am walking between a twenty-metre spiral of rifles circling in the air. It looks spectacular but is easy to achieve with three months of practice.
As I approach the last pair, I give a sideways glance to the guy on my right, just a deflection of my eyeballs. His hand trembles as he receives the rifle that has just swished past my nose. His right hand is a nanosecond late in his throw, the rifle makes a half-circle in the air and its butt comes at my temple.
Perfect.
Blackout.
If the bastard had delayed it another beat, it would have been the bayonet instead of the butt.
The medical orderlies take off my shoes, remove the sword and loosen my belt. The ambulance is silent. Someone slips an oxygen mask on my face. I give in to the stretcher’s comfort and breathe deeply. I wish I could afford the luxury of passing out but my condition needs to stabilise quickly. I don’t want the overefficient buggers to open my skull.
As my back rests on the white sheets in the sickbay’s special care room, an orderly slips a needle into my arm. A curtain is drawn. The phone is on the other side of the curtain. I feel calm, too calm even to take a reassuring look at it.
I wake up groggy and immediately know they put a sedative in the drip.
Bannon is sitting on a stool at my bedside.
‘It’s not about Obaid,’ he says. ‘There’s a plane missing. A whole goddam machine, gone.’
I hope it’s a sedative-induced hallucination, but Bannon’s hand is on my shoulder and he is the only person in the Academy who calls an aircraft a plane.
‘An MF17 is missing and they think Obaid took it.’
‘What do you think?’ I ask him, feeling stupid and sleepy at the same time.
Baby O flew away with a whole aircraft?
Emergency procedures for Mushshak, MF17, two-seater, dual-control, propeller aircraft, powered by two hundred horsepower Saab engine:
Engine on fire:
Cut the throttle.
Go into a thirty-degree descent.
Trim the ailerons.
Look for a field to land in.
If the fire continues:
Release the catch on safety belt.
Eject the canopy.
Keep your head down.
Climb onto the right wing.
Jump.
‘Why the right wing?’ I had raised my hand in the Emergency Procedures class.
So that you die quicker, came the reply.
There are no parachutes on MF17s.
‘The plane is still missing,’ says Bannon.
‘Who the fuck cares about the plane? It can’t be in the air forty-eight hours after it took off. You put the bloody idea in his head in the first place. Now don’t just sit there, do something,’ I shout at him and realise my voice is choked. Must be the sedatives, I tell myself.
‘It disappeared off the radar, ten minutes after take-off,’ Bannon says in a low whisper.
‘Did they scramble the fighters?’
‘No, they thought it was a routine training flight,’ he says. ‘Obaid used your call sign.’
FOUR
GENERAL ZIA UL-HAQ was rehearsing his special address to the nation in front of a TV camera when the chief of his security, Brigadier TM, entered the room. Brigadier TM’s salute, regardless of the time of the day or the importance of the occasion, was a spectacle to behold. As his foot landed on the thick carpet, the quality of his respect reverberated through the velvet curtains of the Army House’s living room and once again General Zia missed his cue to stop reading from his written speech and be spontaneous. This was the point where he was supposed to push aside the stack of papers in front of him with his left hand, remove his reading glasses with his right hand, look straight into the camera and say: ‘My dear countrymen, now I want to say something from the heart …’ But his right and left hands didn’t seem to be talking to each other. All morning long he had either removed his glasses while still reading or pushed the written speech aside and stared silently into the camera with his glasses still on. General Zia looked at his Information Minister, who watched the speech on a TV monitor with his hands folded at his crotch, nodding enthusiastically at every sentence and every pause. The Information Minister asked the TV crew to leave the room.
Brigadier TM stood still beside the door, his eyes scanning the camera and the monitor the TV crew had left behind. Something in the room was different: the air was heavier, the colours were not as he remembered them from yesterday. ‘It is a very forceful speech, sir,’ said the Information Minister, trying to ignore General Zia’s hostile stare. With General Zia’s decision to confine himself to the Army House after the imposition of Code Red, his Information Minister was suddenly left with nothing to issue as the headline for the evening television news. After two days of recycled footage, he had suggested that General Zia record a special address to the nation.
‘This speech is dead. No emotions,’ General Zia said. ‘People will not only think that I am a prisoner in my own Army House, but that I am also suffering from some kind of dementia.’
The Information Minister nodded enthusiastically as if that had been his plan all along.
‘And that part about the great threats facing our great nation sounds too poetic. Name those threats; make them more – make them more threatening. The paragra
ph that says I will not move into the President House because it has blood in its foundations doesn’t make sense. Whose blood? Say something about blood-sucking politicians. Say something about poor people. You do know there are poor people in this country? I am sure you don’t want to become one of them.’
The Information Minister picked up the speech and left the room, without being offered a hand to shake and with nothing to tell the nation in the evening-news bulletin.
‘Sit down, son.’ General Zia turned towards Brigadier TM and sighed. ‘You are the only man in this country I can still trust.’
As Brigadier TM sat on the edge of the sofa he immediately realised that the seat under him was also unfamiliar, deeper and softer.
General Zia’s overall security was the responsibility of General Akhtar and his Inter Services Intelligence, but the man picked to ensure his personal safety was Brigadier TM, a barrel of a man, actually a barrel-full-of-suspicions of a man who had been Zia’s shadow for the past six years. His team of armed commandos formed a ring around General Zia’s office and living area and then concentric circles around that ring in a two-mile radius. For a further three miles the job of maintaining security fell to ordinary army soldiers. Outside this circle stood the civilian police, but nobody expected them to do much except stop traffic and baton-charge any enthusiasts trying to get a glimpse of General Zia’s convoy. This five-mile circle was ready to move at very short notice, keeping General Zia in the centre, but ever since he’d cancelled all public engagements that might take him out of the Army House, Brigadier TM’s focus of suspicion had become the Army House itself.
* * *
When General Zia saw him for the first time TM was a major and a speck in the sky, leading a formation of paratroopers jumping out of a Hercules C130 at the National Day Parade. The speck bloomed into a green-and-white parachute and TM, manoeuvring his parachute’s cord-controls, landed in the one-metre circle marked with white chalk right in front of the dais from which General Zia was inspecting the parade. Commissioned in the military at a time when parachutes were still an exotic entity, General Zia was fascinated by TM’s precision landing. He stepped down from the dais, hugged TM and told him to stick around for the post-parade party. TM was at his back when General Zia went along the reception line of ambassadors and other foreign dignitaries. Then General Zia stepped outside the VIP area and went ‘mingling with the milling crowds’ on the Information Minister’s suggestion. The minister had already dictated the headline to state television and was now obliged to make it happen. The crowd with which Zia mingled comprised an all-male congregation of primary-school teachers, court clerks, office peons and government bureaucrats’ domestic staff, ordered here by their bosses. Many in the crowd were soldiers in civvies bussed in from the neighbouring cantonment. With TM at his side, General Zia felt that the crowd suddenly became more disciplined. TM’s towering, bulky presence made Zia forget his old habit of looking around, scanning the crowd for anyone who might fling a stone or hurl abuse at him. Brigadier TM navigated the crowd effortlessly, his elbows working like the oars of a skilled rower as if the milling crowd was nothing but dead water in a still lake.
‘Your jump was perfect. You do that thing beautifully,’ General Zia said, making a shapeless flower with his hands in the air. They were in the General’s car going back to the Army House after the post-parade ceremonies. ‘What if that thing doesn’t open after you jump?’
‘Life is in Allah’s hands,’ TM said, sitting at the edge of the car seat, ‘but I pack my own parachute.’ General Zia nodded his head in appreciation, expecting to hear more. TM was a man of few words but the silence made him uncomfortable and he volunteered some more information. ‘I have written a slogan outside our parachute packing cabin: “Life-packing in Progress”.’ This was TM’s first and last literary flourish; his body was more articulate. TM’s body was a tree trunk, permanently stuck in jungle camouflage uniform. His small head was always covered with a crimson beret, cocked over his left ear. His small brown eyes constantly searched for invisible enemies. Even at official receptions, where the rest of the military wore their ceremonial uniforms with golden braids, there was one man behind General Zia in his drab battle fatigues, his eyes darting from a VIP’s face to a waiter to a lady with her hand in her bag. During his six years as General Zia’s Chief of Security, not only had he kept General Zia safe against all visible and invisible enemies, but also conducted him through so many milling crowds that General Zia had started to think of himself as a man of the people.
Now that General Zia had raised his security threat level to red without consulting the Brigadier, he wanted a proper assessment of the situation. Brigadier TM shifted on the edge of the sofa. He was not used to having a conversation with General Zia while sitting down. He tried hard to sit still and concentrate but his eyes kept scanning the presidential crests on the burgundy velvet curtains and the matching Persian rug. Suddenly all the air went out of his lungs and his shoulders collapsed in disbelief. The curtains and the carpets were new. How did all this stuff get here without his knowledge?
‘Who wants to kill me?’ General Zia asked in a neutral tone, as if enquiring about the lawnmowing arrangements. Brigadier TM caressed the brocade sofa cover with the tips of his fingers and wondered how someone had managed to change it without his security clearance.
The Brigadier was the only man in General Zia’s military staff with round-the-clock access to his working as well as family quarters. He was also the only man in his inner circle who didn’t join Zia for his five daily prayers, a privilege so exceptional that it baffled the others. Anyone who happened to be around General Zia at prayer time was expected to join him, no matter where they were, be it his official plane or the National Command’s bunker. General Zia would look at his watch and everyone, including the peons and politicians who didn’t even know when to stand up or bow during the prayers, would line up with him as if their piety had been waiting for this very moment to be realised. During these prayers, Brigadier TM stood with his back to the congregation, keeping a close eye on all possible access points. In the beginning it weighed on General Zia’s conscience, and he asked TM how he felt about not being able to join him for prayers.
‘Duty is worship, sir,’ he said. ‘If I was in a war I would not be expected to leave my gun and pray.’ Subsequently, General Zia always remembered to add a few words for TM, reminding Allah that the Brigadier couldn’t offer his prayers because he was on duty.
Brigadier TM’s eyes darted around the room, feeling irritated with the new textures, the different colours. TM knew that security wasn’t just about throwing yourself in front of an assassin’s bullet or pulling out the fingernails of a potential conspirator; it was more about anticipating the subtle shifts in everyday life patterns. ‘General Akhtar has all the files, sir. Separate files on all the suspects. And on all possible scenarios,’ he said distractedly. His eyes were scanning the wall where a portrait of the Founder of the Nation had appeared, a portrait that he had never seen before.
‘Those files lie. I am asking you, not General Akhtar. You are my shadow, you should know. You see everyone who comes to meet me; you know every nook and corner in this house. It’s your job to protect me. As your Commander-in-Chief, I demand to know: who are you protecting me from? Who is trying to kill me?’ General Zia’s voice rose, his crossed eyes got entangled with each other, two globs of spit escaped his lips, one lodged itself in the General’s moustache and the other was absorbed in the vine and flowers of the Persian rug under his feet.
Brigadier TM was not used to being addressed in this tone. He had always known that General Zia felt threatened by his physical presence when they were by themselves and only felt comfortable when they had company. Brigadier TM was trained in these matters and he immediately knew that this raised voice, this demanding tone, was actually the voice of fear. Brigadier TM had a lot of experience in smelling fear. When you asked them the last question, when they discovered
that the time for explanations was over, when they realised that the interrogation had ended and there would be no court trial. It was only then that they raised their voices, they shouted, they pretended they were not scared. But you could smell it just as you can smell it in goats before the slaughter; a bleat on their lips and piss between their legs, like men shouting when you strode into their room and shut the door behind you.
‘Everyone,’ he said.
General Zia stood up from his sofa in alarm. ‘What do you mean, Brigadier Tahir Mehdi? Who?’ he shouted, and this time his spit was a shower in TM’s face. When General Zia didn’t call you my brother, my son, respected sister and addressed you by your name he was in a bad mood. When he addressed you with your name and rank you had probably already lost that rank. Brigadier TM had no fear of being fired. He would happily go back to training his boys and doing precision para jumps. General Zia knew about this because, in a rare moment, TM had confessed to General Zia that there were only a few bones left in his body that he hadn’t broken in the pursuit of his passion. He had seemed very proud.
‘I suspect everyone. Even my own boys.’
‘Your commandos? They are here twenty-four hours a day.’
‘I send them back to their units every six weeks and get new ones. You might have noticed. There is no point trusting anyone, sir. Indira Gandhi, what happened?’
A shudder ran through General Zia. Indira had been gunned down by her own military bodyguards while taking a stroll in her own garden. General Zia had to go to India to attend her funeral, where he saw at first hand the abomination that was the Hindu religion. They built a pyre of wood, poured some melted butter over it and then Indira Gandhi’s own son lit the flame. General Zia had stood there watching as Indira’s body, draped in a white cotton sari, caught fire. At one point it seemed she was going to get up and run away but then her skull exploded. The General thanked Allah for giving them Pakistan so their children didn’t have to witness this hell on earth every day.
A Case of Exploding Mangoes Page 6
