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 paragraph that says I will not move into the President House because it has blood in its foundations I will not move into the President House because it has blood in its foundations doesn't make sense. Whose blood? Say something about bloodsucking 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." doesn't make sense. Whose blood? Say something about bloodsucking 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 C13O 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 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 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. 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.
"How do you choose these boys? Why six weeks? Why can't they get any ideas before six weeks?"
"Because of their families; we take care of them for six weeks. I also run background checks. No homos. Communists. No news junkies. They wouldn't be around you."
"You mean they can get ideas by reading newspapers? Have you seen our newspapers? I think you need to revise your guidelines."
"Any man who has the ability to read a newspaper cannot have the will to throw himself between you and your assassin's bullet," said Brigadier TM. He was still trying to solve the sofa-curtain-carpet-portrait mystery.
Brigadier TM's boys were recruited from remote villages and trained so strenuously that by the time they finished their training-if they finished at all, as more than two-thirds begged to be returned to their villages-they had a vacant look on their faces. Unquestioning obedience was drilled into them by making them dig holes in the earth all day only to fill other holes the following day. They were kept away from civilians for so long that they considered anyone in civvies a legitimate target. General Zia spread his hands in exasperation and waited for TM to say something more.
"These are my procedures," Brigadier TM said, getting up, "and they seem to have worked so far. If you'll allow me, we can bring back the K-9 Platoon."
General Zia noticed with satisfaction that he hadn't used the word 'guard dogs'.
"Why do we need those filthy dogs? Are they better than your commandos?"
Brigadier TM put his hands behind his back, looked above Zia's head and gave the longest speech of his career. "We have got air cover. We cover all the access points to the Army House. We monitor all movements within a five-mile radius. But what if someone outside that radius is digging a tunnel right now, long and deep, which leads up to your bedroom? We have got no underground cover."
"I have cancelled all my public engagements," said General Zia. "I won't go to the President's House even for state functions."
And suddenly Brigadier TM felt like a civilian. Too slow to understand the obvious, to see what stared him in the face. The carpets, the curtains and the sofas were from the newly built President's House. He still couldn't figure out where he had seen the portrait.
"I am not leaving the Army House until you find out who it is. Go through General Akhtar's files. Major Kiyani has got a suspect, talk to him."
"I need a day off, sir," Brigadier TM said, coming to attention.
General Zia had to muster all his self-control to remain calm. Here he was, worrying about all these threats to his life, and his Security Chief wanted to get away for some rest and recreation.
"I am leading the para jump at the National Day Parade, sir," Brigadier TM explained.
"I was thinking of cancelling the parade," General Zia said. "But General Akhtar keeps insisting we can't have a National Day without the National Day Parade, so I am thinking of cutting down on the ceremonies. We won't have the post-parade mingling with the people. But you can do your jumps if you want. I am not going to the Academy either. They were planning some kind of silent drill display. Do you know what that is?"
Brigadier TM shrugged his shoulders and his eyes scanned the room one last time.
Before leaving the room Brigadier TM didn't forget to point out the security breach. "Sir, if you want anything transported from President's House, do let me know and I'll arrange the security clearance."
General Zia, still thinking about the tunnel under his bedroom, threw his hands in the air and said, "The First Lady. I don't know what that woman wants. You try talking to her."
FIVE.
I stay still in the bed, eyes shut as I listen. Someone is moaning in the adjoining room. I can hear the faint sound of the Academy band practising a slow march. Every sound is filtered, muted; the light seems to be fading away. This is just like the afternoons I remember at our house on Shigri Hill, where a bright puddle of light on a mountain peak tricks you into believing that there is still a lot of daylight left. One moment the sun is a juicy orange dangling low on the horizon and the highest mountains are awash in bright sunlight. The next moment the only light is a flicker from a fire on a distant peak. Night on the mountains is a black sheet flung from the skies. The day packs up and leaves without giving anyone any notice, without any formal goodbyes. stay still in the bed, eyes shut as I listen. Someone is moaning in the adjoining room. I can hear the faint sound of the Academy band practising a slow march. Every sound is filtered, muted; the light seems to be fading away. This is just like the afternoons I remember at our house on Shigri Hill, where a bright puddle of light on a mountain peak tricks you into believing that there is still a lot of daylight left. One moment the sun is a juicy orange dangling low on the horizon and the highest mountains are awash in bright sunlight. The next moment the only light is a flicker from a fire on a distant peak. Night on the mountains is a black sheet flung from the skies. The day packs up and leaves without giving anyone any notice, without any formal goodbyes.
Just like Baby O.
I try to banish the mountain dusk from my mind and focus on my current plight. There is sadness about the lost day, but there is a phone on the other side of the curtain and Obaid is not the kind of person to scrawl numbers on his favourite hankie if they don't mean anything.
I open my eyes and see the silhouette of the duty nurse bent over a newspaper on the other side of the curtain. I let out a slow moan to see if he is alert. He lifts his head from the paper, looks vaguely towards me, then gets busy with his newspaper again.
In his yogi phase Obaid claimed that if you meditated regularly you could will people to do things-small things usually. If you stare at a stranger's neck long enough he is bound to turn and look towards you. Obaid had demonstrated it a number of times. The success is random at best, and making them move from point A to B is an altogether bigger challenge. I don't have much experience, but I stare and stare, and after about half a century, the nurse gets up and leaves.
I can't be sure whether he has gone for his prayers or for an early dinner. Maybe his shift has ended. All I know is that this is my only window of opportunity.
As my limbs go into action, everything happens very fast; shirt, boots, belt, sword, cap find their place on my body like rifle parts coming together in the hands of an experienced soldier. The tone on the telephone is loud and clear and I start dialling the number urgently, as if Obaid is going to pick up the phone at the other end.
As I am dialling the last two digits my nose catches the faint smell of Dunhill. My first thought is that some cheeky bugger is smoking in the sickbay. My morale gets a boost with the thought that I can probably get a cigarette off him after I finish the phone call.
The phone is answered on the second ring. The operator, used to receiving too many calls, replies in a neutral tone; he will only decide what to do with me after he can identify my rank, and can establish my status in the scheme of things.
"Asslam u alaikum, Army House," the operator says, and the shock of being connected to that place is mixed with relief that the operator seems to be a civilian. It's usually easy to impress them.
"Khan sahib," I start. "I'm a relative of General Zia. I know you can't put me through to him, but can you take an urgent message?"
"Your name, sir?"
"Under Officer Ali Shigri. Son of Colonel Quli Shigri. The late Colonel Shigri." I always find this the hard part, but the name works and I suddenly feel I am being listened to. Not that he actually believes that I am related to the General, but he has obviously heard of Colonel Shigri. Who in the Army House doesn't know the late Colonel Shigri?
"Do you have a pen and paper?"
"Yes, sir."
"Write: Colonel Quli Shigri's son called. He gives his respects. He gives his salaam. Did you get that? Salaam."
"Yes, sir."
"He says that he wants to pass on some very important, very urgent information about the missing plane. It's a matter...did you get that?"
He replies in the affirmative and I think hard about an attention-grabbing end to my message: My only friend in the world is in danger. If you guys have him, be nice to him My only friend in the world is in danger. If you guys have him, be nice to him. I have some top CIA info that I can't trust anyone with I have some top CIA info that I can't trust anyone with. Save my ass Save my ass.
"It's a matter of national security," I say. "He must get this directly from you."
I smell the Dunhill smoke in the room before I hear the voice. I would recognise it from my coffin.
"Under Officer Ali?"
The fact that the voice has used my first name makes me put the phone down abruptly.
Major Kiyani of the Inter Services Intelligence is standing in the doorway, one hand leaning on the frame, the other holding the cigarette in front of his chest. He is in civvies. He is always in civvies. A cream-coloured silk shalwar qameez, neatly pressed, his gelled hair glistening under the bulb's light, a curl carefully arranged in the middle of his forehead where his burly eyebrows meet.
I have never seen him in uniform. I am not even sure whether he has one or knows how to wear one. I saw him for the first time at Dad's funeral; his cheeks were slightly sunken and his eyes seemed sincere. But then there were so many people there and I had assumed he was just another one of Dad's disciples swarming around our house, fixing things, taking care of his papers.
"I realise that it's very painful for you, but the Colonel would have wanted this done quickly," he had said, dabbing his eyes with a white hankie, after we deposited Dad's flag-draped coffin under his favourite apple tree on Shigri Hill.
In ten minutes he had drafted a statement on my behalf and made me sign it. The statement said that as the only male member of the family, I didn't want an autopsy, I didn't suspect foul play and I had found no suicide note.
"Call me if you ever need anything," he had said and left without giving me a phone number. I never needed anything. Not from him.
"I see you are all dressed up and ready to go," he says.
With people like Major Kiyani there are no identification cards, no arrest warrants, no pretence at doing something legal or for your own good. There is a cruel stillness about him. The stillness of a man who lights up in a hospital room and doesn't even look around for something to use as an ashtray.
"Where are we going?" I ask.
"Somewhere we can talk." His cigarette makes a directionless wave in the air. "This place is full of sick people."
"Am I under arrest?"
"Don't be so dramatic."
A Toyota Corolla without a number plate is parked outside, a white, early-1988 model. It is still not available on the market. The car is gleaming and spotless white, with matching starched cotton seat covers. As he starts the car I realise we are headed out, out of here, somewhere not very close, somewhere not very pleasant.
I am already missing my dorm, my Silent Drill Squad, even 2nd OIC's sad, tired jibes. OIC's sad, tired jibes.
The car is very empty. Major Kiyani doesn't carry a briefcase or a file or a weapon. I look hungrily at his packet of cigarettes and gold lighter lying on the dashboard in front of him. He sits back, his hands resting lightly on the steering wheel, ignoring me. I study his pink, manicured fingers, the fingers of a man who has never had to do any real work. One look at his skin and you can tell he has been fed on a steady diet of bootleg Scotch whisky, chicken korma and an endless supply of his agency's safe-house whores. Look into his sunken cobalt-blue eyes and you can tell he is the kind of man who picks up a phone, makes a long-distance call and a bomb goes off in a crowded bazaar. He probably waits outside a house at midnight in his Corolla with its headlights switched off while his men climb the wall and rearrange the lives of some hapless civilians. Or, as I know from personal experience, he appears quietly at funerals after accidental deaths and unexplained suicides and wraps things up with a neat little statement, takes care of any loose ends, saves you the agony of autopsies and the foreign press speculating about decorated colonels swinging from ceiling fans. He is a man who runs the world with a packet of Dunhills, a gold lighter and an unregistered car.
He reaches into his glove compartment and starts rummaging for a tape.
"Asha or Lata?" he asks.
I see a palm-sized holster and the ivory handle of a grey metal pistol and suddenly feel at ease. The presence of a gun in the glove compartment justifies this journey. He can take me wherever he wants to take me.
To tell you the truth I really can't tell the difference between Lata and Asha. They are old, fat, ugly Indian sisters who both sing like they were teenage sex kittens. One probably sounds sexier than the other, I can never tell. But across the country battle lines are drawn between those who like Asha and those who like Lata. Tea or coffee? Coke or Pepsi? Maoist or Leninist? Shia or Sunni?
Obaid used to say it's all very simple. It all depends on how you are feeling and how you would rather feel. That was the most fucked-up thing I ever heard.
"Lata," I say.
He says I have got my dad's good taste and inserts a tape into the player. It's a male folk singer singing a ghazal, something about erecting a wall in the desert so that no one can bother the wandering lovers.
"Don't worry," he says. "We know you are from a good family."
SIX.
One person in Islamabad hoping to improve the quality of his life after General Zia's disappearance from public life was a newly married, balding, forty-five-year-old diplomat, a man who would not live to celebrate his forty-third birthday.
Arnold Raphel was washing a bunch of arugula in his kitchen, a part of the house he was not very familiar with. Like any US ambassador's kitchen, it was designed for a team of chefs, waiters and their helpers, not for the brightest star in the State Department trying to prepare a supper for two. Arnold Raphel wanted to surprise his wife Nancy, referred to as Cupcake in moments of intimacy, by giving her a Foggy Bottom evening in Islamabad. He had asked the domestic staff to take the evening off, ordered his communication room to reroute all important calls to the First Secretary's residence and shut the doors to his vast drawing rooms, dining halls and guest suites. On her return from her weekly tennis game, Nancy would find that there were just the two of them, in their own living area, no servants milling about waiting for dinner instructions. For one evening they would live the life of a newly married couple; an early supper just like they used to have in their two-bedroom condo in Washington and then spontaneous love-making after watching the Redskins triumph over the Green Bay Packers in a crucial NFL play-off.
The beers were chilling in the morgue-size fridge, the Hawaiian steaks marinating in white ceramic dishes. Arnold had already programmed his dish antenna to receive the game and now he was going through the kitchen shelves looking for olive oil and a pepper grinder. He was determined to create a little bit of the East Coast behind the barbed-wire-topped walls of his eighteen-bedroom ambassadorial mansion. He was trying not to think of the three different layers of security surrounding his residence, the numerous antennae and satellite dishes stuck on the roof and colour-coded telephones dotting the whole living area.
Arnold wanted to make it a memorable evening. He wasn't a domestic type of diplomat but he was acutely aware that Nancy had put her own career in the State Department on hold so that she could be with him in this blasted city. For one evening, it'd be just like the old days when after putting in long hours at their Washington office they would take turns doing meals, Nancy cooking yet another variation on lasagne and Arnold when it was his turn getting a sudden urge to order Chinese takeout. Islamabad was a whirl of conspiracies and dinner parties; there were more CIA subcontractors and cooks per household than meals in a day. Nancy had started referring to herself as Nancy begum, the housewife with no housework.