In a PTA meeting, his teacher divulged that Faqr’s name was creating some unintended problems. Confounded by its conflicting consonants other children had ended up adding a vowel to the name, thus: Faqer. When mouthed, it came out as something not entirely savoury.
The parents, as always happy to accommodate and adjust, suggested that their son’s middle name – one they’d conferred upon him as per the customary middle name required in the US – be used as his first name instead. This name – Babur, meaning tiger – was considerably less taxing on the American tongue, at worst getting modified to Bob. It was not easy, however, to get the children to switch from the decidedly loaded-with-fun ‘Fucker’ to the boring ‘Bob’, and so the young AfPak-origin American boy continued getting ribbed. The parents, in desperation, located to another part of the city and had him change schools, but like the proverbial bad penny, the nickname returned. Somebody picked it up from a friend from the former school, the new boy had another infinitely more interesting name, and the chequered story of his battle against it bubbled through the new school’s grapevine. The boy reconciled himself to being called ‘Bob’ by a few friends and teachers while the majority hailed him with ‘Fucker’.
He was however a tenacious kid and, along with acing his academics, was also a superb baseball player. The latter was to earn him many fans as he grew up and slowly the ribbing around his name dwindled. In the bargain Faqr was to learn an important lesson: respect had to wrested from people and the only way to do it was to take control and create his destiny. Faqr was captaining his high school baseball team to victory when news of the twin towers of the World Trade Center imploding broke out. Faqr, with his clean-shaven good looks, fair complexion and athletic ability, on his way to being an all-American whiz kid, suddenly realized that despite the ‘Bob’, his surname Khan was about to trip him up.
In the newly radicalized environment in the US, everyone with an Arabic name or surname was not kosher. Once again, the perennially-assimilating Khans got to work, abstaining from the weekly mosque visit, severing links with friends who were seen to harbour sympathy for the perpetrators of 9/11. They ventured out less frequently, most trips restricted to shopping for groceries, and like good ostriches decided to bury their heads in sand and let it all blow over.
It was at this time that Faqr saw a pamphlet from the US army asking young men to sign up for war. In 2005, at the age of twenty-one, Bob was sent on duty to Afghanistan.
That was six years back. Now, bearded, turbaned, wearing a shalwar kameez, he looked nothing like a soldier of the US army. In fact, he could be taken for one of the many men seen in the old storytellers’ bazaar, an AK-47 slung on one shoulder as they huddled in shadowy corners or ambled down streets. Bob had morphed into Babur, and as he sipped his tea, his eyes were on the teashop entrance. He was awaiting an emissary who was carrying a message for him, a message that would set him upon a path, the culmination of which would restore the balance of power in the region.
New Delhi
Monday 8:15 a.m.
At breakfast the following morning, the newspaper headlines gave Mehrunisa her first jolt of the day.
Pakistan President killed in a bomb blast
General P. Zaidi, the President of Pakistan, has been killed in a suicide bomb blast. He had stepped out of home and was walking through his gardens on Sunday morning when a bomb went off. He was taken to the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences Hospital in Islamabad where he was declared dead.
Initial reports suggest the attacker was a guard at his house who was also killed in the attack. No exact motive is known but it is believed that he was a suicide bomber. There have been previous attacks on the President’s life and he had been receiving death threats since the attack on Lal Masjid in which 100 suspected militants were killed.
The night before his death he told a political rally: ‘I don’t mind if my life goes in the service of the nation. If I die today, every drop of my blood will invigorate the nation.’
Security throughout the country has been stepped up. Roads to the hospital and the home of the President have been sealed off and borders around Islamabad have been closed.
After going through the news article twice over, Mehrunisa read the headlines aloud to her godfather. The elderly professor sat slumped in his chair, his gaze fixed on the vase of gerbera daisies on the table. He showed no sign of following what was being read out. His hands lay limp on his lap, just the way they had been positioned after he was led out of his bedroom to the dining table.
Mehrunisa finished reading and scrutinized her godfather. While the news was significant in itself, perhaps the daily reports of violence in the region had lessened the impact. She folded the paper and kept it aside. That the headlines had failed to stir the professor was not unusual. Days passed in which he would show no sign of registering anything, in repose amid the routine of the household, until suddenly he would surprise her with a pertinent question on her ongoing assignment or the political climate of the nation.
With a smile at the professor, she tried again. Nodding toward the window from which sunlight was filtering in, she said, ‘Looks like a sunny day. Would you like to sit outside in your favourite spot?’
The professor stayed listless. Mehrunisa continued talking to him, detailing the site she was planning to visit that day. She worked with the Archaeological Survey of India as a consultant, just as her godfather had done before her. After the professor’s illness, the ASI Director-General had offered her the job, suggesting she fill the professor’s shoes. Mehrunisa, of course, entertained no such notions.
Professor Kaul was an eminent historian, an authority on Mughal India, highly regarded for his extensive study of Indian monuments of the Mughal period. The only scholar permitted by the Government of India to take measurements of the Taj Mahal, Kaul had worked on the world-famous monument for a majority of his fifty-odd years as an art and architectural historian. His book, The Taj, was regarded as a definitive work. In addition, he had served as the architectural advisor to the Taj Mahal Conservation Collaborative, a project set up for the conservation, restoration and beautification of the seventeenth-century mausoleum.
After her mother’s passing, Mehrunisa had come to India to work on a project researching Indo-Persian linkages. It was a subconscious effort to connect with her binary roots, the legacy of a Persian mother and a Punjabi father. Her godfather, Professor Kaul, in whose Delhi home she had spent most summer vacations as a child, had taken her under his tutelage. That brilliant mind, however, had succumbed to Korsakov’s syndrome. It was a case of a profound and perhaps permanent devastation of memory. Mehrunisa’s constant communication with him was her attempt to jog his mind.
The housekeeper Mangat Ram walked in with a rack of fresh toast. As he picked up the newspaper to make room, the headline caught his eye. He clucked, ‘This is what happens when you ride a tiger.’
Mehrunisa shrugged, smiling at the folk wisdom. She bit into a toast and launched into a monologue about the renovation work she was overseeing in the historic Red Fort. Mehrunisa had worked as a docent at the Vatican museums after majoring in Renaissance studies. Her twin qualifications in Renaissance studies and Mughal art baffled her colleagues. They were further bemused when they discovered that she was a natural linguist, fluent in six languages. Adding to the strangeness was the fact that, at five-foot nine, with straight black hair, grey-green eyes and a marmoreal complexion, she was a striking beauty. To Mehrunisa, however, the idiosyncratic data points were all irrefutable parts of her self, a self she had been attempting to comprehend. Nevertheless, the answers she was looking for when she came to India were still elusive. She was aware of a persistent sense of discontent and guilt – one that climaxed every year with the approach of the anniversary of her father’s disappearance.
‘Red Fort,’ the housekeeper remarked as he pottered about the living room. He shook his head in mute remonstr
ation as he peered at the soil of the bonsai in the window, estimating if it needed watering. Mehrunisa did not mind. She had known Mangat Ram as long as she had known Uncle Kaul. It was Mangat Ram who had initiated her into kite flying and playing marbles during the long days of her vacations.
‘You should stop living in the past,’ Mangat Ram said. ‘Look what it did to him.’ He indicated the professor with a lift of his chin.
Mehrunisa could not mask her grin. If the professor were his lucid self he would have ended Mangat Ram’s dissing with a wave of his hand and the command to stop fussing like an old hen. He’d occasionally scold him: If I needed a wife, I would have married, right? But Mangat Ram had taken it in his stride. In the years he had been in Professor Vishwanath Kaul’s service he had developed the temperament of a traditional spouse in a long marriage, ignoring Kaul when needed, otherwise delivering good food and keeping house in a steadfast manner. The professor’s debilitation had changed nothing.
Mehrunisa finished breakfast and leaned across to hug her godfather. Pushing her chair back, she slid her iPhone into the inside pocket of her voluminous Birkin bag, and withdrew her wallet to ensure it had enough cash. It did, and as she was about to flip the cover back, she paused. Her gaze lingered on the slightly fading photograph in one of the plastic pockets of the wallet. A man, woman and a girl sat in the shade of a fig tree, a picnic basket on a chequered cloth in front of them. Lush grass dotted the ruins. Mehrunisa’s hand strayed to the picture, taken in the Roman Forum when she was twelve. Two years before Papa disappeared. She moved her fingers gently over the picture.
The housekeeper, getting no response, clucked his annoyance.
Mehrunisa shrugged. ‘Sometimes the past is unfinished business.’
Mangat Ram straightened up and looked at her with kindly rheumy eyes. But he was not in a yielding mood. ‘What we need in the house are little children – they keep you in the present. And,’ he nodded, a cheeky smile rippling over his wrinkles, ‘since I am too old to have any, someone in this house should be getting married!’
Mehrunisa rolled her eyes.
Srinagar, India
Monday 8:30 a.m.
Jag Mishra stood at the foot of the hospital bed and scrutinized the patient. Harry was heavily bandaged and sedated. The bomb blast in Dras had knocked him unconscious and caused a concussion. However, the CAT scan had revealed no bleeding in the brain or under the skull. The thorough examination that the surgeons at the Army Hospital in Srinagar had done indicated that Harry’s faculties – mental and physical – were intact, and except for lacerations on his arms and several gashes on his legs, he was fine. Despite the bandage swathed around his head, Jag Mishra knew that Harry had come out of the blast relatively unscathed. The falling slurry had buffeted the knockout, one from which Harry had awoken with a heightened sense of consciousness.
Therein lay the problem.
Jag Mishra pursed his mouth. As the Director, Pakistan Desk he was responsible for the wellbeing of his agents. And Harry was simply the best operative he’d ever had. They had started together as batch mates from the Indian Foreign Service who were then recruited as intelligence officers. The intelligence failure that led to the Sino-Indian War in 1962 had prompted then Prime Minister Nehru to order a dedicated foreign intelligence agency, which in a later avatar became the present day RAW.
When Jag Mishra and Harry were moved to RAW in 1978, the agency did not have its own cadres, choosing to pick the best talent from other services such as the police and military. RAW was structured on the lines of the CIA and Harry and Jag had trained in the US and Israel. When things started to heat up in the Indian state of Punjab in the ’80s due to a separatist movement that was actively sponsored by Pakistan, Harry was brought on the case. A Sikh by religion, Harry had an instinctive understanding of what drove the disgruntled militants. Additionally, he had grown up with Punjabi and Urdu, vernaculars of Pakistan.
Harry went on to mastermind an operation that would scuttle Pakistan’s support for the separatist Khalistan movement in Indian Punjab. In the early ’80s, the ISI, the Inter Services Intelligence agency of Pakistan, had set up clandestine camps to train and arm Khalistani recruits in Pakistan’s Punjab Province and the North West Frontier Province. During this time, the ISI received large sums from Saudi Arabia and the CIA to arm Afghan mujahidin against Soviet troops in Afghanistan. The ISI diverted part of these funds and arms to the Khalistani terrorists.
Meanwhile, RAW had a close liaison relationship with KHAD, the Afghan intelligence agency. Angry at Pakistan’s meddling in its internal affairs, KHAD was paying them back by monitoring the activities of Sikh militants in Pakistan’s tribal areas on the AfPak border and relaying information to RAW. This relationship was further strengthened when the foundation was laid for a trilateral cooperation involving the RAW, KHAD, and the Soviet KGB.
Harry proposed setting up a covert group, Counter Intelligence Team-Z – CIT-Z – directed at Khalistani groups. The ‘Z’ in the acronym was for Zamzama. Also known as Kim’s Gun, for its stellar mention in Rudyard Kipling’s Kim, it was a large bore cannon, one of the largest ever made in the subcontinent. As Kipling had eulogized, ‘Who hold Zam-Zammah, that “fire-breathing dragon”, hold the Punjab, for the great green-bronze piece is always first of the conqueror’s loot’. CIT-Z was Harry’s bold plan to wrest control out of ISI’s hands by taking the battle into the heart of Pakistan.
CIT-Z was given the mandate to carry out a low-grade but steady campaign of bombings in major Pakistani cities. Soon, the cities of Karachi and Lahore, the business and political capitals of Pakistan, started to shake, forcing the ISI to the negotiating table with RAW. Fresh rules of engagement on Punjab were crafted. It was agreed that Pakistan would not carry out activities in Indian Punjab as long as RAW refrained from creating mayhem inside Pakistan.
In the wake of the agreement, the cross-border trafficking of arms and funds was suspended, snipping the lifeline of the Khalistan separatist movement. Harry won that round and solidified his credentials as the master operator on Pakistan. Just when it looked like nothing could go wrong for him, his life took a turn.
In 1994 Harry was in a covert meeting with a Najib loyalist, a KHAD operative in a remote outpost outside of Kabul, when a shell exploded near them. The high-pitched ominous whistle, followed by a thunderous explosion with no visible combatant, impelled the KHAD operative to flee. In that second or two between the whistle and the explosion Harry had quickly hit the ground and curled up into a ball. He watched the fleeing Afghan being torn to shreds by falling shrapnel. As another shell pounded the ground, Harry squeezed behind a boulder. The thundering dislodged rocks from the cliff top, and even as he tried to shield himself, one clipped his head in descent.
That knock rendered Harry unconscious for several days. When he came out of it, Harry’s brain had suffered chunks of memory loss. The doctor called it lacunar amnesia, a type of amnesia that leaves a lacuna in the record of memory. In Harry’s case, the lacuna was his entire married life, his wife and daughter swallowed up in some sinkhole of his mind. The erasure was convenient for Mishra. In the ’90s, India was facing its severest test: Pakistan was teetering on the edge of chaos, Afghanistan was seething with mujahidin and the region was crawling with two superpowers – Russia and the US – in a turf war. It was an environment in which a super spy like Harry, stripped of encumbrances, would flourish. Additionally, he reasoned, if Harry’s brain had chosen to forget a part of his life, rendering him an even more effective agent, it was not for them to awaken it.
In the seventeen years since, Jag Mishra had risen to head the Pakistan Desk in RAW, and Harry was the master Pakistan operative. It was his knowledge and brilliance that had initiated the idea of a secret deal on Kashmir, and he and his Pakistan counterpart had worked hard over the last two years to bring it to fruition. Now, with the deal tantalizingly close, everything was in danger of falling apar
t. The Pakistan President had been assassinated. And Harry had risen from amnesia.
New Delhi
Monday 9:32 a.m.
Mehrunisa drove down the broad avenue of Janpath. Originally named Queen’s Way, it was inaugurated in 1931 in the new city designed by Lutyens. The assumption of enduring British rule had overturned, but the radial road had lasted, even begetting a flourishing roadside market that thrummed with tourists.
At the traffic light, the car idling, Mehrunisa watched vendors arranging cloth handbags, festoons and embroidered rugs, as a young boy with a rack of glasses weaved through them. The vista lent itself to a Caravaggio. The glint of mirror work on handbags draped over metal railings, the stained trash bin silhouetted against coral cashmere, the cracked rubber slippers of the tea boy amidst brass divinities – this kaleidoscope he would fittingly animate on canvas.
It was during her second year of Renaissance studies when she’d returned to Delhi for a short vacation and discovered India was a Caravaggio masterpiece in motion. The Italian artist had loved to paint streets, and in India entire lives were spent on streets, by pavement dwellers, homeless beggars, hawkers. Caravaggio had painted Biblical scenes as if they were happening in the here and now. Indians lived with their history, whether in the ancient ruins that jostled with the masses or the daily recitation of verses from the Rig Veda composed five thousand years back. A Caravaggio painting grabbed the viewer by the throat with its synchronous depiction of grime and splendour, beauty and savagery. That duality Mehrunisa witnessed in the Subcontinent’s daily reality. Here lives were navigated amidst extremes of wealth and poverty, fanaticism abided with quiet faith, conservative sexual mores were upheld and never mind the Kama Sutra…
THE HUNT FOR KOHINOOR BOOK 2 OF THE THRILLER SERIES FEATURING MEHRUNISA Page 3
