Six Suspects (30 page)

I didn't have a clue what he was blabbering about, but I said
'Yeah . . . Yeah,' and nodded my head a couple of times. 'Page
Rank. Now that was a terrific idea, wasn't it? Third best thing to
come along since sliced bread.'

The guy was persistent. 'What exactly was your tipping point,
Mr Page?'

'You mean the point when it tipped over?'

'I mean the point when you and Sergey knew that you had a
winner.'

'That was in April, I would say. Yeah. In April we knew we had
a winner.'

That shut him up.

'Won't you introduce me to your friends?' I asked.

'Oh yes, sorry, Mr Page. This is Abu Khaled,' he said, referring
to the turbaned guy. 'He's our emir, our leader, our
zimmedar
.'

'What about him?' I pointed to the pyjama dude.

'That is Abu Omar.'

'So are you guys brothers or what? All of you are called Abu.'

'We are brothers in arms, Mr Page,' he smiled. 'But we're not
related to each other. In fact we don't even speak the same
language. I'm from Pakistan, from Rawalpindi. Abu Khaled is from
Egypt and Abu Omar is from Afghanistan. I speak Urdu, Abu
Khaled speaks Arabic and Abu Omar speaks Pashto. So we talk to
each other only in English.'

'Good for me. But what are you folks doing in Kashmir?'

'We are helping our friends like Bilal in their fight against the
infidels. I am glad you sympathize with our point of view, Mr Page.
It is wonderful to have the support of someone as influential as
you.'

'Glad to be of assistance, but when do you think I can get back
to Delhi? I got a plane to catch, you know – my private 767.' I
winked.

'Soon, Mr Page, very soon. But first we need to take you to a
safe place. You need to rest now because tomorrow we will go on
a very long journey.'

We slept in a small room which was not half as cosy as the one in
Bilal's house. What was worse, I had Abu Teknikal on my left and
Abu Omar on my right for company. And they kept pestering me
with questions half the night.

'You know what,' Teknikal told me. 'Ever since I was seven, it
has been a dream of mine to visit America, abode of the internet
and the Xbox 360. Home of the Blue Gene and the BigDog. I
actually cried when I saw a picture of the Cray X-MP in my
school. But your achievements dwarf even those of Vinton Cerf
and Robert Kahn. If the internet is heaven, then Google is God.
Do you know what that makes you, Mr Page?'

'What?'

'The Godfather,' he said and grinned.

Abu Omar had other interests. 'So how many girls have you
banged, Mr Page?' he asked me.

'Excuse me?'

'I mean how many girls have you had sex with? Abu Khaled
tells us in America girls start having sex when they are only ten
and eleven. Is that true?'

'I dunno. I'd need to ask my niece Sandy. She's ten and she's a
girl.'

'I know it is forbidden in Islam, but I keep having these
immoral thoughts. All because of this Indian actress.'

'And who would that be?'

'Her name is Shabnam Saxena. The bitch is so hot, I become
crazy with desire.'

I felt like walloping the pervert, but restrained myself. 'Have
you seen any of her movies?' I asked.

'I can't. Films are un-Islamic.'

'Good for you,' I murmured and laid a protective hand on my
wallet, which contained a picture of Shabnam as well as her number.

'Don't tell the
zimmedar
,' Omar whispered, 'but I once saw an
American film at a video parlour in Kabul. It was called
Debbie
Does Dallas
. Have you seen it?'

'Never heard of it. Is it about the tourist places in Dallas? I
hope it showed the ballpark in Arlington and the—'

'No, no, Mr Page, the film was full of naked women. Thank
Mail-Order Bride
259
God the Taliban closed down that video parlour or else I would
have gone blind.'

The guy was hornier than a two-peckered billy goat.

'They say in America you can get these kinds of films even at
grocery shops. Is it true?' he continued.

'I dunno. I only buy milk and bread at Quik-Pak,' I said and
turned my back on him.

Teknikal was waiting on the other side to pounce on me.'What
is your view on anonymous peer-to-peer networks, Mr Page?
PC
Mag
says that the proliferation of such networks increases the risk
of a devastating attack on the networked information infrastructure.
Do you agree?'

The guy had diarrhoea of words and constipation of thoughts.

'With due respect to Mr Mag, if brains were gasoline, he
wouldn't have enough to run a piss ant's go-kart around the inside
of a donut!' I said, and before he could figure that one out, I pulled
the blanket over my head. 'If y'all excuse me, I'm now gonna get
some shut-eye!'

I was sandwiched between two top-notch loonies. The rocks in
Teknikal's head would fit the holes in Omar's. I don't remember
when I finally fell asleep, dreaming of Shabnam in a valley full of
snow.

The next day we left the house around nine a.m. A few minutes
later I found myself in a street full of tumbled-down houses and
charred temples.

'What the hell happened here?' I asked.

'We kicked out the Hindu Pandits from here,' grinned Teknikal.

These guys obviously knew the area pretty well. Like Bilal,
they evaded all the sentry posts, and after an hour of hotfooting it
across the city I found myself at a fruit-and-veg market.

They made me travel in a grain truck, hidden among sacks of
wheat with a blue tarpaulin over my head. The truck took us to a
Podunk town surrounded by mountains and dense forests.

We spent the night in a quaint little cottage, outside which a
mad dog kept howling. Luckily, they put me in a room with Abu
Khaled this time. He didn't speak a word to me, but I still couldn't
sleep coz he kept getting up either to go to the toilet or to pray.
The guy got up to pray even at four in the morning.

'Which prayer is this?' I asked him, rubbing my eyes.

'It is called Tahajjud. This prayer is not obligatory for Muslims.
But the truly devout do not miss it.' He kneeled and touched his
forehead to the ground.

I now knew how he got that dark mark on his forehead. It was
from all this praying.

The next morning we took off in an open jeep which Teknikal
had arranged from somewhere. From both sides, dense forests
seemed to rush in like giant waves at our jeep. The clouds were so
low, it felt as if I could reach out and touch them. Thankfully the
wind wasn't blowing, otherwise even my warm
phiran
would have
been as useless as a windshield wiper on a goat's ass.

The only trouble was the roads. They were so bad, even
buzzards couldn't fly over them, and so crooked you could see
your own tail light. Many a time the jeep narrowly avoided going
into a pothole or over the edge, and I had to shut my eyes on the
hairpin bends and just hang on for dear life.

We came across very little traffic, just the odd farmer tilling his
land or a shepherd grazing his cattle. The jeep stopped abruptly
near a mosque, and I was ordered by Khaled to get out. Teknikal
said there was a big army camp just a short distance away and
travelling by jeep would attract attention. So for the next couple
of hours we made our way on foot up a steep mountain pathway,
with Omar leading the way.

We finally neared a place called Trehgam. As we reached the top
of a hill, Omar took me aside and pointed to the village in the
distance. I saw a cluster of houses with corrugated-iron roofs. 'See
that roof painted green on that single-storey house? That is the
house of my
zerrgay
, my love. She lives there with her mother,'
Omar said.

'Then why don't you go down and meet her? I'm sure she will
be very happy to see you.'

'Are you out of your mind? The army has its brigade
headquarters in Trehgam and keeps a close watch on that house.
The moment they see me I will be arrested. I am not afraid of
capture, I am ready to die, but I don't want to be tortured.'

We didn't stay in Trehgam village. Khaled made us climb yet
another mountain. I was about to faint from exhaustion when
suddenly we reached a clearing.

Under a few
chinar
trees was a hideout. It was a slum hut,
inside the ground instead of above it. A rectangular pit had been
dug, six feet deep into the ground. Two tree trunks had
been planted at two corners, supporting a corrugated sheet which
served as the roof. The roof had been covered with branches,
leaves and shrubs, so that to a visitor coming up the mountain
the foxhole would look like a little bush. There was only one
entrance and exit. I descended into the foxhole and discovered
there were four men already inside it. They were all young
and bearded. One was bent over what seemed like a wireless
set, another was reading a book, and two were cooking something.
The foxhole was well equipped with provisions, a gas
stove and even a pressure cooker. The mud walls were lined with
blankets on all sides. There were plenty of guns and rifles lying
around, together with magazines and boxes of cartridges. I
reckoned the foxhole had enough ammo to take the Fidelity Bank
of Texas.

'Make yourself at home, Mr Page,' Teknikal told me. 'This is
where you will be staying with us for a while.'

The space inside the hideout was barely big enough to sleep
six people, and there were eight of us. I'd rather have jumped
barefoot into a bucketful of porcupines than stayed in that dump.
In two shakes of a goat's tail, I was out of that foxhole.

'I'm sorry, folks, but I don't think this is such a good idea.'

'But there is no other place to stay,' Teknikal protested.

'I'm fixin' to go over yonder to that village. I'm sure they'll
have a hotel there.'

'But the army will catch you if you go to Trehgam.'

I looked Teknikal in the eye. 'Something doesn't seem right to
me. I've been thinking, why would the Indian army be after me?
I've done nothing wrong.'

There was a long pause.

'You're right.' Teknikal nodded his head. 'Actually the army is
not after you. It's after us.'

'Why?'

'Oh, we've done a couple of things. Like blowing up the
Srinagar bus station, a market in Delhi, a temple in Akshardham,
the stock exchange in Mumbai. We escaped recently from
Tihar Jail.'

'Well sock my jaw! You guys are terrorists! In that case, I want
nothing to do with you folks. And here I was, thinking you were
my friends.'

Abu Khaled, standing by my side, laid a hand on my shoulder.
'You moron, we're not your friends. We're your kidnappers.'

'Kidnappers?'

'Yes. You've been kidnapped.'

I laughed. 'You guys are jokers. That's about as funny as a fart
in a church.'

'No, Mr Page. We're dead serious. You've been kidnapped.
Now we are going to demand a ransom of three billion dollars for
your release. We're going to get George Bush to vacate Iraq. We'll get
him to force Israel to vacate Palestine. We'll force him to quit
meddling in Somalia. We'll ask him to remove the un-Islamic regime
in Saudi Arabia. We'll compel him to make reparations to—'

'Whoa, whoa, whoa, just hold your horses for a minute,' I
interjected. It was time to set the record straight before these
crazies started asking the President to send a man to the moon.
'You folks have got the wrong guy. I am not
that
Larry Page.'

'What?'

'Yeah. You heard right. I am not that Larry Page. I've got
nothing to do with that Google guy. I ain't loaded. So if you were
expecting me to eat spinach and shit greenbacks, you'd better
think again.' I laughed.

That went down like a lead balloon.

'Come again,' said Teknikal.

'I said I am not rich. I was fooling you guys. If it took a nickle
to go around the world, I couldn't cross the street.' I looked at
Abu Khaled. 'You catch my drift?'

The big guy moved like greased lightning. Without any warning,
he swung his fist at me. I didn't see the blow coming and
caught it in the mouth. I staggered back against a tree and
collapsed like a pole-axed lap-dancer. When I got up there was
blood in my mouth and a ringing in my left ear. I touched my face
and felt the cut on my lips burning under my fingers.

Abu Khaled was still glowering at me like a mean rattlesnake.

'Er . . . do you guys take Visa?' I asked hesitatingly.

Teknikal was plumb weak north of his ears, but he finally saw the
light. 'So you really are not the Larry Page of Google fame? I had
my doubts from the beginning. Who the fuck are you?'

'I am a forklift operator in Walmart.'

'A goddamn hi-lo driver! This guy probably makes less than
four-fifty a week. And we thought he was a billionaire! Not only
that, we even paid that crook Bilal a million rupees to bring him
to us.' Teknikal started laughing like a hyena on helium.

Abu Khaled looked at him sternly. 'Abu Teknikal, behave yourself
! And make sure this infidel doesn't escape.'

I knew two things now. One, that Bilal was nothing but a lowdown,
no-good varmint. And two, that I was up shit creek without
a paddle.

My hands and feet were tied and I was dumped in a corner of the
foxhole like an old sack of clothes. The youths looked at me
curiously, then picked up their guns and went out of the hut. I
heard them reciting some prayers and running around like they
were in boot camp.

It was close to evening when Teknikal and Abu Khaled
returned. Teknikal daubed the cut on my lip with some kind of
ointment.

'So who exactly are you guys?' I asked them.

'I am Abu Al-Khaled Al-Hamza,' the big guy replied. 'I am
number four in the hierarchy of Lashkar-e-Shahadat. The Army of
Martyrdom. We are a part of Al Qaeda. Our commander is Abu
Abdullah Osama bin Muhammad bin Ladin. You've heard of him,
haven't you?'